Beta Pictoris

The Poser

2012-01-31T20:06:00.003+02:00

I finally managed to put together the first version of the animation I've been working with for our animation course. We might redo it a bit, but since it works pretty well already like it is, here we go. :) At least some proper work to post about in this blog, again... :P

The way to see life

2012-01-28T16:26:00.003+02:00

Like many, both of my friends are using tumblr.com to post inspiring pictures. I love to follow them, but I don't have the patience to surf through tha Netz to find more pictures. Maybe I can do some myself, though. :) Here's a couple.

Time lapse photography

2012-01-23T11:52:00.002+02:00

My ex-collegue from New Zealand is ripping my heart off by constantly posting the time lapse animations he's been making in Lake Tekapo area and Mount John Observatory... There will be a total solar eclipse in Australia later this year, I hope I'd be able to go there and visit NZ on the same trip. When looking these things I miss there so much...

(Notice the glow of the southern lights in the sky!)

Much more the coolest animations you'll find in Fraser's Youtube channel!

Storyboarding

2012-01-21T19:56:00.002+02:00

It's been a while since the last work post, mainly because many things we are doing on the courses are quite big and I haven't had anything worth posting in my hands. Now the end is nigh, though, and the works - hopefully - start to get ready. The animation I've been working with is quite far. As soon as it's ready, I'll post the link here. :)

The other thing I'm working on is a storyboard for our storyboard course. I thought I could as well try to visualise that Eisbrecher's song I've wanted to draw for a long time. (It's good, since I have many ready made things for that in my computer already.) So, here's sneak preview. I like the way the pics are coming and my eternal love for Illustrator is just getting bigger... (Premiere is not bad either, as long as my computer can handle the data!)

An open letter to the teachers

2012-01-09T12:35:00.003+02:00

Dear teachers,

This is not the first and sadly not the last time I - as a student - face this irritation. Some might say it has to do with the quality of the teaching. But that's just the nice way to put it. I would call it the lack of organisational skills, or just plain laziness.

The whole cause of irritation is simple: the teachers entering the class without any preparations done whatsoever. It seems that some teachers think the lesson will take care of itself and if not one can always improvise. Well, it won't work. The difference between the teachers who think through their lessons in advance and the teachers who just turn up is unbelievably huge.

So, here are some news for those teachers who are on the wayside:

First of all, the students can't really read teachers' minds. It doesn't help, if some important piece of information was given more than a month ago, because the students probably will not remember that anymore when it's acute. The good teachers always send e-mail to all course attendants, so that also those who were absent (yes, some people can also be sick and not just skipping the lessons) know where everything's going. The good teachers are also very precise about what each lesson will be about and they are not afraid of telling that in advance.

Second thing is that when there are examples to be shown or tasks to do, they also need to be meaningful. The teachers probably have no idea how fast badly designed lesson kills the student's motivation. It is pretty much impossible to follow a teacher who doesn't have anything to say. If there is a task to follow, the teacher also needs to be clear that there is a task to follow. Especially when learning different programmes, it is not easy to follow what the teacher is doing and then do the same in your own computer when the teacher is racing forward.

Third, every student has his/her own way of doing things. If that is the best way for him/her to work (so that there will eventually be results), the teacher has absolutely no right to mock or evaluate that work flow. When for some people it is a piece of cake to produce perfect designs at school in 5 minutes, for some it is next to impossible. The teachers should courage each and everyone to find their own creative ways. That's why the time given to finish the tasks should also be long enough for good work for everyone. "All the designers should be able to do this like this" is not a proper way of giving critique about other person's work flow. It is also impolite.

Some people might say that the worklife will not be so easy and that many bosses will be acting exactly like the bad teachers. Well, school is not worklife and even if it's good to make a mental note on the bad teacher/boss axis (there will be enough of those still to come) it is more important to concentrate in what the school is about: preparing the students to the work life. The school's purpose is to give enough knowledge and new ways of thinking for the students as well as strengthen his/her self-esteem in his/her abilities. Bad teachers will not succeed in relaying such things, they leave only confusion and frustration behind.

So, the next time you are entering the classroom, please think honestly through how many hours did you prepare this lesson. The students have huge respect toward the teachers who make real effort in helping what's important for them: studying. The best teachers are the ones who in this way really care about their students.

Advertising

2011-11-29T21:33:00.002+02:00

Since I find "new" and unforseeable marketing ideas important, here's something I got in the mail. This summer I made a video clip about Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg. Today I got mail from them, saying that it's nice I talked about them in my blog and if I would be so kind to report their newest video to my readers, too. Since I find it awesome, that some company understands and uses the power of the internet marketing so well that they actually have the trouble to directly mail people that have visited and talked about them (my video in Youtube has already almost 500 views), here's their video. And now I want to go to visit them again, since I can't remember to have seen half of the things they show here... :)

Bauhaus-Uni

2011-11-27T15:56:00.004+02:00

Bauhaus-Uni won the title of "Die internationale Hochschule 2011" in Germany. Here's a link to a small clip if you want to see a couple of famous sceneries from Weimar (and maybe a familiar face). (And here is some information about it in German.)

Black humour

2011-10-23T00:07:00.004+03:00

This is really stupid, but it just came to my mind from somewhere and makes me laugh...

Nebra Sky Disk

2011-10-21T20:35:00.003+03:00

I'm still feeling quite high after the excursion I made to the countryside today. To be more precise, I visited Nebra and the place, where they found the Nebra Sky Disk in 1999. I only realised how close the place is from here when I moved to Weimar, and knew right away that I _must_ visit the place. (There is nowadays a big visitor centrum.)

Rock paintings excluded, the Nebra Sky Disk is one of the oldest depiction of the heavenly phenomena we know of. It was buried in the ground some 3600 years ago, but at the time it had already been in use for an unknown time period. The disk itself is nowadays in a museum in Halle (I have to visit that, too), but its history is very well explained in Arche Nebra, where I was today.

There are not too many things that make me feel sentimental or cry. Nebra Sky Disk is one of them. Maybe it has to do with my astronomy interest, an ongoing saga for the last 25 years or so. Still, when I think of the disk, I feel connection with those people thousands of years ago. They also looked up to the sky in awe, trying to fathom what that all meant. I think of all those years the disk spent under the soil before it was found - straight to our time. Its shape and symbols are so unique for that time period, that one can only wonder if the smith was a genius or a lunatic. But talking about design, Nebra Sky Disk really is one of a kind. Whoever the smith was, I bet he didn't count his design being fresh almost 4000 years later...

Arche Nebra visitor centrum

Confinement

2011-10-19T20:45:00.002+03:00

Confinement from West468 on Vimeo.

Here is a still photo video I made for a competition in the summer. It didn't prevail, but I find it beautiful in its "under the skin" soreness. Now that the school has truly started, I hope I'll get inspiration to do more short films/animations. :)

Kraftwerking

2011-10-16T18:39:00.003+03:00

A couple of days ago I was in Kraftwerk concert in Munich. It was quite of an experience, interesting personally as well as professionally. My first encounter with Kraftwerk's music is from when I was 7 years old. I was in the first class of primary school and I still remember how our teacher asked us to draw an image that comes to our minds from the music she played to us. The piece was Kraftwerk's "The Robots" and even if I wasn't supposed to understand English, I drew three robots with triangle heads (thank the Tripods for that) walking in a long grass. I didn't know what the song was or who Kraftwerk was, but the song played in my head long time after and sometime later I recognised it somewhere else and found out whose song it was. :) I've always liked Kraftwerk, even if I'm not as hardcore fan as some others. I just find the music lovingly industrial and sometimes hum the songs in my head or listen to them.

So, all in all, it was great to see them live. I was very happy also because I was there with a guest status and got a small peek behind the scenes, too. The show itself was quite fabulous. It was 3D, so you needed to have special glasses to get the best of it. That made me think about the future and how the shows will evolve. It will definitely be quite different in about 10-15 years! Some of the animations were rather... animated, I guess I would have made them differently. But specially the most famous songs had pretty decent effects and the show was very enjoyable. It lasted exactly 2 hours, so people definitely got a good ride.

The equipment you need to do a full set 3D animated show was quite powerful. The work for only three shows must have been pretty extensive, I'm interested to see if they are going to make a full tour next year... On the trip I also visited the Kling Klang Studio near Düsseldorf. Neat place, I must say, but rather undecorated. I would have expected to see at least few bicycles laying around... ;)

Back to business

2011-09-30T12:17:00.003+03:00

My holiday came and went, and now I'm back at school - this time doing my study exchange in Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany. The courses haven't started yet, so I don't have much to tell about the ways of the school. Still, it's quite neat to be hear, since Weimar is a very lovely little town with lots of history and great location. I've only been here less than two weeks and I already went to visit Prague. (It's not that far away from here.)

One of the best parts is its Bauhausiness. Compared to e.g. TAMK, this university always seems to have some sort of a core (The Bauhaus) where you can always be led back to. You can see and feel it around(, when you are not busy with Goethe, Schiller and Liszt).

I feel like gaining back my inspiration that has been slightly down during the summer. It seems to me that I don't need to do that many courses to get my 30 study credits I need this half a year. That's great, then I have more time to concentrate in things to do them properly. :)

A wall at Bauhaus-Universität. Btw, if anyone remembers the old TTVO logo from FInlayson, you might see some correspondence in Bauhaus... ;)

Thunder and lightning

2011-08-27T13:58:00.002+03:00

I'm on holiday! :) Next week I'll go back to Finland for some time before I'll come back to Germany to do my study exchange. My summerwork is finished and I've been just doing all sorts of lame things in between.

Last night there was a cool thunderstorm. It lasted for hours (actually there were several clouds that took care of that.) I tried some photography with my pocket camera and animated the pics this morning. It'd be cool to have a system camera, but then I'd need to drag it with me where ever I'd go...

One of the best shots I did last night. :)

The thunderclouds were cool to watch. The poor cranes by the Elbphilharmonie seem like being lost and scared...

Full moon

2011-07-16T23:33:00.003+03:00

Full moon is the time of transformations - at least as far as werewolfs are concerned. Yesterday, the full moon of July rose nicely above the rooftops and I took few pics of it. Unfortunately, I only have a small digi pocket camera and the moon shots didn't turn out that well. But while listening to the Symphonies of the Planets by Voyager and the full moon rising behind the Elbphilharmonie, the atmosphere was perfect for some reflection photography.

I haven't been feeling very good lately, so I think this photo captures my feelings pretty much perfectly. Something from Munch's The Scream in it... Or the Borg.

