The Labyrinth
Helsinki has a labyrinth of underground tunnels and shops that I have never been able to reliably tell where I am or predict where I will emerge when I take a flight of stairs. This is the entrance to the subway with a tile compass that isn't really much help in navigating the maze. :)
29 Feb 2004 at 1:44, Helsinki
Atom Feed
A few people mentioned that my rss feeds were broken even though they passed through the validator without errors, so I mangled them a bit tonight and also added an atom feed while I was at it. Atom is the result of the rss flamewars a few months ago and, while I couldn't care less about XML, atom does appear to have a saner format. I also tried out Shrook since I've not been entirely happy with Netnewswire and found that I really like it much better, especially the iTunes style of organisation and navigation of the feeds.
Wireless Finland
The Helsingin Sanomat ran an article in the paper earlier this week about the growing number of wireless access points in Helsinki and around Finland. The article included a nice map noting the locations which I scanned in and offer here in a small ~60k jpg and a large ~240k jpg. It seems that most of the current hot spots are catering to the business traveller judging from the number of hotels and business centers listed. There are a few cafes and a movie theatre or two listed though and my hope is that it finds sufficient interest to keep spreading. I've had wireless at home for years now and find it luxurious to sit on the couch with my laptop even now. I'd really like to see WiFi in public libraries in addition to more coffee shops since students would benefit a lot from being able to use their own computer while doing research or homework.
There are two companies offering WiFi; Sonera and DNA. DNA seems to be geared more towards the local geeks and ala carte folks while Sonera is mainly in the hotel and business traveller market. Sonera Homerun doesn't appear to have a pricing structure on the net. The DNA WLAN service has three different price plans which range from €5 per month with a per minute fee to €90 for those with a serious porn habit and large downloads.
Until mobile phones get much more sophisticated displays, surfing the net or reading email with them more than occasionally isn't as attractive as having a small laptop and WiFi in convenient spots around town. WiFi really means WIreless FInland. :)
Functional Antique
We drove through Arizona, Utah and Southern California for our honeymoon a few years ago and I took most of the photos of the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley on Kodachrome film. The lab made a mistake in the processing and only gave me the slides instead of including a photo CD with them. They refused to correct the error and I didn't have a projector so I've never gotten to get a good look at them. Since then the boxes of slides have sat in a container that I occasionally pass and remind myself that I should do something about the slides. By chance I noticed an old Leica Pradovit projector on eBay and bid on it. I lost that auction but I kept looking now and then and finally nabbed one. It is as simple and as elegant as a slide projector can get and certainly all that I need for the occasional viewing of slides at home. It's a Leitz Prado SM-300 from the late 1950s and 1960s with a solid lens and tough bakelite body. Instead of €250 or more for a projector with more electronics than my laptop, this was only £20 and will likely outlast most of the new ones that require service instead of a hammer or a pair of pliers. :)
The only problem with the projector was that the seller likely picked it up at a local boot sale without checking the parts or knowing the slightest thing about shipping things that contain glass. Fortunately, all of the optics survived the trip, but the bulb was not so lucky. Removing the old bulb was an exercise in patience since the socket is unusual and flanged. I had to use a leatherman to carefully go down into the socket and ease up one of the flange guides that had been bent which made the removal of the bulb impossible. I took the bulb's ID number, started searching on the net and only found one place that had them in stock and they were €150 each. For a cheap old projector, this was likely not an economical solution. I needed to go by EP-Kamera to see if I could get a lens cap for the leica anyway, so I thought I'd take a chance and ask if they had a bulb. The gentleman who owns the shop immediately recognised it and was able to order 2 of them for €20 each for me. It reminded me of why the internet sucks for buying things that require some level of expertise in the seller. I had forgotten how nice it is to have a shop like the electronic parts place my father used to take me to where the owners knew their business and loved what they did. Now we have a working projector and I promise not to torture the family with captive slide shows at dinnertime. :)
The world through the windscreen
The Windscreen Gallery is a fun and interesting collection of pictures taken from inside moving automobiles. It's an incredibly iconic theme for America since the automobile is almost as central to the culture as apple pie. Everyone has a road trip story, everyone has a story about when they first learned to drive, everyone has stories about making out in a car. The collection really could use a lot more pictures from outside the US in spite of the theme being terribly American, so I submitted my glimpse of death in Madeira.
