2012

Sun, May 20

<16:01 EEST> What is the area of a semicircle whose perimeter is 150 units? Rounded to whole units, the answer should tell whether you are one of a distinguished group of people who can do high-school math.

But enough of this geeking out. It was Yläkaupungin yö once again, and even though I have grown some level of contempt for it and similar mass events in recent years, I still managed to go, and spend a good 12 hours while there.

Initially, I had decided to go to town around noon, first to return some CDs to the library (yay, sneakernetting in the 21st century), then watch a play, and return home for lunch, with a mild possibility of going back for some evening events. The play was by one of my JYT friends, and besides the unsurprising bunch of other JYTians, I spotted some of my young students onstage. Feeling a general lack of directions after the play, I followed some of the JYT guys to some food and subsequent performances.

At this point, it might be worth mentioning that I have no particularly strong ties with any of the people I hung out with, it is more like a collegiate relationship. I can easily feel like an outsider in a big social event if I am not going with any close friends, but this time it felt somehow OK, likely due to my lack of expectations. Later into the night, I even found myself mingled in a dancing crowd with no acquaintances around, enjoying the collective pulse as if in a techno rave. That particular energy was supplied by Lada Nuevo, a faux Russian folk dance act.

Adding to my mixed relationship with JYT and social events, some people were genuinely happy to see me after a year or few. Again there were no deep connections to be reforged, but a few moments of smallish talk between old friends who once went through hell onstage together. I also felt that there is still something special about YKY that separates it from national booze-fests, in that it brings together all kinds of art lovers.

One of the weirder performances was Juha Mäkinen cutting his hair with a hunting knife. It was genuine underground avantgarde from the premises, but as I recall happening before on such events, it took on interesting turns from the crowd participation. Some small children started picking the longer cuttings for fake moustache, while a man started a loud commentary in the style of a sports announcer. Dressed like a demon barber from Fleet street, Mr. Mäkinen did end up cutting himself with the bleeding edge, albeit only his fingertips.

I headed home after the traditional Moirislampi event and fire artists, both of which had been relocated to the university sports ground. After a rather heavy sleep, I feel strangely content in my decision to partake in the night. I still maintain a general issue in my working life, where too much social action makes me want to stay quiet at home every night, but this was probably a much-needed combo breaker. A couple of hours of paperwork today did not feel half as bad as usually.

Well, I guess it is back to geeking out nevertheless. Earlier this week, my ISP change was completed and I got myself 50/10 Mbit/s of fat pipe. Saunalahti had brought fiber to the building, and the final tens of metres are handled via VDSL2.

While it works great now, the installation was an incredible hassle of a couple of weeks. Every few days, I got an email and/or SMS saying it would be complete in [insert date], and on the date in question, I would get an update to a few more days later. Eventually, I was informed of the small techical issue that no one can access the telecom room in the basement, and a locksmith was being hired.

Absurd as it was, in my history with a few different ISPs, Saunalahti is the only one that constantly promises something really fast, and then makes you wait weeks and weeks without any explanation. (They spent about 10 weeks installing my ADSL back in 2004.) I should not complain too much now, since the offer was simply so much capacity for so little money, and I like the technical aspect of having fiber to the basement, but it still reeks of an unprofessional marketing-driven business. In contrast, small businesses have less money to spend on marketing, so they actually have to be honest and deliver.

There remains another slight technical downside to this ISP change. Just a few months ago, I had gotten a shiny new ADSL modem with gigabit ports to enhance my LAN usage, particularly network drives. Alas, the new connection is VDSL2, and the DSLAM has no ADSL fallback. The ISP-provided modem has the usual 100 Mbit switch, and the WLAN side also leaves something to be desired. I could always buy my own modem though... right? It turns out there are much fewer VDSL2 modems on the market, and consequently, they have yet to go through the same development from cheap, basic 100 Mbit ports to something serious.

I will probably keep the Buffalo for a while, since the gigabit switch and WLAN are perfectly usable without the modem, but of course this would add to power wasted and overall clutter, so it remains offline for now. In fact, the new modem should consume a little less power than my past couple of ADSL boxes. More importantly, gigabit was never a make or break question for me; sure, it makes some things smoother, but I could already do the same great things such as FPGA development over the 100 Mbit LAN. Still, it is a nice piece of opensource-friendly hardware, it would be a shame to sell it to some Windows muggle ;)

Last but also 1337est, I finished reading the whole of Rudy Rucker's Ware series. Rucker is easily compared to British poet-mathematicians of yore, like Edwin Abbott and Charles Dodgson, and with the fourth and final volume this becomes blindingly obvious. It is more than a worthy update of Flatland into modern science and SF ideas, while tying up the wacky and wonderful threads of the cyberpunk saga. I love the way SF can touch upon the deepest of religious and philosophical issues in what is basically an action adventure comedy.