I'm not the blogging type of people it seems and I certainly don't have that much to say to the great public. While I like to post on topic, like on Vakiomestarin jorinoita blog, thats pretty much it.
So, sayonara, the affairs have been officially closed. Definately no one will be sad to see this blog go.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Monday, October 13, 2008
OpenOffice 3.0 released
OpenOffice 3.0 has been released and as of speaking, their website is swamped, serving only error about users not being allowed to access a servlet for content:
Hopefully this means they are more popular than ever and MS Office takes a dive in sales. One can always hope... :)
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /servlets/ContentHelmNoodle on this server.
Apache Server at download.openoffice.org Port 80
Hopefully this means they are more popular than ever and MS Office takes a dive in sales. One can always hope... :)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Qt 4.4.0 released
Trolltech has released Qt 4.4.0. I installed it and monkeyd around with it a bit, watched the demos (they're still impressive). Qt Graphics View and XQuery look very promising to me. More about them later.
If you are looking for a decent toolkit to build both Linux and Windows GUI applications, take a look at Qt. Especially as of late I've been developing a Windows GUI application, the WinAPI is horrible compared to Qt. If it was my call, I'd instantly switch the project to the Qt! One of the most important points of Qt is having consistent API, where function names mean something!
Example:
Q: What function do you call when you need to create a button in WinAPI?
A: CreateWindow()
All I can say is OMGLOLPLZ! :)
If you are looking for a decent toolkit to build both Linux and Windows GUI applications, take a look at Qt. Especially as of late I've been developing a Windows GUI application, the WinAPI is horrible compared to Qt. If it was my call, I'd instantly switch the project to the Qt! One of the most important points of Qt is having consistent API, where function names mean something!
Example:
Q: What function do you call when you need to create a button in WinAPI?
A: CreateWindow()
All I can say is OMGLOLPLZ! :)
Sunday, May 4, 2008
BatMUD Tools by Tumi sources released
Today I've released the sources of my once-famous BatMUD-game support web site. Sources are released under GPL v2 at the GoogleCode, here:
BatMUD Tools by Tumi.
Its been year and a half when I retired from BatMUD, where I had been playing since 1997, on and off. First character ended up as maintainer, a "wizard" there, called Tumi.
Second character was playing for fun only, and while playing, did the most comphrehensive site of tools ever available on BatMUD, which eventually made the official help and support site, obviously gone now.
While retiring, I predicted problems for MUDs and MMORPGs raise their ugly heads more and more aggressively and people get more and more lazy about their gameplay. Most of what I said I've perceived as true now, like the playerbase, which has gone WAY down since I quit.
Though, I'm happy to see couple individuals who've done good, hard work to replace the tools I used to provide. The map is now way better than it ever was at my time, the reincsim has, well, implemantation.. Better than nothing though.
I hope the sources inspire those who have done the hard work, and keep continue doing so. The others, the lazy motherfuckers, can still "¤¤"¤ dick. The number of downloads rocketed instantly as I posted the announcement, and I suppose most of those downloads belong to people who have no intention whatsoever to contribute to the community. Or, if they do, they won't respect the GPL2. Sigh..
Well, anyways, not my concerns anymore, I've released it. Contact me though if you wanna be participating member in that project and really start modifying the source code in the GoogleCode SVN.
BatMUD Tools by Tumi.
Its been year and a half when I retired from BatMUD, where I had been playing since 1997, on and off. First character ended up as maintainer, a "wizard" there, called Tumi.
Second character was playing for fun only, and while playing, did the most comphrehensive site of tools ever available on BatMUD, which eventually made the official help and support site, obviously gone now.
While retiring, I predicted problems for MUDs and MMORPGs raise their ugly heads more and more aggressively and people get more and more lazy about their gameplay. Most of what I said I've perceived as true now, like the playerbase, which has gone WAY down since I quit.
