The Black One

The Black One, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

Bored a couple of cats out of their heads

The Cow II

The Cow II, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

Well, you see, the cows are cool. Read Garry Larson and you'll understand.

Castle

Castle, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

Ireland at its best.

Wallflower

Wallflower, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A flower on a nice old stone fence they have in abundance in Dublin.

Evil Dwells Here

Evil Dwells Here, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

It has been a while. A summer. Barely got to stay a straight week at home. So there has been a pause, but also a bunch of photos. I'd like to start the season with a rather gloomy one. Taken from the window of our bus in Dublin. Spooky, isn't it?

Dances with animals

Dances with animals, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

Mr. Aleksei Turovski, who gave us an amazing tour of Tallinn Zoo a while back.

Camouflage

CRW_8666.jpg, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A giraffe in London Zoo

The Raven

CRW_8916.jpg, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

The best of the series of shots of the ravens of the Tower. Magnificent birds, really!

British Squirrel

British Squirrel, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

St. James park, London. June 2007.

Roaming

, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A stray cat that occasionally visits Villa Kütt in Käätso. Spring 2007

Estonian rhapsody

205_0584-01, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A view to Estonia in early spring. Matsalu, spring 2006

Duckling

Duckling, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A duckling at the London Zoo.

Dance

Dance, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A swarm of small gnats in sunset light.London, st. James Park

On search

On search, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

Small Furry Animal

Small Furry Animal, originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

May 2007

A green one

"Greenfinch", originally uploaded by Andres Kütt.

A greenfinch in my back garden.

Shaky expression

Among all the photos taken at the Eestifoto Animal Sports seminar, this one somehow appeals to me the most. The horse has such a geeky expression :)

Jellyfish

Was totally blown away yesterday when I opened the front page of flickr: they had my photo there. Oh, turned out this was not the case. Just somebody had taken a very similar picture of the same jellyfish tank in Monterey. Here's my version:

Goldeneye

Goldeneye, Kakerdaja raba, Spring '07

Back in business

Have beaten the jetlag and distilled the 1600+ photos from the trip into 128 more or less OK images. Here we go again!

An image from a series of shots taken at the Monterey Aquarium Medusa tank.

Day 17: Home at last

Uh, it's done. Back at home. The end of the trip went relatively smoothly. The only aggravations were the fact that the flight to Tallinn was 40 minutes late (hm, why did Estonian Air made as much loss last year as they had made profit a year earlier?) and that for some reason none of the lounges at Gatwick granted admittance based on my Eurobonus gold and economy ticket to Tallinn with EA. I have always been there and it has been one of the main reasons to get my gold card at all and till now I have not had any trouble on any airport with a Star Alliance flight to board. Strange, shall investigate.

Ah, home sweet home. Boarded my flight home and the first sign was there. During all my flights with all those various airplanes and all those different people for the first time my personal space was invaded mercilessly. That was not done by a 200 kg British bachelor with a couple of pints under the tie (which I would have at least understood) but by a normal-sized Estonian girl in late teens. She quite obviously _needed_ to open that newspaper as wide as possible and obviously needed to have her elbows reaching exactly as far as she found comfortable. Not in a condition to pick a fight I drew to a corner and tried to sleep.

Second thing about home were the newspapers. The main articles of "Eesti Päevaleht" were about a bear cub growing up in a refuge, an essay about history of parliament in Estonia (inspired by a three-week old incident where a member of coalition was given a beating for targeting a question towards the member of government) and endless ravings about Pronkssõdur (a bronze statue of a Red Army soldier that represents the glorious victory of Soviet Union over fascism that has been turned into a pilgrimage site and a source of international turmoil by reckless actions of the government). Oh, there were also a couple of paragraphs on elections in Nigeria and France, but that was about it. How come there are thick interesting newspapers produced every single day all over the world but the ones in Estonia are full of week-old crap plus selected international news.

After arriving in Tallinn, I was greeted by a huge passport check queue. You see, only one officer was there to do the work. And so, my arrival to Estonia took longer than my admittance to the US of A. Brilliant, welcome to Elbonia!

Day 17: Going home

The day started off with a packing frenzy. Had to open my bag three times to accommodate forgotten items and the it now looks like a particularly round pig. Checked out from the hotel (albeit having a nasty habit of sometimes hiding my pillows and complaints when they were not able to do room service 0830 AM it was OK. Not good, but OK) and headed towards the Marine Headlands.

Was driving happily along US-101 when the Hertz Neverlost (tm) thing went "proceed to the route" and positioned the car on its on-screen map somewhere near the eastern border of the State of California. Frustratingly enough it kept doing that for the rest of the day. Sometimes coming to its senses immediately, sometimes requiring somewhat longer to recover. Very strange.

Marine Headlands is such a beautiful place. Spent what was left of the day on a beach (should look up its name) that was a such a peaceful place. Strangely, the fact that it was pretty crowded did not change that impression. The ocean, cliffs on both sides of the beach and rolling hills in the background. Beautiful. There were surfers in the water but for some reason (being lame?) they didn't do much actual surfing, I only saw two guys manageing to stand up for a couple of seconds.

The place was also a paradise for dogs and those were present in all shapes and sizes. From a tiny chiuaua in lila outfit two a rather large rotweiler. Made acquaintance with most of them, took as many pictures as I could (yes, Margus, your new lens is perfect for dog-shooting) and exchanged smiles and a couple of words with the owners.

At some point I felt tired. Just bloody tired, hungry and homesick. Farewell to California it was, then. It managed to grab me for the last half an hour when a huge grey waterbird (could not make out what exactly it was) flew across the road just in front of me and landed in a pond nearby. In an attempt to get closer to it I discovered a dragonfly heaven and was stuck for some photography. The light was very harsh (it was close to midday) but there's a hope for some imagenary. Got one of a big dragonfly munching away on a smaller one, lelt's hope my hand didn't shake too much.

Then it really was it and after a futile attempt to find a parking space in town for some food I headed towards the airport.

You've got to love the San Francisco International Airport. It's international terminals are big and airy. It is never too crowded, there are plenty of places to charge your laptop and even food both in and outside the security gates is tasty.

So it is done now. Gave the car back to Hertz, checked my bulgeing bag in and am sitting at the gate. Even the US Government knows that I'm about to leave the country.

Time for conclusions, then.

The car, Mazda 6 from Hertz, was good. The steering felt strange till the very end and it was surprisingly sensitive to side-wind on one occasion on the coast. However, the gearbox was very good, ergonomix spot on and fuel efficiency reasonable. What did they do to the poor v6 under the bonnet, is unclear, however. If felt like it was missing a pair of cylinders: below 4000 nothing was going on and even above that there was no real shove. All in all, it was OK. The navigation system was also good despite the hickups and I actually prefer its graphics to the one from Garmin.

Travel arrangements were terrible. There's no other word for it. Jüri and Bertrand were forced to spend a night in Frankfurt, also courtesy of Estravel. Maybe next time I'll just go and book the whole trip through the internet myself?

People were generally very kind and the meetings I had were very useful. I'm proud to work with these guys.

Weather was not so good. The rain on Saturday and the cold cloudy wind in Washington should have not been there.

