Bleadof’s world of tinkering

Oh well, I just haven’t felt like blogging… I don’t know why, probably just feeling too lazy But here we go again…

Hampsted Heath

I went there with Philip and Thulani. Took about 200 pictures (not quite but close). It was lot of fun just walking around this huge park, spotting shots and getting some fresh air while doing it. Photographing is fun! After a while it started to get pretty chilly and I was freezing. We decided to get some coffee and head back to Tufnell Park. So we popped in Starbucks and took bus back to halls.

Johanna was here about a week ago

Yup. My girlfriend Johanna came to visit me for the weekend about a week ago. That was fun. I miss her a lot. She’s not going to be in France for the whole academic year but she is also going to leave after first semester. So we are trying to get a flat together from Jyväskylä and to be more precise from Kortepohja. On the weekend when she was here we went out shopping on both days. Didn’t get much shopping done but we had fun and that’s the first priority anyway On monday I escorted her to Liverpool Street station where she took train to Stansted. It’s hard to say goodbye although we are going to see in less than two weeks. Now it’s less than week.

Christmas time

I’ve done my christmas shopping already. All the gifts have been planned and got. I feel proud of myself. This is the first time ever I’ve done proper Christmas shopping

I’m leaving UK on a Friday, 16. of December. I’ll stay in Helsinki for the night in Olli’s and Tanja’s apartment and wait for Johanna who is coming the next day. Then her parents are going to pick us up and we’ll be on their place for few days.

On Monday 19. of December we’ll visit Jyväskylä and see our friends after a long time. That’s going to be a blast I’ll be leaving to Kolari on 20. of December by train. The trip is going to be about 13 hours Thank something I can sleep during the time in sleeping car.

When I arrive to Kolari I have a hairdresser appointment which is nice because it has been quite a while since my hair has been “trimmed”. I don’t look bad but it’s getting there.

During the holiday I probably have to finish two other courseworks which aren’t that bad but I have to take the time to finish them and doing work during holiday sucks in general… Other one is the eCommerce where I need to add a shopping cart to my website and something else which is also trivial… The other coursework is doing a Flash design for the HCI module. We have to do a high fidelity prototype of the Smart Wardrobe application… I don’t know Flash or Action Script at all but I will probably catch it pretty quickly (hopefully anyway).

New Year

We’ve got a cottage in Äkäslompolo, near Äkäshotelli, and we are going to spend the New Years time there with our friends. Me, Johanna, my sister, my sisters boyfriend, my sisters boyfriends sister, my sisters boyfriends sisters boyfriend, Johanna’s friend Sanna, my friend Hannu, Hannu’s girlfriend Hanna, my cousin Matias, my friend Anssi and my friend Matti are coming at the moment. Probably there will be also my friends Kimmo and Mika but they’re not sure yet. I’m going to arrange reindeer driving, snow scooter trip and maybe we’ll also go for some hiking… New Years eve we’ll probably just spend time in the cottage, eating, talking, going to sauna and maybe firing few rockets. That’s going to fun. I’m waiting for it.

Now

I should’ve already gone to shower and started doing my coursework but I felt that I have to blog so I did. It’s only few days until I will leave to Finland but I still have loads of work to do. Better get as much as I can done here not on the holiday. Although I want to have some fun here as well before I leave. We’ll see how I can manage to do that. But now it’s work time… Bye bye for a while…

The reason I haven’t been writing for a while now is because my girlfriend Johanna was visiting me last week and this week I’ve been struggling with courseworks. That’s why I have almost two weeks of happenings to tell you! Oh the joy and the happiness

Courseworks

IM217 eCommerce

Yes! Dear something, I’ve handed out my first courseworks and celebrated that already also! \o/ Basically this means I’ve handed out my eCommerce coursework which can be found in here.

That’s a sad site which is “selling” geeky watches. That’s not all of the coursework, I had to hand in a report describing problems and the process of doing the artifact. Not so interesting to write a report on that. As you probably can see if you visit the site it’s done with using XHTML 1.1, CSS 2.0 and ASP. The layout is quite lame, I could have done better but I just couldn’t be bothered. All but one of the images are nicked from Thinkgeek which was basically my source of inspiration for the site.

