Lavonardo

• It’s far better to bump into a commercially inspired recitation of Abba classics in the metro than into scarily strung-out guys talking to themselves.
• To avert confusion, if a color movie is rendered in black&white in a director’s cut version, this fact should be made abundantly clear in the packaging.
• Things rules (and more about that later).
• Getting stuck in profoundly stalled traffic is much more bearable with a conveniently available magazine.
• Chinese Democracy keeps on getting better after multiple rounds, but it failed to impress the Chinese officials.
• Watched a rather boring hockey game and endured a shortish nachspiel, details available at mr. Srpnt’s blog.
• Missed the fire that seems to have gutted Botta (that’s what you get for going home with a train).

It’s been a good while since any recent discoveries were advocated in the blog, so here goes with a list of some things picked up recently - paired with a new blog is a good entry within.

• As gentle introductions go, Graeme Wood’s take on the future social media is amongst the finest in a long while.
• With a couple of key links, the demostration of WotC’s D&D portfolio’s faltering is pretty convincing.
• The traditional roles of an MVC application can get seriously blurred.
• There are way too many Linux filesystems, each decorated with a cryptic abbreviation, kev009’s report on the situation and estimations of the future seems valid enough as a starting point.
• And for Linux on the IPhone there’s no better article than the one that actually describes the port being in a reasonable state.
• Criterion, the finest purveyors of dvds have launched an online cinemathique (availability outside the US suspect and to be proven.)
• Hätäkeskus, kuinka voin auttaa ja palvella…” is a brand new blog that describes the different levels and kinds of cluelessness of finnish 911 users (and that’s 112 for local readers, obviously).

For this week’s Macro Day Challenge of souvenir I’ve used a shot of a plastic totem pole bought in Vancouver’s Stanley Park (which has the largest collection of totems I’ve seen).

Once again, managed to semi-succeed in the rather hypocritical Buy Nothing-day.

Bought no goods at all, only food and drink from cafeteria at work and later at a bar. But since spending money is considered a sin as well, this was by no means a rousing success.

Didn’t get a cold turkey from shunning away from shopping, but there’s still some goods I definitely aim to pick up today: Killers’ newest record, a warm-ish shirt and food for starters.

The duo of t-shirts ordered almost three weeks ago arrived today.

The designs are as cool as they seemed on the web, and the clothes themselves done well, on American Apparel shirts.

Apart from mis-shots, this picture of a sneaking leopard is one of the blackest I’ve taken, and hence an appropriate response to today’s photo friday challenge

Based on the fact that I’ve liked every author I’ve read of the selection, the remaining half of the top 10 science fiction novelists of the ’00s ought to be investigated sooner or later. At least the descriptions of some of the thus far unfamiliar authors output seem interesting.

• Charles Stross: I’m a loyal fanboy, not all his books shine, but most of them do. Glasshouse didn’t, the others range from good to excellent.
• Richard Morgan: Only read Altered Carbon thus far, better than OK, but his brand new fantasy novel seems far more interesting than the rest of the Takashi Kovacs-sequence.
• Alastair Reynolds: Started strong, but the last two bits of the Revelation Space-saga quite sucked. The newer novels have shown recovery, though. Chasm City remains a favorite.
• Ken McLeod: Star Fraction was a fine piece of work, but the acclaimed new novel Execution Channel had the worst deus ex machina ending I’ve ever witnessed.
• Peter Hamilton: The finnish paper industry thanks the author, whose books feature on the heavyweight ring. Haven’t read anything but the Reality Dysfunction-sequence.
• Vernor Vinge: The Rainbows End was OK, but I liked it far less than expected - it was surprisingly laborious to read.

[ Again via The spectacularly obtuse blog, and do take a look at five things I learned about women from the James Bond books as well. ]

When it comes to abruptly-ended television shows, Deadwood is almost at the top of the category. Twin Peaks still reigns supreme.

In a recent interview David Milch provides insight what could have happened in had the tale of North Dakota continued, yet never will. While the desciption is thin, it’s probably more than we’ll ever get out of David Lynch.

The finnish rumor mill is abuzz with speculation on Mike Monroe getting named Velvet Revolver’s vocalist. With Scott Weiland faded out of the picture, the ex-Gunners band is indeed in need of a new vocalist.

This week’s thursday challenge is soft.

My take on the subject is a soft and cuddly plush incarnation of Cthulhu, cradling an appropriately named beercan.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is glass.

