But I cannot fool my heart

Bus

Street

Crossing

Cars

Fence

Reflect

Once again, one thing after another. In the morning I realized I had to prepare two presentations, one in English and one in Finnish, and managed to finish them in half an hour, before the first meeting. And then there were a lot of e-mails to process, memos to edit, and so on. And similar things are scheduled for tomorrow.

The weather hovers around 0 °C, a bit above usually, but there is ice on the ground occasionally. I have been commuting by bus, which allows a bit of reading, and a little bit of taking photographs.

(Posting title is from "Reflection" song by Christina Aguilera.)

And strives to wake the heart in turn

Flowers 1

Flowers 2

Flowers 3

Night

Today I got a big bunch of flowers from the people at the Ministry. The beautiful bouquet was almost one meter in length, and I had the problem of how to transport it home, as I was commuting by bicycle.

Well, I solved the problem by opening the package, and with a sharp knife carefully cutting the longest flower stems in half. Then I closed the package, and put it into my bicycle bag. My Ortlieb Back Roller City was big enough to hold the bouquet when I didn't close the bag. I used adhesive tape to keep the bouquet in place inside the bag.

I was a bit worried whether the flowers would suffer during the 16 km ride home, but there was no problem, and I didn't even slow down but managed to get home in under 50 minutes. Even the temperature, +3 °C, was perfect for the flowers. At home my youngest daughter asked: "Are they real?" Yes they are, quite impressive indeed!

And why was I given flowers? Well, it is a tradition when you get appointed to office by the government, as happened to me today.

To celebrate, I fetched with my daughter some ice cream from the shop nearby, and took some photographs of course.

(Posting title is from the poem Meditations by Margaret Fuller.)

I don't believe that dreams are false

Meiko

I was too busy and too tired today to take any photographs. Instead, here is photograph from last weekend, taken at Meiko lake. I heard later that Meiko is quite "wild" in the sense that wolf and lynx have been spotted there. Certainly a place worth exploring!

Today we had the retirement party of a colleague, it was his last day at work. I'm feeling sad, and also happy for him, as he is someone who knows what is worthwhile about life. I have benefited greatly from his advice, and so have so many others that is seems that he has been supporting us all. This mixture of sadness and happiness feels rather special, I think it is due to noticing the deep humanity of a fellow being, who is an example to us all.

(Posting title is from the poem The Answer by Bei Dao, translated by Bonnie S. McDougall.)

What a funny place to rupture

Wet

Flowers

Colors

I have tried on several Fridays standing at work. I raise the desk so high that I can work standing, not sitting on the office chair.

I have a desk which can be raised or lowered by simply pressing a button, which is really convenient, even though the desk is not quite as stable in the high position as lowered down. But it works, "standing Fridays" seem to be a great idea.

I should start doing the same on other days as well, maybe half a day each work day, or something like that. One really notes the difference in how the muscles are used, and the first time I felt some strain after two or three hours, but today it wasn't so bad any more.

(Posting title is from the poem Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara.)

Tires become brushstrokes, hills

Reflect

Rock

Hanging

Wet

Shapes

Ice

Bow

Fallen

Today was a busy and physically demanding day. Maybe I packed too much things to do into one day. I started easy enough, going for a walk early, after seeing children to the school, as I thought that today may be the last day that the snow still carries a man walking - the weather forecast promises rather warm days and nights ahead.

And the snow did indeed carry rather well as I was walking in the Luukki forests, north and west of lake Myllyjärvi, in a region where there are no paths and in fact nobody had walked there before me, at least on this snow.

There there was some shopping, visiting the library, doing chores at home, and finally, the grand finale, changing the tires in the car, from studded winter tires to summer tires.

Changing tires went mostly well, but two of the tires were rather hard to get moving, and some of the bolts were really really tight. And I didn't have any tools except the old ones. Well, after applying some thought and a little bit of force everything went fine.

And then there were still some chores waiting... Well, I managed to do them all, and in fact I'm rather pleased with what I managed to do today. But tired.

(Posting title is from the poem The Grey Hills of Oxford by Sina Queyras.)

On celebration

Curled, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Wood, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Autumn sky, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Markus Spring graciously provided feedback about my photographs, of which I'm thankful. And he had quite an impressive photograph of his on display.

However, instead of feeling good, my first reaction to reading his words were "Oh no!" And then I had to think a bit to find out why I got such a response.

