hiidenkonttibeta

A big Autumn storm was to hit Finland and Oulu today. The wind’s been blowing and it’s been raining the whole day (very small raindrops, but there’s a lot of them everywhere because of the wind – it’s like a very heavy fog), but I wouldn’t call this weather a storm. It’s only a rainy day, and the wind blows in Oulu all the time.

There was a lot heavier rain a week ago. The drain cover jumped on top of water gush:

Someone’s been murdering youngish pine trees in Lintulammenpuisto by sawing them in two at waist height. The photos show the rather brutal details:

What turns someone into a tree-killer? A feeling of power when a tree falls down? Boredom?

Anyway, I also found the hidden murder weapon:

Celebrations of Oulu’s 400th birthday continue. There was an exhibition called “Aikamatka” in Ouluhalli, with set up pieces of historical Oulu and personnel in costumes. The old bus didn’t look that old, actually I think the bus I took to school until 10 years old was older than that..

There’s a new statue – or actually a collection of 32 small statues – behind the city hall, displaying different kinds of people of Oulu from the last 400 years in historical order:

All the museums had free admission last weekend, so we visited the museum of Pohjois-Pohjanmaa. Like every other museum following the trends, they had modern action figures for display. Except their display had a severe error:

The text tells about Star Trek figures, but the figure they have for display is Qui-Gon Jinn from Star Wars Episode I. My girlfriend pointed this out to a random member of the museum personnel, who didn’t seem to understand what the problem was. Some experts.

They also had a large small-scale model of Oulu from 1938:

Quite a lot of hay fields around the city center.

Sunnuntaina satoi reippaasti vettä. Välillä näkyvyys katosi lähes tyystin, junanikkunasta näkyi vain tiheää vesisuihkua kuin juna olisi kyntänyt itselleen kulkuväylää sadepilveen. Näkyvyyden vähän parannuttua aloin napsimaan kamerakännykällä kuvia ikkunaa pitkin virtaavien vesinorojen vääristämistä maisemista:

Viimeisessä kuvassa juna on pysähtyneenä vähän Oulaisista etelään olevan pellon kohdalla. Hirvi jäi alle ja katkaisi jarruputken, jota korjattiin tuossa reilut puolisen tuntia. Ikkunastahan näkyy selkeästi pelto, jolla seisoo kaksi hevosta, ja taivaalla on sateenkaari.

We were killing time in Tennispalatsi before The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the movie which many Douglas Adams fans have been waiting for years – too bad Adams himself had to leave too early to see the movie through. Not a bad movie, actually I’d like to see it again to catch the things I may have missed on the first viewing). A popular pastime is to visit Kukunor, or at least wonder at the things in their display window:

They’re selling a Japanese magazine called Gothic Lolita. Quick leafing told us that it’s got mainly clothing patterns for making your own dresses and other stuff related to dressing up ゴスロリ style. Some cosplayers might be interested in this at first – that is, until they spot the >30€ price sticker. Pretty much for a magazine, even for a bit exotic one.

The floor in the Pendolino trains has a pattern consisting of red, yellow and black dots in a seemingly random pattern. It looks like this (actually it doesn’t, since my camera phone just can’t get it right, but at least the picture gives some idea):

Now, the uninitiated probably wouldn’t take a second glance at it. But an engineer may find it mildly interesting: is the pattern random, or does it start repeating itself at some point? If it’s random, how random is it? Is the world so fscked up already that someone has been able to acquire a patent for that (pseudo-)random mess?