Work disturbes hobbies

The first week at work is over. In my work as a teacher in a school for adults it is also the hardest. Teaching there is a pleasure but the beginning is hard. You can never know how many students will show up this year.
This year I had enough of them, at this point about 40 starting the long math courses and there will be more, I know that from experience. This is enough to keep the courses going through all year. There are always eager starters who notice that it is too hard for them at this point of life.

The week has gone and I have not had time to write to the blog, I have barely been able to answer most e-mails and after school at 21.00 I am mostly too tired to concentrate on anything.
Even this week's review puzzle is not finished. It started just fine, but Wednesday I found out I had made an error and I just have not had energy to erase the part where the error is, yet. I am going to do it since I want to solve them myself without clues from others.

For those who don't know what I am talking about:
Conceptis publishes a review puzzle every Sunday. Members solve or try to solve the puzzle and then write a review about the puzzle: the quality of the picture, how hard the puzzles was and things like that. One can even say that it was too hard to solve. One lucky member wins a T-shirt every week.

My absolute favourites are B/W Pic-A-Pix puzzles which I always solve on paper even though Conceptis offers also two of them online every week.
I have my favourites attached to my freezer door with magnets and today I took pictures of them to share.





This is the first puzzle I reviewed









And this was the second. I was not very experienced yet and it took me the whole week. I even had to clue a fresh part in the top middle because I had erased so many times that the paper started to wear out.






This was also one of the first ones. It is large but it's a coloured Link-A-Pix and thus much easier to solve




This was the one which won me the T-shirt in the summer of 2005. Ironic that this is a B/W Link-A-Pix and I think they are too easy :)







This is the hardest one I've solved so far (I don't count Advanced Logic Fill-A-Pixies since I have not had the energy to learn to solve them)







My favourite is one of these, I just can't decide which:

Amazing things happen!

I have previously used clipmarks in my blog when I created links to Conceptis website. I have been viewing other people's clipmarks and popped the interesting ones for further use. I have so far created 17 of my own, containing news and of course my main interests: puzzles and mathematics. This clip I made two days ago and it has been popped 21 times! On top of that it has been commented on 7 times (that contains my own comments). I was among the 5 most popped yesterday.
The more I spend time blogging and socializing in the net, the more I get amazed. This was not something I thought would interest so many people.

clipped from users.forthnet.gr Do Mathematics Exist? According to Neo-Platonists, mathematics exist independent of human quest, so they are in fact discovered, not invented. Even the most abstract mathematical objects are real and invariable For Formalists on the other, mathematical objects do not exist. Mathematics consist of symbols, axioms/sentences composed of such symbols and rules to transform sentences into others (e.g. theorems), but none of these has any particular meaning. Mathematics is therefore a humanly constructed language devised by human beings for definite ends prescribed by themselves. Constructivists take the extreme view that if something cannot be constructed in a finite number of steps it does not exist. Links on the Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics can be found at the University of Waterloo/ Department of Philosophy site here

Proud to be Finnish!

My classes start today and probably that will affect my posting :(
I still have no idea how I could combine blogging and teaching...

Something really fabulous and unexpected happened over the weekend.
Finland won the first EUROVISION DANCE CONTEST (EDC 2007) and thus became the first winner in the 'history' of this contest. I did not watch the show on TV until I happened to pass by and saw the start of the voting.

Finland's dance is spectacular. It is artistic and also a noticable thing is that the music is Finnish by Apocalyptica.

Here is the winning dance:

It was only 1.5 years ago when we won the Eurovision song contest with the biggest amount of points in the long history of that contest thanks to Lordi. Before that we probably were the first in the "worst points ever" - list.

And here is our winning song from there. Monsters and hard rock, something you would not expect a woman of my age to like. Anyway I love it!!. This version is from this years contest opening. Finland hosted them and the show started with this video.

When nobody becomes Somebody

I consider giL my mentor in my new blogging hobby and what a good mentor he has been!

Yesterday giL published a post about the second most popular clip on YouTube this week showing the incomprehensible answer Miss Teen USA South Carolina 2007 gives in a beauty contest to one of those questions which normally should have an answer like "I would like to save the Earth" or something similar.
Since my opinion of the clip was quite different from giL's, I even commented the post in his blog. Another comment from cooper suggests that the girl probably will be famous because of it.

I very much agree with cooper on that and I have an example here from Finland. Our country is very small, but because of the internet, even a Finnish person can get famous by doing something so funny that the video starts to get more and more watchers.

Olli Hokkanen made himself famous or like Wikipedia describes it: became an internet phenomenon in Finland after failing his attempt to drink 1.5 litres of Coca-Cola on the television show Ennätystehdas ("Record Factory").

On the television broadcast Hokkanen attempted to drink 1.5 litres of Coca-Cola that was poured into seven regular-sized glasses. No specific time limit was set, since there was no knowledge of an existing record for drinking 1.5 litres of Coke in Finland. Hokkanen abandoned his effort after drinking three glasses. After the third glass of Coke, Hokkanen commented on the high carbonic acid level of the drink, by saying the now famous words, "Ei pysty, on niin hapokasta" ("Can't do it. Too acidic"). The host asked him whether or not he was surprised at the fact that Coca-Cola contains carbonic acid. Hokkanen then explained that at home he usually keeps his bottles open for some time so that the drink becomes less 'acidic' and thus easier to drink. Prior to the attempt Hokkanen had said that he was an experienced Coke drinker since early childhood.

I happened to see the actual show on TV and had a good laugh but I would never have imagined where it would lead.

After the broadcast of the seventh episode of Ennätystehdas, the Internet phenomenon started to emerge. The YouTube video-sharing service was the most important distribution channel for the video, which has been watched over one million times (as of July 2007). In addition to the video, new edited video clips, edited images and pieces of music related to the event appeared. T-shirts with a text "Can't do it – too acidic" in Finnish have been sold. Hokkanen also claims that rubber masks resembling him have been made.


The story of Olli Hokkanen continues at the moment and Wikipedia seems to get updated regularly. Even though Olli Hokkanen was laughed at by everybody, he thinks that publicity has more benefits than disadvantages and that this was like winning in the Lottery.

here is the video with English Subtitles, judge for yourself :)