I'll start by telling one of my favorite anecdotes. When our son was born prematurely (on week 27), we were at the ICU for weeks, because he didn't really have any lungs to speak of, and was kind of the size of a carton of milk anyway. He made it fine, to those not in the know, but still, it was touch and go for weeks.

While they were doing sterile operations, like changing incubation tubes or other such stuff, parents were asked to leave the ward and go to a waiting room. The room had a TV, a couple of sofas, a guestbook (filled with the most horrific and the most brilliant stories). Just a room to spend half an hour in while you couldn't be with your child.  One day in the waiting room, we were joined by a middle-aged woman. We talked for a moment, and then she asked, as an aside, if our son had been "emergency-baptized" as soon as he was born prematurely. Apparently, this is something where your child is baptized right away by a priest or whoever, so that if the child dies, his/her soul goes to heaven. A kind thought, but since neither of us, the parents, belong to any church or subscribe to any system of belief, we answered "No, our son has not been baptized".

What does this charming example of the human race do? She stands up, fire in her eyes, and nearly shouts "Your child is going to hell!". She then promptly storms out of the room, leaving us, literally, gasping.

I had no words for the situation. Now, mind you, i wasn't a "new" atheist or agnostic (more on this later) at this point, so i wasn't stumped by her reasoning. I was simply amazed that someone would do this at a children's ICU-ward. I rarely have good comebacks when people say something "smart". I'm also not a violent person by nature, though, if i could go back, i would probably beat the everliving crap out of her for the sheer fun of it.

So what made her do it? Her religion. Her beliefs. Her conviction. She was absolutely sure that an unbaptized child will go to hell. She was not angry at our child, but at us. The non-believers. We had, with our ignorant actions, condemned this poor young-soul to hell. How dare we?? We had no right. I saw this.

But then, I don't feel pity for people like this. I feel hate. Anger. That's the kind of person I am. So sue me.

Uh okay. So what do i believe in? I don't believe in a god. Or gods. Or the Bible, or the Koran, or the Talmud or anything else of that sort. I believe in science. I believe in scientific methodology. By definition, that makes me an atheist. Something that is counter to the theist idea, that include belief in a god or gods. I do however accept that there are things we do not understand. That doesn't make it supernatural, or imply the existence of a mythical god-figure. There may very well be a force beyond our current understanding, that manipulates what we perceive as reality. But it still doesn't make it a god. It just makes it something that we do not yet have the terminology or science to grasp.

Atheism, to me, is not a belief system, though a lot of people want to say it is. It's a way of thinking based on rational thought. I don't believe there is no god, i know there is no god. It's the difference between belief and knowledge. I think that sums Atheism well enough for me.

Then what is science really? It's a current best guess. Theory, based on theory, based on experiment, based on theory. We're constantly revising what we know, because we accept we are not perfect. We accept that we know a humble tiny little piece of how the universe works, and we're trying our best to figure things out. Some theories last longer than others. We do not need absolutes, just current estimates and theories.

Religious people work with absolutes, as far as I've been able to understand them. An age old adage says, "If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people". If there's something you don't understand, you consider it, ask other people, look at other angles and so on. Or do you just say "no, god did it". Or "god works in mysterious ways". That's just a piss-poor way of saying "I don't want to understand" or "I don't need to understand". "These things are not meant to be understood by me." You're essentially saying you are too stupid to understand how things work, and that you're okay with it. If that's okay for your, to not be able to reasonably look at things then... I'm very sorry for you.

I used to think that I'm an agnostic. An agnostic does not make up his mind, but waits for evidence to either side before making up his mind. But since there is not conclusive evidence toward either side; and how could there ever be conclusive evidence, ever in an issue as complex as this, you don't make up your mind. But this is pretty much a cop-out, as I've come to understand it. Even if there isn't evidence that conclusively proves that there is no god, can i really honestly accept that possibility? Can i honestly accept into my world a supernatural being that created and controls everything? No. I can accept a force beyond our current understanding that may to the uneducated mind seem omnipotent. But anything can be explained through science. Just not current science.

So I've perhaps come to understand that I'm purely an atheist. If i need the label at all. But i definitely don't accept the possibility of a deity of any kind. The mere concept is ludicrous.

So what about the afterlife. Dying. Creation? Evolution? Let's look at my thoughts on these issues.

When you are born, in fact, before you are born, your consciousness is born. This can be proved by looking at EKG from a fetus. At some point, when enough stem-cells have been tasked to form brain cells, a chemical process happens which triggers electrical activity in the clump of cells that will be your brain. They will eventually take over involuntary and voluntary functions that you need to survive and act. The fetus will move it's hands. It will kick. It will toss and turn. When the child is born, these will be augmented by a whole host of amazing feats that us humans take for granted.

