Alexey Smirnov's blog

Today I went to a dentist, the first time in Taiwan. I am quite surprised with the price/qualitty ratio once again, especially comparing to the countries in which I happened to visit dentist previously. So I decided to create a buyer’s guide to dental clinics around the world.

1) The United States. The health care is notoriously expensive. Filling a small hole in a tooth can cost about 500 USD or even more. The insurance does not cover these expenses. Due to high prices the foreign students often go back to their home countries to get their teeth fixed during a summer break. Until then you’d have to tolerate the pain. Being a graduate student is painful.
2) Finland. The situation in this country is more complicated. There are a number of state clinics which are quite good and cheap (about 20 EUR per tooth), so you really want to go there. The problem is – there are too few of them, you might need to wait for up to 1 month in a queue. I wonder what kind of pain you might have to go through in the meantime. The alternative is to go to a private clinic which is more expenseive (maybe 1/2 the rate of the US), but they are available immediately.
3) Taiwan. I don’t know how much it actually costs, but the insurance covers it. So, today I only had to pay 5 USD to get my tooth fixed. It was a private clinic with modern equipment and friendly staff, so I really liked it.

So, if you have teeth problems consider coming to Taiwan!

This year was one of the most eventful, probably as much as year 2002 when I went to study in the United States. Year 2010 was comprised of 3 equal parts: in Finland, in Russia, and in Taiwan.

In the beginning of the year I was still in Helsinki. However, I decided to wrap up working in Finland and moved back to Russia in May. Then I spent the summer working on my startup. Cloudy Security, the company that I am founder of, offers consulting services in cloud computing area. In September I went to Taiwan to work with Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-sponsored organization known for creation of Taiwan laptop industry, as well as many other high-tech initiatives. So I am staying in Hsinchu, Taiwan since then, even though I had to make a few trips to Russia.

At work I was dealing mostly with embedded systems this year. Various Linux middleware libraries, applications, as well as kernel were areas of my work. Another reason why I compare this year to year when I started studies in the US is that I had to learn lots of new things during this year. Obviously, embedded computing is extremely hot area during these days. Everybody is trying to move to the cloud or to mobile platforms – this offers better flexibility and reduces utility bills.

But I was working on my own projects besides that work in the office. JavaScript is the language I like a lot. To me it seems that in the world of desktop development (or traditional Linux development using C++) lots of work has been done in the area of designing the software. I like to learn how to use design patterns. JavaScript is used in developing browser applications – an environment where design patterns are used all the time. But JavaScript itself does not include many object-oriented features. Implementing design patterns in JavaScript is a challenging and enjoyable task.

I have worked on a number of my pet projects, none of which I had time to release. In the beginning of the year I worked on improved Timeline. I want to place arbitrary widgets on SIMILE Timeline, for example to make it possible to interact with events on the timeline – vote for events you like, rate them, etc. This work has been completed but I just did not get a chance to publish it. I still want to do it.

Next, I worked on Norton Commander for Web – a tool with the look and feel of popular file manager, except that it runs on your web site. This tool should help web developers a lot. Of course, I started implementing it in JavaScript. One can ask: why do you need a file manager on your web site in addition to what the hosting company offers? Indeed, most hosting companies offer a file manager that the owner of the web site can use. The drawback of this solution is that it takes lots of time to login into the management console of your web site (oh, btw., what is that top-secret password needed to access my web site?), and often those file managers are implemented in Flash. Last but not least, the UI of file managers I have seen is in no way similar to that of Norton Commander, a file manager with arguably the best UI. This is why I decided to re-implement Norton Commander but in a totally different environment – in a web browser. Also, HTML5 makes it possible to access local file system, therefore one can use this file manager to work with one’s computer as well.

Then in the summer I worked on updating my web site. I implemented new layout and menus. The menu at the top of the page allows one to navigate quickly to one of the few areas of interest: blog, projects, hobbies, etc. In addition, the accordion-style side menu makes it possible to navigate within sub-sections of the selected area.

