The Fog that was November

Most every day of November was dark, rainy, foggy and, well, dark. :) Hopefully December will at least bring some snow to make things brighter.

permalink Ω 30 November 2003, Helsinki

Holiday Windows

Stockmann, the omnipresent department store in Finland, has a Christmas window complete with ice cream and chocolate smudges left behind by kids pressing their face and hands to the glass. The pregnant elf and the elf morphing into a cookie are a bit freaky looking. :)

I vaguely remember my parents taking my sisters and I to see the Famous-Barr holiday display downtown when I was a kid. It was two blocks long and impressive, but the store stopped making the displays in the early 70s since downtown St. Louis had became a ghost town and the people who fled the city didn't want to drive downtown just for the lights in the grand old department store. I wonder where the holiday window display tradition for department stores originated. I looked in two of the books I have on the history of Christmas but neither of them cover this specific part of holiday marketing.

permalink Ω 29 November 2003, Helsinki

My Eyes. Your World.

Private and Public is an interesting concept for a photgraphy project. One spot, one year and many candid photographs. Photos of people tend to be the most interesting, especially when they are candid shots. Maybe I should pick a spot in Helsinki and entertain myself for a year. :)

Ami Vitale has some of the most captivating photos I've seen.

permalink Ω 29 November 2003, Helsinki

Scarygirl

My occasional trawling for new and interesting icons turned up Scarygirl. It is a beautiful Australian comic which is gorgeously illustrated and has no dialogue. Strange, curious and beautiful.

permalink Ω 29 November 2003, Helsinki

Piparkakut

Among the traditional holiday cookies in Finland are the piparkakut. They are commonly cut into a round scallop shape but pigs and little boys are the traditional holiday shapes for these delicious cookies.

There are a lot of different recipes out there for piparkakut. The most common variations in the US omit the orange zest and add nuts and/or cardamom. One yankee recipe online had margarine instead of butter. Blech. The Finnish variations seem to all have much the same ingredients but differ in the amounts.

The most important and curious omission is in preparation of the dough. The sugars are brought to a near boil along with the spices and then allowed to cool. Afterwards, the dough is chilled for 8-12 hours. Both of these steps are omitted in all the US variants I found either online or in cookbooks. The sugars in the corn syrup are complex and long so heating allows them to breakdown as well as have the spices mix with the butter. The chilling firms up the dough and gives the dough much more time to develop the complex spice flavours.

If you're not familiar with cooking sugars it's not terribly hard, but you have to be on top of it. It is interesting that the cooking of the sugars is just not present in many recipes and perhaps it is a result of a difference in baking culture or laziness. Corn syrup is generally used to make cookies browner and surface crisper. The acidic orange peel is likely added for aroma as well as to keep the sugars from crystallising into granite hardness. If you want a softer cookie, you could replace the white sugar with brown sugar. Since the cooking of the sugars also involves the butter, don't crank up the burner to 10 as the butter will form solids and burn. Start with a low-medium heat and a whisk and stir it until it looks a bit bubbly then remove it from the heat.

I should make a batch of both the boiled sugar and the non-boiled sugar recipes and see if there is as much a difference in taste as I expect there would be. The recipe is translated and converted from the Finnish classic cookbook, Kotiruoka :)

Piparkakut, Finnish Ginger Cookies

Ingredients

• 250g or 2.5 sticks salted butter
• 2 dl or 1 cup sugar
• 1.5 dl or 3/4 cup dark corn syrup
• 2 eggs
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon
• 3 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 3 teaspoons orange peel zest*
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 8 dl or 5 cups all-purpose white flour

Instructions

1. In a saucepan, bring the corn syrup, sugar, butter and spices to a boil. [ The text in the original recipe doesn't say anything more than boil. This likely doesn't mean the same as a sugar boil for candy. I'd suggest a slow heat, while stirring constantly, until it looks close to boiling. ] Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Add in eggs, slightly beaten.
2. Mix flour and baking soda and sift into bowl containing wet ingredients. Mix well and roll into a ball. Cover bowl and place in refrigerator for 8-12 hours or overnight.
3. Split the dough into two parts. Roll dough to about 1/4-inch or 2-3mm thickness. Cut into shapes and bake at 175C/350F until golden brown, the cookies feel firm to the touch or about 10-15 minutes, whichever comes first. :)

