"The Finnish journalist names his favorites, but says Wayne Gretzky stands alone."

The whole piece from the above link or after the jump.

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Our cable TV provider was acquired by another company a few months ago. For us, that meant picking up a new digital box for our TV. According to the instructions that came with the new box, we should now throw the old one in the garbage.

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I was so bored today I had to call my Mom and tell her that I had nothing to do. As usual, she had a few suggestions. Mothers always do. Must be something they get at the maternity clinic when the father is in the parking lot, trying to find his car.

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Tough guys don't dance:

Here's an entry from the archives. All the way from December 2005, in fact.

Magic with Malik and Dad
There we were, Dad and I, in the Madison Square Garden last Saturday. It was Dad’s first NHL game ever, and for me, it was the first time I was in MSG.

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Finns see themselves as a nation with a poor collective self-esteem. If that's possible. To have a collective self-esteem, I mean.

Anyway, apparently, our self-esteem is fine, thank you very much, and instead, we rank higher than, for example, Japan, in how we feel about ourselves.

Where do we get the ego?

Just got back from London where we spent a long weekend, taking in the latest trends, the sights, and doing a lot of shopping. Amazing city.

But the left-hand traffic is a killer. Really. Without the huge "LOOK RIGHT" signs painted on the streets, I don't know how right I would look now.

The funny thing is that many people here talk about that as "the Brits driving on the wrong side of the street." Left isn't wrong, right? It's just ... left.

Here's a special post for a special occasion. It's my wife's birthday, and I wanted to do something special. So, here's the first ever RPodcast. It's a short short story about a man, his job and a baby, with some autobiographical elements in it.

If you don't want to listen to my reading of the piece, the entire text can be found after the jump. (But you'll miss photos, some sound effects, and my lulling voice.)

Master of My Domain, 11MB, time: 8:14

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I've been thinking about different sorts of clubs lately. Not night clubs, more like membership in an exclusive group. Such as, VIP treatment at a hockey, an inner circle of any genre, a gym, and how we all want to feel special.

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"The Finnish journalist blogs on the Mens of Steel who represent European countries well."

More after the jump.

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I'm in Finland for the Finnish Custom Publishing Day, and staying at a hotel. Every time I eat alone in a restaurant - and that happens regularly on my numerous visits to the old country - I think about this movie: Steve Martin, The Lonely Guy.


No spotlights on me tonight, though.

It's as easy or hard as writing for a printed magazine. Who said writing was easy anyway? A writer colleague of mine once said that a story doesn't exist until it's been read. It's the reader who decides what works and what doesn't. Same with the Web. And I think people have showed that they can read stuff off of a screen as well -- once they have decided to read something.

The question's not how to write for the Web, it's more about whether you should write for the Web at all.

More about this on Tuesday, after the Finnish Custom Publishing Day.

Edit: here are the slides.

Edit 2: NY Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger: "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."