| currently listening to... | |
| sagor and swing | |
| watch out | |
genius! (samurai jack, episode 49)
| recap | |
on monday evening was the lawrence lessig talk. he talked about the copyright wars. he spoke a bit about the creative commons movement (which i think he helped to found) and how it helps to redress the imbalance in copyright laws back to the people and away from the lawyers. i need to read up more about creative commons, they just launched version two of their licence and there is rumours that the bbc is gonna open up a large part of their archives with this type of licence. hurray.
in far more important news i cleaned up a lot today, got turned down for a job and had a pretty unsettling dream. i applied for the evening version of the course i want (its 1630-2030, four days a week, for two years). i'll find out about that next week. fingers crossed. i also ate an ice cream and thought of a cool thing to do when i get my digicam next month. i also learned how to do that aligned image thing in the previous post, in the past i would have the image and the text underneath it, but now i can have the text beside it!. welcome to the 1990s darren.
| none | |
nothing! the everchanging rain snow sleet sun warm cold damp dry green drinching wet maelstrom that is irish weather has been taken care of. just in time for summer. enjoy!| music to listen to | |
thankfully thomas is here sometime next week for a month, then alice the week after for a week, then sara for a weekend (and our first annual wine and cheese party) then my cousin fionnuala is here for five days.
here is a cd i made for päivi to enjoy. she rang me a little while ago and said that she nearly fell asleep cos of it on her way to tampere airport. good or bad sign?. dunno.
01. badly drawn boy - once around the block (3:44)
02. cyann & ben - selected ambient work (2:30)
03. cyann & ben - siren song (6:23)
04. sigur rós - hvalir í útrýmingarhættu (3:00)
05. giant robot - 09 - jenny (4:36)
06. josé gonzález - heartbeats (2:40)
07. ladytron - seventeen (4:37)
08. stina nordenstam - fireworks (5:46)
09. ...and you will know us by the trail of dead - mistakes & regrets (3:46)
10. bob hund - dansa efter min pipa (3:19)
11. håkan hellström - kom igen lena (3:54)
12. nancy sinatra - bang bang (2:39)
13. low - just like christmas (3:08)
14. suede - shipbuilding (3:16)
15. ampop - made for market (5:03)
16. frakkur - untitled [live in reykjavík] (11:00)
17. josé gonzalez - love will tear us apart (3:04)
18. kings of convenience - parr-á-pluie (2:49)
| copyright | |
im off to this in an hour or two.
defined by the new yorker as “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the internet era”, creative commons founder, stanford law professor larry lessig is visiting helsinki, and kindly agreed with super-short notice to give a talk on the topic “the future of copyright, culture and creativity” to aula members and anyone interested. the talk will be this coming monday, 24 may at korjaamo (details here, for directions see map). the event will be held in english and is free and open to the public, so please spread the word! also, check out larry’s new book free culture, available for free download here and published by penguin press.
| svt | |
jørgen leth, den berömde danske dokumentärfilmaren och hans fotograf dan holmberg har gjort en personlig och poetisk film om amerika. filmen är inspelad under september 2001 i new york, texas, new mexico, colorado, arizona och kalifornien
| electioneering | |
in ireland, almost every single telephone pole in the country has posters on it for months before the election. most have smiley happy politicians promising the world, sometimes for referendums they can get a little ugly (previous referendums on abortion and divorce being classic examples). two laws were passed that changed irish elections slightly and subtly. the first one was that no canvassing could occur within a certain distance from the polling station, so no more party faithful harassing you just outside the door of the building. the second one was the introduction of laws governing the erection of posters. before the law, any poster could be put up, and usually it would stay for a few months after the election (funnily enough the winners would tend to leave them longer than the shamed losers). the new law said something along the lines that the posters had the have a notice on them stating who funded them and contact details, also the posters had to be taken down within a certain time frame after the elections. but still the greater part of the madness remains. posters everywhere.