* - Jarkko points out that orange peel in Finland is not from the usual Florida orange, but from the smaller and thinner Moroccan kind of orange. Florida orange peel will likely be fine as well though. :)

permalink Ω 28 November 2003, Helsinki

Lights in Plague Park

Plague Park has a rather unusual collection of lights hanging from a tree. In the darkness they look like a cluster of UFOs hovering. They seem to be made from thin plywood and are adept at collecting water in the pouring rain with each of them tipping a bit like a bucket when enough water has accumulated. I have no idea who put them there or what they are for but they are interesting to look at.

n.b. - Well, it appears that the lights are part of the Forces of Light 2003 celebration which begins on Suomenlinna and winds through the city to Hietalahti Square. There are quite a few events for the dark times as detailed in the Winter program [570k pdf]. The lights are by Jouko Kärkkäinen and titled Puuvalon Aukio.

permalink Ω 27 November 2003, Helsinki

The Best laptop bag

In a vast field of laptop bags I have finally found the perfect bag, Timbuk2's Commute 2.0. I've tried Tumi, Waterfield, Booq, Crumpler, TiBag, Brenthaven, Kensington, and a few others I can't remember at the moment as well as the Timbuk2 Commute 1.0 bag. The usual laptop bags are made for men so a reasonably tall and slender woman looks like little more than a pack animal when lugging one around which seems silly when your Powerbook is tiny and weighs 4 pounds.

The Timbuk2 Commute is the right size, has a detatchable and easy to adjust strap, a well padded sleeve for the laptop, plenty of pockets, rings and a strap for wearing it while riding a bike, a waterproof lining and other additional thoughtful improvements over the original design. It's lightweight, durable, practical and looks smart as well. You can also get an iPod case that attaches to the strap but it also has belt loops if you want to use it without the bag. :)

permalink Ω 27 November 2003, Helsinki

The Cunning Linguist

Richard Lederer has 2 new books coming up: A Man of My Words: Reflections on the English Language and The Cunning Linguist: Ribald Riddles, Lascivious Limericks, Carnal Corn, and Other Good, Clean Dirty Fun. Carnal Corn...:)

Another new book from OUP, Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-By-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century should be interesting. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation appears to be quite popular in the UK. I may have to get a copy of that myself since having had the commas rapped out of my knuckles by nuns because I was a shameless comma splicer as a child has left my punctuation confused and often wrong.

Umberto Eco, the noted semiotician, just published Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation which should prove interesting for translators, people learning languages or language enthusiasts in general.

permalink Ω 26 November 2003, Helsinki

A is for Atkins and Anorexia

I can't take the crap being printed about the Atkins Diet anymore. Supposedly 10% of the US is on this crazy diet and there was even an article recently in Salon, Hackers on Atkins, with the tagline:

Geeks who go low-carb see it as more than just taking off pounds -- they're reengineering the human organism, overclocking their own bodies.

The blogerati have reinvented anorexia and think of it as hacking? Whatever. I suppose the diet wouldn't be as cool if it were called "The Karen Carpenter Diet with Meat and 2 Veg". On the upside maybe they'll be fewer of them self-promoting themselves after a year or so.

The Atkins Diet is an eating disorder. You aren't 'hacking' your damn body, you're starving it and Atkins didn't invent that. The Atkins has all the hallmarks of an eating disorder. Telling yourself that any food, much less a loaf of bread, a food that has been around for thousands of years, is the source of all your evil fat is a big step down the road to having a really dysfunctional relationship with food. A whole new generation of girls are going to mistake an eating disorder masquerading as a diet as something that's acceptable and healthy and that's the worst thing of all.

Sure, the diet works and works quickly, but you'll pay in the long-term both physiologically and psychologically.

permalink Ω 25 November 2003, Helsinki

Death of a Snowman

It snowed most of the day yesterday and when we were out walking HB we noticed this sculpted snowbear. Jarkko took this picture with his mobile and when I returned about 15 minutes later with my 10D, someone had already decapitated him :( Whomever built it sculpted lovely eyes, ears along with a smiling mouth and protruding snout. A flourish of an evergreen sprig was placed on top of its head for a final touch. I wanted to drape my scarf around his neck and get a much nicer picture of it since it was so whimsical.