Photography was good. How good exactly, shows when I get home to my big monitor and can do some sorting. In general, I think that the second time on the Big Sur yielded some spectacular images. The Washington zoo was cool, too. What is obvious, though, is that my 10D is not cutting it any more. It's slow on bursts (the Lexar card, despite being a 133mhz one, is also of the slow sort), takes far too long to start up, the screen is too small, the sensor magnification is limiting (you shouldn't have to lug an additional ultra-wide zoom around every time there's a chance for some landscape-worthy light), minimum ISO is 100 instead of 50 and above 400 only black and white images can be produced due to the noise. It's time to start saving for the 5D or whatever will have replaced it by the time I get the funds together. The fact that I now own sensor-cleaning equipment (Sensor Swabs + accompanying liquid) is pleasing: some of the shots from Washington were ruined because of dust on the sensor, this will not happen in the future, I hope.

As a summary, I'd say that (although am not home yet, any of the airlines could still loose my bag or I could still be late to the flight home despite 5-hour delay) the trip was a success. Both personally and for the business. This blog will now revert back to it's normal, more photography-oriented self and your's truly hopes to start publishing on humararchitecture.blogspot.com on a more regular basis once the jet-lag has worn off.

Day 14-15: The end is near

Day 14 was nothing spectacular: the usual work thing and in the evening the folks down here took us out to an excellent sushi place. Can't remember the name (it's only a couple of blocks from our south campus) but the atmosphere was very homely and sushi excellent and plentiful. Thanks, guys!

Today we planned to go out and play with Jüri and Bertrand in their hilariously large rental car. It's a Mercury Grand Marquis and a quite new one. The fake wooden inserts! The uncovered wires leading to rear screen heating! The ancient green lighting and only a little younger buttons on the dashboard! I have heard, that American cars are poor on packaging but this was just ridiculous. The car is actually bigger than a long wheelbase 7 series BMW (5361 vs. 5179 mm) but has no more legroom in the back than a 5er. How do they do that? Also, I'm highly suspicious of cars I can push down 10 centimeters with one hand and that have bumpers that actually bend while I do so.

Anyway, we started off to a place called Fry's that was literally jaw-dropping. It's the single largest electronics store I have ever seen, roughly the size of a really big supermarket back at home. Very good selection, too. However, they didn't have, and apparently did not know of, the IR-blaster thing I was looking for (allows your media center to control an external device via its infrared sensor). What they did have was an xbox 360 with Guitar Hero running on it and I was instantly hooked. Hooked, I tell you! They also had Lego Mindstorm but I could carry myself out of the place before forgetting the size of my luggage and the limit of my credit card.

After that, it was back to the cool photography store I had discovered and after finding out that stuff actually costs 30% less than in Tallinn, severe shopping was done. Excellent.

Next item on the agenda: Mythbusters. Finding their address was easy (do your own googling, will you?) and getting there was a toddle thanks to the Garmin device Avis had given to the guys (not the hideous Motorola I wrote about earlier, must check it out). We got there, I took the camera and... no CF card. Checked the bag, no CF card wallet either. Damn. This is just me: you go off for a day full of photography and you forget all of your media. Jüri had been more considerate and I hope I will get a picture of me and the M5 Industries logo. From the moment on, me and Bertrand shared a quest to find compact media (he had just bought a camera) which we completed at Ritz Camera on Market street completely blowing my photography budget in the process.

By that time, our adventures had made us hungry, the next stop was for some steak (Joe's Grill, near Union Square. Questionable service, questionable prices, questionable steak, not recommended). After we had finished, it promptly started to rain heavily. Which destroyed my hope for photography and the need for that 2 GB Lexar card I had just purchased. Oh well, you can't have too much storage these days. We headed back to base.

Decided to spend the evening at the movies. Hot Fuzz was supposed to be good and, guided by google, I ended up at Century Berryessa 10. Admittance cost reasonable $10 (wee bit cheaper than in Tallinn, would not dare to compare standard of living, though) the medium-sized popcorn was humongous and so was the mid-size coke. The movie itself was a mediocre one. Good old English language, good old English countryside, a tad weak storyline and some good action sequences. Good laugh, though.

Tomorrow I'll be off to Tallinn. I do think I will find time for some closing thoughts during my 8-hour stay in London but you never know. Seeya!

P.S. Some idiot has started posting spam into the comments here, will switch moderation on.

Day 13: US is getting to me

The day consisted mostly of work-related meetings that were tiring (people loved my presentations, though, which was nice). So nothing spectacular there. However, later when I went out to have some dinner and discuss situation with Jüri and Bertrand something happened. My Hertz NeverLost (tm) thing broke down. It went "acquiring satellite" and just did not get anywhere. Figuring that it would come to its senses sooner or later I drove off, towards a random highway. Still acquiring. Pulled over, shut it off, then back on. Nothing. Turned off the ignition, nothing. At that moment it hit me: I am god knows where without a map, without clear understanding of where my hotel was or where I was going to and I didn't even have a compass. These are all the things I used to have when I drove in the States before I started renting GPS systems (Well, this, and maporama. Used to print out routes to and from all the places I was probable to go and just have a huge stack of paper in the car). Anyway, the luck turned, and after some waiting with ignition off the darn thing did a reboot and after asking my confirmation to "thou shall not use me while driving, you idiot!" displayed a route. Thank you. Next time, will have a map, and Lonely Planet, and compass and important routes and will study the map to understand the basic topology. A promise.

There was this horrible massacre in Virgina Tech at the beginning of the week and this brought me to two thoughts I'd like to share.

Firstly, it was the press coverage. Was sitting on my bed at the hotel watching CNN (or fox or cbs or whoever, they all had the same basic information) when they were about to reveal the identity of the shooter. Went and checked upon Estonian news later and turned out most of the bigger sites had published the news about the identity a couple of hours before CNN had it. Heck, they even knew it was because of a unhappy love story. Makes you wonder, how come an Estonian newspaper had news like this before any of the big US stations that were on the story like ravens. Until you read the Estonian articles more thoroughly. One of them said the guy was Korean at the beginning and Chinese at the end. The other said that each of the victims had at least 3 "showers" of shots ("valang" in Estonian) which the gun the man was using is just not capable of. So my theory is that they just acted upon some rumor going around and not facts that the US stations were waiting for. Used to think that Äripäev was the only crappy newspaper in Estonia but seems the general level of journalism is way lower than what I thought.

Secondly. You see, every liberty a society enjoys, has a price attached. You get democracy and you also get the chance that a charismatic idiot gets elected. You get freedom of speech and you also get people claiming there was no holocaust. You get freedom to carry a gun and you also get lunatics running amok with them. And there's the unfortunate catch. With the last one, the people who actually enjoy the liberty are not the ones paying the price. Because, well, they own a gun and are therefore pretty unlikely to get shot at (or at least can retaliate rapidly). Instead, kids at school and people on the streets will suffer. Just stating the facts here, people in the US have to make that choice.

Day 12: A lot of work and some play

Most of the day was pretty much as yesterday: a lot of work that I can't really describe here. But, after I was finished with all of it, I headed to the Big Sur. Thing is the previous time I was there a mysterious hair (turned out to be a hair from my blower brush) ruined a couple of good shots. So, since I had got some Sensor Swabs from an excellent photo store and removed most of the dust, I could hope for better quality. I ended up spending (again) most of the time on a strip of coast a couple of miles south of Point Lobos. I just did not want to leave, just didn't. At some point, however, the sun went down and I headed back. This place definitely makes my top 3 favorite places:

Day 11: Working hard

No news here, move along, people. Move along, will ya?