Though, I'm happy to see couple individuals who've done good, hard work to replace the tools I used to provide. The map is now way better than it ever was at my time, the reincsim has, well, implemantation.. Better than nothing though.
I hope the sources inspire those who have done the hard work, and keep continue doing so. The others, the lazy motherfuckers, can still "¤¤"¤ dick. The number of downloads rocketed instantly as I posted the announcement, and I suppose most of those downloads belong to people who have no intention whatsoever to contribute to the community. Or, if they do, they won't respect the GPL2. Sigh..
Well, anyways, not my concerns anymore, I've released it. Contact me though if you wanna be participating member in that project and really start modifying the source code in the GoogleCode SVN.
Friday, March 28, 2008
My QtJourney begins
I'm set to learn Qt. I stumbled upon it while searching new perspective to my Netflix Prize solution. I found Icefox's Framework, which is coded with Qt.
I got interested in it. The simple makefiles, quick build process and, for now at least, decent looking framework in general. Works both in Windows and Linux apparently, neat. I've worked with GTK+ earlier, and while I liked it, I also hated it. Coding in C++ wannabe C, sigh. Autotools, sigh.
Lately, Nokia bought Trolltech, the main developing company of Qt and Qtopia. Knowing that Nokia has put a lot of balls and cash behind Symbian, it should be interesting if they will shift their focus to Qt and put all their weight behind it. Sooner or later (my guess is later), it will happen. Symbian is not a system that will live much longer, its such horrible system to code for.
I'm just starting my journey with Qt, but I have high expectations. I'll later comment how it went, and possibly share my wtf-ish pieces of code with you. Maybe I'll write up a tutorial from moving from GTK+ to Qt.
I got interested in it. The simple makefiles, quick build process and, for now at least, decent looking framework in general. Works both in Windows and Linux apparently, neat. I've worked with GTK+ earlier, and while I liked it, I also hated it. Coding in C++ wannabe C, sigh. Autotools, sigh.
Lately, Nokia bought Trolltech, the main developing company of Qt and Qtopia. Knowing that Nokia has put a lot of balls and cash behind Symbian, it should be interesting if they will shift their focus to Qt and put all their weight behind it. Sooner or later (my guess is later), it will happen. Symbian is not a system that will live much longer, its such horrible system to code for.
I'm just starting my journey with Qt, but I have high expectations. I'll later comment how it went, and possibly share my wtf-ish pieces of code with you. Maybe I'll write up a tutorial from moving from GTK+ to Qt.
Friday, February 1, 2008
KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid
Perhaps not being a prime example of K.I.S.S, but I made my own Atom parser for the Blogspot feeds in Perl. Having my website under a webhotel, I do not have proper rights to install perl modules directly to Perl module repository, I often find myself fighting over an installation of CPAN module - despite the fact I have a "private" module repository myself. Most of the stuff install there pretty well, after having configured CPAN install properly, but Atom feedreader XML::Atom just did not build OK in my system. It derives a twenty-something subpackages and somewhere along the route, one of them just fails.
So I dug a little what kind of feed the Blogspot Atom feed really is. I found out its pretty simple one, if you just wanna regex through it fast and simple. So here is how it works:
1) Grab the feed with LWP::Simple
2) Run two regexes globally:
3) ???
4) Profit!!
Not sure if this is any help to anyone, but works great for me! KISSes to everyone!
So I dug a little what kind of feed the Blogspot Atom feed really is. I found out its pretty simple one, if you just wanna regex through it fast and simple. So here is how it works:
1) Grab the feed with LWP::Simple
2) Run two regexes globally:
$feed =~ m%<published>(\d{4,4}\-\d{2,2}\-\d{2,2}).+?</published><updated>.+?</updated>%g;
$feed =~ m%<title type='text'>(.+?)</title><summary type='text'>(.+?)</summary><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='(.+?)' title='.+?'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='.+?postID=([0-9]+)' title='(\d+) Comments'/>%g;
3) ???
4) Profit!!