It warmed up overnight and began to rain so most of the snow is gone now anyway.

permalink Ω 24 November 2003, Helsinki

Helsinki Card Game

On Friday I stopped in one of the shops on Bulevardi I pass every day but never enter. I looked around a bit and noticed an interesting deck of cards which claimed to be a Helsinki version of 8 perhettä ja junnu [8 happy families and junnu]. I was curious so I bought a deck. There are 32 cards in the deck, 4 people/families from 8 different neighbourhoods of Helsinki, and Junnu. The way to play the game:

The objective of the game is to collect card pairs of the same colour and district. The cards are dealt and players with-for example two red Alppila cards- put their pairs down. Next, the dealer lifts a card from the player on the left. If the card completes a pair, the pair is put down. Play continues until all the pairs have been formed. The player left holding the Junnu card loses.

It's a cute if not terribly challenging card game. I've been thinking about subjecting Jarkko to playing Scrabble in Finnish if I can find the game here with the abundance of k, ä and ö Finnish words require.

permalink Ω 24 November 2003, Helsinki

My dog the SUV

The new S-Market right around the corner from where we live is next to a nicely sized park. Once in a while when I'd go shopping I would notice a giant great dane tied up outside to a light pole and go over and say hello. Since the market is next to a park where people freqeuently walk their dogs, it's common for many of them to do a quick shop for groceries or beer on the way home so another kind of dog park would be a useful addition. I've never seen explicit signs and tie rings for dogs before and I think it's really quite thoughtful of the store to make it available for pet owners. The area is right outside the entrance, brightly lit with security cameras and has plenty of space between the 5 spots so the giant great dane doesn't get ideas about snacking on the toy poodle next to him. :)

note: the international symbol for parking is not 'P'. :) The word for parking in Finnish is 'pysäköinti'. One curiosity about the dog illustration is that all the parks and other public spaces use an iconic black scottie dog and this one far from being a short and scrappy terrier. :)

permalink Ω 23 November 2003, Helsinki

Sputnik Mugs

Jarkko bought 2 distinctive mugs [ side and front ] from a porter on a train in Russia while there on a trip in the late 80s before the fall of the USSR. I'm fascinated by the design which features a globe with a Soviet era space theme of rockets and space capsules jetting into space. I'd guess they're from sometime in the 1960s. I don't know much about the USSR space program but I'll guess that the little ball closest to the globe is Sputnik, which is often credited as starting the Cold War, from which I can guess that the rest of the design illustrates the progression of Soviet space technology aiming towards landing on the moon. The Leningrad Cowboys may be familiar with Soviet Era space race artwork. I'll drink glöggi [more vodka, less sugar], play Laika and the Cosmonauts and, after the first drink, I'll be in space too. Who needs a sputnik when you've got hot spiked rocket fuel to drink? :)

permalink Ω 23 November 2003, Helsinki

Lomo

I enjoy cruising through other peoples on-line photos when they're interesting and nicely organised. One of the sites I'm particularly fond of had a couple of photos last week that were instantly recognizeable as film rather than digital photos. At the bottom of the page he mentioned the camera, the Lomo LC-A. I went poking around the net and I became intrigued by this camera that I'd never heard of before.

The Lomo is a Russian camera which seems to have met with a very slick marketing campaign that makes the seductive pitch of fun, interesting and unsnobbish photography for everyman.

10 Golden Rules Of Lomo

1. Take your camera everywhere you go.
2. Use it anytime - day and night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
5. Don't think.
6. Be fast.
7. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film.
8. Afterwards either.
9. Try the shot from the hip.
10. Don't worry about any rules.

The Lomographic Society International apparently convinced the Russians to start making the LC-A again in 1997 and have created quite a small and passionate following, much like Apple has :).

• world archive of lomo photos * An interesting project to collect photos from around the world.
• Lomo photo albums * some of them are quite interesting.
• Lomo Links
• Buy a Lomo
• Lomo US User forum
• 120seconds interviews Lomo users
• lomo.kataan.org * A rather nice Lomo personal website.

