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Today I got a very nice short off-road ride with Helsinki MTB club MTBCF. The starting place was almost near my home, so I had no excuse of long commute from/to home for not participating. I already rode with MTBCF two times, two or three years back. Once it was their weekly cruise “for beginners”, where I was dropping out all the time and finally broke my rear derailer with a branch; that was too hardcore MTB for me. Another time it was a “flat ride” of 300km, to Bromarv (link on Google maps) and back. That time I did not drop, although was at a limit of my stamina by the end of the distance.

This time we were just three persons, Timo and Sami (on the picture) plus me, but for a forest trail ride this makes a perfect size company.

I rode last, the two other riders had to wait me sometimes. I hardly can come up with a better way of spending two hours in a nice weather! The only thing which I was concerned with is the damage to trails; still, cycling with knobby tires over small brooks or large puddles does not make them better. It is certainly bigger impact than from walking. On the other hand, it is certainly smaller impact than from driving a car, so I’m not arguing against off-road cycling; and I’m not doing it frequently.

On MTBCF forum, there is already a post by Timo about the ride. I’m not a hardcore MTB rider, and that’s the reason why I’m still not a member, but it seems that this is the only really active cycling club in the Helsinki area (not counting CCH and IK-32, which are too professional, with everydays trainings and regular competitions). I’m pondering joining!

Last years, I was not much exposed to bullshit at work. In fact, almost not at all. Now I received an email with a brilliant example of the subject. A person has an email signature, which ends like this:

[MyCompany] is one of the global leading suppliers of Information Logistics
Solutions and Product Information. Our customers are global leaders, at
the cutting edge of the telecom, software, automotive and industry sectors.
High expectations and demands from our customers drive [MyCompany] to
strive for operational excellence.

[MyCompany] currently employs some 500 highly talented and dedicated
staff globally, with offices in Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary,
Ukraine, and China.

They should use some of the on-line bullshit generators to add, for example, “incubate innovative e-markets” or “syndicate customer-centric initiatives”. I think I’ll eventually point the author of the email to this post

Do I want a Content Management System (CMS) for my web site?

• My web site is small.
• It is not dynamic or interactive (and that’s how I want it to be at this moment. I do not want “dynamic spoon” or “interactive pants”).
• It is authored only by me, no cooperation expected in the future neither.

So I probably do not need any CMS. But on the other hand,

• I’m regularly catching myself that I’m not putting a new article because I’m fed up with copy-pasting of HTML
• sometimes I end up in poor places which do not have any putty/scp, so I just can’t do the update until I come home
• I have some articles in more than one language, and this is something which is pain in the neck to maintain
• I like my pages to be valid HTML, and this is an additional thing to watch when writing in the text editor.

But the most important of all: with static site written in the text editor, I have full control over my data. I can always do a full backup from my host (in fact I store an up-to-date copy locally). I can move all my site to another host at any moment in minimal time. Sure, backup of MySQL database + CMS system is also possible, but I’m afraid I’ll not do it regularly, and I imagine that moving to another host may turn out to be a very frustrating experience.

I’ve put to MediaWiki two of my pages which are kind of more dynamic than others: bicycling bookmarks and list of cafeterias around Helsinki. So far these are not pages which I necessarily want to be able to read 10 years later, so the portability here is not a keystone. Now I’m in musings, do I want to move more of my content to some CMS. And to which one? OpenSourceCMS lists tens if not hundreds different CMSes. The leading ones seem to be MediaWiki, Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. Read comparisons: Joomla vs. Drupal, more Joomla vs. Drupal, Wordpress vs. Drupal, Joomla/Drupal/Plone.

The main question to me is, to repeat it, the portability. How easy is it to backup some CMS site, and how easy is it to restore it in completely different environment?

After publishing first-minute positive impressions about Nokia E90 communicator, first negative ones have not been waiting for long.

Naturally, when changing from one device to another, a user wants to move data from the old one. Mine “old” was Nokia 9500 communicator. Note, it is the natural predecessor model of the same manufacturer. Phones have “data transfer” menu item. But this transfers only contacts, messages and calendar entries - no documents. I have about 60 files, most hand-written once, like foreign words and travel notes. Moving them should be a trivial task?

1. Any file can be sent between the devices, for example via Bluetooth. But… you can’t send a directory. Manual sending of 60+ files does not look as an attractive option.

2. OK, fortunately there is Zip archiver in both devices. I compress the files I want to transfer to one archive, send it, decompress it. Guess what? I can’t open any of my files! They were saved in some proprietary format, which is not recognized by the new device!

Now I’m left with two options: 1) send all files one-by-one; believe or not, the texts are converted to Microsoft Word .doc format before sending :-/ 2) use Nokia own software to dig my data from the old device (this software is Windows-only).

I knew I should never store my data in a proprietary format, and I knew I’m doing a mistake saving my texts in default format 9500 communicator offered me. I naively expected that the same company will at least support its own formats. Beware!

Got a new device, the 2007 Nokia communicator edition, E90:

It is smaller than the previous 9500 communicator (in fact every new Nokia communicator model was smaller than the predecessor).

It has, in addition to what you’d expect from any such device, a built-in GPS receiver.

It is nice for touch. It has very sharp screen - both screens, in fact. 3.2Mp camera, FM radio, 512Mb micro-SD card. All data transfer technologies you can imagine: EGPRS, 3G WCDMA and HSDPA for cellular, Bluetooth and WLAN for short-range. See full specs here.

So, the first-minute impression is very positive. Let’s see what it comes to when I start actually using it.