another great thing about elections in ireland, is that the pr system is used: proportional representation. this means that the vote counting is incredibly complex and full of twists and turns. every constituency has a between three and five seats, as opposed to the (for example) english system where its 1 seat only. anyway, the last election in ireland i had my vote taken away from me because i never changed my address on the registration list, and i didnt get a letter asking to confirm my details, so my name was struck off (even though i had voted on previous elections no problem), so the last election i sat it out. however, the day after the election i was at home in limerick and i got lots of food, a comfy place on the sofa and i watched the counting process on television for hours.
this counting day is the only day that irish politicians are even remotely honest. the difference between what the say that day with what they had said the previous day (polling day) and the following days (when the government forming tussles begin) is amazing. they are honest and pretty humble. it can be nine or ten counts before all the seats are given. all the political parties have their own people on the ground (tallymen i think is the name) whose job it is is to lean over the barrier and count the votes as they are being counted and to give word back before each count is announced (which is around ten times per constituency). i'll miss them days.
finnish elections are a lot more ordered in comparison. i didnt remember seeing any posters last year for the election. trams and buses had a lot of advertising, but it was strange. each party would have several people you could vote for (similar to the irish system), but they had a more varied choice. you could vote for more senior people, slightly less experienced people ......... all the way down to the early twenties person standing for election the first time. some of these people had dreadlocks and were being put forward by the main parties, something that would never happen in ireland. the only young people who went up for election in ireland tended to be the children of dead dáil (parliament) members. these advertisements were there just to show the faces and names. in public spaces then around the city they had boardings erected where each of the parties would affix a small little manifesto or outline of their policies and a list of their candidates. no need for the widespread postering like was evident in ireland.
anyway, whats the point to all this you may ask, well here it is: european elections are coming up on june 13th, and i being a european union citizen can vote!. hurray. so if i get the camera i want, expect some silly pics of me voting.
update: i posted this, then took it down again, i went on a bit of a posting spree during the week, so i decided to hold off on this one for a while. anyway, i was just watching a bbc news report about posters in the irish elections and they interviewed someone from dublin city council who said that there is a limit of two posters per lampost and some streets should be kept poster free (the most famous of which is dublins main shopping street, grafton street). although the reporter on that bbc report did say that he counted 60 posters on one street (it looked like the street outside the irish parliment building).
another poster story here: ireland.com story
| 41st street | |
| zombie | |
| crazy | |
gmail has gone from offering 1gb of email to offering 1tb! (as a comparison its gone from 500 times hotmails space to 500000 times).
update: it just went back to 1000mb. little bit of excitement there.
| tilannearvio | |
kurssin kulku: darren osallistui aktiivisesti ja täsmällisesti kirssin työskentelyyn ja teki itsenäisesti kaikki vaaditut tehtävät sekä auttoi heikompia opiskelijoita. hän ymmärtää melko hyvin tavallista puhuttua ja kirjoitettua suomea ja pystyy hyvin keskustelemaan jokapäiväisistä teemoista. hän hallitsee hyvin keskeiset rakenteet ja sanaston, vaikka omassa tuottamisessa saatta horjuntaa esiintyäkin
suomen kieli taito:
yleisarvio: ****
suullinen kiekitaito: ***
opiskelutaidot: kiitettävä
helsingissä 14.05.2004
| seattle | |
benjamin benschneider / the seattle times
a really nice slideshow of the new seattle public library by oma here: seattletimes.com sideshow. the same newspaper has a section devoted to the buildings here: seattletimes.com feature
| number 9 | |
being from a country where public transport is undervalued, being here is a nice distraction. i went through a phase for a few months where i would start to imagine the route of the new number 9 tram route. for some reason though only when i myself was i a tram. strange. anyway, i found out the (preferred) route the other day when i was at that meeting about keski pasila.