Perhaps it's the novelty or the marketing but the photos taken with the Lomo are interesting. One thing I noticed while looking through the wide variety of galleries was that, in contrast to so many of the digital galleries I've waded through on-line, many of the photos are well organised, properly sized for the web, have something to interest the eye and have a texture digital cameras just don't have. I enjoy my digital cameras but I sometimes regret trading print film for the instant gratification of digital. The SLR camera, digital or film, is hefty and serious; something that takes photos with a purpose and not very inconspicuously. I've always wanted a Leica so maybe I can pretend the Lomo is just an ultra low-end Leica :) Why not as maybe I can have a bit of fun and have a go at a Helsinki variation on City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver.

n.b. - A very nice reader sent me an email pointing out that there are Lomoizing filters for Photoshop. :)

permalink Ω 23 November 2003, Helsinki

Rakas Joulupukki

I had to go down to the Tulli today to pay up for some warm shoes and ear muffs I ordered from L.L. Bean. I think the customs people are incredibly nice and polite here. Granted, I don't like paying a 22% tax on stuff I order from outside the EU, but they're friendly in spite of what is likely an unpleasant job sometimes when people get irate, etc. over the tax.

The tulli is in the main post office downtown and the posti is ramping up the Christmas cheer with a display of letters to Santa sent to Santa's Post Office which is in Lapland, where Santa lives and maintains an office. There were a few letters that were just adorable:

• Jeramias * 5 years old and wants lots of games. Self-portrait needs work. :)
• Sarlotta [Charlotte?] * Illustrates her saavy well beyond the boys by illustrating precisely what she wants with pictures. She's an ad exec in the making. She wants a truck, too. You go Sarlotta!
• Satu * A girl who wants only one thing and, like Sarlotta, illustrates the exact make and model of her fondest hope: A Nokia 3510i.
• a scroll * Kids too poor for paper, pen and postage can write to santa in the posti. Some of them are sad and some of them are funny.

My youngest sister was 7 years older than me when I was born so I never really bought into the santa thing or wrote letters to a bearded fat white guy asking him to bring me stuff. I do, however, remember pretending to believe for a lot longer than I should have because my sisters asked me to and because I thought my parents genuinely enjoyed playing santa. I don't even know these kids with the letters and I want to send them stuff as playing Santa is fun if far too brief.

I'm usually a real humbug for the holidays but that display sure put me into a holiday mood. If only it would snow now it would be complete :)

permalink Ω 21 November 2003, Helsinki

Tracey's Potato Casserole

I always lose this recipe and wind up calling my sister for a copy of it so maybe putting it here will help. I don't know where she originally found it but Tracey has been making it for at least 15 or so years and there's never any leftovers. In fact, I'd bet people would lick the dish if they could :) It's easy, likely bad for you and tastes really, really good in cold dark weather.

Tracey's "Get Fat Quick" Potato Casserole

• 2 pounds frozen hash brown potatoes, thawed [ 2 500g pannu peruna packages ]
• 1/4 cup onion, chopped
• 1 can cream of chicken soup [Stockmann - Cream of Mushroom]
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 4oz butter, melted or softened
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 pint sour cream [kerma villi]
• Bread crumbs (topping)

Mix all the above ingredients together in a 2 quart covered casserole dish, sprinkle the top with bread crumbs. Bake for 1 hour at 350F.

I always add extra onions and cheese and a little less butter. Garlic is an excellent addition too.

permalink Ω 21 November 2003, Helsinki

I Like Pie

Tarts with Tops on: How to Make the Perfect Pie by Tamasin Day-Lewis is a lovely new cookbook. It's filled with all sorts of savoury pies, apple pies, American pies and other traditional kinds of pies from around the UK. It's impossible to read this cookbook without getting hungry as well as a little amused at the colourful selection of words in the recipes themselves. Hearty winter comfort food with ingredients easily found even here in Helsinki.