After I left Finland I still wanted to implement a few pet projects using Qt, the framework that I learned in Finland. But the coming Qt book to which I had access through Safari Rough Cuts grabbed my attention. I spent lots of time proof-reading it because it dealt with such advanced areas of Qt as web programming and model-view design pattern. I communicated often with Mark Summerfield, the author of the book and my name is mentioned several times in Errata. Also, I found a bug in latest release of Qt while reading this book.

In addition to programming, I began creating 3D models using Google Sketchup during this summer. First, I read a book called Sketchup for Dummies. Then I created models of two schools and a church in my home town Dzerzhinsk. It is a very enjoyable process and gives you lots of satisfaction when your models are accepted to Google Earth. Everybody can see the school you went to as a kid!

In the Fall of 2010 I moved to Taiwan, such a beautiful country! I traveled a lot to various parts of Taiwan, as well as to Hong Kong taking lots of pictures. Therefore, while writing my travel reports I needed a convenient tool to insert pictures. This is why I decided to write a plugin for WordPress that would allow me to insert a small image gallery to my blog. This plugin allows one to select the images (thumbnails and full-size) when one writes a new blog post and generates appropriate JavaScript code. Then when one publishes new blog entry a good-looking photo gallery appears. Despite the fact that WordPress offers thousands of plugins, very few image gallery plugins have been written so far. I am still working on improving the UI of this plugin. It should have intuitive interface: palette of images on the left-hand side (your photo library) and the images you selected for inclusion into the blog post on the right hand side.

This work led to the following idea: I would like to re-implement Qt library in JavaScript. The advantage of Qt is that it offers well-thought design patterns to implement UI. The advantage of JavaScript is that it runs in web browser. Therefore, with Qt APIs available in JavaScript, one can easily port Qt applications to browser! But of course this project will require lots of time, there are so many classes in Qt.

To summarize, this year was the year of cool ideas. Lots of prototyping has been done, but nothing released yet. I am already counting down hours until the beginning of year 2011 – then I will go ahead and release the pet projects I have prototyped, and work on more pet projects, and who knows what!

This Saturday I participated in a race in Tuusula, the place where I ran a marathon last year. Initially I was planning to run a half-marathon because this was the first race in year 2010. In addition, I had only one long run this year after which I felt pain in the legs and was not running for another couple of weeks.

So my mindset was configured toward an easy half-marathon until the moment when I arrived to Tuusula. But I will start with what I was doing on Friday. In the evening I had a check-up training session under rain after which my mood was between not running on Saturday at all or running a half-marathon.

However, on Saturday the weather improved and the sun was shining. I went to the bus station and boarded the bus to Tuusula. It was quite a low-cost comfortable trip in a tourist bus. It costs less than 6 Euros one way, 30 kilometers from Helsinki to Tuusula. I was astonished when I got off the bus and breathed freshest air and saw the cleanest sky. It is a kind of feeling when you arrive to a village after spending time in the city. And I thought – such a beautiful life, why should I spend half of the day at home? I should spend all my time on the road today – and I decided to run a marathon against all odds!

A marathon is always a challenge. But I have learned the lessons of the past and started the marathon slowly. Because of the nice weather lots of people were walking or biking. Many of them were also participating in marathon but as cheerleaders. Look at these nice posters in the hands of children. They are saying Hyvää which means Good in Finnish. The spectators make the run a lot more enjoyable.

The course goes to the town of Järvenpää – the town of Jan Sibelius and Joonas Kokkonen, the two famous Finnish composers. It was surprising to see an amusement park there. Besides the traditional carousels a helicopter tour was offered for only 60 Euro! It is well known that in big cities it costs a lot more, probably 300 Euro or so. Of course, I did not fly the chopper this time but if I were visiting Järvenpää as a tourist I sure would!

After leaving the town the course goes through countryside. At this time of year the trees are not green yet and there is no crops on the fields. However, the spring has definitely come and the last patches of snow are disappearing under the shining sun. It is very nice to watch the nature waking up after winter sleep, such an enjoyable feeling.