We know there is electrical activity happening in the human body. When you die, this activity eventually ceases, within 24 hours or so [uh edit here, after the brain stops getting oxygen, it stops working after a few minutes or so]. Don't quote me on this, by the way, but let's say that for the sake of conversation at the moment. According to physics, energy doesn't go anywhere. It may transform, but it exists just the same. You burn a log and you get heat. Same way, the energy that kept you going has to go somewhere. It may just dissipate into the surroundings, or the tissue, or it might do something else. There's no evidence for any of this, so it's just speculation. As far as we know, when you die, you cease to exist. You don't conceive anything anymore. Ergo, there is no afterlife, because there is no you there to comprehend it.

Creation..well can we just put this to rest already? It's 2011. If you believe a magic fairytale-guy created the world by thinking about it in a week, or even thousands of years, you're crazy and you should be institutionalized. There is enough conclusive evidence to say that the universe was created some 13.7Ga ago, and we have visual evidence of other solar systems that are in the process of forming planets to say that this didn't just "snap into existence through some magical fucking being". It's still an ongoing process that we have the privilege to study and look at.

As for life, well, we've already created 'artificial bacteria' in labs. We've created something that wasn't created through natural process. Sure, we haven't yet simulated how life came to be from a goo of amino acids, water and various elements, but we have enough supporting evidence to say this is exactly what happened. We have evidence for evolution. Sure, there are holes in a number of species and how they came to be, but that doesn't negate the other, valid evidence that we have. We can point to a rock or a fossil and say with a high degree of certainty that it is n years old.

And because our knowledge of evolution isn't complete, as few things are, it's still just a theory. And that doesn't bother me in the least. It can be a theory as long as it has to, but theory doesn't make it any less real than something written in a book 1800 years ago. Theory just means we don't fully understand everything, so we make certain hypothesis based on research and empirical evidence, until we can fill out the gaps with enough confidence. Which we may never! And that's the great thing about science.

I don't get scared of the unknown, i take it as a challenge. I want to learn more. I don't settle for explanations that take away an amazing process, and instead explains the end result as magics created by some guy in the sky?

One of my favorite quotes is 'Epicurus' Trilemma' (paraphrased by me and summarized by David Hume) :

If God is unable to prevent evil, he is not omnipotent

If God is not willing to prevent evil, he is not good

If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, why is there evil?

This is the best god damn evidence that there is no god. If you want to worship a god that is petty and childish or downright evil, like a child killing ants with a magnifying glass.. well..

Anyway, it was far from a clean job. The window was shattered to a million bits inside the car, and half of it had dropped inside the door. Cleaning it up just so i could drive it to work and put it in the garage was a bitch. So yeah, i decided, instead of taping a black plastic bag over the broken window, i decided to drive it to a safer place. Who know, maybe the same fuck would have come back for my 1994 Green Day "Dookie" cd that i still had in the glove compartment. He also left a 100 euro inverter. I guess it could have been anyone, but my money is on some junkie looking for his next fix of cheap drugs (Subutex or some such stuff). A GPS like that retails for 150 euros or so, and on the black market it ought to fetch 30 bucks? Maybe 40? And that gets you what? In Helsinki, maybe a fourth of a gram of cocaine (probably not his brand of poison), or a few pills of subutex or some benzos.

Sigh.

Anyway, as soon as i noticed what had happened, i pick up my Galaxy S, and call the insurance company to ask about what to do next. However, as i'm slightly shocked by the events, i fumble, and drop my phone, which hits the asphalt with a resounding thump. Perfectly flat on its screen. I pick it up, and next thing you know, i'm picking out small pieces of glass from my hand. Great. Broken car. Broken phone. Phone still works, so i make the call anyway. Insurance company tells me to call the cops, and take the car to a shop for repairs.

Now, all this hinges on the po-lice. The five-oh. Come monday, i look up from their site how to make a report, which can be done either at the station, online or over the phone. I'm adviced by the site that i should not use the electronic form if the crime involves someone breaking in somewhere. Someone broke into my car to steal shit, so i figure i'll call them instead. On the fourth call, someone picks up. Here's the dialog:

Me: Hey, i need to make a report. Someone broke into my car.

5-0: Yeah? Well you need to fill out the online form

Me: But.. it said..

5-0: We can't take reports like this over the phone. Either visit a police station, or fill out the online form.

Me: Fine.

I was stumped, but then again, my faith for our men and women in blue is .. minimal to begin with, so i was not altogether amazed.

So i look up the online form thing. I have to authenticate using my online banking codes. Fine, that's fairly standard in things like this where you need to be sure who's doing what. I fill in my info, and it says "Sending this information [insert name and social security number here] to the requesting site. Again, standard practice. I'm then taken to this 90's rendition of a website, with a simple html form asking for different kinds of information. The first bits of information requested? My name and social security number, which i just authenticated to be sent over for. But hey, okay. Can you make a report under some other persons name? Doesn't make sense to me why you'd authenticate as John Doe, and then make a report under the name Jane Doe, with her soc.security number. That smells illegal, you know?

