Busily Going Nowhere

On translations and the metric system

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:33:05 GMT

I am reading (yet another) Swedish detective novel translated into English at the moment, and I find that I'm thrown by some of the translation.

As you might guess, it's to do with the translation of the units of measurement from metric (I assume, but I'll get back to that) to imperial.

First thing is, I have taken to the metric system like a duck to water, and faced with an imperial measurement like 3 feet, I will automatically convert it back to metric. And, efficient person that I sometimes am, I regret the time that the translator spent that I just had to undo.

Then, I'll try to figure out what the original metric number was. "About sixty miles" probably started out as "about a hundred kilometres" (except in Swedish ;), I don't have to think about that one, but "around four feet" takes a bit more consideration.

Which isn't to mention the conversions that I can't do in my head, notably from Fahrenheit to Celsius, or anything to do with weight. Actually, on the subject of weight, even when I lived in Ireland and weighed myself in stones and pounds and ounces, I could never remember how many of what were in what - I mean, was it made deliberately confusing with a mixture of sixteen and fourteen? - and I can't even take a guess at it now!

And, I also get thrown because it sounds so odd for a Swedish character to be thinking of miles, or talking about pounds. I find myself wondering if it is a character note, if there is some plot element that has the character using the imperial measures instead of metric. As I would if I read an American book with a character talking of the temperature in Celsius, because I know what units they habitually use, and to use others is strange or at the least unusual.

And then I almost set the book aside when I read that the footprints were size 11 1/2. Whose size 11 1/2, for pity's sake?? What does that mean? Since the intended audience of this book is not me, nor is it Swedes, then who is it and what system do they use?

I'm being slightly disingenuous. The audience is obviously American (despite it being a UK publication), and in fact I discovered thanks to this page that size 11 1/2 is pretty standard (if still pretty much a blank for me, I have trouble remembering my own shoe size never mind understanding others'). But then if all of this is translated so as not to confuse the reader with strange and alien terms, why leave the currency as Kronor?

Recommend to me...

Fri, 22 May 2009 14:04:23 GMT

... TV series to watch on DVD

(this actually rhymes. Ignore the scansion.)

So, I ran out of Battlestar Galactica episodes* to watch about a month ago, and decided to finish Angel Season 5. Unfortunately, Angel Season 5 does not hold the smallest tiniest candle to BSG, and I have rowed barely 10km since I switched. I need to find new TV to watch! Help me out here!

The thing that made BSG such perfect rowing viewing is that it was completely absorbing. I really needed to know what happened next, and with a strict rule that I could only watch it while I rowed, I got a lot of rowing done. The characters were appealing and interesting, so I liked spending time with them, and watching the episodes back to back was possible because of the very clever foreshadowing that was done.

I don't want to point people in a particular direction with their recommendations, so hopefully from the above you can gather what kind of thing I'm looking for.

* To clarify about running out of BSG episodes, I mean that season 3 is finished**, and I am waiting for season 4 on DVD. I'm only waiting a week, now, but pretend that I'm waiting a month because I forgot to post this entry :) Also, it will be worthwhile having the next series lined up for when I finish season 4.
** Please don't spoil season 4 for me. Please. I knew most of the twists in season 3 because of careless talk online, and it really impacted my enjoyment.

Sprung

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:10:23 GMT

I'm going to be optimistic and say that the precipitation earlier was whitish rain, not sleet, and that the sparse white things I saw drifting on the wind this morning were due to a bird fight overhead. Not snow. Oh no.

Because, in the last few days, Spring has aggressively arrived in Helsinki. I know all the signs.