Markus was writing about the "practice, practice, practice" aspect of photography, the fact that only by trying and failing can you learn a skill (whatever skill it is). And he is very much right in stressing the importance of practice.

I think I got the "Oh no!" reaction because of the fear (which is of course quite unreasonable) of being pressed into performing. Photography is for me an avenue for relaxation - and also being outside walking, with physical health benefits as well - and thus photography is a hobby which could be easily destroyed by feelings of having to perform, having to produce great photographs, or anything of that kind.

Maybe I'm a bit strange in this respect. Many people have hobbies where they aim high and really like the positive feedback they get. In fact, the feedback can be a central source of motivation for the hobby. But for some reason this is a difficult thing for me to handle - things turn too serious too easily. Maybe some facet of personality I can't easily analyze myself.

Also, this may have something to do with the Finnish mentality. I read a nice story about this in a book by Olavi Toivola. (The book is Johtajan ilo ja tuska - kokemus opettaa. Some impressions of the book are here in Finnish.) This is from memory as I don't have the book any more.

Toivola tells a story about two daughter companies of an American paper company. The other is French and the other Finnish. The American company gives new challenging targets on quality and productivity to the daughter companies. To discuss the new targets, an American executive visits first the French company and then the Finnish one.

In France there is a party (with sparkling wine of course). The French staff is celebrating the certainty of reaching the goals because there is such a great team appointed to lead the work. In Finland there is a short business meeting where the Finnish staff say that the targets are hard to reach but they have already started working on this.

After the deadline, the executive visits the daughter companies again. In France there is again a party, the staff celebrating that they have achieved 80% of the target and still progressing. However, in Finland there is a short business meeting, where it is noted that all the targets have been achieved. However, the Finnish staff note that they understand that even harder targets will be set in the future, so they are working on progressing beyound the original targets. At this point the American executive comments to the Finns: "Maybe you should try celebrating sometimes."

So, maybe what is needed is to forget the worry and have fun with whatever you do, and don't mind the results.

And there is always the choice of stopping if things get too stressing. Also, I have a feeling that a drawback to the digital world is the immediacy of feedback. Waiting some days to see how your photographs look developed, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. You had a better perspective on what you did.

Flowers

Flowers, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Yesterday I was given this bunch of flowers by colleagues at work. Thanks! And I look forward to the next 20 years...

Green stuff

Vine, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Greetings from Leuven! I decided to make a short posting despite the sporadic network connection. Above you see a bit older photograph, but it fits the following, which is off-topic (and work-related) but I hope you don't mind.

I'm involved in organizing a free event, Workshop on Green and Environmental Computing, taking place in Helsinki (Espoo), Finland, on October 27-28, 2010. If you are interested in green stuff, or ICT stuff, and especially things like “ICT carbon footprint”, have a look. Or tell someone who might be interested. The weather in Finland at the end of October is not something anyone would brag about, so it will be easy to focus on the workshop topic and forget other things.

Mushrooms and leaves

Mushrooms, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Leaves, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Amanitas, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

It has been so wet here in Finland that when the leaves fall off the trees they immediately turn brown. And no real good autumn colors either so far. But mushrooms thrive.

I haven't posted much work-related matters, but this is big for us. So, if you are interested in green ICT, datacenters, supercomputers etc., check out CSC establishing a data center in northern Finland: "... one of the world’s most eco-efficient data centers in Kajaani, on the site of the former paper mill of UPM in northern Finland. The datacenter will be built jointly by CSC and UPM, and it will provide a state-of-the-art environment for supercomputers, data storage, and other demanding IT systems." - This is a big thing for us, although of course things are currently still in the planning and negotiation stage. Have to see how it goes.

By the way, it is interesting that I haven't yet taken a photograph of a supercomputer, or a datacenter. I guess I have a different taste for subjects of photography than subjects of work.

Snow work

Snow work, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

There is so much snow on the roofs on houses that people are climbing up there to shovel it down. I did a couple of hours of shoveling today, throwing down 8-10 tons of snow, which is quite a job for anyone not usually doing heavy physical work. The photograph illustrates the amount of snow we have on our garden.

I have been reading some old books, many of which aren't good at all, but even bad writing can be entertaining sometimes. It is interesting that the blurbs on the covers of books sometimes reveal more than they perhaps intend. For example, "work that is original in design" - but is it any good, does it work? Or "enough plot twists" - can the reader follow the writing?

It feels like Thursday

Brown flowers, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Lights, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today I forgot what day it was several times, feeling that it is late in the week although it is only Tuesday. Probably due to extremely busy two days at work.