So i fill in the fields, which are by the way, limited to like 50 characters. Try describing anything in 50 chars. Try writing the model name of the stolen items in 50 chars. There was also a field which asked how i wanted a copy of the report. The options were "by snail mail" or "i'll pick them up". I hit "by mail", and then decide to click the "info" button next to the field. It says "You can get it by email (but that's unencrypted mind you!), by mail, or you can pick it up". There's no field for "email", and since the buttons are radio-buttons, i can't de-select the choice i already made. I was stuck. Fucking sucks. I send it in anyway, and i get a date and time, a reference number. I then file a report with the insurance company. This is a PDF-file, with fillable forms. I then *print it out* because my insurance company doesn't offer an electronic way of sending in stuff. There are rumors of an email address that accepts stuff, but it's not public or i didn't find it. So i then proceed to fucking fax over the form to the insurance company. *bepbepbeeep* Hey look, it's the 90's calling. Yeah? Okay. They said they want their technology back.

Jesus fucking christ.

Then i drive over to the car repair shop, so they can take pictures and get an estimate over to the insurance company. So far all good. Two days pass. On the third, i get a call from the insurance company, who say they have not heard from the police department. I then call the police, who give me the run-around, and finally forward me to the documents department. They spend a good 15-20 minutes searching for my report. They ask for my name. They ask for my social security number. The date and time i sent it in. The city i live in. None of these apparently produce any results, and i'm left to wonder whether they ever got the report or not. I try to offer the clerk the reference number that i got after i filed the report. Her reply? "No that's useless. I can't do anything with that". So what, either she's incompetent, or the reference number is.. a random generated number to make me feel better?

Also, i've never made a crime-report. And there should only be one person with my name and social security number in the entire country. So how can it be this difficult to find my report? This is beginning to sound like the work of some big IT service provider.

I was also told that "No the documents are not sent to the insurance company unless they request them (which they also don't automatically). So i either have to ask the insurance company to ask the police to get the documents, or wait for the police to send the documents to me, so i can i guess..uh.. fax to the insurance company.

All this has yet to happen. No nothing from the po-po. The car guys are waiting for the insurance company, who are waiting for the police. So i'm stuck until they do their thing. Great.

..as for the phone

As i didn't have a company phone (or i did, but i gave it away to a colleague when i got the galaxy s), i decided to get one ordered for me to replace the now-fucked Samsung. I wanted the Galaxy S 2, but they didn't have it in stock, and i'm a very impatient man, so i got the HTC Desire Z (the HTC Vision elsewhere). That's the qwerty-slider. I'll write something about it once i've had a chance to use it first. It seems solid, and they physical keyboard is a nice thing to have around. Also, it supports Cyanogen Mod 7.1.

Let me describe the place. It's a pretty inconspicuous-looking place at the corner of Lapinlahdenkatu and Työmiehenkatu. Walking in, you're greeted by someone from the staff, who asks you to remove your shoes, as the restaurant is shoe-free except for the vestibule. There are eight tables, two of which are .. i guess Japanese-styled, where you sit on the "floor". That area is actually raised from the floor, but anyway. The restaurant opens at 17:00, and we had one of the low floor-seat tables booked. The place was booked for the entire evening, and people kept walking in asking for tables without reservations. I'm not sure how much in advance you have to do your reservation, but it's not a place you just walk in to. And this was on a Tuesday!

Sitting down was not an easy task for some of our entourage, but we all eventually found our places. I'm a small chap, so i found it rather comfortable to sit cross-legged at that low table. They had, as i mentioned, 6 regular tables, but we wanted the Japanese experience, whatever that may mean.

We ordered assorted drinks first, including some "Japanese" beer, called Asahi. Which was actually made in the Czech republic, which was printed with the smallest possible font at the bottom of the label. But none the less.

The menu can be confusing at first, because you kind of have to flip back and forward if you don't read Japanese. On the first two pages, you have the kanji (?) and the english versions of the dishes, but then when you get to the other dishes, which are combinations of different things, you just get the japanese name of the dish, but with a number, that corresponds to the first two pages. Confused? Good. Anyway, we managed to get some appetizers ordered, including Ebi Furai (deep fried scampi, flounder, and octopus), Yakitori (chicken skewers), and some dish with fresh tuna that i missed the name of, possibly the Sashimi Moriawase. 

The main courses were ordered next, along with a beaker of warm Okunomatsu Junmai Ginjo sake. This was our waitresses recomendation, out of the three standard sake varieties. It was a warm, very sweet liquid, which wasn't overwhelmingly strong, but not something i'd drink on it's own. With the food it was alright. They had an 81 euro premium sake, but we decided not to order that, even though we were on the company dime.

