Jani Kotakoski's blog -- RSS Feed all

Happy New Year 2018!

Sunday, 18th February, 2018

Happy New Year 2018!

Happy New Year to anyone who stumbles onto my rarely updated website. As a thank you, here is a picture of Sofia meditating at the Donaukanal.

Sofia at Donaukanal (click to enlarge)

How to know where it\'s safe to submit?

Thursday, 01st October, 2015

How to know where it's safe to submit?

After finishing a research project, or a part of a project, one needs to decide how to make the outcome accessible to other scholars and the general public. The traditional way to do this is through academic journals which typically first prescan the work to check that the topic fits to the journal, and then perform prepublication peer review through other, often anonymous, scholars working in the same field.

Since in many countries and institutes the scholars are evaluated partially based on the number of publications they produce, there is a clear incentive for publishing as many papers as possible. This has resulted in practise to publish the research in the smallest publishable units (so-called "salami slicing"), which is a significant factor in the growth in the number of scholarly publications (doubling every nine years).

Simultaneously with the increased pressure to publish as much as possible, many funding agencies have started to demand publishing the research they fund as open access (OA). This means that any member of the public will have access to the research outcome after publication. While in general a worthy goal, the rise of OA has spawned a not-so-worthy market for predatory open access publishers.

The business model of these 'publishers' is to charge large amounts of money (up to several thousands of Euros) from the authors (or their funding agencies) as an "article processing charge" and either do a very bad job with the peer review or to skip it completely before posting the submitted work on their website. To make matters worse, there is no guarantee that the articles will remain accessible after the people behind such journals have lost their interest. Because the number of both legit and illegit publishers in any field is approaching hundreds, if not thousands, it has become increasingly difficult for an individual scholar to know which journals are worth contributing to.

To address this issue, several international organisations and some individual publishers have now launched "Think. Check. Submit", which is a campaign to help researchers navigate this issue. I wish the campaign will be a great success and will get a wide media coverage to spread the word.

Through the scholarly kitchen.

Running this year

Sunday, 20th September, 2015

Running this year

Some time ago (in January, to be precise), I had great hopes for getting myself into shape for the Vienna City Marathon in April and to make a new PR somewhere below the magical three-hour-limit. Turns out it didn't quite work out that well. In any case, I did make my new personal best at 3:13:42 (ie, 4min 35s per kilometer). As you can see from the results-page, the university had registered me as an Austrian female for the race. In the W-35 category I finished 10th, which I personally think is quite good ;)

A couple months after the VCM the season's greatest challenge took place in Saltzburg: 100km race on the hills around the city. The weather was much worse than anybody could have expected with heavy rain and temperatures down below 10°C (in June in Austria -- incredible). Despite the additional challenges, I finished the race in 12:39:34, which is just 40min more than I had anticipated I could do in normal weather conditions.

Races until now

13.5.2006 — Helsinki City Run (half marathon): 1:29:16
19.8.2006 — Helsinki City Marathon: 3:24:48 (1/2 1:37:04)
15.9.2012 — Wachau Marathon: 3:28:27 (1/2 1:40:26)
14.4.2013 — Vienna City Marathon: 3:18:14 (1/2 1:34:21)
13.4.2014 — Vienna City Marathon (1/2): inofficial
12.4.2015 — Vienna City Marathon: 3:13:42 (1/2 1:29:13)
20.6.2015 — Mozart100 Ultra Marathon (100km): 12:39:34

Update on the design

Sunday, 20th September, 2015

Update on the design

Since this website has been relatively static and quiet for the last couple of years, I felt that it was about the time for an update.

Introducing new family members

Sunday, 20th September, 2015

Introducing new family members

After literally years of contamplating, we finally bit the bullet and went to visit the local shelter for abandoned cats. We ended up taking a taxi home with two little kittens (both presumably born in May this year). Let me introduce to you: Muru and Usva.

Muru (click to enlarge)

Usva (click to enlarge)

Disorder in Materials

Monday, 21st September, 2015

Disorder in Materials

Big news: I started on a tenure track position in Vienna in September 2015!

I was in the very fortunate situation where I ended up being able to select from two excellent offers from exactly the two universities where I most wanted to work. In the end the offers were very similar, and we made a decision as a family to stay in Vienna. It is no suprise to me that Vienna is constantly ranked as one of the best cities to live in. This is a great place.

My research group is called Disorder in Materials. We made the logo of the group together with Toma Susi, who joined my group from the beginning. Now we need to get the offices and lab spaces renovated and start to setup the new equipment in there.

Sub-3h Marathon

Friday, 02nd January, 2015

Sub-3h Marathon

That's it. That is my goal for this year's Vienna City Marathon. My personal best is a hair under 3:15 until now, and it will be two years old when the next VCM starts, so at least I had enough preparation time ;)

There is 14 weeks to go for the marathon now, and I need to start seriously planning my training... If I manage to pull that off (the planning and training, that is), that will be the first time in my life. In any case, I am relatively serious about this goal. If I was able to pull off sub-3:15 without good planning and proper training, doing things right should allow me to drop the last 15 minutes.

Mozart100 in Anticipation

Sunday, 23rd November, 2014

Mozart100 in Anticipation

It turns out I am actually planning to do this. To run a 100 km race, that is. Which is very fitting, because I haven't done a marathon in 2014 (so I need to run at least twice that much in races next year).

I just signed up for the Mozart100 race to be held on 20.6.2015 in Salzburg. What this means is that I need to make a training plan and deside on new shoes to get, and to run, run and run. I already hear the Wienerwald calling :)

R-R-Running with R(Plotting GPS tracks and heart rate data)

Monday, 29th September, 2014

R-R-Running with R
(Plotting GPS tracks and heart rate data)

I have recently been toying around with the idea to get myself a bit better versed in modern tools used in data analysis and so-called big data. One of the often mentioned tools on this arena is R, the free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. Since I like to practice with new programming languages, I have already for a couple of months been looking for a good excuse to try R in a real application.

Until recently, I have been logging all my running activities on online services, which have provided a nice overview on each of the runs individually and also a convenient way for browsing through old entries. However, this has always felt a bit silly—while having the data online is good for sharing on social media, for anything that interests just myself it is crazy. Nevertheless, unaware of any good offline tools for this purpose, I was stuck with the online solutions. As you can guess, this is where R came to the resque. I can't remember how it happened, but this Sunday I landed on Mollie Taylor's blog, where she discussed Mapping GPS Tracks in R. Now I had the long-awaited excuse for getting my hands dirty with R.

Obtaining data from the GPS watch

I already had the GPS and heart rate data from my Garmin Forerunner 405 transferred to the harddrive with Braiden Kindt's python-ant-downloader, and Mollie pointed out in her blog that the tcx files I had could be converted into csv using GPSBabel. What I still needed to figure out myself was how to use OpenStreetMap instead of data from one specific colossal corporation, how to include several plots within one figure and how to populate those plots with the data I wanted.

Calculating accurate distance from GPS data

The trickiest part turned out to be calculating accurate distances from the GPS coordinates. For reasons I can't fully comprehend, it turns out that almost everybody assumes that the Earth is a perfect ball when calculating the distance. This is obviously not true, and since I often run on different continents, I wanted to get this one nailed down. Of course, I wasn't the first one looking for a solution to this problem. The most reasonable implementation for R, by Mario Pineda-Krch, can be found on r-bloggers.com. It is based on JavaScript code by Chriss Veness available at movable-type.co.uk (attribution license). (The theory behind the method is by Thaddeus Vincenty). Also this formula, however, disregards altitude variations, which can be significant if you like to run on hilly areas like I do. So, I needed to add that part myself.

Plotting the pace

Another point to consider was that the point-by-point pace information was much too noisy for being directly plotted from the data. I ended up solving this by calculating the average pace for each 100 m trek and plotting those instead of each individual point. The result seems to be reasonably good in terms of comparison with empirical analysis (pace variations while running).

End result

The end result from my Sunday coding is now R code, which produces results such as this one:

A 8.5 km run in New York City in 2014

Code is available on Github

The runmap code itself is available on github under the MIT license. I hope it will be useful also for others.

Open Notebook Science

Wednesday, 04th June, 2014

Open Notebook Science

I have been horrible with updating the blog recently, and I'm offering no excuses for this. The reason for this update is the Open Notebook which I established on the Wiki of University of Vienna. I will keep the notebook in the spirit of Open Notebook Science for projects where this approach seems suitable. I wish I could do this with all of my projects, and I may indeed start to do this at some point, but for now I will just test the concept. The first project where I'll try this is exfoliation and characterization of 2D crystals, which we are carrying out with a couple of students here at the Uni. We'll start with mechanical exfoliation, and carry out optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy on the samples. Let's see how this goes.

The main reason for trying this out is the need of centralized notebook for the project and the appeal of open science. The final push for trying this out came from a presentation by Peter Murray-Rust given yesterday (3.6.2014) in Vienna (organized by the Austrian Science Fund).

Barefoot(ish) running

Thursday, 25th April, 2013

Barefoot(ish) running

Since Fall 2012, I have been collecting minimalistic running shoes in the hope of starting to evolve a more naturalistic running style. The first pair I bought was the EVO I from Vivobarefoot (on the left in the image below), which I initially used at gym and for walking. Unfortunately, they seem to be a bad match for my feet: the toebox feels too large and the edge of the shoe above the heel irritates my skin. The next pair was the Vibram Fivefingers Bikila LS (on the right), which I bought in Finland a couple of months ago. The latest addition is the Merrell Vapor Glove (I have the green version; in the middle). Unfortunately, I didn't dare to really run in any of these before the Vienna City Marathon was done, except for a couple of really short runs (none of them were longer than 3km). I also recently ordered Xero Shoes both for myself and our daughter. I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival within a week or two :)

Minimalistic shoe collection

Since the marathon on the 14th, I have been conditioning myself to the new stride involving a shorter step and a more pronounced forefoot strike. So far, I have finished four runs in about a week (5.71km, 5.32km, 5.19km and 9.26km). Initially, I felt some soreness in calfs and shins, but it has more or less disappeared already. Because of this, I don't think I have started too fast, although many people suggest an even lighter transition period.

On the one hand, the most interesting change in running so far has been the new springiness of legs with the shorter forefoot strike. It feels almost as if running on actual springs, which I really enjoy (my heels don't typically touch the ground at all while running with the new form). On the other hand, the strangest thing is the soreness of my toes, which started a day after the last run (the longest one so far). Honestly, I don't know whether it is due to running or not, but I have never felt anything like it, and therefore I'm inclined to attribute it to the forefoot strike. Now three days after the run (yes, I have had two rest days from running already) the toes feel already mostly ok.

After my transitioning period is over with the Fivefingers, I'm planning to try some actual barefoot running, as well as the rest of my collection. Or... maybe I should already go for the next run with the Merrells? In any case, looking at the great weather outside (it's sunny and about 25°C), and taking into account that our gym was closed today for no apparent reason, I think I will take a long lunch break and go for a run before continuing to work at home.

VCM 2013: 3:18:14

Monday, 15th April, 2013

VCM 2013: 3:18:14

I ran my third marathon yesterday (14.4.2013) here in Vienna, Austria. I ended up making a new PR, despite some worries I had beforehand.

My training was largely limited this year because of travel (in Austria, Germany, Finland and Spain), and partially also because of a really nasty cold in February. I ended up making only six runs in January and two in February. Luckily, in March I was able to log ten runs, although none of them were much longer than 20km. The weather was also exceptionally cold in Vienna this winter (I remember reading from somewhere that this was the coldest winter in Vienna in 130 years).