BS2051 Human Computer Interaction

I also had a groupwork coursework for Human Computer Interaction module. The coursework was about developing a Digital Home Help which would ease peoples everyday task.

I came up with the idea of a Smart Wardrobe which would basically be a automated stylist for young women. You could be able to consult it with touch screen attached to the wardrobe door. The wardrobe would know what is inside it because all of the clothes would have RFID tags on them and the wardrobe would have a RFID reader. It would give the clothing suggestions based on the clothing inside it, based on the users previous preferences and based on the fashion info programmed into it.

And yes, I’ve heard Clueless had same sort of thing. And yes, I’ve seen the movie but I didn’t remember that. Anyhow the lecturer of the course liked the idea. \o/

I did this coursework with two other guys, Abdul and Jide. No idea where they are originally from and it doesn’t really matter. The guys didn’t put as much effort as I did for this coursework but then again, such is life. We had to write a report about the process and the methods we used to get to this design. We even interviewed and observed people (or at least I did) for the user needs analysis. The report we wrote had about 2500 words and that’s 500 more than we needed. \o/

This kind of project is ok. I think now I really understand what do they mean with User Centered Design.

Both of the courseworks are still going to continue. So more struggling ahead.

Went to the Mean Fiddler on friday to celebrate the finished courseworks. The night was OK, although I enjoyed more when were drinking in Drews room. Thanks for the beer Drew!

Week with Johanna

I miss her even more after she visited me. I almost got used to her being here already and then she just went back to Grenoble. Boo!

The whole week she was here I didn’t do much but hanged with her and showed her the city. We went for all of the usual tourist places but it was fun. The weather could have been a bit better since it was raining almost the whole week she was here. We didn’t mind it that much because as she said it: “It’s not a true English experience of London if it’s not raining.”. Indeed!

Before Johanna came I got to know this bloke called Phil and he was kind enough to give us a tour of places I didn’t know. He’s been living in London for about 6 years now, so he has been around here and there. Cheers for Phil

We went also to see Tate Modern and spent there few hours of wondering the queer and odd things some artists have created. I found it somewhat disturbing but still quite interesting.

That was actually the same day when London had a huge fireworks near the Waterloo bridge so we stayed to see them too. I took bunch of pictures of the fireworks but didn’t really think that they were that good. I might put them online at some point anyhow.

The last day Johanna was here we went to do some shopping in Camden Town, the Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. She actually didn’t buy much, only some souvenirs for her flat mates and two t-shirts from the Babel Line guy. In the evening we went to Garfunkel’s near Oxford Circus and we both had Garfunkel’s Mixed Grill which is: “a full plate of steak, chicken, bacon, sausage, tomato, spicy onion rings, mushrooms and your choice of French fries or a baked potato and barbecue sauce on the side”. It was just brilliant although we got a bit bad table with no privacy what so ever. Then again it’s easy to get privacy by just talking in Finnish. We enjoyed the food and the later on we came back to the Tufnell Park and went to local Sainsbury’s to buy some snacks and sweets. It was a really nice evening all together. Last night together for another month or so…

Johanna left on monday morning and I escorted her to the Liverpool Street station so she could take the train to the Stansted airport. That wasn’t any fun…

This week

As I said before I’ve been mostly doing the courseworks but last wednesday we went to Hyde Park with Phil to take some pictures and get some fresh air.

That was fun just wondering around the park and we captured some nice shots. I’m so envious for Phil because he has a Nikon digital SLR and some nice equipment… My Canon DI 50 was feeling a bit like a handgun beside of a bazooka. So I tried to compensate my lack of equipment with imagination . I’ll put the pictures online a bit later…

Uhm, what else… Yes, I forgot to tell you that I got a new towel! Yei! I also bought a crate of Carlsberg export for £7.99. It’s 12×0.44l cans. That’s about 5.28 litres of beer . Had some on tuesday and some yesterday. Cool stuff, as Phil would say.