I have completed the first lap 21km in 2 hours 25 minutes, slightly slower than last year when I was running a marathon. However, then I felt crams in my legs because I have not adapted to the shoes yet. It is one of the best shoes you can get. The original price is nearly 150 Euros but I got them on a sale for 70 Euros. I guess their biggest advantage is that they treat your knees well – a typical problem of an experienced runner. Indeed, I should say that on Sunday my legs were in good condition, much better than earlier even after half-marathons. However, during the second half of the race I felt lots of pain in muscles and thus had to walk, not run.

De-hydration is another typical problem during the marathons. I was in the winter pants, I used to skate during freezing temperatures in this pants. I decided not to buy the sports-suite because I thought the weather will get warmer and I will run in the shorts. But for this race I definitely needed a sports suite, not the winter pants. This is why during the second half of the race I needed to drink a lot. Even though the water stations were available here and there I felt thirsty at thirty kilometers. Fortunately, there was a Siwa shop near the road. Another lucky coincidence was that I had money with me, but only 3 Euros. It turned out that the energy drink costs 2.99 Euros. This drink healed my legs, the muscle pain was gone and I was able to run again! I guess I was super-lucky on that day!

So I completed the marathon walking the middle part of it but otherwise running. The net time is 5:16:41 which is worse than what I thought of in the beginning but much better than what I was thinking during the race when my legs started to hurt. I thought I would have to walk the second half of the race in which case my time would approach 7 hours.

Overall, nice run in a joyful atmosphere. A tough battle to finish the race but this is a marathon after all, the sports of Gods! From now on I think I should try marathons every time. Because a half-marathon is a shorter distance I am always trying to beat my record which takes lots of effort. I feel a lot more exhausted after a half-marathon than after a marathon. Also a marathon gives a lot more satisfaction – not everybody can do it.

And I just did it! Again!

A few days ago I went to Oulu, a city in the north of Finland to attend Linux Symposium which was featuring Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++.

I left Helsinki on Monday night and arrived to Oulu at 7:30 AM on the overnight train. It was so-o-o co-o-old in Oulu! We did not have such freezing temperatures during the whole winter in Helsinki. On that early spring day it was -20 centigrade. Because the train arrived early initially I planned to walk to the Oulu University which is located approximately 5km from the train station. I actually walked there but I froze like I have not frozen for a long time already. What was surprising to me was that local people were walking and even riding bikes normally. Apparently, they got used to such temperatures. In Finland there is a special word sisu which means persistence and stubbornness in a good sense of the word. Now I know that the city of Oulu is the city of sisu – sisu students, sisu workers, sisu everybody.

I barely had time to warm up in the university lobby before the conference began. It had a keynote speech dedicated to the looming C++ 0x standard as well as two tracks: business and technical. Before the conference I have spent lots of time studying the agenda trying to decide which track I want to go to. But there were interesting talks in both tracks. So I needed to remember the order in which I would visit the tracks. It turned out that there is a simple algorithm which tells you which track to go at any moment of time. The idea is that it is best to always switch the tracks, for example if you are listening to a talk in the technical track now then the next interesting talk is in the business track. So I followed this algorithm and I enjoyed every talk that I attended.

But the first was the keynote. Bjarne is a great speaker! He was describing his work in the standardization committee and the features that were selected in the new C++ 0x standard. He said that name of this new standard comes from the year in which they wanted to get it approved – anytime before year 2010, but at this moment the standard is in the Final Draft phase which means that it will get approved in year 2012 probably.

Bjarne pointed out several criteria that they used when selecting features for the standard. Basically, keep it simple was the main criterion. Any extra functionality should go to a library. Keep the run-time as small as possible. One of the goals was to make it possible to use C++ as the first language during teaching in a college. It is an ambitious goal as most of US universities are using Java as the first language. New set of features for writing parallel programs was described. Mostly, it was related to locks, semaphores, etc. and avoiding deadlocks and other problems, as well as inter-process communication. To me it sounds like a pretty low-level stuff. After his presentation I asked whether the committee thinks they’ve chosen the right level of abstraction. Nowadays there are a few interesting parallel programming frameworks such as Map-Reduce and transactional memory. Bjarne said that it is too early to standardize any of those which is probably true.

The funny thing is that the committee does not necessarily accept the features that Bjarne proposes even though he is the inventor of C++. For example, he was trying to get lexical_cast into the standard which is basically string tokenizer. But the committee voted against him because of possible problems with locale. On the picture above Bjarne is trying to persuade the audience that lexical_cast is a cool feature.

