How To Have A Great Holiday At Home

Time really flies! Four years have passed since  Dave Green visited us last time. Dave is the president of Conceptis puzzles, which provides my fix for Japanese puzzles. I have visited in Israel four times now but Dave has been in Finland only twice and both times in October, when Finland is dull, grey and dark. No snow yet but all the trees have dropped their leaves and the weather is awful. Now I had the chance to show Finland in all it's beauty and light. There is something magical in the Finnish summer.

I will tell about things which made an impression to Dave. Since I am not sure about his order of preference, I have listed them chronologically.

The weather

Dave was travelling by plane from Moscow and we picked him at the airport. The weather was hot and sunny. My Israeli friends have always warned me about the hot weather in Israel in the summertime, and now I had the chance to show Dave, that ours it not so very different. The air was very moist and we could actually feel a thunderstorm coming.

On our way, quite near Turku, we actually had some rain and saw lightnings. In Turku the sun did not shine but it was still about 30 degrees Celsius. The thunderstorm reached Turku later, when Dave was in his hotel resting. Sunday the weather was hot and sunny again, except when Dave wanted a break for rest and some work on the computer we had a huge thunderstorm with lots of water again. As if Dave was good friends with our ancient god of weather, Ukko. Three hours later when he was ready, the weather was very nice again.

River Boats on the banks of Aura River in Turku

After Dave's rest after the trip he was hoping for some coffee and I knew exactly the place where to take him. Turku is situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, and the centre of Turku is located on both sides of the river. A typical place in Turku to drink something in summer are the river boats. There are 11 reastaurant boats in the river and some of them are open even in winter. The food is usually served inside the boat, but the decks are wonderful places to drink some beer or coffee like we did on the deck of Cindy. Dave had some foreign puzzle magazines with him and while we were having our coffee, he showed me the latest products worldwide. 

These boats are something which is very typical of Turku. When the spring comes and sun starts to warm us  and while most people would think the weather is still too cold, the first ones are celebrating the the departure of the winter on the boats drinking beer or cider.

Restaurants

Saturday we had dinner in restaurant Smör, which is a highly considered Scandinavian restaurant. We had our own cabinet, since all of my family was also present. The food was excellent and this was the first time when someone explained all the incredients on my plate. According to Dave and my son the wine was also good, but I don't drink wine and can't confirm that. The desserts were the weirdest I have ever seen. Huge plates and the portions scattered artistically on it. Also those who had dessert said that everything tasted very different than they expected. I am not sure if that is a good thing. I was so full by then that I only drank some coffee. We had so much fun talking and joking. Dave is great company and we had many laughs about small things happening while we were eating. As an example the waiter, a young guy, came to pick up our plates and asked: "Are you all finished?". Dave answered: "All the others are Finnish except me." It turned out that   the waiter was not either, he was from Austria. Those words seem totally different when you read them, but try to pronounce them. The difference is so small that in the restaurant you can't really hear it and Dave has the habit of taking advantage of situations like that :)

Monday I had dinner with Dave and the managing editor of Sanoma Magazines crossword/puzzle magazines. The place was Särkänlinna. It is situated on a small island just outside Helsinki. The place is beautiful, and the restaurant has been built in an old fort. The weather could have been better; It was still about 20 degrees, but the sun was behind clouds. The food was fabulous and the atmosphere was just amazing. The floor was sloping and the bottoms of the water classes were inclined to get the water level horizontal. Occationally we could smell some smoke when they were preparing salmon in the kitchen.

Light

The most amazing thing in Finland at this time of the year is the amount of light. Here the sun never drops to the ocean in 15 minutes like it does in Israel but it slides gradually down. Saturday night I took Dave back to his hotel about 2 a.m. and the northern skyline was light. On that particular moment the sun was at the lowest and instead of dusk we actually saw the dawn. Sunday we were playing games outside and at 11 p.m. we still had light from the sun. It is the only thing I really miss about Finland when travelling abroad in summer. It is even weirded in the north; the sun actually never goes down and it is really hard to go to sleep unless you are using blinds.