The run itself went very smoothly until about 26km (the time for the first half marathon was 1:34:21). This was at about 11 o'clock. Then, the Sun started to show its power, and running became a struggle. Looking back at the readings from my GPS watch, the real problems started at 30km. At this point, I had to take a few extra walking steps after each refreshment point, which shows up clearly both in the pace and in the heart beat rate charts. Nevertheless, I managed to force myself to run until the end and finished the second half with 1:43:52. The official netto time for the full run was 3:18:14, which means I was able to shave away more than ten minutes from my previous race in Wachau.

Out of all marathon runners, I finished with rank 688 (104 in M-30 class). I was the fastest runner carrying the Universität Wien shirt. Out of the 68 Finnish marathon runners, I was the sixth fastest. Overall, I am very happy with the result.

Running at about 41 km (Photo credit: Stella)

My races so far

13.5.2006 — Helsinki City Run (half marathon): 1:29:16
19.8.2006 — Helsinki City Marathon: 3:24:48 (1/2 1:37:04)
15.9.2012 — Wachau Marathon: 3:28:27 (1/2 1:40:26)
14.4.2013 — Vienna City Marathon: 3:18:14 (1/2 1:34:21)

Two Months Gone

Monday, 18th March, 2013

Two Months Gone

Phew... After returning from Ulm, we headed to Finland for two weeks (collaboration at Aalto University and a workshop in Lapland). Then, we headed to Semmering with my sister's family for skiing. Having yet again stayed at home for a couple of days, I attended a winterschool in Kirchberg in Tirol. Since then, I have now been in Vienna for a bit more than a week, trying to get myself back into shape for the Vienna marathon which seems to be approaching faster than I'd hope for. In a week I will be heading to Barcelona for a couple of days, which means that now was a great opportunity to post something over here.

In the meanwhile we got an article published in Nano Letters: Scaling Properties of Charge Transport in Polycrystalline Graphene. If you are interested in this work, but don't have access to the paper, have a look at my publication list for a download link.

Here are a couple of my favorite shots from the picture-a-day project for 2013 since the last post:

075—Swinging in Pink

072—Matchbox in Light

067—Squares, hexagons and circles

061—Red Clouds Over Tyrol

036—Helsinki

028—No 66

019—Echt schwäbische Wibele

A Leaf and an Icicle

Friday, 18th January, 2013

A Leaf and an Icicle

Last two from Ulm. I'm heading back home tomorrow morning after a 10-day trip. About a time ;)

017—Last Year's Model

018—Icicle

015 — 016

Wednesday, 16th January, 2013

015 — 016

Two latest daily shots.

015—Something's Cooking

016—Bent Under the Weight

Hiding in The Shadows

Monday, 14th January, 2013

Hiding in The Shadows

A quick one from today.

014—Hiding in the Shadows

Wiblingen

Sunday, 13th January, 2013

Wiblingen

We had a long but rewarding 12-hour day at work yesterday. When we finished, there was just time for a quick shot before we went for dinner and, afterwards, for a few beers.

012—Snowscape

Today, after sleeping for about 4 hours, we went for a walk with Franz to Wiblingen where we stayed 3 months with the family back in 2011. This shot is from behind the Kloster Wiblingen.

013—Entrance

Update From Ulm

Friday, 11th January, 2013

Update From Ulm

I arrived in Ulm for a research visit two days ago. Preparing samples and catching up with friends kept me too busy for uploading the most recent photos. Today I took a couple of hours off before returning to work tomorrow (Saturday) morning. Here they come.

009—Yellow Pole

010—Hanging

011—Branching Out

Shot 008/365—Snow Cover

Tuesday, 08th January, 2013

Shot 008/365—Snow Cover

We got some snow today :) Admittedly it melted as soon as it landed, but it kept snowing for the whole day.

008—Snow Covered

Shot 007/365—The Dark Hours

Monday, 07th January, 2013

Shot 007/365—The Dark Hours

Today's shot.

007—The Dark Hours

Shot 006/365—New Life

Sunday, 06th January, 2013

Shot 006/365—New Life

Today's shot.

006—New Life

Shot 005/365—5.1.

Sunday, 06th January, 2013

Shot 005/365—5.1.

Here we go again.

005—5.1.

Shot 004/365—J

Friday, 04th January, 2013

Shot 004/365—J

Yet another shot taken during the evening. I'll try to up my game tomorrow.

004—J

Shot 003/365—Genie of the Bottle

Thursday, 03rd January, 2013

Shot 003/365—Genie of the Bottle

Here comes the third shot of the year. Should've taken one while we were in the city. Alas, here comes another shot taken at home. A bottle cork carved by our daughter. Scary, huh?

003—Genie of The Bottle

Happy New Year 2013!

Tuesday, 01st January, 2013

Happy New Year 2013!

After slacking with my photography for the whole year 2012 (and quite a bit of the previous years as well), I have reestablished my Smugmug account and started another picture-a-day projects: 365 days of 2013. Below is the first of the bunch.

001 -- Goodbye, 2012!

Fitness Roundup for 2012

Tuesday, 01st January, 2013

Fitness Roundup for 2012

According to Runkeeper, I logged about 1060 km of running in 2012. As far as my memory serves, the running took place at least in Austria, Finland, Singapore, Netherlands and Spain. Quite a few of the runs were very painful to my legs, especially around August and September, probably due to overtraining. Nevertheless, I managed to finish my second marathon ever in Wachau with time 3:28:35, which is behind my goal (3:24), but ok taking into account the circumstances.

For 2013, the plan is to increase the total distance as well as beat my personal best from Helsinki City Marathon in 2006 (3:24:23). The first try is going to be in April, at the Vienna City Marathon.

Regarding fitness beyond running, I also did my personal best in bench press in 2012, and was able to more-or-less stick to my planned training program at the gym. The goals for next year involve getting stronger and leaner, as usual. I will aim at three gym trainings per week with 2-3 runs and a Krav Maga training once a week. That should keep me reasonably busy.

#002 Suspended

Wednesday, 02nd January, 2013

#002 Suspended

Here comes the second shot for the 365-day-project of 2013. The subject matter is boring, but I'm quite happy with the shot.

002 -- Suspended

Lise Meitner–fellowship 2013–2014

Friday, 05th October, 2012

Lise Meitner–fellowship 2013–2014

Although I''m still waiting for the official email or letter, the FWF website (you need to click through until the second-to-last page from the links at the bottom, or type in my name here) tells me that my Lise Meitner application "Tailoring of 2D materials beyond graphene" (M1481) has been approved for funding this last Monday (1.10.2012).

As described at the website of the program, Lise Meitner fellowships are targeted at "[h]ighly qualified scientists of any discipline who could contribute to the scientific development of an Austrian research institution by working at it." The fellowship relieves me from teaching duties, gives me a modest salary increase and—more importantly— allows us to hire a new post-doc for the two years for which I will take a leave from my current 6-year University Assistant position at the University of Vienna.

What a nice end for the last couple of weeks of writing somewhat larger applications for three different funding agencies in Vienna, Helsinki and Brussels :)

Wachau 2012 — 3:28:17

Wednesday, 19th September, 2012

Wachau 2012 — 3:28:17

The Wachau Marathon was this last Sunday. The weather was perfect and all went fine.

What an anti-climax after all the suffering before the run.

I started by following the guy with the 3:29:59 sign, but got bored at about 5 km since the pace was slower than what I felt comfortable with. At 5.6 km I was number 225 in the race. At 10 km I was #196, at 21.1 km #134, at 33.2 km #116, and finally when crossing the finishing line #113. My pace was very much constant throughout the race (average 4:56 per km) except for the last couple of kilometers which went somewhat slower. My average heart beat rate was 176 bpm (max 187 bpm).

At least I know I can still run a marathon 6 years after my first one. All the stats are available here: a link to the official website.

Never-Ending Pain?

Monday, 15th January, 2018

Never-Ending Pain?

Right now I have two weeks to go before the marathon... and to be honest, I'm a bit scared. Mainly because the legs still hurt. I was hoping to get rid of the pain by running less frequently, but that itself hasn't worked (yet).

Since the last post, I have done only two runs: 21.09 km and 16.65 km. The first one was weird since I had pain in my left calf at about 1.5 km which was much worse than the pain I have been having in my right leg recently. I massaged the calf for a while and continued running, and didn't pay too much attention to the right leg during the rest of the run. However, I probably ran with a strange technique since for the second run both of my legs hurt more than ever before. It took me 5 km in agony thinking about quitting the run before the pain eased and I was able to continue with my normal pace until the end of the 16.65 km run.

After the run (that was yesterday) I've been trying to apply heat on my legs as well as massage them gently to make them better... and, fingers crossed, right now it feels like it could be working. Tomorrow I will have another gym day before the next run, which I wish will finally be pain-free.

UhOh

Sunday, 26th August, 2012

UhOh

It's been a wee bit longer than it should have since my last update. There are two reasons for this. The first one I like: we went to Salzkammergut and Salzburg for a short vacation (click on the links for photos). The Salzkammergut-region especially was awesome. Great mountains and caves, including one of the longest cave systems in Europe (Mammuthöhle). We had a great time at the mountains and hiking down from Dachstein (> 2 km).

A view of Dachstein from the Rieseneishöhle

The other reason is not equally nice. Actually, I have only done 5 runs since the last post: 9.31, 17.29, 9.35, 19.78 and 9.34 km, ie, less than 70 km in about three weeks. This is something like half of what I should have done, and it is because of an intense pain in what I think is my right Tibialis Anterior muscle. My hope is that by less extreme training and by taking supplements for magnesium and potassium I will get it to ease so that I can finish the marathon in three weeks.

Another 30km this week

Thursday, 02nd August, 2012

Another 30km this week

The planned gym day yesterday changed into reading books to our daughter. My excuse is that I seldomly have the time during normal weeks (I'm on vacation atm). However, the run this morning was a longer one than what I had anticipated.

To avoid draining my energy during the run, I has some pasta for supper yesterday. This is very much contrary to what I usually do since I tend to skip the supper completely and run with an empty stomach in the morning. However, it worked wonders; the only problem I had during the run today (after the first 1-2 km when the pain in my legs disappeared) was due to the heat. I started at 6:45 am so that for the first 20 km the temperature was perhaps 22-24°C, but by the time I was done with the 34 km it was already 26°C.

Alltogether, the run today was very nice — even the time 2:29:24 (4:23 min/km) (which excludes 3-4 water pauses) was good. As a result, I feel much more confident than two days ago after the first 30 km.

First 30km in a While

Tuesday, 31st July, 2012

First 30km in a While

It somehow so happened that I had a 3-day break between the previous blog post and the next run. I could dive into the details, but to save everybody's time, it's probably fair enough to conclude that I was a bit lazy.

Anyway, the next run I did (on 27th), I did with our 5-yo daughter on her bike (which by the way is one of my favorite ways to do sports). We did about 10 km (Runkeeper hasn't been working after I upgraded to Android 4.0.4 - go figure) in about 0:43:11, ie, 4:36 min/km.

Since this didn't feel like much, I set my alarm for the next morning at 5:30 am and went to bed early for a longer run next morning. For whatever reason, I unfortunately woke up at about 3 am and couldn't get sleep for another 30-45 min, so I delayed the alarm until 6:05, when I finally got up for the run.

Regarding the run itself, to put a long story short, almost everything was difficult: my legs hurt, my ass hurt even more, it was too hot, I didn't have enough energy, etc. It was pain from the first meter to the last one. Somehow I still managed to do nearly 30 km, but it definitely showed that the marathon will not be as easy as I perhaps was hoping it would be.