Here are the notes from a few other talks:

Sami Paihonen. Implementing cross-platform UI

The core of cross-platform UI is UI style.
Lots of research. Empty screen is the best place to start.
6 design principles: avoid clutter. Too many things on the screen. Two hands is not mobile usage.
IPhone open-source contacts has a better UI than official app.
UI style defines core UI identity
Smoothness and stability are most important. Steven Frei blog.
blog: dizzyhorizon.com

Mikko Välimäki, Tuxera. Open source and IP licensing

This is the guy who won Espoo half-marathon!

Tuxera – is company doing filesystems on non-Windows systems
GNU GPL – free of charge to everyone.
Is it possible to use Android UI on another hardware? Apple is suing HTC for Patent infringement.
Jonathan Schwartz blog. Bill asks royalty for every download of OO b/c of patent infringement.
Microsoft sued TomTom over usage of FAT file system.
Mixed, dual-licensed, open & proprietary models will win.

Alexander Bezprozvanny. Traditional vs agile/open source

different roles that a person takes in multiple team in agile.
key differences in OSS projects: no project managers. Project leaders are models.
Healthy community is the key.
Definition of healthy community, various paths that a project might take depending on how developers interact with users. Nice diagram.

Examples:

1) Too late means never. Affix and bluez bluetooth stacks. Commercial vs. open-source. A company that missed release.

2) High admission price: OpenBSD community. A success at a high price.

3) OSS contribution from software company: bureaucratic barrier too high. Disclaimer of rights is difficult to explain to management.

4) Maemo case: combining proprietary and OSS SW.

Ari Jaaksi’s speach and consequences in his blog.

After watching the performance of Idiot in Espoo theater and concluding that actors do not understand the great Russian writer Dostoevsky I decided to try to explain how I understand Dostoevsky myself. To start with, I think that Espoo theater has done a great job because they at least tried to interpret Dostoevsky even though I think that their interpretation was not correct. With the following explanation I would only like to deepen their interest in studying our culture and Dostoevsky in particular. Basically, they need to read other works that Dostoevsky has written even though they are probably not translated into Finnish.

Dostoevsky is one of the most controversial writers in Russian literature. The following saying of Annensky characterizes him:

Read Dostoevsky. Love Dostoevsky if you can, if you cannot – curse him, but READ and only him if possible.

I got to know Dostoevsky not through his books but through a movie Idiot by Bortko which I saw in 2004 or 2005. At that time my interpretation of Idiot was also limited to the relationship between Myshkin and Nastasya Filipovna. Such a love story with a tragic end. But after reading other works of Dostoevsky, in particular his diary I think there is a deeper interpretation of Idiot.

Dostoevsky saw a deep division between noble Russians and ordinary people. These were opposite classes of our society in the end of 19th century. They were not able to tolerate each other, thus Dostoevsky was predicting revolution long before it happened in 1917. Of course, he blamed noble people for their betrayal of traditional Russian values in favor of modern European values. This has occurred because in the 19th century it became obvious that Russia was far behind Europe in its industrial development. Noble Russians did not want to identify themselves as such because Russian became a synonym of barbarian.

But Dostoevsky was saying that traditional Russian values were good. Those were the values of kindness, love to every human, Christianity. According to Dostoevsky, only ordinary Russian people possessed those qualities because educated Russians were trying to follow Europeans in every aspect of life and despised everything that looked like Russian.

The main point of Dostoevsky Idiot is that there were noble Russians who also admired traditional Russian values which in this case is Prince Myshkin. This is very unusual and controversial, this is why nobody likes him. If you read the complete version of Idiot, not the abbreviated one that was sold in the theater before the performance you will see lots of Idiot’s monologues in which he shares his values. With relation to people he says that everybody is worth forgiveness. During the performance Idiot often talks to Jesus Christ. But Dostoevsky did not mean that. Idiot doesn’t admire Jesus, he probably does not know all this theological stuff because he is an idiot. But he admires every ordinary human, a fallen woman for example, every sinner. He is the bearer of Christian values even though he cannot explain this.