Day 10: The works

Finally a solid day of work. Very good, but nothing to write about.

Got a real good hint today: besides the gym on our campus, there is a nice running/biking trail close by. And true it is: go along the Hamilton, cross the Bascom and before the bridge go down the stairs. There you go, Los Gatos Creek Trail. According to locals, it goes basically on for ever in both directions. Certainly was long enough for me. Whether you prefer that to the running mill in an air conditioned gym is a different story, though.

Saw a new BMW 3rd series cabrio in the parking lot. Saw new x5 near a mall yesterday. Why is it that the people here get new beemers before we do? Something seems to be wrong with the concept of Americans knowing nothing about cars, too. Saw a Porsche Speedster 1600 super, a Diablo, couple of Miatas, old Porsches and every man and his dog seem to drive a 350Z. Weird.

One other thing. Why the heck do they build showers like this? Donald A. Norman is clearly not popular around whoever designs these things. Imagine a clock that has "blue" written from 6 to 10 (left side) and "red" from 2 to 6 (right side). Now imagine that the long hand is pointing at 6 and the short one on 12. Of course, the hands are fixed to a line and are part of a knob. Now, where do you turn this thing to get a warm shower? To figure it out, you need to make following assumptions:

1. You can't adjust the volume of water, just temperature. How would you know that?
2. The shower will start to spit out cold water (not hot) as the first thing. A splash of ice cold water, anybody?
3. The temperature is indicated by the _short_ not long end of the knob

None of which matches a mental model a normal person has about a shower. Just incredible.

Day 9: California dreaming

Woke up this morning into glorious Californian sunshine. What a treat! Started off with some shopping. First was the Discovery store at Westfield mall which also didn't have any actual Discovery-related stuff in them so that chain is official given up as of now. Then my traditional target of pilgrimage, the Oakley store at Santana Row. Was initially going to look at "Unknowns" but those turned out to be far too small. However, just beside them sat a pair of Ducati Monster Dogs which happen to be my favorites: after spotting them in a bizarre small store in some Spanish airport a couple of years ago I have failed to find anything else that fits my big round face. Have been living in fear of loosing, scratching or breaking those ever since so ended up getting myself an identical pair, just to make sure.

Just beside the Oakley store, the is the local Borders which had a section dedicated to Kurt Vonnegut who has recently passed away (his Slaughterhouse 5 was one of the most influential books I read in my teenage years). "Breakfast of Champions" is now here on the table. They also had a massive two-volume The Complete Far Side (~$120) which was deemed very desirable but too expensive and heavy.

Then it was off to Monterey Aquarium which I have sought to visit several times in the past but always something happened. It was not such a big deal. Surely, they had penguins and otters and _three_ gift shops and approximately gazillion educational games for kids but all in all nothing very spectacular. Also, they had some sort of Mexican day which meant there was a large band of youngsters playing Mexican music in the center of the aquarium. I have never ever heard three people sing and so utterly miss each other and Greenpeace ought to look into what was done to these two trumpets.

After a small unhealthy lunch of some pastry and apples the sun was low enough for some photography so I headed for the Big Sur. As usual, I did not get far and got stuck quite soon at some breathtaking bay where I sat and took photos for almost three hours. Got almost swept away by the incoming tide, too. Despite the relatively low wind the waves were spectacular, hopefully some photos will escape the bin. This one is a good candidate: A nasty hair has appeared on several of my pictures, need to get a sensor cleaning kit ASAP.

Day 8: The flight

There's nothing much to say about that day. I was supposed to leave to San Francisco on a 06:20 flight from Dulles. Upon arrival, I was greeted by huge queues and a horrible mess with check-in counters. After spending 40 minutes in a queue, I was told that my flight (and, in fact, the next one to SF) were canceled and I was to go to a queue ironically enough labeled "additional services". After spending almost an hour on that queue I was told that there was absolutely no way I was going to SF that day. There were waiting lists, but nothing was certain. After making various loud noises and pointing out that I was absolutely not spending another day in Washington the man behind the counter looked closer and went "oh". Turned out, that as my flight was originally going to be a business class one, somebody had already re-booked me to SF. Through Chicago. On a flight that was leaving in the afternoon Having no alternatives, I took the chance and spent next 9 hours watching movies and working. Finally at the gate, I was upgraded to first class (a first time for me) without any explanation. Unfortunately the flight only takes less than two hours and the plane was a battered old 767 so no bar, no massage, no flat-folding seats.

Landing in Chicago is truly magnificent: You can see the whole town with a tiny island of skyscrapers on one end and the rest is just a featureless checker board of suburbs as far as the eye can see. Scary. If you step out of the plane, you immediately sense the difference from the Dulles airport. Where the latter is a fairly dark, gloomy and joyless place the former surprises with light, room and happy people. The biggest difference, though, is food. In Dulles you can't find anything better to eat than hamburgers and sweet mass-produced pastry. In Chicago, there is a outlet selling apples, bananas, yogurt and such after every 50 meters. Very nice. After spending three more hours in that relative weight-watchers paradise, I was finally off to San Francisco where we landed 4 hours later. Then, after waiting for my bag for an hour (some idiot had put a set of random bags aside in a far corner behind the carousel) I rented a car, drove to the hotel and immediately fell asleep. From hotel to hotel, the total trip duration was 22 hours. Usually, it takes roughly 19-20 hours from Tallinn to SF via Frankfurt!

Ah, car rental. Decided to choose Hertz over Avis this time as the Avis GPS thing (its sort of a mobile phone with GPS inside that talks to a server that calculates routes) really sucks whereas Hertz Neverlost thing is a decent big-screen Magellan unit that actually works and has a usable interface. Turned out that besides this, Hertz has a very nice selection of cars, too. In the parking lot, there was a nice row of Z350s, a Corvette, some Volvo S80s and nice Caddies. Next time I'm here I'll pay the difference and take a 350. Wheeee! Not this time, though. Have to do with a Mazda 6 which is a huge improvement over the Jeep monstrosity we drove last time. It has decent suspension that actually stops wobbling after you leave the steering alone (not so the Focus I once drove) and a smooth 6-speed auto (as opposed to hideous 4-speeders American cars usually get). The steering is strangely over-amplified and feels very artificial. Could that be a US-thing as Brits have gave Mazda6 very high grades for the whole drivetrain.

One more thing I have to get off my chest. It's the Dulles airport. I just can't figure it out. The thing is that you travel between planes and the terminal and between terminals using very strange buses that are short, wide and can be risen up to the second floor level. So to go to terminal C, you step into this thing, it is lowered to ground level, driven around the airport and then risen up. Didn't it ever occur to the designers of this thing that if they built the whole terminal on _ground_ level, they could make do with standard buses and not these undoubtedly expensive custom developments?

Day 6-7: The messup

This one goes out to the fine people of Estravel. Last morning I checked out from one hotel and into a new one. The cab driver dropped me off at the wrong hotel, but that didn't even aggravate me much. Checked in for one night and ordered a car for transfer to the airport next morning. The car arrived (a long wheelbase Lincoln Towncar that amazingly cost $60 vs. $52 for ordinary dirty taxicab) and took me to Dulles. Where I found out that my plane is to leave on 15th not 13th. And this is why: apparently, Estravel had done another two booking in another hotel for the last two days of my stay. As I had done the planning a long time ago and did not see these bookings in the pile of papers and tickets the sort of trip requires I figured that my check-out date from the hotel is also my departure date. This would have undoubtedly surfaced earlier, but Estravel DID NOT GIVE ME ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER UP TO THE POINT WHERE MY PLANE WAS ALREADY LEAVING. Who would have thought that a 7-day stay in Washington would need FIVE different hotel bookings in two different hotels?

