Note: The older the entry, the unlikelier outside links are to work.

Glad that Tero finally made it back and took off some of the burden I carry by being the sole contributor to Kekkuli, I took some time off to... what did I do? Why didn't I get around to spending 10 minutes to put up one of the several things I have lined up for Kekkuli? Was it because of Nokia Game? (Nooo, I gave up on that after the second day, realizing that it was a lot more time-consuming and a lot less fun than last year). Was it because I was busy saving the world from a future controlled by a superhuman artificial intelligence? (No, I'm still looking forward to that). What was it? Oh yeah, this master's thesis that I'm writing right now. I just passed the 20,000 word limit and am slowly getting to the stage of wrapping up. Hopefully by the beginning of next week I'll have something to present to my supervisor and be done with it all by the end of the year.

So that's where I am. The question was where are we? You can get a real big-picture answer here, where they have Maps of the Universe. Unfortunately, they are very earth-centric, so it won't tell you much about where in the Milky Way we are at the moment, but it gives you a nice idea of where human understanding currently stands.

On the map and in reality, the most-travelled human construction Voyager 1 is getting ready to leave the solar system. How cool is that? (replies expected at the poll on the side).

I might have been stranded in a deserted island in Malaysia for a while and I might have been fighting the immigration officers in northern Mexico ever since, but nothing could keep me away forever from the one and only kekkuli website. So, although I did manage to stay lost for quite some time, I have now returned. For good, who knows. But at least for now. In my absence, Jani has done a wonderful job in keeping you all (or should I say you both) occupied with such incredibly interesting nonsense like old computer games and more mobile phone wizardry! Wow! My return comes not a moment too soon. In any case, I know of only one person who actually did miss my contributions to the site, and that person is David from New York, although I stronly suspect it's only because I owe him a meal. So, to make a long story short, David is one of our most loyal readers and visitors, but more importantly he was also the 6666th visitor on kekkuli.com, for which (if anybody can recall this) I promised him a free meal. David has truly earned his meal and I look forward to feeding him in or around Mexico anytime soon. Also, I am now looking for visitor number 7777, for I just realized I have been gone quite longer than I first thought. Damn. Anyway, let me know if it was you.

While I was gone, the world has changed a lot, or not at all, depending on your point of view, but either way I did miss this great matchup. One would think these two would have more urging matters to attend to, but hey, at least Castro has proven by now that he doesn't. Chavez still has to live up to his great "wisdoms" and Bolivarian expansionistic dreams. Try surviving the year first. I am also trying to survive the dissapointment of the second Matrix movie, to such an extent that I might even skip the third one. Well, that is a lie I know, for it must be seen if only to be able to say how bad it sucked. In any case, also surviving are the animals in this funny and should we say educational parody of the movie. Enjoy.

I'm telling you one more time: Nokia Game starts in less than a week, and if you're in need of a new phone, there's no better chance to get a free one. About 50 people from every country wins one, and in the demo game that they have up on their site already I'm in the top 20 for Finland. And this is a snowboarding game, definitely not my forte. All signs are once again pointing towards a relatively easy win. Of course I could be totally wrong, in which case you won't be hearing much more about Nokia Game from me anymore. Still, if you finally resigned to giving it a try, join the clan "kekkuli" I created for no rational reason.

A friend of mine has been working on a strategy game of his own for some time, and he's finally got it into working condition. The idea of Militarea is that you can have an unlimited number of players in one game, though I've only played two-player games so far. Those have been pretty fun as well (after initial problems were sorted out), so if you find yourself one evening wanting to play around with strategy without any friends to play Risk with, I recommend you give this game a try. There should be a game every evening (Finnish time), but since the player pool is still pretty small there might not be enough players every day. Still, try to get into a game at some point. It's very simple yet keeps your interest going. I'm hoping I'll be able to get to play a multiplayer game sometime soon.
As an added bonus, you can even play for money if you have a Finnish mobile phone operator. You send your bet in with a SMS message and the bets are divided between the winners. Yet another thing you can do with that company phone of yours.

If you're into biotechnology and have a few extra mice at your disposal, how about entering the Methuselah Mouse Contest? The prize is awarded to whoever manages to keep a lab mouse alive in functioning health for the longest (current record: 1819 days). Obviously the final aim is not to just have long-living mice, but somehow to be able to apply the same techniques that keep mice alive to humans. But think if this technology gets into the wrong hands! You'd have mice running all over your house that would outlive you! We must stop this horrendous activity, ban it through legislation and burn everyone that attempts to make superpests!

Speaking of living long, I saw The 6th Day a few days ago, and I'm coming to the conclusion that I should just watch any sci-fi movies that come along, I seem to enjoy them no matter what. In this case, despite Ah-nold (I'm sorry: Mr. Governor). The movie was based on the huge assumption that the moment we're able to clone humans, we'll also be able to transfer all of their thoughts and memories to the new body. Realistically, the ability to just clone someone (ie. to have an identical twin that's of a different age than you) should be coming around in a few years, and it will be done somewhere for sure. The technology to record and transfer a person's mind will not be available in decades. It's still probably coming along at some point, though, which in my view is a perfect reason not to outlaw it. If it's outlawed, only criminals and bad people will do it, like in this movie. If you're into sci-fi, this movie was surprisingly good. If not, don't bother.

During my travels in the last few years, I've reached the conclusion that you can get on the internet pretty much everywhere. I haven't been too much in darkest Africa, which could prove me wrong, but even the tiniest village in the Balkans or the Caucasus always has at least one internet cafe. Accordingly, the paradise islands of the south Pacific have not been left behind. One island group that I'd never heard about is Tokelau, 480 km north of Western Samoa (helps a lot, doesn't it?) that belongs to New Zealand. Still, the islands have their own domain extension, .tk, and they're giving domain names for free. So if you have one of those crappy addresses given out by ISP's, with all kinds of slashes and curly lines, you might want to consider a simple .tk-address. It's not like you're going to lose anything.

My favorite Pacific Internet story still remains the story of Tuvalu's UN membership. The story goes (and I think it's true, although it's not listed on Snopes.com, so I can't be sure) that when internet domain extensions were given out to various countries and regions, Tuvalu ended up with the extension .tv. Some American company realized the potential of selling .tv-domains to tv-channels, programs and whatnot and offered to buy the rights to the domain from the government of Tuvalu. Tuvalu accepted and received an intial hefty sum of dollars and a share of all sales. With this money, the dirt-poor island statelet could finally afford to join the UN, becoming the 189th member state in 2000. Now that's new economy.