MK et G

2011-07-02T10:18:00.003+03:00

Yesterday, I spent most of the day in Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. I had noticed that there was special exhibition about Graphic Design in the Art Nouveau and I absolutely wanted to go to see it. (I normally leave that kind of things too late and miss the whole thing.)

The exhibition wasn't extremely large, but it took me lots of time to go through it. The exhibits were lovely, especially the ones from the end of 19th century. Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Behrens... I was almost clapping my hands from joy while watching some of the pictures, they were so captivating and beautifully drawn. I wanted to buy the catalog, but it was binded in a huge brick of a book and costed 68 euros. :( If I wouldn't need to move now every half a year I would probably have bought it anyway...

Eugene Grasset's November
Pic from davidsongalleries.com

This Art Nouveau exhibition wasn't the only interesting piece in the place. The building is huge and at the end of the day my legs were killing me. Still, I was also blown away with the Japanese Katagami stencils that people have been using to dye kimonos in the 19th century. It was unbelievable to see so beautiful works that were designed so cleverly that they could be used for an unbroked pattern. I got an urge to practice my Japanese again, I've forgotten almost everything I ever learned. But maybe when I have time again..... ;)

Hamburg Planetarium

2011-07-01T21:14:00.002+03:00

Wow, I managed to go the whole June without a blogpost. Well, it's been rather hectic in work, mind and body. I only have around a month and a half before my summer holiday, can't wait!

But anyway, back to business. The jewel of Hamburg for me is the Hamburg Planetarium. I was rather dubious at first, since I normally pretty much loath commercial planetariums. They never use them in their original purpose (showing the stars), but offer mostly scientific films about astronomy. I guess it's ok for the visitors, but I normally just end up counting as many mistakes as I can spot from the show. (I don't mean that I would know everything about astronomy. There's a lot I don't know, but I'm not that interested to know much more right now.)

Hamburg planetarium is different. They do have films about this and that (astronomy and related subjects), but their real beauty lies in the way they are using the thing for audiovisual feasts. Some time ago I went to watch Deep Space Night 3.1 and I was completely blown away. It's basically just animation about space flights and stars to music, but the animations were extremely exact and made with good humour. Also the music was carefully selected. (I didn't really care that much of Madonna, but Depeche Mode woke my hidden passion to their music again!) The crazy part is that they use lots of lasers, too, and with the smoke effects the whole place transforms into something otherworldly.

Yesterday I went to watch Mike Batt's Voices in the Dark. The music was completely by him and there were great 3D animations made to it. (You can check the video clip in www.voicesinthedark.de.)

Every time I go to the planetarium I get so much inspiration... I strongly recommend a visit if you ever happen to be in Hamburg. Unfortunately, many shows are running only rarely, so it's worth to check the calendar and plan your visit accordingly. ;)

World Press Photo

2011-05-28T11:49:00.002+03:00

Some time ago, I was having a walk in the harbour and noticed big advertisements about the World Press Photo exhibition. Since the place was quite in the neighbourhood, I paid it a visit couple of days ago. It was really worth it, since the stories behind those shots are often quite touching. You can see all the winning photos in the World Press Photo website, but if the exhibition is coming to a city near you, I recommend to pay it a visit!

It is amazing how much power a single picture can hold. E.g. this one made by Péter Lakatos, where a man commits suicide by jumping from a bridge turret after setting himself to fire. Stupefying.

Pic by Péter Lakatos, source the Atlantic

Fireworks

2011-05-08T12:08:00.003+03:00

This weekend, Hamburg is celebrating Hafengeburtstag. Last night there was a big firework show over the harbour. I tried to shoot it with my video cam and made this film. (I did cut about half of it off!) It was a great show and in the end of the video you can hear all the ships in the neighbourhood blowing their horns... Sounded quite rough! :D

Miniatur Wunderland

2011-05-03T22:59:00.004+03:00

Yesterday, I visited Miniatur Wunderland - the place for all model railway enthusiasts. I was busy using my video camera and finally managed to put together and edit this video. (I got a proper desk yesterday for my comp, so what would be nicer than to enjoy sitting by it for hours...?) Hmm... I hope my creative side is getting active again. :)

The airport is opening tomorrow, so I guess I need to visit the place again to add a bit to my shots. :D

Orientation tactics

2011-05-01T20:35:00.002+03:00

After the first few weeks the life in Hamburg is starting to make sense to me. :) There are still many things I need to fix, but I try not to stress too much about them. (Even if I'm constantly feeling being late with the deadlines for some things at school.) But life is for living, so I don't care that much. I guess some people start to call me reckless soon. But they don't know. :D

During the Easter I went to Berlin with my friend. We visited Potsdam, too, and found an art automat. (Unfortunately I didn't take a pic of the automat itself.) It was hilarious, since with a couple of Euros you could obtain your small piece of art. The vending machine itself was made of an old cigarette machine. Great idea, all in all!

"Warning: This art can confuse, light up, upset and be addictive! About risks and side effects ask yourself and write the answer to us. No further liability is acknowledged. The art inside is packed by the artist. All packages are unique. This one belongs to you now."

More info in www.sek-kunst.de.

Das Leben

2011-04-19T00:31:00.002+03:00

I've been so busy I haven't really had much time to update (or think) any design stuff... I guess it'll get better when I get used to my new surroundings and work, etc. And get used to the 8 hour work days again. (It's been a long time.:) Hamburg seems a nice town considering media. (It's actually supposed to be the media city of Germany.) I love going for a walk down to the harbour area, at least the city side. The weather has also been really nice for me and everyone around - this week it should be around 20°C every day. I hope I'll have time in the near future to get some inspiration from the industrial feeling around here!!! :)

Moving on

2011-04-04T14:17:00.002+03:00

Tähtipäivät came and went and people seemed to have pretty good time! My last few weeks have been extremely hectic, so I've been trying to relax by reading and watching dvds. I haven't had much any material to post into this blog, so it's been a bit quiet.

Tomorrow I should leave Tampere behind and move on with my life again. It's almost exactly two years since I came back from New Zealand. I seem to be living in 2 year cycles, so now it's time to start again something completely new. I guess I'm one those eternally restless people... This time me and George are heading to Germany. We can't wait.

George is eager to see if the cakes in Germany are as big as they were in New Zealand.

When the moment approaches

2011-03-17T18:49:00.002+02:00

Tomorrow I should pack my prepared gear and head to Turku. It's the Tähtipäivät weekend! I'm very happy that soon the whole hassle will be over, I'm not ashamed to admit that. I've been doing the stuff for it since last September, so it's nice to get it over and done with. Still, I think (and hope) it'll be fun and everything will work out fine!

I'm especially interested how the content I've been doing will work... (And Neil's, too, he's been doing some pretty awesome art!) One of the things I've luckily managed to finish (on top of that floor puzzle and Väisälä exhibition), is a task track for people to solve. There will be few hints spread around the venue and people can try to find them and "break the code". Here's an example of the hints (the astrolabe will be there, too;):

More prints

2011-03-10T21:23:00.002+02:00

I've got a new love: the big Epson printer downstairs in our school. For Tähtipäivät, I've also put together some stuff about Yrjö Väisälä, one of the most famous Finnish astronomers (and telescope builders and geodetics) of all time. This year is his birth's 120th anniversary and his life is one of the themes in Tähtipäivät. Originally I got the idea already years ago, when I visited Tuorla, the observatory he built. I was unhappy to see that everything one could read about Väisälä's achievements there were a couple of articles clipped from magazines on the wall of one of the domes. That's why I wanted to make something more tributary about his life for Tähtipäivät.

It took me quite a while to investigate his life and put these things together. It also took me some time to figure out how the interference comparator works and draw the explanatory image. And it took me some time to get the pictures from Tuorla to use with the exhibition. When I did the test prints, the small printer printed some stupid boxes around some of the transparent images. I did the best I could, but was a bit doubtful how it would turn out with the big printer.

But Epson did it and the boards came out just great! I am hugely relieved. :)

Finished puzzle

2011-03-09T18:55:00.002+02:00

...continuing from the last post. :) I managed to get the thing printed and cut at school, so the puzzle does actually look quite nice now! It was tricky to do, though, since I had to print it in two pieces and then place it on several different boards. Some of the pieces ended up having funny looking edges, but you can only see them from close distance anyway. All in all it turned out great! (Anyone who knows me well enough knows also how seldom I say that. Too seldom, actually.)

The puzzle will be in Tähtipäivät for trying it out. ;)

Midway

2011-03-02T19:05:00.002+02:00

I haven't been able to finish too many things since there are quite a lot of fuzz going on with Tähtipäivät. I also had a short holiday, which did help me relax a bit. (Organising big events are dangerous for my perfectionism inclined attitude.:P) Still, I guess and hope that I'll be able to finish the things in time and have fun in the event, as well. :)

I've been having fun with the editing programmes in that CS5 package I mentioned in my previous post. I guess next big buy will be bigger computer for the proper video editing... XD We'll have some lessons about After Effects at school soon, I hope I'll have time to attend to few lessons, since I'll be pretty busy with other stuff, too.

Next Tuesday I should try to print a bigger version of this constellation puzzle I've been working on. It's funny how challenging it seems to be, even if all the constellations are so familiar! Great stuff, though! :D

Product in production

2011-02-13T20:40:00.002+02:00

I often find it fascinating how I can be really stingy with my money when it comes to things like clothes or food. I can rant for hours how I don't have too much money for good food, but I can go and buy really expensive stuff without blinking an eye when I feel like it. I guess it has to do with what I consider useful. And I like to buy things for future purpose, too.

I think this latest buy is one of those "investments for the future". The thing which really is useful in being a student is the 80% discount of Adobe products... ;) Especially now that they've changed the policy and one can use the student editions also for commercial use after one has graduated. But I don't think that far ahead, I just want to see what I can do with these things - and with my videocam. :D

Paint for your life!

2011-01-31T22:00:00.002+02:00

I realised that I probably will be moving soon again. I also realised how many blank canvases I have in my closet. I always end up buying stuff like pretty fabrics and blank canvases to wait for the inspiration. Sometimes it comes, sometimes I get really angry when I more when I notice how much stuff I have again gathered around me. :P

So, now I'm trying to do something for the matter - I paint. :) Here are the blocks currently residing on my shelf. The one from the Moon I finished yesterday.

Chaos

2011-01-28T18:55:00.003+02:00

I've been ranting on before how much I love the chaos theory. I saw a documentary about it in the 80s and been completely captivated ever since. :) In this documentary, they showed how they connected a videocam to a tv and shot what was visible in the screen. Because it takes a fraction of the second for the image the reach the tv through the cable, the image stood never still and created some weird unpredictable patterns on the screen. It was awesome, but we never go it working ourselves.