I had the Sukiyaki, which was one of the two "table-made" dishes (the other being Yakiniku). Basically, they bring out a cast-iron pan, and turn on a gas-stove which is at the center of your table. When the pan has heated, the waitress brings out a tray of different items. She started out by taking a small dollop of fat, to see that the pan was properly heated. After that, she started piling on the different components: very thin slices of beef, leeks, chinese cabbage, bamboo, shitake mushrooms and noodles, adding the Sukiyaki sauce as she went. The sauce consists simply of sake (or mirin, which is not as alcoholic?), sugar and soy-sauce. With everything simmering away in front of us, she brings a cup with a raw egg inside, which she informs me, is for dipping. She tells us to wait a few minutes, and then enjoy. Totally awesome!

The beef was absolutely succulent. Marbled to perfection, and cut so thin you almost couldn't see the slices (Seinfeld reference, never mind). The sauce made everything soft and sweet, and you then started picking up pieces with your chopsticks, dipping them in the raw egg, and then eating it. An absolutely delightful dish for 18 euros.

Dessert consisted of green-tea ice cream, which was rather odd-tasting, but not altogether bad. Two from our group had red-bean ice cream, which was equally odd, but not repulsive either.

All in all a great place to eat, if you remember to book in advance, with fair prices and good service. The only thing that was kind of weird was the decor, which consisted of hockey-jerseys, clubs and skateboards filled with signatures. How does this fit in with the theme, i have no idea. But it's not stifling or bothering, so i guess.. rock on.

Check out their website at http://www.kabuki.fi/

1. We don't stop building nuclear power (if needed), but also don't stop developing alternative energy.
2. Women retain the right to abortion
3. Same sex couples allowed to marry and adopt children if they want to

And let's see, yes, all of these are now scrapped and fucked over. Basically, during the negotiations that took place in order to form the new government, the Christian Democratic party imposed some terms, that needed to be accepted for them to enter into the new coalition. Now, as a reminder to my esteemed readers, the Christian Democratic party (henceforth CD) has a 4.03% share of the votes (6 representatives in the parliament, out of a total of 200), which is the lowest they have had since the 1995 elections (when they had 2.96% of the votes). This is pretty much one of the smallest parties in the entire parliament, which is how it should be in my opinion. So how come they get to make demands? Basically they said that they will enter the coalition as long as discussion on same-sex adoption rights and marriage rights are put on hold at least for the next four years, and that abortion-laws are reinspected (and supposedly made stricter).

Yes, welcome to the 1950's.

I wonder what kind of deals were made behind closed doors that made the other five coalition parties agree to these draconian deals. I am amazed that anyone could feel these issues are unimportant or minor! They are, in my opinion, some of the defining points of a modern, western society. And since do minority beliefs dictate majority rules? I am just shocked.

I honestly wonder, if the had of the CD party wasn't a woman (Päivi Räsänen), would they want to remove women's right to vote? Or maybe they could try to get stoning as a valid legal punishment?

And what is the problem with gay people? People, this is the 21st century! Honestly, Räsänen, IIRC, pulled the "i have a lot of gay friends"-card when the issue was brought up, which of course makes her exempt from critique. After all, how can a person who has gay friends have anything against them! I have a black friend, therefore i can't be racist no matter what i do! What a can of worms. As an aside, a poll conducted last year shows a majority of us Finns support same rights for same-sex couples. So i stress again, when the majority of the people are of a certain opinion, how do the opinions of 4% factor in?

So until this government is dissolved (fingers crossed), or four years passes, we're stuck with these fucking 19th century views of the world. It never seizes to amaze me how in 2011, we're still making government policy based on ~1800 year old writings that have been redacted, translated, re-translated, re-redacted, and ultimately, probably written by a bunch of goat-herders who just enjoyed a really good batch of mushrooms, or a nice big spliff.

I wish Räsänen would just sit down and take a nice big hit, and stop being dumb.

Edit Seems like, after the negotiations were done, the adults stayed in the room and made a deal of their own, ignoring the views of the CD. Of course, not long after, CD chairperson Räsänen came out saying "No, we were not duped". Whatever dudes, whatever.

Edit 2 - Added the poll about same-sex rights.

