Sunday, October 28, 2007

What do puzzles, Finland and Spanish red wine have in common - Conceptis!


Conceptis is not just about puzzles. It is a community, people around the world sharing the same interest in logic puzzles. The people in the community are friends, almost like family.

I had a fabulous weekend! I had a visitor from my new family, the dearest of all, Dave Green. Dave was on a business trip in Scandinavia seeing publishers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Even though Dave had been travelling very much in the past month, to my great joy he included me in his journey and came from Helsinki to Turku just to see me and my family.

I have considered Dave my friend for over two years now. We have had the most interesting e-mail conversations over those years. My husband and I had already seen Dave in July during our visit to Israel. That trip was amazing; meeting all those Conceptis people after having met them by e-mail only. The staff was like a family and I had a real feeling becoming a part of it. when I picked Dave up from the train station, it was as if all the months between our departure had vanished.

Dave told me the latest news in the cosy little hotel lobby and we went to dinner with my whole family. My son and his girlfriend had cancelled their trip to Rovaniemi this weekend to meet Dave. Probably Dave did not think that was a great sacrifice since his trip to Rovaniemi during the World Puzzle Championship 2002 had been very dull. He and his wife had driven about 3-4 hours there seeing a million trees, a thousand lakes, numerous reindeers and one car :)

We had a fabulous dinner in the restaurant Rocca and had some very good laughs. Finally my son found his equal; he is very intelligent and has a very sarcastic sense of humour which few people understand but Dave did.

After the dinner we went to our home in Kaarina to continue the discussions over some cheese and red wine which one of my dear Conceptis friends, Rosa from Spain, had brought me when she paid us a visit in August.

The children left, my husband went to bed, but I continued my discussion with Dave until 5 am when I drove him back to the hotel. It seems to me that no time is enough talking with Dave!
The next day we drove Dave to the airport and when my husband was driving Dave and I still had some things left regarding the Conceptis Pixies.

After all this Dave's flight was late. I hope he got some sleep in the plane!

I also hope as many of you in the Conceptis community can experience what I have: meeting so many friends from the forums and the fabulous staff. I have moved to the next level; the puzzles are not the main thing any more, the people are.

If Dave can drink Rosa's wine with Leena in Turku, then ANYTHING in life is possible.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Piitu is networking, too!

Piitu has her own network! Here is Piitu's profile page in www.Corgi.com:


And here is a widget from her page:


Find more photos like this on MyCorgi.com




Piitu has already 2 friends and received 3 comments about how cute she is :)

Like many connections lately I just stumbled upon this. I had a visit from slstsang in Stumble Upon When I visited his site I found out that he is
CEO of MyCorgi.com - a free social networking site for Corgi owners.

This is so awesome !

Monday, October 22, 2007

Sudoku winner is no surprise

I have had lots of traffic in my mailbox lately from BlogLog or BlogCatalog informing I have new messages or friends, from StumbleUpon announcing messages in SU mailbox or from Clipmarks telling my clippers activity. This morning I had a message from LiveJournal that a member had added me as a friend. I was already a fan because I had joined a group named World Puzzle Championships. When I went to look at his page I found out who my new friend was: Thomas Snyder, the Sudoku world champion who had won the Philadelphia Inquirer Sudoku National Championship Saturday!



He became the world champion of Sudoku in April in Prague.

Here is the story from philly.com, and remember to check also the video of the highlights
The current world Sudoku champion, obviously at the top of the game, put the numbers together again today. Thomas Snyder, a post-graduate from Stanford, Calif., won the Philadelphia Inquirer Sudoku National Championship at the Convention Center.

read more | digg story

Thursday, October 18, 2007

The Beauty in Mathematics

This was one of those days when I found something so impressive that I had to stop my random surfing. I found a clipping made by AndreaJoRush who had added herself to my followers in clipmarks.

clipped from math.furman.edu

poisson.gif (18515 bytes)

"Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and
teaching mathematics"--Siméon Poisson


My thoughts exactly. I discovered the beauty in mathematics when I was 15. After that my goal was to study it without exactly knowing what I was going to be. I could say that totally coincidentally I ended up teaching in the best school possible: the school for adults who know why studying is important. Since I work late in the evening I am now able to study again. It is even more magical now than when I was young.

clipped from math.furman.edu

Galois, Evariste

Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile
scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he
does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties

If there weren't those authors, mathematics would not have developed.

clipped from math.furman.edu
Edwards, Jonathon

When I am violently beset with temptations, or cannot rid myself of evil thoughts, [I resolve] to do some Arithmetic, or Geometry, or some other study, which necessarily engages all my thoughts, and unavoidably keeps them from wandering

I do the same. I just use puzzles to calm myself. Picture puzzles give the amazing feeling of accomplishing something beautiful.

