Leena is a married woman from Turku, Finland.

Likes 3,005 pages, 61 videos, 238 photos • 178 fans • Received 47 reviews

Member since Jul 05, 2007

I am a math’s teacher in a high school for adults and seriously addicted to Japanese puzzles.

1. What caused you to join StumbleUpon and how long have you been Stumbling?

I am addicted to Japanese puzzles and I am a member of Conceptis puzzles, which creates the best of them. I followed closely the forums and someone had found out that Conceptis puzzles had been reviewed in SU. Of course I had to check and give my own review. When I found the stumble button and the web games it lead me to, I was hooked. This happened in the beginning of July 2007.

2. How do you select your SU friends?

It has changed over times. At first I added people who had interesting blogs and followed what they were stumbling. Now I have had to start removing some of them because I reached 200 a couple of months ago. At first I was the one who added people and now my visitors add me. I try to check all the visitors’ blogs and I add people whom I know from other connections or who have really interesting stumbles.

3. What are your favorite StumbleUpon topics, and why?

My absolute favourite is mathematics. I fell hopelessly in love with maths when I was 14 and it also became my profession. I want to show my students the beauty in mathematics and I try to get them overcome the fear for it. The next ones are puzzles and online puzzle games. I have been addicted to them since I got my first computer at home. After I found the Japanese puzzles I came to the conclusion that no game can beat solving them, but I occasionally try new games, too. I also love arts and photography.

4. Is there any feature that you think SU is missing?

The only feature I am really missing is the ability to blog posts straight to my main blog. If I want to do that, I have to Digg the article or use Clipmarks.

5. How often do you Stumble? Do you keep track of about how much time you spend Stumbling every day?

I stumble every day. At first I spent really too many hours Stumbling but nowadays that is not a problem. Every morning I have pages waiting from my friends and also when I get home from work. I check them and also my visitors. I don’t really use the stumble button any more. Interesting stuff keeps coming to me anyway :)

6. Do you belong to any other social networking sites?

Yes! I think too many :) For social bookmarking I use also Digg, Mixx, Del.icio.us and Clipmarks. I also have accounts in Reddit, Subbit and a couple more, but I rarely use them. I also have connections through MyBlogLog , BlogCatalog and Facebook.

7. If so, in what ways does StumbleUpon compare favorably with the others?

First of all the beauty I can create around my content. I remember things visually much better than verbally and that is why I try to photoblog even the logo or something from every site. From Digg I can’t actually find any old stories I have Dugg. Del.icio.us is fast and good but I have learned that I should have organized my tags better. Too many tags are just confusing.

8. Would you like to tell us a little more about yourself than is in your profile?

I never revealed my age in the profile :) I am 52 years old, have two grown-up children who don’t live at home anymore, husband and a one-year-old Welsh Corgi Pembroke. My job a maths teacher is somewhat peculiar: I work from 4 pm to 9 pm and teach adults. Part of my students have left high school or have not even started it and want to do it now. Some of them have chosen the short course in mathematics and have noticed that they need the long courses for their future education. There are almost as many reasons as there are students. I love teaching them because they know the value of education. I am very passionate in my teaching and some of the students probably regard me as crazy at first, but when they finally get my point, they actually grow an interest in it. The main thing is that I am able to wipe out fears. I know that sometimes evil mathematics teachers have originally caused some of them to leave school in the first place.

I started my blog www.conceptisaddict.blogspot.com in August to share also the wonderful experience of Japanese puzzles. Almost all people know Sudoku, but the picture logic puzzles are unfamiliar to many people. My blogging led to the socializing and I have enjoyed every moment. In addition to the normal bloggers I have found many contacts with teachers who use all the technologies Web 2.0 can offer. I already started a Finnish blog targeted to my students but I have not had time to update it very actively. I also started a blog for our school in order to develop discussions between students and teachers but all of it is very new to most of the people and I still have lots to do to make it work like it should.

9. What would you say are the best ways to guarantee that you have a really wonderful StumbleUpon experience?

Make friends, be friendly, send messages and keep a positive attitude. I got the advice long ago from a friend in the net: remember that there are so many good people in the world. I did change my attitude; I have always had a great deal of the Finnish pessimism, but remembering that advice and keeping an open mind I have had wonderful experiences and found a great amount of those good people. I also would like to point out that people who concentrate only on promoting their own content will never succeed in being popular.

10. If you could say one thing to the rest of the Stumbling universe, what would it be?

Try to find the good side of everything. I have noticed that even though I don’t like the content I stumble into, it may have the best web design I have seen. Giving very many thumbs down will not benefit you, on the contrary. If I don’t like something, I just leave. There are very few occasions when I have met something which makes me really mad but I have learned in real life that it is better to count to suitable powers of ten before exploding.