The actor who plays Prince Myshkin should show that he represents Jesus during this performance. He should convey this message to the audience but do not show the image of Christ! Make the audience think of Idiot’s role in this drama. This actor will succeed only if the audience becomes convinced that he is Christ.

With relation to Europe Prince Myshkin says that Russia will surprise Europe. But not with aggression which there was a lot in this performance, but again with love to every human. He thinks of Russia as a more Christian country than Europe. Russian people who have adopted European views do not have those good qualities such as mercy and ability to forgive.

To summarize, the Epanchin family is visually very respectable. They are Europeans in the best sense of this word, very noble people. They would not shout at each other as they did during this performance. They do not drink vodka or smoke. They are very polite. But they despise traditional Russian values. And here comes Idiot, the true bearer of traditional Russian values and Christian values. He brings the joy with him, the universal love to human beings. He is ready to forgive everybody despite that he is a Prince. He behaves like ordinary people – he is joyful and sincere. And this is why Epanchin family hates him. He reminds them of traditional Russian life that they have betrayed.

This Saturday I went to see Dostoevsky’s Idiot in Espoo theater. Even though I don’t understand what the actors are saying because the performance is in Finnish I am always trying to check out Russian authors performed in Finland because this allow us to understand how Finns perceive us, the Russians.

I should say that Dostoevsky’s Idiot is no different from Gogol’s Revizor which I saw one year ago in Tampere Workers theatre. Russians are presented as wild barbarians. They are drinking vodka all the time, smoking cigarettes and punching each other. It reminds me of a Hollywood gangster movie when cowboys of the Wild West are trying to decide who is the best to represent the nascent United States of America. The movies are different but the play is the same. But this time the music made me laugh. Most of the time it was Tchaikovsky’s Illness of a Doll. So I guess Nastasya Filipovna was that doll. And she was sick and eventually died because prince Myshkin the Idiot did not marry her. Or she has actually died because she was waiting for too long. She thought that she would get too old before Idiot would drag her to bed. So the moral is that if there is a pretty girl it is your responsibility to sleep with her otherwise she will get sick and die. I wonder whether the great thinker, the theorist of Russian greatness Dostoevsky ever had this in his mind.

But probably I am too strict. I have watched Idiot movie by Bortko. Many great actors were playing there. Of course, it is impossible to avoid comparing them to this small theater. Also I guess Bortko has read every work of Dostoevsky, at least most of them whereas the young actors of this theater probably did not read Idiot completely because it is quite a big piece of literature.

But the fact that Finns are thinking of us as of wild people is actually our problem, not theirs. There is a certain well established cliche that Finns are using whenever they think of us. Despite the proximity of Helsinki to Saint Petersburgh we were unable to change their mind, even though Saint Petersburgh is the cultural capital of Russia. How is it possible that Finns think of us as barbarians when our capital of culture is a 5-hour ride from their capital? What do they think of the remaining parts of Russia? I guess people of Stone Age are inhibiting those areas. How can we change their perception of us? It is big problem. For example, I wonder whether Russian literature has been translated to Finnish language at all.

In the theater an abbreviated version of Idiot was sold in Finnish. It was a small 50-page book. Is it possible to understand Dostoevsky using a small book? Even reading the whole Idiot is not enough. Dostoevsky had his own school of thought with relation to Russian nation. It is not explained in one of his book but rather has been developed through his lifetime. In his diary Dostoevsky explains that Russian noble people have separated from the ordinary people because they admired Europe too much. Then Dostoevsky says that ordinary people have better values, the true values of humanity, kindness than rich people that adopted false idols. But in his other novel Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky shows that ordinary people are not always right. They actually cannot appreciate the high spirit of noble people, they are narrow-minded.

But understanding Dostoevsky is a different topic which I would not dwelve in right now. I guess I should summarize how I understand Dostoevsky myself in one of the later posts.

Here is part 2 of the description of my trip to Savonlinna. Earlier in part 1 I described getting to Savonlinna and walk around the castle.

On the next day the castle opened and I went into it. Upon entering you can see a huge statue of St Olaf.