Now I've had a day's rest and will hit the gym tomorrow, but the day after that I need to be running again. I'm thinking about 20 km, but we'll see — the +30°C weather we've been having is merciless.

Wachau Marathon 2012

Thursday, 26th July, 2012

Wachau Marathon 2012

I just signed up for the Wachau Marathon, which will take place on September the 16th, ie, in seven weeks.

My previous marathon experience is limited — I have only done it once, in Helsinki in 2006 (with a time of 3:24:23, ie, 4:51 min/km on average). That was before finishing my doctorate, before I moved abroad and before our daughter was born. Back in 2006 the first marathon was one of the events which marked the end of a 6-year long period in my life as an undergrad and a Ph.D. student and not being a parent.

Quite some water has flown in the Danube river since then. Now I have been a postdoc for more than five years and in three different countries, our daughter will start school next year and we have recently settled in our latest country of residence (Austria). During the intervening years I had several excuses for not running enough: "family oblications", "too much work", moving and traveling all the time which resulted in breaks in running, etc. However, this year I have nevertheless kept up with the running (and gym training, but that's another story). Although I've been putting much less hours per week into training than what I customarily did in 2006, I have nevertheless done enough kilometers to be confident that I can run a marathon again.

Similar to my first marathon, I'm again planning to start a new period in my life by this run. However, this time I will do my best to keep up with running and gym training. To me, a marathon a year sounds like a good goal for this.

Since April 2011 I've been tracking my running with Runkeeper, which allows me to go back to check my training for the past 16 months. I'm quite sure that there are some runs which are not recorded in there, but at least this gives a tentative picture.

Total distance in each month in kilometers

Obviously, even the totals for the previous and current months are not very high (this month will be above 200 km eventually). However, for example in July I have by now done four runs of 20 km or more with paces in the range from 4:30 to 4:06 min/km and without any problems during or after the runs.

Now I have about three weeks to get my distances up to 30 km and then four more to cool off before the big event. Wish me luck!

New on the site: RSS feed

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

New on the site: RSS feed

I have no proper reason to give for why it took me this long to implement an RSS feed to the blog. It may have something to do with the update frequency though...

Anyway, now it is finally implemented and you can subscribe by clicking the button right here:

Tiedejulkaisemisen noidankehää murtamassa

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

Tiedejulkaisemisen noidankehää murtamassa

Tämä kirjoitus julkaistaan Tiedetoimittaja-lehden heinäkuun numerossa 2012.

Jani Kotakoski and Toma Susi

Arabikevään mukaan nimetty akateeminen kevät -protestiliike alkoi matemaatikkojen Elsevier-kustantajaa vastaan suunnattuna protestina. Tutkijat kamppailevat entistä riippumattomamman tieteellisen julkaisemisen puolesta kaupallisten kustantajien ylivaltaa vastaan.

Arabikevään mukaan nimetty akateeminen kevät -protestiliike on jäänyt suomalaisessa mediassa varsin vähälle huomiolle. Muualla maailmassa se on herättänyt kiinnostusta myös ei-akateemisille suunnatuissa julkaisuissa, esimerkiksi aihetta laajasti käsitelleessä englantilaisessa The Guardian -lehdessä. Sosiaalisen median katalysoiman liikkeen saama julkisuus on nopeasti lisännyt kansalaisten ja päättäjien tietoisuutta tieteellisen julkaisemisen ongelmista, mikä näyttäisi johtavan muutoksiin kansainvälisessä tiedepolitiikassa.

Liikkeen tavoite on saattaa tutkimustulokset kaikkien saataville, kun julkaisutoiminta tällä hetkellä keskittyy voittoa tavoitteleville yrityksille. Viimeksi liikettä tukevien tutkijoiden ja kustantajien välit tulehdutti suurimman tieteellisten lehtien kaupallisen kustantajan Elsevierin tuki Yhdysvaltain edustajainhuoneen Research Works Act (RWA) -lakialoitteelle, joka pyrki estämään liittovaltion – eli veronmaksajien – rahoittaman tutkimuksen avoimen julkaisemisen.

Itse protesti sai alkunsa kun Cambridgen professori ja Fields-mitalisti Timothy Gowers toivoi tammikuisessa blogissaan sivustoa, jonka kautta matemaatikot voisivat irtisanoutua työskentelemästä Elsevierin hyväksi. New Yorkin yliopiston tohtoriopiskelija Tyler Neylon toteutti pian Gowersin toiveen, ja vain kaksi päivää myöhemmin thecostofknowledge.com alkoi kerätä tutkijoiden nimiä boikottiin. Nyt kesäkuun alussa sivustolle on kertynyt jo yli 12 000 allekirjoitusta, eikä suinkaan pelkästään matemaatikoilta.

Kustantajat keräävät taloudellisen hyödyn

Tutkijoiden ja kustannusyhtiöiden huonojen välien perimmäinen syy on tutkimusartikkelien päätyminen kustantajien yksityisomistukseen huolimatta siitä, että tieteentekijät tukevat työtä merkittävällä ilmaisella työpanoksella. Tutkijathan paitsi tekevät tutkimukset myös vertaisarvioivat artikkelit ja usein vielä toimittavat julkaisut. Yliopistokirjastot puolestaan joutuvat ostamaan kustantajalta satojen lehtien niputettuja tilauksia, joten lehtiin uppoaa vuosi vuodelta kasvava osuus niiden budjeteista. Suuret kaupalliset kustantamot tahkoavat samaan aikaan ennätyksellisiä tuloksia. Elsevierin viime vuoden 883 miljoonan euron liikevoitto esimerkiksi oli huikeat 37.3 prosenttia liikevaihdosta.

Julkaisijoista nimenomaan Elsevierin maine on tahriintunut myös useissa skandaaleissa. Yrityksen Australian osasto esimerkiksi julkaisi vuosina 2000–2005 lääke- ja kemikaaliyritys Merckin sponsoroimia artikkelikokoelmia vertaisarvioitujen julkaisusarjojen asussa. Elsevierin emoyhtiö puolestaan tuki asekauppaa järjestämällä isoja maanpuolustusnäyttelyitä, kunnes tutkijoiden äänekäs vastustus lopetti tämän toiminnan vuonna 2007. Elsevier on myös toistuvasti julkaissut artikkeleita ilman vertaisarviointia, plagioituja tutkimuksia ja jopa kokonaisia artikkeleita jotka on myöhemmin jouduttu vetämään takaisin.

Urajärjestelmien noidankehä

Tämänvuotinen protesti ei ole ensimmäinen laatuaan. Vuonna 2001 yli 30 000 allekirjoittajaa lupautui olemaan julkaisematta tutkimusartikkeleitaan niiden avointa saatavuutta vastustavien kustantajien lehdissä. Kustantajat eivät kuitenkaan juuri reagoineet protestiin, eikä tutkijoilla tuolloin juuri ollut vaihtoehtoisia julkaisukanavia.

Akateemisen julkaisemisen noidankehän syy on urajärjestelmien luonne: tutkijoiden suoriutumista mitataan tavallisesti laskemalla julkaisuja perinteikkäissä arvostetuissa tutkimuslehdissä, joista kaupalliset julkaisijat omistavat suurimman osan. Avoimen verkkojulkaisemisen merkitys on kuitenkin kasvanut, erityisesti kun yksi edellisen kampanjan johtajista, Berkeleyn yliopiston geneetikko Michael Eisenin, perusti viisi vuotta sitten Public Library of Science (PLoS) -lehtiryppään.

Elsevier nöyrtyi

Elsevier on vastannut tutkijoiden protestiin useilla avoimilla kirjeillä. Alkuun niissä korostettiin julkaisijoiden roolia tutkimuksen tason takeena. Tällaisten väitteiden tueksi ei kuitenkaan ole vahvaa todistusaineistoa, sillä esimerkiksi vertaisarvioitujen lehtien tason mittarina usein käytettävä ns. vaikuttavuuskerroin (impact factor) korreloi huolestuttavalla tavalla takaisin vedettyjen tutkimusten määrän kanssa.

Helmikuun lopussa, mahdollisesti allekirjoitusten määrän ja asian saaman negatiivisen julkisuuden säikäyttämänä, Elsevier veti tukensa RWA-lakialoitteelta, joka muutamaa tuntia myöhemmin kuopattiin kokonaan. Protestin taustavoimat eivät kuitenkaan ole vakuuttuneita kustantajien aidosta halusta muutokseen. He pikemminkin haluavat kokonaan eroon voittoa tavoittelevista kustannusyhtiöistä kehittääkseen julkaisutoiminta aidosti uudelleen.

Tutkimusrahoittajat mukaan

Myös tutkimusrahoittajat ovat nyt ottamassa aiempaa aktiivisemman roolin. Huhtikuussa liikkeen tavoitteiden taakse asettautui maailman toiseksi suurin yksityinen tutkimusrahoittaja Wellcome Trust ja Iso-Britannian yliopisto- ja tiedeministeri David Willets [1]. Pian tämän jälkeen Euroopan komissio ilmoitti, että se asettaa avoimen verkkojulkaisemisen Horizon 2020 -puiteohjelman 80 miljardin euron rahoituksen ehdoksi [2]. Valkoiselle talolle tehtiin samanaikaisesti sosiaalisessa mediassa laajalti levitetty kansalaisvetoomus avoimen verkkosaatavuuden ulottamisesta kaikkeen Yhdysvaltain liittovaltion rahoittamaan tutkimukseen [3]. Vetoomus saavutti vaaditun 25 000 allekirjoituksen rajan 4. kesäkuuta, joten presidentti Obaman hallinnon täytyy vastata siihen virallisesti.

Akateeminen kevät on tehnyt selväksi, että yhä useampi kaupallisten akateemisten kustantajien voittoja ilmaisella työllään ruokkivista tutkijoista tiedostaa nykyisen järjestelmän ongelmat. Näyttää myös, että protestiliikkeen keräämä laaja julkisuus on saanut eri maiden hallitukset kannattamaan liikkeen vaatimuksia, etenkin koska avoimen julkaisemisen odotetaan tuovan merkittäviä säästöjä. Tieteellisen julkaisemisen noidankehä näyttää siis olevan murroksen partaalla – halusivat julkaisijat sitä tai eivät.

Kirjoittajat ovat boikottiin liittyneitä materiaalifysiikan tutkijoita. FT Jani Kotakoski on Helsingin yliopiston dosentti ja Wienin yliopiston yliopistoassistentti. TT Toma Susi on tutkija Aalto-yliopistossa.

On academic publishing, open access & Elsevier

Saturday, 28th January, 2012

On academic publishing, open access & Elsevier

I was recently approached by an editor of a well-known academic journal—published by Elsevier—asking me to review a submitted manuscript. Although I have occasionally published in their journals, reviewed for them, and even participated in conferences organized by them, a recent flow of negative press regarding Elsevier's actions caused me to decline carrying out any free work for them.

Specifically, I cited the following articles published by the Guardian:

"The danger of drugs ... and data" (9 May 2009, by Ben Goldacre)
"Academic publishers have become the enemies of science" (16 January 2012, by Mike Taylor)

For links to discussion on the topic elsewhere, see the end of this post.

Clearly, I'm by far not the only one to have refused to work for Elsevier recently. In fact, already 1441 researchers have signed a pledge at The Cost of Knowledge refusing to publish in, refereeing for, and/or doing editorial work for Elsevier. There is also a pledge called Research Without Walls—at the moment signed by 432 researches—stating that the signatories

"...will assist in the peer review process (as a reviewer, board/committee member, chair, editor, etc.) only for conferences, journals, and other publication venues that make all accepted publications available to the public for free via the web."

