Why am I staring at the peas? Must be the heat effect.

This evening I took part in an interesting virtual meetup. I have been very frustrated with the recent Finnish political decisions considering digital media and laws. Jyrki Kasvi, member of Green League in the Finnish Parliament, is a candidate in the oncoming elections to become one of the representants of Finland in the Europe’s Union. I was keen to hear what he has to say a month before the voting.

The meetup was taking place in Second Life, the grandmother of all the virtual worlds. I have tried the service several times, but due to its clumsiness, dreadful lag, difficult user experience and generally annoying control system, I never got far. But this meeting sounded so interesting, I was willing to give it another go.

I created a default style female avatar, activated my account and the brand new me was ready to hit the road and the skies:

Hello Venlala Petrolhead, Welcome to Second Life! Now, get ready for some fun. A whole new world awaits you where the talk is free and there’s no limit on what you might discover alongside millions of other Residents from across the globe.

Traveling should be easy in virtual worlds, but it never is. I have spend hours on the backs of griffons, bats, raptors, wolves… Name it, I have done it. The instructions say I can simply type “EduFinland I” to the search box and hit teleport button. Brilliant. I do that, but nothing happens. I am still standing in the noob landing platform and there is no error message of any kind. The help guide suggests that I press ‘Detach All’ option before the jump. I obey, but only succeed in losing my character’s helmet (Nice terminator style cloth disappearing effect

Now I am bald and still stuck.

Next the help guide suggests is to fly up to 200 metres height and try to teleport from there. I fly up and press the button. Nothing. The first first fifteen minutes of the meetup is already over. However, I am getting more determined to continue to solve this problem and find out if anyone else has succeeded to turn up.

Five more minutes of scanning the help guide and pressing teleport button repeatedly and then I receive an error message: too many people in the other end prevents me from teleporting. I double-check to find out how big the crowd is. 62 people in the area of 1,000 square metres! There are more people in Orgrimmar AH on all the time on an average Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.

I go make a cup of coffee and wait. Half an hour after the meeting began, I finally manage to teleport to the green Island of Finnish Education. Almost there: the instructions advice me to walk to the signpost and press a red dot labelled ‘meeting point’ . Pressing that would get me to the right place, but none of the meeting points have red dots. Sigh.

I fly around the island, it all looks empty. I manage to find couple of ducks. I give up and sit down in front of the signpost and wait. Another character approaches from the horizon. He comes to me and says that he is lost. Together we explore the terrain until we finally arrive to the meeting. We manage to catch the two last sentences before it is all over.

I managed to get a screen grab and looks like some people had really made it in time. I am the bald one in the front right corner.

I wonder how Second Life can still be as clumsy, difficult and flaky after all these years in development. I was so frustrated after missing this virtual meeting that I did not continue to the virtual beers with the other participants.

I decide to customise my helmetless bald avatar instead. After a good half hour I still haven’t found any decent tools or textures to create anything but solid ugly flat coloured surfaces that would not even qualify for clothing. So, I ask Google for help. How to create skins in Second Life has been queried 14 million times. After scanning through the first tutorial, I don’t even really care anymore. It is amazing how difficult everything is. One has to be good in Photoshop to create anything decent, and even though I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, I just do not have the patience for it.

I hope the next virtual meetup will be held in Habbo, Azeroth, Norrath, Middle-Earth or Eve Online – I might even make it there in time to participate in the debate

Last week, on his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict said that “[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. The Pope’s statement is at odds with the research on AIDS prevention, and a setback to decades of hard work on AIDS education and awareness. With powerful moral influence over more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and 22 million HIV positive Africans, these words could dramatically affect the AIDS pandemic and put millions of lives at risk. Worldwide concern is starting to show results and a willingness by the Vatican to revise the statement – sign our urgent petition asking the Pope to take care not to undermine proven AIDS prevention strategies: http://bit.ly/11fFHK

Like his predecessor, Benedict XVI maintains the all-so-traditional Catholic doctrines on artificial birth control, abortion and homosexuality. There are 1.1 billion Catholics and this man would have the power to make people to listen – I simply wish he would use his advocacy to talk about tolerance, human rights and freedom of choice! Claiming that condom distribution is not an effective AIDS prevention mechanism is UNTRUE, and if it diminishes condom use, it will also be deadly. Please, sign the petition.