Then the guided tour goes up to the middle level. From there it is possible to see the inner court. Then the tour goes up to the towers. Earlier there were five towers in the castle but two of them were destroyed. In part this is due to prominent history of the castle. During numerous wars the castle was sieged a number of times. Their duration and severity varied. During one siege a huge hall in the wall between two towers was made after two thousands canon shots were fired.

There is a whole maze inside the castle. This is why going on the upper level is allowed only with a guide. After the one-hour guided tour ends tourists are told that it is possible to explore the ground levels on your own but you cannot go into towers. This is a bit frustrating because there are so many things to see in those towers!

After the not so long tour of the castle I went to explore the lake system on a boat trip. A variety of them are offered. The lakes span huge territory reaching Russian border areas. Earlier it was an important trade route.

I went to a 1.5 hour cruise on a steamboat. It goes through a beautiful archipelago with a thousand of islands. I guess earlier it was a convenient area for independent people because it was possible to live free on any of these islands. Most of the islands are habitable these days, that is a number of cottages are visible on the shore. But I wonder if they have electricity and water supply.

After looking at the archipelago I wonder why that particular island was chosen as the location of the castle. There are bigger islands, thus it was possible to build a bigger castle. Olavinlinna is a strong castle but it is quite small. In case of a war not too many people would find protection in it. This only means that the surrounding villages would get destroyed. In Russia, each major city had a Kermlin – a strong castle which size was 5-10 times the size of Olavinlinna. I also noticed that the elevation of the island on which Olavinlinna is situated is low. Going on the neighboring island lifts you above the walls of the castle.

Thus to me Ovalininna looked like a Trojan horse. It is attractive because it was a stronghold situated on an important trade route but it is an easy vulnerable target. The history proved that as the ownership of the castle was transferred many times during its prominent history.

There is a museum of history in Savonlinna but it was closed when I visited the city. Thus, after visiting Olavinlinna I have more questions than answers. The castle hides lots of mysteries within its walls.

View test in a larger map

Juhannus is the mid-summer celebration. The tradition is that people go on various trips on this holiday. So I decided to go to Savonlinna, a town in Eastern Finland to check out the only castle that I have not visited yet – Olavinlinna. As usual, taking train was the cheapest and fastest option. However, the above map shows that there is no direct train between Tampere and Savonlinna. The train network is going pretty much in north-south direction with short distance connecting trains that allow to jump between one branch and another. In this trip I had to take four trains which sounds like a crazy idea. In addition, the day before the departure an accident happened on Tampere-Helsinki branch, thus the delays were introduced.

So I started the trip 10 minutes late. The chances to make it to the first connection were really minor because the time between the trains was only 6 minutes. Thus the whole trip was in danger. Of course, I thought of back up plans but it would not make me happy to start the trip with a backup plan. But it was amazing how well the railroad network adapted to this delay. Basically, it was propagated to all related trains. I guess the algorithm that controls this network has a notion of relevant train. For example, if lots of people are expected to change trains at a certain station at a certain time then the connecting train waits for all the incoming trains. It is an interesting algorithmic problem.

I was also impressed with the extremely mobile connecting trains. It can have as few as just one car as this connecting train in Savonlinna.

Because of that, I made all connections on time! I could not believe it but I arrived to Savonlinna as planned! I stayed in a hotel with swimming pool and spas situated on a lake. Upon arrival I checked out its saunas. Nice place. Then in the evening I went to the town and walked around the castle. Because of the holiday it closed earlier in the afternoon thus I only walked outside. The castle is very impressive. It is built on an island which is basically rock. It occupies the whole island in order to prevent the medieval warriors from getting hold of it. During the opening hours a bridge connects it with the mainland. I did not take a boat trip around the castle. Instead, I jumped from one island to another taking pictures.

I like building 3D models of various castles and churches but this time I used Nokia Maps 3.0 on my Nokia 5800 to get the model of the castle. Surprisingly, the map is not aware of the island which the castle is built on, it is showing it on the water.

Check out the following images of the gorgeous castle!

I have participated in another half-marathon in a village called Kyronjoki in Finnish or Stukachio in Swedish.

