The point of migration is the return

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The photograph was taken in Kajaani on July 13th.

(Posting title is from the poem How to Move Away by Lynn Pedersen.)

Doubt, not many have seen

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The photographs were taken in Kajaani on July 11th.

(Posting title is from the poem I Saw England — July Night by Ivor Gurney.)

It seems the least little shove would land us there

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The photographs were taken on July 10th in Kajaani.

(Posting title is from the poem July in Washington by Robert Lowell.)

You love how she only wears her glasses with you

Flowers 1

Flowers 2

Flowers 3

The photographs were taken on July 3rd in Kajaani.

It is remarkable that the country that feels to be the most dangerous to the future of the world is the United States. Quite a change in six months or so.

(Posting title is from the poem You Love, You Wonder by Brenda Shaughnessy.)

Galleries in

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I'm still waiting for the nut for my bicycle. The photographs were taken in Kajaani on July 23rd.

(Posting title is from the poem Don’t Be Flip by Todd Boss.)

So delicately, like a silver fob

Heliconiinae

The photograph was taken in Kajaani on July 23rd. The exact species is unknown because I didn't see the underside of the wings.

(Posting title is from the poem Consecration by Susan Stewart.)

I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair

River 1

River 2

River 3

River 4

Here are some photographs taken in Kajaani, on July 23rd, by the river.

(Posting title is from the poem Afton Water by Robert Burns.)

It followed the river first

River 1

River 2

River 3

River 4

Some views to the river in Kajaani, photographs taken on July 23rd.

(Posting title is from the poem River by Greg Miller.)

That all recurring joy is pain refined

River 1

River 2

Fireweed 1

Fireweed 2

These photographs were taken on July 23rd near a bridge which crosses the river in Kajaani.

I rode the bicycle today, for 1 1/2 hours. Afterwards I did some repairs to the bicycle, and realized there is something bigger that needs to be done at some point. I hope the bicycle works still for a while until I need to go the the repair shop. The last time I had the bicycle repaired wasn't so great, I needed to have the bicycle re-repaired half a dozen times until it was ok.

(Posting title is from the poem A Fixed Idea by Amy Lowell.)

Hear they did not look where I pointed

Flower

On July 23rd we were in Kajaani. By the river near the city center there is a forest criss-crossed by paths, and in the forest there were several spots where Impatiens glandulifera was growing in uncontrolled manner. This plant is spreading quite rapidly, and I except it will cause trouble in Finland in the future, as it is very competitive with native species. It should be cut down before the flowers turn into seeds.

(Posting title is from the poem Native Trees by W. S. Merwin.)

Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air

Tropic

There is some driving by car in the program today, we are going west from Kajaani. Temperature will be near +30 °C. The hot weather is not giving up any day soon. Even the nights are warm, and humidity is then at 90%. I'm not sure if I should complain about this, or try to enjoy the tropical feeling.

(Posting title is from the poem The Triumph of Life by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)

Yesterday, before I swam

Colors 1

Colors 2

We are now in Kajaani, and it is hot, +28 °C, and there has also been some rain. We tested Kaukavesi swimming center in Kajaani, and it was good. The place wasn't crowded, only a couple of other people in addition to us.

The photographs were taken in Särkänniemi on July 3rd.

(Posting title is from the poem Swimming Ool by Kenn Nesbitt.)

This is not Alaska

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Road

Blur

Dim

Blue

Cafe

We returned from Vuokatti - after swimming for three days at Katinkulta spa - via Jyväskylä, where we spent the last night of the trip. The weather turned much worse, temperature going to 0 °C, there was some snowfall and occasional icy rain, and the roads got slippery.

While traveling I was trying to eat vegetarian and drink green tea, but that isn't so easy as most dishes have meat in them, and coffee is what you are expected to drink here in Finland.

So, I took often soup dishes, which were mostly not that bad. I'm not completely dogmatic about vegetarian dishes, but I'm trying to decrease how much meat I consume, and during this Christmas I managed to avoid eating even a single slice of Christmas ham, which hasn't happened ever before.