I'm still angry but about to go jogging which usually calms me down a little bit.

Spent the day sleeping and shopping. Went to a mall at Pentagon City with a hope to find a Discovery Channel store and maybe some place to get something to clean the extremely dusty sensor of my D10. Found the former (which was almost devoid of any Discovery-channel related stuff, no Mythbusters t-shirt this time unfortunately) but not the latter. At the mac store I stumbled upon Bose headphones attached to an iPod. Boy, are they good. I have never ever ever heard such audio quality and the noise cancellation is amazing: the whole background rumble of a big mall just went away on a flick of a switch. They are portable, too, which is important for me. But they cost $300. Still longing, but at the moment, they are just too expensive.

Day 5: still gathering

Washington at dusk. It's raining as I'm jogging towards the White House with Sepultura "Criminals in Uniform" blasting in my ears. Two police cars pull over right next to me with their lights flashing.

The rest of the day started off in a very slow and jetlagged manner. We were given a tour of the Jefferson building and I honestly tried to take pictures. Just nothing I came up with didn't do the place any justice so here's a picture of the neighboring Supreme Court instead. Aren't we just ants?

Day 4: the gathering

Finally got to what I was sent here for - the Seminar. It was extremely tiring (9 hours of alphabet soup could kill a horse) but useful. And the venue! Jefferson building of the Library of Congress. Just fabulous. However, I did not bring my camera which meant I could hardly take advantage of the glorious morning and evening light with no tourists around. This is something that shall be righted today.

Oh, one more thing. The basic message of Washington seems to be "if you don't live here, you don't belong here". Hadn't I protested the hotel would have made me move rooms for just one day. After which I would have stayed in another hotel for one day. Why would anybody do that? Also, the metro is just driving me nuts: the ticket machine is happy to sell you a day pass 8AM but nothing indicates that these things do not work till 0930. The fare system is also quite cool: when buying a ticket, you need to enter the price of your journey. Which is not indicated anywhere. After talking to the guy in charge I learned that my trip would cost me $1.35 (at least it's cheap), thank you very much.

Another day of the seminar awaits, and this time I'll bring the camera.

Day 3: The zoo

The jetlag is still there. The hammer comes down around 7PM. But before that, the day contained my first business meeting here (quite a strange experience to talk to a guy who has his name in the name of a law firm in downtown Washington) and a long walk in the zoo.

To get to the zoo, I decided not to walk but try out the metro. Boy, is it different from the one in London. Where the tube is a tight but somehow light and lively and vibrant place, Washington metro is a huge, gloomy, dark place without any decorations: the walls are plain concrete.

The zoo rocked. It was run by the Smithonian Institution, like all of the museums around the Mall, and was free. Turns out in 1826 mr. James Smithson figured donating his legacy to "increase and diffusion of knowledge among men". Well, there's a plan that has worked out just fine. Although the place was a tad cramped, the exhibition was well layed out and nicely accessible. Even photography was possible (which is not true in Tallinn, for example):

I was especially impressed by the giant pandas and the place where they keep the butterflies. Fabulous!

Day 2: cold, very cold

Who would have thought that there is a place where it's actually colder than in Tallinn? It was -2 (was supposed to feel like -6 according to weather.com) this morning when I stepped out to make my rounds with the camera and find some food. Real, bitter, windy, cold. The light was pretty nice, though: the sky was mostly cloudy but not the grey damp uniform mass you get in Estonia but rather a moody changing sort of thing with small gaps for the sun to peak through. Like this:
After I had frozen my butt off taking pictures of all the landmarks of the Mall (could not figure out a way to properly picture that corner of the Reflecting Pool where Forrest met his Jenny, seen far right on the picture above) I declared retreat and went to the National Air and Space Museum. Which was very cool. It did not contain a SR-71 Blackbird but there was a real U2 barely fitting into a huge hall dedicated to all sorts of espionage affairs. The coolest parts of the museum were various places where one could try out different laws of physics that apply to flight and astronomy like see how various telescope systems work and how wind angle affects the turbulences . None of them could have cost much but boy, were they cool! Why the heck can't every darn school in Estonia have at least some of them? Four laser diodes, 6 lenses and 4 mirrors can't be that complex to obtain, can it?

Anyway, Spaceship One was also there in it's full glory right beside The Spirit of St. Louis. On it's tail, a writing: "a project of Paul G. Allen". Dang, you might be rich and all and sponsor numerous cool undertakings and what not but this ain't a show'n'tell back in the elementary, you know. Unbelievable!

Anyway, here I am, totally exhausted from the day (of course the clouds disappeared at once after I had arrived at the hotel making for perfect evening light) and ready to hit a very early jetlag-induced sack. The trip indeed did take a turn for the better.

Day 1: Sometimes travel just sucks

It actually started before I even left Tallinn. Estravel (greetings!) could not confirm my flights until one working day before the departure. Oh well. When they were eventually confirmed, it turned out the only way to get to Washington from Tallinn was to go through London and change airports. Luckily enough, they had left plenty of time for that. Eight hours to be precise. Last year I flew Tallinn-San Francisco repeatedly through Frankfurt with the whole trip taking just 16 hours. To be fair, they also offered an alternative route using Finnair, but that company is liable to loose your baggage about 80% of the cases (an observation most of the people in the office share) so I chose not to.

Anyway, the next step was booking a hotel. Turns out the only way to stay in Washington is to change hotels, too. Oh well.

Having digested all that I figured that an upgrade to business class using the points on my EuroBonus card would sweeten the plot up. Not so. Turns out you can only do that when a) you fly SAS b) they have free places in business class c) for some reason they also have more supplies available than the passengers need (why would anybody do that?). So economy it is.

Being pretty much in peace with the situation, I arrived at the airport in an ungodly hour. To be greeted by a sign at the Estravel office that stated that due to the Eastern they would not open before two hours after my plain has left. A few panic-laden phone calls later (sorry, Triin!) I was given my tickets and could finally get some shuteye on the plane.

The take-off did not wake me. However, a Russian company occupying two rows right in front of me decided that the best thing to do 7AM on a Saturday morning is to drink cognac and have a jolly loud good time all over the plane. Which indeed woke me.

Arriving at Gatwick I figured the safest thing to do is to find a way to get to Heathrow and settle down there. The next coach would leave in 40 minutes and take an hour an twenty minutes to get there. A quick calculation (30 minutes Gatwick Express, 20 minutes tube, 15 minutes Heathrow Express from Paddington) yielded a promising chance of some quality photography in Hyde Park with not much more time spent. Not so. Turns out there is nowhere to leave your suitcase in the Paddington station. So much for photography and soon I was on my way to Heathrow.

So here I am, waiting for the check-in to start, sitting in a Cafe Nero that charged me 10 pounds for a coffee, sandwich, yogurt and cookie, writing this post in a good hope that there is a turn for better somewhere around the corner.

Travelling

This blog is going to turn into sort of travel-picture-diary sort of thing as yours truly is going to spend next two weeks (actually slightly more) traveling in the United States of America. Be good, then and do not cause too much trouble while I'm away!