Cod, Smoked Haddock and Scallop Pie

Ingredients

• 1kg/2.25lb cod or unsmoked haddock, skinned and filleted
• 225g/8oz or so natural smoked haddock
• 8 or 9 scallops with large commas of coral, cleaned and the white discs sliced in two, the corals left whole or sliced if large enough.
• 290-425ml/10-15fl oz milk
• 55g/2oz unsalted butter
• 30g/1oz plain flour
• 1 bay leaf
• nutmeg
• a large glass of white whine or better still vermouth
• the white part of three leeks, cleaned and cut into rings
• 1kg/2.25lb potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed with butter and milk
• handful of fresh dill, chopped
• sea salt and black pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Put the unsmoked piece of fish in a gratin dish, pour over the milk and cook in the oven for 15 minutes. It may not be cooked right through when you remove it, but that doesn't matter.
3. Remove any bones and flake the fish in large chunks into the gratin dish you're going to cook it in, reserving the poaching milk.
4. Meanwhile, cover the smoked haddock in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain the water off and flake the haddock into the gratin dish.
5. Make a roux with the butter and flour, then add the hot poaching milk, bay leaf and a suspicion of grated nutmeg and whisk into a smooth sauce. Add the wine or vermouth, cooking it down for at least 10 minutes. Season well with black pepper, but go easy on the salt as smoked fish carries a lot of it.
6. Steam the leeks until tender and add them to the fish.
7. Put the raw scallops and the coral in with the fish, then strew the handful of dill into the sauce and pour it over the fish.
8. Cover with mashed potato, ruffle the top with a fork and dot with butter.

Place on a baking tray and consign to the heat for about 30 minutes. The sauce often erupts through the potato like a geyser and courses down the sides, which is part of the charm of the finished offering. One of the few dishes that really should be brought to the table nuclear hot. Serves 6.

permalink Ω 19 November 2003, Helsinki

WireTap

I miss NPR, especially This American Life, quite a lot and I can enjoy listening to them via the web in realaudio format but the net gets chunky fairly often these days and I want a local copy to listen to when I wish. I bought a copy of David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries from Audible.com about a year ago and the only problem I have with it is that I have to give it my audible login information every time I want to listen to it which I didn't understand would be part of the deal at the outset. So, I figured I'd order a hard copy of it directly from NPR and it's almost comical to admit that they sent me a casette tape instead of a CD as I had expected. I don't even own a cheap-o walkman. *sigh*

I've been waiting for Griffin Technologies to hurry up and ship the Radioshark, a Tivo-like gadget for radio and system sound, so I could record it myself but I broke down and gave WireTap a try since I love Ambrosia's software and, best of all, it's free. It's a terrific no-frills audio recording application that will record any sound on your Mac and save it to .aiff format which can then be used in Quicktime or iTunes and converted to other formats. Thanks Ambrosia! :)

permalink Ω 19 November 2003, Helsinki

Postman Gephardt

This is the friendly Postimies on the back of the card they leave in the mail slot if a packet or package is too large. It occured to me today that if Dick Gephardt dressed in brown overalls and a baseball hat to give him that rustic farmer look then carried a package in his hands he would be a dead ringer for this guy. So, Dick, when you lose the nomination maybe you will have a promising career in the Finnish Posti awaiting you. :)

permalink Ω 19 November 2003, Helsinki

Pants-fu

A pixelated stencil icon graffiti I saw on a telephone switch box when I was returning from the Posti this afternoon. The caption might read, "You are no match for my Pants-fu!" :)

permalink Ω 19 November 2003, Helsinki

Meet Earl Holt

I was reading Shelley Powers blog today and ran across this amazingly brazen email from a former school board commissioner in St. Louis. I grew up in St. Louis and I'm familiar with this sort of attitude and it still makes me sick 3500+ miles away from it.

Meet Earl Holt. He must be the most unaccomplished graduate of Burroughs I've ever seen:

Earl Holt has received an A.B. Cum Laude in Criminal Justice from Washington University. He is a graduate of John Burroughs High School, and of the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C. He is the owner of Urban Ventures Contracting, and an editor of the Citizen's Informer newspaper. He was a founder of St. Louisans Against Fraudulent Elections, serves on the national board of advisors of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and served as a member of the St. Louis Board of Education from 1989 to 1993.

For those of wondering what the Council of Conservative Citizens, A.K.A. White Citizens Councils which formed after the Brown decision, [apparently, although unsurprisingly, an organisation that Ashcroft has been associated with ] is all about I think the "Wilkommen" banner should be enough for you to at least enjoy the irony of this guy bristling at being called a "white supremacist". Yes, because every conservative white guy knows German in St. Louis, right Ed? Of course.

