giant puppets in downtown reykjavík: story link : video

(bonus random image link that has nothing to do with the puppets but is beyond fantastic!)

1: a 2007 election here in finland will have some “celebrity” candidates: teen rapper pikku gee and yer man from the finnish curling team from the winter olympics. yle.fi link.

2: metro mene länteen! the sign in ruoholahti metro station will finally mean something proper! yle.fi link.

a large multifantastical company (wasaki) wants to build a new island off the coast of dublin in the shape of a shamrock. the island will have playgrounds, motorway access, tram line access, 14km of coast, 42,000 lukury apartment and lots of office space. what really makes it fantastic though is that it will have the worlds only giraffe zoo!.

construction on seamrog island will take 3 years and everything will be fantastic.
project website
project video

(98% of me thinks this is a joke)

update: yup: spoilt.ie piece and boards.ie thread. viral marketing in ireland enters the 21st century. (it was all for some new housing website in ireland…. just what the housing market needed in ireland - more hype)

when i was getting ready to go out last night i seemed to have misplaced my wallet. couldnt find it anywhere. i checked everywhere in my room but no sign. retraced my steps but nothing. so just after midnight i started to “ring officialdom” to tell them that the card has been lost. i rang my finnish bank (spoke for 2m47s in finnish! woo!) and my irish credit card companies. was more worried about having to go to the police this morning to get my two state id cards reported as being lost. so i wake up this morning and get ready to go for a shower - i find the wallet in my bathrobe?!. i have no idea how it got there. so i ring back the finnish bank people and tell them and the woman there seemed genuinely happy that i found it. life goes on.

taken last summer in atocha station in madrid.

you dont have to be irish to enjoy this site - but it helps.

some of the stuff in the new google earth version 4 beta makes my brain hurt. go get it now!

as i mentioned in passing yesterday, there is an exhibition on in the finnish architecture museum at the moment thats called “kaupunki tilassa” (city and space). it takes the city of helsinki as the background and five proposals for different areas of the city are highlighted (as you can see in the image above the five proposals are seen to float above the rest of the city - you can see the future waiting to descend on the present. an amazingly simple idea and it just blew me away when i saw it this morning. i spent 20minutes taking pictures so i need to go back and see the actual proposals. best 3,50€ i spent in ages.

here are some photos: 2006.09.17 kaupunki tilassa

i just love stuff like this:

laajasalon yhdistämiseksi helsingin kantakaupunkiin suunnitellaan nyt sillan ja tunnelin yhdistelmää. uuden suunnitelman mukaan 350 metriä pitkä läppäsilta yhdistäisi ensin katajanokan hylkysaareen. sieltä yhteys jatkuisi meren alla kilometrin pituisessa tunnelissa laajasaloon. sillalla ja tunnelissa menisivät kevyenliikenteen väylä sekä raitiovaunu. helsingin sanomat

basically a proposed underwater tunnel that will be used for trams aswell as light traffic (i.e. bikes and pedestrians). ive never been to laajasalo (actually id never heard of it).

just looking around the helsinki city planners (kaupunkisuunnitteluvirasto) website i see that they have an exhibition just opened that shows the following:

kaupunkisuunnitteluvirasto esittelee tulevaisuuden helsinkiä viiden alueen kautta: jätkäsaari, keski-pasila, sörnäistenranta-hermanninranta, kruunuvuorenranta ja kuninkaantammi. taustana on nyky-helsinki. (my translation: the city planners office presents future plans for five helsinki districts: jätkäsaari, central pasila, sörnäistenranta-hermanninranta, kruunuvuorenranta and kuninkaantammi. with present day helsinki as background) pdf link to more info (in finnish)

display is on 13.9 - 5.11 in the suomen rakennustaiteen museos small exhibtion hall on kasarminkatu 24. something to do tomorrow!

(as an aside to all this there is a huge tunnel being built under helsinki at the moment - this pdf shows when the plans will be on display in the ksv building on museokatu (link in finnish). it basically says there will be a discussion on it on two dates: 26.9 in the ksv building on museokatu and also on the 3.10 in the kaisaniemi school - with the display continuing in the ksv building until the 13.10. lots of stuff to check out!)

perhaps my favourite single sticker in helsinki. there are lots of these waving man/apua pictures all over the city and they are pretty cool but ive always been distraced by the “let me love” stickers. i should write a bit more about all this