1) What used to be fields covered in snow are now lakes, with areas of farmland around the edges. And ducks. I love how ducks have this flexible view of what is a suitable body of water. "You may call this a puddle," they seem to say, "but I call it home."
2) The weather feels much colder, while actually being warmer. This is because I am (as stated above) an optimist, and have retired my winter coat and clothes too early.
3) Every walk ends with me lugging a martyred-looking Tesla into the shower because she is up to her arm/legpits in mud and freshly thawed horseshit. Now that she is over two years old, and officially grown-up, there is not one single thing about the shower that she likes anymore. I would feel guilty, except that there is plenty she still likes about sitting on my pillow, so there is no room for me being soft.
4) There is litter everywhere. Months' worth of it, hidden under successive layers of snow, and now revealed in its entirety. I call it "the sins of Winter". Not just litter. Dogshit. Drunken pukes. Mysterious piles of I-don't-want-to-know.
5) Similarly, the whole Winter's worth of grit for paths is now all in one layer on top of the path. Luckily it is still wet out there, but in a few days of fine weather the air will be filled with the dust from it and wearing contact lenses will become hazardous.
6) Everyone is much more cheerful.

Rowing update

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:07:28 GMT

March
Distance: 91.3 km (cumulative 161.7 km)
Average speed: 11.98 km/h - slower than in February, but the pace is much more maintainable, witness the extra 20 km I rowed

Distance left to Kinsale: 2948.4 km
Distance left to Sweden: 228.9 km

Current location: At the end of the month, I was just 1.5km short of the end of the motorway in Turku. I'm irritated with myself, but I just could not get myself that extra distance to make the milestone. After this evening's row, I'm now through the city and heading for the ferry port at Naantali.

Conclusion: great improvement from last month, still room to do more

Milestones
So, I hit the 100km mark since my last update, I reduced the distance left to under 3000km, and now I have completed the first of the (many) long stretches on the journey. I'm glad I didn't find it too unmotivating to have no real landmarks to pass during the trip, as soon I will be facing the cross-water trip to to Kapellskår in Sweden, 213km of it, and then I will be spending the rest of the year on Swedish motorways.

Apart from rowing, I've not had much to say. Glorious victory in the rugby aside. I'm vaguely annoyed at work, for uninteresting reasons; I've got a bit addicted to an online game so I'm not reading here as often.

Next week I'm off to France for Easter, my first time out of Finland since June last year. I really need the holiday.

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:34:51 GMT

I need to save this for posterity.

	Team	Played	Won	Draw	Lost	For	Against	Pts
1	Ireland	5	5	0	0	121	73	10
2	England	5	3	0	2	124	70	6
3	France	5	3	0	2	124	101	6
4	Wales	5	3	0	2	100	81	6
5	Scotland	5	1	0	4	79	102	2
6	Italy	5	0	0	5	49	170	0

Pissed off by bad reporting (again)

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:41:55 GMT

View Poll: It's not fat it's fluff

And while I'm bitching, is it so difficult for reporters to remember that being overweight (BMI > 25) is not the same as being obese (BMI > 30)?

Rowing update

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:53:07 GMT

February
Distance: 70.412 km
Average speed: 12.17 km/h or 202.85 m/min (which is pretty good, actually)

Distance left to Kinsale: 3039km
Distance left to Turku: 92.7km
Location: On the motorway to Turku, nowhere very interesting

Conclusion: could do better

My body has turned into a strange shape. I have (for the first time in my entire life) huge muscles around my neck, shoulders, and upper arms. My elbows and wrists are solid, strong, I feel like I could punch a wall and only hurt my fingers*. Then, moving downwards, I still have a flabby belly, fat layered over my hips and arse. My legs, however, have big solid slabs of muscle, and my knees are pretty strong.

I'm not sure if this better than my previous "spider-shape", skinny arms and legs with a flabby mid-section. I've started doing the two hundred sit-ups program to tighten up my midriff, and I need to add one more activity to improve my general flexibility.

I started well this month, then somehow I got caught up trying to improve my overall speed each session. The muscles between my shoulder blades, the same ones that tense up when I use a computer, got to have a permanent tingle in them. I stopped altogether for a week, partly due to laziness, partly due to pain. I need to either do many more short distances and work on my speed, or else do longer distances and not worry about how slowly I go. But I'm a high need achiever, and there just aren't enough milestones to keep me happy**. It's just a matter of finding the balance, though, and the overall project is definitely useful as a motivator.

