Lavonardo

Like good ol’ HPL states, there are things man was not supposed to know.

Thanks Fredu, I think I have to rinse my ears with mouthwash/citric acid-combo now.

During june, the following flimsy excuses (among many others, some unpublishable in most of the lower 48 states) dragged in people like moths to an open flame:

{Teräsbetoni | Taivas Lyö Tulta} lyrics

Still going strong as the #1 search term.

Timo Saarniemi

Clearly an interesting individual.

eb games kamppi

Guys! It’s in Kamppi. What more do you need to know?

charles de gaulle airport usability

OK. So it is a bad airport. So?

valborg@yahoo.com.fi

Alice does not live here anymore.

stamp n go shanty

Good call. Shame about them skipping Molly’s this summer. Right?

the baltic badasses

Check here instead.

older man vs little boys

Definitely spooky; and nope, not here, no sir.

And tons of people brought in by the roiling Lehtovaara-case. Most via blogilista. Also image searches are picking up, with the MIT museum pictures leading the charge.

Saw Audioslave in the old Helsinki hockey arena. And quite a gig it was.

The warm-up band was “… and you will know us by the trail of the dead”. Played quite unannounced, even today’s ad in hesari was missing a reference to them. I skipped them in march, and clearly it was no great loss to mankind. Very loud, but mostly boring. Art rock, with nods towards both progressive and regressive wings. Marred by the volume and unoptimal sounds. Fortunately they played only for 40-odd minutes. But then, they might have been vastly better in a smaller environment. Or not, considering the amount of noise the seven (two drummers, most of the time) guys on stage managed to put up. Some of the songs were interesting, so if a cd shows up cheap, I might just be persuaded to buy it.

The main event was greeted by a huge audience response. The crowd was shouting and singing from the very beginning. Set covered both Audioslave as well as the root bands’ products: Killing in the Name Of and Sleep Now In the Fire by Rage Against the Machine, and Spoonman and Black Hole Sun from Soundgarden. At least one of the unrecognized songs I guessed to be from Chris Cornell’s solo album. Altogether a great show, although not all of the songs are a great match - Cornell just cannot match the fury of Zack de la Rocha, and the ex-RATM rhythm section is somewhat wasted on the slow-paced Soundgarden songs. Played for a solid 100 minutes, which is a very respectable duration for a show. Played songs from both Audioslave albums, to which I clearly need to devote more attention to. As well as dig up the old RATM albums, had forgotten how effortlessly cool Tom Morello’s playing is.

A setlist is bound to exist somewhere in the web, I failed to recognize enough of the songs to be dissuaded of not publishing one.

Seen both originals once. Soundgarden in the great Helsinki alterna-rock fiesta of ‘95 (with Blind Melon and White Zombie among others), and RATM supporting U2 in the Salt Lake City olympic stadium in ‘97 on the PopMart tour. Today’s concert was not as good as either of them, but pretty damn good nonetheless. And the audience earns an extra bonus for hefty participation. Clearly there’s a lot of pent-up desire for both original bands long after their disbandings.

With such a nice logo for a reward, how could I have resisted.

EDIT 22.8.2008: The logo is gone the way of the dodo.

Out of the blue (or flame red and soot black, in their case), Rammstein have announced a quick follow-up to last year’s Reise, Reise.

Imaginatively named Vol. 2. Majority of the songs are from R,R-sessions, but some new ones have been recorded. I’m sure it’s not just me whose october just got a wee bit brighter. And that’s not just the kerosene combusting on its own…

Koff, the big red finnish brewery, continues its annual tradition of lotterying off a couple of hundred tickets to a club-gig to see The Offspring.

Time to take a chance. Missed Foo Fighters in 2003, and couldn’t really have cared less to see 50 Cent last year.

The big day is today.

And even though the Jazz made a snazzy move, they’re unlikely to land the biggest fish in the pond (Andrew Bogut and Marvin Williams), but only time will tell whether their pick was a bargain or a bust.

Was no jolly customs man behind the counter, but a businesslike older woman.

But charges were taken, and a rather painful experience it was. To the wallet, only.

Customs on clothing is a whopping 30%, and when you add 22% for value added tax on top, the expression “bargain” cannot really be included in the same sentence. Unless combined with a negation.

My only exposure to restaurant Lehtovaara has been very pleasant.

But clearly some people have disagreed on the quality of service (linked article only in finnish). Now the restaurant has threatened legal action (80 kE for damages incurred) against the blogger.

Let’s see how this baby develops [via boingboing.net.]

Sold out, according to the salesperson at the counter. For the third week in a row.

You’d expect the theatre owners to get a clue and show the movie in a bigger screen, but nope.