Grey sky
The Sokos Torni Hotel has a lovely view of the city from the cafe on the top of the tower, but in winter the balcony is often closed due to winds, ice or both. So, I had to settle for a picture taken from the inside. You can see plague park and a few of the church steeples before it drops off into the vast white expanse of the Gulf of Finland. Snow on the rooftops and a low, flat and grey sky that looks close enough to touch.
People of Downtown
Sydänstadin kuvia [Photos of downtown] is a nice, small photo exhibit in the Pannuhuone kahvila on Uudenmaankatu [the mincemeat crepes are very good, too]. If you're in the neighbourhood, go have a coffee and a look at the photos. In spite of the photos being digital and showing it in the enlargements, the subjects are people around downtown Helsinki which I found very interesting. The pair of couples in the photo above are especially well done and I think the artist should get photo quality glossy prints and sell these two as a set. If you can't get there, the photographer, Ukko Heikkinen, has a gallerly online of the people of Uudenmankatu which, even with some of the stiffness/awkwardness in a few them, is a terrific collection of the people who live and work here in Helsinki. M-F 9-15 until Friday at Pannuhuone, Uudenmaankatu 19.
Lost in Translation
The movie Lost in Translation finally arrived in Finland recently and without exaggeration I must admit that it is one of 3 or 4 movies I have ever seen and immediately wanted the DVD. Aside from the sparse dialogue that is crisp, excellent performances from Bill Murry and Scarlett Johansson, and cinematography that helps to tell the story instead of trying to impress the viewers, there was an insight to the human condition that is rarely ever explored with such frankness in film; What happens when you lose your sense of place and belonging?
Expats are not so unlike the characters in the movie as we are strangers in strange lands with varying degrees of isolation and feelings of being lost. Often expats don't feel at home in their own country and go in search of someplace that should feel like home but don't always find it. The sense of dislocation in LiT is only emphasized not created by the Tokyo landscape and Japanese language barrier.
A lot of reviewers call this movie a love story of sorts, but I saw two expats, one young and one much older, who are adrift in themselves and in their lives without a place they can call home or people who will listen and understand them. Maybe they are people who never made friends very easily or haven't yet figured out what they want out of life. What is often labeled as 'wanderlust' or 'nomadic' is likely a desire to find the missing niche or some meaning in life. Some people, like Bob, have been looking for a long time. The elevator scene in which Bill Murry looms over the Japanese businessmen is a brilliant dialogue-free moment that beautifully captures the sense of being apart, of being different than everyone else, of feeling exposed, of being alone.
Perhaps the most profound feature of the two lost souls in LiT is the lack of intimacy with everyone around them. Charlotte calls a friend at a low point who puts her on hold whereupon she clues in that this is not someone with whom she can divulge her feelings of desolation. Intimacy is becoming a rare experience in life, even Bob and Charlotte possess it only briefly before moving on. You find yourself wondering if Charlotte will still be as lost at Bob's age since it's clear he has seen a bit of his own lost youth in hers.
A Walk in Winter
A few photos from a walk on a winter day.
Alan Burlison always has such nice pictures and stories from his own walks around the Peak District that I thought I'd have a go with my urban landscape. No fields of heather or peat bogs here, but it's home. :)
We took a nice walk around the southern edge of Helsinki and I needed to finish off a roll of film. We wound up walking out on the ice which made me nervous even though it appeared to be a very popular Sunday pastime for quite a few people. Where I come from, only stupid people who want to die walk out on the invariably thin ice, but Finland's ice is much thicker so that only a few people manage to fall through each year. :) It's strange to walk on the ice where in summertime there are only boats. The abandoned fuel station looked out of place and abandoned in spite of the people with strollers, with pets, with friends all wandering on the ice around it. It may be winter here, but we don't let the cold keep us inside all the time.
Glowing Crystals
A few photos of the Kide sculpture.
I'm a regular visitor to Niklas Sjöblom's photoblog as he takes nice pictures from around Helsinki every day and a few weeks ago a picture of the Kide sculpture took me by surprise as I hadn't seen that since August 2000 out behind Kiasma during the day and unlit. I found another photo of them in front of the Tuomiokirkko, too. I thought it would be a great excuse to trudge out in the -15C weather to try out a new tripod and take a few photos. I arrived well after darkness had fallen so the colours were bright, but the sky didn't have any colour to it at all. I went back for a few more shots at sunset and will add those when I have them developed.
