Thoughts from Inside the Box

So I'm Picard. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw this test I was Data, but no amount of reasonable fiddling this time got me away from Picard. And with this post, the Picard result is immortalized onto the great Internet, never to change again.

Labels: addiction, meme, psychological profile

When I'm shopping for goods or services, my preference is physical store (but keep your salesweasels off my back up to when I've decided, please), Web and email, phone (I really dislike phoning people I don't know, it's all the impersonality of email without the ability to be precise). So, since most businesses I want to do business with publish an email address, I usually email them if it's not convenient to drag my backside there.

Some six years back I needed my TV repaired. I emailed one company, no response for a few days. So I pick another one. They call me back, leaving a message on my answering machine that indicates they print out all email that comes in and then someone goes over the printouts before the day ends. Funny method, but they did get my money since they replied at least. Well, the first company replied too, after a couple of weeks.

But surely, all this was years ago, and things are better now. Not really. Recently I ordered some bookshelves over the Web, and of course their preference was to call me even though I provided an email address as well (the form had a mandatory phone number and an optional email address, it figures). Not only that, the call came from an unlisted number, so I rejected it, as is my custom if I'm even the slightest bit busy. So they had to relent and send me email asking how I'd like to pay. As is my custom with business email, I replied immediately, expecting that they'd handle things the next day. Hah! It's now been two weeks and not a beep from them (I wasn't really able to contact them last week, but will tomorrow).

I don't really have high hopes of anything requiring actual service to ever work in Finland over the Internet. My experience is that businesses provide email addresses, since nowadays it's expected, but they don't really bother to read them or to provide the same level of service through email that you'd get if you just show up at the store (of course, then you'll get pre-empted by someone who calls in, but usually that's not such a big deal).

Labels: asperger, customer service, email blackhole, rant

One of my hobbies is solving crossword puzzles, which I've been doing for nearly 15 years now. But I never tried making them myself before I met another person who had just started doing that and pestered me to try as well. So now I finally got my first crossword finished, and tomorrow I'll send it to my test solver.

I started by first putting in all the words into a free-form grid so I could move the black squares when necessary. This phase was very much like solving a crossword. It's easier because the grid is not static so bad words can be replaced by longer or shorter ones as well, but it's harder because there is no certainty that even with good words it's possible to complete.

Figuring out the clues I had been doing a bit during the grid making as well. I started with a list of 50 clues or so, and expanded on it by about 20 when new good words appeared in the grid. Eventually I managed to use about 40 clues and had to invent 70 new ones after the grid was complete. I don't think I did a really good job with this, but I'll just wait for the solver's opinion.

The final part is then writing the clues. In a Finnish crossword the clues are usually embedded inside the grid, so getting them there legibly takes some serious penmanship. I mostly managed, but I can also understand why the usual method is to draw the crossword on a larger sheet and then shrink it for printing (in fact, I had also prepared for this alternative).

Labels: crossword, phew

I finally did what I had been thinking for at least two years: I got myself a cable modem and gave up on pay-per-minute dial-up. Yes, it seems kind of weird that a computer geek uses dial-up, but it has worked pretty well so far (and would still have, I just got off my lazy ass and did something now).

I figure the main restriction from using dial-up was that I haven't been able to participate in Web forums. But even that's not so bad, Web forums suck anyway, Usenet is so much better technology-wise. I'll have to watch myself now to avoid picking up new time sinks with the new opportunities.

The major pain came with reconfiguring my mail and news program. I use Gnus, which I have configured to work perfectly for me, and this of course means that changing servers is a chore I'd prefer to do without. Surprisingly, this time things went just fine from the Gnus end (I guess it helped that the mail server also changed its name in addition to everything else). For news I decided to look further ahead and went with NIN, also in part because all of their customers seem very happy with it, and a well-administered news server is important to me.

Mailing lists are still insane, though. I'm subscribed to a dozen Debian lists, and even though they have a handy Web form for subscribing and unsubscribing, each list still generates one confirmation email for unsubscription and another for subscription, which all have to be replied to.

This did bring me to a decision: If I ever write a mail program, I'm going to include support for mailing lists and to make it easy to switch addresses and servers. This is an interesting point: a complex operation of a program that is rarely used but needs to be perfect when used, must have a single button to do it, but it's really hard to test such functionality.

And of course there's still the main reason for switching to a faster always-on connectivity: now I can upgrade my Debian system every day and don't have to use my weekly sneakernet connection.

Labels: 21st century, fresh packages, obstacle course, yeah baby

A few months back I gave up using a drip filter coffee maker, for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, in Finland it's really hard to find ground coffee coarser than filter coffee, especially since I prefer to drink Fair trade coffee. In fact, I'm limited to pretty much one brand, which I don't really like that much.

So, of course I had to get my own grinder, since the selection in beans is slightly better (though nowhere near the state of filter coffee). And today I finally ran out of the ground coffee I had previously bought (incidentally, both at work and at home) and will have to switch completely to self-ground coffee. And it does taste better than pre-ground, even when it's the same kind.

Labels: coffee, mmmmm, pretentious snob

I own a TV. I watch it occasionally. So, since Finland is going all-digital soon, I made plans to get a digital set-top box, so I could continue watching.

But yesterday, when reading the paper, I finally realized that I really don't watch TV at all. Practically all I use the TV for is watching DVDs, either movies or series. This year I've been following maybe two or three series, but really, I could have just got the DVDs for those as well. I don't watch the news either, I prefer newspapers for that.

So, with that realization, I concluded I don't need to "upgrade" to digital at all. And thus, when the analog transmissions finally end, I can also look forward to periodic visits from the TV license inspectors.

Labels: holier than thou, pretentious snob, sensory deprivation

I've submitted my PhD thesis for review, and it's now halfway through the allowed three-month review period. I seem to be chronically unable to work without deadlines: during the last week before submitting, I added over 60 pages, about the same amount as in the preceding two months.

There's nothing actually groundbreaking there, but I did run many experiments and wrote many pages of text, and that's what counts, right?

Labels: obstacle course, phd, phew, stupid work habits

So I have this blog that hasn't really seen much activity. Originally it seemed to me that every now and then I'd get some idea in my head that would be useful to communicate and that a blog would work for that. Well, that didn't happen; either I didn't actually get any ideas, or didn't think they were worth writing down, or just plain forgot I have a blog.

Anyway, this post marks my first resolution to actually start writing something here a bit more often, and let's see what happens. Comments on things are welcome, but I doubt anyone even knows of this blog's existence, so I'm expecting this to be mostly a therapeutic exercise for me in releasing my world pain (as a secondary school teacher of mine once called it).

Labels: all by myself, navel gazing, web 2.0

Well, the EXI group finally managed to publish the first draft of the format specification and the second draft of the measurements note. The work is taking more time than we originally planned, at the moment we are about half a year behind schedule, and it doesn't look like there's much chance to catch up significantly.

But I really like the format itself. It's a clean approach and it's very clear that it works well. It could maybe use a bit more formal way of describing things, but there's stuff there that isn't very amenable to being treated in current formal language theory (as far as I know), so that might not happen in time.

Labels: binary xml, disruptive, exi, phew, standardization, subversive