Apparently Elsevier is taking this movement relatively seriously since I received a response signed by Rob van Daalen. To provide their view on the topic I quote his reply below in full:

Dear Dr. Kotakoski,

I have been informed that you rejected to review for [an Elsevier journal], which is a very unfortunate. As publisher of the journal I would like to add a shade of meaning to the articles published by the Guardian on which you have based your decision.

1) From 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place. This was an isolated practice from a past period in time and it does not reflect the way we operate today. The individuals involved in the project have long since left the company. Our CEO has affirmed our business practices as they relate to what defines a journal and the proper use of disclosure language with our employees to ensure this does not happen again.

We will continue to partner with all scientists and clinical investigators, including those in the pharmaceutical industry, to help communicate the findings of high-quality, peer-reviewed medical research. We have strict disclosure rules in place so that readers are aware of any financial interests behind a specific article or journal, or when entire compilation products are created for pharmaceutical marketing purposes.

2) Our support for the Research Works Act comes down to a question of preferring voluntary partnership with government agencies and other funders to promote access to research works, rather than being subjected to inflexible government mandates like the NIH policy, which don't take into account the needs of different journals.

One of Elsevier's primary missions is to work towards providing universal access to high-quality scientific information in sustainable ways. We support the bipartisan bill, which seeks to prevent US government policies, like the one imposed by the NIH, that mandate the dissemination of journal articles published and funded by the private sector. Elsevier and other publishers have embraced and nurtured a whole range of access options to ensure broad dissemination - author pays journals, delayed access, manuscript posting, and patient access, to name a few. We've worked constructively with a number of government agencies to develop new ways to expand access to journal articles reporting on, analyzing and interpreting agency-funded research. But like other publishers and societies we have always opposed the adoption or extension of the NIH policy, which restricts the author's freedom to choose where to publish and undermines the sustainability of journals published by the private sector. The legislation is an effort to prevent such unsustainable policies.

Elsevier has been continually expanding access to content. In fact, we were the first and largest contributor to PubMed Central as part of the NIH's voluntary posting pilot in 2005. What we're opposed to is the mandate that forces us to contribute our content to PubMed Central, and potentially other platforms, in ways that aren't sustainable to commercial and non-profit publishers. That's why publishers are fighting these government mandates even if it means taking an unpopular stance.

For several years, Elsevier has been a major partner in three information philanthropy initiatives. Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) are aimed at those countries that have the least amount of access to information resources. In most advanced countries, access to research is not a pressing problem for researchers, when compared to other issues, such as funding. In the poorest countries, it is a more fundamental barrier. Publishers like Elsevier have been working hard to close down this gap. Together the programs offer scientists in 114 eligible countries free or low-cost access to some 7,500 scientific journals, books and databases.

I hope that this background information will be useful to you and that it may (even slightly) change your opinion on our company.

With kind regards,

Rob van Daalen
Publisher Physical & Theoretical Chemistry
Elsevier - Amsterdam - The Netherlands

Discussion elsewhere

There has been much discussion all over the 'net about Elsevier specifically and the Research Works Act (RWA) specifically. Hence, the list below is necessarily far from complete, and only presents some parts of the complete picture.

"Polymath Journal publishing reform" on http://michaelnielsen.org/
"Open access and academic journals: the publishers respond" on http://theconversation.edu.au published on 11 August 2011 by Sunanda Creagh
"Elsevier = Evil" on http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ published on 16 January 2012 by PZ Myers
"What We Can Do About Science Journals" on http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ published 24 January 2011 by John Baez
"Ban Elsevier" on http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/ published on 26 January 2012 by John Baez

Happy 2012!

Sunday, 15th January, 2012

Happy 2012!

I know I'm a little bit late with wishing happy new year, but that's just how things are over here on my website.

Anyway, it's now roughly two months since our relocation to Vienna, Austria, and we have for the most part settled here quite ok. If only we'd get a running internet connection at home we would be just fine for some time. Since we lived in three countries last year (Finland, Germany and Austria), we are planning to stay here at least over the next new year :)

I finished last year yet another pic-a-day projects, which you can find here. It wasn't a complete success, but considering the circumstances I'm happy I was able to get along with it until the end. This year I'm having a break.

My presentation (in Finnish) 15.12.2011

Sunday, 15th January, 2012

My presentation (in Finnish) 15.12.2011

Esitelmäni Suomalaisen tiedeakatemian Nuorten tutkijoiden akamiaklubilla 15.12.2011 (Youtube): @ Youtube.

Aurora seen from the ISS in Orbit

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

Aurora seen from the ISS in Orbit

A youtube video as taken from the international space station, shared by user isoeph. Beautiful.

Atom-scale modifications in graphene and white graphene

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

Atom-scale modifications in graphene and white graphene

Anticipating leaving University of Helsinki, I will collect here some pieces that have appeared elsewhere. This one appeared as a Division Research Highlight for Division of Materials Physics, University of Helsinki in 2010.

The only known atomically thin two-dimensional materials are graphene and the hexagonal boron-nitride monolayer. They have a similar atomic structure, resembling a honeycomb or a chicken wire, but altogether different chemistry. Graphene is a single layer of the familiar layered carbon material graphite, kept together by the sp2-hybridized covalent bonds between the carbon atoms, and exhibits semi-metallicity (or, in other words, is a zero- band gap semiconductor). Although many properties of graphene had been investigated theoretically as a prototype material for understanding the properties of graphite and carbon nanostructures, e.g., fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, it was a surprise in 2004 when this material was experimentally shown to exist also in reality. Due to this breakthrough discovery, Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim received the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics. On the other hand, hexagonal boron nitride monolayer, the insulating counterpart of graphene sometimes called white graphene, is formed due to ionic bonding between the alternating boron and nitrogen atoms.

Discovery of these materials was significantly aided by the recent advances in the high resolution transmission electron microscopy, especially via the introduction of aberration corrected devices, which allowed atomic resolution images at conditions which are not destructive to the targets.

The initial experimental observations displayed, along with the materials themselves, a set of atomic defects which were either intrinsic or caused by the electron beam. Especially in the case of hexagonal boron nitride, the triangular vacancy structures caused much confusion in the field since they seemed to be unexplainable by the existing theories of damage production in this material. Through a collaboration of University of Helsinki and Dr. Suenaga's group from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, we have been able to explain the formation of these defects by primary knock-on events between the electrons and the target atoms. The peculiar triangular shape of the defects is due to easier displacement of boron atoms in the system, which leads to vacancies terminated by nitrogen atoms. For graphene, the observed defects have been much less controversial. However, as we show in our recent review (written in collaboration with Professor Banhart from University of Strasbourg, France), the flexibility of carbon chemistry allows for a breadth of different defect structures to be formed. As a result of collaboration of University of Helsinki and University of Ulm, Germany, we have recently found the lowest energy defect configurations in graphene, which also introduce a band gap into this material. This may prove out to be an important step towards carbon-based electronics of the future. As the limiting case for the growing defect structures, we displayed the first-ever two-dimensional amorphous structure.

References

Kotakoski, J., Jin, C., Lehtinen, O., Suenaga, K. and Krasheninnikov, A.V., 2010. Electron knock-on damage in hexagonal boron nitride monolayers. Phys. Rev. B, 81, 113404 (2010)

Banhart, F., Kotakoski, J. and Krasheninnikov A.V., 2011. Structural defects in graphene. ACS Nano, 5, 26-41 (2011).

Kotakoski, J., Krasheninnikov, A.V., Kaiser, U. and Meyer, J.C., 2011. From point defects in graphene to two-dimensional amorphous carbon. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 105505 (2011).

Personal News, August 2011

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

Personal News, August 2011

As seems to happen more often than not, I've been lazy posting anything here. I tend to update my Publication list and CV, but rest has remained rather static. As can be seen from there, there has been quite a bit going on on the science front (so far 7 published articles this year and three organized international events plus a 3-month visit to Ulm, Germany). However, this is how things should be, and that shouldn't prevent me from writing stuff up here.

We'll see if that will change during the coming months. I do hope so, since I have some ideas for actual posts to write and put up here.

The 365 day photo project for 2011 is now at day #213 (today's shot is below), and it seems I will again keep up with it until the end of the year...

... which gets me to the exciting news for the rest of the year: We are moving to Vienna! It is terrifying and exciting at the same time. The best part is that my wife may be able to get a chemistry-related job over there which would get her back on track career-wise. I myself am going to partially switch from computational physics to electron microscopy, which, I'm sure, will be extremely cool.

Anyway, the site is not dead, although my update frequency has been lame. I hope to post something more interesting rather sooner than later.

Happy New Year!

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

Happy New Year!

Last year was extremely busy, but at the same time very enjoyable. It was the first full year back in Finland (although I went to US, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Portugal and Japan during the year), and it may well be that it was the last one for a while.

If nothing else, at least we are planning to spend three months in Germany next year with the family. The girls will again have time to be together and I will be busy with some experimentalists. I'm very excited to see what comes out from this collaboration.

2010

Last year also ended my second photo-a-day photo project. All shots are available here or by clicking the image below (one of my favorites from the year).

2008

The first time I ever did this was in 2008. This old gallery is available here. Being completely honest, I feel that I was much more creative back then. Perhaps it was a combination of the birth of a child, new country, finishing my PhD and having a new job. Everything just was so awesome in 2008! Here's one of my favorites:

2011

Since I seem to be unable to stop this now, and since my last year was far-from-ok, I decided to go for it again this year. Below you'll find the first three shots for the year.

Scientists Are Dicks

Thursday, 09th September, 2010

Scientists Are Dicks

The skeptic community has been discussing vigorously on Phil Plait's (@BadAstronomer) "Don't be a dick" talk at James Randi Educational Foundations's Amazing Meeting 8.

Some people have taken it personally or accused Plait of only relying on anecdotal evidence. In any case, the response in the blogosphere has been fierce.

His point can be put into a single question he posed to the audience during the talk: "How many of you no more believe in those things [UFOs, religion, etc.] because somebody got into your face, screamed at you and called you an idiot?". Some people would answer "Me!" to this question, but not necessarily very many.

Daniel Loxton (@Daniel_Loxton) has been reflecting to this both on twitter and on the Skepticblog (here and here). I posted the following as a comment to the latter blog entry.

Now, getting to the title of this post, what does this all have to do with scientists?

In my opinion, the on-going discussion on the “dickiness” of the skeptics ~~seems to neglect the under-laying reason for it~~ has omitted an interesting parallel to the scientific world. For a scientist, as myself, it seems obvious. We Scientists are trained to tear each other apart. That’s what science is all about.

When we get a manuscript to review from our peers, we do our best to find each and every weakness in it, point it out, and tell the writers to try harder to polish their theory and correct the mistakes, if possible. Sometimes the theories are so bad that they are “Not even wrong!”

Some referee reports are very rude, and sometimes the ‘questions’ after a conference presentation are set to demolish the speaker. Some scientists seem to even try to do this simply to show their power (or to protect their own old theories).

Hence, many of us expect everyone else is (a) ready for similar criticism if they present their own ideas and (b) expecting others to do their best in tearing their arguments apart.

As an anecdote, I should confess that my wife accuses me of doing exactly this when we disagree on something. And that’s with a person I’m deeply in love with. Imagine what happens with people we don’t even like.

As Carl Sagan writes in The Demon-Haunted World (p. 31, paperback): “But there’s one side [in science] that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism considered acceptable or even desirable.”

