Roberta from Spotify

I've been using Spotify now for quite some time and I like it more now than when I first wrote about it. Perhaps 70% of my music listening is now on Spotify. If I don't take into account music I listen to from the radio in car, then the percentage probably is close to 90%.
I even use it to listen to music that I have already on the hard drive. But why is it like that, why do I use it so much? It's the user experience, the UI is very nice, there is no lag, and the editorial content is vey good. When you add to that the huge music collection, there you have it, an offer you can't turn down.

But I still must bitch about the scrobbling. It just won't work on all the computers I'm using and I really want to have my music listening history on Last.fm. And where's the S60 client that they demoed already some weeks ago?

I read earlier today that Spotify is facing serious financial challenges and that within a year they would need to shut down. This is unless they manage to lure more paying premium customers as the ad based model doesn't bring in enough money. This would be fortunate but still I won't pay for the premium account as I can live with the ads and can even live without Spotify. Besides I want to hear the lovely voice of "Roberta from Spotify" every now and then.
So Spotify, if you want to get more premium users you should get a less nice voice with less likeable face behind it to read your premium account ads. :-)

Floorball season opener

Went to the season opener game of OLS in Finnish Floorball championship league. It was my first time ever to see this game live on this level. It's pretty damn fast and very good entertainment. I sat on the first row so I was really close to the action. I totally recommend this to anybody who enjoys watching a fast team sport. The game is pretty physical also nowadays. I'm sure I'm going to see quite many of these games this season as I have free entrance as a co-coach of my son's F junior team.

Let's play hockey!!!

I can hardly wait to see how Oulun Kärpät will do in SM Liiga this season. The team has gone through some changes compared to last year and there are a few very interesting players in the roster now - Teemu Aalto, Kimmo Koskenkorva, Pekka Saarenheimo and Pavel Rosa. Especially I'm looking forward to see how Koskenkorva who is now returning to Kärpät after many years is going to perform.
Also otherwise the SM Liiga should be rather interesting this season with a few very talented young players trying to establish themselves as solid SM Liiga players. Last season's rookie of the year, Hartikainen, should now show what he's really made of. And then the 17 year old boy Mikael Granlund who moved from Kärpät to HIFK is certainly a player to follow. I hope he does well.

PS. Last weekend I bought a new set of hockey equipment for my 8 years old son. It's a damn expensive hobby. I hope I don't need to buy all the gear every year.

What is too much?

I read an interesting book during the flights on the way from Oulu to San Francisco. It was "Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More" by John Naish. It's interesting how Naish explains our consumer habits by survival instinct that was vital when we still lived in caves. But the question remains open for what happens if we all learn to realize what is enough and that we just don't get any happier after reaching a certain standard of living? The whole current economy is built on constant growth.

I'm not sure how much the book affected me. Maybe I didn't buy as much clothes as I would have thought although they are crazy cheap in US compared to Finnish prices.

One change I decided to make is that I will watch less TV in the future and will lock the Disney Channel so our younger kid can't watch it too much.

Easter in Utsjoki

We had a wonderful Easter break in Utsjoki with two other families - our friends from Oulu and Kuopio.

The weather was just great for the two first days. On the third day it was cloudy but it didn't matter that much. The first day we went ice-fishing on a lake in the fells. We didn't catch any fish though but that wasn't the point anyway. The snowmobile trip to the lake was a great adventure for the kids of our friends. And the sun was shining from a blue sky and the temperature was somewhere around +6 c so it was just great to be there. We sat around a fire eating and chatting, watching kids play in snow laughing and shouting.

The next day we went first skiing on the ice of river Teno. It was just beautiful, sunny day once again. The wind was quite heavy but it was from our back and we were skiing down stream so you didn't really need to do anything but spread your arms to get going. Now our friends have seen Teno in the winter and have skiid to Norway - Teno is a border river.
Later that day we drove up 100 km to see the Nordic sea. I didn't remember how beautiful it is in winter. Our friends who hadn't seen that kind of scenery before were just amazed again.

The last day some of us went skiing on the ice of river Vetsijoki - me, my son and the ladies and girls - while the rest went feeding raindeers in the fell with my wife's dad and brother. Those guys were all smiles after that experience :-)

The evenings with great meals with all the three families together were so nice I'll remember it for a looong time. On the last evening also the family of my brother-in-law and my parents-in-law joined the dinner with us. There were 19 people around the table enjoying good company, good food and wine.

I'll try to post pictures of the trip to Ovi Share within a few days, but I'll probably make those available only to the friends that were on the trip with us.

The snow mobile trip of the year

Only 4 nights to the start of the main snowmobile trip of the year. This time around we're going to Gällivare, Sweden. Expectations are extremely high! I've been reading trip stories from kelkkalehti.com discussion board and it all sounds almost too good. There's just enough snow right now (68 cm) even though I woudn't mind if there was more. The weather forecast for the time we'll be there looks very promising. And the snow slide risk is very low in the area.

The entourage consist of all together 6 guys of the snowmobile club of Nokia Oulu. I guess all others than me have short sports sleds so I guess they will be digging those up from the snow a lot as they will get stuck. I guess we have to make one trip to Stora Sjöfallet and one to Kebnekaise. Although the mountains, or fjells rather, in Utsjoki where I was raised are very beautiful and some of them pretty high, they really don't compare to Kebnekaise or Stora Sjöfallet at all.

I've understood that Gällivare isn't really a place to go if you're looking for vivid night life. But that's not what we're looking for anyhow so it doesn't matter :)

We will pack the sleds on the trailers on Wed evening and by 10 am Thu we'll be on our way to Gällivare. I hope we arrive early enough so we can already make a small warm up trip on Thu afternoon/early evening.

Net Gens own the world?

I'm reading Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital and feel quite related to the Net Gen in some ways although I'm Gen X'er myself. I love many of the great social networking services and other nice stuff on Internet. I love to both consume and share things there. I want my Facebook, Last.fm, Flickr, Twitter, You Tube, Spotify etc.
But then again in many ways the Net Gen is so alien to me. I'm not as fast, I'm not as social with my working practices etc.
But if they are so damn efficient and clever, what is left for us Gen X'ers and baby boomers to do in the work life? Should we just retire and let these guys and gals take care of the business? ;-) Or is there something we're better at? Maybe the answer is there in the book, I just need to finish it first and digest it for a while.