As this event was only a month after a half-marathon in Seinajoki initially I thought of it only as the next step of preparation to run a marathon. I did not aim at any high goal such as breaking 1:50 time. During April it was colder than expected, the temperature was near freezing. However, on the day of the half-marathon it suddenly became much warmer, near 20 centigrade.

I brought a jacket and pants with me but ended up running in shorts and T-shirt. While I was warming up I realized that running in such conditions might allow me to achieve a higher result than that in Seinajoki, to even improve my personal record. Thus I decided to do my best in this half-marathon.

I was preparing to sustain cold weather for two hours. I have eaten a lot before the half-marathon. However, running in sunshine does not require that much energy reserve. It can make you throw up if you get overheated.

The course in this half-marathon is nearly flat thus it looks easier than it is. What makes it difficult is lack of any shadow during the entire course. In the summer the organizers plan the route in the shadow because everybody knows that overheating is dangerous. This time it was spring therefore nobody thought of overheating. But the conditions were quite tough – no shadow, no wind, direct exposure to sunshine for the duration of run.

A marathon in Kyronjoki is quite popular event even though the place is located quite far from any major city. When people began to gather I noticed that their average age was greater, these were really mature people. Typically, lots of young people participate, but in this event it was not the case. I guess this competition is known for its toughness.

Surprisingly, I have finished with the same time as earlier – 1 hour and 50 minutes. This course it totally different from Seinajoki, however. I have completed the first half of the run in the same time as in Seinajoki, in 50 minutes. However, this time I decided to take a break, I was walking for a couple of minutes. Then I spent another 10 minutes getting back to the pace in which I was running previously. Lots of people have overtaken me. I found out that it is convenient when people run past you as you can try to run after them. They give you an idea of how fast you need to go.

Anyway, in the end of the race I picked up the speed necessary to finish with a high result. However, during the race I thought many times of slowing down or stopping completely. It was a tough run.

How is it possible to finish two different races in the same time? The following anecdote came to my mind. Soviet spies obtained the sketches of top-secret Western jet. The engineers started building it but they got a locomotive instead. They thought for a while, then disassembled the construction then assembled it again in a different way. But still it was a locomotive. They were totally confused and did not know what to do. They sent the spies again to get additional sketches that would allow to make a jet. The spies indeed brought back additional instructions. It was a tiny pamphlet that had only one sentence in it: After assembling a locomotive use chisel to shape it into supersonic jet.

Official results are here.

Last week I have watched a spectacular game here in Tampere. Russia was playing against Finland. Previously, I have been to the Finnish SM-league games only which of course are also quite entertaining. However, I found out that when the players represent their country they play with doubled effort.

I liked the game even though Russia lost 2-4. The Russian players look quite differently from Finns. They are much leaner, they are playing ice-hockey like an art. It is a common saying that when they try themselves in NHL they find it very difficult to stay on the pit long enough to touch the puck because the defenders push them away. Being able to survive in the vicinity of opponent’s goal is a key component of ice-hockey as a team game. Russia did not succeed in this component as Finns are obviously bigger guys. However, individual play of Russians was very impressive.

The Finns were in power play when a Russian player was able to run across the whole field, deceive a defender and the goalkeeper to score a goal in the upper corner. When another goal was scored the shooting angle was nearly flat, that is the Russian player was nearly on the line of the goal. The puck went into goal from goalkeeper’s back.

I was surprised to see the open hockey that the teams played.Russians demonstrated pressing even when Finns were in power play. I think Russians were a bit opportunistic whereas Finns played more standard ice-hockey.

As I found out that the game would take place only an hour before the game began I did not have time to pick up my Panasonic with 12x optical zoom. Thus I used the built-in Carl Zeiss camera of my Nokia 5800. I found its quality pretty good. It supports digital zoom and obviously image stabilization. I remember that taking pictures with zoom using an earlier camera was prone to blur. This camera has lots of options such as contrast, exposure, gamma correction. During the weekend I learned how to upload the pictures to the web easily. The default firmware has Flickr support. I found out that there is a nice web application Pixelpipe which connects your phone with over 50 online galleries. Thus it is possible to overcome the limitations which a free account imposes.