Egrafov, M.

If you ask mathematicians what they do, yo always get the same answer.
They think. They think about difficult and unusual problems.

This is why there are legends about absent-minded professors. Concentrating on problems keeps their mind from noticing anything else. To me the most intruiging fact has always been the unusuality. Many discoveries originate from problems which seem totally irrelevant to other people.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)


How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought
independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?

Again one fact showing how wonderful mathematics can be.


blog it

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Do I live In Mario Land?

Sometimes I realize that things which are every day life to me, are really surpirising for others. My son who belongs to groups about games, showed me the article Mario Mushroom Found in the Wild in Tokyo Mango



The writer tells that there is now knowledge where this grows, and asks for people who have eaten it report if they have experienced unusual growth.
Kotaku
referring the previous article knows where to find it and ends their article:
With the way some people are, I'm just surprised some moron hasn't gotten sick eating one of these and then blamed it on Nintendo! So, remember kids, don't ingest things you find in the forest. Words to live by!
This was so funny. The mushroom is the only poisonuous mushroom known in Finland when I was a child! Every Finnish child has been taught not eat those. It looks so good that it may attract children. Wikipedia says that the mushroom
Amanita muscaria (also known by the English-language common name fly agaric or Fly Amanita) is a psychoactive agaric species of mushroom found commonly throughout much of the world.

I did not much play Super Mario. At that time I never learned to use the controllers of Nintendo. I saw kids playing it, but I never made the connection between our familiar fly mushroom. I guess you miss the most common things seeing them in unusual places.

Wikipedia has also two pictures showing the similarity very well







Monday, October 15, 2007

Police suspect Finnish connection as 80,000 online passwords are compromised

The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (Ficora) regards it as almost a certainty that the compromising and publishing on the Net of around 80,000 online passwords is an act of Finnish origin.
Apparently passwords have been lifted from five or six Finnish discussion groups, chatrooms, or social networking sites over the space of a couple of weeks.

read more | digg story

According to MikroPC the break- in to their sites have been confirmed at least Rakkausrunot- (Love Poems), Kiekkoliiga-(hockey leadue), BatMUD- ja Mesenet-Galleria. These use php-based phpBB-forum software and BatMUD Invision Power Board -software.
Also Hilavitkutin.com (Widget) has been attacked and it uses WordPress and Simple Forum.
With the information for instance some IRC-Gallery pages have been altered.
Rakkausrunot and Voitta.net have for a precaution altered all the passwords of their users.
According to Habbo Hotel, IRC-Gallery ja Luukku.com any information of their passwors have leaked outside.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition - Business & Finance

On Tuesday the Internet search engine company Google acquired the Finnish social network platform Jaiku, which can be accessed both from computers and mobile phones.The service’s business idea is based on presence. Through Jaiku, its users can inform each other of their movements and doings. In Jaiku the messages are short, under 140 characters.

read more | digg story

This is very interesting. And here is a clip from Jaiku website:

Jaiku Tour

III. Use Jaiku on Your Phone

Download the new free Jaiku Mobile Beta for Nokia S60 3rd Edition handsets. Learn more

Have another Java phone? Download the Jaiku widget

  • Text presence updates from any phone
Or, download Jaiku to your smartphone:
  • Use Jaiku as your phonebook
  • Browse and post Jaikus
  • Add comments
  • Share your location
  • Share your availability
  • Share your calendar events
  • Share who you're wit

The problem is that if you want to join Jaiku, you have to get invited. The request to register in Jaiku gives the next message:

Request an Invite Code

We're pleased to see that you are interested in Jaiku. To request an invitation to beta-test the service, please enter your email address in the field below, and we'll let you know when an account becomes available.