I'm a strong believer and defender of the First Amendment, however, there is freedom of speech that crosses a line into slander and willful discrimination of people based on race that will make me resent it even though I respect the principle that allows it to be said lest we bring back the days of the inquisition. This does not prevent those who find the following email from someone who may or may not be a current benefactor of public funds in St. Louis or elsewhere to bitch like hell to get this dude out of harm's reach. St. Louis is a small place so I ask my family, Sarah and anyone else in St. Louis to hunt down this guys network and cut it off. He lives in the Shaw neighbourhood which has plenty of residents who might be interested to know such a person lives among them, especially since most of them are the buggery and crime obsessed black people he decries. Perhaps some nice folks will print out this email and paste it all around the Shaw and Tower Grove neighbourhood.

St. Louis has enough problems with race without guys like this and Rush making things worse than they should be. Earl Holt III, may I call you "Trip", fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Hey Commie:

Imagine my chagrin when I used a search engine to find commentary about myself, and there was your shallow, dilettante, asshole self, labeling me a "white supremacist."

Being the shallow, nigger-loving dilettante that you are, you probably DO consider niggers to be your equal (who am I to question this?): Yet, unlike you and your allies, I have an I.Q. in excess of 130, which grants me the ability to objectively evaluate the Great American Nigro (Africanus Criminalis.)

The nigro is 11.5 % of the U.S. population, yet he commits in excess of 55% of all felonies (although felonies are UNDER-represented in the nigro community, where observing the law is considered "acting White!") Moreover, he (or should I say she?)accounts for 48% of all ADC recipients in the U.S. We have spent over $7 TRILLION on "Urban Welfare Spending" since the mid-1960s, (black economists Thomas Sowell & Walter Williams) and the nigro is still as criminal, surly, lazy , violent and stupid as he/she ever was, while his illegitimacy rate is 80% nationwide, and over 90% in the "large urban areas."

By the way, those of us who tried to end forced busing in St. Louis did so because it is a colossal waste and nothing more than a symbolic gesture that has seriously deprived every school district in Missouri that doesn't benefit from a deseg program : It has cost the state of Missouri $3.5 BILLION since 1983, (another $3.5 Billion in Kansas City,) yet, the nigro "scholars" bussed to county schools under deseg "improve less academically than every other category of student in the St. Louis Public Schools," according to the Federal Court- ordered Lissitz Study.

Also, you lying asshole, in the 2003-2004 school year, St. Louis spent $11,711 per nigger -idiot in the public schools, yet, half of all students test at the 20th percentile (or lower) on nationally-standardized tests. (If I were Emperor, I would forcibly hand over you and all your commie apologists for nigro under-achievement to White, working-class parents of public school students, and let them have their way with you...)

Some day, You sanctimonious nigger-lovers will either have to live amongst them ("nothing cures an enthusiasm for integration like a good dose of niggers") or else defend yourselves against them. My guess is that you are such a cowardly and pusillanimous lot of girly-boys, they will kill fuck, kill and eat you just as they do young White males in every prison system in the U.S. That's right: When defending this savage and brutish lot, you must also consider their natural ( or should I say UN-natural) enthusiasm for buggery!

I honestly pray to God that some nigger fucks, kills and eats you and everyone you claim to love!

Earl P. Holt III
4029 Shaw Blvd.
St. Louis, MO
63110-3621
(314) 772-0745

P.S. I dare you to print this e-mail verbatim: You know as well as I do that most people know I speak the truth, and you are a liar and whore who takes to heart Lenin's dictum that "The first duty of the propagandist is to subvert the meaning of words."

permalink Ω 18 November 2003, Helsinki

Deciphering Quicksilver

When the Baroque Cycle was first announced there was a cryptic message on the front page of the site. I recognised the code but I figured cracking Finnish was enough for the time being. Someone deciphered the message and has a a nice translation of it along with an explanation of how he deciphered it. Stephenson also mentions this in a letter on the Baroque Cycle website. I was hoping for a more clever and witty message but now I'm sorry I didn't bother with it and get the autographed copy of the book. :)

There is a mention of, but no link to, the seminal book on this philosophical language that Wilkins created which this cipher is based upon. I went looking and found An Essay Toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language in whole on-line complete with translation and original pages scanned in. Worthy of a look if you enjoy historical crypto.

