Eventful.com...

Found this nice new (?) service http://eventful.com following http://microformats.org discussion.... I signed up, (found out that unfortunately there is virtually nobody (yet) from the Helsinki capital area,) and started playing around. I invited some of my good friends to join with bad results ;o) . Tero-Markus did join and started making his own groups, which is great but we two don't really yet make a "social networking event site" functional in this geo area ;o)

I haven't really compared it to Meetup, other group-event-activity sites or groups in MSN etc. but somehow I like the feel of Eventful - It really looks something I could use a lot in my various groups of interests so I wish Finns would find it soon...

Just to memorise....

I've been priviliged to be working in a same room with Tero-Markus for some time now.... We have had numerous great discussions (and even more not so great but with hundreds of good laughs ;o) during the last past year. We have a habbit of writing the "best" of the resulting thoughts to our whiteboard - some of them are just "funny" but some have some ideas behind which really make you think how different life is for all of us:

"Joskus on hyvä pysahtyä kysymään miksi - Sometimes it is good to stop and ask why" presenting quite a sort of wealthy western thinking and problematics ?

"Kun ei aina tarvitsis kysyä miksi - One just wishes that one would not be forced to constantly ask why" presents the thinking and problemtics of somebody who's been living in war area (ex Yugoslavia ?) for last 15 years...

Egotrippi... again

Pekka brought me today some new (=old) EgoTrippi's CD's.... shit - I have been missing so much :o(
but better late than never. I logged into CDON.com I bought them all ;o)

Tänään ei kukaan vastaa, älä soita uudestaan
Me ei palata koskaan, jätä viesti vastaajaan
Älä soita uudestaan...

(From SuperEgo)

New York...

We did 4 day trip to NYC again like last year this time with Vili as his birthday present (we were there also last year with Otto and in both times the trigger was rock bottom prices from Stockman's Hullut Päivät ;o)...
Very nice trip again ! I sort of love NYC - everybody can be an insider and an outsider at the same time ?? Just walking around all day is an ever chaning experience.
Anyway.... It's propably me getting older ;o) but again (besides enjoying just simply walking around the city observing the life and the people) the trip raised lots of thoughts about how different worlds we are living in different parts of world. Eg to me the way that society seems to really be divided to people who are doing really (what to Europeans seem to be) totally irrelevant/meaningless jobs, earning 5USD (?) per hour and having absolutely no possibility to participate to official mainstream life (??) of overwhelming consuming (?) and to officially promoted world with happy people buying their everyday "Gourmet Pannini with NY Pastrami and medium size Latte" from a deli (worth of 8-10 bucks) ... capable buying their own way to happiness ? Well, on the other hand eg the Skandinavian system (where if you don't have a job available which to you are being trained for you are "entitled" to stay unemployed and still get paid sufficiently to live ~OK) might seem equally ackward as the US system to me.
Another thing is the amazing waste of energy which can be seen overwhelmingly everywhere. Eg cars everywhere are pretty much ~all consuming I guess about 2-3 times more than typically the models used in Europe would consume.... For no reason really.
Also I personally hate tipping "culture" in it's US format - it's really mandatory and not realated to any special will to reward good service. The tipping "culture" in US is nothing but additional "tax" where the employers/business owners instead of paying fair salaries to their employees (and putting the correct price to the eg menu) they saddle their customers with those expenses.
Another thing is the size of everything - why the ---k has everything to be so big ? Really I'm a relatively big guy (189cm - 92kg) but the portions are in general always beyond anything I could rationally even think of eating - why oh why ? Humanly reasonable sized portions with even maybe slightly lower price would make everybody much better in the long run ? ;o)

Well, as I said I admit I'm a slave to my own culture and perceptions - things in EU seem to equally strange in here to US citizens ?

Samuel Adams rocks anyway !!! ;o)

Testing Photobucket slideshow to Blogger....

Pictures from last Fiskars trip..... seem to be coming as they are to Blogger.



OK ... it just send the pictures as they are to the blog.
(I Did some resizing and deleted most of them and left just one as proof that it worked ;o)

Photobucket

This is a test post from Photobucket.com

=================================
Yep... testing out the service. After some learning I think I sort of am getting it. Seems to be pretty neat way of creating photo albums which you quite conviniently can then place directly to your blog (seems to be working well ... it's made easy). The other way of using the service is to get (2 types of) html code generated from the albums which you can then place on your pages... sort of Flickr badge style ;o) I'm still missing at this phase the "thing" which makes it better than Flickr (if that _is_ the intention?) and it's badges but I hope to find it...

