CompUSA is a well stocked computer superstore on Market Street in San Francisco. The store looks miniscule from the street level, but all the stuff is located in the basement.

You can satisfy all of your basic computing needs here, including Apples. There are also networking stuff, PDAs, software and a lot of various accessories available.

As an extra gimmick the store provides free Internet access with a few computers. Usually all of those are taken, so be prepaped to wait 10-20 minutes for your turn.

http://www.compusa.com/, 750 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 391-9778

Old Navy is the discount chain owned by the company behing GAP and Banana Republic. The Old Navy stores are not that fancy as the other chains’, as they concentrate to deliver clothes with smaller pricetag.

The clothes are of good quality, but the design is not always the best. The store itself has cheapish feel and does not induce to spend time in browsing and trying out different outfits.

This specific store is huge, there are four floors of garments for both sexes, including maternity and bigger sizes. The upmost floor has a good selection of children clothing, too.

http://www.oldnavy.com/, 801 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 344 0375

I’m again on my way to the United States of America — to San Francisco and Bay Area to be exact. This is a business trip so I won’t be able to explore the neighbourhood that much. It’s a pity, as I’ve never before visited Emeryville and other parts of East Bay (except Berkeley — I’ve been there several times).

I’m always excited and a little bit worried when travelling. I’m not afraid of flying or anything, but I usually get a tad stressed out that I’m not going to be late… Maybe I’ve to be extra sure that I’m on top of the situation.

This time I’m even more worried as the expected date for the delivery is exactly three weeks from this date. I’ll be in the opposite corner of the world and if the delivery would begin, it takes 18-24 at best to travel back to Finland. I’ll keep my fingers crossed to elbows that nothing happens. Wish me luck.

San Francisco downtown has one good mall, located on the corner of Market Street and 5th Street. The few first floors host boutiques and Nordstrom department store is on the topmost floors.

The boutiques are pricey and Nordstrom is not cheap either, so prepare to have a thick wallet or enough credit with your credit cards to fully enjoy this place.

The mall is especially good at clothes, thanks partially to Nordstrom, but there are some other shops, too.

www.westfield.com/sanfrancisco, 865 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 512 6776, sanfrancisco@westfield.com

Union Square is the ground zero for shopping in San Francisco. Surrounded by big department stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Macy’s, and by speciality outlets, it offers more spending possibilities than your wallet can endure.

The boutiques are mostly to east of the square, on Post, Geary and Sutter streets.

The square itself has a small park that is nice to stroll and sit in between shopping. There is a café and theatre ticket booth on the square, too. And those of us travelling by cars can park their mobiles in underground garage below the park.

Union Square, Geary Street x Powell Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

Continuing from the previous article, let’s discuss about the left middle and bottom sections of the front page.

This part is usually still shown on modern computers with resolutions 1280×1024 or bigger. It may be partially hidden in 12″ laptops, depending on the selected font size.

The contents of the section are still primarily from the journal, but also photo gallery has a small section to spotlight a random gallery.

The front page shows in total eight most recent journal posts that are not reviews. The first one is shown on the top of the page and the rest in section More in Journal. The first article is shown with one paragraph (8) and the rest without any text, just the title. If the entry is in several categories, only one of those is shown to save space.

I have picked certain articles that have value over the time. These are listed in section Staff Picks (9). The picked articles have one WordPress custom field as a marker and the front page PHP script selects those articles in alphabetical order by titles.

The photo gallery is based on my own script. The galleries are managed through a specialised admin interface and the information is stored to several files. One file contains information about galleries themselves and every gallery has one file for the images.

The front shows one random image from the galleries (10). The gallery information file is read in and a gallery is selected using rand(). That gallery file is read in and the first photo is shown. Every gallery has similar type landscape image as the first image for better look for the gallery front page and that image is used here, too.

The bottom part of the left column contains information that is not designed to invite visitors to explore new parts of the site. Instead, it acts more like a brief sitemap to show the site structure.

The sections of the site (11) are listed in the same order as in the navigation menu. The main subsections are listed also. The journal categories are considered as subsections in this respect. The PHP script creates a data structure from the sections and subsections, and iterates it to produce the section table. The number of items is divided with three to create the columns. A
section is not, however, cut in the middle — all subsections are always shown under their section.

One of the sections is randomly selected and explained (12). The explanations are stored in the front page and the random number just decides which explanation to show this time.

That covers the left column. Next time, I’ll discuss more about the right column that concentrates mainly to the reviews.

Restaurant Henri’x is newly established gourmet restaurant in the poshy southern parts of Helsinki. The main chef is quite a young guy, Henrin Poulsen, who has made food in several gourmet restaurants before opening his own.

The food is very good and the prices are decent compared to the quality. The service was one of the best that I’ve experienced in Helsinki restaurants, attentive and still subdued. The waiter noticed the slightest hints to provide more water or bring the bill.

The restaurants sports modern design with dark furniture and splashes of bright magenta here and there. Still, the atmosphere is relaxed and cozy.

During out visit, there were patrons of all ages: group of young women, a family with children, middle-aged and elderly couples.

www.henrix.fi, Tehtaankatu 21, Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 4114 5370, info@henrix.fi

Alcatraz is one of the most famous penitentiaries in the world. Located a rock island in middle of San Francisco bay, just north of the downtown, the prison has held several well-known crooks, such as Al Capone and Robert Franklin Stout (”Birdman of Alcatraz”).

The cool waters and currents in the bay made the prison almost impossible to escape. Several inmates tried, but only two succeeded to get to the shore, just to be immediately returned.

The prison is a chilling experience. The cells are very small and without any extra items. As an additional torture San Francisco is just a few stone throws away and you can see the city from the prison yard.

www.nps.gov/alcatraz. Ferries from pier 41, Blue & Gold +1 415 705 5555.