Now I’m off to make something to eat…

You won’t belive this. Today I went to the Graphics and Imaging modules lecture. The lecturer was there sitting alone. I was a bit amazed because it was the third lecture and the clock was a bit over 2pm. This guy asks me if I’m interested on Graphics and Imaging and starts telling me that I won’t probably be able to attend because there’s only two people who are interested and capable to take the module.

I’m getting frustrated already with these modules. They are either not running on this semester or they have some freaking propietary prequisities I’d need before I can take the module. Slightly annoying I’d say. Well, we’ll see what Peter Chalk, the academic leader of computing, has to say about my modules on wednesday 12pm. Hopefully I’ll find something I can take or I’ll end up getting only 22.5 (=3*7.5) ECTS credits from here. Oh well. We’ll see.

Groceries

It’s a funny thing how different nationalities have different names for different products. Papricas are sweet peppers in UK and canned champions are only called canned mushrooms. Don’t know if this is only in Waitrose, but it’s still odd.

I have a nice amount of spices already gathered so I can actually make some food with some taste. The spice collection in the local Sainsbury’s is crap, they didn’t have anything. But it’s good thing I found the big Sainsbury’s in Camden which had almost everything I needed.

I really understand Mika’s desperation not recognizing anything in the grocery shop. I’m having the same kind of trouble here although the language is quite familiar but I can’t even imagine how difficult it is if the language is only remotely familiar. I think you’ll pick it up anyhow or you just need to ask the Swiss girl to come in the shop with you.

I think I’m going to watch an episode of Lost now… So, cheerio!

Do you remember my last blog entry, Getting drunk? Well, I and Tuomas ended up buying 0.75l Smirnoff bottle and I also had a 0.35l Waitrose branded vodka. If you think this wasn’t enough we had also two bottles of wine. Quite a set I’d say.

The evening started quite slow, nothing really happened because Alberto and Andrea were late. I started cooking pasta, sausages and fried eggs. Me and Tuomas were babbling with Anna, who is a British girl living in third floor. When I was almost done with the cooking Alberto and Andrea showed up, 45 minutes late that was. After that we ate, talked and drank the two bottles of wine. Then I fetched the small bottle of vodka and some orange juice to get us going. The first bottle was destroyed quite easily. Then we moved to my room and people started talking about going to a club. I was against it because we still had loads of vodka and I wanted save some money.

After some discussion and the fact that Tuomas prepared to lend his second Oyster card I decided that I could come too. We thought that we don’t have any more of orange juice while I actually had one litre of it but what we didn’t realize. So we started drinking the vodka as it was from the bottle. We wen’t out and because Northern line was closed we had to take the bus. We waited the bus for a quite a while and at the same time consumed heavy amounts of vodka. Andrea proofed me and Tuomas that she was a heavy drinker drinking as much of the vodka as we did. You have to admire that Spanish spirit. In the bus we didn’t drink that much and it was a slow ride anyway.

After we arrived the central London we went to get another Spanish guy called Edu. He was waiting us in front of the Metro club. Meeting with Edu and discussing about the fact where we wanted to go ended us to Mean Fiddler, the Frog club. After this my night gets all blurry. I think the vodka might have kicked in at this point. I remember most of the stuff but then again I was quite drunk. A bit too drunk but I was with friends and I had taken care of myself. I also walked with my own feet so nothing major damage happened. They were playing heavy metal in the bar and we bounced around while dancing. We were all quite hammered and thus had loads of fun. I’m not doing that again for a while. I’ll stick to beer and wine for time being anyway. We got home safely and I used my old and trusty one day travel card for the bus. I was quite tired in the bus and I apparently even slept on Tuomas’s shoulder. Scary stuff That’s a one reason I’ll stick to beer and wine anway.

