hiidenkonttibeta

Yesterday I finally did the thing I’ve been thinking about since Spring – I got myself an Apple iMac. I was able to get it locally here in Oulu, right off the shelf, for a bit cheaper than the price in Apple Store.

My plan was to use it side-by-side with my Linux PC for a while, and gradually switch to Mac (after transferring all my data, and maybe doing a Linux install in iMac for dual-boot setup). But things don’t often go as planned.

This morning I was reading my e-mails on the Linux PC, went off for a few minutes to make some sandwiches, came back and my monitor was dead. The power LED was on, but all it displayed was black. Even the built-in setup menu of the monitor itself doesn’t work.

So now I’m switching to Mac a bit sooner. I’m wondering if this iMac unit I’ve got is as quiet as it should – I can hear the fans (and/or the hard disk) easily from another room, >6 meters away. It’s definitely noisier than I had hoped for, but I’ve never heard other similar iMacs in a quiet room.

This year we made our fall foliage watching trip to Pallas instead of Aakenus. The fjelds in Pallas are about 300m higher than Aakenus, but since the hiking routes also begin at higher altitude, there’s a lot less trees on the way to the top. And since the colourful trees make the most of fall foliage, this probably wasn’t so good a choice after all.

We aimed for Taivaskero, a bit over 800m high fjeld a short way (about 3.5km) from the visitor centre (and hotel). It was really windy, and quite cold on the top – so cold actually, that there was snow on the shadowy side of the rocks on the top:

Because of the lack of trees, the only fall foliage colours were on the ground, with occasional patches of red among the plants:

There’s a stream in the gorge between the fjelds, passing the hotel and visitor centre (visible in the photo) on it’s way to the lake. The water appeared from the fjeldside, beneath some stones. It was very clear, and very cold. I filled my water bottle there.

On the way back an ice-cream lorry followed us for a while:

It’s a somewhat strange sight on a road to a fjeld in the middle of Lapland.

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.