Lavonardo

Finished Valve Software’s Portal earlier this week, and was impressed by the little game. Very impressed.
Initially the first-person puzzle game seems like the weakest link in the cornucopia that is the Orange Box, but towards the last few rooms this was the game that kept me going until the way too wee […]

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Well, with this entry, it’s been 100 entries with the new blog engine, and it’s time for some low-key analysis.
All in all Wordpress has worked well, and been a pleasant tool to play around with.
The initial installation issues were pretty much the web hotel’s fault (and routed around with minimal effort). […]

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Visited the annual Finnish Metal Expo in Kaapelitehdas yesterday. This was my first visit to the occasion that has grown to quite a size in its four years. The saturday session was sold out, so settled to a single evening’s visit.
And even then, arrived late, and just missed Municipal Waste on […]

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The recently opened (and very poshly named) La Societe du Cochon was the site of a team dinner on wednesday.
The food was offered in plentiful quantities, instead of being just laid out just so on the plates.
Definitely a plus after a long day.
Appetizer was a decent portion of whitefish, […]

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Yes, the old adages don’t hold when it comes to reviewing bad movies. If the movie does not warrant anything nice to be said about it, you better make the disrespect itself worthy to read.

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Wired has posted a nifty visualization what happens to a blog entry after it is published.
The tally of missing issues of said magazine in Finland is now two: neither the december nor january issues have yet been sighted in the shops. There is no official explanation, just speculation of a shipment […]

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This week’s photo thursday challenge is food.
My take on the subject is one of the greatest desserts in the world: the key lime pie. The picture is taken in the Faneuil Hall McCormick&Schmick in Boston. And the pie has indeed been a staple on subsequent visits to the establishment.

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My first ever participation on the Macroday challenge is about produce.
The subject is an uchuva close up. The fruit is called either pineapple cherry or lantern fruit in finnish, and it has no shortage of names in english either.
The full-size photograph is available by clicking on the image.

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This week’s photo thursday challenge is together.
Location: Eira.
Me: on the left side, and the odd hump is my elbow. I think.
Date: sunday morning, late autumn.
The usual explanations apply: a full-size image is available by clicking the photograph, and the archives from the […]

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Voima magazine has published their collection of busted ads. Like with the original, some miss the mark, but some manage to score several hits on a precision shot.

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Seems that the news of the peculiar clown-horse rear admiral-o-rama was traumatic enough to forget watching today’s episode of Torchwood.
While it definitely is no new Who, the show is decent enough to warrant watching it.
Its second season seems to have been picked up by yle, which is odd, since they haven’t shown […]

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This is a long overdue review of Ben Affleck’s debut as a director: Gone Baby Gone. This is the second film of a Dennis Lehane novel, and while good, it does not reach the lofty heights of Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River.
The story is the fourth in the five-novel Kenzie/Gennaro-series, and this makes […]

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JIM @ 2000 on 11.2.2008:

Uskomattomat videot
Sirkustemppu menee pieleen kun klovni tutustuu hevoseen takakautta.
Amerikkalainen sarja.

I so do not want to know what happens here.
And rinsing the mere idea of this scene from memory is going to demand industry-strength solvents.

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In the continuing series of expositions of free stuff related to speculative fiction, Neil Gaiman has been greenlit to publish one of his novels online, absolutely free. The selection is by popular vote - and surprisingly enough American Gods has a hefty margin right now, my preference would be towards small chunks of prose, […]

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Lottolabs has put up a collection of great visual illusions. And these babies are color-based as opposed to stereograms which I don’t usually get.

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After three months the Writer’s Guild of America might be calling off the strike today, or not - as the preceding strike back in 1988 that took almost twice as long showed, the scriptwriters can indeed be away from the keyboards for a good while.
The spring television schedule in the US is pretty […]

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Is the site claiming that Firefly might be up for a second season just wishful thinking?
The site does not look very convincing, and the statement of being just an independent production company without a license to the show doesn’t exactly make me reach for my wallet to provide funding.

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Ignite Helsinki on 22.2. Ought to be interesting and Dubrovnik might be a little crowded.

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This week’s photo friday challenge is what is that?
My take on the subject is the attached image, a peppermint stick insect (Megacrania batesii), a rare critter from Queensland that just happened to be around on a rainforest walkabout in Cape Tribulation. The coloring has not been altered, the animal is shockingly turquoise in color, with […]

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This week’s photo thursday challenge is history.
My take on the subject is a picture of Niccolo Macchiavelli’s statue located outside the Uffizi Galleria in Florence. The author of the Prince certainly made his mark on history with his opportunistic guidelines for wannabe rulers, of whom there was no shortage of in medieval […]

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