Next day (saturday)

Woke up at 12 o’clock and was amazingly perky. Went to shower had some breakfast but then after 45 minutes froze and went to sleep again. Slept till 3pm and then woke up having a bit of head ache. Not bad and my general feeling wasn’t that bad but you noticed the affects of vodka. Had something to eat again and watched an episode of Veronica Mars. After that dozed off for a while and continued this type of activity till 5pm. At 5pm I got up and went to see if anyone else was awake. Never saw Alberto or Andrea but they were apparently already somewhere and I got a message saying they were going to the same club as night before. Went to see Tuomas and talked about the night. He seemed ok and we decided that we’d watch movie. After that I went to kitchen to heat my pizza and met with Lloyd. He wanted to see a movie too. We asked bunch of girls if they wanted to see a movie with us but they were kind of declining very politely. We then watched it with only three of us. It was Batman Begins which is absolutely brilliant.

Batman Begins hype

Christopher Nolan did amazing job pulling this together with the writers. Christian Bale did also amazing work as the dark and gloomy Bruce Wayne. Of course you can’t also forget our friend Qui-Gon Jinn. I just loved the way the built the story behind Batman and the images they produced to the screen. Nice and dark just the way I like it .:) The sound track was also quite well thought. You just have to admire the work and detail they put into that film.

After the movie

After the movie I went to do my laundry and chat with people in common room. I found out there’s a guy from Sweden here too. Spoke a bit Swedish with the Swede and this Norwegian girl. It was nice to meet new people. Took some pictures too. Got my first patch of laundry done, waited for Tuomas to do his and after did another patch. I was up till 5am or so and watched Herbie: Fully loaded. You just have to love Lindsay’s boobs. After Herbie I went to sleep. Another day passed in London.

Freaking modules and undergraduate centre…

Yei! Today is the day I actually got my modules really sorted out. It only took three times of visiting the undergraduate centre that I’ve got them the way I want them.

First of all, I couldn’t take the Network Devices because it had prerequisities and some Cisco propietary accounts and exams couldn’t be taken without going through the prerequisities. I changed this module for Graphics and imaging

Secondly, the Data Modeling and Database Systems has exactly the same content as Databases and data management. So I changed that module to Human Computer Interaction.

Hopefully now everything is sorted

Last week

I got myself a coffeemaker or actually my hero Hanna “p_poach” Eerio got it for me because I was too sick to get it. So big thanks to Hanna. I was basically sick the whole last week thus I didn’t attend to any lectures after tuesday. I was just feeling so bad. That’s the one reason there’s not many posts from last week

Me and Hanna went to central London on last friday when I was already feeling a bit better. We toured around city and saw:

• Soho
• Piccadilly Circus
• Japan Center, near Piccadilly Circus
• National Gallery
• Trafalgar Square
• Some cool bookshops on our way to Trafalgar Square

We had a nice time and Hanna bought few books from the Japan Centre and she send also post cards to her family and friends. We enjoyed good meal in Burger King near Leicester Square. We walked around the central London and had a nice time. Then we got back to Tufnell Park to get Hanna’s stuff. We headed back quite soon to get the rest of her stuff from her friends place in King’s Cross. I actually escorted him to Liverpool Street Station where her train to Stansted Airport left around 23.30. After leaving her to the station I returned to the residence and went to bed.

The weekend went fast and I really didn’t do much. I got only new sheets and so forth.

Today! The getting drunk part..

Today I’m going to get drunk and humiliate myself talking loads shit and saying things about people what I’m not supposed to say.

We are having a wine night, where everyone brings a bottle of wine. No specific whine is needed just wine. Thanks for the idea goes to my cousin Matias whose friends have been this for a while already. Basically the whole idea is to have first something to eat (while drinking wine), watch a movie (while drinking wine) and then maybe pub after all the we all are out of booze. Doesn’t it sound like a good plan. Hopefully everything goes as planned and people bring their wine and maybe something to eat. Hopefully I won’t have a hangover tomorrow…

Now I’ll watch an episode of Veronica Mars. People, have fun too!