The sculpture was to have been put into storage so I was somewhat surprised to see it had found a new home out on a Ruoholahti breakwater. It has seen better days as someone has taken a marker to the cubes, some of the lights are dead and there is moisture in 2 of them. Still, they are an interesting sight in the darkness. The breakwater didn't have a fence around it so I didn't get too bold with various angles since I didn't want to slip on the ice and fall 6 meters onto more ice and into the cold, cold water. You can see Lauttasaari and it's alien spaceship/mushroom water reservoir from the sculpture as well as lots of footprints in the snow across the ice.
Crystals connecting nine Cities of Culture and European Cities of Culture for the Year 2000 [PDF] have a lot more information and background about the sculpture. The quick summary:
The sound and light sculpture Kide (Crystal), made of glass, symbolised the connection between people and cultures. 'Crystal' is the symbol project of the Helsinki City of Culture programme and a salute to the eight other Cities of Culture for 2000. In September 1999, a Crystal was installed in each of the Cities of Culture, providing a visual connection between them through a monitor near the sculpture itself. The Crystals will be returned to Helsinki before the New Year and assembled into an 18-metre tunnel of light on Senate Square; people may pass through this tunnel into the new millennium. The Crystal resembles an ice cube; it is made of laminated and reinforced glass elements. The middle one of the three glass layers is shattered; the broken glass crystals create reflections that shift as the viewer moves. The light source in the Crystal reacts to the touch of a human hand, and the light grows depending on how many people touch it. In the dark, the Crystal is lit. The colour and sound world of each Crystal reflect the city in which it is placed. The Crystal was designed by architects Kari Leppänen and Peter Ch. Butter. The visual design is by Dusan Jovanovic and the sound design by Jyrki Sandell. The glass construction is a patented Finnish invention.
Fashion that deserved to die
It's a cold, dark night when you're walking home and you hear some music that sounds vaguely familiar. You walk towards it. You realise that it's Madonna's "Like a Virgin" coming from the speakers in front of a store window that has mannequins dressed up in clothing that you burned in a ritual to cleanse your soul and your wardrobe of the 1980s a decade ago. You realise that two-tone jeans, big hair and ripped sweatshirts are coming back. You have fear.
Just a little bit of history repeating
Stephen Bury is the nom de plume of Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George. I found a copy of the little known The Cobweb on Abebooks a while back and purchased it since I enjoy his books. The Cobweb reads like a novel written yesterday, not 10 years ago. It's a novel about the last war in Iraq, the intelligence people who have information of potential terrorists acts on US soil, and the people in politics who cobweb them into inaction. While the novel isn't brilliant, it is a fun read and is a fairly good analysis of how people with good information and intentions at the lower levels of the FBI and CIA couldn't stop, and likely still can't stop, terrorism.
Hennessey laughed ruefully. "Your problem with this Iraq thing is that you've got tangled up, unwittingly, with people who long ago decided it wasn't sophisticated to be sincere, that sincerity was for fools, that sincere people were put on earth to be manipulated and exploited by people like them--for the greater good, of course. This is currently the most common character flaw in the Washington establishment--attempts to be Machiavellian by people who lack the talent, the panache, to pull it off. So here you are, good old Clyde Banks, desperately trying to deal with this very real problem here on the ground, and it's as if you're in a nightmare where these fucking bush-league Machiavellis listen to what you're saying but don't really understand."
"That's pretty much what it feels like," Clyde said, frowning at his corned-beef hash and nodding his head.
"You and I know that something is going on in Forks County, and we would like to do something about it," Hennessey said, "but between the two of us are about ten thousand of these people who are too busy looking down their noses at us to actually grasp the problem and take action. You must know that taking action is looked down upon, Clyde. This is the postmodern era. When events come to a cusp, we're supposed to screw our courage to the sticking place and launch a reanalysis of the eleventh draft of the working document. Actually going out and doing stuff in the physical world is simply beyond the comprehension of these people. They're never going to do anything about the Iraqis in Forks. Never."
Politics is the definition of putting a good face on raw selfishness. An organisation will always fail when the personality, feelings or agenda of one or a few people are more important than the mission of the organisation.
