Hasamäki downhill skiing site checkout by bike

I went to check out a place for downhill riding. I think the best route is in the forest. It's the nearly straight path seen on the far left in the Sports-Tracker excercise. It has some curves, and it has only a few small rocks. OTOH, I did not see clearly every obstacle because of the stuttering (no rear suspension) and wet eyes ;) The bicycle meter recorded maximum speed of 35 km/h. It really felt a bit faster! Not once before I've needed to hold so tight on the handle bar. That was interesting!

Besides writing something, I thought it's about time to try how embedding the excercise works (with the new layout, it doesn't seem to work):



Open the workout on Sports-Tracker website.

Anyway, the hills have some / lot of vegetation, which makes fast riding very dangerous, as there might be (there is) some rocks or potholes you can't see. To make it clear: I only tried riding where I could see the ground. I also noticed that just going down is not so rewarding. There should be a trail with bends and some jumps and stuff. As it is now, Hasamäki offers very little for downhill riding. But, if there would be a group of DH riders interested making it a DH-able place, it is possible.

Art of the war

I may not be the first one having negative thoughts on journalism after seeing a great shot in not so nice context. Anyway, some thoughts were raised quickly when I saw this photo (sorry, I could not find this alone anywhere):

http://yle.fi/uutiset/teemat/kansannousut/2011/04/libyan_kapinalliset_valmiita_tulitaukoon_2483260.html

My intention is not to copy the photo here, so you have to click the link and check out the source.

The title says "Libyan rebels are ready for ceasefire".

The beauty of the photo is striking. It looks a bit too good, IMO, and I don't mean overprocessed. I'm talking about the subject, composition and exposure all together. I could add timing to the list, but it's just plain obvious in this case. This photographer is a real photographer, so it's just right he's on the field taking photos. What's wrong? Just what I'm saying! The photo is awesome! And it's about war. A war that's going on right now. This just made me feel strange. Welcome to today?

Red after sunset

The sky at the direction of the sunset looked very interesting one evening, 2 Sep 2010, 20:30 local time, Mikkeli, Finland. The colour was very intense, and I was afraid my old Canon would not capture it. It turned out to be quite nice. The photo below has not been "processed" in any way, just RAW -> JPG with Raw Therapee, as neutral settings as possible.

Canon EOS D60, 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 IS, 18mm, f/3.5, ISO100, 1/15s, daylight wb, auto exposure

Search for IRC client on S60 phone

Some time ago I needed an IRC client on my S60 phone, namely Nokia E63 (the inner workings are comparable to E71). I had previously installed a number of useful applications, but now it was time to get my hands really dirty ;)

I've found two applications that "do it":

JMirc: http://jmirc.sourceforge.net/

mIRGGI: http://mirggi.net/

Before you download either one of them, here is a quick summary of my experiences.

mIRGGI:

Made for S60 2nd, 3rd and 5th edition (so it's not a Java app). Looks like a real IRC client, with chat window and a line for typing below it. You can customize colours. You can have several active server connections and channels. URLs posted on channels can be picked up from the list (latest first) and copied to system clipboard. Text from the channel can be selected and copied. Logging to text file is possible.

The downside: crashes occasionally, most likely when the mobile internet connection breaks. Also seems to crash when you go to settings while having open session. May run a whole day fine if the connection is stable. But this is clearly the biggest problem: the more you move, the more it crashes. Ironic, isn't it? You'd expect it to be a mobile application!

JMirc:

Java, should run on any J2ME device. This is a bit simpler application, but works very well. You can have multiple channels, but not on different servers. Text is entered using the full screen system editor (while you're typing, there is nothing else on the screen than what you are typing), and you cannot send a line by pressing enter. Those may be a "NO" to an old IRCer. If you're willing to stick to the subject, and don't have S60 phone, this might be it. I don't remember any crashes, though I'm not sure what happens when the connection breaks.

Others?

To my understanding, those are the first options on mobile IRCing. I don't have experience on server ircing (ssh or what ever connections, I've just heard about such option) or other client applications, but if YOU do, please leave a comment!