Next I'll try to post a show to Blogger.

New toy ;o)

Just got my new toy Ozone Access 10m2 kite 2006.... (http://www.flyozone.com/ozkites/kframe.htm)
It should be good for me for some time and then the boys hopefully can used it .
Once I get over the flu I have at the moment it's time to get humiliated again by the forces of nature again ! With my "skills" and luck I'll propably somehow manage to break the kite (or myself) during the first hour :o( Let's see - I'm totally excited anyway and barely can wait to go on ice with the board !

Tallinn...

The teachers in Meidokan Espoo did a next season planning trip to Estonia's capital Tallinn. I was well prepared mentally for the trip ready to enjoy "few" quiet ones, a relaxed dinner in good company and good karate discussions. I even did remeber to take my passport with me ...which was actually outdated autumn 2004 . A funny moment though when the customs the officer looked me and "Ja tälläkö meinaat matkustaa ??" - "And you intend to travel wtih this ??". Luckily I had my new ID also with me so I got onboard.
Lot's of good (and later less impressive) discussions on the relevant issues relating to our club'c style issues - went to bed way too late and after way too many beers.
Next morning 9am Nikke knocked the cabin door and woke Are and me (as obviously agreed sometimes during the night ?) for a visit to Tallinn. Nikke kicked us out from our beds, and off we marched to Tallinn.
I had completely forgotten how beautifull the old city is. Impressive work on renovations !!I must really visit the city regularly in the future - it is so close to Helsinki.
I envy (and joy with) you Estonians for your beautifull capital ;o)

ShoZu

www.shozu.com looked like nice way to post pictures and videos from mobile phone to one's existing photo service (in case it is one the 4 they now support including surprise surpise Flickr).... but I did not manage to pin point that it also automatically "vacuumed" all my contacts from my mobile while sigining-up the service. Scary ! (In my (stupid) case I have all 4 bank/credit card pin numbers stored as contacts... OK - that is stupid but I do not want to remember all 4 different. Anyway despite of this pin number stupidity) I do not like the idea of getting all my contacts "automatically" (ok - there was a selection to give OK for this... which I missed) moved to some service. Call me paranoid. I do.

Btw, does not seem to be possible to get rid of your Shuzo account if one wants to ... "varokaa näitä penskat"

Sorry for the wrong info I blogged - it is indeed possible to delete an account in case somebody would like to (no reason for it while ShoZu seems to be doing the job well)... and (as I did write) it was indeed my mistake not to see the option for making the selection to vacuum/not to vacuum one's mobile contacts to the service. Thanks for corrections - Andy !

PubSub....

I started to try www.pubsub.com out some time ago.... It looked like just another "blogosphere aggregator" to me first ;o) but Hey !! it's not (?). I typed in couple of days ago "snowkite" (sort of a longtail (pardon me for using the word) hobby), let it cook for some time and it dig this out for me
http://atom.pubsub.com/6a/07/853255571e8bdbe4dc8122027a.xml which I could conviniently watch from PubSub. NICE !

RSO, Mahler, Anne Sofie von Otter...

Magical moment !!! http://www.yle.fi/rso/show_page.php?page=000&cmd=archive_bulletins&ID=243&lang=

Sounds maybe a bit "large" but I will always remember this concert - heartbreaking & heavenly elevating !

Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde !

I just hope that one day YLE would have the permission to podcast this !

Egotrippi....

Fantastic new album.... Egotrippi's "Vielä Koittaa Uusi Aika" ! What a shame that it's in Finnish while even thought the music is universal (?) lyrics are not.

http://www.egotrippi.com/

Messilä.... and the Olympic ice hockey final

Last weekend Otto, Vili and me headed towards Lahti to visit and take care of my mom ... we did also spend some 5 hours in Messilä skiing slopes on Saturday accidentally ;o).