Film Heroes
I noticed a poster for a photo exhibit in a camera shop window and decided to go have a look since the theme was interesting. Valkokankaan Sankarit, Heroes of the Screen, is a provocative collection of photographs by Malla Hukkanen taken around Finland of tiny movie theatres that are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Hukkanen tells the story of these indie theatres in vivid colour on 35mm and panoramic film. I took my time looking at the faces of the people he captured so poignantly in and around their theatres and wondered if they were still in business. I'd love to see more of his work.
I have never really liked the giant 20 screen megaplex theatres that are so common in the US nowadays as they often show the same movies for weeks on end, have stale popcorn and they're as large and impersonal as a shopping mall. The small independent theatres have fresh popcorn, interesting films and often a small staff who remember your name if you're a movie junkie. It's ironic how the people who evangelise how the internet and social software are "revolutionising" our social lives when, at every turn, nearly every part of our daily lives away from the computer are becoming more and more impersonal and isolated. Hukkanen's photos will likely be a testament to the future of a time when people went to see movies and each other without the aid of a computer.
The Living Picture Museum [Elävän Kuvan Museo] is hidden away in a small warehouse in an out of the way neighbourhood, but it has an impressive collection of projection cameras and movie theatre ephemera, including an ushers costume from Kinopalatsi last worn in the 1960s. It's a short walk from the Sörnäinen metro station and it's worth the trip if you wax nostalgic over old movie theatres or enjoy photography that tells a story.
Living Picture Museum: Heroes of the Screen
Vanha Talvitie 9, Verkkosaari, Sörnäinen
Open: 29 Jan through 28 Feb 2004, Tues - Sun 12-6pm
Free admission!
Dive
I don't know how many times we've passed the Seahorse Restaurant in Eira, but every time Jarkko would describe it as a 'classic dive'. Maybe there is a translation difference here as 'dive' usually is applied to pubs and diners of not quite the most pleasing reputation or patronage. It's slightly more damning than 'greasy spoon'.
We went there for dinner there the other night and, if this is a Finnish dive, then I want to see one on every corner. The food was hearty, delicious, served with understated but lovely presentation and reasonably priced. Jarkko ordered the herring steaks which made me rethink my lukewarm stance on herring and I had the breast of chicken served with the most delicious aura blue cheese sauce I've ever tasted. The pancakes with ice cream and jam for dessert were sublime. In the genre of Finnish cuisine, I don't think there is another restaurant that has such delicious, beautifully presented, reasonably priced food in a nice atmosphere like the Seahorse does. It's not listed in the travel guides so I presume that the people who go there like to keep it to themselves and I can't really blame them. :)
Animals on the Underground
Sometimes it is a totally obvious and simple idea that is the most brilliant. Animals on the Underground is just that sort of brilliant, simple idea. Constellations of stars have been illustrated for centuries using the connect the dots technique, but applying it to the underground station map is clever and the animals are adorable. Maybe I'll dig out my underground map and try to find a few new ones.
Kiasma
It seems common practise that people don't go see the sights and attractions in the city they live in either because they think that they should go elsewhere to see the sights or that they might look like a tourist in their own city. This is why I enjoy having visitors from elsewhere to give me an excuse to visit places I've not been to before, even though they're right down the street. Last week we went to Kiasma, Helsinki's contemporary art museum, with a friend visiting from the US. The exhibits are a bit of a mixed bag, but it is a fine collection overall. I especially liked the "Faster than History" exhibit, a collection of artwork from Baltic countries which included a series of photographs of 3 shivering men clad only in underwear standing in front of churches and a number of film shorts, a few of which had me laughing out loud. The artwork in the picture is "Gun. So What?" if I remember it correctly. There was a gun on a tripod and several bottles suspended on a plate of glass with a light lending a dramatic effect. The way it came out in the photograph, taken with a Lomo, is pretty cool as it looks like a bullseye drawn with light.