Last week, I bought a video camera for myself to see what I can come up with it. Today I decided to give that old fling a try. I had some great great time playing with the thing, here's a short example how did it look like... Chaos theory still proves itself, since I have no idea how those patterns are forming! :D Awesome!

Flashy

2011-01-23T16:57:00.003+02:00

It's been ages since I did anything with Flash. I still haven't really decided if I like the programme or not - it's slightly irritating - but naturally it has to do with my very limited skills with it... :P Well, I ended up playing a bit with it, after I had made myself a new wallpaper. Here's the result. Not bad for a newbie.

Life drawing

2011-01-18T21:16:00.002+02:00

Our school has quite many courses to choose from. During my first year I went to the classes of life drawing in the art section. I used to do that when I was living in Turku, I was in an evening class and I had a fabulous teacher. She taught me to really observe the models and pay attention to certain things. That's why I was happy to continue that hobby here in Tampere, even more so thinking that I can get study credits from it! :)

I got a bit tired of drawing every week (it can be really demanding, since you need to concentrate so thoroughly) and skipped a bit too many times last spring. That's why I'm in there again to do few more sessions and gain my study points. The teachers in the school are nice and fair, so it's soothing to go there.

I'm doing so many things right now that it was a good idea to go to that class today, the first time in almost a year! The concentration helps me to disengage from my thoughts, which can be a bit overwhelming at times. And I like to notice that I'm still able to keep my level. I'm not a fan of croquis drawings, but longer poses I like to draw. This one I made today with 3 x 20min.

New Zealand blues

2011-01-14T17:46:00.002+02:00

I lived and worked in New Zealand from Oct 2006 until Mar 2009. Every now and then I still get huge bangs of homesickness for the place. One of those is currently on. It's scary how used you can get to your everyday life. For me, it seams somehow unreal that I ever was there. I guess this starts to be the time when the time goldens the memories, since I don't remember anymore how cold it was during the winter inside the house or what difficulties I had with some of the things over there. I only remember the sceneries and how it felt to drive back from Timaru or Christchurch and reach the Mackenzie Basin. I felt like I could breathe again.

Me preparing for the night work while working in Earth and Sky.

I will always think that Lake Tekapo is one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth. It's really easy to prove: just go to check Fraser Gunn's photography. Fraser used to be my work mate and one of my best friends in Tekapo. He's amazingly talented photographer! I could watch those animations forever, the ones about the fog over Tekapo are some of my favourites.

And by the way, if you want to buy that Mackenzie splendour dvd, I still have few of them for sale for 12e each (incl. postage). I wrote the texts to the pictures. ;)

Saturnian reality

2011-01-11T22:59:00.004+02:00

Ok, I don't normally post unfinished works here, but I did some painting earlier today and now this thing doesn't give me any peace.

When I start painting, I don't usually plan the composition in advance - I see the way how I want it to look. When I started painting this, I was mildly worried about placing the edge of the ring almost exactly in the corner, but was too lazy to think about it any further. After painting happily away for some time, I remembered that I probably would need to add at least one moon in to the pic, even if the only place for one would be in the tightest corner.

Still, after all and everything, I find the final composition extremely intriguing! When I take a look at this painting I need to give it another glance after some time and then I end up staring at it for minutes. Maybe the slightly weird (but still somehow balanced) composition makes it more real-looking, I don't know. But I really like the graphical feeling in it. Woah! :D

Animism

2011-01-10T23:34:00.004+02:00

Let's get it straight, I am slightly animistic. (And not even ever so slightly...) Especially everything industrial makes gets me wondering, how human things might feel. I think one of my first post in this blog was about powerlines and their beauty. I'm not into robots, though, traffic lights are enough for me.

Driving in the night through a city makes me always think, how dutiful the traffic lights seem to me. Red light is like a miniature Mordor Eye, which ravenously keeps guard over the hapless cars. When yellow comes in, the red suddenly loses focus and manages to look embarrassed, like it would be blinking and explaining why it was looking so nasty in the first place. Green, on the other hand, looks like a talking mouth, blabbering "hey, guys, you can go now, c'mon, I don't have the whole day, guys! Gee, what's that piece of shit you're driving?". Yellow alone looks like a police which shuts the green's mouth and claims that there's nothing to see here and that people should disperse and go home before the force is needed. And then it starts all over again. (Yes, I really think of these things pretty often when I see traffic lights in the dark!)

And what about the speed limits, then?! (Come on, how many of you have ever thought how personal numbers look like?) Often when I see 50 km/h sign, I think about somebody, who has been doing his nine to five work for 40 years and is a bit of a nagger and is frowning while looking at the passers-by, just in case they are speeding. 60 km/h feels apologetic, looking slightly sad but dutiful.

70 km/h is like an old spinster, who thinks she's posh, since she can let people drive a bit faster than 60, but not yet 80. 80 km/h itself looks quite serious, like someone who takes his duties gravely, but doesn't get much fun out of it. 100 km/h looks surprised, like someone who has just noticed that she's actually very pretty, but doesn't really know how to take it. And my fav 120 km/h, who always looks very enthusiastic and sprightly, like a laughing swan.

I noticed in the beginning of this year that I truly like how 2011 looks like. It's not as steady-looking as 2010, there's more jaunt in it. For me, it looks like number 2 is leading the outing and the 1s in the back are trying the keep up while chasing butterflies. No, don't ask me. I have no idea where these things come to my mind. :P

Christmas presents

2011-01-06T22:13:00.003+02:00

People can find it really hard to buy presents for me. I hate things I can't really use and I usually like to buy the things I need by myself. And because I still value the gesture more than the present itself (at least most of the time), I hate presents that are been bought to me on the solid reason that it's my birthday/Christmas/whatever annual/centennial/once in a lifetime celebration. I'm not really materialistic, so I want to keep my stuff as minimum as possible. The only good choices about presents bought to me are books (non-fiction), gift cards, self-made gifts and something that I can use.

Me and my friends got a Christmas parcel from our friends in Germany. It was filled with goodies like biscuits and stuff and we were all really overwhelmed about such a surprise. I always find it amazing how some people can be so like-minded that they guess almost instantly what amuses me/us. :D They even have the same kind of humour as we do...

Erich's (! :D) luxus body wash
"To be used primarily by the working class, comrade farmers and (in special cases) relatives in BRD. ... Is worth of two bottles of tomato ketchup, one banana or one half of a windshield wiper in street market."

Solar eclipse

2011-01-04T15:57:00.005+02:00

This morning, a partial solar eclipse was visible in Finland (except in Lapland where there's still "kaamos" - the time the sun won't rise). As typical, they had forcasted thick clouds for the event. (With about 95% probability there's always rain/clouds when there's some heavenly incident.) So I hadn't really even prepared. I've seen quite a few partial eclipses during my years, can't even remember them all anymore. And after Turkey 2005 with the total eclipse, well, parial ones are just not terribly interesting... But when I left home to go to library and then to school, I noticed that surprisingly the sun was shining to the wall of one house. (It was really low in the horizon, since, hey, it's winter!) So, I turned around to pick my eclipse shades, just in case. Then I had the idea to go check if it would be visible from our roof terrace, even though I started to be a bit in a hurry to school already. I went up, stared at the scene in amazement, forgot totally about my hurry and rushed back to get my camera.

I only have a small digital pocket camera I bought last year (when my old one got broken after falling to the deck of the ship we were travelling back with from Rammstein concert in Tallinn last February), so I knew I couldn't really dream of very good photos, a) because the camera doesn't have very good zoom and b) it doesn't have any solar filters plus c) since my flexibility was limited in our roof terrace only I couldn't compose the image much at all. But I happened to be extremely lucky. The stage was set almost perfectly for me:

(Click the image to get it a bit bigger)

:D Awesome! And I managed to get to school in time, too.

---

Btw, the application period to our degree programme has started! If you are interested in any of the stuff I'm talking about in this blog (well, school related anyway), you should check the pretasks and application process in the Media blog. Maybe I'll see you in school next year? ;)

Same shit, different programmes

2011-01-02T12:02:00.002+02:00

I was thinking about my past life (nice way to put it) over the last days of 2010 and browsing through my computer checking some of the old files from my previous comps. I was giggling over some of the old writings, gee I used to write some amusing stuff... (Some of it was actually quite nice, too. Hehe.) I got my first PC around 2000, but I can't quite remember the year. (My first computer was a C64.) Nowadays, I think I was extremely young those days, living in my own world, being afraid of growing up. (I guess I still am, to both, but nowadays I don't see much wrong in that anymore.)

Still, in the beginning of the millennium I was drawing pics like this:

These kind of images were illustrations of my inner world and stories that I invented in my mind. I wanted to be somekind of artist or writer to get all those ideas out of my mind. Not much has changed, nowadays the ways are just more sophisticated?

It was actually pretty amusing to notice that I haven't really evolved anywhere, since I had just started to play with PhotoShop to draw something like this:

:D So, same shit, different programmes. I guess I'll just stay childish in this sense for the rest of my life, seeing things and stories around me and living in some kind of unreal world. It's not so bad, after all.

ABCDEFG...

2010-12-30T19:23:00.006+02:00

...you should know how it goes on. (If not, check your ABC-book.)

The December came and went and boy I'm glad it's over. This autumn has been one of the roughest for a long time, I hope I'm able to gather myself up. But I'm optimistic for a change, and kinda proud that I'm still alive and kicking. (I just got a text from my best friend, she just wanted to say I'm important to her. Two of the people she knows has committed suicide in the near past and one is still in hospital after a try.) The toughest part in life is that everyone needs to make their own luck. Even when it seems impossible. :/ I'm just happy that I feel like I've learned something from my personal pain, even when it felt overwhelming.

But anyway. Back to the alphabets. Designwise, the Dec went with the Eisbrecher Christmas calendar. Was fun, but the Jahresabschlusstour came and went and I wasn't there. :( Maybe next year? I did get the urge to finish the font I've been doing, it's based on the logo of... Eisbrecher. (Well, _sorry_, what can I do?! It gives me inspiration. :D)

Some time ago, I started to wonder if the band logo is based in any existing font. I couldn't find any, so I decided to give a try to make my own... (I should never get these "ideas", I think I started this one in September!) So, first I cut the original logo into pieces and assembled the letters and numbers out of the pieces as I thought they might be in Illustrator. Then I drew them all over to create unbroken lines and transformed them to SVG files. I downloaded the FontForge programme, set each letter into their boxes (twice, since it's the same, capitals and lowercases) and then came the fun part: I had to separately set every character (and about every corner point) into their grid and look for mistakes - without really knowing if the thing would work outside my own computer. (I had never used FontForge before, I'm pretty sure I did quite a lot of extra work.) In the end I set the distances between the letters. For example T looks rather airy and alone if it's not a bit closer to its neighbours than e.g. M.

