Inner silence

Spiced up the morning jog some. I ran 3km interval at 11km/h, with the elevation following a standard bell curve over a 20 min duration. Looking back at some earlier posts, I must have been doing some slower speeds.. Back at Arcada I ran (trotted?) 3 km in 30 minutes. That's just barely over walking speed. 11km/h is alright.

When I'm practiced up I'll try to maintain 15km/h, which should give me a good 3km Cooper. This is more running than jogging though.. Maybe one day it would be nice to have run the marathon. To be a Marathon man. Level-up IRL. hah! It would be easier if they created like a 'miesten kymppi' event (after the women's 10km annual event).

... so much for that, here's something that came throug on my last.fm personal radio station here at work, and I wanna share it with you. It may seem a little emo, but I really like this song.

Anathema: Inner Silence

When the silence beckons,
And the day draws to a close,
When the light of your life sighs,
And love dies in your eyes,
Only then will I realise,
What you mean to me.

Have a nice wknd

Time flies..

Wow, weeks go on by. Here's a quick update:

1. I got the thesis done.
2. Got some free time now
3. Work is good, life is good/ok.
4. Fall sucks, it's just too dark.
5. I like my work & co-workers!

Good stuff. I've been trying to get a little more active with sports.
The training regimen I'm trying on now is as follows:

- Tuesday, before work: 3km jog and some weights.
- Thursday evening: Squash 1 hour
- Friday, before work: 3km jog and some weights again
- Sunday noon: Squash 1 hour

The main bulk of my new-found free time has mostly been spent on catching up on reading, watching movies and playing some games. The computer's been upgraded a little thanks to a motherboard meltdown. I'm now running an Asus P5k with 4Gb ram and an Nvidia 8800gts 640. Seems to be running games alright. A bigger, better monitor is something I'd like very much, the 22" is a little limited by the resolution.

Some other purchases: A Canon S5is digicam & Canon Pixma mp600. They get the job done for most of the digital work that needs to be done.

Minna's been quite busy trying to juggle 3 jobs and her final year at school. There's also been some unwanted drama from her family's side. Without getting into details, I'll just say that we're not currently on speaking terms with the most of them. Minna's little brother is still cool, but the rest I'm not so sure about. Sad state of affairs, but what can you do.

Anyways, that's it for now.

BLASTOFF

I think I'll start typing again, friends.

Some of the more recent events:

Workplace changed to Verkkokauppa.com
Thesis deadline 7 days!
I feel positive... :)

"Spring is in the air"

Well, it seems like spring is back again. The first symptoms of allergy are here, hooray. Time to dig out the old recipes and get some meds.. Have to cancel the squash game with Mr. M. today. So far I have not managed to write a single line of text for my thesis, but have instead been reading a 1950s history classic by Mr. Alf Henrikson: "Alf Henrikson: Antiikin tarinoita 1-2" third Finnish edition. "And how is that relevant to your thesis?" I hear you ask. None of your goddamn business! Perhaps I was trying to get some inspiration from the rhetorics of Cicero? :P

Anyways! It is a very readable history of ancient times. Periods covered are roughly 1000 bce to 500 ce. Great source of stories and highly acceptable. One thing that is bothering me, though - is the complete lack of accurate references. Given the sheer volume of quotable material, and the projected reader's interest in references (and the fact that the book was written in the 50s) this is arguably quite understandable. The author has a very casual writing style, similar to Veijo Meri (note: his non-fiction Finnish history series) & Henri Troyat (biographies..). Sometimes it is rather fun to just blaze through authors such as these. The more serious (from an academical perspective anyway!) writers, such as Anthony Beevor are a little more tedious to read. This does not mean that their books are any less enjoyable. The amount of detail and research that for an example Mr. Beevor puts into his books is quite respectable.


Back to other tasks...

It's been a while

Hello friends and e-friends. Looks like I will have to step it up some to make the 52 posts! That is still the big idea. Anyway, I will give an update of what's been going on in due time, perhaps with some backlogging posts, that'll go somewhere in the middle.

Here is a "thought for the day", taken from the proposed Blogger's code of conduct (against trolls):

"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it."

Lite brådis

I've been doing some hardware upgrades. Here's the short shopping list:

22" Samsung LCD display
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300
Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA motherboard

The old 22" CRT display went bust and I had to get something to replace it. After a short browsing frenzy I went and got the Samsung from downtown, from the only place that actually had it in the shelf, Serv-it. A week or so later, I got annoyed by not being able to play HD-Divx movies. So it was time to look at a budget-friendly computer upgrade. The asrock's motherboard makes it possible to run either ddr or ddr2 memory, it supports both agp and pci-e slots, and takes any goddamn intel socket 775 cpu. Another plus is that it's dirt cheap. See, as far as motherboards go, you can shelf between 50-300 euros on them. This one is at the bottom range. I noticed it too, as soon as I had installed everything. Lots of crashes and freezes. Apparently their hardware support for ATA drives is pretty bad. Luckily it seems most of the problems are gone now that I used the drivers from the CD, and did not use new ones from the web. Strange. The E4300 is running at default clock speed now, I cannot be arsed to fiddle with it since everything is running smooth as it is.