My take is the attached image, of a classic Dali melting clock, as reproduced in the Swarovski Kristallwelt in Innsbruck. The odd reflection of a Keith Haring-piece in the southeast corner is an unexpected bonus. The photograph was indeed taken in suboptimal conditions and it’s reflected in the less than glorious finish.

I originally thought about using a wineglass for this challenge, but it turned out that I didn’t have any good images readily available, and opening a bottle of champagne in the middle of the night just for a couple of good shots of the bubbles floating upwards in the liquid would not have been the brightest idea of the week.

Nuovo et Piaccevole Gioco detto il Barone (1600) by peacey (CC)

Bibliodyssey has published a great article on the history of boardgames, with plenty of images, concentrating on the early centuries of the scene.

[ via The spectacularly obtuse blog. ]

The Sisters of Mercy who seem to have been on a tour forever without publishing any new records will play in Nosturi on the 23. of march next year.

Rex at Fimoculous has started the annual year in review.

Thus far it’s mainly music and books, but if the last few years are any indication, the list will seriously bloat up during the next six weeks.

As luxury watches (and good-looking ones at that) go, the wristwatch festooned with chunks of moondust cannot be beaten.

At up to 450k€, it’s not exactly something to be picked up on a lazy saturday afternoon.

Bad Bad Idea by cmbellman (CC)

I lost both games this weekend purely due to bad player choices.

Both niners and hakkapeliitat were down by a mile after the sunday games, but a massively high-scoring affair on monday night football almost set things right. Almost. But almost never counts.

Hakkapeliitat lost because I opted not to play Marques Colston and ran Cincinnati’s air force instead. Turns out that the Saints offense had a day for the cards, and Colston picked up both serious yards and a single TD. The running backs were uniformly quiet - both Barber and Gore had a very quiet game when San Francisco lost to Dallas.

Niners took a two point loss. And with three players producing a single point, and Joey Galloway netting a zero, this loss was a pure case of digging my own hole. Any one of Boss, Hightower or Colston on the field would have sealed a victory. But that never happened, and the less-than-productive guys’ output meant that niners are back at .500. The Chicago defense returned to form after a weak week, but it would have been unfair to have expected any more than four picks from them.

Bring on week thirteen (and fourteen, which ends the regular season).

One of the gloriously good discoveries of this fall has been Pasila, a simplistic animation that combines absurdism with the basic ingredients of a finnish police show.

While the animation is on the basic side (but very well done overall), and the plotlines border on the ridiculous, it’s the twin mainstays of good television that make Pasila worthwhile: characters and dialogue.

The characters are surreal - yet figments of them seem to be present in a lot of finns.

The dialogue is rapid-fire, and packed with sentences and expressions of such power that they insinuate themselves into everyday discussions.

The protagonist, Kyösti Pöysti, a pacifier-sucking junior detective, combines the two. And manages to add enough anxieties and struggles with everyday life into the mix to evolve way beyond a simple caricature.

Suomalainen rikos on huonosti suunniteltu, toissijaisista motiiveista tehty ja useimmiten sekä uhrin että tekijän kannalta lähinnä vaivaannuttava kokemus. Poliisin tehtävä on hakea tekijä kotoa, solvata tätä kunnes tämä murtuu itkuun ja siitä sitten pikkuhiljaa paranee ihmisenä eikä enää ryssi.

Even if the plotlines turn out out of the ordinary, the underlying themes are very topical. The blatant disrespect doled out to blathering morning television hosts, obligatory positivity and whatever seems to have pissed off the writers earlier is nothing less but awe-inspiring.

I’m now ten episodes into the first season’s dozen, and the news of a second season kicking off in January was a very pleasant surprise discovered while seeking out proper references on the web.

This week’s Thursday Challenge of hobbies wasn’t too easy to answer.

I seem to have too many photos of hobby-related things. In the end figured that this marine aquarium shown in the exhibition put out by Helsingin Akvaarioseura for Akvariets Dag 2004 fits the bill nicely. It doesn’t concentrate only on the contents of the tank, but shows the whole nine yards.

• Rich Hall’s cancellation was by far the lowest point of the week.
• While snow regularly surprises the finnish drivers, this saturday night bus-on-bus collision was nothing more than carelessness.
• Whereas the sunday’s blizzard was a reminder that despite two lousy winters mother nature still packs a punch.
• Rediscovery of Moebius as a comic artist was a pleasant surprise (more on that later).
• Finding quality calendars is not an easy task.
• Water is better suited to washing the kitchen floor than champagne (and nothing more needs to be said).