My geeky things

I have an iPad from school and I am testing it for educational purposes. Dave had never used one and I showed him the latest Finnish success in games, Angry Birds. He did not quite get the idea of the game, but I explained him that it is also a puzzle. You have to figure out where to aim, since the birds have different features and so do the walls which you have to crack. I am totally addicted to the game. Unfortunately iPad is not the best device for my puzzles. Sudokus are quite nice, but the screen is definitely too small for my large picture puzzles. iPad is even worse than my Nokia N900. Nokia has a resistive touch screen and I can use a plastic pen with it. I should have my fingers sharpened in order to draw fine lines with iPad. The stylus pen I have for iPad is just a joke and actually useful for pushing buttons, not any real writing.

One device that would suit very well to the puzzles is the fabulous Smart Board in my classroom. My school was very near and I showed Dave how Smart Boards can be used for teaching and how it would be like to use it with puzzle solving. Frankly the screen is actually too big. Solving a big puzzle while standing next to it is like having the paper right in front of your nose. The board worked fine, but it was not the optimal way either. When Dave dragged a line of dots to the board, the last dot was not visible because the cursor was left on top of it.

The Archipelago

After the visit to the school, I took Dave to see one of the peculiar places in Turku, Föri (in Finnish), which is a small ferry carrying pedestrians and bikers over Aura River. It's completely free and travels from bank to bank without any time table. Handy when you don't want to walk all the way to the first bridge of Turku. We travelled from one bank to another and back while we were waiting for the others for lunch on Sunday.

We waited for the others on the bank of the river sitting in the shadows of very old trees. Turku is very beautiful when all the trees have leaves and on sunny days people enjoy the sun sitting on the banks of the river. We had lunch on m/s Rudolfina, which is a boat taking tourists to a cruise in the Archipelago of Turku and serves a lunch buffee along the way.

The trip took two hours and the scenery is beautiful. You have to travel quite far from Turku before you can see the horizon, because everywhere we have smaller and bigger islands like in the picture.

The weather was very hot when we started. The food was good and we could avoid the heat staying on the shadowy side of the boat with a little breeze cooling us. When we came back to the harbour, the first drops of water started falling down. We did not get wet, but on my way to Kaarina the rain started. The drops were huge and the lightnings were just above me. Actually the storm had broken a couple of windows in Ruissalo and also torn away the tents they had already put up for the yearly rock festival Ruisrock. It was less than 15 minutes before we were travelling past the place on the boat. 

Finnish food

Sunday night we enjoyed some traditional Finnish home cooking at my sister's place in Kaarina. The menu was created thinking of food which is not very common outside the Nordic countries.

We had crepes, which were fried outside on a large pan and served hot. The crepes had fillings which were made of fish, which my brother-in-law actually catches himself. The dessert was also crepes, but filled with  woodland strawberries  and some vanilla cream. The strawberries were also picked up by Hannu, who found an excellent place to get them. They are very small compared to cultured strawberries, but they are much sweeter. They are very hard to find nowadays, but Hannu did an amazing discovery this summer.

We had some fresh summer potatoes with butter, the traditional delicacy of midsummer in Finland. The potatoes do not even have peels, and we start eating them while they are still very small. 

The basic incredient of the Finnish menu in summer is grilled sausages with mustard. Nowadays many people have grills heated with gas, but we made them the traditional way. 

Hannu had also made some good liquor from Koskenkorva (Finnish vodka) and plums or cherries, which both were from their own trees.

Between the meals Dave was introduced to my sisters herb garden. We did not know the names of the herbs in English, but we did not have to. Dave tasted them and could say which herb it was. Tuula also grows onions, garlic, zucchini and tomatoes.

Mölkky

We played a couple of rounds of Mölkky, a fairly new Finnish outdoors game. It involves throwing a wooden pin and trying to knock down the other pins. You get points by certain rules and the game ends when someone gets exactly 50 points. If the limit is exceeded, the amount of points drops by 25. You can also be dropped out of the game if you miss all the pins on three rounds. It is amazing how easy it is to miss. The soft lawn makes the pin jump over the other pins without hitting anything.