Quicksilver is a terrific read if you enjoy history and if you're patient enough to read through 900 pages while knowing that there are 1800 more pages still to come. :) I don't know if Neal is one of those authors who googles for mentions and reviews but if he is and finds this page I'd like to say thanks for such an engaging book and that I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment.

permalink Ω 15 November 2003, Helsinki

Falloween grab bag

The days are getting shorter; the light glows paler; the wind is colder. Finland, lacking both Halloween and Thanksgiving, has slid into a full-on holiday marketing blitz that would make hohophobes around the world cry foul. No Falloween here.

I surf the net when the cable connection hasn't been cut by the neighbours doing home improvement or I'm not staring aimlessly into space after spending an hour or two attempting to fathom the absolutely insane Finnish plurals. I'll just jot down a few new and old sites with new content in lieu of boring myself with my own ennui.

Random

• Despair.com 2004 Calendar * My cube used to be empty save for my Macquarium and a Demotivators calendar. The "Enron Document Storage" stickers are also tempting.
• Tom Tomorrow satire of war bloggers * A valiant attempt Tom but you know the definition of satire...
• The Meowtrix * Because the flash spoofs of the movies are better than the movies themselves.
• Henchfig's Codeblurbs * Magnetic geekery
• Ballmer does iPod * Don't drink any beverage this man offers you.
• Sunny 16 * New Ben Folds EP. Be sure to listen to the lyrics in All U Can Eat.
• HELTown * mactown-esque desktop and icons of Helsinki
• PixelGirl * PixelGirl has good taste in icons and desktops.
• Watiworks * Excellent icons.
• The Airbow * Way to go Andy!

Blogs and Journals

• Halfbakery * Full of fun, crazy ideas
• West Virginia Surf Report * One of the most entertaining and well written blogs around.
• 2lmc * link blog. no crane porn.
• The Sneeze * Anyone curious enough about Beggin' Strips to make a BLT out of them and eat them rates high in my book. :)
• First Monday * An old favourite remembered.
• NeatNew * The website is easier than the email which gets swallowed by the deluge in my inbox.
• View of the Day * A rather nicely done Helsinki photoblog.
• MIT Tech Review blog * Usually interesting bits on technology.

Lingua

• Wordspy * Always some new words to make you laugh...and cry
• Prints the Chaff * Solid newspaper editor blog
• Copy Massage * A copy editor as cynical as I am.
• Vocabula Review * An on-line journal for English language lovers with such gems as A Feast of Halloween Puns which recalls all those corny school lunch menus long past. At $9 per year, it's a must have.
• The Discouraging Word * Lingua blog
• Wordways * Journal of Recreational Linguistics
• Unwords Remember sniglets?
• The Meaning of Liff * More fun sniglets
• Pseudodictionary * A modern sniglet-esque dictionary.
• Anguish Languish * To remind me that Finnish is not the only crazy-ass language in town. :)
• Finnish Grammar * Free and downloadable.

permalink Ω 13 November 2003, Helsinki

My First Orson

A creative bit of mixed-media graffiti on a utility box on the side of a building.

permalink Ω 12 November 2003, Helsinki

Quentin Knows

We went to see Quentin Tarantino's new movie, Kill Bill. It's a masterpiece. It's comedy, drama and tragedy but, most importantly, Quentin shows that he knows what women know about themselves. Shakespeare knew in the Taming of the Shrew and Ridley Scott knew in Alien but Quentin doesn't let the viewer ignore the reality through subtlety. Women are cold and ruthless.

I am likely jaded by my years in an all-girl Catholic school and being born into a family with 3 sisters and no brothers where this lesson is learned quickly lest you find yourself in a hell that only girls can inflict upon each other. There have been some recent books on this wisdom that guys are either too stupid to notice, choose to ignore or capitalise on: Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls [ Hidden? Only if you're willfully ignoring it ] and Woman's Inhumanity to Woman. A bitch is just a more overt version of the passive-aggressive picture of sweetness and light over in the corner looking demure. Guys fight and then go out for a beer but girls fight until hair flies, blood is drawn, and the wound salted.