Last week Kokkola, a town in Western Finland decided to block people from using Facebook both at work and in schools. The official reason given was the added security risk from Facebook applications. Ooh, scary, so they wanted to prevent bad things from happening? The tone suddenly changes when the IT Manager Jan-Erik Widjeskog continues:

Ei kiellolla ole tarkoitus kiusata ihmisiä. Mutta se päätös hallinnon verkosta ottaa pois, niin sehän oli aika selvää, että ei ihmisillä ole aikaa käyttää tämmöstä työaikana.

(= We don’t mean to do harm to people with this restriction. But the decision to not allow the council-manager government and civil servants and to use it, it was pretty clear that they do not have time to use such things at work.)

So what is going on? Why has everything employees do at work suddenly turned to such a big problem for employers? Why is there this new trend of changing the rules towards monitoring and restricting people’s rights? And why aren’t people making bigger fuzz about it? The following poll was held in one of the biggest Finnish tabloid newspapers last week asking Should Facebook be blocked at schools and workplaces?

66% say yes… WTF? In recent blog entries I have ranted about the recently validated Lex Nokia snooping law. So, I guess MPs are only as stupid as the people that voted for them at the first place. And I am not ranting about Facebook here, I personally hate Facebook, but I am asking, who decides what is good for me and when is good and where is good. Why would banning sites make workplaces better? What motivational value adds the policy of “We know you are visiting sites that do not maximise your productivity, so we make sure you can and will only do what you are paid to do.”

I wish companies would instead value their most important asset, the people who spend one third of their day at work and provide them with trust and assets instead. I always do my best and the deal should be of mutual benefit where both parts win. That is the thing that should really matter.

I had been given a massage voucher as birthday present, but only got around of having it last week. The masseuse immediately informed me that she can see angels flying and energy flowing around me. She also informed that when I first walked in to her house, I didn’t arrive alone, but with my grandmother. That sounds cool, she was one hard lady, mean and tough, but she’s also been dead more than ten years now. Nice icebreaker for a cynic/atheist. Things got even more interesting, when she told me that in at least one previous life of mine I was killed violently, because I was believed to be a witch.

I have been witch even in this life and here’s the photographic proof of Seppo, me and my bro Kalle – two wizards and one witch.

Later when I informed my mum that her mother Agnes still likes hanging out with me, she replied: “Your grandma was an evil person.” Guess apples don’t fall far from the tree. About my violent death as a misunderstood healer she said that in one of her previous lives she had been a fisher, in another one she was living up in mountains and she went on and on… So even my mum believes in rebirth! o.O

For me all those previous lives sound silly – if we all have practiced beforehand, humankind should be doing much better. Frankly, I plan to live, die and not come back haunting you. Unless you deserve it. But if I turn out to be wrong and get to choose my next form, I choose an otter. Did you know that a bunch of otters is called a romp? Sounds like fun, romping with mates. I still love the classic Otters holding hands video:

After the massage I was given my personal zodiac star chart.

URSA Astronomical Association summarises the problem of horoscopes well (I apologise that everything seems to be in Finnish today):

2000 vuotta sitten aurinkomerkeillä eli ihmisten pääasiallisilla horoskooppimerkeillä oli vielä pitkälti niiden alkuperäinen merkitys. Jos synnyit sinä aikana vuodesta, kun Aurinko oli Leijonan tähtikuviossa, olit horoskooppimerkiltäsi Leijona. Jos taas astuit maailmaan niinä päivinä, jolloin Aurinko oli Oinaassa, sinustakin tuli Oinas.

Sittemmin yötaivaan asento on muuttunut. Maapallon akseli tekee vaivihkaa hienoista kieppuvaa liikettä, jota kutsutaan prekessioksi. Prekession vuoksi eläinradan tähdistöt ovat siirtyneet taivaalla lähes kokonaisen tähdistön verran ajanlaskun alkuun verrattuna.