Randy Olson joins the choir in his recent “Don’t Be Such a Scientist” by noting that (paperback, p. 99): “[W]hen I was a graduate student – we learned to write first drafts of our scientific papers, give them to colleagues, and then eagerly await their comments. The more red ink on the manuscript when it came back, the better. The only thing that would ever cause anger would be someone not covering the manuscript in red ink, suggesting they were just lazy.”

In fact, I know many scientists who have earned their reputations by being the harshest critiques of the work of their students, colleagues and even of themselves.

In my opinion, this indicates where the problem is. Scientists are dicks to each other (for people judging from outside). That’s the way of the scientific mind in the scientific setting. And for many scientists, there is no other setting. They always talk the science talk. Olson felt that the topic was worthy of a book. Judging from the discussion after Phil Plait’s talk, and from other facts like Olson’s book, internet has changed things for the skeptics and for the scientists.

We aren’t any longer simply talking to ourselves. Now we have a broader audience, and it’s time to learn how to communicate with it effectively.

It’s good to have the discussion on. I wish as many scientists as possible will pay attention. This is not just about UFOs and the Bigfoot.

Bad Bad Me

Sunday, 08th August, 2010

Bad Bad Me

Last note here was from last April. Then I was sorry I didn't post during the SF trip. This time, I've been to Sweden, Germany, Canada and Portugal without posting. Plus spent quite some time at home. Anyway, I've kept shooting. Latest shot is below. Not the most extraordinary animal they had at the Helsinki Zoo, 'Korkeasaari':

Home sweet home

Sunday, 11th April, 2010

Home sweet home

I haven't posted during the San Francisco trip. If you want to catch up with the daily shots, go here. As a proof, here is the bridge:

It was great to notice how far the spring already is after I got back here :)

1st of April

Wednesday, 31st March, 2010

1st of April

Amazing how the time flies... It feels like we came back to Finland yesterday, and soon it's been a year.

#090/365

Tuesday, 30th March, 2010

#090/365

Something quick late in the evening.

Next set of two

Monday, 29th March, 2010

Next set of two

Again, I slacked posting for one day, so you get two today.

Two for the money

Saturday, 27th March, 2010

Two for the money

We went to Finnish National Opera to see the Sleeping Beauty ballet on Saturday with our daughter and two other little girls. Fun was had by all, but we came back home rather late. Luckily we could sleep late today (although we missed gymnastics because of that).

That's why I didn't post yesterday, and hence you get two today :)

Self-baked, of course

Thursday, 25th March, 2010

Self-baked, of course

I should write a note to myself to add more sugar and butter next time...

I wonder what was on the other sign...

Wednesday, 24th March, 2010

I wonder what was on the other sign...

I'm also wondering where the "cable" is. And what it is for.

New life is always a wonder

Tuesday, 23rd March, 2010

New life is always a wonder

Biology is perhaps the most amazing field of Science.

It's amazing how complexity builds in the Nature. How life emerged from molecules. How molecules build from atoms. How atoms were created in the stars. I'm in awe.

One from this morning

Monday, 22nd March, 2010

One from this morning

Almost more than taking the shot at the last moment I hate posting the first shot of the day. It somehow feels like I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I didn't?

Present from the granny

Sunday, 21st March, 2010

Present from the granny

I admit I said "I wouldn't have been mad", when my mom told me our daughter would have liked my mom to buy her a pink dress while they were in a shop some time ago. I didn't say "Go back and get it". Oh, well. Besides, she loves it (of course).

One more week survived

Saturday, 20th March, 2010

One more week survived

Applies to this fellow as well. Badly treated first by mom and now by our daughter. Poor little horse.

Ateistit eivät ole yhtenäinen joukko

Friday, 19th March, 2010

Ateistit eivät ole yhtenäinen joukko

Ilse Paakkinen vastasi kootusti hänen kirjoituksensa kirvoittamiin kommentteihin Helsingin Sanomissa 8.3.2010. Alla kommentti Paakkisen vastaukseen.

Vastaus Paakkisen toiseen kirjoitukseen

Vastasin Ilse Paakkisen Vieraskynään (HS 3.3.2010) mielipidekirjoituksella (HS Mielipide 4.3.2010) joka oli otsikoitu "Ateistille riittää elämä itsessään". Kootussa vastauksessaan (HS Mielipide 8.3.2010) Paakkinen esittää vertauksen joka tuo hyvin esille ettei hän ole ymmärtänyt - tai halunnut ymmärtää - mitä termit ateismi tai tieteellinen maailmankuva tarkoittavat.

Hänen mukaansa esimerkiksi kirjoituksestani poimittu "Ateisteilla ei ole mitään sellaista uskontoa vastaan, joka ei esitä yliluonnollisia väitteitä" rinnastuu väitteeseen "Minä äänestän vihreitä, eikä minulla ole mitään sellaista politiikkaa vastaan, joka ei kritisoi vihreitä". Ilmeisesti Paakkisen mukaan siis mikä tahansa yliluonnollinen väite suoraan kritisoi uskonnollisen uskon puutetta.

Koska luonnollisen maailmankuvan omaava henkilö on velvoitettu muuttamaan maailmankuvaansa esiintulevien todisteiden (ei väitteiden) mukaan, olisi esimerkiksi seuraava vertaus parempi: "Minä äänestän vihreitä, kunnes on selvästi osoitettu että heidän ajamansa politiikka on kestämättömällä pohjalla."

Yritin kirjoituksessani selittää minkä tyyppiset seikat voisivat osoittaa tieteellisen maailmankuvan omaavalle henkilölle, että uskontojen väitteillä voi olettaa olevan edes jonkinlainen todellisuuspohja. Esitin, että toisistaan riippumattomat yhtenevät uskonnolliset näkemykset voisivat olla tällainen asia.

Tähän viitaten, Paakkinen toteaa että koska ateistitkin omaavat toisistaan poikkeavia näkemyksiä, ei heidän näkemyksensä voi olettaa olevan sen todempi. Hän sivuuttaa kokonaan sen tosiasian, että ateisteja yhdistää vain jumalauskon puute samoin kuin kristittyjä ja hinduja yhdistää esimerkiksi uskon puute Zeuksen suhteen.

Koska kukaan ei ole esittänyt pitäviä todisteita jumalan olemassaolosta, ateisteilla ei myöskään ole asian suhteen todistustaakkaa. Ateistien käsitys jumalasta (ei ole olemassa) on ainoa joka sopii yhteen havaintojemme kanssa. Tuskin kukaan kehtaa esimerkiksi esittää että henkilön joka ei usko hammaskeijuun on esitettävä pitävät todisteet hammaskeijun olemassaoloa vastaan.

Ateistit ajattelevat omilla aivoillaan eivätkä yritä mukautua muiden (esimerkiksi papiston) esittämiin totuuksiin. Siksi myös ateistien näkemykset poikkeavat toisistaan.

Ateistit tyypillisesti kannustavat avointa, havaintoihin ja tutkimukseen perustuvaa keskustelua, jossa kaikkien ei tarvitse olla samaa mieltä. Usein kuultu viisaus onkin: "Ateistien järjestäytyminen on kuin kissoja paimentaisi."

Linkit vapaasti luettaviin kirjoituksiin

#079/365 After a Saturday of shopping

Friday, 19th March, 2010

#079/365 After a Saturday of shopping

This one is straight from our kitchen table. Light was just fabulous, and so is she.

Natsikortti viuhuu

Friday, 19th March, 2010

Natsikortti viuhuu

Vastineeni Ilse Paakkisen Vieraskynä-kirjoitukseen nosti esiin jopa natsikortin (nettikeskustelussa Hitlerin tai natsit ensimmäisenä maininnutta pidetään argumentoinnin hävinneenä osapuolena). Blogisisko (Anna Amnell) on huolestunut uskontokritiikin nykyisestä tasosta lapsellisuuksineen ja asiantuntemuksen puutteineen, kuten hänen blogi-kirjoituksestaan käy ilmi. Hänen argumenttinsa hädin tuskin kaipaavat edes vastausta (poimintoja alla). Suosittelisin häntä lukemaan kirjoitukseni huolellisesti uudelleen, jos uskoisin että siitä olisi apua asian ymmärtämisen kannalta. Valitettavasti olen realisti.

Blogisisko kirjoittaa mm.:

"Kritiiikki uskontoa kohtaan on monesti niin lapsellista, että siihen ei suhtauduta vakavasti. Se ruokkii kuitenkin nuorta sukupolvea, myös lapsia ja teini-ikäisiä, joten siihen pitäisi kiinnittää enemmän huomiota."

"Uusateismin ominaispiirteitä ovat asiantuntemattomuus ja hillitön viha uskontoja kohtaan."

Tämä oli suunnattu minulle (korostus minun, kirjoitusvirheet alkuperäisiä):

"Nutta mikä on germaaninen Yule-juhla? Sehän on ennen kristinuskoa Pohjois-Euroopassa vallinneen pakanauskonnon juhla. Sen juhlan viettäminen on uusateisteille OK, mutta kristinuskon joulu ei sovi. Uusateismi näyttää olevan nimenomaan kristinuskon vastustamista keinolla millä hyvänsä, vaikkkapa germaanisella muinaisuskolla, joka kelpasi myös Hitlerille ja natseille, kuten olemme saaneet viime aikoina tietää mm TV-dokumenteista. Siinäkö parempi vaihtoehto kristinuskolle!"

Kirjoitin selvästi "Yule-juhlan hengessä"! Itse asiassa myös monet (käytännössä "kaikki") kristityt suomalaiset viettävät joulua Yule-juhlan hengessä (joulupukki, jouluruoat, joulukuusi, joulusauna, ...) [Wikipedia].

<satiiri> Ehkä joulupukkikin on kristittyjen mielestä natsi. Koko tyyppi on minustakin ollut aina vähän epäilyttävä. </satiiri>

Linkit kirjoituksiin

#078/365, the quickie of the day

Thursday, 18th March, 2010

#078/365, the quickie of the day

I should put a bit more effort to this. For some reason being sick for four days and a bit light headed after that has made me to slack on the shots. I promise to try harder.

This is what I found outside our house while coming home today.

Shot #77. 288 to go.

Wednesday, 17th March, 2010

Shot #77. 288 to go.

As you may guess, this was a quickie. Just to get something shot before reaching home waiting for the guests. Anyway, I rather like it.

Simple rule to decentish PODs:

Get close!
Shoot wide!

It helps to have decent gear to do the job.

Nettirasismista, kritiikistä ja sananvapaudesta

Tuesday, 16th March, 2010

Nettirasismista, kritiikistä ja sananvapaudesta

Muutaman viime päivän aikana julkinen keskustelu on Suomessa merkittävältä osin pyörinyt "nettirasismin" ympärillä. Keskustelu ryöpsähti käyntiin Suomen maahanmuutto- ja eurooppaministeri Astrid Thorsin (RKP) tehtyä rikosilmoituksen häntä kohtaan netissä tehdyistä uhkauksista. Netissä keskustelu on ehtinyt saada absurdejakin piirteitä, kuten onko suomenruotsalaisen ministerin uhkaaminen rasismia (On, jos syy on hänen myönteisiksi oletetut mielipiteensä jostain ihmisryhmästä). Krp on myös aloittanut tutkinnan nettisivusta, jolla uhataan useiden poliitikkojen henkeä.

Keskustelu sai uutta vauhtia Anna Kontulan blogi-kirjoituksesta Iltalehden nettisivuilla. Kontula toteaa kirjoituksessaan useiden tutkijoiden harjoittaneen itsesensuuria netissä esitettyjen uhkauksien takia. Kontulan kirjoitus uutisoitiin laajasti mediassa (esimerkiksi Aamulehdessä ja Taloussanomissa).