Found a new, very handy image backup application. Acronis True Image 10. Speedy backups possible, easy to run restore (you can either install a boot menu, or run it from usb/cd, cool stuff). It helped quite considerably when my C:\ partition was being raped by the ASS-Rock motherboard. Luckily no important data was lost, but it was not a pleasant experience. I'm not used to fighting shitty hardware. But I'll have to say, now that it's running smooth, all is well.


Eventually I'll make the jump to decent motherboard and buy a monster 8800-gtx series graphic card. And overclock the HELL out of this cpu. But as things are now, I don't want to spend money in more hardware untill I've graduated.

Another monday half spent

Been a while since the last update. I've got to keep up! :)

Been a little sick again. Some fever, but it went away in the same day. Situation now: home alone, drinking coffee and getting ready mentally to work on my thesis.

I've been pulling 3-4 work shifts per week. On the off time I've been watching some episodes of twin peaks, Rome second season & playing games (America's Army, Continuum, Europa Univeralis III, Fable, Medieval 2: Total war). I've done quite a considerable amount of reading as well, sadly I don't have the library receipts to see the reading history. Anyway, it's been history mostly + some business books.

I've also done some work on the thesis. Btw, procrastination is a bitch.. but have no fear friends! There are ways to combat it, such as goal setting. The following is a dirty copy-paste to make this post appear longer:

Goal Setting
This is a very effective mechanism for limiting procrastination. The process requires taking some larger goal and breaking it down into a series of smaller tasks. For optimum effectiveness, these goals should have four properties: Specificity, Challenge, Proximity, and Routine. It works very much as Discounted Utility Theory, outlined on the Theory webpage, would predict.

1. Specificity
   Goal specificity refers to explicit standards and conditions that indicate their fulfillment. Increasing specificity has been shown to increase performance and, in turn, should decrease procrastination. To the degree one does not have a clear understanding of when goals are about to be achieved, the motivational benefits of temporal discounting do not occur. In other words, you should know exactly where your finishing line is.
2. Challenge
   Challenge of goal essentially increases its value. Achieving a difficult challenge is more rewarding than achieving an easy task. To avoid procrastination, challenging goals should be set as they have higher value and less easily overshadowed by other alternatives. To be effective, challenging goals should be set as they have higher value and are less easily overshadowed by other alternatives. Of note, expectancy is somewhat diminished by challenge. Consequently, there is an optimal breakpoint where the decreased expectancy of a goal outweighs the potential gains in satisfaction.
3. Proximity
   Ideally, your goals should be set though that they can be completed in a timely manner, perhaps today or even just this morning. Distant goals are substantially delayed, reducing the motivational effectiveness. The only reservation regarding proximity is that by dividing a large goal into variously spaced sub-goals, each sub-goal must necessarily be easier to achieve and thus less satisfying. Consequently, there should be a breakpoint where the further subdivision of a goal decreases achievement motivation more than can be offset by the decrease in delay.
4. Routine
   One predictor of procrastination is the number of “choice points” a task requires. The more junctures that require choice, the more likely it is that we will procrastinate. Consequently, one of the most powerful self-control techniques is the development of automaticity through routines. Automaticity refers to a habitualized course of action that can be conducted with little or no conscious attention. These automatic routines can maintain goal pursuit as they limit decision making to that relevant to the task at hand. Consequently, you should try to schedule your goals to occur at a regular time and a regular place. For example, if you trying to exercise, choose a day, a time, a place, and stick to it as best as possible. If sickness makes you miss a day, get back to it as soon as possible. Eventually, you won't be deciding to do other things. You will just find yourself effortlessly performing."

(In)discipline

Just a quick update. Typing frenzy. Thesis not coming along that well at all. There are so many distractions in the world. I'll keep this post short and wrap it up with a short responce to my problem from Mr. Robert Fripp:

Here is a question: what do you do when you have
no enthusiasm, no interest, and no energy?

Another question: what do you do when you
can't do anything?

The answer is simple: You do what has to be done.

The principle is this: suffer cheerfully.
Deliver your commitment on what has to be done.
Reliability is elementary.

RF

2007, another go at it

Hello all you boys and girls. My new years resolution is to try to give you 52 updates this year. I'll give you a brief 5-points update on what's gone down since the last time I updated:

1. Got married
2. Went on honeymoon (Bratislava & Prague, missed Wien due to shitty weather)
3. Started writing on a thesis
4. Got sick with pertussis, still recovering (!)
5. Started studying spanish

Untill next time