Sanoma Magazines

On Monday Dave was visiting Sanoma Magazines because Sanoma publishes Conceptis puzzles in several sudoku magazines and one picture logic magazine called Japanilaiset Ristikot.  I had the great honor to go there with him and see the people who are making these magazines and also how they do it. I just loved seeing all this and hearing all the details and problems which can occur when choosing the puzzles and placing them on the magazine. Even titles take space and can force the puzzle smaller. They know what the optimal square size is, but it is not very simple to get that size on every puzzle. Finland has a long history of solving crossword puzzles, but these logic puzzles are hard to find even in Europe. I consider myself lucky to have Conceptis magazines here. I was so fascinated by all the details that I stayed longer than I was originally supposed to. I hope my opinions did not bother Dave too much. I was so thrilled about explaining how we puzzlers think (or at least some of us).

Good Company

The three days were filled with laughter. Dave and my son are people who notice when someone accidentally places his words wrong and make jokes about it. I love this incidental fun since it makes me pay attention to my words. It happens in my classes also. I think I have figured out my sentences but somehow they come out funny. It is good to have some laughs among the more serious studying.

My family jokes a lot, and our jokes don't necessarily open up to all people. Dave shares our humor and even acts as a catalyst for others. I'll give one example, which cracked the others totally. My dog Piitu is a Welsh Corgi Pembroke and The Queen of England is famous for her Corgis and Dorgis, which is a Corgi-Dacshund hybrid. Suddenly my son asked : " Why did Elisabeth have to make a Dorgi?" No one obviously knew. The answer: "She was locked out". At this point we were still looking at each other puzzled but burst into laughter when Olli refrased the answer: "She did need a door key." Once again the joke does not work when it is written, but read it out loud.

The dinner with the managing editor of Sanoma was also filled with interesting conversations and fun. When we did not find the right names for birds or flowers, I googled them with my iPad. That is a good use for the device. It is stylish to have on your table even on a fancy restaurant and you can get answers to your problems while having the conversation. For checking the last train or the time tables of buses it was not so good. The pages were very hard to open but they might have applications for that :)

Weird Finnish people

I have actually always considered myself to be weird, because I love mathematics and puzzles and love to spend my time on the computer. When my sister and his husband told Dave about their hobbies I started to think that I just seemed to look like the normal one. Hannu catches fish almost all year long with a net which he even puts under the ice. His catch is about 25 kg/year in file and he uses also roaches, which are not considered good for eating because they have quite many small bones. He puts them in cans and uses a pressure cooker. The method makes the fish so smooth that the bones dissolve in the mixture. Hannu also picks huge amounts of mushrooms and berries. Tuula grows the herbs and vegetables and it's like they are prepared to hibernate during winter time. 

Hannu also carves plates and bowls out of wood, makes knives and the leathercases for them and Tuula makes the decorations. Tuula makes things out of clay; candle holders, plates, lamp shades and anything you can imagine.

How to have a vacation at home

The three days Dave was here, were like a holiday for me, even though I was spending them in my normal surroundings. Normally I don't even pay so much attention to the usual things but when I started looking at them with Dave's eyes, I noticed how wonderful Finland actually is. Dave is very good company and I enjoyed the discussions we had. I hope the other people in Conceptis take Dave's example and come here for a change instead of me going to Israel. I love Israel but talking about Finland is not the same. You have to see it yourself.

Thanks Dave for visiting!

Famous In Japan?

I have been featured in a Sudoku book. Conceptis Japan made a book for a Japanese publisher, Kasakura Shuppan. In the book they introduce a puzzle friend who has solved four of the puzzles and his/her solving time is revealed beside the puzzle. Chie, the manager of Conceptis Japan, asked me if I knew someone who would like to get introduced there. I decided that I could as well do it myself.

So here are two of the puzzles I had to solve. Solving them as fast as possible was more stressful than I thought. I usually pay no attention to the clock. The hardest one took me 28 minutes!