While traveling, I had to be satisfied with flavored green tea from a teabag which is usually not that good, the flavors hiding the bad quality of the tea. And once I had a cup of coffee when there wasn't any tea available.

But at Jyväskylä, in the Solo hotel at Paviljonki, they offered green tea in a real brewing pot with a filter, and it was almost perfect, except that I would have used a bit lower temperature in the brewing.

The worst vegetarian dish I got was in a road side cafe, where I had "vegetarian pasta", which meant frozen vegetables heated up in a microwave oven put into a plate with cheap pasta and a bit of oil on top, with no spices or anything like a sauce. I still shudder about this.

(Posting title is from the poem He stopped part way across the field to by Michael Palmer.)

And earth seems very near the sky

Lines

Road

Church

Twigs

These photographs were taken on Sunday in Kajaani, having a look at the winter scenery there. It was still rather cold, but the temperature was already creeping upwards. Daylight time was short, and the clouded sky made it seem even shorter.

(Posting title is from the poem At Home from Church by Sarah Orne Jewett.)

Packed like a box with the toys of childhood

Kajaani

River

Wall

Rock

Flowers

Here is the second installment of photographs from the trip with the children. These photographs are from Kajaani, where we spent some time walking around, including a bit of play at the old castle at the river.

In addition to the Canon mirrorless camera announcement, of which I may write a bit also, a thing which I didn't have time to ponder about during travel (or even know about) was that Apple released a new OS version, Mountain Lion, a.k.a Mac OS X 10.8.

Yesterday I had a look at the multitude or reviews and upgrade instructions, and Mac OS X 10.8 looks good. But I need to confirm that I have a working backup, and I need to make a bootable installation disk just in case something goes wrong, so I'm not upgrading to Mountain Lion right away. The price of 16 euro is certainly modest enough for a new OS.

In any case, the Apple approach of gradually evolving iOS and Mac OS X together seems to be a good thing, although I'm not completely convinced about cloud integration. But having the same basic info (contacts etc.) on different devices is certainly a good starting point.

(Posting title is from the poem History by Babette Deutsch.)

Skimming - and why everything has to be social

Kajaani, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Helsinki, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Crossing, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Lake, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Night, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Car, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are some photographs from yesterday and today - one from snowy Kajaani, one from moist Helsinki, and four from Vantaa.

Today I listened to David Nicholas lecturing on the "Google generation", or on the topic whether the net is dumbing (all of) us down. Young people don't spend time at web sites, they skip (or maybe the word is skim) from one place to another, reading no more that 1-3 pages at one site.

Update: you find the program of the event here - it is mostly in Finnish, though.

And they always expect to see signs of visitors or personalization, such as "25 comments" or "Recommended to you because of your X".

The social aspect is especially interesting. Young people trust their Facebook (etc.) friends more than research articles. I guess this is a kind of filtering effect because of information overload. However, I do hope doctors are not following this trend in their profession... (Nicholas hinted that this may actually be the case.)

If a site doesn't have any social aspects, it is "silent", like a church, and the web users don't like that. There has to be signs of previous visits. "The Google generation" likes company, and the wisdom of the crowd is the best they know.

Also, Nicholas say, we all are "Google generation". All of us are changing similarly, although the young are changing the most.

However, despite the skipping and skimming, there is a part of the crowd which is being enabled in a dramatic way. They know how to use the web, and they also know when to focus on a topic. They are the (rare) elite of the Google generation, those who have the ability to read a book once in a while.

Well, all in all, it was an interesting speech, as perhaps only the English can do it. You have a feeling that some people have a gift which captivates the listener whatever they say. This may also have something to do with the classically educated English accent - a pleasure to listen to.

This skimming/skipping is also visible here at Light Scrape. Usually there are 1-2 page views per visit, sometimes 2.5 pages or so. And typically one visit lasts 1-2 minutes, occasionally a bit more. However, during a rare day some time ago the average time on site was 6 min 5 seconds - I don't know why. On the average, there are 150-200 visits per day, sometimes a bit more. I don't know how many of these visits are made by robots, though. Does someone know the internals of Google analytics, what is counted and what isn't?