*I won't put this to the test. I am a coward.
**A whole month, and I haven't passed any of my milestones***.
***The first one will be when there are less than 3000 km left to go.

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:14:10 GMT

You know what I really don't like? I really don't like France 2 showing three quarters of a rugby match, and then passing the coverage over to a channel that I can't get.

I'm listening on internet radio now.

Idiot bloggers

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:24:53 GMT

This article in the Irish Times grabbed my interest.

A website designer found a bug in Ryanair's web site and blogged about it. Ryanair employees left several rude comments on the blog entry, including one fairly threatening one. Ryanair has now officially responded with: "It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm it won’t be happening again."

I'm going to comment on the bug itself (and what I as a professional tester would interpret from finding it,) tomorrow or over the weekend. Although I am just really tempted to organise a Bugfest for their website and live-blog it.

I wonder if it would count as malicious activity...

The Soup and the Laptop, Part II

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:22:46 GMT

I had hoped that by yesterday I would be able to reveal the happy ending to the laptop saga. But it was not to be, and although I am not quite at the ending just yet, it now seems certain what way this will go.

Now, it wasn't clear from my entry on Monday that my ex-laptop was my work machine. I ran around the corner to the nearby Apple Dealer (MacBook Pro 4GB, pre-solidbody model, but only a few months old for all that.) Their technician looked at it over night, and pronounced it a deader, swapped out the hard drive and the battery into a spare MacBook Pro they had while they waited to finalise the order for a replacement.

I talked to my boss, he talked to the guy in Purchasing, and the Apple Dealer called me to say that everything was going great, she needed to get one final confirming email, and then I'd have a brand new MacBook Pro, solid state body, sexed up display (which actually I don't like, but anyway), etc etc.

The odd thing was, for completely bogus reasons that don't belong in this post, the company had stopped buying new Macs a couple of months ago. I thought that Purchasing would have known this, and felt all clever for having found a way around the block. I hadn't gone quite as far as encouraging everybody else to fling soup into their machines, but it was something I had been considering for next week.

My boss arrived in my team room this afternoon with a long face, and I knew that my workaround plan had failed. He saw how unhappy I looked in response, and started trying to find another way around it.

"Can you even do your work without a Mac?"

We all pulled faces, and muttered, and I admitted in a small voice that yes, I could (and I used to - it was just much more unpleasant), but he went off anyway in search of a Mac. After all, transferring apps and files from one Mac to another is trivial, while migrating to a Windows box will probably take me a week.

So, he found a Mac for me, a temporary old MacBook with 2GB of RAM for a month, until someone leaves and I get his MacBook Pro. And it could be a lot worse, of course, but my evening plans were originally to pick up my new shiny machine from the Apple Dealer and copying my apps and settings and documents, so the revised plan of grumbling on LJ, doing some housework, and then rowing just isn't up to much.

Not exactly according to plan

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:58:46 GMT

Yesterday I was working from home, all set up on the kitchen table where I could stare out the window at my neighbours going past, where I was close to the kettle, where I could easily make myself some toast to nibble, or something else to eat, as I continued working.

My plan was that I would heat up the soup I made over the weekend and eat that "at my desk", then later take a break and go for a walk with Tesla. She's in heat again, and needs a lot of exercise, while paradoxically she actually gets less exercise because we can't chance letting her off the leash.

Anyway, that was the idea, I would spend my lunch break with Tesla as opposed to actually lunching.

And then I threw an entire bowl of soup over my laptop. RIP.