Here are two photographs, one taken in daytime and another at night.

By the way, several reviews of Canon S90 have appeared, here is a quote: "There's a temptation to be disappointed with the Canon S90, mainly because our expectations are too high. [...] the Canon S90's lens and sensor combination do some amazing stuff in low light [...] Unfortunately it's not a complete coup thanks to the wayward rear Control dial and the slow zoom control. These two foibles make setting exposure and zoom level almost unbearable most of the time, such that I missed 60 percent of the shots I'd have been able to get with other cameras."

So all doesn't seem to be rosy with this camera. Pity, it would have been good to have so good usability with the S90 that Panasonic would be forced to keep on improving the LX3 as well.

Decrease in IQ (because of being busy)

Glass, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Rocks, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are two photographs taken today. There was a little bit of snow on the ground, which made the landscape much brighter than it has been so far.

And now - some non-photography related thoughs, so you might want to stop reading here.

I might have mentioned that we got a new microwave oven at home. The previous one was 16 years old, and when it was on, our wireless net (wifi/wlan) stopped working. With the new one, no problems whatever with the net connection. Although I don't think the leaking radiation was dangerous, better safe than sorry.

And then to IQ. I was really busy at work this week. Meetings after meetings, dozens of emails to answer, discussions one after another, phone calls to make, driving from one place to another, from ministries to universities to cabinets, lunches in a hurry.

This morning I even forgot my work laptop at home because of being in a hurry. Similar things happened all the time during the week. Sometimes I felt that I wasn't able to think much at all, that my IQ had dropped by half. Not good.

Today I read an article I had written a month ago. It was fine. In fact, I felt that i wouldn't be able to write anything like that if I would have needed to. Going rapidly downwards, that is how it feels. Everything feels complex, and it is hard to get a grasp at anything.

And next week will be even worse than this one was.

Feeling blue

Blue moment, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Street, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

End of a very heavy week. Need more to be said?

Hurried

Playground, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today I wasn't able to go out until at children's bedtime. I had meetings one after another and some of them lasted so long that I managed to get to the next meeting only when it was already closing down. And others I had to leave in the middle to get to the next one. Not so nice.

But I'm feeling good nevertheless. The iMac which had disk troubles last weeked is doing well, no symptoms of breakage so far. And the computer is in fact significantly faster in disk operations compared to before, so it may be that there were some indications of failure already apparent before the filesystem corruption.

But lesson learned: backup, backup, backup. And test that it actually works. I'm currently in the process of thinking how to improve my system from the current one. I'm using one external Time Machine backup disk plus another (smaller) disk where I copy all media files a couple of times each year, and then I have some backups on the net. In addition, a bootable backup disk would be nice to have.

Shades of gray

Drawing, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I know, this is not a black-and-white photograph, it is in color. And furthermore, this posting is quite off-topic from photography, I hope you don't mind.

Recently I have been pondering the term "black and white". You can say that someone sees things in black and white (right vs. wrong, good vs bad etc.). But isn't is so that a black and white photography is actually about the shades of gray, not just black and white?

Shades of gray is what I'm dealing with in all kinds of contexts, also at work. There is hardly ever (and perhaps never) only black and white. There are usually multiple views and interpretations. And thus it is very difficult to make decisions and tell about things, as there never is one and only truth.

But how then to handle all the shades of gray, that is the question. In many cases I have looked at the same thing from opposing viewpoints, and found both viewpoints reasonable and (at least somewhat) consistent. This seems to happen increasingly often when you are dealing with information technology. It is becoming more and more complex.

But how to make decisions? A compromise is often the worst solution. A better way is to find a third way to proceed, containing some good aspects (and also some bad stuff) from the two choices. But this requires a lot of thinking, discussion, looking at the situation in a creative manner.

Managing the shades of gray is demanding indeed.

Simple view

Shadow on red, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Greenery, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today evening I was tired and had stamina for only a short walk outside. The sun was low on the horizon and greated long shadows. Although I had the camera with me I didn't start exploring the views in earnest, instead I took a couple of snapshots and that was it.

Although I'm now tired I'm quite pleased with this week. There were several moments at work when I managed to provide some insight on a situation. It is a good feeling to be able to do this.

We are an IT company but we have a higher percentage of PhD's in the staff than many research institutes. I'm very much relying on the experience, intellect and insight of my colleagues in getting things done but sometimes even they can get stuck. And when this happens the challenge can be at first overwhelming. But nowadays we are getting good at working together.