i just found the page that has an image of it and talks about it in more detail, along with the proposals for the alteration to the traffic layout around here when they start to develop central pasila. information (in english) here: helsinki city planning website
| finglish | |
there is an ad company in helsinki with the phrase on the side of all their cars and on their website aswell."where people meet, where success is the option" now, maybe i dont get it, but in the buisness world, when would success ever be just an "option" ?.
there is a well known and pretty big optician chain here in finland, and its slogan is: "look & life" hmm, it just doesnt feel right. perhaps "look and live" would make more sense.
last year finlands largest brewery had a competition on one of their orange drinks (probably finlands best selling soft drink ). it was for a competition where the entrant could win something from a pretty cool selection of prizes. the slogan was: "big wins" they almost have it, but it (like the rest of them) just dont feel right. as i said at the start, i'm not laughing at normal people making normal mistakes in a language, more so at a company that pays for this kinda stuff to be produced and then to use it as a marketing tool.
| ramblings | |
calender: i've tried mozillas new calender add on for the firefox browser and gave up after a few tries. having it as a plug in for thunderbird or firefox or mozilla just doesnt make any sense to me. thankfully, i found out that they had a stand alone one, sundbird, so i tried that out aswell, but it too is at a very early point in its developement to be of any use.
anyway, a new calender programme would be cool so i could output my calender (maybe contacts too) in ical format so that when i do get a new phone later this summer i can connect/sync it to that.
so, im stuck using outlook, its got about seven years of emails stuck in there (easily exportable i know, just a lot of hassle. i go from having several easy to handle .pst files to having lots of tiny files hidden away in a folder in some profile with a strange name).
what i'm trying to say here i dont know, just a nice ramble to have. the google gmail account is great, needs some work though. tomorrow is my final day in finnish school, my choclate break does not include choclate ice-cream and some trojan virus has tried 230 times in the last 4hours to get into my computer. strange.
| mid may resolutions | |
also, i have to post packages to several people. to my mam, to beatriz, to mick, to dara, to aurora, a letter to carl and casey. if anyone wants anything from me, now is the time to ask/demand.
| koneisto | |
| test q1 | |
there was nine parts to the test. i'll go through most of them here. here we go!
1. essiivi or translatiivi
essiivi translates to "essive" which means: of, relating to, or being the grammatical case indicating a state of being or an existence in a particular capacity or state in some languages, as in finnish professorina, "as a professor."
translatiivi is the translative case which is defined as being: of, relating to, or being the grammatical case indicating the state into which one passes in certain languages, as in finnish (tule) terveeksi! "(get) well!"
for this part, we were given ten sentances and we had to choose if the correct form was essiivi or translatiivi. this was a pretty straightforward thing. but as with everything in finnish, the end of the word changes. essiivi changes the ending of the word by adding a "-na" or "-nä" to it. whilst translatiivi changes it by adding "-ksi". so, some examples from the test: (the word in backets is what we had to use as a basis)
jukka valmistui lääkäriksi (lääkäri) viime vuonna
(jukka graduated to be a doctor last year)
jo lapsena (lapsi) jukka tiesi, että hanestä tulee lääkäri
already as a child, jukka knew that he wanted to become a doctor
in the second example, lapsi changes to lapsena. the i changes to an e in some circumstances. here is another two from the test:
heti kesällä han meni sijaiseksi (sijainen) terveyskeskuskseen
right away during the summer, he went to be an assisitant at a health centre
opiskeluaikana hän työskenteli apulaisena (apulainen) lääkäriasemalla
during his study period, he worked as an aid in a doctors station.
in these two examples you can see one of the many strange things in the finnish language. "-nen" ending words act to a certain pattern. when they are changed for whatever reason, the -nen becomes -se-. and after the "se" other endings are added on (which in this case was -ksi and -na). (for plural words the -nen changes to -si). hours of fun.
okay, its 0930 and ive been up since 0600 and i got to bed drunk at 0200 (see the two previous posts). so i'll continue later today.
