What would MacGyver do?

We won't budge

We finns are determined folk it would seem. Yesterday the police was dispatched to see that the tent would be taken down. The protesters then took shelter in a mobile performing stage that has been on the market square for years and has a roof on top. The city of Turku then sent someone to remove the stage from the square leaving the protesters with nothing against the weather but their wits, some equipment and determination.

The situation called for some MacGyverism. An improvised shelter was put up using some tarps and benches in the pouring rain and a pretty nifty one I can witness. It was completely dry despite of the rain and no stove was needed when everyone was packed tightly together in the shelter. As a matter a fact someone thought it was a bit too warm. I was about 4 deg C outside(39F) It brought back childhood memories of making such huts indoors at home with friends and declaring them as our forts.

You could find the fort by following the sound of laughter and passionate speeches about the world, environment, economy and other topics.

We are living interesting times!

The following note was "flewn in by the wind" today

Due to civil activism (tents at Wiklund corner) we ask all merchants at the market square to take care when visiting the restroom that the activists don't accidentally get the access code for the door. Also care should be taken in order not to allow strangers slip in when entering or leaving the facilities. Other kind of assistance(giving water, electricity etc) is discouraged. Notice this when going to the "washroom".


Warm water will be available as soon as we get the boiler fixed. It's known to the people who decide these things but we don't yet know about the timetable.

We are living interesting times!


In the note was included a four digit code written by hand.

Thank you very much merchants at the market square!

Lessons of life and work

In 1980 Heikki "Hessu" Salmela opened the first Hesburger fast food restaurant in Turku Finland. The chain grew fast and in 1988 he sold it for almost 200 million finnish markkas.(At that point the reason for selling was exhaustion and stress.) Only a few years later during the recession, he bought it back for 25 million. The chain has grown ever since and expanded to other countries as well. The things that have made this possible are: hard work and self sufficiency. Almost everything in the production process apart from farming is done in-house. That and little luck is a recipe for success. Marketing helps, but only if you've done everything else right.

I have always been interested about how one makes a business really successful. The stories that tell the history of great successes often are stories about personal sacrifice and hard labour. Very few people have the qualities this requires. I believe one has to learn how to fail many times before the lessons that enable one to be truly successful are learned.

The first lesson is: don't take shortcuts. The quality of your work is that much less when the product you offer is not exceptional. Only by offering truly worthwhile stuff you and your customers can believe in the work you do. With bad products/services no one has any incentive to turn to you.

The second lesson is: know when to take shortcuts if absolutely necessary. Sometimes the situation just needs for quick action. There's not very much time to think things trough in situations like these and unless you are a very seasoned expert you are going to make bad decisions.

Third lesson is: how to avoid situations when you have to take shortcuts. When you've been doing something long enough you start to develop an eye for situations that tend to escalate towards an unwanted result. Experience and hard work are the only ways to get this foreknowledge.

Anyone that has some experience in business or other serious undertakings that take time and effort should have learned these lessons at some point. It's just too easy to forget these things when you're obsessing about one specific detail about your work. I hope to remember by having this text as my personal reminder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesburger
http://www.city.fi/artikkeli/Heikki+Salmela/468/ (finnish)
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikki_Salmela (finnish)

UEFI "Secure boot" feature

Read these and you're up to speed
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/5552.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/22/protecting-the-pre-os-environment-with-uefi.aspx


The PR department at Microsoft is lulling people to their happy places again?

There obviously isn't any real benefit for the end user in "secure boot" so why beat around the bush. This is a feature, the purpose of which is to allow commercial entities to have greater power over what can and what cannot run on computer hardware. It's an "update" like so many we've seen that doesn't really fix any problem but only makes it more difficult for the end users to have freedom over their devices.

People can't really be so gullible that they can't see past the fact that this writing does nothing to clarify anything but only drops words and phrases like secure, enforcing, strong protection, ensure, growing threat. To me this writing gives a strong impression of trying to seed fear and then sooth with a miraculous salvation. When the threats are great we forgive the trespassess right? At least in the US as recent history has shown.