Casualties are inevitable

Nõva, spring '07

Dereliction in Brussels

Brussels, June '05

Very cool

Huh, These guys have created something really cool. Have not been so excited about new piece of software since Blurb it would really solve some problems I have. Am yet to try it out (will let you guys know), but it sounds really good.

Sir Winston and a Lady

Sir Winston Churchill and a Traveling Lady. London, March '07

Greenfinch

A greenfinch in the Spring.

Went there

I went to the altar of friendship
the road there was long
finally got there
with some help from Ramones

I went to the altar of friendship
and there were familiar faces
god, I was glad
and so were they

I went to the altar of friendship
and I brought a sacrifice
it was accepted
I don't want to do without

I went to the altar of friendship
some of the faces were sad
that will come to pass
that will come to pass

I went to the altar of friendship
and found out
not everybody is on a quest
for dead presidents

Called the cops

The other day driving home through Tallinn I called the cops. It's not something I do often, but that one really pushed me over. There was a youngish woman driving in a medium-sized french car with a 4-5 year old girl in the passenger seat. The kid could barely see out of the window and I'm damn sure she was not wearing a belt or if she was, that would have been even worse. So I called the police and told them the make, model and license plate of the car plus the direction it was going.

What kind of sick people do stuff like this? If you want to make a head-shaped bump into your windshield, be my guest. If you attempt this with your kid, the kid should be taken away from you and you would be forced to drive without the belt till the kid is 35 years old.

Redpoll in the morning

Redpolls on their way back to north. 20th of March 07

Apparently, it's spring

Snowdrops in my back garden.

Girls

Kelly and Edith in Pärnu. January '07

Here were the tanks

Probably last photo from the Beijing series.

Goodbye and welcome!

It's time I got serious. Well, sort of. This means that from now on, my serious thoughts and more thorough writings on software architecture and management in general go into a separate blog called Human Architecture and the rest of my passions and moans will stay at The Place for BelZaah. Let's just say that posts going "I had a crappy day" and "A software architect at Skype thinks this or that" really should go to two different places.

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City. Another take from the October '05 trip.

Start of a tradition?

I have been quiet for almost a week because last weekend kind of slipped past before I could grip it and this week I have been in London (missing my camera badly as the weather was brilliant). On flights and airports I did some organizing on my feeds, added a bunch of friends and decided to start posting daily (or at least very frequent) photos, maybe with some stories attached to them. Let this be a good start and let's see how far do I get.

A guard at Tiananmen Square at sunrise. October 2005.

Correction on the smokes

Apparently, when writing about the wolf smoking cigarettes the other way around a couple of posts ago, I was plain wrong. As a friend pointed out, he is smoking a specific brand of soviet smokes called "Belomorkanal" (White Sea Channel, also look at my post about history) which have a very long white filter and short gray part with tobacco.

Silly me, then. Also, he was kind enough to point out that 1411200 roubles will get you a railway wagon (560 000 packets) of those things. The fact that somebody actually knows that is kind of spooky. Anyway, thanks for helping out!

It's spring

This morning I discovered that it is almost possible to take a shower without turning on the lights, it's that light outside. Also, the weather is getting warm (ish), the birds are singing like crazy and there is a crow building a nest right behind the window of some of our developers. Weee!

Comments on the Architecture post from 3/3

Sergei made a valid comment on that post. The thing is that the layers are of different dynamics: the organizational structure changes much more often than the functional architecture which is in turn more dynamic than the technical architecture. Which means that any reorganization creates tension on functional architecture. If the tension is not handled and the two layers not synchronized, one of them breaks: either the functional architecture breaks apart with all the consequences to the underlying layers or the reorganization fails and is reverted.

Some old photos

Got delivery of Epson R800 last week which, after some initial issues with paper handling, is doing brilliant work. Printed out some views of the Golden Gate Bridge I took almost a year ago and discovered they are not in flickr yet. Fixed it. Also uploaded some new pictures of our Maine Coon. What a tail, eh?

Wait for me, rabbit

The other day somebody sent me a link to a youtube video that had scenes from an old Russian cartoon, "Nu pogodi, zajets", remixed and combined with a soundtrack by Rammstein. The video was not that good but the "Related" links rocked: somebody has uploaded all the old Nu Pogodi episodes every soviet kid adored! I had jolly good times watching them. They just do not make stuff like this any more. The whole thing is full of platnoi (sort of crook in Russia, amazingly google could not spit out any good links and my keyboard is too weak to go into detail here) references, signs of Soviet everyday life, reflections on different campaigns that frequently sweeped the great country and so on.

Also, they are refreshingly politically incorrect. And not in a way South Park is (which is apparently created under influence of controlled substances without any desire to reflect reality) but it shows how things really were. Look at the very first scene of the third episode. The wolf steps out of a makeshift garage (a _very_ familiar sight for everyone who has lived in the USSR) and lights a cigarette. And he lights it from the filter side.

And the music. It's a miracle: every scene has it's very own piece of music perfectly matched to it. The authors have not confined themselves to one style, oh no. They have picked tunes from folk to propaganda to rock to pop. Marvelous!

As opposed to Tom & Jerry and others, these cartoons were produced in very low volume. Between 1978 and 1985 only 15 episodes were made. In fact they produced more but the ones above 15 are not true to the original spirit and can not really be considered as part of the series.

Part social experiment, part attempt to amuse the crowd, I played one episode to my class during a coffee break. They are a mixed lot of various ages looking to get an additional degree in accounting. Most of the people enjoyed it and knew most of the scenes by heart but there actually were a couple of people to whom it really didn't say anything. On one hand it is a pity we don't remember good things that are not yet that ancient. On the other, it is probably better there is a new generation for whom the Soviet times is just something their parents sometimes talk about.

On architecture

I have been thinking that there should be a generic way to express the role of an architect in an organization and thus also helping people be better architects. So here it comes.

The layers
Architects know that system architecture is not a thing in itself, it is strongly bound to how an organization works in general. There are authors who have thought about that to some extent (like Christophe Longépé) but they usually only look at the technical or functional side of the systems. It seems to be much wider than that, let's build a stack here:

1. Organizational architecture. This layer answers questions like what business are we in? How do different parts of organization relate to each other? What are the core principles the organization lives upon? What business processes do we have?
   
2. Functional architecture. Every organization performs a certain set of functions in its everyday life. This layer deals with what clumps of functionality (like accounting, HR, customer service etc.) there are and how they interact.
3. Technical architecture. This is the domain usually attributed to technical architects and deals with logical components, integration methodologies, middleware and so forth.
   
4. Support architecture. The layer consists of processes tools, and organization that works underneath the technical architecture. Version control setup, release and testing procedures, coding conventions, team interaction, development methodology etc.
   

An example
Let's explore this layering using an example. Let's say a system architect has three projects on the table for evaluation, each of them approaching the concept of a corporate customer from three different angles creating a technically unsolvable puzzle: although the architect sees that it would make sense to have the three systems talking to each other this can not be done because one treats companies as phone numbers with some fields attached, the second one as a source for authentication information (several customers can operate under the same legal agreement) and the third as an entity that has to pay VAT.

How did it come to this? Apparently all of the layers were affected. Firstly, the organization was set up as a set of silos which do not talk to each other, which leads to the three different unsynchronized projects being initiated.

Secondly, the functional architecture consists of a phonebook, a list of warrants describing who can do what business with the company and an accounting system. This poor setup gives the business units no support in their quest for solving their business problems and getting money pouring in.

