hiidenkonttibeta

The winter is really here at last. No more silly little snowfalls with snow melting away the next morning – now there’s been 10cm of snow and about -10°C for the last few days.

The winter’s been here for as long as all the bus drivers have been on strike. What a coincidence. Bicycling 10km in freezing weather and in ice and snow wouldn’t be fun, but luckily I’ve been able to get into the few remaining buses.

Today I was waiting at one of University’s bus stops for the last bus of the day, when suddenly a car stopped at there. There were two girls inside, they opened a door and called out: “Anybody going to the city centre? We’ve got room for three”. Two girls and me bravely climbed in. The girl who was driving explained that she felt silly driving an empty car past a crowded bus stop. I wish there was more her kind people – most of the cars we passed were empty expect for the driver.

There was the following creation in the hall of faculty of pedagogics:

It looks like Oulu. There’s the ball of Rotuaari, the church, the theatre and main library, the building in Linnansaari, river, and three buildings of Toivoniemi. But I don’t know what the building on the right side is.

Here’s my collection so far to show the differences in sizes of old and new devices:

I may occasionally update the entries for the individual consoles I’ve already covered (listing games, replacing photos with better images) but I won’t make new entries about them unless I think there’s something especially interesting to write about (obtaining a rare game or accessory).

Last week I received Atari Lynx, the first hand held games console with colour screen. It’s the revised model, a bit smaller than the original, but still quite big compared to modern devices:

It has a 16-bit CPU, 160×102 pixel screen with backlight and 16 colours (out of 4096), and it runs 4-5 hours on six AA-batteries. It was sold from 1989 to mid-90′s.

There’s a period of complete darkness during which the sun does not rise above the horizon in Northern hemisphere. All locations above the Arctic Circle (latitude 66° 33’) encounter it between Autumnal Equinox and the Vernal Equinox – not for the whole 6 months elsewhere than at North Pole, but at least on Winter Solstice. In Finnish this period of darkness is called “kaamos”.

We don’t have kaamos in Oulu (being about 1° 32’ below the Arctic Circle), but we have a pretty good simulation going on right now. The sun rises at 08:39, an hour after I’ve gone to work, and sets at 15:25, before I return home. And we still don’t have permanent snow. Snow would lighten up the world a great deal.

Last week a selection of seasonal beer appeared in Alko. A selection of interesting tastes to try out! One of the first ones I got is Young’s Christmas Pudding:

The bottle says it’s got “flavour of dried fruit”, and it certainly doesn’t taste like your ordinary lager.