2001: A GEEK ODYSSEY

Sun, Apr 29

<05:07> Upgrade to Linux 2.4.4. PCMCIA from kernel tree still not working :-/

Thu, Apr 26

<10:27> Wahey. Nothing like a night of coding for the start of term. Unfortunately the website deadline was too close to my physics work deadline, but only one of them could be shifted. Too much Red Bull is just too much, but what can you do except mysql_query("insert into teknohog (caffeine) values (100)");. Oh well. At least got something done today, wonder how I'll keep up during the rest of it. :-)

Tue, Apr 24

<01:06> Today, as we had agreed, I met Antti Savinainen in Cambridge. He was my physics/chemistry teacher in the IB, currently he's working on a PhD in Leeds. It was great to chat about stuff, especially on physics and teaching. The only slight worry is that his wife and daughter remain in Finland, but they try and meet quite often. A happy family it seems, on the other hand I enjoy being able to spend nights hacking whenever the friends at the company ask :-). A few hours of PHP and JS today. But tomorrow I better get back to physics, the deadline is incidentally on Wednesday (as is the website we're building). Blech. Well life sucks, but so do black holes, and black holes are pretty cool (not quite 0 K but let's not get into quantum details here) so life is cool after all!

Mon, Apr 23

<01:22> Just as things got going well with my particle physics exercises, Rend and Sohail asked me to join then for a hack party. But before going into PHP (nicely forgotten during the past couple of months ;-) there were some issues with my net connection. Eventually DHCP worked, but now that I got back , I found out one more point about routing which I'd not noticed before. And now I know Linuxconf sucks goats because I'd done precisely the right thing but it only worked when did it directly. Anyway, at least I got something done today :-)

Sat, Apr 21

<00:09> Linux 2.4.3 works great. Had a few glitches with PCMCIA which delayed this upgrade a bit. Still using the standalone package, the kernel PCMCIA stuff is too unstable. Basically I wanted this upgrade because of some bugfixes for ReiserFS which is used by my /home.

BTW, back @Cam last night. A terrible day of travel though. And as is traditional here at the college, they turned off central heating for the summer term. Damn that name, it was snowing last night :-( and now I've used the gas fire for the whole day, wearing so much clothes it brings back memories of the artillery camp in Lapland in 1998 -- though that was around -40 C (or F, incidentally). Also trying out a new hair style (again :-) which is not unlike something I had back in the IB..

But there's work to do, oh the surprise. Particles supervision next week, the stuff would be pretty essential for the summer project as well. Gotta pause on Monday as my IB physics/chemistry teacher is coming over. Should be fun.. I must have mentioned another one of his students is starting at Queens' next October.

Tue, Apr 17

<01:39> Another lazy day. Polished the quantum mechanics essay today and yesterday. Not very excited at the moment, but obvious corrections suggested by my supervisor have been included.

:-) `Little Buddha' was a nice Buddhist film despite an obvious glitch (even made it to the title). The kid was a reincarnation of a lama (Buddhist teacher), not a buddha; the latter have escaped the cycle of rebirth... anyway, gave some nice thoughts, as well as mindfulness and Metta for meditation.

"By the way you are using parentheses too frequently." -- Antti Savinainen, my physics/chemistry/philosophy teacher at the IB. Keeping this in mind with all my writing, including the QM thingy, which is probably why some of them escaped into the previous paragraph ;-).

Finished Double Full Moon Night by Gentry Lee, a conclusion to Bright Messengers. These two are not a continuation but a parallel story to Clarke & Lee's Rama quartet, something I realized by the end. Not nearly as magnificent, but a nice complement. This only gets *** now while the Rama could well get *****. Makes me wonder if I should join my techno-adventurous sci-fi forces with someone psychologically minded ... the one I'm thinking of should already guess :-).

Sun, Apr 15

<01:15> Good Friday night ;-) in Kuopio with Opo, Juho, Kalle and other mates. The visual artist Kivi Larmola also joined the party (don't remember what connections he had there), had some interesting discussions about art, languages and GNU with him. Having different drinks like cider/beer/whisky/wine was not a very good idea. The next day my sister and Jussi joined me for some shopping. Finally got a new wallet for British currency and cards - not that I'd have too much money to fit one. That remark also goes with the Swiss bank account I'm opening. For CERN stuff, no money laundering (ha ha just serious).

Wed, Apr 11

<00:42> It's so long since the last update. Better start from where I left off before. Ended up doing paperwork at Rend's until the very end of my stay in Cambridge - Thursday morning. But before that I should mention Saturday night which I agreed to have free. Martti came over from Canterbury, also a couple of Finnish biologists were there attending a seminar. One of them happened to have links to some of my IB friends, as well as my army service (the same place where Martti and I served). A fun, relaxed evening of typical Finnish pastime.

Back to work on Sunday. As my flight was due to leave on Thursday 5.4. around 10 am, I'd got a coach ticket for the morning, but the amount of work forced me to delay leaving Cambridge even further. So it was a taxi drive to Heathrow :-) after a night's work.

Back in Finland, went to Ruka to enjoy the last weeks of the winter. Snowboarding after a long break was no problem. Only the nightly entertainment was a bit disappointing, but heck, guess I shouldn't expect industrial rave at the back of beyond northern Finland. Fun anyway. Now it's back to Varkaus, tomorrow I'm off to see JEO my army comrade.