Keep updated, follow @mjg59 on Twitter.

Censorship

I'm fucking pissed off by censorship. There's no point other than to annoy people, there can't be. When I first heard censoring of swearwords as a kid I thought it was kind of funny. If someone somewhere really thinks they can protect for example children from hearing swearwords by censoring TV, they gotta be kidding. Do you know what kind of parrots kids are. Kids talk to other kids who talk to other kids who talk to someone else and so forth. As long as we have language kids will be hearing swearwords and repeating them to their friends like there's nothing else to do in this world. Especially if you forbid them or try to "protect them" from this. It's rather ridiculous when some people think it's  ok to show blood spilling and heads literally rolling, but swearwords are a big oh no.

Censoring draws unnecessary attention towards the fact that someone just swore. It also makes it very difficult to understand what was being said when it is not obvious what the word was. When it is obvious what the person is saying you're just making people say the word themselves in their minds, you chickenshits... Swearwords convey mood and meaning. It's a fact that people swear.(I'm not quoting a source, go find out for yourself) You can relate to things when swearwords are used in proper context. That means you have to balance the amount of swearing so that whatever story is being told is believable. It just sounds stupid when swearwords are out of context or there's nothing else than them. You start thinking tourettes or lack of things to say.

After a while the censoring itself starts to deliver the same effect that the swearword did. Eventually what is being said will become devoid of meaning. I'ts like telling all the painters in the world to suddenly start painting only happy pictures.

Censorship is control over people in all it's forms. Censorship is evil. Censorship is burning books. Censorship is suppression of speech. Censorship is unnatural.

Censorship is being done only when someone is feeling of loss of control and then instead of reflecting on the real matter they do something fun like turn off your country's communication networks.

ps. This is so fraking lame no matter how big a fan of BSG you are
pps. I swear too much, but it's ok, I'm aware of it.

The day the christians left earth

Sometimes out of the blue happens something so hilarious it's just insane. I thought it was the last episode of Futurama's sixth season (Reincarnation) But then this happened today when I was on Twitter.

I didn't confirm this by going out and checking out by myself, but I'm preeetty sure the religious nuts called christians are sadly all still here.


Have You Been Left Behind? from Rem Lezar on Vimeo.

Lucky Luke - Faster than his own shadow

Ever since I saw this as a kid, I have been fascinated by this image. I think it warrants some explanation.

So this guy is pretty fast with he's gun, that much is obvious. Let's say for the sake of argument that Lucky Luke is instead of being a two dimensional character on paper, a multidimensional being and can appear to move faster than light. The amount of time it takes for the light to travel from Lucky Luke to the viewer is slightly less than the amount of time it takes for the light to travel from the wall to the viewer. This means that if we would imagine someone taking a picture of this the exposure time should be equal to or less than the time difference. In other words this is an image that can never be captured with a modern camera because it wouldn't be able to capture enough photons in the allotted time. It is an illustration of the phenomenon how we can today see a star that went supernova over 21 million years ago.

So lets speculate that it's bullets he's shooting. The bullet should travel the distance instantly in order to be able to pierce the wall before the light travels from the wall to the viewer. How do you pierce something instantly? That must not be a normal gun then either. Maybe that's the reason there's a trajectory drawn in the image? It's a virtual trajectory. The gun passes the bullet through a wormhole but it doesn't travel the whole distance there. That doesn't sound very plausible. Another possibility is that the bullet is propelled by an alcubierre drive. This is still not making much sense. Or maybe he's shooting tachyons? A ray gun of sorts. That would make sense. At least it would if tachyons could affect objects. Maybe there was a hole in the wall to begin with?

As for the smoke, the guy must have exhaled and the smoke conveniently moved in front of the gun to make this image more challenging to figure out. At this point I can admit this guy can do pretty awesome things so it doesn't seem too odd that he has a levitating hat. Even I could do that.

Please leave a comment below if you have any ideas of you own. I'd love to hear any idea no matter how silly.