hiidenkonttibeta

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?

It’s late August and berries grow in every tree bearing any kind of berries. Rowan and bird cherry trees have berries I like tasting but not exactly eating. Rowan berries in greater quantities are real good in some kind of cookies (wish I had the recipe & were eager baker), but eating bird cherry berries in big quantities isn’t such a good idea, they being a bit on the poisonous side.

In Ainola park they had currant bushes for people to enjoy. Black ones had already seen their prime time but red and white varieties were real good:

Hundreds of gulls spend their free time hanging around the top of the dam near Merikoski. If I ever feel the need to cause some feather-scattering panic, I’ll go and run on that dam:

I finally realized the colourful bricks form a figure of a train:

Only I never stopped looking at it before..

Photos of totally random things and events from July & August.

First we have some dog food. Looks very similar to “pick your candy” sections in some store. Would they allow one to take the dog in, so he/she can point at boxes, “some of those”, “skip those”, “a few of these”:

There was (is?) a wonderful photo exhibition in Lasipalatsin piha in Helsinki. There are big prints of photos from UNESCO supported “Earth from Above” project by Yann Arthus-Betrand. The photos are great, but there are a lot of them:

The yearly “Valkosipuliyö” (“the garlic night”) event in Oulu was the most boring ever. It’s too commercialized, too long, too large event by now. The original, too crowded version beats the modern event without competition. I remember the food being better and the general feel of the event being more interesting – it’s so businesslike and neutral now. Nobody seems to be serving stuff like “dracula drinks” with blood and alcohol mixed together. Now it’s a barricaded area with long tables. It probably didn’t even rain back then:

“Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast …” If you call yourself a metalhead but can’t place the quote immediately, you’re not worth the title. Anyway, it seems the beast drives a scooter:

I got tickets for Elojazz jazz & blues concert. Sunshine, beer, wasps, food, music.

The 6th Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16th of July. On the previous evening we spotted the group of fans waiting in the front of a bookshop:

One day I wandered around Helsinki, looking for second hand bookshops with a good selection of sci-fi/fantasy books. There’s one which has a lot of Star Trek books:

I only bought one, since I had too many books already:

• Waldo & Magic, Inc, Revolt in 2100 and The Past through Tomorrow vol. 2 by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Earth Book of Stormgate-1 by Poul Anderson
• The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven
• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Batman Chronicles volume one
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
• Star Trek: The Classic Episodes 2 adapted by James Blish

and some non-fiction (Chaos by James Gleick, Fantastic Voyages: Learning Science through Science Fiction Films, Star Trek: Action!).

I had to get the first Harry Potter book to check if I could find out what the fuss is all about.

(jos löydät jostain joutilaan Star Trek: The Classic Episodes ykkösosan, vihjaise)

Before I left Helsinki we visited the museum of technology. The printing press department had some nice keyboards, like this one:

Visited petcemeteries of both Turku and Helsinki. The one in Turku is unkept: it’s a corner of a hill, a forest with a lot of grass and all kinds of plants growing tall everywhere. People make graves wherever there’s a free spot. The one in Helsinki is a complete opposite: the graves are well defined, go in (mostly) straight rows and the area is maintained, at least somewhat. By counting the crosses it’s also easy to see that there’s a lot less christian pets in Helsinki than in Turku. Now try guessing the city:

I usually don’t take photos of the gravestones, unless they’re really special in form or decoration, but this one I just had to shoot just for the innovative naming of a herd of cats:

(for those who don’t speak Finnish, “Vasen” means ひだり and “Oikea” is みぎ)

In Keskuspuisto (in Helsinki) they had different kind of art pieces in the forest. This is one of the Tree Spirits:

Too bad I never saw the ballet dancer in action with her chainsaw.