Not sure if this is any help to anyone, but works great for me! KISSes to everyone!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monkeys do it better
While cleaning up my temporary bookmarks, I found this old link: Chimps Outscore College Students on Memory Test, Memory Test being this game. I scored constantly around 30, and was disappointed I couldn't go higher than 34 in few tries :(
Darwin Awards 2007
The Darwin Awards 2007 has been announced! Knock yourself out by reading the most stupid things humans can attempt.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
New site design
My old site made with PHP3 got a bit broken when my web hotel upgraded its servers to the latest software, including PHP5. It resulted in very broken website where even navigation got busted. I admit that my old code from 2001 was crappy, and the site was due to be recoded for about six years already.
Being left with a broken site was finally the incentive to do something about it. I took an open source design to begin my work with from Open Source Web Designs, designed by Aaron Ganschow, to save time. Hopefully it pays off in the end, currently my new site design is as default as it can be.
I have grand plans about the content on the site. Many of the old stuff that used to be there have disappeared, but new content is slowly finding its way to there. I just have to check and re-check the code, and add the new layout in them. That will take some time, but eventually it pays off.
Check it out here: tanskanen.org.
Being left with a broken site was finally the incentive to do something about it. I took an open source design to begin my work with from Open Source Web Designs, designed by Aaron Ganschow, to save time. Hopefully it pays off in the end, currently my new site design is as default as it can be.
I have grand plans about the content on the site. Many of the old stuff that used to be there have disappeared, but new content is slowly finding its way to there. I just have to check and re-check the code, and add the new layout in them. That will take some time, but eventually it pays off.
Check it out here: tanskanen.org.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Lack of updates
I probably don't have any readers for this blog, as I haven't announced it anywhere (well, maybe the Facebook notes auto-import thingie counts as an announce?), so there is no-one waiting for my updates on this blog. Its been well over a month now, and I try to sum it up now.
Lets start with the Facebook. Since I joined it, I spent half a day finding my friends (more or less successfully) and configuring the glittery apps the place is full of. As anyone who uses Facebook knows, the apps seem to be "the salt" of Facebook, and they are true. I wouldn't be using Facebook nearly as much if there wasn't any.
However, there already is too many apps; the same functionalities exist in many similar apps and some users finding one apps before the other, they spread that one to their friends and they pass it to their friends and so on. Eventually you get invited to the "same app" hiding in different skin a gazillion time by different friends. And oh boy, is that annoying!
Well, in my book Facebook gets a B- for a good try. We'll see what other sites the future brings.
Another thing I've spent a bit of my time is the Netflix Prize competition. In short, they are offering one million dollars to first team to improve their movie recommendation system accuracy by 10%. It has been running for a year now and team closest to the prize has achieved about 8.5% improvement.
Realistically, I don't believe I can beat even that, but I'm using the competition as a framework for my Artificial Intelligence software project at the university. Getting study credits for something I have personal interest is a great thing! Another interesting thing about the competition is that you get an "authentic" dataset, with 18000 movie titles, 500000 users and 100 million ratings. That is hard to get by and registering to the competition only to download the dataset is worth it.
Thats all for now, more updates later!
Lets start with the Facebook. Since I joined it, I spent half a day finding my friends (more or less successfully) and configuring the glittery apps the place is full of. As anyone who uses Facebook knows, the apps seem to be "the salt" of Facebook, and they are true. I wouldn't be using Facebook nearly as much if there wasn't any.
However, there already is too many apps; the same functionalities exist in many similar apps and some users finding one apps before the other, they spread that one to their friends and they pass it to their friends and so on. Eventually you get invited to the "same app" hiding in different skin a gazillion time by different friends. And oh boy, is that annoying!
Well, in my book Facebook gets a B- for a good try. We'll see what other sites the future brings.
Another thing I've spent a bit of my time is the Netflix Prize competition. In short, they are offering one million dollars to first team to improve their movie recommendation system accuracy by 10%. It has been running for a year now and team closest to the prize has achieved about 8.5% improvement.