When Uma is at the home of one of her would-be assassins and the other woman offers her coffee, anyone who understands the nature of women knows that one of them isn't going to leave that house alive. It is also interesting how Bill and another female assassin view mercy differently. Bill thinks killing her in a coma would be wrong in spite of having shot her in the head while pregnant and in a wedding dress while the woman thinks it would be the ultimate mercy -- a significant difference in cold and ruthless. The most wonderful tip of the hat is GoGo who is a Catholic school girl in complete uniform while eviscerating guys with her 'instrument'. Yes, Quentin understands.

I have always held the opinion that a special ops force of trained and equipped Catholic school girls and nuns would be a formidable foe against most any opponent and I'm very happy to see that Quentin Tarantino illustrates that assertion very well. :)

permalink Ω 4 November 2003, Helsinki

Bi-lingual? Nay, Bow-lingual!

Just when you thought that your dog was the only person you could talk to without having to worry about deep conversations about your relationship or their telling your deepest, darkest secrets to the highest bidding tabloid there comes a new product to ruin all that, Bow-lingual: The Dog Translator. My dog, a 12 year-old Saint Bernard, has been my treasured confidant since he was a wee monster. Sure, he burps, farts, whines and I still pick up his poop after 12 years, but he doesn't talk and doesn't have an email account and I adore him for that. :)

Bow-lingual does, however, present a rather fun idea for hackers with unsuspecting friends who come over to hang out with you and the dog, but find the dog has some rather unusual comments to make. Some ideas might be:

• Have you lost weight?!
• Can you spare some of that steak? The crap they serve me is inedible!
• Give me that remote control! Lassie is on at 7!
• I saw your girlfriend with another guy last night!
• Damn! That baby is uuuuugggggllly!
• Hey! I was not the one that farted!
• Can I hump your leg?
• Can I sniff your butt?
• Scratch a little higher and to the left.
• Can I help you with those leftovers?
• Touch my bowl and die.
• Get off the computer and play with me, dammit!
• If you don't get off that laptop, I'm going to bury it out back when you're away.
• Oh, I ordered 20 pounds of prime ribeye steaks on-line today with your credit card. I hope you don't mind.
• Yes, that's my stash of internet porn.
• On the internet, noone knows you're a dog.

The possibilities are endless. I'm tempted to buy one just to play with it and amuse myself by programming it with random Finnish expressions to scare people on the street who come up and pet HB. The TV ad is brilliant :)

permalink Ω 4 November 2003, Helsinki

The Ghost of Halloween Past

An old picture I dug up of me as a witch for a Halloween long, long ago. My sister Gayle is looking terribly fashionable while trying to get me to wave at my Father with the camera. I think my mother made that costume which had a bunch of cool tassles and embroidery on the cape. Daddy died 5 years ago today and I miss him every time I happen upon one of these old pictures.

permalink Ω 3 November 2003, Helsinki

A Helsinki All Hallow's

Photos of All Hallow's in Hietaniemi Cemetery.

I missed the usual pumpkin carving, drunken costume party and annual halloween candy like candy corn, caramel apples and seasonally coloured M&M's this year. I suppose I should just look at it as an opportunity to save my hands from getting sliced up, to not get drunk and look stupid dressed up as Ashcroft with Jarkko behind me as the draped Boobie of Justice [ or, more likely, the other way around ], to not drink more than a few beers, and to not stuff myself on candy. Still, I've always loved Halloween as the one holiday that is mostly seasonal and secular in the modern incarnation. It evokes nice memories of bonfires, hayrides, candy, the nice neighbourhood I grew up in, bobbing for apples, hunting for pumpkins at the farm down the road and scary stories.

Finland doesn't celebrate Halloween even though the candy shops, some of them, have Halloween candies and decorations. The Finns do celebrate pyhäinpäivä, All Hallow's, a christian version of the more ancient Kekri. I somehow convinced Jarkko it'd be more fun to wander around Hietaniemi Cemetery illuminated only by candles and take photos than to sit at home hugging a laptop. The tradition is to honour the dead by lighting candles at their grave which doesn't seem unusual until you see an entire Cemetery that looks like the milky way. I don't think I've ever seen so many candles lit all at once.

permalink Ω 2 November 2003, Helsinki