 

With the sample books I got this note from Chie :)

 

When I showed the book to my family, no one was thrilled to have the book with my autograph!

Puzzles and Nokia N900

I am a fan of all kind of gadgets and I am not very good in texting or surfing the web with my mobile phone, Nokia E90, which I bought last year. When Nokia announced the new model N900, I decided I want to have it.

I just love the phone. Web pages open fast and I have multiple desktops to save the applications and favourites I use. Everything I need I can choose with my fingertip. I am still learning to use all the features, but one of my first was to check Conceptis website. The start was a bit tricky but with persistence I finally got a result:

Now I have learned to adjust the size of the screen and to use the pen which came with the phone and I started solving a Hitori. The puzzle was a small and easy one, and I got it finished in less than 5 minutes!

What is special about this? I don't need any applications. I can go to my best website and solve the puzzles there. The trick is the Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support my phone has. The prevoius one did not show even the thumbnails of the puzzles.

Mega Pic-A-Pix

This week Conceptis spoiled us with a coloured mega Pic-A-Pix puzzle. It took me several days to finish doing small parts at a time. Now it is finished and as always, the picture is just beautiful!

Relaxing Holiday

I was on holiday. Despite my decision in the beginning of the summer vacation I just had to go to Israel for one week. The trip was too short but the feeling to be away from home made me wonders. My mind was totally reset from the past school year and even after I came home I have been able to relax instead of worrying all the things I should be doing at the moment.

At home I have spent the days in my social networks but mostly I have enjoyed my puzzles. Nowadays my main interest is Pic-A-Pix. Here are 4 screen shots of last week's 6 puzzles.

This week all the others are back to work and I am spending my days with Piitu. I should really start planning next year but as it seems I am not making very good progress. Sometimes I hope I had a job I could leave outside my home. This way it seems I am at my workplace all the time...

Solving a Conceptis Color Pic-a-Pix Puzzle

I think I have spent too long blogging about other things but finally I got into recording a session about solving my favourite type of Conceptis puzzles, a color Pic-a-Pix. These I prefer solving on the computer because I always have trouble finding the right color pencils even though my house is basically filled with ones my children got from school and left behind when they moved away. The other problem is that color pencils are much more difficult to erase than regular pencils.

This particular puzzle can be found here along with other similar bigger puzzles. Because this is a very easy puzzle, I could solve each colour on its own. With harder puzzles that solving method is either impossible or at least makes solving the puzzle even harder.

Notice that you can watch the video on full screen. I made it with ScreenToaster which is an excellent tool for recording your screen. The video is stored on the website and you don't have to upload any software on your computer.

Capture your screen in seconds

Benefits of Vacation

Now that I have no obligations regarding work, I don't have to feel guilty about solving puzzles. My favourite puzzles are Pic-A-Pix and that is why even these six were not enough for this week.

The next one in line was Fill-A-Pix, but they were not very big this week

So I had to turn to the Link-A-Pix puzzles which normally are too easy for me. There was this one MegaLAP and I thought I would solve it. After solving that I remembered how nice pictures they have and decided to try some more and as I went backwards from the biggest to the smallest, I noticed that I still had time for more... ending up solving them all before the new update.

Here is a better screen shot of the bigger ones

Now that I have finished this Conceptis should have updated the puzzles and I can start solving a whole new set,

Fun Searching with Spezify

From the mathematics point of view I have been very thrilled with the new search engine, WolframAlpha. I just wrote some basics about it in my Finnish blog. Then miraculously I found a totally different search engine yesterday named spezify. It is still in beta and to my surprise located in Sweden.

Here is part of my search for "japanese logic puzzles". As you can see the results are shown visually. The results contain Twitter messages and for some reason Conceptis was very well represented. Someone called the results messy but I liked it in some weird way. I had the urge to click and check the results and with Google I try to avoid clicking any extra links. Browsing the results was hard in the beginning using the mouse, but when I realized the arrow keys work the best I had fun!

Before opening a link you can check where it came from. One click on the picture gives black frames with the basic info.