So a short background blurb here: The last time i was in Estonia was .. 10 or more years ago. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

The trip started on Wednesday morning with me waking up at seven, returning the keys to the old apartment, then rushing back home to leave the car at the parking lot, then taking the train downtown, then the bus to the terminal. Luckily i made it with time to spare. Board the ship, which left at.. 10? Anyway. The trip's to Tallinn have been getting shorter and shorter, but none the less, the ride felt agonizingly extended. We were seated in the Business Lounge, which is *barely* ..bearable. With bears. The ship was a Superstar by Tallink. A fairly decent sized boat for such a short trip. The Business Lounge consisted of rather comfortable booths, Satellite Internet-access (which resulted in a funny message that was like from a movie. get to that later), and an open bar + buffet (with a decent selection of spirits, i might add!). So if you do find yourself traveling to Tallinn (too bad for you), at least book in the Business Lounge. It's not that much more expensive and worth the money.

The shitty part about traveling by ship to Tallinn, is that you have to sit in line and deal with the drunk schmucks that make up most of the traveling populace. See, in Finland, alcohol is by alcoholic-standards rather expensive. If you were to work a regular job, and not spend all your money on drugs, alcohol and tobacco, you could maybe afford to buy your drinks here. "Booze-tourism" is what drives the Helsinki-Estonia "tourism", for the most part. The other part is, i guess, business men of all sorts and your occasional recreational (*cough* whores *cough* ) traveler. These people are in addition to drunk, rude, inconsiderate and in my fucking way. They act like traditional Finnish travelers in that they block all corridors, talk loudly and act like a general nuisance to the rest of us. And if you have the audacity to question or oppose them, you will get your head smashed in or a knife in your neck.

Once in Tallinn, we had a chartered bus take us to Saaremaa; a four hour drive. We arrived at a very nice looking manor in a rural area. Cows and sheep in the backyard, all very nice and calming. The following days included lots of drinking, some recreational games, lots of drinking and a 8 km walk to the coast where we had some salmon soup on the beach.

The way back felt even longer. I slept part of it on the bus floor. We got back and hit a spa to chill until the ship leaved. This was probably the best part of the trip. There was a bar that served drinks straight to the jacuzzi. This was pure win, and it cost next to nothing. The best part of Tallinn seems to be that the prices are consistently cheap (although rising all the time, since Estonia joined the EU).

Back at the terminal i am once again confronted with typical Finnish stupidity. The boat leaves in over an hour, and there are 200 idiots standing in line. THE BOAT IS NOT LEAVING WITHOUT YOU UNLESS YOU ARE CONSIDERABLY LATE!

This same fucking phenomena repeats at airports as well. As soon as there is even a whiff of  a plane closing in on the terminal (even if it's still two hours away), these stupid fucks will line up even when they have a numbered seat and a guarantee that the plane is not leaving without them.

FUCK.

While this kind of behavior is nothing unexpected from this idiot population who votes for a populist right-wing POS party, i'm still annoyed. I mean.. i can understand if you have a train or something to catch. But half the boat can't be late for public transport. And on top of that, who among these has anywhere important to be anyway. Oh yeah, i guess they have to sample the forty gallons of booze they are carting home. Time is of the essence!

I bloody overheard conversations of how to get the maximum amount to fit in a certain model of car, or how many cents they could save by getting this brand as opposed to that brand of some liquor. Two hints: Cut your hair, and get a god damn job.

Ok so rant mode is almost over. There are a few essential details which annoy me (tongue-in-cheek):

1) The country is still a disorganized mess, trying to find some direction to go to. They now have the Euro, which is nice and all, but it is not a saving argument. The general attitude is "eh, let things roll and don't bother with details". While this may suit some people, it doesn't suit me.

2) The language is an incomprehensible mess (like Finnish), and i'm not sure who copies who, since the two languages are very close

3) They have the same national anthem as we do (why?)

4) Finnish people go there en massé to get booze, which annoys me to no end, and makes me not want to go there

So in conclusion, i don't like Estonia, and i won't be going there any time soon again.

I bought the book based on..what? Maybe a tweet? Maybe it was Amazon who recommended it to me or something. I'm not entirely sure. But i had just finished Bret Easton Ellis' latest book "Imperial Bedrooms" which was.. well rather bland as well, and i was looking for a good read.

Zero Day starts out fast, exciting, like a real techno-thriller. But very soon, the reader will become aware that the book is written with a very very specific audience in mind: A person who is male, young and unaware of the ways of "hackers" and computer crime. Reading this book i feel almost insulted at times. I could for instance not recommend this to anyone who is easily offended by the objectification (is that even a word?) of women. The book reads like something written by and/or for horny teenage boys. Almost every (it may even be every) female character in the book is portrayed in a flirtatious manner. Like all women are raucious perverts, just looking to be fucked. Almost every "scene" describing a female character, no matter how minor, includes descriptions of things like men oogling the woman's ass, breasts, how she looks, or she may talk in a flirtatious manner, proposing sex or just generally acting like sluts.

I thought it'd apply to just one or two characters, but this has to be a god damn joke, because i have never seen such horniness in any description of the IT industry. Where are all these big-breasted, ample-assed always-horny IT-expert women? I need to know, now.

