Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Thoughts, early 21st century

SC2012 in London

One day before my flight to London I got a bit worried: the guy who was supposed to be my first host was not answering my messages. So I had to post a last minute request and ask many people on CouchSurfing. I got lucky and an nice young guy from Lithuania offered me his place near Crystal Palace.

This was the first time I did only couch surfing. No hotels. And it's my favorite trip so far. I really enjoyed it. I stayed in four different neighborhoods. My second host, a good friend from Berlin, lives in Hackney. Then a software developer living in Shacklewell with an Italian sound engineer and a Japanese couch surfer, and finally another Londoner from Brixton who has had a local radio program for a long time. I'm very thankful to them because they are part of what made this a great trip.

Not only did I do couch surfing, but I also flew for the first time with that cheap company that people use just because it's cheap. They don't fly from Helsinki, so I took a bus, then a train and another bus to get to Turku. I think that must be one of the smallest airports I've seen. The terminal was just awesome. It looked like an abandoned building with a layer of paint :) I wonder what people arriving from London, a city with 14 million people, think about this terminal :)

I don't know how it would be like to live in London. Being there for an interesting event while couch surfing is a different experience from waking up every morning in this large city and going to work. It's a very busy place. I took trains, tubes (metros) and buses every day. At busy times the bus would skip my stop, and the tube would be so full that I had to wait for the next one, which arrived a few seconds later. At times I had to cue to get out of the station, which I don't enjoy. It was a continuous stream of people walking in underground corridors. It's an expensive place too. But my first impression there was great. Coming from a frozen Finland, it was all so green and full of blossoming trees! The sky was blue during the first week. It almost felt like summer. I found people quite open and friendly. Easy talking to strangers. There are many beautiful green parks, and houses with small design gardens displaying flowers and stone patterns. The center of the city is too full of people and tourists, but the areas where I stayed were very peaceful and with hardly any traffic.

The main excuse for visiting London was the SuperCollider Symposium, a week full of workshops, conferences and performances. I was one of the few lucky persons who received a free ticket to this event full of artists and sound researchers. I learned much, had fun and talked to dozens of like-minded people. You can see here some photos from the event. 

I've been trying to remember how I got into SuperCollider and I think it was probably Fredrik who mentioned it after one of his performances. I'm still learning and I decided that starting next Monday I will be uploading a new piece of work using SuperCollider every day for 30 days. Yo from Paris, who I met during the symposium, will also take part on this "one month challenge". I wonder about what kind of sounds will we produce during this time.

Now, if you got a minute to spare, it's a good time to sign here to protect our privacy. It's crazy how often they are trying to pass these silly laws. I lost the count already.

Nieve, pico y pala

Arbol

Ayer visitamos a una amiga de mi abuela. Era su santo. Y estaba molesta por que los camiones que quitan la nieve en invierno la habían amontonado inclinando un árbol que ella plantó hace 10 años.

Aunque le dije que podía llamar a los que se encargan del cuidado de la zona, esta mañana decidí ir a quitar la nieve yo mismo. Al llegar me di cuenta que no era el primero. Otro vecino que también escuchó las quejas estaba allí con su pala. La montaña de nieve tenía unos dos metros en su lugar más alto, y toda la superficie de la montaña era hielo que había que picar. Nada que no pudiera solucionar hora y media de ejercicio. A mitad de la operación, cuando ya había quitado bastante nieve, el árbol se enderezó. Me dio gusto ver como se movía.

De camino a casa me dio por comparar árboles con personas, y las aportaciones de cada uno a este planeta.

I didn't like OS X

Img_0001

This list has been sitting on my computer for a long time. It's from a text file where I collected all the things that annoyed me about OS X. These are some of the reasons why I sold my "designed in California" computer. Some of them may no longer be valid, or may as well happen with other operating systems. If this Mac had been my first computer this list would probably not exist. But it wasn't, so here it is:

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Learning to type with a Dvorak keyboard

Dvorak

During the last year I didn't share much on my blog, even I have a list of posts that I would like to write. For instance: how was it to switch from Mac to a GNU/Linux system, why didn't I enjoy using OS X, what is Fun Programming, why did I move to Finland, how is it to live here, why did I refuse to work for almost two years... 

Much to tell, but for some reason it didn't happen. I think writing in three different social networks takes time away from blogging. Another reason may be that I never received much feedback, and since I'm already subscribed to my own thoughts, I didn't feel the need to digitize them. A third reason might be that I didn't want to contribute to the info-pollution :)

But enough excuses. 

A few seconds ago I broke my own typing speed record using a Dvorak keyboard layout. It's probably a strange hobby which can be put in the same category as speedcubing, or standing still on a bicycle.

I started three months ago typing on a text editor for a few minutes every day. After some weeks, I started a more serious training using a program called Klavaro, still investing 5 or 10 minutes per day. In January I began to feel I was stuck and not really improving, so I decided to dump the Qwerty layout altogether. Since that day, all typing was on Dvorak. No more switching back to Qwerty. In the image you can see that this has helped me double the speed in less than two months.

But what's the point? The answer is that I like experiments, and this is one of them. I wanted to know how long it takes to replace a habit which I trained for almost 30 years. I've heard it's good for the brain to do things in different ways, and I wanted to know if I could do it. I'm changing my profession, I changed the operating system I work with, why not my keyboard layout? :)

I'm not yet as fast as I used to be, but I'm not far behind. In the past I used mostly 6 fingers for typing. Now I use all of them. Another reason for switching is that one should be able to type code faster with this layout, since $&[{}(=*)+]!#@\ and - are all just one key press away, unlike with some European Qwerty layouts, which force you to do strange key combinations to get those same characters. I'll tell you in a few months.

But for now, I can tell you that rewiring your brain is possible.