Helsingin Sanomissa Helsingin yliopiston kansleri Ilkka Niiniluoto toteaa että tilanne on Suomen tiedehistoriassa vakava: "Sitä voi verrata sellaisiin historiallisiin tilanteisiin kuin Stalinin ajan Neuvostoliitto tai se, kun Galileo Galilei joutui katolisen kirkon inkvisition uhriksi". Hän myös toteaa, että "Pelko ei saa mennä niin pitkälle, ettei uskalla kommentoida. Jos tämä on oikeasti turvallisuuskysymys, yhteiskunnan on puututtava siihen".

Niiniluodon kommentti on herättänyt närää erityisesti vertauskohteena käytettyjen Neuvostoliiton ja katolisen kirkon inkvisition vuoksi. Tilanne ei sentään onneksi olekaan aivan niin paha; molemmissa näissä tapauksissa tutkijoita estettiin esittämästä näkemyksiään valtakoneiston toimesta kun nyt kyseessä ovat yksittäiset häiriköt. Lisäksi, kuten Niiniluotokin toteaa käyttämällä "jos"-sanaa kommentissaan, kyseessä ei välttämättä ole edes todellinen uhka. Vertaus kuvastaakin pohjimmiltaan sitä että on varsin poikkeuksellista että suomalaiset tutkijat eivät uskalla kertoa tuloksistaan omalla nimellään.

Yllättävämpi reaktio Niiniluodon kommenttiin on ollut sen tuomitseminen sillä perusteella, että hän yrittäisi estää tutkijoiden kritisoimisen.

Tieteen lisäksi on vaikea keksiä mitään muuta inhimillistä toimintaa, missä nimenomaan pyyteettömästi esitetään omat tulokset/tulkinnat muille säästelemätöntä kritiikkiä varten. Hyvä esimerkki prosessista on tohtorin väitös, jossa useita vuosia tehty työ pyritään arvioimaan kriittisesti ja tuomaan esille sekä työn vahvuudet että heikkoudet. Jokainen vertaisarvioitu julkaisu käy läpi saman prosessin sillä erolla että kritiikki esitetään nimettömänä.

Kritiikin tarkoitus on osoittaa puutteet tutkimusmenetelmissä sekä niistä johdetuissa tulkinnoissa ja niiden pohjalta kehitetyissä malleissa. Ilman kritiikkiä esimerkiksi astrologia ja astronomia olisivat tieteellisesti aivan yhtä perusteltuja - molemmillahan on vannoutuneet kannattajansa.

Näin ollen väite, että Helsingin yliopiston kanslerina toimiva filosofian tohtori Ilkka Niiniluoto pyrkisi tietoisesti estämään kritiikkiä, on erittäin suurella todennäköisyydellä vailla todellisuuspohjaa. On yhtä perusteetonta epäillä että tutkijat eivät uskaltaisi antaa työtään kritisoitavaksi omalla nimellään. On aivan eri asia kritisoida tehtyjä tutkimuksia ja/tai niistä vedettyjä johtopäätöksiä kuin esittää ad hominem-argumentteja tai henkilöön ja hänen perheeseensä kohdistuvia uhkauksia.

Julkisesta keskustelusta päätellen tietty joukko ihmisiä on onnistunut luomaan keskusteluilmapiirin, jossa on efektiivisesti evätty sananvapaus niiltä ihmisiltä joiden näkemykset/tutkimustulokset eivät tue kyseisen joukon omia näkemyksiä. Itse asiassa tämä oli myös Kontulan blogi-kirjoituksen varsinainen asia. Hän kirjoitti: "Sen sijaan uutta ja erityisen huolestuttavaa on, miten maahanmuuttoon keskittyneet nettisivustoille on viime vuosina syntynyt toleranssi vastapuolen organisoituun uhkailuun. Kehotuksia löytyy myös moderoiduilta keskustelulistoilta".

Monilta keskustelijoilta tuntuu jääneen huomaamatta, että tässä on pohjimmiltaan kyse sananvapaudesta, ja siitä että sen vapauden voi myös menettää. Näin erityisesti mikäli sitä ei kätetä sivistyneesti, pitäytymällä ad hominem-argumenteista ja laittomista uhkauksista. Nyt sivistymätön keskustelu on saanut aikaan ilmapiirin, jossa merkittävä osa lainsäätäjistä saattaa katsoa tarpeelliseksi sananvapauden rajoittamisen laittomuuksien estämiseksi.

Kaikkien edun mukaista olisi rajoittaa keskustelu sivistyneeseen kanssakäymiseen, jossa riitelevät asiat, eivät ihmiset. Valitettavasti on surullisen tunnettu tosiasia että tämä unohtuu monilta nettikeskustelussa. Näin ollen moderoitujen keskustelulistojen ylläpitäjillä ja keskusteluun osallistujilla on vastuu siitä että käytössä on nollatoleranssi henkilöön käyvien kommenttien sekä uhkausten osalta.

20.821917808219178082% of the project done

Tuesday, 16th March, 2010

20.821917808219178082% of the project done

Here is my latest pathetic addition to the shot per day project for the year. At least there's something orange there. Personally, I always consider that as a bonus.

Ateistille riittää elämä itsessään

Tuesday, 16th March, 2010

Ateistille riittää elämä itsessään

Tämä kirjoitus julkaistiin hieman erimuotoisena ja lyhennettynä Helsingin Sanomien Mielipide-sivulla 4.3.2010.

Tohtorikoulutettava Ilse Paakkinen esitteli vieraskynä-kirjoituksessa (HS 3.3.2010) näkemyksiään ajankohtaisesta uusateismin näkyvyyden noususta kansainvälisessä mediassa sekä kirjojen myyntitilastoissa. Pelkästään se tosiasia, että julkiateistista sanomaa levittävät kirjat ovat vuodesta toiseen korkeilla sijoilla myyntitilastoissa osoittaa että ihmiset ovat kiinnostuneita tieteellisestä maailmankuvasta.

Tieteellinen maailmankuva perustuu tieteelliseen tietoon - monet ateistit ovat naturalisteja eli perustavat maailmankuvansa siihen oletukseen että vain fyysinen luonto on todellinen ja kaikki ilmiöt ovat tieteellisesti selitettävissä. Tällaisessa maailmankäsityksessä on se hyvä puoli, että se sopii yhteen havaintojemme kanssa; tieteellistä menetelmää noudattavat kaksi henkilöä päätyvät saman kokeen tehtyään samaan tulokseen riippumatta siitä missä he ovat ja minä aikakautena elävät. Tieteellisen menetelmän soveltaminen maailmankuvaan johtaa kiinnostaviin havaintoihin esimerkiksi uskontojen kehityksestä. Sen perusteella voisi olettaa että mikäli jonkin uskonnon jumala, erityisesti luojajumala, olisi todellinen, myös kaukana toisistaan eläneiden ihmisryhmien toisistaan riippumatta kehittämät näkemykset jumalasta muistuttaisivat merkittävästi toisiaan. Kuitenkin, vain samoihin aikoihin pienehköllä alueella Lähi-idässä kehittyneet monoteistiset uskonnot ovat toistensa kaltaisia. Uskonnolliset näkemykset ovatkin useimmiten perittyjä ja muuttuvat ajan mukana ja paikasta toiseen. Uusateismin kantava voima ei suinkaan ole "viha uskontoja kohtaan", kuten Paakkinen kirjoituksessaan epäilee. Kantava voima on luopuminen yliluonnollisista, havainnoista riippumattomista oletuksista, kuten uskontojen jumalat.

Teistien kannanotoissa toistetaan usein uskonnon mukanaan tuoma yhteisöllisyys ja sitä kautta saadut positiiviset kokemukset. Kuten Paakkisenkin kirjoituksessa, niissä usein myös päivitellään ateistista maailmankuvaa, josta heidän näkemyksensä mukaan puuttuu sisältö. Onneksi näin ei kuitenkaan ole. Ateistit nauttivat aivan samalla tavalla ystäviensä ja sukulaistensa seurasta, kirjallisuudesta, musiikista ja taiteesta kuin teistitkin. Lopulta aika harva ateisti on edes juhlimatta joulua; ateistin joulusta vain puuttuu uskonnollinen sisältö. Monille meistä kyseessä on keskitalven juhla, perinteisen germaanisen 'Yule'-juhlan hengessä. Tuskin kovinkaan moni ateisti kaipaa varsinaista ateistista perinnettä, tai 'positiivista historiaa', kuten Paakkinen kirjoittaa. Näin siksi, että ateismi ei ole uskonnon korvike, vaan sen puute, a-teismi. Ateistille riittaa kulttuurin tarjoama sisältö.

Paakkinen viittaa kirjoituksessaan myös Raamatun liian kirjaimelliseen tulkintaan, johon ateistit hänen mukaansa syyllistyvät. Mahdollisesti hän suosittelee ateisteja ymmärtämään jumalan Spinozan tavoin - jumala on yhtä kuin luonto. Tämän jumalakäsityksen myös Albert Einstein allekirjoitti. Tällaisella jumalalla on kuitenkin hyvin vähän tekemistä kaikkivoivan ja rukouksiin vastaavan jumalan kanssa. Ateisteilla ei ole mitään sellaista uskontoa vastaan, jonka jumalakäsitys on aidosti spinozalainen, ja joka ei esitä yliluonnollisia väitteitä. Se vain ei ole enää uskonto.

Ateistit edustavat myös lähes poikkeuksetta humanistista maailmankatsomusta, eli kannattavat yleismaailmallisia ihmisoikeuksia, myös uskonnonvapautta.

Jatkokeskustelua aiheesta muualla

Shot of the day #075/365

Monday, 15th March, 2010

Shot of the day #075/365

As you can see, I actually got out today. It was wonderful. Except that I didn't realize it had gotten so cold while I was laying on the couch feeling miserable. I seriously froze by butt.

Shot of the day #074/365

Sunday, 14th March, 2010

Shot of the day #074/365

March 2010, week 2

Sunday, 14th March, 2010

March 2010, week 2

Here we go with the second week.

", "http://jkkoski.smugmug.com/Photography/2010-365/wm20100312192429/808457512_bqTU6-S.png"); ?>

March 2010, week 1

Sunday, 14th March, 2010

March 2010, week 1

Since I've been lazy with my postings, I will throw in this post the first week of March, and to the second post the second week. Anyway, here we go.

February 2010 archived, commenting

Saturday, 27th February, 2010

February 2010 archived, commenting

I was in the process of adding commenting to the blog posts, and hence haven't been updating recently (wanted to finish the commenting first).

Funnily enough, I only got it finished because I got sick during the weekend and don't trust my head enough to do any real work. So, please feel free to leave comments to the posts. I'd love to hear from you.

I've thrown the February shots to the Archive, but you find them in the Smugmug gallery. I only left here my favorite of the month.

#056

Wednesday, 24th February, 2010

#056

Krrrhm...

Tuesday, 23rd February, 2010

Krrrhm...

I seem to be behind in posting here. Here you go:

#055 Shadows and sparkles

#054 Let there be snow

#053 Watched

#052 Frozen Delight

#051 Tea Time

#050 Submerged

#049 Untitled

#048 A Glass of Red

#047 A Bud

#046 Through the blinds

#045 Happy Valentine

044/365

Friday, 12th February, 2010

044/365

I found this shadow interesting. It was already dark when we were heading home from Ilona's birthday party (although it wasn't late). Hence the high iso (3200), although the texture is at least as much from the snow as from the high-iso grain.