Why I Like BNL

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:55:40 GMT

We all had our ski masks and sawed off shotguns
But how do you plan for a bank full of nuns

I guess we panicked - we all have taboos
And they were like zebras; they had us confused
We should be in condos with oceanfront views
But instead we're most wanted on the 6 o'clock news

- Bank Job, Barenaked Ladies, from the album Barenaked Ladies Are Me

Nails

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:05:09 GMT

In a perfect world, the shop I saw from the bus today called Imperial Nails should be an ironmonger. This not being a perfect world, it was instead a beauty salon.

Then again, perhaps Imperial Nails are similar to Imperial Stormtroopers, in which case the real puzzle is, which empire is training its nails in Helsinki, of all places?

Lament of the ex-pat

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:22:36 GMT

Personal training is now a luxury in Donegal.

(From an article in the Irish Times about, what else, the recession.)

I have missed a whole part of Irish history, that time during which personal training was not a luxury in Donegal, and I feel robbed.

On my way

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:29:03 GMT

(and over the latest insecurities)

Over 30km into my rowing trip to Kinsale, on the motorway to Turku. Last night I had a really good session of 9km, last week I think I was still a bit sick as doing even 2km seemed difficult at times.

I picture the scenery in my head as I pass it, the motorway is empty of cars and I am facing backwards. Facing backwards going down hills, even in my mind, is pretty nervewracking. Sometimes I picture crowds lining the road, cheering me on.

Mainly, I watch Battlestar Galactica Season 2 on the computer, because the motorway to Turku is not very interesting and I am going so slowly that I need something else to keep me rowing, instead of doing something else.

I decided to publish the spreadsheet tracking my journey. In the unlikely event that anyone wants to follow that closely. Or indeed, wants to see how much I obsessively fiddle with spreadsheets.

Too good for my own good

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:45:52 GMT

Being good this week:
- 15km rowed so far
- two chapters read of Aaresaari ('for foreigners' translation, not 'for Finns' translation)
-- about sixty new words learnt
- home made vegetable soup being eaten at lunch instead of fattening canteen lunch
- favourite meals cooked for both my husband and my dog
- finished book of feminist essays by Angela Carter

Being bad this week:
- gave in to craving for cheddar and brie on Monday
-- half a kilo heavier than last week
- still not being very productive at work
- got very cranky on Tuesday
- reading trashy crime novel

However, I still think that on balance I am improved.

And on a side note, I find it really weird that the books published in Finnish for people learning the language are all translations of classics in English.

Stating the obvious

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:13:59 GMT

I will take a break from swearing at my test tools (temperamental bits of hardware and software that have the potential to make my life a joy, if only they would stop making my life a misery), and point out that I have changed my icon.

The old one has been about for five years or so, and high time it was changed. I took this picture (a still from a video) on my phone on Saturday, while I was out walking Tesla. It is reassuring to note that I look exactly the same as I did when I was twelve.

Row, row, row your boat

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:23:23 GMT

So far, I have rowed from Tallinn to my office in Espoo. It was 83.66 km, as the crow flies and as the Google Earth line tells me, and I didn't even have to leave the comfort of my own home.

As part of my plan to fit in regular exercise, that does not put extra pressure on my ankles, and that also strengthens my (hyper-extending) elbows, inspired by truepenny I spent a huge portion of my savings on a rowing machine. And not just any rowing machine, but a WaterRower Oxbridge model in Cherrywood which, take it from me, is the BMW of rowing machines.

Also inspired by truepenny, and being a lover of spreadsheets, I am keeping track of how far I row and how long it takes me each session, and the cumulative time and distance, plus my average distance per day. truepenny is rowing to Mordor, which is just the coolest thing ever, I am keeping myself in the real world. Well, kind of in the real world - I see no reason not to row across land, seeing as I am imagining my progress. My trip from Tallinn to the office was my warmup. Now I am planning a much more ambitious trip. I'm going to row from my home in Helsinki to Kinsale, Co. Cork. I'm not actually from Kinsale, but Innishannon is just up the road from there and Kinsale is a much nicer place to aim for.