The technical architecture, the third layer, now has to face the situation and figure out a way to solve this. As forcing the business people back to the drawing board does not work (remember, there are silos and nobody has ever spoken to them about the concept of a unified customer view) and re-writing all existing systems would blow the budgets of all three projects all there is to do is to build three separate systems. Which, as the architect knows, will lead to an integration nightmare the moment somebody discovers it would make sense to have the ability to have the company phone number displayed along the agreement information so the legal people can conveniently place calls.

The support layer now faces even more trouble: instead of having one or two applications to deploy there is three, all of which have different availability requirements, different release cycles, different versioning schemes and so on.

In short, a problem in an upper architecture layer leads to a growing amount of issues on its way down. Actually, the same applies to the opposite direction. Imagine a setup where two different outsourcing partners (one using RUP and the other XP) are forced to work together to tightly integrate their applications as there has been a change in the organizational structure. The very least that will happen is that the applications remain separated and the business guys suffer acute schizophrenia while participating in a planning game in the morning and compiling requirement artifacts in the afternoon.

The conclusions
Following conclusions can be drawn from the layering concept:

1. A poorly set up layer "radiates" issues to the neighboring layers. For example, a poor technical architecture leads to problems in deployment because of unmanageable dependencies and a weird organizational structure leads to a weird functional architecture.
   
2. A major change in any of the layers causes changes in every layer with the impact getting weaker the further you get from the source of the change. What is interesting about this one is that it usually only applies downwards. If changes start filtering upwards, something is very badly broker somewhere as there should not be any technical change without a business cause.


3. The model shows a weak spot most of the companies happily ignore: the fact that nobody is really responsible for the functional architecture layer. However, it acts as a filter between top and bottom layers and thus, if undeveloped, hinders all cooperation between them. The only conclusion to draw from here is that a system architect needs to make darn sure that part of the stack is under control taking it to him or herself if necessary.

Comments from Sergei added as a separate post

Utterly therapeutic

Nothing more to add, really:

On history

Recent drum-beating around a certain statue in Tallinn and the statements of a certain party leader almost had me on a brink of writing a long and angry post on how evil ideologies still linger on just because they managed to kill off another evil ideology and how they affect the ability of people to see situations from another perspective.

I am not going to. There's no point. Instead, I suggest (assuming you are already familiar with the basic ideology of the Nazi party) you read up on following topics and books. Google is good, wikipedia can be altered, books by academic historians are the best.

1. The White Sea Channel and its economic importance. Hint: a couple of years ago one still could buy cigarettes with that name in St. Petersburg
2. The Vlassov Army
3. Metsavennad (the Forest Brotherhood). Hint: the last of them in Estonia was killed in 1976 _after_ the Beatles had come and gone.
   
4. The White Book
5. The GULAG Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsõn
6. Resistance movement in Ukraine
7. The Volga Hunger
8. Katõn
9. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

And better still: if you have any Estonian (or in fact Russian) friends ask them about the destiny of their grandparents.

Chaos and agility

The organization I work for has grown tremendously over the last couple of years and I am talking more than 100% per annum in terms of headcount. This is not something one can deal easily with from the standpoint of development processes and how people think of them.

In the very beginning we had the Agile Manifesto on our fridge door. We sure as hell did not follow it but at least we knew it was there. Nowadays nobody really remembers or talks about it any more. There are committees and processes and papers and things. The funny thing is that none of it really seems to improve anything that much: we are doing pretty well as we were, the levels of frustration have not changed (the kind of them has, however), and we do not stick to deadlines not more and not less than before. There are, however, massively more people around and more projects going on which means more mistakes will be made and more deadlines missed and the _number_ of people who get bruised is bigger. Which makes the problems more obvious and hence leads to more processes.

The reason I am writing this is that I mentioned how most people mix up chaos and agility (as much as they tend to mix up bad intent with stupidity, but that's another story) and people started laughing. I dropped the same line a couple of hours later and got the same reaction. Clearly, this was not obvious to the people around me and that got me thinking. And lead to this post. Anyway.

The reason we have not managed to increase our development throughput (not that it is bad, vice versa: we spit out more innovation at higher speed than most) or keep levels of frustration under control is thinking that replacing agility with a more stringent set of regulations will help to create order and make us more predictable. Wrong. What we are actually doing is replacing development chaos with regulated chaos. Think of a bucket full of cockroaches. Now imagine you insert the internals of a wine crate (you know, the thing dividing a box into 6 sections comfortable for a bottle) into it. Do you get more order? No. You get an illusion of order but within the 6 sections, the very same fizzling and buzzing goes on.

The attitude of people does not change when you introduce processes or try to enforce more rules. They still (as a group, not necessarily as individuals) prefer a chaotic approach because they do not know better and it has served them well. Coming back to my point about chaos and agility: agile development processes have some of the most complex rules systems I have known. Look a http://www.extremeprogramming.org/. The stuff is complicated! This is why it is so difficult to pull off successfully. It sure looks chaotic to the naked eye used to clean lines of a waterfall. This is why every company who for whatever reason has not implemented a software development process can hide behind the shield of agility and say "We did agile, it did not work and now we have RUP and everybody is happy. Well, at least they know why their lives suck now."

An interception with regards to Toivo: we really did not hide behind that one back in the days. We just figured getting cool stuff out the door is more important than the ability to express exactly how we are doing it by implementing a particular methodology. And your method sure worked!

Well, I guess what I am trying to say is that as long as one replaces an un-organized chaos with an organized one under the sign of implementing a process one can not hope any major improvements. One should focus on the people instead (Individuals and interactions over processes and tools) and see that their needs are taken care for by maybe taking the Manifesto close to ones heart. Managing processes and business is easy. Managing people is hard.

Strange days

Strange days have found us. Spot the line? Yes, it's the Doors. It has been rather like that the last week or so. My health is slowly deteriorating (although very difficult to point out anything in particular), anything I do at work moves slowly and I amaze at my inability to figure things out, I can't take any decent pictures, I loose things (forgot my tripod to the woods and my laptop charger to school) which is something I have not done for ages. Shit, I think I need a vacation.

On culture

This weekend I had two pretty shattering culture-related experience and would like to share those with you.

The first one occurred on Saturday. I was driving through southern Estonia. It was about -20 degrees C, the sun was shining, the road was perfect, the country was all white and I had 320 bhp under my right foot. Even more, I had the CD from Metsatöll and RAM performing works of Veljo Tromis among others in my changer. Let me give you some background. Metsatöll is an Estonian pagan/folk metal band that has gained a considerable following in recent years. They have managed to fuse very sincere and simple, yet powerful, lyrics with oldschool metal sounds that are combined with old natural instruments. Very impressive. RAM is the only professional male choir in the world. Imagine a 50 strong party of men singing of their ancestors, old gods and harsh nordic nature. Veljo Tormis is the man solely responsible for me becoming a metal-head. This happened after I saw his The Curse Upon Iron performed by Tõnu Kaljuste and his choir on TV. If you have not had the pleasure, I suggest you imagine O Fortuna by Carl Orff. Imagine this being performed in dark winter's night by roughly 30 young people clearly enchanted by the whole thing carrying torches and singing around a fire. Insert the most powerful lyrics you can imagine. Add shaman dums. That gives roughly a third of the experience. Having all of those components - RAM, Metsatöll and Tormis - thrown together in a live performance is something that one can't put to words. They did both Litany to Thunder and Curse Upon Iron and I floored it with sun in my back and bitter cold Estonia rushing past. That was just perfect.