Seriously.

Another annoying thing, that drives me mad, is the chapters where the protagonists are discussing on instant messenger, irc or whatever. The language is silly, and made up and not how people talk, anywhere! Christ! Do you have to put up a big sign saying "this is how hackers talk!!" by making the characters talk like fucking language-impared imbecilles? Sure, sometimes people talk in leet-speek, but this has become kind of an in-joke at this point. I've seen 14 year-olds express themselves quite clearly, and i find it very difficult to believe that 30-something IT-industry experts would sit in a chatroom writing sentences that lack most vowels or are otherwise compressed to the point of utter annoyance. It would actually take a concentrated effort to write like the characters in this book.

I have about 70 pages to go, and i'm so tired of these repeating themes. Oh and one can't forget the continuous references to 9/11 (that's September the 11th for people who write dates in a way that makes sense). I get that it's a central plot point, and Al Qaeda is the pseudo-boogey-man, and how arabs are evil and the towers fell and the planes hit and oh the humanity. I don't think it's a very effective plot point at this point anymore, but then again, i'm not a US citizen. I don't have the lifelong emotional scars.

This just.. doesn't work for me. I might recommend this to someone who is entirely outside this industry, this scene  if you may. But under no circumstances would i recommend this to anyone who has spent more time in front of a computer, or who would like to read something about like cool cyber hackers (the word cyber also appears on nearly every page, which means, if you're playing the Pauldotcom drinking game, you'd be dead by page 100), about criminals and terrorists and Osama Dead Laden, and how horny the girls are in the IT industry (not). But if you for some reason wish to read about this stuff, by all means, pick it up. A casual reader looking for a sure-flowing thriller might enjoy this book. I'm not sure i can finish it, because i find it so insulting to my intellect. And i write this without even a hint of arrogance, trust me.

The other stuff

Another chapter of miscellania. Most of the stuff is now in boxes or bags. Keys will be picked up on Friday. We're on the waiting list to buy Assembly 2011 tickets  (me and H, P, M and O, at least). The other people, well.. they don't seem too interested, as nobody has contacted anyone about tickets. But i guess that's for the better.

This will probably be my last year. It's a fitting end too. It's the 20th aniversary Assembly, and i'll get to show H what the fuzz is about. I also realize i've said this for the past three years. But you can't trust me!

We're rewatching Twin Peaks, and we just saw the episode with David Duchovny as Dennis, sorry, Denise. A brilliant episode, and a brilliant portrayal by Duchovny, keeping in mind that this was before The X-files started. Wonderful.

With B, we've discussed multi-dimensional objects, probabilities of intersection in finite and infinite spaces. Standard stuff.

Also wrapping up Mad Men Season 3, which is a great series to watch. Looking forward to the 4th season on DVD, whenever i can get that for a reasonable price. Also, Flash Forward, though i have only seen the first half of the series. The box is a bit pricey in Finland at the moment, so maybe i'll wait to get it. I'm not sure they showed the entire thing on TV, and considering the fact that i don't watch TV anymore  (haven't watched more than an hour a week for the past two years), it's unlikely i'll see the remaining episodes there.

This is a widespread phenomena. Anything Apple does is toted as revolutionary, even if it has been done and re-done thousands of times before. They release the iPad which is a crippled piece of shit, and then wait a year and soon they will release the iPad2, to the amazement of all, and it will be the best thing out there because they added an SD card slot and the ability to make video phone calls or something. That's some dank shit right there guys. Apple also called out Android tablets as being nothing but oversized smartphones (this was during CES, which saw the release of multiple Android-tablets), and that their OS is not designed for tablet use. Sure, Android tablets have so far been mostly crap and slow, but then, at least we have choice, and hardware that isn't locked down. Android 3.0 will be geared towards tablets, so there is development here too. And if the iPad isn't a crippled oversized iPhone then i don't know what is.

Engadget has been pretty good at not freaking out about apple stuff, but they do their share too. Gizmodo obviously is another one who just licks the honey-dew sweat off the balls of Apple. There are too many sites to mention that ride that ugly train.

It should be noted that i am typing this on a MacBook Pro, which my employer got for me, at my request. I also had an iPhone 3GS, which i swapped out after about 6 months of use, because i thought it did not deliver what i wanted. I picked the Galaxy S simply because of its features, not because it has a shiny apple on the back of it.The main reasons for choosing an Android phone today is that you get an exchangeable battery, SD card slot, the freedom to choose what applications and most importantly, what carrier you use. Carrier lock-in is perhaps the stupidest invention of the 21st century, and it should be fought whereever it appears. When you buy a device, make sure you own it, and not the manufacturer or carrier.