It's quite a way. Using the driving instructions from Google Earth, it is over 3000 km, and involves ten different countries, three ferries, the bridge from Sweden to Denmark (which I've always wanted to go across, so yay!), and the Channel Tunnel. I think that, factoring in illness, holidays, and usual laziness, I will aim for an average of 20 km a week, which means that if I maintain my interest and general well being, I should be rolling into Kinsale in about three years time. Three years! I must be insane.

I'm not going to blog every session, since the disadvantage to using real world journeys is that I will be spending almost two months just on the motorway to Turku, and all 75 km of the Netherlands is summed up as "Continue on A67", so it is a bit dull. But I'm dividing it into smaller goals which I will mention in passing. This entry is just so that you know what the hell I'm on about.

I'm off to a good start. I haven't been on the machine in over a week, thanks to a particularly unpleasant bout of the flu.

Two random things

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:58:02 GMT

1) Many years ago, Joel the Elder was given homework from his Finnish language class to write about what he could see out his window. He wrote a (really quite beautiful) poem about winter nights blurring the boundary between sky and sea. "Nobody else wrote a poem," he told us yesterday, looking faintly surprised. He's such a wonderful man.

2) Walking Tesla through a field one night last week, she found and tried to befriend a mouse. After a lot of excitement, probably involving her picking up the mouse in her mouth and feeling it move, the mouse decided it had had enough, and began meeping in the most strident and irritated tone I have ever heard coming out of any rodent. "Would! You! Ever! Fuck! Off!" it shouted.

Books 2009

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:54:53 GMT

3) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Another of the 1001 Books, coincidentally instead of deliberately read, because I read it as part of my fascination with the Cambridge Spies Scandal, and the repercussions from that. I'm reading around it, so TTSS fits in there perfectly.

I haven't read any other John le Carré before this, but since finishing TTSS I have bought two more of his, and count myself a fan. I think that I started reading one of his books when I was far too young for it, and discarded it, and from then on decided that I didn't like his books. Later in life, I became interested in tense thrillers, especially ones not set in the US*, and also in spycraft and then in Kim Philby, and yet I kept steering clear of le Carré until I realised that I was basing all this avoidance on a teenage fit of boredom and restlessness.

So yes, I have taken to him (and to George Smiley) like a duck to water, and am halfway through The Honourable Schoolboy now.

4) Mutts III: More Shtuff by Patrick McDonnell

His third collection of the popular strips. I hate the way Mooch the cat lisps, but love the interaction between the him and Earl the dog, and just love the way that McDonnell creates both animals with just a few lines yet manages to catch the shape that they would naturally put themselves in.

5) Camouflage by Joe Haldeman

You know the way that modern authors, blessed with word processors, databases, and spellcheck, often drag a book to twice its optimal length, with the ending stretched so that you could spend two days reading the climax? Haldeman has done the opposite. Five pages from the end, and he's barely set up the climax! It felt rushed, like a deadline or wordcount forced his hand.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed this one, much more than I liked The Accidental Time Machine which I read last year. It's not going to find its way into any lists of Best SF Novels, but it made compulsive reading, and had some delightful details. I particularly liked the way that the changeling would transform into a Great White when too stressed, almost its equivalent of comfort eating, and I liked the way that we were shown this and not told it - Writing 101 and yet weirdly often still forgotten.

**********************************

In addition to The Honourable Schoolboy, as mentioned above, I am reading a collection of Alan Bennett's plays, and have been listening to a huge number of audio short stories, as well as radio plays. My pace of reading will be slacking off from now on, though, as my Finnish language classes start up again on Tuesday, and the next Players production gets under way.

* Not saying anything against US fiction per se, just that I'm not very familiar with the history or geography, and so many authors assume that I am

Contexts

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:08:09 GMT

You know the way, you can be in a typical situation with friends and acquaintances, and then various things come together in your subconscious, and you realise that your normal day is in fact a day Fraught with Significance for others. And it comes home to you, again, that you really are only a bit part in somebody else's movie-of-their-life.

