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upandupwards
 Thursday, July 29, 2004 | link |
i think the change over went okay (some would say it went a little too easily), might take some time for everyone to see this, name servers need to be "propegated" apparently. anyway, now my webspace is 30 times bigger than my last host, half the price and tons more features. (and no goddam banners!!!!!!)

updownonoff
 Monday, July 26, 2004 | link |
im in the process of moving webhost, so this site might be up and down a little bit or a lot over the next while. i'll post again when its all taken care of.

22km
 Sunday, July 25, 2004 | link |
cycle ...
tv table ..
choclate muffin and coke ...
new pension building ...
cycle ..
home ..
get a sheet and something to read ...
cycle ..
look under a bridge ...
a picture in a mirror ...
see wooden houses ...
pikkukoski ...
lots of kids swimming ...
some being stupid teenagers ...
dicuss genes and fat kids ...
leave ...
cycle ...
get lost ish but find yet another beautiful part of helsinki ...
i need to cycle more, but less hills ...
cycle ...
home ...
two toasted cheese sandwiches and off again ...
cycle ...
neste ...
cycle ...
stockmann ...
suski and ilona ...
puisto ...
jaffa ...
bottle collectors ...
janne ...
frisbee ...
walk ...
cycle ...
sleepy ...
home.





























july
 Friday, July 23, 2004 | link |
holiday season here in helsinki. everyone gone, trams have 20% less people in them, free newspapers stop publishing, the english language section of the main newspaper isnt being updated, places that have job offers on websites asking you to email them automatically reply straight away to the email saying "olen lomalla" (i am on holidays), college acceptance papers dropped off at an college that is all locked up and empty, libraries close weekends, even god tv has gone off air for the month, small shops are locked up for a few weeks with a little note explaining when they'll be back and to have a nice summer.

it has been a nice summer so far, havent done too much, did spend a few weekends in country cottages, a few day trips, read three books, got a farmers tan. in a few weeks we're off to a music festival and then to saarenmaa for a few days. saarenmaa is a small island off the west coast of estonia. when i inter-railed here back in 2000 i wanted to go there for some strange compulsive reason. i never got there as i just ran out of time. so now päivis boss has a house there that we can stay in and look at geese and ducks apparently. then i come back and start back into winter doing the language course and the 3d visualisation course.

between these two courses, i'll have four eleven hour days and one seven hour day a week. this is part of my "total immersion finnish kieli plan" that im going for. less time online talking in english, more time listening to finnish all day. thats it.


shaky
 Thursday, July 22, 2004 | link |



such a beautiful sunset last night, the clouds were on fire, reds and oranges and light purples. i went for a short walk to take some pictures of it and i came home and looked at them and they were all shakey with none of the colours coming out properly. i suppose i should read the manual. boo. this one sorta came out okay though:

.

in other news, i hate when you think its wednesday, but it is in actual fact thursday!.


tv licence
 Thursday, July 22, 2004 | link |
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.



angles
 Monday, July 19, 2004 | link |


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


widepics
 Saturday, July 17, 2004 | link |






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.


fiskars
 Saturday, July 17, 2004 | link |
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!)


random
 Saturday, July 17, 2004 | link |
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.


summer
 Sunday, July 11, 2004 | link |
hello summer
hello darren
is there anything nice for me to listen to this summer?
yes! its in the box in the hall press, its got a brown cover and a long title
excellent. talk next summer!
yup.


random
 Sunday, July 11, 2004 | link |
in almost two years here ive never ever seen a single person smoke in an apartment. no matter how cold and snowy it might be outside, they go outside to a balcony.

umf
 Friday, July 09, 2004 | link |
there is gonna be a small cool festival (uudenmusiikinfestivaali) going on in turku on august 6th and 7th. lots of good bands (almost all i think finnish) in some cool venues.

perjantai 6.8.2004.

ravintola samppalinna 20.00-04.00.
päiväkoti 20.00-03.00.
suomi rock bar 20.00-03.00.

lauantai 7.8.2004.

brinkkalan piha 14.00-23.00.
teinin terassi 14.00-00.00.
kåren 21.00-04.00.
päiväkoti 20.00-03.00.
suomi rock bar 20.00-03.00.

im looking forward to seeing uusi fantasia, tv resistori, aavikko (although they arent listed on the schedule anymore uhoh) aswell as a few djs (yer man from pan sonic is playing). which is nice. prices for the two days are 23,70€, crazy cheap. a crime not to go. a lot of running between venues though.


things
 Friday, July 09, 2004 | link |
i was so convinced i wouldnt get into the course (that starts september 1st) i had planned to go back to ireland for a few months, id started to start the planning preperations for it all. so now im not going, its for the best as to go home now for about six weeks would just mean i would be even further behind language wise in september in the course.

in my quest for lots and lots of education (to wake the brain up a bit) ive registered for another finnish language course. its seven hours a day five days a week from mid august until early december. so all this means for a few months at the end of this year i'll be in class eleven hours a day for four days a week and seven hours for friday!. crazy.

i am waiting for one thing to clear up before i can change hosting companies. my current one is pretty okay, but the price to features ratio is dreadful. hoping to get it done before the end of the month, then i can start adding lots of behind features n stuff. the webspace will be much bigger than present aswell.


sanomatalo and kiasma and a tram going by.


suburbs
 Wednesday, July 07, 2004 | link |
there is an area north of dublin city called ballymun. its just south of the airport, so it was easily visible from large parts of the city. it was built back in it mid 1960s to counteract the tenements that were (and to a lesser extant still are) in a large part of dublins city centre.

