hiidenkonttibeta

The Sun is shining and the snow is melting rapidly, all the streets are no longer covered in ice and water – but in gravel instead:

Only all the shadowy streets still require some care in walking on them:

Last week most of the rain sewers were frozen shut. Some workers were digging ditches and holes in the ice – just like we did as kids when the Spring came. Apparently some people never grow up :-)

Last week the screens on bus stops started displaying timetables, along with “the screen is in test use” text:

The buses are (or will be) equipped with GPS positioning systems, but so far the displays on bus stops rely on timetables only. Practically this means that they say “bus #8 arrives real soon now” and “bus #8 has left” (actually they delete the bus from the screen), but in reality the bus arrives on the stop a few minutes later than, according to the display, it has already left.

I visited my parents in Tervola with my girlfriend. It was a night of full moon, so we went for a walk. I tried photographing the moonlit scene but my camera phone was a bit confused. The photos it takes are a “bit” on the noisy side after a lot of enhancing:

The “ripples” is an icy cover on the top of snow on a field.

It had been a warm day, with water and slosh everywhere. But at night it was colder, and all that wet stuff turned into ice. We took an old kick sled and glided down every nearby icy downhill road in moonlight:

Since there were patches of sand and blocks of solid ice on the road and we didn’t like the idea of flying instead of gliding, constant braking was required. That poor old little kick sled didn’t feel too stable with two people on it and the speed it was able to acquire on a steep downhill was a bit more than we felt comfortable dealing with on a public road and without steering capabilities.

There’s not many stories told of this period of Moomin’s life, but he had a rebellious phase. He tried to impress girls and ended up hanging out with a local street gang and he got some bad influences from them, turning into a bully harassing everyone less than half his size (i.e. pretty much anyone but other Moomintrolls):

When Moominmamma found out about this she made it clear to Moomin that that kind of behaviour was unacceptable in the Moomins family (using old and tried methods) :

Today I entered the post office with a Canon EOS film camera and exited the place with Canon EOS digital camera. Apparently the post office is capable of transforming a film camera to digital one, it’s strange they don’t advertise this much.

For the last three days I’ve been scanning films I shot last year. There weren’t too many rolls, but it still took time. There’s still a lot of editing to do to get them on my homepage. I’ve also still got my trusty old EOS 10 (in addition to Fed-2, Zorki-4K and Zeiss Ikon 6×4.5), so I didn’t completely get rid off film cameras. I also have a set of 3D photo pairs I have shot every now and then during last 10 or so years which I haven’t really checked out yet.

Got some CD’s today, too. Based on them I first titled this posting as “Digital Chinese punk seagull from Okinawa”, but decided to add entries for the CD’s later.

Spring Equinox occurs today. The length of day in Oulu is now 12h 12min and it’s a little bit longer than in Helsinki. We’re getting closer to sunny nights. Go Sun!

It’s still very much winter in here. Snow and pakkanen still rule the world, and people are walking on the ice to nearby islands. The Sun shining from a long angle lit the city with golden light:

Spring Equinox is also an old pagan festival. Right now there’s an interview with the author of book Mitä wicca on? going on in TV. Surprisingly it’s about wicca.