Tomi Junnila

I'm traveling again, this time in Grenoble, France (and noticed I'd neglected to post anything from Frankfurt in June and Chicago in September). I got here today, first flying from Turku to Helsinki to Geneva, and then renting a car from there to here.

Driving was a bit of an adventure (but luckily not too much so) as it was snowing, and the car of course had summer tires. Didn't see much of the Alps with the clouds hanging so low, but every once in a while got a glimpse of snow-covered mountains just beside the motorway (the road tolls were a total of 15 € this way, BTW). My rental car is a crappy Ford Fiesta with a 1.25 l petrol engine that cannot maintain a steady 110 km/h in top gear with two passengers going up a very slight incline - I had to downshift so the car revved at 4000 RPM to be able to maintain this pace.

After arriving at the STMicroelectronics office in Grenoble, we went for lunch in the cafeteria. Today's courses included tuna cooked Chinese style (about 2,50 €), white sausages (1,80 €), and I took an excellent ostrich steak, which was the most expensive course today at 3,79 € (Edit: I found out later the company subsidizes lunch by roughly 2,90 €, but even 6,70 € for that lunch was cheap, and the rest of the week was even better).

In the evening, I took a stroll downtown to find that all the shops had closed by 19:30 at the latest, but had a hamburger with fondue(!) cheese for supper.

In unrelated news, the hotel seems to be blocking my domain. Well, that's an easy obstacle to avoid: I just SSH home and use the proxy there.

I just read on Turun Sanomat that Dream Theater are coming to Helsinki on September 23 and went hooray. Only to recall that I have a MIPI meeting in Chicago between September 21 and 25.

Especially for kondooritar: Spike and Angel Debate the BSG Finale

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't yet seen Daybreak, Part 2!

Ok, a bit last minute as usual. I'm off for Munich tomorrow, and was wondering whether anyone has any recommendations as to where to go and what to do there? I have three evenings (after my meetings end) to go shopping etc, but no whole days off this time.

(Mitzi already commented that my travel plans have gotten a whole lot less so the last few trips...)

The Big Picture just ran a second set of aerial photos of London at night. These are just absolutely magnificent (as is usual for Big Picture). The first set was published in August, when I didn't yet follow the site, but they're worth viewing too.

I'd ordered myself some clothing by Scottevest to be delivered at my hotel in Las Vegas (I'm just about to give up hope of actually ever writing a travelogue on the trip). I've now had them for a month and a half, so here is a ( review )

Summary

Pros

• Plenty of pockets make items easy to find
• Comfortable to wear even with an ungodly amount of gear in the pockets
• Pockets don't bulge even with an ungodly amount of gear in them.
• Magnetic closures are handy: they close automatically, yet are trivial to open when needed.

Cons

• Some of the zippers feel a bit flaky. teroyks reports one of the zippers on the hoodie I brought him doesn't work. Some of mine feel a bit low-quality, which may be partly due to the zippers being "left-handed" (i.e. the moving part stays with the right-hand side of the zipper), and thus not what I've been used to.
• Measurements listed are rather too conservative, especially for pants
• Drawstring on the pants is less than useless
• Ordering the clothes to Finland is a bit expensive, especially if you have to return something (you pay for the postage for returns yourself — this got a bit expensive for me in the U.S. too, although the hotel may be partly to blame for this).

Edit: LJ somehow ate this post, so I'm reposting it.

Olisiko jollakulla heittää suosituksia (sivustaladattavista) pesukoneista? Entinen heitti juuri veivit (olipa sillä ikääkin jo paria kuukautta vajaa 10 vuotta).

(Looking for a new washing machine since our old one just died after 10 years of service.)

Very tired right now, so just a couple of words. Uneventful flight, cheap taxi (10 € for four persons for roughly 7 km), arrived at hotel after dark. Everybody seems polite (probably not true in traffic). Went for a walk to the mall 3 km south of hotel, though didn't anticipate the hills in between. Got lost twice, but noticed both soon and recovered without much extra distance. Liked what views there were in the dark, though there is a smell not only from the sea. Someone tried to ask for directions but he didn't speak English nor do I speak Portuguese.

Amoreiras shopping center had, in order of stumbling upon, a game store (mostly console games though), a plush toy shop, a supermarket (1 l coke 0.89 €, pineapples 1.37 €/kg, Die Hard 4 9.99 € which was tempting as haven't seen it and the covers were in Portuguese), a Sony store (should go there to find new noise canceling headphones, old ones are dying and crappy), a book shop (no Agatha Christies in Portuguese for the mother-in-law there), Disney Store (found The King for Ville), movie theaters (didn't check what was on), McDonald's etc (went to a local equivalent of Subway).