| SMS Email from GSM number +358405237447 | |
| SMS Email from GSM number +358405237447 | |
| a silver mount zion | |
| secrets | |
student uncovers us military secrets
an irish graduate student has uncovered words blacked-out of declassified us military documents using nothing more than a dictionary and text analysis software.
claire whelan, a computer science student at dublin city university was given the problems by her phd supervisor as a diversion. david naccache, a cryptographer with gemplus, challenged her to discover the words missing from two documents: one was a memo to george bush, and another concerned military modifications to civilian helicopters.
| kelpie | |
i just saw the loch ness kelpie short cartoon that sigur rós provided the soundtrack to. it is produced by red kite animation and is directed by iain gardner.
it was really enjoyable, a few moments it had a little too much 'scottishness' in it for me, but it was still really interesting and athmospheric. the music too was really well done, worked well with the music and its typical sigur rós stuff. i think there will be a sample from it on sigur-ros.co.uk sometime soon. (click on the thumbnails for larger screen shots)
| tentti | |
| planning panel | |
| worlds ugliest building | |
its a small pic of an ugly building in limerick city. its in a residential area near enough to the city centre and the train station. this photo doesnt do it justice of how ugly it is. my mum took the photo over the weekend (if you look closely you can see the sticker of where they bought their car)
| panel | |
| holey moley! | |
irish media accused of playing a part in september 11th attacks
a former american diplomat has accused the irish media of playing a part in the terrorist attacks of september 11th by stirring up "anti-americanism" internationally.
mr george dempsey, first secretary of the us embassy in dublin from 1988 to 1992, said "dishonest" stories circulated by irish newspapers and broadcasters had helped to fuel terrorism in the arab world.
a spokeswoman for the us embassy said mr dempsey was entitled to his views, but "his views are entirely his own, and he does not speak for the embassy".
in a book to be published next month, on the eve of president bush's visit to ireland, mr dempsey criticised what he described as "witless pandering to arab irrationality and intransigence" in the irish media.
of the attacks on september 11th, he writes: "let us be clear about this. the irish media, in general, bear their share of responsibility for what happened in the united states.
| wahoo | |
i think the magpies from yesterday morning decided to move their construction to an area where there are less parties, they werent around long enough to see the päiväkoti (school for 0-7yr olds) right under the tree. no screaming kids for them.
may 10 update 1: they have introduced a few cool new things, including commenting (rather than having to get an outside site to do it).. but ive set the commenting up and ta daaa .. its not working :) doh.
may 10 update 2: the comments seem to be working, but only on new posts. strange.
| nest | |
| time flies | |
my only hot summer ever was a summer in new york city. even now, five years later, i can still imagine intensity of the heat there. on days like today when it is as warm as it was in nyc, all i can think about it nyc. most days something happens to me that reminds me of nyc for a quick moment. be it weather, or simple noises like the screeching of trains or random other things. anyway, i am hoping this summer in helsinki will be a hot one, i need to try to lose those memory associations i have with nyc a little bit and move on. although if there was one place/thing in the world that was hard to get over it would have to be new york city. it seems to be by far the most recognised and idolised place. no matter what one does sooner or later it meets up with new york. a few quotes from new york vertical:
new york is my lourdes, where i go for spiritual refreshment brendan behan, irish playwright
times square, centre of the universe. you have connections to the n, r, a, c, e, f, d, and q trainanonymous, subway conductor
this fascination i have has to be reconciled with the thought that it is just one city, that things that happen there happen daily in countless other places around the world, that it means different things to different people, that what i think it is might not match with what it is now or what it was then.
| presentations | |
| kesä | |
we have two types of windows in our apartment. ones that open normally, and ones that need a special handle 'key' to be opened with. this special key was missing for the last year, i found it yesterday, and today i had every single window in the house open. a fantastic summer breeze went through the apartment and took away the smell of my girlfriends parents cat (misse kissa) who had been staying with us for a few days.