But I managed to get the .ttf work in my old Windows, so I guess I'm almost done. :) There are few special characters missing, but I feel that I managed to relay the feeling of Eisbrecher in the font. (I must admit, I first got the idea when I saw their ad video about the gigs in the summer. It used Bank Gothic. :P) Here's another sample:

Yay, it looks cool! :D I'm amazed what I end up doing in the name of a hobby... (Then again, I think I'll squeeze a few study credits out of this, since we never really had a practical teaching about fonts at school.)

Edit: Eisbrecher font is now downloadable in my homepage's fanart section.

Eisbrecher Christmas Calendar

2010-12-02T16:44:00.004+02:00

Those who know me, also know that I possess somewhat dry sense of humour. I also tend to have completely wacko ideas just by looking around and thinking about all sorts of things that could happen. That often results in quite amusing things (at least I tend to giggle by myself in many situations where other people don't have any idea why I'm doing that). Considering that it's December and I love Christmas calendars, I ended up starting an Eisbrecher version of my own.

Here's the picture for today. Since I'm posting them each day straight to one of the threads in the Eisbrecher forums I won't put them here. They can be viewed in their original environment - among the amused (and hopefully not too serious) fans. ;)

Handicraft fair

2010-11-20T22:18:00.002+02:00

This weekend is one of the best weekends in the year, because Tampere hosts Finnish Handicraft Fair in Pirkkahalli. I was there last year for the first time and I was washed away by the multitude of handicrafts, creativity and pure fun the place has to offer. Of course there are always plenty of people, but it doesn't bother me at all, since everyone seems to be having great time! I always get loads of ideas and feel a bit envious about the abilities some people have... And I also always end up buying something. This year, my mom joined me and she was quite amazed, too, by the fair. We both agreed that it is the best fair in the country, because it's so diverse - and still everything has to do with handicrafts. E.g. the International Book Fair usually starts to repeat itself when you walk around, that's not the problem with this one.

Anyway, I highly recommend. This year I ended up buying a temple (the thing which keeps the cloth stretched in the loom) and some fabric you can print on. Most of the time I urged my mom to buy stuff, mostly Christmas presents. :) Here are few picks of my favourites:

Latimeria's wrist bands. I'm a really bad person to buy a gift for, since I don't feel like needing anything and I'm really picky about what I buy or use. That's why quite often the gifts I recieve will end up in some corner unused. I'm also extremely picky about the jewellery I use (I hate gold, brushed steel is my favourite), so it's very rare that I ever find anything I fancy. These are really pretty though, but I'm a bit dubious that they would suit me, since they are so broad and my wrist is quite thin. :(

Sammallammas foxes! (Okei, Senni, säästit mielenrauhasi olemalla kotona. :D) They had apparently a new design, too, since it's not in the homepage yet, but they had on sale BLUE FOXES! Cutest things ever! (Well, I guess this doesn't open to everyone, mainly only those who read the book called "Ainakin miljoona sinistä kissaa" when they were kids - and those who adore foxes. Like S.)

Anna Pusu Design's glass droplets. I saw them in the fair last year, too, but I forgot the name and tried to look for them frantically but couldn't find. This year I didn't make the mistake. :) These glass pendants are just awesome, but you really need to see them live, since they only sell them with the pics you can load there in their webpage... But in the fairs they have a huge collection of really cool pics, like Marilyn Monroe, James Bond, Suursyömäri (from Käytöskukka!), Uuno Turhapuro, Kekkonen, Audrey Hepburn, Princess Leia (well, not this year anymore), Donald Duck... Well, basically anything you can imagine. Pretty as hell! ;D

So, all in all very pleasant experience. Now I can go back to feel sick. I (like apparently many other classmates, too) caught a cold from Austria. Makes your head hurt. :(

Jigsaw puzzles!

2010-11-19T13:19:00.003+02:00

Ok, I should never go shopping when I feel the spree coming. :P I wanted to buy a couple of the advent calendar Christmas cards and ended up coming home with piles of stuff. Well, what can I do if there are huge piles of jigsaw puzzles in the shop! Especially if one design has some astronomical pics in it... So, those of you astronomically inclined, how many of the objects can you recognise in this pic? And I mean honestly, it's not enough to say "I know that some of the moons of Saturn are Dione and Rhea", you need to really recognise them from the features. And you are not allowed to use books or other aids. (It helps to see the real package, sorry;).

I think I got as far as 29. Fun, though.

I'm still in search of some of my old jigsaw puzzles, they have disappeared at some stage while I was moving my stuff around when living in NZ. :( They were really dear to me so I'm devastated that I haven't been able to find them... One of them was the old star chart with 2000 pieces, one was a pic of a sunset over the ocean, also 2000 pieces (I was rather proud when I got it done!). The one which I never had time to finish was the 3000 piece one with a pic of some mountain range. And there were a few more, too. I still have some slight hope that they might turn up one day...

Europrix

2010-11-16T20:18:00.002+02:00

Last weekend, our class spend few days in Graz, Austria. This trip was part of our Networked Media Culture course. The reason why we travelled such a distance was that Graz hosted Europrix festival. This festival is an annual event and it is open for the young media talents of Europe. There are several different categories to enter and the competition is hard.

Since we have talked a lot about the festival in one of the other blogs, (my Blogger account starts to be a bit confusing, I wish we wouldn't open another blog for every course...), I won't go too much into detail here. Just to mention that I enjoyed the trip quite a lot! It was nice to get to speak German again (and not to slip talking English), to see the beautiful city in beautiful weather and to relax a bit. I got tons of new ideas and I finally found out what I am actually studying (it's been a bit of a question mark for me until now). :)

I really wish I could do that trip next year, too! Here's a photo taken by one of my classmates, Miska, from an evening event hosted by the local broadcasting company ORF.

Submachines

2010-11-07T20:41:00.002+02:00

Picture from Pastelportal.com

I'm completely hooked on the Flash games by Mateusz Skutnik. I like point-and-click puzzle adventure games much more than anything else (I hardly ever play anything else), and these I consider to be the elite of them all. Especially the Submachine series. The atmosphere in them is enchanting, the music captivating.

I like the way Skutnik is capable of keeping the overall feeling throughout the series, also Daymare Town is a good example. There is a Game Design course going on at school (which I unfortunately had to skip since I just don't have enough time), and they were talking about how what you can do in the game is not as important as what can you feel in it. Spot on. I would love to create something similar one day... Maybe when I would have time to learn Flash better? (Bloody ActionScript 3, I hate coding. :P)

Submachines and other stuff you can play here.

Oven mittens

2010-11-04T19:27:00.003+02:00

I've been pretty busy with my Tähtipäivät project, writing project plans and stuff for school. (I guess I'll write more about that later here.) So, not much time for anything else, all that jazz has made me tired.

My friends had their birthday yesterday, we went to have fun in some cultural activities (theater, that is). "Hamburger Börs" in Turku city theater was quite a lot of fun. Should be doing more of those... As I've known my friends for such a long time, it feels stupid to buy anything for them as birthday presents. I hate everything that's been given only because it is expected. That's why I try to make as much by myself as possible, or give experiences. This time I crafted two oven mittens for my friends, since I found suitable coloured yarn in my closet. (It's great to make a small inventory there occasionally, I always get ideas.) Turned out quite ok. :)

Vacation complete

2010-10-25T16:45:00.002+03:00

Last week, we had the autumn leave. Our teacher tutor always tells us that "it's autumn leave only for teachers, for the students it's independent studies". Yes, that _was_ my intention. I had a list of things to do for school during the week, and I failed successfully in implementing them. Actually, that was good thing, since I noticed that I really needed a break. And now the school is getting busier than ever.

But back to the vacation. I managed to travel to Sweden, where I visited some German friends. They were working, but I just followed around, and since their work was mostly waiting for things to happen (in a charming villa for apparently rich people), it wasn't bad at all. :) I enjoy practicing my German, since it tends to vanish from my mind relatively fast if not perpetually active.

After the recreational transportation activities, I headed to our summer house in the Eastern Finland. At this time of the year I always find it the loveliest. The summer is gone, the leaves on the ground and everything seems so dead. But it's beautiful nevertheless. I didn't have time to visit it during the summer, so I was quite happy to go there now. Even if the weather wasn't the best, it was great to sit by the fire and read.

There is an intriguing place nearby of our holiday house: a sculpture park of Veijo Rönkkönen. He was a self-learned artist who filled his garden with concrete statues and let people wander through them. He died last year, but the place will (hopefully) continue even if changes are inevitable. We often take our guests to see the place, because it's so extra-ordinary. (Some pictures of the park are here. Every time I go there I find some new detail amongst the statues. This time it was in the form of two concrete owls, who looked somewhat familiar... Or what do you think?

Stellar horizons

2010-10-09T20:54:00.003+03:00

It's absolutely awesome to be a visual amateur astronomer. I know many people are slightly disappointed when they look through a telescope for the first time, since the objects look so much more modest live than in the space telescope pictures. I've never had that problem. One of the things that have kept me so irrevocably fixed with astronomy is my inbound talent to see and feel the interstellar visions in 3D. Sometimes I feel sad that I don't have the knowledge to change these visions into art for other people to see them, too. (Thank god, we have blogs like Astro Anarchy.)

But I can do something else: I can paint some of the things I love, as I've shown in the previous posts. Today, I finished my latest painting depicting M20 or Trifid Nebula. When I was a kid, one of my biggest sorrows was that you can't see this nebula from Finland (well, you can but it's so close to the horizon that it's not much use). To see it was one of my biggest reasons to go to New Zealand. (Believe it or not!)

I'm happy to notice two things. Firstly, nowadays I like to make bigger paintings. And I'm not pursuing my perfectionism with such an urge anymore. When you look at the picture, it might sound rather weird to you. But I only used three sessions to paint it and I wasn't so detailed as I would have been a couple of years ago. For me to say that is something quite peculiar, but I guess I'm the only one who really understands what I mean...

But yes, the painting came out quite nice. And now I'm feeling high because of the varnish smell in my room. Yay.

Coding...again...