I entered my e-mail and I am curious to see how long it will take.
I guess this means I really have to buy a new mobile I have been planning to.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Nightwish started their tour in Israel

"Nightwish started their world tour Saturday night in Tel-Aviv with a concert which was sold out. The first official concert with the new vocalist Anette Olzonin got the Israeli heavy metal fan into ecstasy" writes Turun Sanomat today. Unfortunately they write only in Finnish.

This video is from the concert and one of my favourites - Ever Dream - and judged by the reactions of the audience they like it, too.



Turun Sanomat continues: " The Israeli fan club has for two years tried to arrange a concert, and now the club with a few thousand members celebrated - regardless the fact that most members thought that the new vocalist did not reach to the level of Tarja Turunen.

After the recording in the Hartwall Areena (Helsinki) on the 21st of October, 2005, of the new live DVD End of an Era (released June 2006), the four other members of Nightwish decided that it was best to continue Nightwish without Tarja Turunen, a feeling they expressed through an open letter which was given to Turunen by Tuomas Holopainen after the concert, and afterwards posted on the band's website. The main justification of Turunen's dismissal given in the letter was that the band felt that her husband Marcelo Cabuli, an Argentinian businessman, and commercial interests had changed her attitude towards the band.

The opinions have been similar here; Some people think that Tarja Turunen was Nightwish. However she was just the vocalist and the band is about Tuomas Holopainen and his music.

All I can say to this that I could not stand Nightwish, while Tarja Turunen was the singer. She had the education of an opera singer and when somebody does not pronounce English well and sings opera, no one understands anything about the lyrics.

Changing the vocalist to Swedish Anette Olzon has made me like their music.

You can judge by yourself. This video clip shows the difference between the two Nightwishes:



Sunday, October 7, 2007

The Amazing Corgi

It has been a while since I last wrote about Piitu and her second day in dog school. She is doing very well there an she started the second level this week. She has a great desire to please people and that makes her an excellent learner.

She is full of energy and does things I never thought that Corgis would do. I have had one in the past but Piitu is totally different. And I thought Ellu was wild. I actually knew nothing!

Piitu watches TV sometimes and sees herself in the mirror. I have not yet figured out what kind of programs she prefers. She does not have time to watch TV very often.

Ellu used to eat every bit of food we ever gave her and additionally she stole sandwiches which were left too near the edge of a table. Even though a Corgi has very short legs it has a long body and it can reach the table by jumping to lean on the edge of the table. Piitu is not that hungry. She does not necessarily want to eat when we offer her food. I think that is good since Corgis get overweight very easily. Piitu also doesn't eat her chewing bones when we give them to her. She hides them, either in the garden or under the furniture. She has many times come from outside with a dirty bone she has dug from it's temporary storing place.

Now she is practicing on jumping. For a long time she has been able to jump on the sofa and the bed. Two days ago I was working in the living room with my laptop and the door to the garden was open. Suddenly I heard an odd sound from the outside. When I went to see what had caused it, I found Piitu standing on a box we have for gardening tools. The box is actually very high. It's a bit higher than Piitu's own length if we don't count the tail.

Yesterday I was again working when I heard something strange, this time from the kitchen. When I went to check that one, I found Piitu on the kitchen table. She had used the chairs as her stepping stones. And I had thought they were too narrow for her to jump on! We are going to take Piitu to agility practice. I hope she will get enough jumping there to need to do that at home any more.

Piitu has obviously musical talents also. We have almost all of the Singstars for PS2 and when children come over, we take battles with each other. Piitu joins us because in her opinion the children don't visit often enough. When the song has those la-la-la, da-da-da -parts, Piitu starts barking. Otherwise she does not bark often. Maybe we are not as good in singing as we think we are.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Finnish women have proved to be better than men

Study: companies managed by women more profitable than those run by men

Analysis focuses on return on capital

Companies managed by women are on average ten per cent more profitable than those with a man as CEO. A study organized by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA finds a clear correlation between women in management and profitability, which cannot be explained by differentiation of companies or fields of business.


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Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Nokia growing

Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition - Business & Finance

In what would be Finland’s largest-ever corporate acquisition, Nokia would acquire digital maps of 69 countries and make itself a major player in the market for navigation devices.

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