Or you're out with the dog, and a couple jog past, holding hands and all smiles, and you're not even a bit part for them, you're background material in their love montage.

And then you hear from an old friend, and you catch up on news and babies ("Potato headed, we call him") and you're not really down about anything because you are the star in your own movie, and have a hefty supporting role in various other movies, and you're not really thinking about that anymore, caught up in your own drama or comedy or love story or tragedy or the whole mix of those that makes up your life.

Tesla and the frost

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:15:55 GMT

The weather has been wonderful since just after Christmas, about -10C with brilliant sunshine, which gives that delicate crystal frost on everything (which you can't really see in the photo, it was taken on my phone.) We went for a long walk on Sunday, following the smaller paths around the hill in Malminkartano, and then running up and down the mountain bike tracks.

Books 2009

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:20:19 GMT

1) The Prize in the Game, by Jo Walton

Read on my iPod Touch, I started reading this one weekend when stranded at my mother-in-laws with no paper books available. I had no idea until googling it just now that it was part of a series, it certainly stands alone with no problems. It's a short, trashy, YA fantasy, and she has written much better, but I've also read worse.

2) The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

One of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which is why I am calling it a book. Weirdly, I think I maybe read it before, it began to seem very familiar in places, as if it had been excerpted in one of my English literature anthologies at school or something. I'm usually aware that I am lucky to live in the time I do, and I don't kid myself that things were better in the past - but it is always good to see evidence of this. In fact, from now on I will be forcing women (especially, men also if need be) who start expressing nostalgia for previous eras to read this.

Trailer

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:12:07 GMT

The Helsinki Axe Murders.

finnbear as the murderer (lucky bastard!), Z. being extremely good as the main character. ("I have a bone to pick with you," she told me during filming. "Your husband is trying to kill me!")

I play Cop #3 and Cop #4 in the same person, but I didn't make the trailer. :(

slimmeroftheyea - this is one of the films I was telling you about at Åcon.

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:38:55 GMT

Almost three months ago, I began to get pains in my ankles and wrists, especially on my left side. After a while, my elbows and knees also started to hurt, and for a large part of November I also had shooting pains through the muscles of my arms and legs.

Thankfully, the muscular pain has stopped, and the joint pain is not the early onset of rheumatoid arthritis. Yay!

On the downside, I am still in constant pain, it is still unexplained, and after three months of limited movement I am at my lifetime's fattest - which latter doesn't help at all with the ankles.

On the upside again, my lifetime's fattest is not very fat, I am barely five kilos away from an ideal weight. I have finally got a good anti-inflammatory painkiller, so I'm starting some gentle exercise to get me back into shape. Or, get me back into the shape where I can start exercising seriously.

It has been a strange experience in many ways, for the first time in my life I have been brought face to face with my own mortality - and that facing has been weird, I've been thinking about how long my remaining life could be if I had to spend all of it in pain, as opposed to how short it will be. In addition, the lack of fitness means that I now trudge unwillingly up the stairs, only when I really have to, as opposed to the way I used to dash up and down them.

My grandmother had a saying: "If you don't have it in the head, you've got to have it in the legs". What she meant, for those unfamiliar with the saying, is that if you keep forgetting what you came upstairs for, you'll be coming upstairs a lot more often. I used to take a perverse kind of pride in "having it in the legs", but lately my head has been doing most of the work, mostly the convoluted justifications about how it can wait, I didn't really need it anyway.

Bah. I have been feeling sorry for myself, and I'm trying to keep that out of this entry (and notice how you haven't had three months of me finding new ways to say "I hurt!!!!" - only poor finnbear has had that joy). I'm also trying not to be overly dramatic - the most likely explanation at the moment is some kind of stomach infection that has moved to my joints, which is a very long way from anything incurable or life threatening, and I think that I'm probably over the worst of it. In fact, although this time of year it is difficult for me to be positive about anything, I'm as close as possible to thinking that everything will get better from here on.