2010-10-05T18:56:00.003+03:00

Sometimes I'd love to get back to the age when coding meant something like sending Morse messages through the wires. I've been sitting by Dreamweaver for ages while trying to design and code new website for Turun Ursa, the amateur astronomer association in Turku. Today I finally got the pages online, you can view them here.

When starting a project, I always end up going backwards and starting from some completely random thing that eventually leads to the goal. Coding that site is actually part of my project for school. I need to live through a project that will give me 30 study credits, and I'm involved in creating an event called Tähtipäivät in Turku next spring. That event needs a website, but to get that working, I had to redesign the horrible horrible thing that was claiming to be Turun Ursa's website before. (I'm entitled to crucify it, I coded that...thing as well - before I started studying the field.) So, actually I got through rather easy. Normally I end up doing several other things before I even get to the point. Now I only have to do 740 more hours to fulfil the demand for those study credits. Yay.

Left hand right hand...

2010-09-24T13:54:00.003+03:00

I must admit that I'm usually rather observant. I like to see and register things and then wonder why they are as they are. I'm also pretty evenly ambidextrous and that gives me another view to some things. There are millions of details in the world that are carefully thought of, we just don't notice them very often. But that's exactly what makes it curious. This is what I was thinking about today.

All of the things in this pic were made for right-handed people! As left-handed, you can use them with almost perfect ease, but you won't get the full user experience as it was meant by the person who designed them. A pen? Yes, I write with my left hand and I sometimes change the pen to my right hand just to see the text on the side of the pen right side up for once. The scissors are tricky and I'm happy that I'm right-handed in this skill! Left-handed scissors are not always easy to find, because the blades need to be mirrored so that people using their left hand while cutting can actually see what they are cutting. Those scissors look ok to be used for both hands, but that's not the case. The spatula is also for right-handed if you want to use it right side out. Otherwise the edge is pointing away from the pan. Books, magazines, cd and dvd covers... Whoever invented the idea of opening things from right to left might not have thought about it, but he was definitely right-handed. If I browse through magazines I need to start from the back and flip the pages from back to start because I use my left hand for this. And admit it, when you are reading a book, it's easier to turn the pages with your right hand. (This of course raises the question about e.g. Asian way with the books.)

And then comes the idea of clockwise vs. counterclockwise. I would say that for left-handed it's easier to turn things counterclockwise when right-handed people find it more natural in clockwise direction. (This must have to do with how far can you turn your hand in which direction and with what strenght.) That's why e.g. pencil sharpeners work only with clockwise turn as well as pointers in clocks (and pretty much all knobs in the world anyway). Lids and screws are originally designed so that for right-handed people they are easier to close than to open - that's their priority funcion anyway, to keep things tight and from escaping. (And since I tend to use my left hand in this I really find it easier to open things than to close them ranging from certain wine bottles to jam and stuff. But not to screws, screwdriver I use with my right hand!)

All of this I find extremely interesting! And it's everywhere. Today, I noticed a particular oddity in our kitchen. But after a bit of thinking it wasn't that odd anymore, only another proof how well things are designed - for right-handed people.

Why are there two knobs where the numbers are running clockwise and two where they are running counterclockwise?

Great design. First, the stove plate that is used the most is located right and front on the stove top. It's knob is right-hand side in the panel. That stove is always small, mostly for boiling things in water. You need to get it hot fast, so the highest temperature you reach easily by turning the knob once clockwise with your right hand. The same applies to the other small stove plate. The bigger ones are rarely used to boil water. They are more likely for stewing in lower temperatures. So no need for extreme heat but more variety for lower levels. You reach these again easily by turning the knob clockwise with your right hand...

These things are great to spot and lots of fun to think through. I never get bored of thinking how the world works and why things are like they are. Breaking one's own habits is often quite a lot of fun. Yes, I can write with my right hand, too. :)

The Big Picture

2010-09-24T12:20:00.003+03:00

When I was around 12, I read pretty much everything about astronomy I could find. Since then, I've been buying books I find interesting, mostly factual books and not that much fiction. (I have the idea that fiction you can borrow from library, but fact books you rarely read straight through, but want to return to them in later date.) Today I suddenly noticed that I haven't read those books for ages, sometimes I even forget they exist in my bookself. That's a pity, since after several moves from one flat to another I've kept only the ones that mean the most to me and the ones I think I want to read in some (near) future.

These books are not supposed to be read from cover to cover, at least I don't do that very often. But I love the feeling of knowledge in them and the idea that I can read only a small bit about some certain thing that interests me today. Every book carries a feeling of some certain part of science or history or both. I love that personal feeling in every book I have.

A small collection of my books

Here are some of the books I find most intriguing. Maps of Time - an Introduction to Big History is exactly what it states. It charts the history from the Big Bang to the present. While browsing it, I always end up thinking of those billions of years when it didn't seem to happen much in the Universe - but lots of things happened anyway. Star Names - Their Lore and Meaning is kind of a dictionary to all of the star names known. Even if it's rather old (the original text dates from 1899!), I find it fascinating that we still use partly the same names and see the same shapes in the sky as the people from more than 2000 years back in time. There is certain romance involved in that.

Rare Earth is a puzzling read. It's describing what features a habitable planet should accommodate from its position in a galaxy and a stellar system to what kind of elements and compositions it should have. After reading the book one really sees how fragile we are. And after that, The Life and Death of Planet Earth will further point out how small we are in the midst of the great powers of Cosmos. This feeling I love. (As well as reading those Feynmans and seeing how easy it is, after all, to enjoy life in general.)

Looking at my bookshelf, somehow it feels unlikely for me that the e-book will ever replace the old-fashioned user interface. But things might look different in 10 years time.

Paper doll episodes

2010-09-10T18:01:00.006+03:00

After finishing the Alexx Wesselsky Paper Doll last May, I didn't think of doing another one right after. Still, Alexx is not the only person in Eisbrecher and you can't really even consider the band without Noel Pix, the mastermind behind the compositions, producing, lead guitar and several other importances. Actually I like his way of not making a show of himself but staying in the background. That's why I thought I should give him the respect he earns - in my own peculiar way.

To design a paper doll is not an easy thing to do. When starting, I have to decide the stance the person is standing in. It has to be natural for the person, so I have to know how they move in the stage and what their characters are like. The stance also depends on what things the doll is suppose to hold in its hands and how thick the clothes will be (i.e. how far the edges reach from the body so that they won't block hands, etc.) I drew the first sketches already during the summer and transferred them to Illustrator for better manipulation.

I drew people from Star Wars in my early teens and already then I realised that copying someone straight from a pic is relatively simple, because the model is 2D. But if you want to draw someone into a pose you don't have direct picture of it becomes more difficult. I had to browse the Net looking for pics that had somewhat similar pose for both paper dolls and then form a 3D image in my head about how do these people actually look like. I had huge difficulties with Noel's face, since there are far less pics of him than of Alexx and he seems to look slightly different in each and every one. His face is also filled with very small lines that create his character - if you leave even one of them out or draw an extra one you miss his persona. I did as well as I could...

After the body was finished it didn't take long to draw the clothes, since they don't need to be so exact by looks. The guitars were a challenge, since I don't know anything about musical instruments or their brands. I couldn't google them so I ended up drawing them straight from the pics. Unfortunately, they were often incomplete, so I had to trace the parts from several different images. But I managed after all and finished this thing, too. :)

Here's a pic of both of the paper dolls on my wall.

And here's the link to the pdf-file for your own Noel paper doll. (Alexx was already here. Both files are about 3.6MB.)

Projects, projects

2010-09-06T21:28:00.005+03:00

I seem to be having a bit too many projects going on at the mo. I feel like doing a lot, but never get into it, because I can't decide what to do... I should be doing that Star Party project for next spring, because there is LOADS of things to do, but I always end up doing something else. Mostly related to Eisbrecher. I really don't know why, but that fanart thing has grown on me. It's amusing but slightly frightening to think what do people actually think about me, constantly putting some really wacko ideas into public display.

I started to wonder why do I get so many hits in this blog nowadays until I noticed that someone had found my Eisbrecher Stage and linked it to his blog. Pretty cool, I think it was just a load of fun, but checking some other stuff there makes me think that that guy seems to have some level with quality... So I feel like being flabbergasted and in good company. :)

After some rough battles and unstitching I finally managed to finish the handicraft I've been doing lately. It was actually made from the thread that was leftover when I finished those Rammstein pillows earlier this year. Now I feel really naked not having any handicraft on the way. But the planning takes some time and that's another project I don't fancy doing right now. Well, we'll see when the inspiration hits me again. But I really should get more into that Star Party thing...

Here's the finished handicraft.

Those minor differences...

2010-09-05T17:25:00.003+03:00

The first week of my second year in TAMK Media started last Monday. This first week wasn't terribly overloading, we only had a couple of hours English on Monday, User Experience Design on Tuesday and Project Management on Wednesday. That was is. This first period is working with the same schedule until October, so I need to find some other projects to keep me busy. I have some, surely, so no worries!

We have quite lot of exchange students this year, and I started to wonder about the differences in the school systems around the world. I know something about German schools, since my pen pal is freshly graduated teacher. Finland enjoys a very high status and reputation in having one of the best school systems in the world. At least in our school it's partly because the teachers and students share a very close relationship. I have most of my teachers as my Facebook friends, in the school parties I might join them for a beer, and I've even attended a dinner party once with several international guest teachers from all around Europe. There's nothing wrong with that, even if most students (read: everybody else but me) are not interested.

And we have pretty much free hands to do whatever we want, as long as we understand what's the idea. Last Wed, in Project Management, we talked about what challenges one faces when undergoing a project. We formed groups and made a small presentation about the subject. I, for one, hate typical PowerPoint presentations, because I can never remember what was discussed. According to Presentation Zen there shouldn't be more than 6 words in each slide. (Otherwise it's hard to grasp.) But you can do it otherway, too. Our group ended up taking another approach. And even if the exchange students in our group were a bit dubious at first, it turned out pretty good. Yes, we really gave out this presentation. And apparently it worked, since the teacher quoted our lines later during the lesson. :)

How to Screw up the Project (.pdf)

International trauma

2010-08-21T18:03:00.006+03:00

Some time ago, there was a page in Helsingin Sanomat -newspaper, that cought my eye - and I bet many others, too. There was a full page article about a sauna competition participants (the same competition which sadly claimed a life of the Russian finalist and put the other one in the hospital for quite a while). The article showed several pictures of men posing in their swimming trunks looking rather serious, they were, after all participants in a sauna world championship. It would have been a nice, humorous page, but up in the header was a small Nazi flag pointing to another article later in the newspaper.