Programming: Unexpected errors

"Unexpected error"... what's that? Lately I've been writing a lot of new code at work, and I've faced the question frequently: "Do I really need an exception handler HERE?? I just added a few around this part..." Yes, usually there is a need and it's a true need. Let me explain: if there is an exception in the program that didn't go through my exception handler (which logs the actual error message in this special case of a remote DB application that nobody is watching), a "refreshing" hit-and-miss operation will be carried out, possibly causing a domino effect creating a number of new bugs and logic faults just because I didn't spot the missing double quote or something similar that caused the original fault.

I'm guessing that the "unexpected errors" in the world largely go to the waste bin. I mean, they don't tell what went wrong to most of the developers, regardless of the fancy hex codes and address pointer values. (This hints that those messages don't tell anything to me, though I don't know if I'm amongst the "most of the developers" or not.)

Someone said back then that most of the computer code is used for checking/validating the (user) input. I think that is true. Especially when the "is used" is replaced by "should be used". But when you cannot really validate the input, write decent exception handlers! Simple as that. Either way, implementing the actual function may not be a big task, but making it fault tolerant, or even user-friendly that tells clearly what went wrong... that is a never-ending story ;)

Valtakunnalliset Tähtipäivät 2010

Mikkelin Ursa ry on saanut kunniakseen järjestää valtakunnalliset tähtipäivät 17.-18.4.2010. Ne pidetään Suomessa 37. kerran. Mikkelissä ja koko Etelä-Savon maakunnassa tähtipäivät pidetään nyt ensimmäistä kertaa.

Tapahtuma on suuri tähtitieteen harrastustapahtuma, jonne saapuu ansioituneita tähtitieteen ammattilaisia, alan harrastajia, tähtiyhdistyksiä ympäri Suomea sekä runsaasti yleisöä. Päivät koostuvat mm. vaikuttavista tähtitieteen luennoista, mielenkiintoisista esitelmistä ja planetaarionäytöksistä.

Luennoitsijoina tähtipäivillä ovat mm. Turun yliopiston avaruustähtitieteen professori Esko Valtaoja, joka hämmästyttää kuulijoita Universumin ihmeistä ja Helsingin yliopiston avaruustähtitieteen professori Karri Muinonen, joka valaisee yleisöä asteroideista ja komeetoista. Lisäksi päivillä kuullaan useiden asiantuntijoiden esitelmiä supernovista, eksoplaneetoista, meteoreista ja tähtiharrastuksesta. Yleisöllä on mahdollisuus ihastua tähtitaivaaseen planetaariossa ja tutustua havaintolaitteistoon, mm. kaukoputkiin sekä alan erikoisliikkeiden tuotteisiin. Tapahtumassa on ohjelmaa myös lapsille. Tähtipäivät avaa Mikkelin kaupungin kehitysjohtaja Soile Kuitunen.

Lue lisää tapahtumasta Mikkelin Ursan sivuilta: www.mikkelinursa.fi

Video: timelapse: snow and shadows

Here's one of my first DSLR timelapse videos, and the first time I'm embedding my own video, blogging a video etc. I'm also learning how to do things right with Google buzz. I wanted to "buzz" this to my followers (there's no such option in buzz, right - it's either public or chosen contacts... I don't like that kind of choises!). I didn't want to put this on my public profile. So, if I blog this, it will be buzzed. Right? :)

Snow and shadows 1 from Sami Jumppanen on Vimeo.

Definitely not a smooth one, or perhaps not even interesting. I set 1 minute interval because I didn't know how long I would let the timer run, and Canon EOS D60 takes no bigger than 2GB card, and the remaining photos counter displayed "999" when using medium sized high quality JPG setting. I used low FPS to make the video long enough. I did consider the composition, however. The "ditch" is a pathway through our backyard, after some more snow has covered it.

The frame-to-frame flickering caused by auto-exposure is filtered by Temporal smoother (a VirtualDub filter).

I hope this works...