The results with even Finnish search words are mostly in English.
Now I have to start playing with the mathematics links. So many fantastic looking pages!

Finally - A Good Book with Calcudoku

I got mail last Monday. I had a card in my mailbox telling that I could collect a package from the post office because it was too big to fit in through the hole in the mailbox. I don't quite understand why Amazon has to pack everything in big boxes. The book inside the package would have fitted very well. I already knew what was inside before I went to get the package Thursday. The new Conceptis CalcuDoku & Sudoku book has finally been published. I made the pre-order a long time ago.

The book has 300 Calcudokus and 144 Sudokus. I have played the Calcudokus online on Conceptis website where I can choose to see the possible combinations and use pure logic. Solving them on paper was actually fun. I can write my partial conclusions to the margins. These are some of the easier ones.

The biggest are 8x8 squares and they demand more conclusions. Here is my start for one of them:

Here is the link to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. This time I would have got the book cheaper from UK. With the current rates the price is lower not to mention the lower postal fee in EU. I think it is not totally out of the question that I could get the book from Finland eventually but the cost would probably be more. I always have to buy puzzle and math books online. There just is not demand here to make bookstores willing to keep the books in their supply.

Calcudokus are totally indentical to puzzles named KenKen created by a Japanese teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto. According to Times Online:

Tetsuya Miyamoto has vowed “not to teach children”.What he does instead is to set them a puzzle which, he says, transforms the brain into a vigorous problem-solving engine. The puzzle, of Mr Miyamoto’s own devising, is called KenKe*, which translates as “cleverness squared”.

Mr Miyamoto’s theory is that the brain – of a child or adult – is failed by conventional teaching. By concentrating on a “third way” of problem-solving, he believes that the mind becomes a more potent tool for dealing with the rest of life, from main-stream education to the challenges of the workplace.

The article is quite long and I suggest you read it all. The article ends:

Because of Mr Miyamoto’s rigid beliefs about the importance of the “personal pattern and style of learning”, he is careful not to offer any advice to readers of The Times. Successful solvers often seem to start with the higher-value number clues and to focus on the numbers, particularly the primes, where possible solutions are naturally limited. Beyond that, he says, it is up to you. “Nobody can tell you how you should do it.”
*KenKen ™ Puzzles are used with permission of Gakken Co., Ltd and Nextoy, LLC. Puzzle content © 2008 Gakken Co. Ltd.

I have the first KenKen book that was published with The Times puzzles. The foreword of the book, written by Tetsuya Miyamoto, states very similarly:

"I teach you nothing; I will only give you problems. Try hard or go home. There is no right way to the solution. Your way is the right way. Just keep trying and, through trial and error, you will get there."

As a mathematics teacher I am not really sure if this really is advantageous in teaching mathematics. The students eventually develop the skills to solve the puzzles but do they have the ability to transfer that skill to the theory of math. According to the article his classes are very popular and it is hard to get in. I am horrified about the idea that some teacher would use this technique to all children. The fear of mathematics would surely get immense.

Well obviously the publisher of the book does not believe in the trial and error method because the next nine and a half pages contain detailed solving methods written by David Levy, the President of International Computer Games Association.

These puzzles are lovely and I could see them as rewards for those students who have finished their usual assignments before others and need some extra problems.

Is KenKen the Next Sudoku? asks Time (CNN). I think it could have been but the mistake was to trademark the puzzle. Now other puzzle creators can't use the name KenKen and these puzzles are provided by names like Kendoku (also this has been trademarked since kendoku.com has this warning now: Nextoy, LLC, the co-owner of KenKen® in conjunction with Gakken Co. Ltd., has informed me that they are also the trademark owners of the KenDoKu™ brand name). Kendoku.com was changed to Mathdoku.com. Also names Square Wisdom and MinuPlu are used. One of the reasons of Sudoku getting all the publicity was because all the puzzles were Sudokus regardless who made them!
The Finnish Conceptis publisher could use the name Numeroku. It sounds so Finnish.