The other culture shock I had was related to mr. Tolkien. I got my hands on my old copy of Estonian translation of The Hobbit (1977) on Sunday. It barely resembles a book any more and wears many stains resulting from the nasty habit of reading while eating I had as a kid. The illustrations by Maret Kernumees have defined how Gollum and Smaug looks like for me (considerably different from other illustrations I have seen and totally different from the movie) and perfectly accompany the text. Also, the translation is very good (as opposed to the horror put among us with the Trilogy). I don't know whether this is because of the nostalgic value, the fact that this was the first Estonian book I have read in a long time (being put off by the same horrible translations) or the fact that this is a work of genius, but I swallowed it in a day and enjoyed every last minute of it.

In essence, I got very little done during the weekend but I still immensely enjoyed it.

London calling

It has been a while since the last post. Seems the frequency of me getting time and urge to write is correlated to the amount of work I have to do. So this must mean I have a lot to do right now, which is good. I have also been working on an article on architecture role in the organization but it is a longer post and still needs work.

So, am in London again. Firstly, let me tell you about this wonderful hotel I was staying at. And no, they are not paying me for this and this is no spam. The place really is that good, I probably had the best hotel experience anywhere in the world. The place is called Ambassador Hotel Bloomsbury. The room was very tiny but well laid out and OK for one night. It is a fairly modern place with nice design touches everywhere but unlike some places it still manages to be perfectly functional: you never have to look for anything, it's just there. To top it all up, the breakfast was astounding: very nice choice of mainly French products combined with elements of traditional English breakfast. Just perfect. The only gripe really was that there was a door close by that sent shivers through my room every time it was closed but that didn't happen that often so it was OK.

This trip has been very nice otherwise, too. The weather is beautiful with blue skies and just a little bit of frost to keep things winterly fresh. After landing in London City Airport I decided to go for train + tube instead of a taxi which takes ages and costs a small fortune due to miserable traffic in the mornings. Have not dared to do so before because of general distrust in public transport but boy was I wrong. The train arrived in 2 minutes (in perfect accordance with the posted timetable), was fast, clean and reasonably crowded. Why on earth is public transport in Tallinn slow, unreliable, smelly, always crowded to the max and you have to walk for 45 minutes before you get to it.

Anyway, the train took me through Docklands which is a mess of industrial estate, huge old residential blocks, four level junctions, playgrounds and branches of Thames. Does not sound like much but is strangely beautiful to look at. Would love to go there for pictures some time.

All in all, it has been great (Estonian Air still has a chance to mess it up but hopefully they won't) and there is a growing feeling that I need to come for a weekend and take a ton of photos.

Please take my money

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How to become an arhcitect? Huh?

I was so outraged by an article referenced by TSS that I just could not help put create this post. Would you believe it, that somebody actually goes out and defines how to become an architect. What the heck is that? It's like trying to define how to become an artist or how to compose music or how to become a leader. Sure, there are technical skills to gather and you must read and have experience and all that but at the end of the day it comes down to sheer talent. Of having a vision and being able to execute on it. Anybody claiming they have guidelines on how to become one or in fact who an architect is and what it does clearly does not understand organizations and the software development process.

There, I said it. Luckily enough there is still hope as some comments on the page seem to reflect the same viewpoint.

Will go and try to calm down, promise.

Revelations

Was in Tartu last with Mari last week for several reasons, one of which was to go to see "Kits õnge ja viiuliga", which is part of the Artists trilogy by Mart Kivastik. Although some critics say the play is no good, I must object. I have never ever had such an deep-reaching experience before. Aleksander Eelmaa managed to play the role of Elmar Kits with such a clarity and sense that I thought I was looking into a mirror. It was all there. My fears, my feelings towards things unfinished, aging, friends, desires it was all there.

During the pause I wrote the following. I meant to post it separately but figured one would need some context:

I do not know how to deal with debt. I just keep on giving and giving and can never find a suitable time to ask for it payed back. There is not even a thought of that. Although I need it, badly. I need it.

I have never had many friends. The few there were have grown apart or have been forgotten. I don't want to forget, I still remember them but can't find a way to tell them. What would there be to say anyway?

But still I remember the friends and the times we had.

"Tardo liin, va pordumaja"

Huh, guess visiting Tartu makes me nostalgic.

To make it short: to learn most of things about me, go and watch that piece in Tartu or Vinnistu. And Mr.-s Eelmaa and Kivistik (also Tõnu Oja) are a bunch of geniuses.

Rebellion in wonderland

Do you know the feeling that somebody asks you a question about a decision you have made and you can't remember why you made that decision? Even more, with every question your decisions seems more and more unwise. Well, I just had this experience.

I have designed (actually put down a design that a team has come up with) a system that involves separating front- and back-end systems with a layer of request-response queues to improve robustness. The system has been mostly built already and is due to go into the QA cycle when some people in operations started asking questions about why we needed these queues. Indeed, as there has been a while since I was deeply involved in the design details, I could not come up with a better answer than "This makes the system more robust" without believing it myself. We ended up giving the topic a good brainwhacking and ended up with a decision to proceed as planned.

I guess this is something every project faces: at the very end somebody questions a decision nobody actually remembers reasoning for and manages to convince enough people that a design change is necessary. The only wise thing to do at this point is to note the suggestion and proceed as planned, because the cost of (and risks associated with) change goes up exponentially as the time goes. Hence, even small changes can prove disastrous at the final phase of a project. Ah, but the temptation is big and the guy might actually be right and if you as a project manager have not noticed the rebellion early enough a lot of people might already be infected and support the change. Tough luck, this is what you get for becoming a project manager. Or an architect.

In London once again

Am in London again. That's not a big deal but I'd like to share two things with you. The first is the Danubius hotel I'm staying at. What a roach-hole! Never seen a TV that is so small and with such a bad picture, the shower has about third a inch of travel between bitterly cold and boiling hot, the reception is strange and unfriendly, at some point there was a loud bang in the corridor and minutes later the manager called to check up if I was OK and so on and so forth. Just crap. Stayed just one night and I actually need very little so no biggies.

The second thing is the experience of this morning. The hotel is located near Regent Park and there had been a inch or so snow during the night. That made for a wonderful walk, it was really beautiful. Got up real early so the city was still relatively quiet, the birds were singing and it was all nice, fresh and calm. Very exhilarating, indeed.

Can't understand the Brits, though. The morning news made the situation sound like a total catastrophe with phrases like "freezing cold" and "treacherous driving conditions". Jesus, I saw a couple of guys jogging in shorts and I barely had to zip my coat. Anyway, it was just beautiful!

Teaching is complicated

Am writing this while three groups of students break their heads (all female, by the way) over the project planning exercise I gave them. This is quite fun, actually: talk about something you know much more than them, answer questions and make up tasks that should be challenging to work on in groups.

Well, it is more complex than that. You actually take responsibility for

1. not wasting their time, this is an evening course and staying in school beyond 9pm better be worth it
   
2. not wasting their money, they need to be able to actually use the things they learn later
   
3. not teaching them stuff that is plain wrong or does not apply to the subject
   

Making sure none of this happens is not easy. Even with something as easy as project management for beginners which is what I am teaching this semester.

Makes me wonder, if I should continue the old series of posts about project management principles.

Health issues

I went to see a doctor this Friday, a cardiologist.