ballymun was going to be different, in a (then) rural part just outside the city, tower blocks were designed to aleviate the problems of the inner city. to go from crowded inner city to high rise - wide open - nice view - new urban design living. the problem that haunted the developement is that whilst the apartments were built is that there was no facilites around them. no social infrastructure, no sense of common ownership. instead they had wide open spaces with no centre. nothing as a focus for the community. so they were largely percieved as a failure, thus dooming public social high rises to the waste bin in ireland.

for the last eight years or so they have been redeveloping the area, building a new town to replace the tower blocks. building a main street, some decent social services and doing it all in conjunction with the local community. almost forty years of living in ballymun has created a fantastic community spirit, people helping each other out to overcome the relative harshness of the area. so now the towers are been demolished. the demolition progress slowed by asbestos fears and the first wave of new houses and low rise apartment blocks are being inhabited.

being irish we rarely learnt our lesson from things. ballymun was in many ways a disaster, but it wasnt soley the fault of them being "high rises", it was the disconnect between the area and the people, the area and the rest of the city, the people and the society. like a lot of "new towns" or areas built in ireland over the last half century or so, there was very little social structures there. houses were built and that was it. left to fend for themselves almost.

we have some friends here in helsinki who live in a newly redeveloped area called "arabia". its built around the arabia dishwear factory. its now an area which will have up to 6000 residents and severeal thousand work places and the uiah art college. from my friends balcony we can see an entire area devoted to sports; several tennis courts, a football pitch, a running track, a huge shopping centre, a school and all the usual things like day schools and recycling for all. the tram line that finishes a few hundred metres from the area will be extended next month. things like this happen in most developements in finland, they are almost inconcievable in an irish context (with some exceptions). there is a "suburb" of dublin called tallaght. except its population now makes it probably the second biggest city in ireland, and its got the facilites of a town a tenth its size (with the exception of a huge shopping centre). lets hope that irish planners/government and society has learnt something from its failures.

meanwhile, wider lessons have been learned. modern social housing is built on a smaller scale, with the public areas overlooked and a sense of ownership fostered. it doesn't automatically mean an end to urban disasters. "they're addressing ballymun, but they're not addressing other problems," seán kearns points out. "wait until you see the future of the vast housing estates of dublin's satellite towns. they are time bombs." next week, though, is about ballymun.

from irish times 7th july 2004 (paid registration required)


hurray
 Wednesday, July 07, 2004 | link |
i got accepted
3d visualisation specialisation line offers versatile facilities and skills to work in the field of 3d multimedia design, design and production of contents, visualizing of plans, product design, research of environments and modeling of different virtual environments. the specialisation line includes also studies in graphic design, anatomy and architecture. the emphasis is put on digital visualizing and sound, 3d modeling, visual simulation and animation.


midnight
 Tuesday, July 06, 2004 | link |


i went walking around my area on sunday night for two hours. i got chased (well, 'buzzed' is probably better) for an hour by a seagull, the area was pretty much deserted and the lighting was perfect. i took about 150pictures, a lot of them with 5 or 10second shutter speeds so a few came out really really well. most didnt due to the fact that my hand refuses to stay still for 5seconds. i press the the button and then i feel my hands start to twitch, just for a laugh, just to make me have to go out and buy a small tripod.

i'll try and put some of the pictures up later on.


spyware
 Sunday, July 04, 2004 | link |
i hate spyware. i had to spend a few hours last night messing around with an old windows 95 computer getting rid of all the spyware it had gathered over the last while. putting on a copy of mozilla and some anti-spyware programmes to clean it all up.

it really is annoying that internet explorer is built in such a way that its so easy for pretty much anything to get by the average user, the 90% of people who dont need to/want to worry about their computers too much, and in turn they get get unknowningly infected.

so, stop using internet explorer. these people said so, as did slate (owned by mircosoft) who recommended firefox (which is faaantastic). other programmes which should be used are spybot and adaware.

(this mini rant was caused by far too much rain recently and by the spyware)


summer pop
 Saturday, July 03, 2004 | link |
tv resistori: näen tanssivan sun uudestaan

fantastico!


ateenaan
 Friday, July 02, 2004 | link |
it arrived today, so i decided to go have a look. we first went to the street about a minute from our apartment, but apparently it had already gone by and only coca cola staff collecting bottles were any sign that it had gone through. so a little bit later i cycled to meilahti and waited on a small pier. after a few minutes i heard what sounded like a large sound system and the usual dj folk shouting n stuff. so i knew it was on its way. ten minutes later the noise got louder and the convoy came around the corner.



the convoy consisted of about six trucks, half for seimens and half for coca cola, i was on the pier so i didnt get any of the free drinks, balloons or the mini coca cola flags. boo. then the convoy passed and i thought for a second that i missed the flag. then a police man started to talk to the people beside me and told them it was on its way. then a few minutes later it came. a few press people hovered around filming for the usual fantastic olympic documentaries.



i dont know who the flame holder was, but other ones here in helsinki included former finnish gold medal winners and sports stars and the runner up to the finnish pop idol competition. anyway, the runner was surrounded by a few people shouting support and the like, and then two large sweaty hairy men (one pictured on the right) who were running topless. delightful.

oh, i just saw that the other advertiser in the convoy was samsung and not siemens. advertising is wasted on me sometimes.


sairaala
 Friday, July 02, 2004 | link |


the hospital in meilahti almost hidden behind a sign at kesäranta


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