According to google earlier today, the entire internet was harmful for your computer. Turns out that the culprit was a loose slash in a configuration file.
Jan 312009
Jan 312009
This week’s Photo Friday challenge of costume turned out to be not so easy to satisfy. I simply don’t have that many pictures of strangely garbed people.
This image of a calypso band taken on the fifth avenue in New York has to suffice.
Jan 312009
Finally, both the temperature (chilly) and the predominant color (white) are appropriate for the season.
Jan 292009
The trend of the day seems to be “topic-targeting”, as new blogs by already established authors that concentrate on a single subject proliferate.
- Kuva is a multi-author movie blog.
- Vinyyli is a journey through the author’s record collection.
- 120 kirjaa is a collection of reviews on book/movies and other cultural experiences.
- 6001 km @ 2009 is a collection of bicycling stories.
All of these are proper blogs at that, not mere singleservingsites.
I haven’t really thought about expanding in quite a while – the twin specific blogs have gone fallow a long while ago.
A blog on nothing more than photographs would be on top of the list, but even with the visually impressive monotone (that adapts to the dominant color of the photograph) I haven’t taken the plunge yet.
The idea of doing book or movie reviews on a separate blog does sound a bit attractive, but would also be a bit too much work and redundant.
Jan 292009
I haven’t been actually challenged, but that’s not a reason NOT to participate in a meme.
The instructions are simple:
- Enter the fourth directory in your picture stash.
- Choose the fourth picture in your blog
- Describe when/why/how you took it.
- Challenge four people to participate
Well, this picture is from New York, close to the WTC ground zero, taken in January 2002, after the cleaning crew was mostly done with the rubble. This was a cold day, easily fifteen below zero, the chill compounded by stiff winds off the rivers.
The camera was a brand new Canon G3, and this image is the nineteenth picture taken with it.
And nope, I’m not challenging anybody.
Jan 292009
This week’s photo thursday challenge is many.
This image of floating medusas in dwindling blue light ought to be an appropriate take on the subject.
Jan 292009
A chocolate box full of berries is certainly an adequate response to this week’s Thursday Challenge of container.
Jan 282009
The subject is an imaginative take of the byline that’s more than a century old, and seems to be matched content-wise as well.
The New York Times offers a lot of data through incrementally added APIs.
I’ll try and add a link to a NYT-review of movies when I inevitably have to rework the listing of reviews (that is so out of date that it is not even remotely funny).
Jan 282009
The device of choice exploratory game development has apparently changed, of the Independent Games Festival finalists the ipod touch/iphone combo has captured a truly scary percentage.
Jan 272009
Champion of Guitars (directly playable using Parchment, a nifty in-browser Z-machine interpreter).
It’s missing the act of actually strumming the plastic Gibson, but that’s hardly a serious fault.
Jan 272009
I fell for Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko on a first view, and haven’t been able to shake the feeling. Even though his later career has not been exactly successful, especially in the box office, I still have faith. I hated domino, but liked Southland Tales pretty much more than anybody else.
The arrival of S. Darko was a complete surprise – while it’s not a direct sequel to Kelly’s debut nor actually directed (or even written) by him, it’s still among the “films to check out in 2009″.
[ via soks. ]
Jan 272009
Should I worry when a description of a papercamp is among the most interesting things recently discovered?
Jan 262009
Guillotine, published in 1998 by Wizards of the Coast, is a deceptively simple card game that is easily taught and enjoyed by pretty much anybody who can distinguish between gallows humor and actual celebration of nobility getting decapitated.
Indeed, the subject of the game is on the grim side. It depicts a struggle between rival executioners in the last days of the French revolution. A struggle in which success is measured by the lopping off and collecting of as many nobles’ heads as possible.
The game is easily learned, but the random nature of its course (especially when more than two players are involved) turns it into a chaotic affair where luck and skill alternate.
The bloody nature of the topic is gracefully sidestepped with use of plain and humorous art. The images on the cards are provided by two veteran Wizards artists: Quinton Hoover and Mike Raabe, both with a long career of MtG-illustration as a merit.
Even though the publisher is famous for flogging good games t death with expansions, Guillotine curiously never got anything additional designed for it. An omission that is tackled with the addition of new cards in boardgamegeek.
The simple nature of the game lends itself to online play as well. A version was produced for the aborted Gleemax portal. It is now available on the gametableonline.com, and much more attractively on facebook as well. Haven’t tried either, but will do, soon.
Jan 262009
Yesterday was the chinese new year, when the year of the rat turned into the year of the ox.
Helsinki celebrated the occasion for the third time, with a smallish festival on Lasipalatsinaukio in the middle of downtown.
