Lavonardo

As noted in the attached temperature gauge stolen from the pages of the finnish meteorological institute, the temperature was far from a constant thing today.

At its quickest, the temperature climbed from -22 to -8 in some three hours, which is plenty quick in my book.

Did stay above zero, which means that mr. Slush stayed away. Which is always a bonus. The rest of the week the weather’s predicted to be less wintry, with temperature hovering around -5. Still decent, but not as great as the two bright days of arctic glory.

Awright. It’s been below -20 for several days now (and that’s below zero for the folks scoring temperature on the fahrenheit scale).

And not only has it been really cold, but the weather’s been quite amicable otherwise as well. Snowfall has turned Helsinki into a white city, the frozen sea now pumps no humidity in the air, and sun’s been shining. A lot.

Mamma Gaia is supposed to turn up the heat today night, and tomorrow’s expected temperature is a puny -1C. Right now it’s -22 in Haaga, so it’ll be an interesting bit of hot air that turns this arctic weather into such balm.

The first wind of the winter blew from the north, and it had ice and rime on its breath.
It was dirty and sharp and it cut like a razor…

Neil Gaiman, Sandman #14

Where “normal” is equal to “cold” as is common in mid-january. “Cold” as in “I really missed my beanie walking home the one and half miles from work”.

Not really connected to the weather report, but interesting reading nonetheless: Ilmastonmuutosblogi tackles the warming from a decidedly green perspective. Worthwhile reading even to a non-practicing climate-change sceptic like me.

Grey skies, +2C, sleeting rain, slippery streets, snow puddling into overflowing drains.

Not what is expected from a new year’s eve. Or beginning of january in general.

Feelings are adequately summed up in a snow-graffiti discovered nearby. Curses, indeed!

This is NOT what’s it supposed to be.

+

• Watched my first ever “salatut elämät”-episode. For a very good reason (an old friend was acting in it) and mostly on fast forward.
• Queensrÿche’s 1990 album “Empire” is as good as I remembered, and the remastered version has a couple of songs originally available as obscure singles’ B-sides.
• All in all, not many things sucked this week. And otherwise would have been worrisome - a proper extended weekend and all.

-

• Hello? Ms. Gaia? We really could use a winter here.
• Got reminded that Serenity did not make it on big screen here.
• Not that many things that were really good with sugarcoating on top, either.

EDIT 26.8.2008: Timo’s web presence has been extinguished.

Notes on week 47.

Positive:

• It finally snowed properly.
• Got the new System of a Down album (and will review it properly, given a few more spins).
• Sometimes you cannot but admire the quick wit and scathing tongue of some people.

Double-plus ungood:

• Amount of context switches needed daily.
• Late discovery of Dropkick Murphys.
• The pain one is subjected to when buying non-trivial clothes. Been buying the exact same spec jeans for the last 6+ years, that approach doesn’t really work with anything fancier.

And this week the lady fortuna smiled/frowned on the following.

Grin:

• Figs. As a jam particle and eaten singly. Dried only, couldn’t score fresh ones in the local shops.
• Ninth Island Pinot Noir. Much appreciated. And the white’s supposed to be an even more classic selection.
• Empire magazine. One of the greatest time sinks known to man.

Grimace:

• Overpaid primadonnas with eagerbeaver agents. And that’s T.O. and not one of folks at work.
• No issue #10 of Wired seems to be coming to Finland. Official story is that the shipping agency “misplaced” a pallet “somewhere in Sweden”.
• Still no snow. And plenty of darkness.
• And AK-47 is hurt. Again.

Up:

• Buying Laphroaig for others by the glass and by the bottle.
• Appreciation for Charles Stross as an author.
• Fear of cold turkey for the availability of the second season of Lost.

Down:

• Apparent availability of Lagavulin in finnish shops.
• Quality of the weather; but not the temperature, however.
• Price per gigabyte in any hard disc-based device - holding off buying a new iPod, but a recording digibox would be nice.

nanowrimo kicks off again. Nope, had no dreams of writing a 50k-word count novel in a very busy month, but toyed with an idea to create a progress meter widget for konfabulator. In the end, didn’t. Didn’t even seriously consider.

But updated the catalogs of records and movies for the first time in a good while. Turns out that the ugly perl scripts functioned perfectly in the way newer interpreter in the os x environment.

October’s top search terms were boring.

And while the length of the day is definitely novemberian, weather has been very mild. Apart from a couple of light snowfalls and chilly days the mercury has steadily stayed closer to ten degrees than zero. Which is definitely unusual for the season.