Walked back to the hotel, this time took the direct route which was 3.10 km according to GPS. Spent half an hour trying to remove magnetic metal shavings (probably from the airplane) from the MagSafe power connector on the MacBook. Just about ready to collapse right now. And that was a few more than just a couple of words.

Cross-posted from Ville's blog:

I've spent the day at the University hospital with Ville, after he got a referral last spring from speech therapy and a child psychologist. Obviously, no conclusions were made today (there will be plenty of time for them towards the end of the week and next Monday), but rather Ville was tested and both me and Ville asked all kinds of questions related to how he manages. And Ville was being an angel again: measuring his height (98.9 cm) and weight (16.0 kg) were a breeze, and everything else was easy too.

The speech therapist had - based on the referral - prepared to not being able to get any tests done today, but a popsicle-munching Ville was eager to do all the tests (some went well, some were obviously not understood). He charmed the doctor by building legos and puzzles on the floor while we were having a discussion, and by letting the doctor examine his heart, lungs, ears, mouth, and eyes (which apparently is not easy for many of the children being examined there; Ville on the other hand liked to use the stethoscope himself, though he couldn't really pronounce the word).

The only slightly more difficult parts of the day were lunch (Ville had a small piece of the sausage, made a face, and in the end only ate bread and water) and leaving for home, when it would have been so much fun playing with the Moomin house and car transport at the ward. And even the latter one was easily solved by reminding him of mommy, who was about to return from her first work day.

Dang, teroyks posted first though we got our car already three weeks ago. Anyway, we also have a new car, a Skoda Octavia Combi 2.0 TDI DPF Laurin & Klement DSG Automatic:



( First experiences after 1800 km )

Comment from Ville (carrying a Yoda doll around) on finding a Yoda Pez dispenser: "Baby Yoda!"

This is in addition to him starting to distinguish other related items as mothers, fathers and babies, i.e. his plush toys now include a Mommy Bear, a Daddy Bear (Mitzi's old Mandorallen), and a Baby Bear (Ville's beloved teddy bear), as well as a Mommy Totoro (a large Totoro pillow) and a Baby Totoro (a Totoro key chain).

Meille on päätynyt nurkkiin itsellemme turhan vanhentunutta mutta kuitenkin vielä käyttökelpoista tietokonerautaa. Näille etsitäänkin nyt uutta omistajaa, muutoin joudun viemään nuo kierrätykseen. ( Inventaario )(Donating some computer gear we've retired which will otherwise end up in recycling.)

So, now I have my Mac, and I've installed the stuff I know I need on it (Firefox, iWorks, Lightroom, Xcode, Google Earth & Google Notifier), and tweaked most of the stuff as I want it. What do I do next? I.e. can anyone recommend any cool stuff I should check out?

( First experiences )

I think I've ended up choosing the 13.3" MacBook as my new laptop, largely due to

1. Adobe Lightroom being available for the Mac (so I won't need a virtual machine just to run it)


2. My interest in the reportedly far better API the Mac has (compared to Windows)


3. UI consistency

I think I'm getting old, since I'm also looking forwards to seeing the "It just works" principle in action (here's hoping it actually will...).

I decided against the MacBook Pro because of its prohibitive cost, the cheapest of them would have cost 50 % more than the smaller MacBook, and while the display was a lot better, the price difference is almost the cost of a good standalone 24" display. And the smaller laptop will easily fit my camera bag etc, so I can actually carry it around.

Yes, teroyks, you can point fingers and smirk now.

Edit Jun 13: I bought the MacBook this morning, but haven't yet powered it up.

I spent this morning getting a surfing lesson on Waikiki Beach with a colleague. The instruction cost $40, which was not as much as my colleague had been told yesterday. I spent about an hour and a quarter in the water, and was quite exhausted by the end - surfing is a lot of hard work when you paddle outward, and I'd not really understood just how hard it was beforehand even though I'd been told about it by a surfer friend once.

I used my heart rate monitor to record the exercise (though I only remembered to turn it on after a quarter of an hour), and it reports my heart rate was at 154 beats per minute on average, with the maximum at 177. Calorie use was reported at 520 kcal for the last hour. These values could actually be on the low side, since the RF signaling doesn't work through water, and the monitor displayed 0 bpm quite often when I happened to look at it.

The actual surfing part was not so exhausting, but not at all easy (for me at least). It was surprisingly easy to get up when I got on top of a wave, but never actually was able to build enough speed to do so by myself, only when the instructor pushed us a bit to help was I able to stand upright on the board - although in my case at least the word upright may be a bit of an exaggeration, as I saw from photos afterwards that I was crouching rather low the whole time. But at least I only fell a couple of times when I didn't know how to steer the thing and had to avoid other surfers who were paddling in my way.