043/365

Thursday, 11th February, 2010

043/365

This is from a car covered by snow. That's a truck heading towards downtown in the background.

041/365

Wednesday, 10th February, 2010

041/365

I've been waiting for the snow to fall off the lab's roof for weeks now. Can't take much longer.

041/365

Tuesday, 09th February, 2010

041/365

All the snow has lead to interesting patterns all over Helsinki. These two joining sets of footprints really caught my attention.

040/365

Monday, 08th February, 2010

040/365

This is from a Toyota pickup truck. I liked the texture and color.

039/365 Say \"Cheese\"!

Sunday, 07th February, 2010

039/365 Say "Cheese"!

I've been trying to keep myself from posting shots of the girls, because that's the easiest way to make a decent shot each day (and would bore everybody). Today I just couldn't resist her expression. Would you have guessed she'll be 3 in May?

038/365 Lines

Saturday, 06th February, 2010

038/365 Lines

This catched my eye when walking to the store.

037/365 III

Friday, 05th February, 2010

037/365 III

I suppose shooting beer is lame, but the new 1l can is such a beauty that I had to (buy and) take a picture of it with the little brother (1/3 l). I did drink all the beer too :)

036/365 ICICLES AND BRICKS

Thursday, 04th February, 2010

036/365 ICICLES AND BRICKS

It has been getting warmer and the icicles are melting all around our neighborhood. I just had to take one of these at the wall of the old baracks building close-by. I loved the contrast between the bricks and the ice.

035/365 Mini

Wednesday, 03rd February, 2010

035/365 Mini

The new Minis are just so great! Bright in colors and cute to look at. I would consider buying one if a car wouldn't be a complete waste of money and environment.

033/365 WHAT WOULDN\'T ONE DO FOR THE SHOT?

Tuesday, 02nd February, 2010

033/365 WHAT WOULDN'T ONE DO FOR THE SHOT?

There was/is an interesting sign in the nearby park, which I wanted to shoot. I kept on getting closer and closer with the 50mm until I was hip deep in the snow. Funnily, the shot I took of my legs was in the end more interesting than the one I took of the sign.

033/365 ICE & DANGER

Monday, 01st February, 2010

033/365 ICE & DANGER

I took a few shots of this box and the icicles. In the end, I realized both that I should've stopped down and that the wall of the box is ugly. With some PP I got what you see below. It's far from perfect, but could also be worse.

032/365 ABSOLUTE CTRL OVER THE BOKEH

Sunday, 31st January, 2010

032/365 ABSOLUTE CTRL OVER THE BOKEH

There's something funny with the people frequenting photography forums. If they must take a shot but don't have the slightest clue what to shoot, this is what they.. krrhm.. we typically end up with: a boring shot of the keyboard. 333 of these coming up... I bet you can't wait? ;)

January 2010 archived

Wednesday, 25th July, 2012

January 2010 archived

I moved the last month's shots to the archive because the page started to get a bit heavy.

January 2010

031/365 BIOBULLET IN THE SNOW

Saturday, 30th January, 2010

031/365 BIOBULLET IN THE SNOW

Meet Tiuhti, the dog of my mother-in-law. They were visiting us today, and we went to the ice to play a bit in the snow. Had great time (although I wasn't properly dressed in my jeans; they get wet pretty fast).

030/365 IT COMES ALSO IN LAYERS

Friday, 29th January, 2010

030/365 IT COMES ALSO IN LAYERS

Somehow I believe the theme of the month throughout Finland has been 'Snow'. Mainly because it's all over the place. After three winters without snow, I'm not sure whether I'm going to get bored of it during the coming weeks or not. Though, seems a lot of people have already lost their endurance ;)

029/365 56 cm (22 inches) OF SNOW, MORE COMING

Thursday, 28th January, 2010

029/365 56 cm (22 inches) OF SNOW, MORE COMING

The snow seems to be here to stay. We reached 56 cm today, and there is more coming today and during the weekend. I LOVE it! :)

028/365 ####

Wednesday, 27th January, 2010

028/365 ####

This is more of my traditional style. I was hoping it would be later during the year when I need to start shooting the walls of the lab, but here we are... And I already shot the surveillance cameras about a week ago :'o

027/365 COUNTERACT [-21°C/-5.8F]

Tuesday, 26th January, 2010

027/365 COUNTERACT [-21°C/-5.8F]

It was pretty cold today. Taking into account that there is a clear wind blowing through our balcony door and one of the windows (they will come and fix it), we have it warm and cosy inside. Still, it inspired me to take this shot.

026/365 CURSE AND BLESSING OF THE MODERN LIFE

Monday, 25th January, 2010

026/365 CURSE AND BLESSING OF THE MODERN LIFE

For a Finn, the title is probably more true than for the average Westerner. This sign is from the Flagship shop at Aleksanterinkatu in downtown Helsinki, which I've been frequenting with my N81 which refuses to work properly. Tomorrow, they said today, I might get a new device to replace the problematic one. We'll see what they'll offer.

025/365 TROLLS OF THE DARK FOREST

Sunday, 24th January, 2010

025/365 TROLLS OF THE DARK FOREST

Phew... I had one of those "I have to shoot something, I have to shoot somethign..." moments slightly transforming to panic, when I noticed the Moomin fenced on the floor where the rest of the family was playing with the wooden railroad. I asked Stella to set up the trees behind the trolls, and ended up with this.

It is, I believe, the first selective color shot I've done this year.

024/365 TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE SUNSET

Saturday, 23rd January, 2010

024/365 TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE SUNSET

Finally something I'm actually happy with. I went out just to shoot something, and found this lonely little tree from the top of the hill behind Annala. I had to step out from the trail, but I think it was worth the effort.

023/365 IMPATIENTLY WAITING FOR THE SUMMER DAYS

Friday, 22nd January, 2010

023/365 IMPATIENTLY WAITING FOR THE SUMMER DAYS

It's crazy what people leave outside during the winter. For instance, there are two bikes covered by the snow right outside our door, and a motorcycle which is actually completely under snow by now.

022/365 ALMOST OBSOLETE

Thursday, 21st January, 2010

022/365 ALMOST OBSOLETE

It must be the scientist in me which tries to cut all the bullsh*t ;) ... at least this is how I'm explaining to myself the lack of comments I post with the shots. Some people doing a similar project will write PAGES each day. I really admire them for doing it, although I very seldom actually read all the text.

Whatever.

Below is what I was able to do today. I'm eagerly waiting for the next month and changing lenses again. The 180mm is a bit long to be used indoors.

021/365 are you? UNDER SURVEILLANCE

Wednesday, 20th January, 2010

021/365 are you? UNDER SURVEILLANCE

020/365 DRY STREAM

Tuesday, 19th January, 2010

020/365 DRY STREAM

019/365 HIDDEN BORDER

Monday, 18th January, 2010

019/365 HIDDEN BORDER

018/365 SCIENTIFIC VIEW

Sunday, 17th January, 2010

018/365 SCIENTIFIC VIEW

A quick one. Just something I've been reading lately.

017/365 COME ON! GET BAKED!

Saturday, 16th January, 2010

017/365 COME ON! GET BAKED!

Tried to think a bit out of the box today. Hope you all like it.

016/365 DARE TO ENTER?

Friday, 15th January, 2010

016/365 DARE TO ENTER?

Funny colored lights they have in the stairways of the parking hall at the University of Arts ;)

015/365 BOUND TO THE GROUND

Thursday, 14th January, 2010

015/365 BOUND TO THE GROUND

Went out during the 'lunch' break to shoot something. This was behind the lab...

014/365 A BIG NO-NO!

Wednesday, 13th January, 2010

014/365 A BIG NO-NO!

Just don't :D

013/365 SOMETHING SPECTACULAR

Tuesday, 12th January, 2010

013/365 SOMETHING SPECTACULAR

I've no idea what the girls were looking/shooting at. Must be something spectacular...

012/365 CAN YOU SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES?

Monday, 11th January, 2010

012/365 CAN YOU SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES?

The twigs caught my attention while heading for the kindergarten to take Sofia home.

011/365 SUPPORT

Sunday, 10th January, 2010

011/365 SUPPORT

No comments. The picture should speak for itself.

010/365 TOWARDS LIGHT

Saturday, 09th January, 2010

010/365 TOWARDS LIGHT

I love how the trees look right now. Lot's of snow and tiny pointy crystals growing out from the branches.

009/365 PABLO\'S GUESTS AT -15°C

Friday, 08th January, 2010

009/365 PABLO'S GUESTS AT -15°C

It wasn't seriously cold today, but it must have felt quite cold for all the people queing for the Picasso exhibition at the Art Museum Ateneum.

008/365 ISICLES

Thursday, 07th January, 2010

008/365 ISICLES

After a few years in practice without snow, it's great to see it all over with such amounts. We are definitely loving it :)

007/365 NOWHERE TO GO

Wednesday, 06th January, 2010

007/365 NOWHERE TO GO

Taken during the 'lunch' break while I went to Sörnäinen to pay for the laptop repair.

006/365 KEEPS ME GOING

Tuesday, 05th January, 2010

006/365 KEEPS ME GOING

A bit hasty, but I didn't have enough time for proper shooting. Great coffee in any case.

005/365 RETIRED, NOT FORGOTTEN

Monday, 04th January, 2010

005/365 RETIRED, NOT FORGOTTEN

I think I'm repeating myself... need to find something not in snow for tomorrow...

004/365 A LIGHT IN THE DARK

Sunday, 03rd January, 2010

004/365 A LIGHT IN THE DARK

We had a busy day today with Sofia running around downtown Helsinki after she slept. When I remembered my camera after the tram trip back home, it was already dark. This is what I came up with.

New Year, New Year...

Saturday, 02nd January, 2010

New Year, New Year...

So, we are back in Helsinki since about five months as of writing this. We are enjoying Arabianranta extremely much, and everything is just as dandy as it gets. Even when there is 34cm of snow and temperature somewhere at 20 degrees C below the freezing point.

During 2008, I did a 365 day project posting one picture a day. Last year, I went for one shot per week which ended up as the 52 week project. This year I'm back to my roots. I will again make one shot for each day - preferably one taken during each day - and post them in Smugmug and here. For the January, I'm going with the AF Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 lens and posting the pictures collectively here.

Without further ramblings, here are the first three shots:

003 SAFETY ABOVE ALL

002 FLAME

001 LAST MOMENTS OF TODAY'S 5H 57M

Sometimes life feels like a puzzle

Monday, 09th March, 2009

Sometimes life feels like a puzzle

For half a year now I've been wondering what I want to do when I grow up. I always thought it would become easier while I get older, but seems it's even more difficult now. Especially with a family.

Right now I feel like going for an academic carrier. I know I love this job, and perhaps it really is possible to get a living while doing research after all. Well, at least I'm trying; there are a total of four proposals submitted or in preparation plus some other possibilities :)

I also got prepared for some networking today (researcher id, nature network, research gate, linkedin, and as usual facebook) and added links to my publication list. Btw. check out the on the side bar. Pretty neat application!

Here is a recent fitting shot:

EVERY PERSON IS AN ENIGMA

Check out the gallery for new family pictures.

Another year spent

Thursday, 30th October, 2008

Another year spent

I'm fast approaching the age of 30 - today's day count is 364, and it will become one less each day. Perhaps because of this, I have lately been thinking of my future carrier.

Unfortunately there are no real conclusions ;) However, I have been surprised on how much I like preparing (and giving) lectures. I would've never believed that.

