No, not SO social!

In my previous entry I moaned about missing interaction. Well, someone heard me apparently.

My picture, name and profile appear in Samppler, a dating and messaging site. Surely I have nothing to do with that service - it has harnessed some bot app to collect online profiles to generate an illusion of wide variety of users, or perhaps to gain money from some ad contract.

Name: eskolius
About me:
Seeking a: Man
Location: Mayotte

As social as an encyclopedia

Social media was the buzzword of the two-day conference on Virtual teaching. Examples like blogging, wiki, Facebook were mentioned. Social, it is said, means that content and knowledge is constructed collaboratively. Furthermore, it's interactive in a novel way.

Some of you know I've faded away blogging in blogspot.com. Instead, I've written notes in Facebook, and posted comments on culture in the group Culture Club. That way I've been pushing some content to social media.

I've almost stopped blogging now, and this week I've thought to stop the useless activities in FB as well. For a reason that there's no more sociality than an encyclopedia writer has. No counter indicating someone has visited and enjoyed my yield. No comments left. No sociality, no interactivity. I was truly surprised when I was told yesterday, that there are two people who have dropped in and seen my kitten video and read some of my writings.

It felt good - there's some sharing! Someones to reflect their own thoughts upon my issues! It took a coffee pause in a conference to hear that. In other words, there is some fundamental flaw with the so called social media listed above. Only sociality there seems to be is to send chain-letter-like apps to friends. That's a far cry from personal interaction.

If I knew the solution, I wouldn't write this in frozen Helsinki but in Silicon valley or any place I found comfortable.

* * *

Wait! Actually, ain't I going to visit Jaiku pikkujoulu gathering right after posting this? And aren't the Jaiku founders now well-off, living in California? They apparently have found some genuine answers. They could elaborate a bit further and combine Jaiku, blogs and FB!

Osoitteenmuutosilmoitus

Uusimmat merkinnät löytyvät facebookista. Profiili: Esko Lius > Notes.
Keskusteluihin saat minut raahattua parhaiten Jaikussa: eskolius.
- Piisilmä

A capital error

24th Jan 2006

Think of a next to non-existent small rural town in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometres from the capital. You may have heard of a friend living there, or it was perhaps in the news. I call mine Mourujärvi, the Burmese people in Myanmar call it Pyinmana.

This Mourujärvi-Pyinmana is to get a turbo boost, as the government of that Asian country has unexpectedly decided to shift the whole government and it's offices there.

As papers have it, "Pyinmana has a population of about 30,000 and is an agricultural production center for sugar cane and bamboo shoots. It's also prone to malaria, full of poisonous snakes and generally a miserable backwater. No one understands why anyone would choose to move there."

The officials have had just some days to prepare for the removal. The Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun continues: "Wouldn't it make sense to quit the government job, and remain in Yangon?

Nothing is as it appears.

By law, government officials cannot resign without permission--which is not often granted.

One brave man, an Industry Ministry official, quit to take a job with a foreign company. In retaliation, the government has refused to issue his passport or official papers." Also pension and rented houses are at stake.

Some Western experts of that region say the haste is due to astrology. The chief astrologist of general Than Shwen has said the shift must be completed under lucky stars, that is before the end of March.

-

For seventeen years the military regime has been oppressing people in that utterly poor land. You may know the story behind the democracy movement that won the 1990 election (getting 83% of votes) but was not allowed to take power. The leader of the movement is the peace Nobel winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Unfortunately Burma doesn't have any strategic resources and thus it won't get the world's attention as it needed.

* * *

30th Jan 2006

The visitor counter got mad after publishing my entry on the Burmese change of coulisse. Usually something like four or five hundred visits per week, but during this last seven days two thousand! Today I've noticed it to go down again.

If the traffic was accumulated by the local people and bureaucrats under the Myanmar government thumb: remember, we haven't forgotten you! And if it was generated by the intelligence of the military oligarchy: remember, we haven't forgotten you either!

(both texts that are so topical today were published initially at my blog in Spymac.com)

Betonireidet testiin

Huomenna täyttyy uuden pyöräilyharrastukseni ensimmäinen tavoite, kun osallistun Tour de Helsinki -ajoon. Juhannuksena rupesin polkemaan enemmänkin, ja kun TdH julkistettiin heinäkuussa, päätin pistellä tämän 140 kilometrin kuntopyöräilyn 25 km/h vauhdilla. Nyt on sen verran kilometrejä takana, että keskinopeustavoite on yli 30 km/h.

Eilen osallistuin duuniporukassa triathlon-viestiin, ja saavutuksena oli Koululiikuntaliiton mestaruus opettajien sarjassa. Erityisesti aikaan 16:40 (telineestä telineeseen mitattuna eli talutukset + kympin lenkki) olen tyytyväinen, kun ei tuota vauhtikestävyyttä vielä oikein ole kertynyt.

on toisaalla

täällä tauko jatkuu. fillarikeskustelut fillarifoorumissa nimimerkillä fiber.

Täsmäsää kaupunginosan tarkkuudella

Yksi marjastaa, toinen pyöräilee, kolmas jakaa mainoksia. Moni haluaa tietää onko sade tulossa tai onko odotettavissa taukoa.

Parasta palvelua Uudellamaalla tarjoaa Ilmatieteen laitoksen Testbed. Se näyttää tiiviillä havaintoasemaverkolla lähituntien sade-, tuuli- ja lämpötilahavainnot. Niistä on helppo päätellä millaista keliä esimerkiksi sadealueen reunalla on odotettavissa. Keksin tänä aamuna, että testbedin havaintotiedot voi liittää Google Earthiin näppärästi lataamalla ilmatieteen laitoksen tarjoama tiedosto, joka löytyy sivulta http://testbed.fmi.fi/other.html

Toivottavasti syksyllä päättyvä kokeiluprojekti vakinaistetaan osaksi Ilmatieteen laitoksen maksuttomia sääpalveluita.

Rankkasade näkyy punaisena sävynä, kohtalainen sade keltaisena ja hiljaisempi ripsiminen sinisenä. Tarkastelualueella sataa kaikkialla muualla paitsi Olympiastadionin liepeillä ja muutamilla alueilla meren päällä. Olen valinnut karttaan näkyväksi vain lämpötilat ja muutamien havaintoasemien nimet.