The weather was far from optimal. The consistent drizzle threatened to turn the bright red rice paper lanterns into mush, and definitely made the icy ground underfoot uncomfortably slippery.
The square was packed with people. Especially the food court was stuffed and unruly enough to deter from queuing up. By far the most scrumptious offerings were by Dong Bei Hu – their barbecued squid on a stick is definitely something to try out on an inevitable visit.
Had dinner in Tang Village in Kamppi instead. Clearly a popular alternative, since the staff was persuading everybody to stick to the buffet instead of ordering something off the menu. Which was a good choice, since the buffet was indeed filled with good dishes – with selection alternating somewhat between rounds (at least the grilled tofu was curiously absent before going for seconds).
The evening was capped by a sponsored fireworks display over Töölönlahti. The fifteen minutes of pyrotechnics was occasionally impressive, and the vantage point on the side balcony of the parliament building provided an excellent view to all rockets but the ones shot low. The camera of the n96 proved to be spectacularly useless in the tough conditions.
Jan 262009
For today’s Moody Monday challenge of curious, I chose this curious frog (or a toad – based on its seriously non-smooth skin) of an indeterminate species.
The picture is taken in Korkeasaari Zoo, so hunting down the actual name of the frog ought not to present too much of a challenge.
Jan 262009
The yy kaa koo nee challenge continues with non-trivial numbers. This week the topic is 32.
My take is this word, off a classic-style Scrabble board.
Jan 262009
This week’s Macro Day challenge of measuring devices didn’t bring in massive amounts of inspiration.
This take of a tape measure is about as basic as they come.
Jan 262009
The song list for Guitar Hero: Metallica has been released.
The list is wide indeed, covering both the biggest hits (Enter Sandman, One) and some great misses (Frantic). Too bad Four Horsemen is entirely absent, but the likes of Orion and Whiplash round out the selection nicely. Death Magnetic is represented by a single song only, but the entire album is available as downloadable content.
As with the game centered on Aerosmith, other bands get their day in the sun as well – here the selection ranges from songs covered by Metallica (Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Tuesday’s Gone and as a definitive highlight Diamond Head’s Am I Evil?) and liked by the band (System of a Down, Corrosion of Conformity and Motörhead are all featured).
Despite the name, this is a full-band game, and hopefully the Neversoft/Harmonix-promise of instruments being cross-usable between the Guitar Hero- and Rock Band-franchises remains watertight.
Thus far I’ve avoided going beyond a single guitar (two, actually, but the PS2 and Xbox 360 instruments are not destined to meet), mainly due to space and availability reasons. The strong set list and my 20+ years as a Metallica fanboy do mean that this game will sooner or later find its way to the HQ.
Jan 252009
Been slowly adding reviews to the eat.fi-site (a smooth social network for reviewing finnish restaurant), and having written twenty thus far, a top contributor-badge is mine, all mine.
Next: a couple of score more, and hopefully soon a version of the site a bit more accessible via mobile phones.
Jan 252009
Nat Torkington has begun to list four quality links on the Radar on a daily basis.
The topics covered range widely, and usually at leas one or two are worth a read, like today’s F*ck the Cloud and Pirating the Oscars.
Jan 252009
This amazing picture is an excellent reminder of two things: to continue photograhy experiments (this is off a six month long exposure), and to retain the Astronomy Picture of a Day on the RSS-reader.
Jan 252009
As the third (and way long overdue) mystery novel read over the christmas break, here’s the lowdown on the newest Maria Kallio-novel by Leena Lehtolainen: Väärän Jäljillä.
It’s been three years since the previous novel, Rivo Satakieli, and the break’s been beneficial. Väärän jäljillä is a back to basics book, enjoyable in the encompassing familiarity, yet bringing in enough new spices not to be a rehash from the previous. The authors mannerisms are present, but way more subdued than in the previous novels.
The subject is the murky world of sports, and the advance of commercialism. There are a lot of more than thinly veiled analogies to real-world figures, and all in all the plot has elements that wouldn’t be out of place inthe real world.
Oddly enough, the franchise has now been decorated with a dedicated website of its own.
Jan 252009
This picture of a shark’s head from underneath is by no means conventionally beautiful, but does fit this week’s thursday challenge theme of experimental.
Jan 252009
All songs ranked, and supplemented with hefty analysis.
Unsurprisingly the commenters do not agree with the ordering.
Jan 222009
This week’s photo thursday challenge is planet.
That’s an easy topic to answer – I have images from only one planet: Earth. Though experimenting with a telescope and the likes of Jupiter and Saturn would be interesting.