Penkkarit
Last year around this time, I was walking home in my post-Finnish class daze when, seemingly out of nowhere, trucks filled with drunken kids throwing candy at people on the sidewalks began whizzing down the Esplanadi. I wondered what in the hell was going on and called Jarkko who didn't remember right away what the mayhem was all about. It's called penkkarit, the day that 18-year old students get to dress up, get drunk, pile into trucks and throw candy at people while driving around the city. People all over the city hoot and wave at them as they go by and even the elderly stoop down to pick up the sweets littering the sidewalks. What a fun thing to do. I was thinking that there would be no way that kids could do this in the US since noone would eat the candy for fear of it being tainted with anthrax or somesuch. It's good to see that there are some places left where kids can still have harmless fun. :)
I had planned to go down to the harbor and take pictures of the kids gathering there, but I was running late and didn't make it in time. Taking photos of rapidly moving objects and people with a manual camera does present a bit of a challenge, especially when the sun keeps popping in and out of the clouds and wrecking your exposure setting. :)
LFI Magazine
So many of the photography periodicals and magazines these days are geared towards the digital photographer which, even as a digital photographer, I never buy since they seem to be filled with articles on topics that don't interest me and oodles of ads. The Academic Bookstore in Helsinki has an admirable assortment of various magazines, including B&W, a lofty art photography magazine and Leica World, a bi-annual journal that doesn't seem to have a lot of content.
I discovered Leica Fotografie International which focuses on Leica cameras and photography that isn't so highbrow since it has a number of articles for those of us who are enthusiasts if not world class artists. There is a lovely mix of practical articles interspersed with Leica photos you can appreciate and dream of taking yourself someday. There are also very few ads and it's printed on high quality paper. LFI may be one of the last non-artsy film photography magazines left so, if you have a Leica or just like interesting photos in the street or photojournalism genre, you might consider subscribing.
A Gaudí City
Pictures from an impromptu trip to Barcelona; part 1 and part 2. The vast majority of photos were taken with the Lomo LC-A since it isn't an expensive looking camera and I didn't really want to get mugged like a friend of mine had only a week earlier in Madrid. I was aiming for fun and random holiday snapshots that would be a bit more unusual than the average. Hopefully they'll also be a pleasant memento for Jessica in the years to come. :)
It all started so innocently as a Sunday outing to see Return of the King for the umpteenth time which led to a few drinks afterwards to ponder the dreamy Aragorn and Legolas. Jessica talked about going back home and lamenting she didn't travel more while she was here. In particular, she had wanted to see the Temple de la Sagrada Família before heading home. After a couple of beers my guard was down and somehow between then and the next afternoon, we had cheap tickets to Barcelona departing the following Monday. It seemed like a crazy thing to do, but without a compelling reason not to go the 'why not?' directive was applied.
As a seasoned traveller, I tend to judge cities/places by two things; food and restrooms. Barcelona wasn't exceptional in either food or restrooms but were mostly agreeable. I had been to Madeira only a few weeks earlier which was exceptionally good on both counts and may have coloured my judgement. We spent the week wandering around La Rambla, going to architectural gems designed by Antoni Gaudí and eating. At some point we went shopping for a few things in a local grocery and I had to stare at the selection of wines which ranged from 1.50 euro to 6 euro. I bought a bottle of the 1.50 wine just to determine if it was drinkable and it was quite pleasant. I don't know what would happen in Finland if there were shelves full of 1.50 euro bottles of wine in the grocery stores. We went out to find the nightlife one evening and discovered the one bar in the entire city of Barcelona that had Helsinki drink prices just because I think we were missing home so much. :)
La Rambla is the center of town where there are purveyors of magazines, newspapers, porn, flowers for any occasion including for the departed, chickens, roosters, bunny rabbits, fish, lizards, roosters, pigeons, and parakeets, along with buskers, street artists and touristy crap to suit any taste or fetish. La Rambla was named after a seasonal stream [from the Arabic 'raml'] that used to flow there which seems appropriate with the seasonal ebb and flow of tourists. I took a number of photos on La Rambla and in the Mercat de la Boqueria since they were vibrant places of people and activity. Markets fascinate me since you can learn a lot about a culture from looking at the kinds of food they have available since food is at the center of daily life and culture.