I’m in complete boredom here. All the people I know are tired or they’re doing something useful. I’m just sitting here in my room and doing nothing. Annoying. The pub closes at 23 (11pm) so no point going there either. God I wish I had a TV or something. This 512kbps ADSL is just too slow and I don’t have anything to watch I think I need more friends! Better to get drunk next time there’s a party because otherwise I’ll be just boring me.

Studies!

Today I went to my second lecture of Programming the Internet. The lecture was about Java basics ie. private, protected or public. It’s good that the lecturer is funny or I would’ve just slept the whole lecture. After going over the basic stuff some student asked him about the static keyword and about it’s usage. He then explained it more thoroughly than anyone before, to me anyhow. So I actually picked up some more detailed info there and the whole lecture wasn’t just complete waste of time

Someone asked me the modules I’m taking here for time being, so here they are:

• IM269 Programming the Internet
• CT2023N Network Devices
• IM217 eCommerce Application Design
• DB2007N Data Modeling and Database Systems

I know, the names are quite catchy and sexy We’ll see if the actual content is as media sexy as the names.

I don’t have that many lectures actually.

• Monday, four hours (from which two hours are practical)
• Tuesday, three hours (from which two hours are practical)
• Wednesday, no lectures \o/
• Thursday, eight hours (from which four hours are practical)
• Friday, no lectures

You might think I’m slacking, but I’m not. Here the modules are more practical oriented which suits me fine with subjects like these. We’ll see how much work I have to do

Now I’ll head back to my lonely boredom…

I’ve been meaning to blog about my room and the whole accommodation situation for a while now, but I haven’t just got around it. However yesterday and today I took some pictures of the place. I hope with the help of these pictures it’s possible to get somekind of understanding about my current state of accommodation.

The actual room

I don’t have a good sense with dimensions, but I think the info I got from the reception is quite accurate: “Rooms are approximately 12 feet by 8 feet.”

Room has:

• Bed
• Desk
• Desk lamp
• Chair
• Drawer
• Clothing closet
• Washbasin
• Mini-fridge
• Cupboards
• Notice board
• Phone

Things I’ve bought for the room

• King-size duvet
• Two pilows
• King-size duvet cover
• Two pillow covers
• Sheet
• Coffee maker

Outside the apartment

That’s what you see when you approach the entrance.

We’re getting close

The entrance

You need to walk through these kind of halls to get to my room

And here are the rest of the pictures.

Oh bugger. Indeed, this flu is ultimately horrible and I’m feeling complete shit. I can’t sleep because I’m just filled with bugger. It’s not coming out as well, it’s just stuck and I can cough myself to death until anything happens. I just hate this so much…

Today I’ve just been lain on the bed. I couldn’t have done anything useful for this shitty state I’m in. Hopefully I’m not like this tomorrow. If I’m then I just can’t go to my lectures. Now I’m waiting the fourth episode of Gilmore Girls to finish so I can watch it. Maybe more whining when I’m not feeling this shitty…

Now I’m feeling a bit sick, I think I caught a flu… Uhm, anyway I’d say I’ve had at least exciting week. You don’t get every day to burn your hand, get into a bar fight or find amazing indie clubs. Not at least in Finland. Hopefully my stay here will be exciting but I’d wish it to be a bit less full of excitement as the last week. And now something completely different…

Studies

Yes, at last the subject for what we all cheer and find the most interesting from every other subject we come up with when we are drinking massive amounts of beer.

Last Friday I got my schedule and studies in order or I hope I did. It took me about five hours to sort it out from which about 30 minutes were the essential part. Again, the Englishmen and their love for the queuing. It’s like they can’t do anything without it.

