hiidenkonttibeta

Spent weekend in Helsinki, attending to Finncon along with some other freaks:

Animecon events were even more crowded than in previous years, so I concentrated on sci-fi. One of the most interesting panels was the one about home-made scifi/fantasy movies, with such panelists as Petri Hiltunen (Kalliovuorten prinssi, Saturnuksen sotavaltias; regrettably I haven’t seen them yet) and Timo Vuorensola (Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning).

A new genre of scifi/fantasy called “new weird” (“uuskumma” in Finnish) was discussed, or at least mentioned, in several events. I got interested enough to buy a collection of “new weird” novels called Uuskummaa? – Modernin fantasian antologia. I’m halfway through and the novels actually are a bit on the weird side..

I did some domestic travelling this summer, too. My first stop was Kuopio (the first time I travelled via the eastern railway). A friend of mine has lived there for a couple of years now, so I went to visit him and see the city of Kuopio. On the first day we took a hour-and-half cruise on the lake:

Then we checked some local bars. The next day we visited the highest spot around, the Puijo tower:

After enjoying the view for a while, we went walking the paths around the Puijonmäki area. One of them took us to a old farmhouse kind of place, with a small café and animals for kids to pet, in theory; they probably didn’t dare to touch the big dog resting in the sunny spot, the rabbit was hiding in the darkest spot of its cage, few people like petting bees, the sheep were probably in heat and acted crazy and scary. Luckily there were some goats wandering around:

Goats are always fun. Later, we visited some other places, and encountered these contradictory neighbours:

From Kuopio I continued to Turku to visit my cousin. The dark place is Aboa Vetus, ruins of old Turku. An example of the power of my camera phones flash.

In Turku we also checked some bars, Ruissalo, Vanhalinnan Linnavuori, and some other places.

The next morning after arriving to Oulu we jumped into a train to Tervola, borrowed a car from my parents and drove over 400km north, to Inari and my family’s summer cottage for a few days. We visited a small lake some kilometers away – walking two hours on a swamp to get there, and on the way back finding a road made by forest industry which took us back to the lake Muddus in an hour or less. Maybe it would be a good idea to update my map from 1960′s some time soon?

On the way back we stopped at Kaunispää to eat. The rain was coming after us:

We also checked some other tourist spots, like a view over the lake Inari, and Porttikoski rapids, which wasn’t very impressive after all (except the nice canyon in which the river flows):

And now it’s the last week of my summer vacation. Oh well.

Kuljeksin viikonloppuna ympäri Oulua napsien puolitoistasataa kuvaa infrapunafiltterin läpi. Olin liikkeellä testikuvausasenteella, joten kuvasin isolla aukolla (f2.8 – 4.0) käsivaralta, luottaen Olympus C-2100:n kuvanvakaajaan.

Käyttämäni Hoya R-72 filtteri (Wratten #89B) päästää läpi vähän näkyvää valoa (0% läpäisy 680nm kohdalla, 50% 720nm eli punaisen pisimmät aallonpituudet), mutta pääasiassa kuitenkin vain infrapunavaloa. Ihmissilmälle näkymättömän valon valaisemat maisemat ovat vieraita, unenomaisia – sininen taivas, vesi, puiden rungot ja kivet ovat tummia, lähes mustia, ja kaikki kasvillisuus hohkaa valkoisena.

Kamerasta tullessaan “UZi”:n ottama kuva on vaaleanpunertava. Joissain materiaaleissa on edelleen omaa sävyään, kuten liikennemerkeissä. Oulun kaupungintalo infrapunaulottuvuudessa (dynamiikkaa laajennettu autolevelsillä):

Koskapa infrapunakuvia on mahdotonta esittää oikeilla väreillään, yleisimmin ne julkaistaan mustavalkoisina. Hautausmaat ovat suosittu aihe, koska siellä näkyy selkeästi jyrkkä kontrasti kivien ja kasvillisuuden välillä. Myös kiviset patsaat ovat tavallista tummempia (mutta lintujen jätökset niissä näköjään eivät):

Vekkuleita unimaisia maisemia saa aikaan kun sävyttää kuvan vaikkapa siniseksi (onnistuu helposti vaihtamalla punainen ja vihreä värikanava keskenään):

June just passed by. I have one week of work before my summer holiday starts.

Last week I acquired Olympus Camedia C-2100 Ultra Zoom, “UZi”, a 2.1 Megapixel digital camera. It’s one of the digital cameras with a sensor that more sensitive to infrared light than they usually are. Today I got an infrared filter for it, so now I can finally experiment with infrared photography.

My brother was moving to day to a brand new apartment. I was helping, by carrying furniture and boxes. The whole building was brand new, and there were many people moving at the same time, so we carried most of the stuff up the stairs to the fourth floor.

A full month without a single entry. Sorry.

The thing is, I’m a kind of distanced from this current incarnation of manpitsu. I’ve been planning and testing a new version of my web pages for some time, and would like to get it done and running, instead of using this old system (even if I’m planning to move all the old entries there, too). But there’s still a lot to do before the new one is actually usable.

It’s green and summerlike outside by now. For a week or so it’s been raining. If it gets warm soon, everything will be growing like crazy.

I made a three-day trip to Stockholm this month to attend the VON conference. Nothing too interesting there this time. But I visited some bars in Stockholm, looking for special beers. A place called Belgobaren is a must for any beer lover visiting Stockholm – they have an admirable selection of Belgian beers. I tasted Liefmans Frambozenbier and Westmalle trappist beer there. On the other side of the town there are two bars close to each other serving real ale. One is called Akkurat and the other Oliver Twist. The first real ale I tasted was some basic pale ale; the other one Harviestoun Black to Front. The brewery is quitting and this was the last beer they made:

I had my first iaido graduation on last Saturday. Being too nervous about it resulted in my worst technique for a while. I probably did most of the mistakes that have ever been pointed out in my technique, and made up some new ones as well. They awarded me 5 kyu.