Ari Makela

– A Unix Dinosaur

Home Äijäruokaa Japan 2007 Unix/Linux
A Gas Tank in Helsinki

Profession

I'm a Finnish software engineer and system admistrator. While I have worked with multitude of systems I nowadays mostly work with GNU/Linux, Golang, Openstack, Python and AWS. If the need arises, I can shake the dust off my Perl do sinister things with legacy systems.

Photography

I love photographs and I specialize in food, night and wildlife photography. I admire photographers like Meeri Koutaniemi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Steve McCurry and Art Wolfe. The latest addition to the list are Nick Brandt and Laurent Baheux. Capturing, and trying capture the decisive moment, is ever fascinating.

My own photographs can be viewed at Flickr and on Instagram.

Cooking

Photography is an essential part of an important hobby of mine: food blogging. I write the Äijäruokaa blog. I'm especially interested in the art of Japanese and French cuisines.

Unix/Linux

Unix type operating systems have been my operating systems of choice since the early 90's. The emphasis on tools and an overall developer friendliness makes them very good for my needs. I am the author of Finnish Linux HOWTO, which is now mostly of historical interest as the documentation of GNU/Linux has moved on to other sources.

Making Love

The powerful Unix command line gives opportunity for playing with error messages, including the single quote in csh and tcsh.

% What is Trump's incapability like? Unmatched '.

However, the best known of these jokes is making love. Different make variants have diverse output when used incorrectly.

GNU make
make: *** No rule to make target `love'. Stop.
OSF1
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.
HP-UX
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

The poor things.

SunOS
make: Fatal error: Don't know how to make target `love'

Fatal indeed.

AIX
make: Cannot find a rule to create target love from dependencies. Stop.
IRIX
UX:make: ERROR: don't know how to make love (bu42).
A Non-Unix System: Borland C/C++ for DOS
Fatal: 'love' does not exist - don't know how to make it
A Non-Unix System: Delphi
MAKE Version 3.7 Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 Borland International Fatal: Unable to open makefile

Japan 2007

I visited Japan in 2007 with my friend TJ. We had a base in Kōenji, Tōkyō. Both of as are very interested in history so we visited many places including

  • Tōkyō: Eastern Gardens of Imperial Palace
  • Fuji-san
  • Tōkyō: The Ghibli Museum at Mitaka
  • Tōkyō: Harajuku (Meiji Jingu)
  • Tōkyō: Kōenji Awa Odori
  • Fuji-san
  • Kamakura, an old capital of Japan, and Enoshima
  • Kure: Yamato Museum, Japan Maritime Self Defense Force Museum
  • Kyōtō
  • Matsumoto-jo is one for the four Japanese castles with the status of a National Treasure.
  • Tōkyō: Shinjuku
  • Tōkyō Metropolitan Office
  • Tōkyō: Shinjuku Gyoen
  • Yokohama: Nippon Maru, Landmark Tower, China Town, Hikawa Maru, WorldCon 2007
  • Tōkyō: Yakusuni-jinja.
  • Yokosuka: Mikasa

Many of my photos from the trip can be found on Flickr and there's more to come.