Realistically, I don't believe I can beat even that, but I'm using the competition as a framework for my Artificial Intelligence software project at the university. Getting study credits for something I have personal interest is a great thing! Another interesting thing about the competition is that you get an "authentic" dataset, with 18000 movie titles, 500000 users and 100 million ratings. That is hard to get by and registering to the competition only to download the dataset is worth it.
Thats all for now, more updates later!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Joined Facebook
I joined Facebook today. I've heard so much stories and things about it that I had to try it myself. We'll see if it turns out to be "too Web 2.0" for me or not :)
Sunday, October 14, 2007
An essay about past ten years
I've been a student in the Helsinki University of Technology for nine years now. As you might already guess, my studies haven't advanced as they should've - I would've graduated a long time ago, if they had. However, having worked full- or part-time all of the that time has brought me such an experience a "normal", goody-two-shoe student will not gather for a long time, even after his/her graduation. I having seen and experienced the the dot-com bubble first hand is something you do not learn from the books or being in stable-and-boring job for ten, twenty or even thirty years.
Well, now I got well off-topic from what I planned to write at first. Earlier this month I decided to put more efforts to my studies to finally graduate some beautiful day. I had to write down a proper plan to complete my studies, and write an essay about my studies so far.
Writing down an essay about past nine years isn't exactly the most easy thing to do. You have to do some deep analysis of yourself and both your successes and mistakes. If something, that is something we all should do on a more regular basis. I found out many interesting things, both good and bad, by analysing the essay. When you see it all in a text that you write for someone else, explaining half of your life, you can no longer use those sad excuses anymore. You start to see the real picture.
I recommend everyone to do a little self-analysis. Write an essay about your life during the past five or ten years and see if you are happy what you see. If not, the problems are in front of you in clear writing and you can start improving yourself and your life quality right away.
Well, now I got well off-topic from what I planned to write at first. Earlier this month I decided to put more efforts to my studies to finally graduate some beautiful day. I had to write down a proper plan to complete my studies, and write an essay about my studies so far.
Writing down an essay about past nine years isn't exactly the most easy thing to do. You have to do some deep analysis of yourself and both your successes and mistakes. If something, that is something we all should do on a more regular basis. I found out many interesting things, both good and bad, by analysing the essay. When you see it all in a text that you write for someone else, explaining half of your life, you can no longer use those sad excuses anymore. You start to see the real picture.
I recommend everyone to do a little self-analysis. Write an essay about your life during the past five or ten years and see if you are happy what you see. If not, the problems are in front of you in clear writing and you can start improving yourself and your life quality right away.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
My favourite feeds
Nothing out of ordinary lately. EU3 has been running a lot lately, so not so much free time left.
I'd like to share my favourite feeds, in case someone doesn't already read these:
The n00b comic: Excellent comic about the WoW generation gaming etc. Lots of fun about online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), lately it has gone down a notch, but mostly because the start is so HILARIOUS its hard to top later!
Ctrl-alt-del: Ctrl-alt-del is another excellent comic about gaming, life, IT. Featuring Ethan the umm, dork :) and Lucas the rational as main characters and best buddies & roomies, their views are constantly clashing and it creates interesting views into everything.. Just hilarious. Read from the beginning to not miss anything!
Slashdot: ./ is the number one site for following the Open source, Linux, IT, media industry etc stories. Very good moderation system, insightful discussion, a must for any IT person.
Worse than Failure: Former What-The-Fuck. Posts WTF cases from IT industries, potpourri of funny errors, WTF'd code and so on. Just hilarious if you are a coder or work in the IT industries. Lots of insider jokes referring to the older posts etc, just hilarious.
Doh!: Oh the humanity. Mostly posting mistakes and absurdies in news, such as BBC, CNN, webstores etc.
