Lavonardo

British post-progressives The Coral seem to release a new album on my birthday. Their site is definitely not the greatest thing in the web, but seems functional apart from the store-pages.

Didn’t much like their previous record, Nightfreak & The Sons Of Becker, but that probably could have been rectified by more thorough exposure to it. Still prefer their eponymous debut album to their later output.

And since the new singles (two versions of In the Morning) don’t seem to be on sale locally, have to scrounge them from the usual suspects at ebay.

And both Audioslave (no idea which direction they have turned to) and Gorillaz (Feel Good Inc. seems decent continuation from the first album) release their second albums on the very same day. Bruce Dickinson’s new solo work should be released this wednesday, as should the first part of the System of a Down double-header. And I still haven’t seen the new Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth either. So, it’ll be a busy season for recordstores…

Played host for a bunch of visiting friends over the weekend (a non-sanctioned Utah European Alumni event).

Weather was nothing short of excellent, and sunshine was much
appreciated. Especially when it’s been raining rather severely today.

So, what’s there to do:

• Reindeer and other finnish delicacies at Lasipalatsi.
• Boat-tour of the Helsinki harbor and environs. On the chilly side, but definitely worthy.
• Day trip to Porvoo.
• More finnish specialties at Zetor. Elk sauté
  (riistankäristys) is definitely worth a visit.
• Temppeliaukio
  Church never fails.
• Mandatory nightcaps in U.Kaleva & Torni
• Suomenlinna in the evening, in high winds and bright sunshine. And before the summer crowds swallow up the islands.
• Listening to some non-descript up and coming band pound their instruments from Kappeli patio.
• Weird recycled-materials art show behind Kiasma.
• Just generally rambling around, pointing out buildings, statues and things as they are passed.

All in all an enjoyable weekend. Pictures will be posted somewhere once I wrangle them out of the camera. Don’t hold your collective breaths (and anyway, I took only a few).

And I’m definitely looking forward to the upcoming one in Munich next year.

And lehti comes through with an utterly appropriate eulogy for the late poet. In finnish only, as expected.

The embrace of the inevitable utter and total mainstream position of blogging is sealed when a href="http://littleoslo.com/eng/blogpoly.htm">monopoly variant is based on it.

But then, there seems to be tons and tons of them
around.

Bah. Couldn’t find this in anything but finnish. Sorry.

Seems that there’s a move underway to update the euro coins soon.

Mainly to reflect the upgraded EU map, but some member states have a pretty good reason to update their coins altogether. Vatican has a new pope, and the Begian coins are just boring. And probably some of the new member states are looking for membership in the euro-zone as well. UK and Sweden probably will resists that till the bitter end.

Ok. So data on the new XBox360 is
now officially out (and the official site officially blows). The machine looks powerful, and thus expensive. And the usual song applies - it all depends on the games.

But who-hoo! The new console includes a light synthetizer by Jeff Minter, a coding hero of yesteryear.

Time to re-think whether this would fit into the entertainment shelf after all…

Executive summary: lost in the penalty shootout.

Period 1: Weird hockey, where both goals seemed to have puck-magnets in them. Finland has more luck. Slightly.

Period 2: Finland has no luck whatsoever, and Russia has us to a wall pretty much the whole period. Only one goal, so the game is drawn.

Period 3: Finns remember that it’s a hockey game out there. To no avail as the Russian defenses hold. Very decent play indeed. From both teams.

Overtime: The good quality game continues. And draws to a close too fast.

Penalties: Sokolov, Mr. Dropsthepuck for most of the game plays very well, whereas the russian shooters manage to locate holes in the finnish goalie’s defense. And yeah, let’s just say that the selection of finnish shooters was not really optimal.

So, the games are now done. We beat Ukraine and Denmark, and either lost to or drew with everybody else. That’s not exactly the result everybody expected. But then, most people expected a heavy-handed loss against the Canadians.

Well, see you in Riga next season.

And unless the sky falls, this is the last hockeyblog entry for a long time. And for good measure let’s now define a re-opening of the NHL as “sky falling”.

Swedes delivered, so Finland continues in the World Championship.