Since we tend to look at the pictures first, no matter how big is the text, the first thing most readers (me included) obtained from that page was the Nazi flag (first, since red is the most striking colour and the flag was on the top) and a bunch of half-naked men trying to look cool. I can't believe that layout was intended, so I must think that someone had a pretty huge lapse at work. Or maybe the editor thought that it's long enough from the WWII for anyone to get annoyed. (Unfortunately, I didn't take a pic of that page and when I thought of it the paper was already in the bin outside.)

I find the whole concept still rather interesting. The amount of emotions the Nazi insignia wakes in a common person like myself is astonishing compared to the fact that I was born 35 years after their time. But in the Western culture, we are constantly being brainwashed to connect everything "Nazi" with "ultimate evil". I don't underestimate the unbelievable pain and suffering of those times and don't try to forget. But I do sometimes find it frustrating how the only two ways one can talk about Nationalsocialism is either loath it as overtly devilish or ridicule it to make it look funny and laughable. Any other point of view is considered to be sympathetic.

And still, there are many aspects that are often overlooked. First of all, of course the feelings anything related to Nazis still awakes in people. That's why editors and designers need to be very careful to think what is the message, like in the Helsingin Sanomat page I mentioned. The other thing is that the Nazis were superb designers who really knew how to put up a captivating show. Albert Speer was of course the most notorious designer, but his products are nowadays often considered rather pompous and revolting - again more out of the collective pressure. (I've been to Berlin for half a dozen times. I don't think Speer's architecture, that few that survived, is really terribly different from anything else that time and just before it.) Of course it was a bit over the top, but when you think of some big modern rock bands performing, it's obvious that people love good shows.

Speer's "Cathedral of Light" in one of the Nuremberg Rallies / Pic from Wikipedia

The Nazis didn't really invent much anything new. They were just very good at using already existing things to their advantage. They were using the same cornu copia the designers are using today - the history and symbolism of humankind. I've seen many times different designs that somewhere in the unconscious mind connects with Nazi design. They have to be subtle, of course, but the impact is striking, because we connect so many feelings with them. Just an eagle with spread wings do bear a small connection with the Nazis - intended or not, wanted or not. The eagle is noble and powerful being, and still used as a symbol of the country in Germany.

Georgia's Eurovision Song Contest entry in Helsinki 2007

Note: I used to be really interested in the morality issues related to Nazi Germany. I had dozens of books about the subject, even if I sold most of them before moving to New Zealand. I still find the questions regarding it worth thinking about and not just go with the flow chanting "Nazis are bad". Luckily, there are lots of people, who also think the same way. History is never worth forgetting, because people hardly change, after all.

Globularity

2010-08-15T19:32:00.002+03:00

I finally managed to finish one of the acrylic paintings I've been doing for some time. Well, I haven't actually haven't done it, it's been laying around half-made for ages. But one evening I actually felt like continuing it and painted the rest of the stars in the globular cluster painting on the left in the picture. I thought it wouldn't turn out very well, but it looks ok to me now, after all. Maybe I should start doing these for sale... ;)

I even bought an acrylic finish to coat the paintings. It cleared the colours a bit. Can't wait to do more!

I managed to move to another flat. Here I'm even entitled to hit nails to the walls, so the place looks pretty decent already. It's a very pretty house from the early 19hundreds, so the rooms are nice and high and there's even a roof terrace. :) The school will start in the end of this month, so we'll see how the new semester will look like.

Handy crafting

2010-08-04T19:55:00.004+03:00

I got a band shirt from one of my friends, but it was men's L size. Even women's XS is sometimes too big for me (it's unbelievably hard to find suitable clothes), so I had to be a bit creative, because I didn't really want to stuck it somewhere in the closet and forget it there, because it's actually quite valuable... And I like the radioactive sign in the sleeve.

So, I took in quite a lot from the sides and made it slimmer also in the back plus added some holes for a ribbon. Cute. :) (I should move during this month and my room looks like a pigsty, so you have to be happy with an empty corner as a background.)

More fanart

2010-07-22T17:55:00.004+03:00

I start to get pretty fixed on this fanart thingie... The idea behind this particular one came to my mind while at work, and since I didn't have much anything to do, I designed the whole thing there. Yesterday and today I put it all together with the computer. So, now there is a board game about Eisbrecher. :D

I've been playing it by myself a couple of times and have great fun! Funny that, it actually works pretty well...

As always, the pdf file is for download over here.

Loom

2010-07-22T17:49:00.002+03:00

I love my mother's loom, but unfortunately I'm not terribly good with it. I would love to learn to use it better, but it takes so much time and effort that I'll probably have it in my agenda for years to come. :P Still, every now and then (not very often) I do something with it. I have a dream one day to start weaving wall rugs, but we'll see when that happens. (The biggest stop with me is that all of the materials are so expensive for the stingy me.)

Anyway, I don't even remember when did I start this table cloth, but I only finished the ends a couple of weeks ago. I love the colours, they make me think of sea in moonlight...

Summer heat

2010-07-16T13:19:00.002+03:00

It's been pretty much too hot to do anything coherent lately. I'm not a big fan of high summer, I enjoy August and September much more - not only because the stars come visible again here in Finland at that time. I have lots of ideas at the moment, but no time to pursue them. I wish it'll get better soon.

My cats, Tahvo and Tiltu, prove that there is excess hot air around. They don't have any energy to play...

Flat out!

2010-07-08T18:55:00.004+03:00

I worked pretty flat out during most of the June. Actually, I only now came back home (since my work is in another town). I was a bit worried if my stuff was ok, since I hadn't been home for a month, but everything looks good. I need to find another place to live, though, since the girl I rented this room from comes back to continue her studies. I hope I'll find a suitable place soon, I tend to stress about such things in the run of time.

During the work days, I haven't have time/energy/inspiration to do anything creative. Most of our full-timers were having their holidays at the same time, so e.g. during the midsummer and Medieval Festival I did 9h days many times in a row. No wonder I was pretty dead in the end. I hope it'll be better now, at least the roster looks a bit more humane now. :) But I do miss ideas and creativity. I wish I could have about three weeks off (without worrying about money) and just do what I would like. But then again, I know I would start to expect some big things from myself, so I guess it's better to go on as it is.

Today, I did manage to put together all the pics I've made so far with the Alexx paper doll. The pdf-file is here.

---

Ich habe schon viele Bilder von diese Alexx (von Eisbrecher) Papier Puppe ich habe vor einige Zeit gemacht. Jetzt habe ich sie alle (die ich bis Heute gemacht habe) ins pdf-File gestellt. Die Deutsche Ausgabe gibt's hier zum Laden.

Summertime

2010-06-09T22:36:00.002+03:00

Now that the school is finished for this semester, there isn't much anything new in the design front. I just go to work and have some occasional trips nationally and abroad (mostly Germany) here and there. There has been quite a lot of adventures and surprising encounters this year, though, but they don't have anything to do with design. :)

Just before the school ended, though, we presented the Flash animations we had made for school. I wasn't originally supposed to do anything, since I had some rough time with my life then, but ended up putting together something after all. Since I didn't plan it, it didn't turn out as good as I would have liked, but I think it's amusing enough to post here. There are couple of bugs, but I consider it to be quite okay work, since I've never used Flash before...

Constellation Survival Kit - the Plough

Where is the love?

2010-05-30T21:17:00.002+03:00

After a short but intensive spell at work I have a weeks break during which I'll travel a bit around Germany. It's been pretty hectic at work, so I haven't had time to create anything, and that's how it'll probably be during the summer, too. :P But it's ok, since it's always so much fun working, because all the small things that happen (and great work mates). There have been few things that have given some food for my thoughts, though.

I can't understand how indifferent people have become. Few days ago, I was working and we had some army service in the church. When the congregation was leaving, I noticed an old lady with two nordic walking poles and button with the visually disabled logo. I went to ask her if she needed help with the stairs. She was surprised and happy and said yes, please. They were treating people with coffee just outside the door, but it was quite cold outside, so I asked if the old lady would like to drink a cuppa before she left and that I could go to get her one. I seated her inside so that she wouldn't freeze in the wind and went to check outside, but the queue was so long that I went back to chat with her a bit. (I guess I should have been doing something more "professional", but I felt bad to think I wouldn't have time for her.) We chatted until the queue came so short that I could sneak and steal a cup of coffee and a doughnut for her. She was really charming old lady, she said she was 94 and still going around in buses and walking as agile as someone 30 years her junior... After she finished her coffee, I helped her down the stairs, across the park and the road to the bus stop. She was really taken about it all and thanked me from her heart. I felt it quite nice, but didn't really feel like earning it all, since what else could I have done? The thing which does trouble me in the whole thing, though, is that even if there were 200 people in the church, army officers and such, I was the only one who stopped to ask if she needed any help...

Yesterday, me and my mom were in a paper shop. They were renovating, so lots of the stuff was in trollies. Just as I was walking past one of those, people in the other pushed it slightly so that some boxes fell right in front of me and spread their insides all over the floor. I didn't really stop to think other than "walking past this mess would be really indifferent and rude". So I started to pick those few things back to the boxes. When the salesperson and the customer other side of the trolly saw what I was doing, they made such a fuss about it that I got really confused. They kept repeating how nice I was and how I totally didn't need to do that and how so kind and nice people still excisted and thank you thank you, I'll take care of it, don't worry but thank you. I tried to flee, but I still had to buy the envelopes, so I had to listen to that gratitude all the way to the cashier... It felt really awkward, since I didn't feel like doing anything special and these people were treating me like I would be the 8th wonder of the world.

So what's the matter with us? Is a small good deed really so extinct that people over react when they see one? Of course it feels good when you see you make someone happy, but I don't expect that much anything in return of those many small favours I do every day - often people don't even notice them (like holding the door open long enough for the next one to pass). It's just a habit of taking other people in consideration. But it does feel sad if we've really grown so unobservative that we don't make the effort. I don't help every old lady across the street, I only do it when the opportunity happens to knock at the right time. I'm no saint, so I would appreciate it if people didn't treat me that way. From my ex-superior I learned that the best way to do many things is to do them so unnoticed as possible. He was absolutely right.

Perfectionism

2010-05-19T20:23:00.003+03:00

Argh, I seem to have one of those days I can't really concentrate in anything... I drew a bit, but didn't feel like doing more, so I went to play with Flash for a moment. Then I grew bored with it and went drawing something else, until after few minutes I started knitting, since the shirt I started was next to me. I knitted one row until I went to shop in the net and pay some bills... Multitasking anyone?