I'm a "regular" snowboarder and I tried to learn to do a switch aka go goofy ;o) because that is a must when doing snowkiting. We had lots of fun with the boys (Vili had new skiis so he was _really_ happy to try them out and Otto learned some new tricks with his snowboard). Saturday evening I had rendez-vouz with my dear friend Pasi in Lahti's amazingly vibrant (?) pubs .... we had few beers which I have to admit reflected to my Sunday's willingness to consider going back to Messilä slopes again when the boys insisted in doing it on Sunday morning. There was also going to be the all time Olympic icehockey final Fin against Swe which also significantly reduced any kind of willingness to go back to the slopes.

Anyway, the day turned out to become drop dead gorgeous winter day and the boys were so very keen to go so I gave up - we went to Messilä for 3 hours.

After 1pm the slopes were practically empty - everybody prepering to watch the game - excellent !!! I used the whole time to learn to switch I finally got it ... I can now go goofy ;o)

They also played the game with full volume in the main loudspeakers so I did not really even miss the game.

Brilliant to feel to be able to overcome oneself, to overcome the mental barries/fears and learn new things.

fifty-sixty !

Snowkiting

Finally managed to take action and contacted Karri Kolmonen in Helsinki for the basic lessons in Snowkiting. *The course took place in Laajalahti/Espoo. Karri is an all year pro for kiting and he gave us a great 4 hour introduction to the sports. We started by some theory, moved to practising with 2m2 kite and then to 6m2 kite.

(my good friend Tapsa giving an example;o)

The last hour I was even trying to snowboard with the kite .... this is definately going to be ground-breakingly-fun and something big for the rest of my life ;o)

I can now strongly recommend snowkiting - if you are in Helsinki go for www.karri3nen.com !

OK - now it's about 1.5 weeks since the course and today I finally made the investement to buy an Ozone's 10m2m Access kite. I did some serious thinking in terms of my principles to support local activities but finally unfortunately lost the battle ! :o(( The difference of about 140€ in price was too much I went for Internet shop.

I'm a quite an disappointment to myself anyway even though I symphatize myself...

Now I'm just waiting to get the kite and jump back to ice !!!!

Thailand...

Yleisön pyynnöstä ;o) ... Antoine was asking for some blogging from Thailand so here it comes.
(Well, some of the pics have been in Flickr for some time and as 1 picture tells more than 1000 pics...)

Very nice 2 weeks with the family indeed. Amazingly good food, nice weather and most of all very frienly athmosphere. Brilliant !

Anyway the thing I want to blog is the sad episode of my "6 day for enjoying windsurfing":

I did quite a bit a fantasizing and planning to windsurf in Phuket for several days. After some Googleing I found something which sounded very good - http://www.phuketwindsurfing.com/ owned and run by Patrick Casiglia. Patrick was very helpful and nice, and once we got there I contacted the him and rented the board for six days. Patrick has lived in Thailand for 15 years and had some interesting insights to beautifull Thailand. He told me that after the tragic Tsunami the goverment had forbidden to have board rental facilities in th beach which has made the whole rental business very "challenging". Anyway 6 days of paradise ahead of me he took me with a new 8.5m2 Gun Sail and Starboard board to our hotel (45 min drive from Patricks home from where he now runs his business). Pretty much straight away I directed to the sea with the gear fulled with excitement.

I put up the gear and off to the sea I go.

...and then came the waves :o(
Not even big ones - just bigger than what I've gotten used to in Finland. I did not manage to really get on the board before I was down again. Then I noticed that I've put the mast too much to front so whenever I actully got going the board actually started to dive. Shit !!

Anyway I kept trying. Then few quite much bigger wave fronts threw me totally around with the gear, and suddenly I noticed that 2 lattas (blattens) were broken - SHIT !!!

1.5 hours of trying to surf - huge humiliation and a 200€ bill. Plus the fact that I should have really paid the whole sail (409€) to Patrick which could not afford to do. Double-triple-shit.

That was it ... called Patrick, did not reach him, send a SMS bringing the bad news, felt like shit.

Next day we did some serious negotiations (being a beginner I did not know that none of the gear is actually insured) and both of us were 10000bath poorer :o((

After the "transactions" I marched directly to the hotel room, had about 3dl of Bowmore whiskey, read a book (Angels and Demons by D. Brown.. yet another ultimate salaliitto description) and after about half an hour I felt numb (due to whiskey) but OK.


Elämä on Laiffii !