The two images here are from today, showing different aspects of the evening sunshine. This was a good day, and it will be getting even warmer tomorrow: 15 °C and sunshine.

Not to forget: the Panasonic LX3 got the number one spot of recommended compacts at Serious Compacts. And it also got the number four spot of top-ten recommended cameras at The Online Photographer. Good choice! (42,590 photographs taken so far...)

Update: I created sets of my top 12 most viewed and most interesting photographs (as reported by Flickr). The only photograph on both lists is a black and white photograph of a pier. I haven't done much b&w photography but perhaps I should. A surprising photograph on the most viewed list is an image of the droppings of a European hare. I think this is due to the name I happened to give to the image, not the image itself.

Taking photographs and being exhausted

Curves, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

This has been an intensive week at work, I have been lagging behind in things to do all the time. Usually I manage to focus on the important stuff but now there has been so much of it that things have been piling up.

Doing things on the critical path... Cutting-edge information technology is not easy even when things work well, but when something breaks it is a nightmare.

And there has been an overwhelming about of trivial and non-important stuff also to go through. In addition, I have somehow managed to be included on Finnish spammers' (or marketers) mailing lists with 1-2 dozen extra e-mails to my inbox daily. These e-mails are not yet caught be the antispam measures I'm currently using.

I commuted by bicycle today, which was a nice counterbalance to office work. I have managed to get 1-2 hours of exercise most days lately, so I'm slowly coming back to shape. But I seem to be hungry all the time, especially at lunch.

Photography was today in the back seat. I managed to take some photographs, but with scant results. The image shown here wasn't too bad though. The evening sunshine generates nice patterns on the curtains this time of the year. The image didn't need any post-processing or cropping either.

On snap judgements

Tree shapes, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I have been really busy this week. And the flu that bothered the family members has given way for additional complications, such as ear and eye infections, so it has been a dark week in many respects.

The image shown here is from Thursday night, taken hastily when going for a walk to get some exercise. The streets are icy and slippery which isn't at all nice for walking.

It seems that many things have gone for the worse in the short time. But I expect things will soon brighten up again.

One aspect of the hurry has been the tendency to make snap judgements at work, not always so successful. But fortunately I also managed to do successful damage repair, after noticing that I had completely misunderstood a situation. Sometimes it is hard to admit that you were completely wrong, but I have noticed that this is the best thing to do almost always. Admit failure, beg for forgiveness, and move forward.

Sometimes it is even so that the situation works out better this way, even compared to the "do it right at once" scenario. Being able to risk failure is one thing, but then you need to be able to admit being wrong and willing to fix things. When you are in a hurry, this can be difficult, but there is no other way.

A day at work

Sun and smoke, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Pasila, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

EIT, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

So far, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today afternoon there was a rare glimpse of sun visible. I took a photo of it from a parking lot, on a way to a meeting in Pasila, Helsinki, to discuss EIT. Pasila is a part of the city I don't much like, it is full of office buildings and traffic and not much nature.

Here is a little photo story from today, a bit of symbolism thrown in for a good measure.

Looking forward

Snowfall, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

No, this photo is not from today. It was taken a week ago, and almost all of that snow has since melted away. But I can always dream of a white Christmas, can't I?

This posting is a bit off-topic about photography, but I hope you don't mind. I have a hard time keeping the "photography" compartment and other parts of my life separate just now. And I'll return to photography at the end of the posting.

Why I selected this photo is that it shows a bright mood, just like I'm feeling today. And that mood has mostly to do with things at work.

We have been working hard to get our company is such a position that we can get leverage both on the national and international level. I'm not talking about Nokia-level operations here - there are only 180 of us - but instead of more modest targets in a quite specialized market.

We have been getting new customers for our services at a growth rate of 15-20 percent per year, but there has been always a bit of an uncertainty about this for us.

Now it seems that those things - big, ambitious targets - we have been discussing with our customers and partners, may become reality. This means a big scaling up of our services, and all the difficulties involved in that, but I'm feeling good despite (or because of) the challenges.

All the work needed to make this possible has been hard during the year, and this may be one reason for my interest in photography. It has been balancing the demands at work, providing a concrete thing in contrast to the abstractions needed to discuss things at the upper management level. (The Dilbert portrayal of things may not be far off the mark in the sense of separate realities of experts and management.)

Thanks to photography I may have stayed sane during this year. Not a small thing. And besides, photography is fun.