Pokernews: PokerNews has improved a lot over the last year, and it has the best coverage of the WSOP this year. Kicked Bluff magazine hands down in accuracy, speed, quality... despite that Bluff was the official WSOP reporting mag.
In addition to those, I have many "private" boards I follow and discuss on. If you have any other good webcomics, post them, I could occasionally use something new :)
I'd like to share my favourite feeds, in case someone doesn't already read these:
The n00b comic: Excellent comic about the WoW generation gaming etc. Lots of fun about online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), lately it has gone down a notch, but mostly because the start is so HILARIOUS its hard to top later!
Ctrl-alt-del: Ctrl-alt-del is another excellent comic about gaming, life, IT. Featuring Ethan the umm, dork :) and Lucas the rational as main characters and best buddies & roomies, their views are constantly clashing and it creates interesting views into everything.. Just hilarious. Read from the beginning to not miss anything!
Slashdot: ./ is the number one site for following the Open source, Linux, IT, media industry etc stories. Very good moderation system, insightful discussion, a must for any IT person.
Worse than Failure: Former What-The-Fuck. Posts WTF cases from IT industries, potpourri of funny errors, WTF'd code and so on. Just hilarious if you are a coder or work in the IT industries. Lots of insider jokes referring to the older posts etc, just hilarious.
Doh!: Oh the humanity. Mostly posting mistakes and absurdies in news, such as BBC, CNN, webstores etc.
Pokernews: PokerNews has improved a lot over the last year, and it has the best coverage of the WSOP this year. Kicked Bluff magazine hands down in accuracy, speed, quality... despite that Bluff was the official WSOP reporting mag.
In addition to those, I have many "private" boards I follow and discuss on. If you have any other good webcomics, post them, I could occasionally use something new :)
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Napolens Ambition
If you like turn based strategy, you must try out Paradox Interactives Europa Universalis. It has evolved to version III already over the years. Couple of days ago, they published an extension for it called Napoleons Ambition.
As you can guess, Im going to praise the extension. Adding a lot of things to a already superior game isn't easy thing to do, but they've done it. The game offers even more balanced game play, advanced AI, extended timeline and so on. The computer isn't the same walkover opponent it was back in EU3 v1.0 a year ago (well, the v1.3 actually managed to fix it properly already...)
Anyways, now shoo, if you are a bit into this type of game, go buy the game and the extension ASAP. Paradox is a rarity in todays gaming world, their games do not include any DRM or stuff that hinders you playing experience. The game does not span multiple DVDs and hog you HD on install. Its just the game, a HUGE set of historical accurate data and lovely gameplay.
Do you need more reason than that? I don't. Now I'm having hard time deciding which one to use my spare time to: Civ4 with Beyond the Sword, or EU3 with Napoleons Ambition :)
As you can guess, Im going to praise the extension. Adding a lot of things to a already superior game isn't easy thing to do, but they've done it. The game offers even more balanced game play, advanced AI, extended timeline and so on. The computer isn't the same walkover opponent it was back in EU3 v1.0 a year ago (well, the v1.3 actually managed to fix it properly already...)
Anyways, now shoo, if you are a bit into this type of game, go buy the game and the extension ASAP. Paradox is a rarity in todays gaming world, their games do not include any DRM or stuff that hinders you playing experience. The game does not span multiple DVDs and hog you HD on install. Its just the game, a HUGE set of historical accurate data and lovely gameplay.
Do you need more reason than that? I don't. Now I'm having hard time deciding which one to use my spare time to: Civ4 with Beyond the Sword, or EU3 with Napoleons Ambition :)
Got my hands on N800
I got a pair of N800's related to my next assignment. Quite a toy! I was part of N770 development team, and we cussed about a lot of things in it, the lack fo memory and flash capacity as our prime targets. 64mb for memory and another 64mb for storage was way too little for a embedded Debian.
N800 does it different: double the memory and quaruple the storage, and another flash card slot for even more storage: one internal and one removable. Stereo speakers instead of mono, yummy. Faster OMAP processor, about twice the speed; oh the luxury!