Yes, the iPhone is exceedingly easy to use, and if you live in a country that has working cellular networks (unlike the US), it'll work great for the basic user. But i can't imagine any advanced user wanting to use an iPhone, simply because the platform is controlled by Apple so tightly. Apple recently even went as far as to change the screws on their flagship hardware (like the iPhone 4), so that you couldn't open the phone as easily as before. Ofcourse, Ifixit now sells the screwdriver and kit to change the mangled freedom-hating screws to regular philips head screws for 9.95. If you still own an iPhone, and you want to keep owning the hardware you paid for, and for instance, change the battery (which is not possible without opening up the device entirely), get that kit from ifixit. The same goes for the Macbook Air, and i think the newer Macbook Pro's. This is just rude behavior, and they had to know that people would open the phones anyway. So why go through the trouble? I wonder how many millions it cost to replace the screws, and what benefit they thought they got out of it?

I also have to hand it to Apple. They have the best marketing team ever. Never fire those guys, they are pure gold. No other company in the history of man has such overhyped crap that everyone seems to want. On top of that, they cost a shit-ton, are completely locked down and behind the curve in features. And again i stress that i picked an iPhone out of my free will, i just didn't like the way it made me feel locked down. You can argue all you like about jailbreaks and unlocks, but the fact is, it's your phone. But with Apple, that's just not the case. You don't own your own phone.

• Small size (pictures later)
• Fairly cheap
• Expandable memory (MicroSD slot, with SDHC support)
• Ogg support

Of those, i actually concentrated on the ogg support. Very few players have .ogg support nowadays, it's all mp3 drm mumbo-jumbo. There is a list of known Ogg players on the xiph site, which can be found here. I basically wanted a smaller device, which plays a multitude of formats. My previous player is the iPod Video (5th Generation). While the screen and user-interface is nice, I didn't really use the screen for anything. I mostly listen to podcasts, and some music. In this sense, the Clip+ is ideal. The microSD slot means you can just pop in an up to 16GB card, and presto, you have tons of space with no moving parts.

So on to the actual review.

What's in the box?

The box is, as the device, small. Contents are: the player, headphones (the cheap earplug style), 20cm mini-usb cable and assorted paper manuals. To start using the Sansa, connect it to a USB port on any computer, and let it charge until full (didn't take long, i had maybe a 70% charge out of the box). Charge meter shows how much charge is in the device while charging, so you can follow the charging more closely. The power button on top of the device takes  a short press to turn the device on. First you're greeted with a Sandisk logo, and then it tells you the database is updating. What it probably does is indexes the contents.

First sign of trouble!

First problem struck right here. It got stuck in the indexing phase, and it was unable to continue. To turn the device off if it's crashed: press the power button for 10-15 seconds. This, however, did not help. Every time the device booted it stuck in the same spot.

So, off to google and did a little browsing. Turns out you can use a Windows machine to re-format the drive. When the Clip+ starts, it checks the storage, and creates necessary files/folders if they are missing. So apparently (and in my case) you can just format the entire thing without doing any damage to it.

After the re-format, the device started fine, and i haven't had similar problems since.

Usage

To use the device, connect to your computer, and copy over some music. I tried a bunch of ogg files, copied them to the Music folder on the Sansa, and ejected the player. Started up... updating database.... And soon i was given the main menu. The main items are: Music, SlotRadio, FM-radio, Voice and Settings. All of those are self-explanatory, except the SlotRadio, which is apparently some kind of pre-loaded MicroSD card, containing..something. I haven't seen these in Finland, so i'll just skip that part.

Music, obviously contains your music. There is playlist support, but you can also use functions such as shuffle, on-the-go lists (ad-hoc playlists), or just browse all the songs in one large list. There's also a simple EQ with a few presets and a custom setting, with 5 bands.

Navigation happens with the four "arrow" keys, and you can return to the main menu by pressing the "home" button. The home button also functions as keylock when pressed for a few seconds. Do it again to deactivate.

As the name indicates, the rear end of the Clip+ is a giant clip, which makes it easy to clip on anywhere. The 28 gram weight means you can put it anywhere and hardly notice it.

Conclusions

So far i've been pleased, except for the out-of-the-box error i had. The firmware is easily updated, and can be done either manually, or using a windows utility which detects the player and automatically downloads the correct version for you. The device seems very open, and there was talk of a rockbox firmware available for the device. The expandability means you can probably use this device for a very long time, if your needs don't change. You could potentially get the 2GB version for like 30-40€ and then use a pre-existing memory card to expand it further, keeping the price very low.

It's not user friendly like an iPod, nor will the battery last for longer than about 8 hours, but i still like it. I like devices that can be expanded and are not artificially constricted by laws or stupid corporate creeps. I like to choose my format, and not need any kind of special software to copy it onto the device. This is just like any memory stick that plays your music.

Overall, i'd maybe give it 8/10, with a Stallman badge for good measure.

