I have to say I am very impressed by the camera. It fits the hand nicely, it is light, the startup time is short, Live View rocks, it is fast and - of course - has an excellent image quality. It wasn’t even expensive.

I am in love.

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I lose the network connection all the time, both at work (the centre of Helsinki) and on my way home (train through Espoo and Kirkkonummi). I haven’t even been moving always when these problems have occurred. My colleague has reported similar issues with his E90 (also upgraded).

Similar problems occurred during the last summer when one of the 3G base stations (Sonera) close to our office was broken.Somehow I find it very hard to believe that most of the base stations in the southern Finland were broken. There must be something else going on.

Could this be related to the firmware upgrade or is it just a coincidence?

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I’ve read this book numerous times and I did it again last weekend after hearing that it will be filmatized soon.

The Alchemist is a beautiful and extremely well written tale about a poor Andalusian boy, Santiago, who has a dream telling him to go to the the pyramids in Egypt. A treasure would be waiting there for him.

Santiago takes a chance and sells his only possession, a herd of sheep, and starts an adventure. He travels across the sea and the desert. His faith in the good in every person is exploited several times, he is robbed and his life is threatened but he makes his way to the pyramids only to find out that his treasure was buried in the very same place where he started his adventure.

There is something inspiring in this book as it is full of hope, faith and love. Yes, life may (and will) kick you in the nuts sometimes but eventually you will win if you have faith in yourself, take chances and you keep humbly doing what you think is right. So far I can attest this is true.

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If anyone at Nokia happens to read this, please start keeping your “Nokia software update news” RSS feed up-to-date. Right now finding out that there is a new firmware requires extra time and effort which could be used to develop something nice.

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My feet are sore from skiing and while spending some time surfing I noticed that
Leander Kahney (of Wired fame) and his publisher, No Starch Press, have uploaded two Kahney books in DRM-free PDF format to the notorious file sharing site, The Pirate Bay. The books are Cult Of iPod and Cult of Mac. I have to say that this is a bold move, even if the books are not “hottest of the hot” anymore.

If you prefer hard copies, please click the cover images.

Btw, the book covers are fantastic! One good reason to get the books to the bookshelf…

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Scrum is one of the hottest things in the software development industry nowadays. It is gaining popularity rapidly everywhere, replacing the waterfall model which has brought enough suffering and unhappiness to the world. The company I work for is also heavily committed to Scrum.

This book does not explain what Scrum is and it doesn’t try to convert anyone. It is all about explaining how Scrum framework has been applied to the work of the companies that the author, Henrik Kniberg, has been consulting. This book is “an agile war story” as Henrik Kniberg puts it.

I have once been listening to Henrik Kniberg and he is an excellent, inspiring speaker. The book is very similar. The author makes his points efficiently and does not waste time theorizing and repeating himself. Once you start this book, it’s hard to stop.

While reading this book I found a couple of ideas for my daily work as a ScrumMaster. This does not sound a lot but I am sure there would have been much more for me to learn from this book unless our agile coach wasn’t such a big fan of Henrik Kniberg and hadn’t taken most of the ideas in use already.

I highly recommend this book for any practioning ScrumMaster or Product Owner (or wannabes) who want to get some new ideas. The developers who are interested in actively affecting the way Scrum is practioned in their companies might also find this book useful but for the management I recommend something else — at least to begin with.

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Since I have never been as big KISS fan as my wife (or my brother), I have some holes in my KISS knowledge. Well, not for a long time.

To fix the situation I ordered a bunch of books about the band and its members. While doing this I noticed that Gene Simmons never ceases to surprise me. He is about to release two books (both can be pre-ordered already):

Ladies of the Night: An Historical and Personal Perspective of the First and Oldest Profession
Gene Simmons’ the Art of War

Yes, the first one is about the history of prostitution and the second one is based on the all-time classic from Sun Tzu. I’m not sure if I have enough interest for the prostitution book but The Art of War I just have to read.

Just in case anyone is interested in, the KISS books I ordered were:
KISS: Behind the Mask - Official Authorized Biography by David Leaf and Ken Sharp
KISS: The Early Years by Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Waring Abbott
Kiss and Sell: The Making of a Supergroup by C. K. Lendt
Sex Money Kiss (Gene Simmons Family Jewels) by Gene Simmons
Kiss and Make-up by Gene Simmons

A lot of reading to do before May 28th…

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Since this book is about starting, it is a perfect book to be the first book I have ever recommended to anyone publicly.

The author of the book, Guy Kawasaki, is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is a former Apple fellow and has been involved in several software companies. He is a well-known speaker who has written several books.

During the past 10 years I have tried to get all kinds of projects started. Sometimes I have managed (e.g. I did run my own mobile startup for four years), but quite often I have banged my big head on many walls and given up too easily. When I found this book, I hoped to find some good tips to increase my success rate.

I am a fast reader, but it took me over a month to finish this book. Not because it was hard to read, quite the contrary. Its chapters are short, it is structured logically and generally makes perfect sense – but just like good books do – it made me think. I stopped almost after each paragraph or a list of bullets to think my past successes and failures, and what I could have done differently.

In this book Guy Kawasaki tries to provide practical tips for “entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and not-for-profit crusaders” in the areas of positioning, pitching, writing business plans, bootstrapping, recruiting, raising capital, partnering, branding, rainmaking and being a mensch (a person who is ethical, decent and admirable) at the same time. The goal is ambitious but in my opinion well met at least from the perspective of an “entrepreneur-to-be”.

The topics mentioned above include several subtopics which range from schmoozing and giving speeches to designing T-shirts and e-mails. For each topic there is a very useful frequently asked question section and a list of further reading. The exercises I however found dull and meaningless, but luckily easily ignorable.

I found the most of the topics very interesting and I noted a lot of practical tips (some of which I have already applied to my everyday life successfully), but I feel that the book is at its best when it comes to raising capital from the venture capitalists.

The author does great job explaining how the venture capitalists think and how they work. He lists a lot of questions that the venture capitalists will ask from a entrepreneurs-to-be. The best practice is to be honest, he says, because the venture capitalists hear the same lies every single day — after all they do see similar presentations from people who “claim to represent a unique and earth-shattering opportunity with a proven team, proven technologies, and proven market.” Citing estimations found from market research studies will not impress investors.

I recommend that you don’t read this book without a grain of salt as some of the tips are a bit subjective, but expressed often as facts. I would also like to say that you should not give up on this book if you browse it and see some banalities listed here and there because it is just the author’s holistic style to include them — trust me, there is substance among them and now that they are included you can actually use this book as a checklist (before doing presentations, giving speeches, etc).

Other books authored or co-authored by Guy Kawasaki now added to my backlog:

Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services
Selling the Dream: Sales as Evangelism
How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit

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