Anyways, if you have any interest for this kind of device, I can recommend it warmly. New software versions are coming out frequently enough and community has ported and developed hundrers of applications for it. Just google for Maemo Mapper (and purchase GPS with Bluetooth) and you have a navigator! The list goes on...
Shoo, go get one! :D
N800 does it different: double the memory and quaruple the storage, and another flash card slot for even more storage: one internal and one removable. Stereo speakers instead of mono, yummy. Faster OMAP processor, about twice the speed; oh the luxury!
Anyways, if you have any interest for this kind of device, I can recommend it warmly. New software versions are coming out frequently enough and community has ported and developed hundrers of applications for it. Just google for Maemo Mapper (and purchase GPS with Bluetooth) and you have a navigator! The list goes on...
Shoo, go get one! :D
Thursday, August 30, 2007
HD explosion - the reinstallation hell
Hoo-fucking-ray, all I can say about this incident. Just a less than a month ago, I went thru the pain of re-installing both my OSs, Ubuntu (upgraded it to Feisty Fawn from scratch) and Windows (from XP to Vista). Now, the HD that hosts both of those OSs chose to stop working!
It was my oldest drive, which I mainly used for OSs simply because earlier Ubuntus and XP didn't know their way into installing themselves onto SATA disk (I got two of them, newer and bigger than the IDE disk) without feeding them special drivers prior the installation. I was simply lazy and went the most convenient way. The re-installation was then a simply "habit" of just doing the same I did before.
Now, one and a half days later, things are getting running again. The tricky part was finding the space required for not just one, but two OSs in the previously full SATA disks. And I also had to find and install those drivers for XP so it could install. Then I could backup any data I could from those disks, defrag those, use Partition Magic to cut those two Linux partitions some space and then install Ubuntu as well.
Well, most of the programs are still missing, but OSs are up and running. And no, I didn't re-install Vista, I backed down to XP. My mere 2800+ single-core CPU and 1G of memory wasn't simply enought for smooth use... Basic system ate 700M of memory, even after I shut down about bazillion services, turned off most of the candy and so on. Pathetic.
It was my oldest drive, which I mainly used for OSs simply because earlier Ubuntus and XP didn't know their way into installing themselves onto SATA disk (I got two of them, newer and bigger than the IDE disk) without feeding them special drivers prior the installation. I was simply lazy and went the most convenient way. The re-installation was then a simply "habit" of just doing the same I did before.
Now, one and a half days later, things are getting running again. The tricky part was finding the space required for not just one, but two OSs in the previously full SATA disks. And I also had to find and install those drivers for XP so it could install. Then I could backup any data I could from those disks, defrag those, use Partition Magic to cut those two Linux partitions some space and then install Ubuntu as well.
Well, most of the programs are still missing, but OSs are up and running. And no, I didn't re-install Vista, I backed down to XP. My mere 2800+ single-core CPU and 1G of memory wasn't simply enought for smooth use... Basic system ate 700M of memory, even after I shut down about bazillion services, turned off most of the candy and so on. Pathetic.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword
Oh dear, Sid Meier has done it again! The original Civ4 was a total success, which revamped the whole system to a totally new level. The Warlords expansion to Civ4 was a failure in my eyes, but the Beyond the Sword expansion adds worthy content. Corporations, colonies, new civilizations and leaders, new techs etcetc, check the massive list here. The most addictive game is a tad more addictive now.
Thanks Sid, once again you made me lose my good night's sleep :)
Thanks Sid, once again you made me lose my good night's sleep :)
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
First post
This is the first post to my new blog, which I chose to call 'The Tuminoid Affairs'. It doesn't mean anything special, I just suck at making up titles :)
So bear with me, I will be rambling here now and then, don't expect anything and you will not be disappointed either.
So bear with me, I will be rambling here now and then, don't expect anything and you will not be disappointed either.
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