And today the games really begin, as the playoffs start. Finland, facing Russia, has a pretty tough game ahead. But hey, nobody said it was going to be easy. Let’s just hope it’ll stay fair

Two books on open source. First one in finnish, the second in english. Latter concentrates on software (and operating systems in particular), the former is pleasantly rambling from Mozilla to Stephen King.

Free, of course.

Finland, whose game has been pretty much lost for the most of the ongoing World Cup, is now on the verge of being eliminated after having drawn a goalless game with Latvia yesterday.

The only thing that is sure to keep the finns afloat is the victory of Sweden over the Latvians today in the last game of the second stage.

I’d love to rely on our westerly neighbours to come through in the hour of need, but we’ll see tonight what really happens.

Or we’ll see the results - since I’m opting for 24 (remnants of the third season) and West Wing (opener of the sixth season) instead.

Bah. Been absolutely ages since I’ve been to watch a movie. And thus the ‘flicks to catch’ section of this very page keeps needing to be trimmed of films that have already passed beyond general release.

No good. Have to start playing catch-up soon to maintain the “at least one movie per month”-rate.

Well well, this would, beyond any doubt cement my reputation as an interactive fiction geek. So, gimme…

EDIT 21.8.2008: Sadly, the Infocom shirt is gone from the supplies of Jinx.

A duo of links. The former will take five seconds, the latter five minutes.

Han Solo in Carbonite as interpreted in lego.
A long, amusing, and precise rant analysis of the movies, and especially of George Lucas as their director/auteur. Be warned, it is merciless.
Would have been appropriate to cap this entry with a picture of the absolutely humongous Episode III sheet hanging off Kinopalatsi on the Rautatientori-side, but wasn’t packing a camera on friday. Supposedly sized at 500 square meters, which is about 5500 square feet. That ought to be just enough to cover the expected plot holes in the movie.

As Pekka notes, yet another monthly gamenight in the Flouder’s Attic is now past.

Continued to suck at pinball… Both Twilight Zone and TNG were playing very much hard to get. Former with regard to points (”high” score a meager 150M), the latter with one unfortunately misplaced ball (though a decent score would still not have been likely, but higher definitely as the game now perfectly mistimed all modes). Personal high score in Indy was pretty much the only really bright spot, silverball-wise.

Had my first encounter with Sony’s Eye Toy. Was sceptical, but the camera proved to be quite successful as interaction device, and games (remixed Sega classics) definitely on the amusing side.

Pro Evolution Soccer via multitap (2-on-2) was fun as usual, GT4 got a suitably subdued reception. And yeah, I’m not that thrilled either.

Tavastia has been upping the ante lately, and the couple of newest signings seem very promising.

Hawkwind on 26.5. ought to be interesting. Though I have no experience with post-1990 albums. But I guess no-one goes to their gigs to hear new songs rather than Silver Machine or Brainstorm…

An even bigger catch is Fantomas on july seventh, Mike Patton’s remaining band (now that Mr. Bungle called it quits). Again, like with modern Hawkwind, would be beneficial indeed to have a good listen to their material before the actual concert. At least to get a good idea what the band is all about. But in the case of Mr. Patton this may be a false hope, none of his previous groups really fit any single mold.

Let’s evaluate the symptoms.

• No frost on the ground. Check
• First utepils.
  Check
• “Perhaps I need new sneakers”. Check
• First ice cream cone bought and eaten out. Check
• The color of grass is closer to green than grey. Check
• First miniskirt. Check
• Abundant cries for the sacking of the finnish ice hockey coach.
  Check
• First bumblebee shooed off the balcony. Check
• Too many unskilled skateboarders in too many public places.
  Check

… because they can always go back.

Anyway, seems that they’ve been adding psychoactives in the Massachusetts groundwater. Anyway, I expect a report from this occasion. With pictures. And paradox-inducing explanations.

Traipsing through the poisonbit-infested wilderness:

Best of Hubble.
Google sightseeing has its own domain now.

Yet another may first bites the dust. The usual. Hanging out in the chillish, and not yet very green Ullanlinnanmäki. Took a less scenic, but by no means really direct route back to the HQ than last year. Noted that some places charge an arm and a leg for a simple mojito. Which was probably not the best choice anyway, considering the less than Havana-esque weather.

Had a slow, but not really unproductive day at work. As is probably poetically just.