On Friday I went to North campus where my lectures usually take place. I was trying to reach my study tutor who could have helped me with picking out the modules I would like to complete. He didn’t anwser to his phone nor was he in his room. I tried asking the doorman but he didn’t know way to reach him otherwise. I didn’t panic because I have my towel (not with me in the Campus but still) and it says you shouldnt. I remembered this advice and with that in my mind I went behind my tutors room. I noticed that there were people in the office next to my tutors office. I waited a while and woman came out of the room. Finally, someone to ask advice from! I asked her if there’s someone besides my tutor who could help me with my problem. She adviced me to go to the Undergraduate Center which was in Tower Building. Well, I took her advise very seriously and did following:

• Went to the Tower Building
• Found my way to the Undergraduate Center
• Lingered outside the UC office for a while (I wasn’t the only one)
• One of the helpers asked if I was seen to
• Got some help from him
• Got told to find out the info about the modules I wanted to take from the Uni website
• Went to the sixth floor for the computer
• Logged in the computer
• Were in the login phase for 20 minutes
• Finally got in and didn’t find the info
• Went back to the Undergraduate Center after about an hour of wasted time
• Asked for to see the academic advisor
• Wrote my name in the list
• Waited
• Waited…
• Got something to eat because it was 3pm and I had had only breakfast
• Waited some more
• Tried banging my head to the wall for attention, didn’t help
• Was seen about 4.50pm and I had went to the North Campus around 11.40
• Was in the office for about 10 minutes and got all my studies sorted out but it was more than 2 hours of waiting
• Went to Burger King
• celebrated my success with £1 cheeseburger and £0.99 Fanta
• Walked to my residence still bouncing around like a little child

Later that evening I found the amazing indie music club.

Big Fish

Big Fish was a big freshmen party. There were amazingly awful music which was played with a ear bleeding volume. After a nice walk in the rain we got in quite easily. Of course first we went for the drinks. Believe it or not but there was a queue again! We waited and waited. Time went past and things started to happen: we got one of Alberto’s friends to get us the drinks. The music was getting even more annoying but hail, there was a bar fight. This is only what I’ve heard after but apparantly a guy was trying to get pass everyone in the queue for the bar and somebody had said to him that he doesn’t have any privilidge to walk pass everyone. After this he apprently just started to punch the guy who made the statement. Well, I was standing quite far from them or so I thought. Some struggling went on and they approached me a bit. The bullies were separated and the maniac with the hasty fist fell. Now the guy wasn’t that far of me. Then he tries to get up and takes a hold of my jacket. At this point I thought he was so drunk that he needs help to get up and don’t say anything about grabbing my jacket. Until I notice the guy is up and his already punching me. He really got one free because I had no idea it was coming. Then I covered myself from the other punches and fell. Then the security was already on the guy and taking him out of the building. I got a minor hit on my the left corner of my eye. He was so drunk that the punches weren’t were powerful which was good for me

The evening went was quite boring but I talked with another Finnish guy who is also living in Tufnell Park Halls of Residence.

Purple Turtle

Purple Turtle is a nice indie bar in Camden which I found on Friday. It’s also near Koko. We were supposed to go the Koko bar at first but the queues were just horrible. So we decided to check out the Purple Turtle and it was really nice and a whole lot cheaper than the Koko would have been. The Purple Turtle had a nice feeling to it. The music was horribly loud but then again they played good music so I forgave them that. It’s really like the poster card for the indie bar. Really dark a bit smoky and decoration had nice attitude on it. I would recommend the bar everyone who enjoys indie pop and rock while still doesn’t mind the certain underground look. The night was awesome although I didn’t drink but one beer

The first day of lectures

My lectures started third of October at 9 pm. The subject of the lecture was “Programming the Internet“. Although it might sound a bit confusing the actual module description sounded nice. Basically the module is about Java Servlets and Java Servlet Pages combined with JDBC and XML. The rehersal is to program a mini-ebay. The people who know Vesa Lappalainen and his way of lecturing mind find James King quite familiar although a bit younger. His attitude was quite straightforward: “If you don’t like programming, don’t take this module (as in sod off)” I found it very amusing. I’m looking forward the as the module gets further what he might slip out of his mouth. I’m supposed to have a lecture on tuesday also but I have no idea where it’s been kept. Hopefully that’ll clear out in the morning.

I think this is enough for this day, maybe some more whining tomorrow. For the people who have asked about my hand: it’s OK The blisters are almost gone.
PS. I’ll put some photos online on tuesday afternoon.