The registration of a mathematical concept is against the mathematician in me. How would the science develop if scientists registered everything they come up with? I see lots of bigger mathematical questions in these puzzles regarding solvability and lots of things only a mathematical mind develops. From the educational point all I can say is: Use these for fun! Don't force anyone to solve them.

If you want to try solving, the Conceptis Widget is on my sidebar.

Friday on a Cruise Ship

I am finally starting to be back to normal again. Last weekend I was so busy that I can't even remember when was the last time I had my schedule so full.

Regarding Friday I first have to explain something. The following is quoted from Wikipedia under Collective bargaining:

In some countries, such as Finland, collective agreements with enough support are universally applicable, in a particular field, regardless of union membership. Effectively, the universal collective agreement sets the minimum wages and other benefits, under which no employer may go with any employee, union member or not. Personal benefits can be given regardless.

The teacher's collective agreement states that we must have 3 days in a year to get some further education to keep our skills up to date. Mostly I am not so sure if the goals are reached. I have been sitting in numerous lectures and wondered if the subject of the lesson has anything to do with my real life. Sometimes the lessons are very entertaining, sometimes very boring and sometimes held by people who have no idea how the school works nowadays.

Friday was one of the days mentioned above but now I knew it would be very interesting. The only thing I did not like was the place where the event took place: one of the cruise ships between Turku and Stockholm.

These ships are not really a good way to travel to Sweden because the journey takes about 12 hours. They are used mainly for entertainment, dancing and drinking on a cruiser (reminds me of Love Boat) and holding conferences. I guess that way the people attending the conference remain there better; there is absolutely no way to escape except one of the bars, but the chances to get caught are too big.

I was one of the teachers who gave a lesson and I told my co-workers about my journey over the internet and social media. I demonstrated how to use Skype and had wonderful help from Dave Green and Gil Galanti from Conceptis. Besides that they are just the best when it comes to chatting online there was one thing I had really forgotten about because I do it so often. Israel is probably the most exotic country from the Finnish perspective. A group chat from a cruise boat between Finland and Sweden to Israel is not really something people are accustomed to :)

I also introduced Delicious and Diigo, told about Math bloggers and about the article Conceptis published about me and showed how I can find good links by not using Google. I also told how wonderful interacting with people from different countries is. I have really enjoyed all these years having friends outside my own country.

Twitter was something only one of the teachers had heard of and he did not even know what it is about. Twitter is awesome, like I already told in my earlier post. If you have a sufficient amount of followers you always get an answer from the Twitterverse when you want to find out something. By following teachers and other people interested in mathematics and puzzles I have been able to add numerous links to my huge collection of good resources.

Altogether six teachers told about their job and that was really interesting. After all the introductions I could really see why the adult students love our school. We have amazing personalities among the teachers, all dedicated to their job.

Part of the teachers continued the journey to Stockholm and came back the next morning. They did not really leave the ship at all but just turned around in Sweden. I belonged to the bigger group of people who turned around changing ships in Åland Islands (Ahvenanmaa) which is an autonomous part of Finland, closer to Sweden than Finland.

The journey back was a bit boring. We had dinner at the Buffet of the ship. They had a Spanish week and lots of exotic foods. Shopping in the ship's Tax Free is also a habit even though we never left Finland not to mention EU and the prices are not free of tax. I tried to use my distant connection with the laptop but the GSM network was not strong enough for pages to load. No chance of getting 3G in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The rest of the time we had conversations among the teachers, which was actually nice. At work we are usually too busy to have deeper conversations.

After the long day I was totally exhausted. I am probably getting old...

The story about the weekend continues in the next post

Teaching Mathematics in Finland With Japanese Puzzles

This is a repost from March for educational purposes with some pictures added here.



In the end of 2008 I had the chance to teach Japanese puzzles in my own school. Now my story has been published on Conceptis website :) I hope this gives ideas to other mathematics teachers as well. Some puzzles in the middle of normal work is refreshing and teaches logic reasoning. Logic is the foundation where mathematical thinking is built. I hope you enjoy the story.



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