Last month’s crop was quite image-deficient. Have to be more active on that front. Which is not made easy by the iSync’s inability to talk to the 6680, or the generic os x’s apparent inability to transfer images over USB (or even discover the connected phone for that matter). Or maybe I’m just unable to twist the phone and/or the computer to behave. I’ll even try to take my long-dormant flickr-account into use again (or perhaps the easiest way to make pix available is to just post them to flickr direct).

A category 5 hurricane is approaching New Orleans. Leading to mandatory evacuation of the city.

Compared to that threat, the bit of suboptimal weather we’re having (the usual rain, with a very unusual small tornado added in) is pretty much a walk in the park.

The outlined worst case scenario is bad indeed. And one that would probably alter the city, if not the entire southern Louisiana beyond recognition.

It’s always good when you hear the thunder before the lightning’s afterglow has disappeared from your retina.

No pictures. Too bad, but neither my G3 nor yours truly just isn’t fast enough to capture the lightning stroke on the fly. Wasn’t the most spectacular thunderstorm I’ve seen, but comes close to top 5.

The already in quite bad shape ice sculpture (picture from last friday) will be nothing but a puddle after this.

Didn’t get wet. Much. The first bout occurred when I was downtown, and the appearance of very wet people and cloud-induced darkness outside was sudden indeed. By the second bout I was already sitting on a glassed-in balcony, ready for the fireworks.

Eventless three-leg trip. Very small shuttle between Montreal and Ottawa. Otherwise, it’s the traditional transatlantic fare, though with surprisingly large legroom. Watched no movies - both Million Dollar Baby and Catch me if you can deserve a better environment than is provided by half-a-buck earphones. So, concentrated on Rule of Four and a couple of magazines instead.

The Ottawa airport is getting bigger by the year. Landed on the domestic side, so no idea what the international looks like.

It’s very warm here. The temperature hovers around 30C even late at night. And the weather forecast is more of the same, air conditioning is prevalent (and in case of room #456 of Courtyard Marriott, quite loud).

Had late dinner at the ever-reliable Blue Cactus after milling around the Byward market for an appetite-boosting twenty minutes. Large portions, and the triumphant return of Rickard’s Red. Can’t remember what I ate for main course, but had a Himalaya-sized plate of nachos for starters (thankfully split between the four of us). Blame need for sleep on the less than total recall…

Time to stick around for an hour or so to prevent a total sleep cycle destruction.

Outside: +28, and probably shooting up to +30 even before noon.

Inside: +31, and hopefully not going up any more. Top floor of the house, one that gets direct sunlight for the whole day, this means that heat will build up.

Can’t do anything about the former, but definitely will buy an electric fan to offset the effects of the latter.

Tossed frisbee in daytime heat, with expectedly long breaks in the action. No forehead catches this time, and seem to be making progress with a decent forehead throw, though the finger placement under the disk does not feel completely natural.

And it’s not just the days that are warm, but nights as well. It was still +22 around 1:30.

Regular daily updates will cease here, since the vacation seems to have gotten off to a good start.

Temperature around +25, with some clouding and a light breeze. Exactly how it should be.

Walked around Seurasaari, and noted that there are paths that I’ve utterly forgotten - didn’t recall that there’s quite a pond system on the island. Put the phone camera to good use, but haven’t yet bothered to pull the images out. Stay tuned.

Had one of the official rites of summer - the classically simple vanilla ice cream from the small kiosk outside the island. Manufactured by an independent vendor and unavailable pretty much anywhere else. Plain vanilla, but gloriously good.

Noted that mosquito bites are as scratchy this year as they have always been. Note to self: bring proper trousers to long garden parties.

Five weeks outside the office.

Got mightily rained on on the way back via the post office. Got soaked, and had to seek refuge from the torrent under some convenient balconies and trees.

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.

Q: What’s the month when there’s abundant rain, and morning temperatures are in single digits?

A: That’s right, it’s june.

Clearly the current conditions are not according to the job description of “summer”.

Warmest day thus far. +23 or thereabouts. Did the “afterwork beer on the cliffs overlooking Tali”. And noted that a lot of people have already passed by, if the glass shards and dachshund-skins are any indication. Taking cans into wider use would, of course, lessen the impact, but clearly that’s not a desirable solution for the local breweries.

Also claimed the third room of the flat for permanent use. Recharged the electric lantern and took it to the balcony, along with a bunch of plants (time to buy basil and rosemary soon), and a couple of magazines.

Was supposed to get thundersome today, but haven’t yet seen any promising clouds.

Sweet.

And the weather’s supposed to turn way warmer as well.