I got word from Jimm's Pc-Store that half of my parts had arived. The rest i would buy from Verkkokauppa.com because they had it in stock. I ended up getting a 250 gig hard drive for 39 bucks, simply because the cf solution was not immediately available (not in stock), and it would have cost nearly three times as much. Otherwise the parts list in the first post holds true.

I started by skimming the manuals of the case and the motherboard, and then started taking the case apart to prepare for installation. I had to remove the top cover, obviously, and also add and remove some of the internal cables according to my needs.

All the parts in one pile!

This is what the case looks like on the inside. Note the power supply, or actually just the distribution-point. The powersupply is actually that transformer-brick next to the case there. There is a 24-pin atx, 4pin 12v extra power, cables for floppy, molex, and sata, which are fairly modular, i.e. you can chose not to connect the molex cables if you don't need them, like me. The case has a rubber-padded spot for the hard drive, on the bottom left in the picture. This should (and did) eliminate most of the vibration caused by the movement. The case also has front panel audio, usb and firewire, as well as a memory card reader. Sadly, the motherboard i got only had one internal usb, so it was a choice between the two front panel usb ports, or the memory card reader. I chose the usb ports, because it's a handy way to hook up external hard drives and media players. Ofcourse, one can just switch the cable, and use one of the external usb ports to hook up the memory-card reader.

Cables for power and hdd led, as well as the power-switch are also included. Cable management turned out to be a bit hard: the 24-pin atx power cable is very very thick and stiff and needs to be forced down quite a lot to get the top cover back on.

The case, opened

The "Power Supply"

After this, it was time to put in the Asus motherboard, the hard drive, and hook up all the necessary cables. I forgot to take a pic of the innards with all the parts connected, but i'll do that today. Here's a picture of the motherboard, pretty handy-looking huh?

The Asus Motherboard

So when everything was connected, it was time to put the case back together, and prepare for installation. The plan is to install Ubuntu 9.10, with XBMC 9.11.  A few more pics of the ready build. Note the fucking awesome blue led, without which, this build would be like, less cool.

Done!

A view from the top

I'll document the entire process of building, installing and configuring on this blog. The first part: The Buy

The Buy

The first task in any computer project is deciding what you want the build to do. I set some goals for this build:

• Has to be visually appealing, and suitable for my livingroom (that means, slim, silent and black)
• Has to be able to play 1080p media (and anything below that of course)
• Has to be usable with a cordless keyboard & mouse and/or remote control
• Has to be able to run Linux
• Has to not cost me an arm and a leg!
• Hast to have some form of expandability, say if i want a Bluray drive later!

Setting out with these goals in mind, the only reasonably priced hardware that does all this is based on the Nvidia ION chipset. The build Anteuz has is a:

• Asus AT3N7A-I Motherboard
  • Atom 330 dual core processor
  • Nvidia ION chipset
  • Gbit Ethernet
  • 8GB RAM (DDR2) max.
  • DVI/VGA/HDMI/SPDIF etc. outputs
• 2 x 1GB DDR2 RAM
• Hard drive
• Silverstone Lascala SST-LC19S-R with 120W passively cooled powersupply

I ended up ordering pretty much the same set:

• Asus AT3N7A-I Motherboard (126€ @ Jimm's Pc-Store)
• 2 x 1GB DDR2 (800MHZ) (44€ @ Verkkokauppa)
• Silverstone Lascala SST-LC19S-R (160€ @ Jimm's Pc-Store)

But as for storage i ended up with a slightly different solution:

• SATA -> Compact Flash adapter (22€ @ Verkkokauppa)
• 4 or 8 GB Compact Flash card from Sandisk, the Extreme III model (with ~30MB/s read and write) (34 - 51 € @ Verkkokauppa and elsewhere)

What i'm going to be doing is, putting Ubuntu on the Compact Flash card (which is completely quiet, low power, and physically small). I don't need a lot of space for Ubuntu, since it'll be a barebones install, with the XBMC media center application on top, it'll hardly take more than 2 GB.

I'm not going to store any media on the HTPC, but instead, stream it over the network from my fileserver. With Gbit Ethernet, i'll be able to stream 1080p content with no problems. The network "backbone" is an HP Procurve 1400-8G, which has more than enough throughput and oomph for my small network.

The total price for the build is 386€ with the 4GB Sandisk Extreme III (add 20 bucks for the 8GB version). For less than 400€, i will therefore have a build that can stream HD media from my network.

A future expansion will be a slim blu-ray drive, which runs at around 150€ right now, which is not a bad price. The hardware is more than capable of playing blu-ray discs in their full 1080p,  surround sound glory. And that's cheaper than a Playstation 3, which has no games anyway

Next up, when i get the parts: Pictures and The Build. After that, it's time for The Install and then The Conclusion.