I wish I had only one idea in my head that I could put all of my efforts in. But usually I have many ideas I pursue at the same time and can't really get anything done in any one. :P And of course the thing which bugs me most is that I'm quite hopeless perfectionist. And pedantic person, too, for that matter. Here is a self portrait I drew yesterday.

There is just one problem. IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I guess you could recognise me in it, especially if you watched me from the mirror like I do, but there's still something wrong in it. I think it's that I drew my left eye a bit too far off from the nose and once again I made my face too short. Also the line in my chin is not quite correct with that smirk. And I have longer hair. Yes, I guess it still looks cool and I'm quite happy I haven't lost my skills with dry pastels, but I can do better. The curse of every perfectionist who ever lived... Maybe I'll quite for today and go to sip some wine and read a book or something. :)

Small gifts

2010-05-18T15:20:00.003+03:00

I don't like buying gifts for people, because I don't like useless shite that is given out only for the sake of some birthday or Christmas. Unfortunately, I often also don't have time to make personal and unique gifts for people and end up running around in shops in the end anyway in pursuit of that "perfect gift" that never really turn up. Actually, I should just start doing this years Christmas presents already...

In the past month or so, I've managed to compile a couple of small presents for a good reason. Here are the pics.

This one went to the truck driver we met in Rammstein's concert in Tallinn. We wanted to send him some thanks for his astonishing friendliness he showed us, so I hunted down half Europe in search for a model truck of Daf Fx, covered it with white plastic tape and cut the letters from blue plastic. What did he say? "Looks great, but all our trucks are black." >:D (With a smirk, of course.)

My workmate turned 60 years old, and because he loves playing golf, I crocheted a golf ball warmer for him. I love to give people useless gifts, because in my opinion everyone already has pretty much everything they need. (One year I bought a real moose warning traffic sign to my brother. I think it's probably the best present I've ever given to anyone, because it looks so cool, but you can't really use it in any way.) He loved it and showed it around to everyone who was polite enough to listen. ;D

The summer suddenly came and it's been some lovely warm days here. It has also resulted in some thunderstorms in the neighbourhood, I never grow tired of stalking the lightning from the thunder radar. There has been some spectacular lightning in the map around the Baltic, but I haven't really experienced any yet. Mostly because I've been working in the church and you can't really here the rumble inside... :( Oh well, maybe some day... Today?

TAF

2010-05-11T16:04:00.003+03:00

I'm very loyal to my habits. In the past few years I've learned to shrug off other people's opinions and just do what I feel like doing. I tend to see funny little things in everything and am amused very easily. I laugh often by myself because of that and don't always explaing what is so funny. Who cares?

So, Tampere Art Factory weekend came and went, before that we had the international week with lots of workshops and stuff. It was quite a lot of fun, even if I did miss some of the stuff because I was so tired. Anyway, weekend was better. I ended up in a pub and dinner with many of our international guests (I still don't really know how that happened, I was the only student there, of course!) and had lovely discussions that varied between cow farming in the Netherlands and old Soviet spying radar in Latvia - sometimes I surprise myself noticing how many things I can actually have a lively discussion about! So, all in all it was very entertaining weekend and I made lots of new contacts.

And in the end I couldn't help myself. The thing that has bugged me from the beginning is the name of the event. TAF doesn't mean Tampere Art Factory for me, but TAF. That's why I just had to buy the T-shirt and add a bit to it...

ENSB? Yes, I would just LOVE to visit the place...!

Useless shite

2010-05-07T16:32:00.003+03:00

Today, I've been feeling really tired. I should have gone to school, since there would be quite many things for the TAF event (no, not METARs this time), but I can't get myself going... Too long story to tell here.

Instead, I've been just sitting at home, doing really nothing. I tried to cheer myself up by playing with the paper doll I made and mentioned in my previous post. God, how much fun you can get from one small thing! ;D

This is Deutsch

2010-05-05T20:11:00.004+03:00

I finally managed to finish the paper doll I've been drawing for the past couple of weeks... Great way to avoid doing school work, that! When I was younger, I always started things but never finished them. I'm rather proud of myself that even if I'm still childish in many ways, at least in that sense I've changed a bit. But I guess one never be persistent and patient enough...

Anyway, after listening through all of the produced music of Eisbrecher (for a few times), laughing my guts out and dreaming of Bezier curves, I finally got this thing into a pdf. I also got it printed and cut, so ready for playing. I posted the thing into the official Eisbrecher forum, I'm quite interested to see what people will say about it! :D

It took me so long since I made so many outfits for the doll. I guess this would be the "official" one:

But every time I look at this, I can't help but laugh...

The whole thing is downloadable over here.

Cruisin'

2010-04-30T11:38:00.004+03:00

After a long and dirty winter, I finally managed to wash my car. In Finland, it's amazing how filthy your car can get during the season of wet snow, grinded pebbles and especially the road salt that is been spread to the roads to prevent slippering. I normally wash my car by hand, because it comes so much cheaper, and that's why I've been pushing and pushing the whole thing until the roads are cleaner and it's drier.

Now that I got the thing clean(er), I could finally attach a small decor to it. Now I have a V8, too!!! :D

The only thing I miss from my car now is this. I've been dreaming of it for some time now, I should just get miself into buyin' the bloody thing...

Answers

2010-04-24T09:36:00.003+03:00

For some reason, this week there have been some visits to my blog from American people, who have googled "Can you see Beta Pictoris from Earth?" Just to get the poor buggers right, the short answer is yes. You just need to be in the Southern Hemisphere.

Beta Pictoris is not very bright star, but it's very easy to find, since it's located very close to Canopus - the second brightest star in our skies. When I was guiding the people during the astronomy tours in New Zealand, I often pointed Beta Pictoris out to explain how stellar systems are formed. With Epsilon Eridani, Beta Pictoris is my favourite when it comes to known planetary systems. (Well, Beta Pictoris pretty much only has a disk of dust, so far, but apparently also some exoplanets might have already formed from it.)

Here is Wikipedia's chart link to Pictor.

Propaganda posters

2010-04-23T21:00:00.003+03:00

There's something really enchanting in the good old war time propaganda posters. I think it owes to the humorous feeling one gets from them nowadays, while everything in the modern society tries to be so unprovoking. It feels like in the past goodies and baddies were clearly labeled and one could always tell them apart - at least when you happened to be in "the right side".

I sometimes like to browse through propaganda posters at Allposters.com, since they have almost all the posters I've ever heard of (except this one, which is my favourite - I should print that out and put it to my car, actually). Propaganda is really interesting subject in the first place, since it is quite effective. (Yeah, I see many people smirk now, but there is a feeling going down to your spine when you look at some of those old posters. And it's good to remember how it was during the war, that time they had even more impact on people.) There are rules in propaganda, too, and sometimes I'm pretty worried that people don't recognise it when they see it... Another lesson about media reading skills wouldn't be too bad?

I have couple of pics on my room's door. My flatmate's friends have been rather confused about them, asking if I'm some kind of a war freak. :P (Another example of those media reading skills.) The small card upper left is an election add, where there are two lightning bolts hitting a small country house. The lightning says "communism" and "socialism" and then there's a text: "The danger is nigh - the Agrarian League (nowadays the Centre Party) will save you." The bigger poster is from the war time, there it stands: "Also you are spied on. The spy will guide the bombs to your home." That will help you to keep your mouth shut when you leave the house. :)

Turku Star Party 2011

2010-04-18T20:36:00.004+03:00

Now it's official! Astronomical association Turun Ursa will host the annual national amateur astronomy event in 2011. :D Me and my best friend (the redhead member of the almighty twins at Twinnerstakeitall-blog) applied for the whole thing, since we can both use our studies to make the event. Of course we will have lots of help, too, but we are kinda responsible that all goes well... Crossing our fingers! ;)

Seriously, it's going to be lots of hard work but also lots of fun. We have both been starlovers since early childhood and we have tons of ideas how to make the thing fun! I find it sad that many people think astronomy is really scientific and hard to understand. I've never been good at maths and I've still been able to get pretty far with my hobby. So, hopefully we are able to light the sparkle in other people, too.

I'm supposed to take care of the visual side of the event as well as the interactivity (of course). I had drawn some rough sketches about the logo, but then one of my amateur astronomy friends called and asked if I'd have anything for the event this year, since they were going to publish the next year's venue there. So, I had to do something quickly. Here's what came out. :)

Celestial Spheres

2010-04-15T22:03:00.002+03:00

Some time ago, I was shopping some crafting stuff and stumbled into the most beautiful jigsaw puzzle I ever saw. I keep an eye on especially Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, since they are great quality and often quite clever, but this one had escaped me. I can't help it, I'm a jigsaw puzzle addict. Of BIG puzzles. This one is only 1500 pieces, so medium size for me. I have somewhere two puzzles with 2000 pieces, I've managed to finish them both (the other one, sunset at sea, was quite demanding...;), but my 3000-piece one was only halfway done when I moved to New Zealand. We had an attic clean-up last year and now I can't find any of those puzzles! My heart is broken. :(

Well, at least this one is awesome. It is a starmap of both hemispheres and some extra pics around. I've pretty much finished with the map section and doing the edges now. I must say that knowing your Messier catalogue really helps with this one... As well as knowledge about the Southern Hemisphere stars. :)

Hokum!

2010-04-14T21:29:00.003+03:00

(Warning! This entry contains hard cynicism and sarcastic comments. Rated PG.)

It's that time of the year again when the most elitist warehouse in Finland puts up the show to draw in common trash to waste their money in useless shite. Already when I was working in that particular company, I marvelled at people who came, hoarded and went, spending huge amounts of money to things I (or they) never thought they needed. I understand readily that there are things people need and are happy to buy when they are discounted, but I loath the way it is done in that big yellow festival people call "the Crazy Days".

First of all, most people consider Stockmann to be a department store for the better earning population. When you are working there you are constantly remembering how important it is to be polite and helpful. In that store people expect to be served, that's why they are willing to pay higher prices about the things they could buy cheaper from somewhere else (especially in the grocery section). So, when the Crazy Days are on I always get the feeling that the store is lowering itself to the level of the unworthy and they get so crazy for this descending that they run and fight for all the discounts in the shop. Even the advertisement - the yellow ghosts - always seem so cheap and tawdry compared to the historical green escalator logo of the department store.

The worst feeling I still get every time I see people coming from the store after the shopping spree with 10+ yellow bags hanging from their arms. Somewhere deep inside I feel pity and shame for them and the society where we are living. I know it's hard not to use the chance if something is available for free or cheap, but I still try to avoid buying stuff just because of that. I don't need much myself, but I do understand that some others find lots of joy from shopping. I just wish they can find happiness out of it, too, since I've never met anyone who would have claimed that. When I browse through the catalogue I just see a massive collection of spending hystery. I wish I could be happy just by being able to buy all that stuff! Unfortunately, it wouldn't work.