The company whose boards we were renting also gave us "rash shirts" to protect our bellies from abrasion with the board surface, though I only got a short-sleeved one and now I've got a bit of a rash on my arms. My shoulders are already hurting from the paddling, and I imagine my neck will be quite sore tomorrow from looking up (forward) on the board all the time. Other than these minor problems (if you can call them such), surfing was quite fun, and I could easily imagine trying again when the next opportunity arrives.

I've made two short hiking trips in the neighboring area, yesterday to the Diamond Head crater, and today to Mt. Tantalus (basically the Pu`u Ohia Trail in both ways plus a detour on an unmarked path).

The first one had a lot of tourists (despite going there before breakfast, just after sunrise) due to Diamond Head being so famous and close to Waikiki. The views there were ok, but nothing compared to today's drive up Mt. Tantalus, especially around Round Top Drive coming back. Pu`u Ohia Trail was an extremely nice experience, as I've never been to guava or bamboo forests before (I have no name for the rest of the terrain, as the detour provided completely different vegetation). There was a lot of noise from birds and the bamboo clacking against one another, and I didn't see a single human being on the entire hike (though most of it was on the unmarked detour), so it was rather peaceful journey. I would definitely go there again, this time also going around the Manoa Cliff Trail (that page has a pretty good description of the many types of plant I hiked through today) which is connected to Pu`u Ohia Trail.

I'll put some photos up after I've gone for a quick swim - I bought protective shoes yesterday so half the coral problem has now been solved.

Salty. Warm. Lots of waves. Coral. Ouch.

That pretty much sums up my first experiences of swimming in an ocean. I put on my swimming trunks (and a pair of shorts and a T-shirt which I took off on the beach) and waded into the sea here on Waikiki Beach. The bottom was sand for maybe 50 meters, but then it turned into coral with patches of sand here and there, and the water was still only waist deep (or less). I had not known about the coral beforehand, so this was a bit of a painful experience - most others seemed to wear sandals for just this experience. Of course the surf didn't help either, as whenever waves hit me, I'd struggle to maintain balance, and as a result of one partial failure, I managed to bump my left knee a bit - it doesn't hurt, but the skin is broken and it's a little swollen.

I waded for maybe 100 meters further, but it didn't get any deeper (only the waves got bigger), so I turned back. I accidentally found a channel of sand bottom which reached through the corals so coming back was a lot easier. Ended up chatting with an elderly couple from the east coast for a while, then decided to get back to the hotel. I then noticed I forgot to take a towel with me, so I just walked straight in carrying my clothes. I did get some slightly disapproving looks from other patrons at the hotel, but at least the police that drove past didn't mind.

Apparently renting a surf board costs $20 an hour, so I might try that later. Right now I think I'll find a pharmacy to get some disinfectant for the knee, and think about getting something to eat.

Just a brief note before I head for dinner.

The last two days have been rather busy, but we've actually made quite a bit of progress in our meetings. Unlike yesterday, today's meeting ended a bit before sundown so I had just enough time to grab my camera and hit the beach. I shot 127 photos in 45 minutes, strolling along the beach and finally stopping on a pier from which I was able to photograph the surfers going by. I've put a few photos up in my Honolulu gallery.

After tomorrow's official programming, we have a social meeting so I won't be able to go swimming tomorrow, but hopefully will get a chance to do that too in the three days I will have off later on in the week, and I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't yet even had time to go to the hotel swimming pool yet (except on Sunday, but my luggage hadn't arrived then so I couldn't go there).

This time (as opposed to last time), Hertz did have the economy class car I'd reserved, so now I'm driving a Toyota Corolla around town (I've a feeling the Corolla is larger than the ones in Finland, but can't be sure). This car doesn't have cruise control or a computer, and actually I've yet to find a trip meter on it, which makes it a bit more difficult to drive using directions from Google, as I can only roughly measure distances (whole miles).

What also makes Honolulu a bit more difficult to drive is that it doesn't have a clear grid structure like Miami. Instead, the streets all have names (rather than numbers) and change from one way to two way at odd locations, much like in San Francisco (where the streets are in a grid downtown). Many street name signs are also rather small and to the side (rather than over the intersection), which makes it difficult to determine where one is supposed to turn beforehand.

On the other hand, traffic in Honolulu is - at least on a Sunday - relaxed, and drivers are courteous, giving way to others. I once turned onto the right hand lane, then noticed it was a right turn only lane, and immediately afterward noticed I was supposed to turn left, and - after giving way to another car switching to my lane - was given a good slot to cut through four lanes to the left hand lane, in a relatively busy intersection.

So far, I've driven approximately 20 miles in the Waikiki area and its immediate surroundings. I expect to do more driving on Thursday, which is the next day I have no program on, and will hopefully get to see up close the mountains I can see from my hotel room balcony.