the absence of a letter through the postbox today or yesterday seems to suggest that i didnt get accepted to the college course i wanted to get into. i have a few weeks to apply for the "aikuiskoultus" (the night time) version (for adults) of the course. for that i have to write a one page letter as to why i am suitable for it. so that should be a bit easier than drawing a cartoon (hopefully). fingers crossed.
| blogs galore | |
links: randomly found website links that take my interest
mute: a random photo every now and then. the title "mute" refers to the fact that i wont be explaining the photo at all. (it made perfect sense last night playing bingo, trust me)
| 25 | |
earlier in the day pat cox (the president of the european commision) spoke about the ten countries joining the european union, he started out speaking in irish, the our taoiseach (prime minister) bertie ahern had a few words. later in the day our president (mary mcalease) had a bit, then the nobel winner had a poem based around the old irish feast of bealtaine. the whole ceremony was fantastic and very simple. my favourite moment was when members of the irish army went to collect the 25 nations flags plus the eu flag from the heads of state. 26 soldiers marched to the front of the building and all that could be heard was the cacophonic crunching of the gravel. they then stood to attention right in front of all the leaders and for a split second it looked like a firing squad. then after that moment they took the flags and proceeded to take them to the poles and they were hung. somebody somewhere was up last night praying for good weather today and they got it. normally its raining there, but today was a beatiful day, blue skies and a nice wind (just enough for the flags to flutter).
good work.
beacons at bealtaine by seamus heaney
in the celtic calendar that once regulated the seasons in many parts of europe, may day, known in irish as bealtaine, was the feast of bright fire, the first of summer, one of the four great quarter days of the year. the early irish leabhar gabhála (the book of invasions), tells us that the first magical inhabitants of the country, the tuatha dé danaan, arrived on the feast of bealtaine, and a ninth century text indicates that on the same day the druids drove flocks out to pasture between two bonfires. so there is something auspicious about the fact that a new flocking together of the old european nations happens on this day of mythic arrival in ireland; and it is even more auspicious that we celebrate it in a park named after the mythic bird that represents the possibility of ongoing renewal. but there are those who say that the name phoenix park is derived from the irish words, fionn uisce, meaning "clear water" and that coincidence of language gave me the idea for this poem. it's what the poet horace might have called a carmen sæculare, a poem to salute and celebrate an historic turn in the sæculum, the age.
beacons at bealtaine
phoenix park, may day, 2004
uisce: water. and fionn: the water's clear.
but dip and find this gaelic water greek:
a phoenix flames upon fionn uisce here.
strangers were barbaroi to the greek ear.
now let the heirs of all who could not speak
the language, whose ba-babbling was unclear,
come with their gift of tongues past each frontier
and find the answering voices that they seek
as fionn and uisce answer phoenix here.
the may day hills were burning, far and near,
when our land's first footers beached boats in the creek
in uisce, fionn, strange words that soon grew clear;
so on a day when newcomers appear
let it be a homecoming and let us speak
the unstrange word, as it behoves us here,
move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare
like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak,
from middle sea to north sea, shining clear
as phoenix flame upon fionn uisce here.
| keski pasila | |
in a few years the harbour will be moved so some of those train tracks wont be needed thus freeing up a lot of keski pasila for redevelopment. two masterplans were submitted. one by one of finlands largest offices, tuomo siitonen arkkitehtitoimisto and the second by the italian office cino zucchi architetti.
images from both were published in the helsingin sanomat about ten days ago. i never got around to mentioning them on here due to laziness. today i did a few searches and i found lots and lots of information about it.
this picture is from zucchi's submission. it shows the area from the air. i've added some notes to a bigger version which you can see here or by clicking on the image
there are lots and lots more pictures of the two submissions here on the skyscrapercity.com website.
further links (links go to the helsinki planning department)
:cino zucchi's outline plan (pictures) [70 mb]
:cino zucchi's outline plan (text) [185 mb]
:siitonen's outline plan [133 mb]
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