In any case, here is a recent picture:

SEVEN-LEAGUE BOOTS

As always, there are also (other) new pictures of Sofia.

The more the merrier...

Friday, 19th September, 2008

The more the merrier...

Anita and Tiuhti (my mother-in-law and her dog) joined us for the rest of the year two weeks ago. Before they arrived, we were busy organizing her room, and after they got here I took some days off, and we went to Finland to Katja-Riikka's and Risto's wedding.

Hence, not much time to think about posting. 'Case Santa-Claus' is forming in my head but we'll see if I ever get done with it so that it could be posted here.

Anyway, here is a picture from the amusement park visiting the city garden 100m from our front door (another shot made it to my picture of the day):

:: My SmugMug ::

I also added a few pictures of Sofia and Roosa. The password for the first gallery is the full name of Sofia (first and second given name all lower case letters and without the space), and that of the second is the address of my mom and sister (only the street name, all letters in lower case).

Seeing is believing...

Tuesday, 19th August, 2008

Seeing is believing...

I learned a new tiny piece of wisdom during the last week i.e. NetworkManager 0.7 is the new Chuck Norris. As a super-nerd, as I've been previously called, I just had to share this information with you all ;)

Think what you want, but that is some good news. And it even works. I'm still amazed. Although the new features would be nice to get (such as the possibility for having different setups for LAN depending on location), I got everything I wanted working with the Dispatcher and some ugly scripts (tm).

Here is another recent shot for all of you. Strobes would make it light years better by allowing shutter speeds above 1/250", but this had to do for now.

:: My SmugMug ::

Waiting for news

Monday, 04th August, 2008

Waiting for news

I got a message from NIKON last week: they've received my D200 on the 29th of July, and more news is to come within 3-5 days. This is the fifth day (excluding the weekend), and so far there have been no other news. I'm hoping they'll get it fixed soon.

While waiting, I've been shooting with Stella's D50. It might not be as much of a pleasure as shootin with the D200, but the camera sure can produce some quality images. My yesterday's picture was a rushed idea late at night, but I think I like it.

:: My SmugMug ::

A dad-and-daughter weekend... first of its kind

Wednesday, 23rd July, 2008

A dad-and-daughter weekend... first of its kind

Stella is leaving for Amsterdam tomorrow morning, and is half terrified and half thrilled. This is the first time she will spend a night (actually two) away from Sofia. We are sure she will forget us the minute the rear lights flash to our direction :'P

Hopefully they will have a great trip with the girls.

I've uploaded some recent shots of the family to the SmugMug gallery. Click the picture of Sofia for getting there. The password is the same as before for Sofia's pics. Send me an email if you need it.

:: My SmugMug ::

When things start to go bad...

Sunday, 20th July, 2008

When things start to go bad...

I noticed last week that the electronics of my Nikon D200 camera were doing something funny; the grid lines in the view finder wouldn't turn off completely, instead only the lower part vanished. Hence, I need to send the camera to Nikon in Stuttgart :( Luckily the warranty is still on for a few months.

Of course, when things start to go bad, all the sh*t comes down at once; next the battery of my laptop died. 9 days after the warranty ended. How bad luck is that? I ordered a new one with much more capacity, but it still was another 180€ wasted...

To add the icing to the cake, my throat has been keeping me up through the weekend. I've no idea what's wrong down there, but there is some pain during the days, and it's difficult to breath during the nights. Now it's already a tad better. Hopefully I'll be fit again tomorrow morning - I need to go to the gym (and to work, of course).

Anyways, here is yesterday's picture of the day of my 366 Day Project:

:: My SmugMug ::

News for the family (in Finnish)

Saturday, 19th July, 2008

News for the family (in Finnish)

Kuten monet varmasti tietävät, kävimme kesäkuussa Suomessa Tiinan, Paulan ja Tuijan tasakymmenvuotispäivillä (kahdet eri kutsut). Sen jälkeen meillä on riittänyt vilinää ja vilskettä täällä Saksassa.

Suvi, Antti, Jonas ja tytöt käväisivät moikkaamassa meitä heinäkuun alussa. Laitoin kuvia vierailusta SmugMug:iin. Alla oleva kuva on linkki galleriaan. Salasana on 'helleloma' ;)

:: My SmugMug ::

Kun he olivat lähteneet, Esa ja Anni käväisivät - itse asiassa kahdesti, ja nyt Tiina ja Ari ovat tulossa huomenna pariksi päiväksi. Sen jälkeen meillä taitaakin olla vähän pidempi tauko vierailijoissa.

Paddling on Altrhein

Saturday, 19th July, 2008

Paddling on Altrhein

We went for paddling with the work group on Friday the 11th of July to Altrhein. Had some fabulous time there :)

EDIT: SmugMug is up again. Click on the following picture to go to the gallery. The password is given as the hint on the page.

:: My SmugMug ::

Seems I\'m not much of a blogger

Wednesday, 09th July, 2008

Seems I'm not much of a blogger

Haven't written anything here during the last 5 months :) I'll try to get things straigth again and write at least something every week. Or every second... or at least once in a month.

Honestly, I'll try to make it a habit to write something here every Monday from now-on.

Here is a recent shot from the 366 Day Project of mine:

SmugMug :: photo page - please leave a comment

I'll also try to add some family pictures to a SmugMug gallery with a password protection, although most of the relatives saw us while visiting Finland in June.

Photo projects

Thursday, 03rd January, 2008

Photo projects

I haven't yet given up the projects ;) However, I decided to stop posting the images here every day. Please, visit my flickr gallery for the pics.

3/366 - Sunrise above clouds

Wednesday, 02nd January, 2008

3/366 - Sunrise above clouds

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

Third pic of my Pic-A-Day project.

I wanted to avoid snapshotting on this project. This image is not far from that, but I still decided to include it after considering it for quite some time.

This was taken on our way back home from spending the holidays with family in Finland. I originally wanted to capture the colors on the clouds framed by the plane window. However, I ended up removing most of the color from the image. In my opinion it came more interesting this way.

Great to be back home. Now I've a few days to recover from the holidays before going back to work...

2/366 - An old enemy

Tuesday, 01st January, 2008

2/366 - An old enemy

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

Second pic of my Pic-A-Day project.

Also the second image was a tough call - we have been visiting relatives in Finland during the holidays and are leaving for home (Germany) tomorrow i.e. this has been a day of lots of hassle. Taking into account the circumstances, I am happy with this picture. I have been constantly bouncing my head against this lamp - hence the name.

We are leaving Finland tomorrow to get back home. As nice as it is to meet friends and relatives, it is also very nice to get back.

New projects for the New Year 2008!

Monday, 31st December, 2007

New projects for the New Year 2008!

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

You may have noticed that I skipped the last two weekly images on 2007. The reason is (mostly) that I took a break from photographing for a few days (except for family), because I had two new projects in my mind.

The first one is called JanuariMadness, and I am doing it with a bunch nice people at the Nikon Café forums. The idea is to use only one fixed focal lenght lens (prime) for the whole month, and to publish one image per day. My choice of the lens is the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4.

Second game is 366 Day Project, in which I will take a picture a day for the whole year - without the limitation on the selection of lenses. Also for this challenge, there are some guys participating on the same fora.

The above image launches both puzzling projects ;) Happy new year everybody!

Photo of week 49, 2007

Saturday, 15th December, 2007

Photo of week 49, 2007

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

Going through my last week's photos, I was rather surprised to notice how few they were. Must be related to all the Christmas hassle... presents and planning the trip to Finland etc.

This photo is probably not the best ever taken photograph ;) However, I sort of like it. Especially because of the contrast between the wine jar and the pipes. They even face to opposite directions.

Four nights before leaving for Finland. Amazing how fast time goes.

Photo of week 48, 2007

Saturday, 08th December, 2007

Photo of week 48, 2007

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

My this week's favourite is a metallic bird on someones front yard in Paulusviertel. I am overall rather satisfied with the colors and composition of this picture. Especially because it was a quick grab while hurrying my way home from work.

We have mostly recovered from our most recent visitors who left last Thursday ;) Now only a bit more than one week before flying to Finland for holidays!

Photo of week 47, 2007

Saturday, 24th November, 2007

Photo of week 47, 2007

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

Let me introduce our start of the week: Sofia! She is laying on a carpet and reaching for my camera. She sure knows what to want ;)

P.S. Happy birthday Stella!

Photo of week 46, 2007

Monday, 19th November, 2007

Photo of week 46, 2007

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

I haven't been shooting much last week - partly because I've been tired after the visit of my mom last weekend ;)

However, I like this picture a lot. I guess the reason is partly that it was taken after dark with Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens, which I had already doomed for shooting after sunset. I got a sort of a revelation yesterday (yup, it was actually taken on week 47) when playing around with long shutter speeds. Oh boy, now I really want a tripod system...

The target is a glass tile window close to where we live. It shone beautifully from the dark wall turned into blue in the darkening evening.

Photo of the week

Tuesday, 13th November, 2007

Photo of the week

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

While upgrading the looks of these pages today, I decided to start a 'pic-per-week' project. This means that after each week - or at least most weeks - I will go through my photos and pick a favorite to show here.

The last week's photograph is from my way to work. I love the autumn colors around, and this tree from the route 'DA(2)' catched my eye.

Pictures from Bessungen

Saturday, 27th October, 2007

Pictures from Bessungen

flickr :: photo page - please leave a comment

I uploaded my publicly accessible photos to flickr. The private ones remain here for the time beeing. New sets include some photos from this part of Darmstadt, Bessungen, where we live and a few shots taken elsewhere around here.

New photos

Saturday, 20th October, 2007

New photos

Just added a few more photos. Nothing really exciting, mostly pictures of Sofia for relatives. I bet most people won't see the difference in pictures taken with my old D50 and the new D200, because the shooter has remained the same. However, I do think that the new camera has already allowed me to start to become a better photographer. Perhaps in twenty years my pictures will eventually be decent...

My Nikon D200 arrived!

Wednesday, 10th October, 2007

My Nikon D200 arrived!

I bought a new camera this week with a decent carry-around lens. Expect huge expansion of the Photos section soon.

Now all I need to make me happy would be a set consisting maybe of a wideangle zoom (~12-24 mm), a fixed-focal length lens with large aperture (f.ex. 30 mm with f/1.4), another fixed lens (f.ex. 180 mm) plus a fisheye lens. Not to mention additional flash and a second battery plus a tripod...

More about the photographs

Thursday, 27th September, 2007

More about the photographs

A friend got me again paranoid about privacy. Have a look at Facebook's terms of usage. Especially the 'User Content Posted on the Site' part is alarming.

Because of this sentence:

'By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.',

I decided to remove the photos from facebook and put them here instead.

I just don't want to find cups or t-shirts sold with Sofia's picture on them...

To access the photos, just click here and give 'photos' as username and both first names of our daughter (without a space, lowercase letters) as the password. Ask me if you don't know them both.

Back from Sicily

Saturday, 22nd September, 2007

Back from Sicily

Well... about the photos... I was overspoken to join facebook and uploaded some pictures there. You have to become a friend in order to see them though.

We went to a conference in Sicily last week, all three of us, and returned today. Some shots of Etna will surely be also added.

Arriving to Darmstadt

Monday, 23rd July, 2007

Arriving to Darmstadt

We arrived at Darmstadt today after a very hard day. We even finally got our luggage here.

Σoφiα

Sunday, 13th May, 2007

Σoφiα

Our daughter Sofia is now 8 days old. Stay tuned for pictures emerging soon on section to-be-called 'photos'.

Sunday, 20th September, 2015