Barcelona is the nucleus for the architectural movement called 'Modernisme' and those who practised it were the 'Modernistas'. It was a form of Art Nouveau and it is quite amazing. We spent most of the week visiting the works of Antoni Gaudí. The most impressive of his works is not yet finished, The Temple de la Sagrada Família. It is projected that it will be finished by 2048 and, by the looks of the construction, it will be worth the wait. Gaudí clearly loved trees and the pillars inside form a canopy which will be tiled and gilded to complement all the other organic forms all around the temple. We went up into the tower and my vertigo provided some entertainment for Jessica. Park Güell was designed to be a modern utopia, but it was never finished. What does exist is intriguing in it's planning and implementation of public space and walkways. Casa Battló, La Predrera and Palau Güell were all amazingly different and inviting. The apartment in La Predrera was nice enough that I'd move in tomorrow. In particular, Gaudí's innovation in introducing natural light into all parts of a living space and organic forms was outstanding. His work makes me wish that such care and consideration of the natural forms were more common in modern buildings.
The tourist bus was amusing as, when we got on the bus after a few dull and desolate hours at Poble Espanyol, there was an American couple reading out of a guide book about how the place wasn't really worth going to, which we were able to confirm. :) As the neverending bus tour continued, the woman was clearly not very entertained. At the Palau Güell, there was a perky American college girl [with the accent and the attitude I will guess Vassar] leading her parents around the tour to show off her edumacation [sic]. It was bad enough to hear her loudly say "y'all", but when she and her parents exclaimed, "Your English is so good!", in a tone of amazement to the tour guide, Jessica had an epiphany as to why I never travel as, nor admit to being, an American anymore except to those who need to see my passport.
In late January, the number of tourists was at a low point and many of the attractions were being repaired for the high season, but we still had a good time visiting a city with so much history. I could have been entertained by sitting in the market or hanging out on La Rambla for a week as well.
Flaming geeks
While I was going through and scanning the photos from Barcelona I ran across this picture of a Unix fire extinguisher. :) I giggled when I noticed it and tried to explain the joke to Jessica. The geeks likely think it's funny and the rest of you, well, you'll have to just take my word for it. I should be able to get through the thumbnails and captions tonight so the Barcelona photos will likely be available tomorrow.
Purkinavaaja
I must be on a well designed gadget kick lately. Yesterday, I found a purkinavaaja which is a rubbery can opener thingy that is shaped to look like a strong man's arms and head. It looks cool and it works really, really well. The Finnish company who designed it apparently won the Gimme 2003 design award with it but it really needs a name to match its creative form instead of simply 'can opener'.
Do you know the way to Tam-per-ay?
The flight back from Barcelona was an interesting adventure on Sunday. We left Amsterdam at 11.00 and were set to arrive in Helsinki at 13.30, but just as we were landing and nearly grazing the top of the trees, the pilot pulled the plane up suddenly and aborted the landing. I was a bit unsettled as I figured we had just had a near miss with another plane in the low-visibility snow storm. We circled for a while and tried again with the same result. After about 20 minutes, the pilot informed us that we would be flying to the happening town of Tampere, about 2 hours northwest of Helsinki.
We arrived in Tampere to more snow and a long wait. The ground crew popped by with a ladder to have a chat with the KLM crew but, after a while, they sealed us back in and there we sat, and sat, and sat. The crew didn't offer us so much as a bag of peanuts or glass of water while we whiled away the afternoon and early evening. I was on the phone to Jarkko trying to figure out what was going on and for train schedule information for the near certain train ride home. After a while the pilot informed the restless passengers that in an hour or so we would try landing at Helsinki again and, if we didn't manage to land, we'd be heading back to Tampere. He wandered back through the cabin at some point to guage how close to mutiny we all were and he casually mentioned that he hadn't ever flown into Helsinki before. What was KLM thinking when they put a pilot inexperienced with Helsinki into a flight bound to run into the snowstorm that had been raging since the night before?
Fortunately, the pilot got the drift that we were all ready stage a coup by 6p and decided to let us off the plane. Of course, we had to wait an hour for the stairs but we were finally free. KLM was arranging for a bus to come up from Helsinki but that would have taken all night and the train was only 20 euros and got me into town by 21.30.
I got the pictures back from the lab today and hope to put a few of them up over the weekend.
Blow me
I've never liked using cans of compressed air as they are wasteful, expensive and get really cold when you use them and trying to blow dust or lint off a lens with your lungs usually includes spitting on the previously clean surface. I found a gadget that has a clever use of form and function, the Giottos Rocket-Air Blower. It's shaped like a rocket and pumps enough air through the nozzle to get all but the most tenacious bits of crud off your camera or electronics. It even comes with a nice lanyard so you can wear it around your neck. At a price under $10 it's a practical, beautiful and economical little tool.