My astronomical vocabulary is so limited that I don’t even try to translate that word to word. Basically, it says that 2000 years ago the zodiac was actually linked to the stars. However, their position has since radically changed due to earth’s precession – (Wikipedia provides a long, fascinating and difficult article to read, if precession is your thing). Nowadays the original positioning of stars is so different that the original calculation makes no sense. So, I wouldn’t recommend marrying someone based on their star sign.

From my own star chart I learned that the rising signs – “the sign of the zodiac that was rising in the point on the ecliptic that is furthest above the plane of the horizonare” – are the ones that people become in their 30′s. So, I was born September 11th and my star sign is a Virgo. But now I have transformed to my rising sign, which is a Cancer. Therefore I am no longer an anal & annoying organiser, who like things in good order thus annoying everyone around her. Good start, but what am I now?

Cancer

This sign has active emotions in that they are constantly shifting, changing from one mood to another. At their worst, they may be cranky, touchy, sometimes even aggressive. It can sometimes be difficult to understand, being highly influenced (positively or negatively) by emotional patterns. As such, it can be rather whimsical and quite unpredictable at times. It’s not uncommon for Cancer individuals to have a change of heart half-way into things, however loyalties are also strong and they may stick to things on this precept.

Cancer sounds like an idiot as well. My mum simply commented my rising sign stating that if someone asked her, she would simpy define me as “yleisesti vittumainen ihminen” – (=Generally annoying/difficult/obnoxious person).

Sounds about right, I’ll toast to that. Amen.

The bill passed in today’s parliament voting (96-56) and the result just another proof to the well known fact that Conservatives are idiots. With them having a majority in the Finnish Parliament, it was expected/feared that the law would pass. 47 MPs were busy knitting at home today and did not bother showing up.

Lex Nokia (as I have already ranted before) basically makes it legal to organisations that provide Internet services to search the metadata of any IP-based online activity, such as emails and web-surfing. How liberate and forward-looking indeed. Yawn!

The Centre Party and the National Coalition have been supportive of the bill all the way, while the opposition Social Democratic Party and the Left Alliance have opposed the law.

^^ Respect ^^ to Jyrki J.J. Kasvi from Green Party, who held the speech against the law today before the voting.

During the preparation process of the law, there were threats made that Nokia would leave Finland if the law didn’t pass under-Secretary to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Markku Wallin, told the daily Helsingin Sanomat.

Guess they can stay in here now. Currently I feel like leaving the country myself.

However, it is not over yet. A final vote on the bill is expected next week. So there is still at least some hope left…

This positive and hopeful artwork was drawn by my niece (6yrs) to remind me that somewhere out there the good guys are protecting us:

Tarvos & friends

Translation: Once upon a time there was Tarvos (=Starwars), who was Joda (=Yoda) and he fought against the evil and he had friends. Colour this picture.

I coloured Tarvos and his jolly mates as requested

I was also told that my five-year-old nephew asks in his evening prayers God to protect all the aliens and Star Wars characters both in our galaxy AND in outer space. Sounds like he got it all covered, so Tarvos and his mates should be safe wherever they may roam. Amen.

Museokatu, my home street today

These mentally unstable kids are looking for becoming popular and famous in no matter what and as long as they make it to the news. And the media follows. The shooting only took place today, but it already has a dedicated Wikipedia site online. According to the news, Matti Saari only received a permit for his handgun yesterday after being interviewed in person by the police. Over the past few weeks he had systematically uploaded shooting material and massacre warnings to Youtube and IRC gallery, Finland’s largest Internet community for teens and young adults (60% of the users are older than 18). In the IRC homepage there is a link to information pack for parents about the rules of the site – still, I bet most of the parents haven’t even heard about IRC.

