ireland, like finland and a lot of other european countries, has a tv licence. in ireland its about 150€ per year per household. the money primarily goes to fund the public broadcasting services (in ireland its rté, in the uk its the bbc and in finland its yle).

anyway, introductions over, i was visting the news part of the rté website today, catching up on all the goings on. when i saw a link to more info about the tv licence, so i clicked on it. i was taken to a page that had some forms that you could download and print off and then use to apply for the licence. “handy” i thought, then i looked at the forms. the forms were put together by an post (irelands postal company) a company not renowned for their use of design forethought in the layout of forms.

on the page there was images of two of the forms, one was a bank account direct debit form and the other a credit card form. below is a partial screenshot of two areas of the forms, on the left the bank debit and on the right the credit card form.

there are a few things that are incredibly strange about these two forms. firstly, on the left hand side there is space for one to enter in their bank account details, but why the irregularly sized boxes? numbers dont change in size why should the boxes?. secondly, on the right hand form, the image on the site is a screenshot, complete with all the ms word spelling mistakes: it underlines amost every single irish word in red as they arent in its dictionary and it thinks “authorise” is spelt incorrectly. so this persons computer is set to american english and doesnt have irish dictionary installed. the screenshot doesnt affect the final form of course, but it just shows that the forms are (presumably) often just produced by a person on their own with not a huge level of thought put into the usability of the forms. another semi pointless ramble there. good work.

the world war 2 museum and a random building, both i think on liisankatu

1. coming back into helsinki, driving through one of the swedish speaking areas, hence the swedish name on top
2. the beach in helsinki.
3. by some lake, just before a dog jumped in, then jumped out and then shoke the water off him and drenched me.

thursday we went to a small artistic town called fiskars about an hour or so from here. on the way there we stopped off to pick some strawberries.

in this town, there is many artist run galleries and shops and museums, some of the stuff was incredibly nice. the whole town/village had such a relaxed athmosphere to it.

two places caught my eye, the first one was an artist who drew pieces that seemed so innocent and warm. usually of one or two childlike characters, or some animals in a summer or winter settings. most of the drawings were amazing and i wanted them all! they did cost about 300€ for the larger ones and 75€ for the smaller ones. more info from here, with a list of works here: [hakemisto].

another place that caught my eye was a shop called onoma, they had a side gallery that had a lot of wooden furniture. some fantastic things in there, some expensive, but some things really affordable (a small kitchen table for 150€).

we did get to the village too late, so we didnt see all of it, i think we’ll go back again soon. (the restraunt there does have the coolest toilets that ive ever seen, we considerded going back afterwards just to have another look. they were like something from an airplane… but cooler and more spacious. really!)

the computer was switched off for the last three days or so. something that is unprecedented in this apartment. we spent a few days doing little excursions around helsinki.

i spent a bit of time today messing around with the site, moving some things to the links part. no idea why, the page doesnt work well. i just need to have a sit down and think about the layout of this site some more. some parts of it are all over the place. i might just leave it for a cold dark winters night.

my girlfriends parents cat has been staying with us this week, we take her for walks most days. i just took her a few hours ago out on to the courtyard. she sat in between the trees for a while and then stared at the local somali kids who have roller blading competitions/races around the area. the cat thanked me for the walk by scratching me yet again.