Grand total of ONE ticket available when the phone reservations expired, but I needed three.

This just means that the inevitable viewing and subsequent review will be delayed. Perhaps until next saturday if the tradition of weekly previews continues, perhaps later.

This is the third week running when there’s a preview showing of Sin City, whose premiere has been pushed back to late july.

Missed the two previous occasions, and today does not seem too promising as the pre-reservation percentage is a blunt 100.

Well, have to go pretend to be a vulture and see whether all those reservations hold.

Four t-shirts from US is probably enough to cross the “this will be taxed”-threshold. Especially when the shipping cost is factored in. At least I have to travel to the customs to claim the package.

The keyword in the above is “probably”, since nowhere in the otherwise quite well-done pages of the finnish customs pages is there an exact definition on how much VAT a shipment of clothing incurs.

Well, I’ll be wiser and poorer tomorrow.

Unlike I assumed previously, the google maps does work well enough even with limited satellite data to show the whereabouts of Lavonardo HQ.

And the utterly missing street-information’s bound to show up sooner or later.

Mr. Summer, you have one week to comply.

Then it’s vacation time, and no such shirking of duty (shining the sun, baking the nation) will be tolerated.

Quite. This is a conveniently compressed account thereof.

Work-filled monday and tuesday. Nothing to report.

Company summer party on wednesday. Boring artist, decent food, good occasion to bump into people not seen in a long while. Note to self: discussing long island ice tea does not mean that the drinking of one must be demonstrated.

Pre-midsummer party on thursday in Jollas. Skipped the official nonathlon (or whatever the decathlon minus pole vault is called). Excellent food - and going for seconds on steaks was not frowned upon. Noted that phone-elves had delivered a new toy via company internal mail.

Real midsummer event on friday in Pakila. More food, good lamb, interesting crustaceans. Subdued occasion. Which was pretty much what the doctor ordered. Finished the Dirt, a book that shows how self-destructive stupid people can be if given the opportunity and tons of money. Entertaining, not pleasant.

The previous few races were quite interesting, but the US Grand Prix has the makings of an utter fiasco.

The seven teams using Michelin tires were forced to retire the cars after the warm-up lap, and now it’s just the two Ferraris racing the low-rung Jordan and Minardi teams.

Quite what this will do to the reputation in the states remains to be seen, but it cannot be anything good.

Bah. At least JJ Lehto finally won in Le Mans. And the football game between Brazil and Mexico from the confederation cup starts soon.

I was introduced to the works of Charles Stross by Tähtivaeltaja, the best SciFi-magazine there is, about last year.

Was intrigued by description, liked the accompanying short story, waited for books to materialize.

Bought Singularity Sky in San Francisco, and was not fully convinced by the story. It’s good, no doubt about that, but very much on the strange side. In a good way, and it’s definitely good hard space adventure, not the ubiquitous new weird. And it definitely bears some scars of being a first novel (characters get seriously lost among the techno-babble), but is compact and readable.

However, Mr. Stross has been busy indeed lately, and there’s a scary amount of books in the pipeline.

The newest is now available at accelerando.org in multiple formats. Go wild. I know I will. At least to the extent of taking a sample, and then buying the actual book.

The vocal author demolishes the last Star Wars film in NYT, here’s link to the relevant chunk of slashdot.

Deservedly merciless.

Visited the newly opened photo exhibit between lasipalatsi and the old bus station downtown.

Had walked through the place on friday night already, on the way to see the Bravery, and noted that it’s a big expo all right. And the images are backlit during the night.

Didn’t count the images, but I guess they number around one hundred. And it’s a good selection, containing both classics (the sandy heart in a mangrove jungle) and brand new shots (a town levelled by the 26/12/04 tsunami). And it’s not just the images themselves that are at work here, but lengthy explanations (in three languages) why the picture was taken, and what is really going on. Some of the stories approach preachiness-threshold, but it’s a thought-provoking selection nonetheless.

Browsing got interrupted by sudden rain, so retreated into the expo tent for cover. And noted that the photographer, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, was present, signing books and photos.

Got the big book, and noted why the bookstores take a dim view of actually shipping this overseas - at five kilograms it is a pretty hefty thing to lug around. And will definitely head back to see the rest of the images. No hurry, though, as the photographs remain until mid-september.

Missed the picture from Finland, but I’m sure it’s part of the collection.

And it’s surprising how ATMs are like cops. All over the place when not needed, but utterly absent when useful. The expo tent will accept cards from next week onwards.

Google Maps now covers the whole world. Though without street-level details, or precise satellite imagery. But it’s a nudge (a big nudge at that) in the correct direction.