dw

bump

darren — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:49:00 +0000

new years eve bump!

blog stuff changed a while back - make sure you use the proper feeds!

new blog rss feed: here
new blog + flickr + del.icio.us feed: here
new blog livejournal syndication: here

(the old livejournal "drrnwbb" feed will not be updated anymore)

moved

darren — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:59:00 +0000

morning.

blog stuff has changed!

new blog rss feed: here
new blog + flickr + del.icio.us feed: here
new blog livejournal syndication: here

(the old livejournal "drrnwbb" feed will not be updated anymore)

break

darren — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 07:10:00 +0000

going to be taking a little break from here for a few weeks - going to denmark/iceland later this week for a little while and im also moving from blogger to wordpress - so i gotta design a theme (how come nearly all wordpress themes look like "wordpress themes"? gotta learn some css too).

back in late october. email or sms!

woah

darren — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 07:49:00 +0000

ryanair bids for aer lingus!

(on an aside - i tried to publish this post 13hours ago when the news was just announced on the radio - but alas blogger.com refused to connect and publish it - not for the first time either. wordpress here i come)

photo a day

darren — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 06:17:00 +0000

as a follow up to this post from 2003 - the dude ("when will it all end") went and put all the 8 years of self portraits into a video: link.

gondry

darren — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:58:00 +0000

a little while back i went to see the film "the science of sleep" - directed by michel gondry. its one of the best movies ive seen in ages despite (or perhaps caused in part) by a linguistic mashup. the film is mostly in english and french with a tiny bit in spanish. the copy we saw at a film festival didnt have any subtitles - so a woman was sitting at the back of the cinema with a laptop and a fancy machine thingy that allowed her to live subtitle the french parts into finnish. of course it didnt work properly for most of it - so i was reading finnish, listening to french, still laughing at a previous joke in english. hohoh. i sat there smiling like a madman for 105 minutes. anyhoo go see it when it comes to your part of the woods.

previous: december 2003 rant about gondrys directors dvd set.

(i do sort of feel bad that ive started his other film "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" twice and not finished either time. just does nothing for me. i think i just prefer his own stuff)

omg! i just noticed/realised/remembered that the character of zoé is played by emma de caunes - daughter of "eurotrash" presenter antoine de caunes. madness. mmm.

also: the making of the film: google video link (mais c'est en français!)

best in show

darren — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:08:00 +0000

i was at the opening of the best in show exhibiton in the galleria krista mikkola and i took some pictures. which was nice. flickr set link!

puppets

darren — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:31:00 +0000

giant puppets in downtown reykjavík: story link : video

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

the future

darren — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:36:00 +0000

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)

in the news

darren — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:37:00 +0000

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.

lost

darren — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 07:59:00 +0000

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.

station

darren — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:25:00 +0000

taken last summer in atocha station in madrid.

gorraah

darren — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 14:57:00 +0000

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

beta

darren — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:24:00 +0000

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

kaupunki tilassa

darren — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:01:00 +0000

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

silta

darren — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 20:35:00 +0000

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!)

hei

darren — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 13:54:00 +0000

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 :)

summer gone

darren — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:36:00 +0000

yellow

pietari

darren — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:13:00 +0000

just got back from a few days in st. petersburg. such a crazy city, almost five million people living in a city seemingly in a constant state of disrepair. we had ten or so hours on thursday and about 7hours yesterday to look around so we only took in the main parts of the centre. most people on the cruise had a different visa to us, so they had organised trips. we got our own visas and went off on our own. the connection between the ferry terminal and the city centre is by the 128 bus. "bus" is a loose term. it seemed to be a van driven by random men with no real official status apart from the route number stuck on the inside window. for 14roubles (30ish cent) we got to the city centre. quick and not much hassle, but bizarre.

the city centre was pretty big, the main street cutting through the centre with lots of beatuiful buildings and churches and museums everywhere. but for every one fantastic building there was ten in need of repair. apart from a few coffee shops we didnt go into anything, which is a shame, but due to their size you'd need a full day at least to see even get a start on some of the musuems (hermitage for example). so the thursday we walked back to the ferry, constantly thinking we were closer to the ferry than we were. many many streets later we found it.

i knew of russias reputation for copyright flouting, but it was pretty bizarre to see the extent of it. some stores openly sold most computer programmes for only a few euros, they sold films (that have only just been released in america) on a choice of divx, vcd or dvd for only 3 or 4 euros. these shops were not hidden away in alleys or side streets or in briefcases, but in modern well laid out stores on main streets with friendly and overly helpfull staff. although in some places the staff were too overly helpful and overly plentiful. in one cafebar, there was seven people waiting on the bar. at most they needed four. three were always standing around doing nothing.

all photos here: 2004.08 st.petersburg

i'll think of more later perhaps, i'll leave you with a photo of the building beside where we docked, its a hotel / ferry terminal / illegal cd shop place and a beautifully ugly building.

turkuun, turussa, turusta

darren — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 10:32:00 +0000

got back late last night from the festival in turku. festival itself was pretty average, didnt blow my socks off in anyway. we didnt get to see much music for some reason. the city is so nice, we only got to see the centre of it but it seems like a relaxed version of helsinki (and helsinki is already superrelaxed in comparison with dublin and other capitals). the aura river flowing through the city provides a really nice athmosphere to the city, something that is lacking in helsinki.

for the festival all we got to see were tv resistori (really good), imatran voima (pretty good), uusi fantasia (pretty good) and bits of a few other things.

yesterday then we went to ruissalo to unwind a little, weather was so warm over the weekend and not too hot. got back late last night and slept.

photos here: 2004.08 turku

background

darren — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:38:00 +0000

taken from the 2001 sigur rós tour ep (with steindór andersen as guest vocalist) this song is one of my all time favourites.

sigur rós + steindór andersen: hugann seiða svalli frá: mp3: 6minutes: 6,9mb

rain

darren — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 21:27:00 +0000

taken in dublin last december. raining there then as it is here in helsinki now.

too much

darren — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 19:23:00 +0000

within the space of a month or so (with today being near enough to the centre of that month) there is three film festivals on here in helsinki (espoo ciné, doc point and rakkautta & anarkiaa). i love going to the cinema but with so much going on i just cant get my mind into the frame of mind of searching for good movies, going to see those movies non stop for a few days... so i just ignored the three festivals (with the exception of one documentary perhaps).

instead im going to try at least check out some of the events in the "helsinki design week" that goes on in late september / early october. thats it.

school

darren — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:04:00 +0000

just listening to rté radio 1 morning news. they were having a live report from a small school in the west of ireland - one of only 14 (primary) schools left in ireland that just one teacher. this school has been in operation since 1822 and at the moment it has 3 students (aged between 4 and 9 or so). today was the first day of the school term and they (they being the teacher and the radio presenter) were waiting to see how many new students would arrive.

at the end of the news programme the reporter came back and said that one new student had turned up.

reading material

darren — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:49:00 +0000

if you're a little bit bored as the summer turns into autumn - go check this out: sigur-ros.co.uk - managers tour diary. it was done by the manager of sigur rós over the bands most recent tour in iceland a few weeks back (and the bands final tour for a long time). at the moment (wednesday night) there is ten entries from the tour on it, we will publish the final three over the next few days.

(they filmed the whole tour and will release it on dvd at some stage in the near future (trying to predict a sigur rós release is pointless)).