This tragic incident has again reminded the nation about guns and the olk-skool gun laws: only the United States and Yemen have higher levels of gun ownership per inhabitant. And yet, Finland wants to paint a picture of a modern, safe country with flawless education system and uncorrupted democracy. According to the Finnish Ministry of the Interior there are currently 1.6 million legal firearms in Finland. The population is around 5.2 million so that adds up to 32 privately owned legal firearms per 100 civilians. And as if that wasn’t enough, many households also store guns brought back from the frontiers of the second world war:

There may be as few as 50,000 or as many as 500,000. The majority of the unregistered firearms are personal war booty Soviet or German firearms dating to WWII. (Wikipedia)

Why does a nation need that many guns? According to the national broadcasting company YLE only 60% of firearm permits are issued for hunting weapons. That makes 40% – 840 000 guns – to be used for other purposes. Both these kids had licenses for their guns and were just avid hobbyists. Dang! There is a big margin for other ones with similar interests.

The last year Jokela massacre began a discussion of what could and should be done to prevent further similar tragedies and now it will get louder again. Ironically, the official group that has been analysing the reasons and consequences of last year’s incident hasn’t even published their results yet. And the online forums are already burstign with the macho comments of “one idiot spoils everyone’s fun.” I would just change the laws now and get the handguns out asap.

So what is wrong with this country? What’s with all these Columbine copycats? I only moved back to Finland two months ago after spending 11 years abroad, so I am still rather outsider myself. However, world is very different from the times when I was at school in the 80′s. Traditionally Finland was a socialistic country, where school, health care and basic services were free and available to everyone. There was a general sense of being a part of society, which has radically changed since. Today’s Finland is no longer even trying to promote services for everyone, same thing that has happened to the whole world. Money rules. Every doctor wants to work in the well-paid private sector. People prefer paying for fast private services. Money doesn’t get spent to support families or preventing problems, but rather gets spent on fixing the mess afterwards. So, the money is spent to too late in the chain instead of preventing the problems in the first place. A good example is the increasing amount of kids that are taken to foster families or temporary shelters due to the abuse and problems in the family. The preventive work for supporting the families doesn’t get the cash, because preventive work does not show in the statistics. It prevents the problems

Single parents, low income households, people with mental problems, old people and people who are depending on social services are not media sexy and therefore not interesting for the politicians and decision makers. They are silent part of the nation, almost invisible. The society no longer looks after people; everything needs to be profitable. This week’s news was that Finland is no longer the least corrupted country in the world – now that political parties got caught of accepting money from businesses. Only naive people believe in common goals, justice or liberty. Everyone’s too busy trying to save themselves from the economic slowdown and the spiralling expenses. Schools, doctors, towns, cities, we all need to be profitable. Money needs to make more money.

What will happen tomorrow morning when the dust begins to settle? Internet, American violent culture and heavy metal music will be blamed, Jack Thompson will release a statement that links the shooting to GTA series (to get hassled less I would rather work as a meter maid than the PR person in Rockstar games), but I doubt that this business oriented culture of stress, overworking, greed and profit hunting will change radically in one night.

When my 60-year old mother Kaija saw today’s news, she immediately said that we are all responsible for this. First and foremost she blames that her generation brought forward the wrong values and we all get to pay for it. I don’t think it is her generation only, which cocked up – my generation bought the values and enhanced them. This is not a righteous world of flawless superheroes, justice isn’t for all and good guys don’t win. Hmm, this rant starts to sound somehow familiar. What if Rockstar Games has just managed to nail the time we live in right between the eyes?

Miksi taas? Why again?

I have this simple one liner in the header.php file, so there is not that much margin for error:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.venla.net/favicon.ico”/>

The latest Flock, Firefox, Opera and Safari are all happy with it. I have checked all the forums, but still can’t get it to work in IE7. Anyone, any ideas – I’ve started to think that ignoring IE7 might be a good general rule.

Flock, Opera and IE7. One of them is wrong.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is released in the UK on 21 November. Time flies, it’s already 8th game in the Tomb Raider series, I haven’t bothered after the 3rd one, but I admit Lara was fun when she first appeared in what…1996! BBC is showcasing some pics of the new marketing face of Lara, and damn, she looks scary.