She took the stethoscope and listened to my heart. Then rushed out of the door and came back to call me along to "try to do a quick test". The test turned out to be something that has to do with ultrasound (I won't even pretend I can tell it's name or precise function of the machine that did it) and after 10 minutes the doctor had a confirmation for her suspicion. The valve that sits in the heart in front of the aorta is supposed to have three blades, mine has only two. A fairly common condition people are born with, apparently. Additional tests will have to be taken, of course, but the doctor operating the diagnostics machine shared her opinion.

Approximately half a year ago my wife started to feel pain in her right knee. Up to the point where every step was accompanied with a slight cracking noise and caused her serious pain. She, of course, went to see a doctor who claimed that a non-prescription joint-strengthening drink every night and some spinning (!) would be all that was needed. She refused to believe, sought a second opinion, had a surgery (apparently, a piece of bone had come loose in the knee) and is already feeling better, thank you.

So why am I writing this in my blog? Well, for once I feel pretty strongly about not being to do a MTB race ever again. But above that, I have had _tw0_ thorough medical checkups within last 6 years, both of which gave me clean papers. Knowing admittedly very little about medicine, I refuse to believe that something a specialist could spot within minutes would have been impossible to find out during those checks. Both of these checkups were performed by the local Medicover branch. And the first doctor my wife talked to was also from Medicover.

Hadn't I had an arrhythmia and talked to a doctor, I could have collapsed on the first race in the spring. I don't want to think about what a loose piece of bone does to a knee under regular spinning exercises.

Sure, nobody got hurt, but this is yet another example of people not doing their job properly (have a post forming in my head about that).

Hope you guys are fine!

Photography: is there such thing like too much photography?

It is done. I just uploaded last of the images and took at the Lightroom beta (it rocks, by the way). The shoot contained no less than 924 images. That's quite a lot for two and a half days. It actually feels like I have had enough, it's too much. Funny, never thought such a thing was possible, but it is. One of the reasons might be that the other guys were, based on what I saw, taking much better pictures. Also, it is physically challenging to carry a camera around for 14 hours. The conditions were also very poor: mostly a darkish room with a very high ceiling so nowhere to bounce the flash off from. Had to use high ISO to get anything resembling of a portrait.

Anyway, I am tired as a dog and will leave sorting of the images for the weekend. And can you guys see them? No, it was a closed event and no images can be published, sorry.

Copyright issues

Some things need to get out: I think I just figured out (actually thanks to the post from yesterday) why I felt so hurt when a darn tabloid published one of my images they had snatched from flickr despite of clear copyright notices. This image is a piece of me: it is firstly a personal thing and only then something I choose to show others. It has history, it has emotions associated with it, it means so very much to me. The image itself is not very spectacular but same feelings apply for all of them.

The tabloid (published by Presshouse, god bless you, fellas!) chose to pay me around $20 for the image. From consulting some friends with a law degree I learned that I could hardly expect more. You see, even if I go to court, the judge will most probably only state that I am to paid the "usual" fee. Well, and it is something like $20 around here.

So there's a question: is it just that one could go and take my innermost feelings and thoughts and push it out in the cheapest and dirtiest way possible and get away with no consequences whatsoever?

On photography

I discovered this cool thing called Blurb that allows you to turn your pictures into an actual physical book. Initially I just figured to give it a try and imported a couple of sets from my flickr account but that thing started to look positively nice so I went through some trouble by adding some poetry I found matching (thanks, google) and doing some editing on the pictures. The whole thing turned out to be something I really liked and so I showed it to my wife. Well, she found the whole thing artistically nice but fairly depressing. Which lead to a discussion on what messages do my images convey.

Well, screw that. Why do my messages have to convey any message? One could argue that even standing in a room facing the wall is a form a communication and thus a set of nicely printed images even more so. The truth is, I do not care. You can take a look my pictures any way you like. Whatever emotion you get is yours, not mine.

I like taking pictures, and I like the process of editing them. I also like to toy around with gadgets and I take huge joy in top-grade engineering that Canon pro lenses are a prime example of. I like wandering around in the nature and I like the silence and the knowledge that there is a hidden world I at least know to exist as opposed to most of other people. The camera is a protective device that distances me from situations I am not comfortable with (like parties and social events). The camera makes me different, allows me special treatment. This is why I take pictures. The picture itself is not primary and the emotion it conveys is even less important.

The question then remains, why do I post them on flickr or try to put them to a book? It comes down to my vanity. I like when people look at what I have done and find it beautiful. Pure vanity, a yearning for somebody to come and pat my back saying "good job" or "good eye you have there".

Of course there is no way to avoid one's feelings and emotions pouring into art they create. It is true that some of my best images are black and white, contain few people and tend to be on the dark on the mood scale. Well, I guess this is what I am. Slightly depressed (and depressing), a bit superficial and pretty ignorant of everything one supposedly has to know about Art like the names of famous photographers, the colour theory and the one of light and so on.

It has been a while

There has been a considerable silence here. Well, for a reason. It seems that being part of a bubbling boiling rocket-riding team of top engineers bound to change the world tends to take all of your time and most of your mental resources. As the rocket-ride trajectory is flattening and the company is getting more mature I have started to miss the possibility to express myself.

Also, Sten pointed out that after going through his feed list he noticed the date of my previous post. Well, it's time again.

MTB: The Otepää marathon

After a lengthy pause there was a decent marathon to ride and I took the opportunity. I mean, there was also the Värska marathon, but the organizational side was so horrible last year I chose not to go. If anyone reading this was there this year, please post some comments.
So, back to the Otepää marathon. The race starts on the worldfamous Tehvandi sport center (they host WM stages for cross-country skiing there) which has plenty of parking spaces and overall good facilities. As opposed to the Tartu marathon that starts at the same place this one also ends there, which is good. The only downside of the location is the long start coridor which makes people that were late with registration wait for an eternity before they can actually start riding.
From start on the trail goes through the city allowing for the riders to spread up. After the city, it's a couple of kilometers of wide asphalt that makes for good overtaking oportunities. This is not for long (otherwise it won't be a MTB marathon, would it?) and by the 20th kilometer you are experiencing the full beauty of the countriside which contains mainly of slopes. The ascent on the 22. km is the toughest (Harimägi, if you can be bothered) but not the only one. Actually the whole distance between 20. and 30. km is one big ascent followed by a steep descent. Pay attention here: the downward slopes are fast and usually very bumpy. For the first time I really understood why people invest into real good forks. After you have managed not to break your neck tehre, it's all pretty nice and smooth till the end. There is even a strech of good tarmac around the 44th km. If you still have some power left, it's a good place to pass some people who don't (I did pass two:)). The last part of the track turns back to the woods and is of no particular interest. However, this year the final kilometer was really wicked. You reach the stadium, see the finish line and forget what the computer's been saying: it must be the end and yes, you have to catch that last one guy and indeed you do. Turns out the computer was right about the distance after all and you are taken for a last strech up and down some hills along a narrow path. Which is the place where you run out of your last and the guy you triumphantly passed 100 m back leaves you standing. Nasty.
It's actually a quite nice track as it's real fast (helped by relatively try wether this year) but still has a total ascent of 655m according to my Polar which is a tad short of the nearly 800m of the Haanja marathon but way over an average of 450 or so.
As Blogspot is now allowing to add images to the posts (way to go!) I can finally show off my fancy hardware and share a track profile.