I worked in Stockmann for three Crazy Days -events. Once I witnessed a fight by the spice section, since there was only one jar of some Indian spice left. I saw many Stockmann Blue -ladies (as someone calls the wannabe-rich people who have dyed their hair blue - you actually do see these occasionally in Stockmann) acting like despots while rummaging through the shelves. It was often ugly and very stressful and I always thought was it really worth all that trouble when you got the credit card bill in the end of the month.

As mentioned, I don't mind buying the stuff I need, but all those massaging chairs do feel a bit over the top. I'm afraid people will get more and more distant from the realities of the world when they get the feeling that happiness lives in those yellow bags. That's what the advertisers want them to think anyway. Judging how Stockmann says Crazy Days is their 13 month of the year (i.e. during 8 days (now 10) they sell for as much worth as in one month), they are doing it pretty well. And that is a pity.

3D part II

2010-04-13T15:55:00.003+03:00

Today we continued our Blender lessons. It's actually quite a lot of fun, reminds me of the geometry lessons we had in the high school... Of course it's also quite demanding, especially for a non-computer nerd like me (I'm just a plain one), especially when the program crashes frequently (the latest version is just an alpha version). But still. I wish I had more persistence to play with it also at home. :)

Here are pics of the bunker I rendered today.

3D

2010-04-06T18:09:00.002+03:00

Lately at school, we have been broadening our skills in 3D. The program we are using is Blender, familiar surely to anyone ever interested in 3D modelling. It's quite a nice program, not only since it's free open source software, but also since after few hours of studying it, its interface actually makes sense. :) Of course it'd take years to learn to use all of its features (and do animations like Big Buck Bunny with it!!!), but it's still fun to play around with.

Last week, we had some basic training with the program, and created a glass cup. (Didn't have time to make the toothbrush, though.) It was challenging, but here's my result...

If that's what one can do during the first lesson, it'd be interesting to see how it would go after a week... ;)

Hour on Earth

2010-03-27T21:19:00.002+02:00

The Earth Hour is still on for another 10 minutes. You know, the hour when people should turn off their lights and think about saving energy. In a way I find the idea cool, as an amateur astronomer I was against light pollution when I was 12. But I just can't quite get the idea what does it help if the individuals are being pushed doing it, when I look out of the window and see every street light on from here to eternity... (In Helsinki city center, they have a switch with which you could turn off every second street light from down town - I know since late 90s we were campaining for similar hour for astronomy. They just never did or do use it.) If every 10th light would be turned off from public lighting, no one would notice it. It has been tested in some occasions. So, one hour "darkness" doesn't really make a huge impact on me. But I do celebrate it my way, though, but using only one light at home now - and my iMac which is supposed to be really green when it comes to energy waste. :P

It's been a rough week in many ways, even if nothing much has happened. I've been pouring my creative energy into crafts like someone who is bailing out water from sinking boat. I finished another Rammstein pillow and am doing the last one like crazy. On Monday, I need to order some more thread for that again. (It's amazing how hard thread is to find! I'm happy I finally found a shop where I can order it from relatively easy...) Of course I should have been learning some coding during this weekend, but I just haven't had the strenght. I've needed to keep my mind in something simple but creative and not to think too much. I'm still also a bit ill, so I guess I shouldn't bother myself too much, because I have to work during Easter.

I managed to finish the painting I've been doing lately. Acrylics on canvas. This is why I love astronomy. It is so inspirational and breathtakingly beautiful. All hail the Helix Nebula, NGC 7293!

Design to my taste

2010-03-20T16:17:00.002+02:00

I'm actually quite an observative person... Today, I went to see my brother. He had a Western Digital My Book external hard drive on his table. I walked past it, took a glance, stopped and said: "Hey, look at these ventilation holes, they look like Morse code or some sort of binary."

He had never noticed it, even if he's got the thing for some time. But the more we looked at the thing, the more it appeared to be exactly that: a Morse code. Of course we had to find out about it. We translated it from Morse, and after some hassling around with it and later some googling we really did find out what it meant...

No, I won't spoil your fun. ;)

I just love it when the designers are thinking the same way as I do!!! :D But why is it always me who notices these kind of things?

Pic by Wikipedia

Among the starfields

2010-03-18T17:54:00.005+02:00

Last week, I went to Stockmann to look for something and of course found something else. There were some space toys in the kids section and I just had to buy the small Space Shuttle model for myself! I've always had a weak spot for Space Shuttles, of course. One of my very first memories about astronomy is when space shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986. I was five years old, but I remember it vaguely. Later I learned by heart the names of those seven astronauts that died in that accident.

When Columbia went in 2003, I was devastated. In my youth, I read a lot about the whole Shuttle fleet. Columbia was my favourite, the old and experienced ship with certain majestic feel to it. Discovery was like a youngster, always ready for adventure. Atlantis more like a big question mark, I never got too close to it, there always seemed to be something hidden in it. And when Endeavour joined the fleet, I felt like a new baby would have been born.

And I am not kidding with this! I drew technical charts of the Shuttles and learned their statistics so that I could quote the size, how much they weighted empty or in full load, how much strength they had while accelerating (and I didn't even understand anything of physics at the time!), even how many TPS tiles they had. (No, I can't do that anymore, thank god!) I guess I was "a bit different" as a kid. :D

Still, the Space Shuttle has a place in my heart, even when the last Shuttle mission is nigh. They taught me to value space technology and human curiosity and persistence. I'm happy I've lived during the time they excisted.

This unnamed Shuttle flies only in my room with Hubble!

Status: Coding finished.

2010-03-16T15:34:00.002+02:00

Tomorrow, we have to present a static website we've coded at school. I been coding my own site for some time now, and I finally managed to get it online to check for the mistakes. Last night, I couldn't sleep very well, since after six hours of coding xhtml and css I just saw tags and asterisks in front of my eyes every time I closed them. :P

But I guess they are now as ready as I can get them in this timeline! Go check yourself at www.west468.com. :)

There still a lot work to do with them, but I'm happy with what I have now (considering I started form the scratch). Spock agrees:

Pi Day

2010-03-14T17:06:00.002+02:00

Just as I was talking about science in my last entry... Today is the international Pi Day, since in America they write this day as 3/14, and of course that reminds people about Pi, which is 3.14159........ Last year I already celebrated the Pi Approximation Day, which is 22/7 (22 divided by 7 is closest date there is to the Pi Approximation).

So, of course I just had to bake a Pi Pie for to occasion! Happy Pi Day, everyone!!!

(For the record: According to tests I'm 74% nerd, 74% geek, but only 30% dork. 1337!!1)

Fractals

2010-03-12T18:16:00.003+02:00

Science. A cornucopia for designer's inspiration. I've been an amateur astronomer since my childhood, but never really understood much Maths. I've always loved to popularise the science, and I find it a strenght in a way that I can't use any mathematical analysis in that work - no one would understand it. When I was working as a stargazing guide in New Zealand, people often complimented me on the clear and understandable way I told them about the universe, stars and cosmos in general and in detail.

I find it sad that many people think that science, especially astronomy in my case, is something incomprehensible and scary to even think of. For me, science is not formulae or hard Maths, but art and way of seeing things! I love to think how rays of sunlight are casted back to the eye from the white snow and which rays am I actually seeing (knowing that the ray is reflected outwards in the same angle as it was casted in). Or just admire the things that are often there but very few people notice them (e.g. just now there is a beautiful Alpenglow in the eastern horizon where the shadow of Earth has been casted by the setting sun!).

Still, I think my longest love affair has been with fractals. I understand very little about those self-feeding patterns and their true meaning (well, maybe a bit more than "very little"), but I love how they look like. They are mystic yet filled with life, they evade the understanding yet fill your mind with a wonder. I've played with programs you can create fractals with, I've done handicrafts and patterns out of them. I just can't get enough of the beauty and order of those favourite childs of the chaos theory.

When we got our assignment last year to design a package for a Nokia phone during the print design course, I got the idea of using fractals as my theme almost instantly. The work from the idea until the end of the course was insanely huge (I constructed the fractal image from about 40 smaller pictures), but I still haven't got bored with my design. It still looks as fascinating, welcoming and mysterious as always before. I don't know about other people, but I would buy such a phone just because of the idea! ;)

Edit: I just counted that I have 194 files in my computer about this assignment. Dedication, anyone? :D

Rammstein

2010-03-07T21:23:00.007+02:00

Today, I returned back home from a two week holiday. (We had the winter leave, but I took some extra days off, too.) It was a very busy and packed "holiday", so in a way I'm relieved that I can get back to school now to relax a bit. :) The saldo of the past fortnight is pretty impressive: I travelled to Tallinn with my two best friends to attend Rammstein's concert, I went to a spa-type place with my mom for a couple of days, I had my 30th birthday and I went to work, too. Eventful two weeks, all in all.

I noticed that I never posted a pic here about the Rammstein pillows I've made. One of them is visible in one of the older posts, but here's the full monty:

I finally managed to get my hand in the thread I need to do them, so I could finish the lot. (It's insanely hard to find, I don't know why. The cotton ones are everywhere, but they are too slim for these.) I've always loved Rammstein's hard industrial style. Their stage show is also amazing, especially this latest one is designerwise very polished, but compared to e.g. the Sehnsucht era, it is a even a bit too perfect for my taste. Nevertheless, the colours, the surfaces, the pyro effects, the details... all of that with the music and the energy kinda explains why that band has gained so much popularity everywhere. (The best Rammstein gallery is Rammimages, quite worth browsing!)

Here's a pic of me and my friends in the front row. We went to queue five hours before the doors opened and were the first ones there. We had met and chatted with one of the band staff members on the ferry the day before and he really made our day by delivering us some tea when he noticed that we were there! That was the first time there was such a good service in the Rammstein queue... :D

Photo by Jelena Rudi / elu24.ee

Finnish by design

2010-03-01T23:37:00.002+02:00

Finnish design is very well known throughout the world. The touch of nature, beauty and innovation has always been popular among both western and eastern cultures. Foreigners often have clear stereotypes of Finnish mentality and us as a country. Often that image is also very shallow and even if it might touch the surface, the true essence of Finnish society gets buried under the surface.

Here it is! The Aalto Vase, the most famous piece of Finnish design all around the world. (Photo: Designcentershop.com)

This is how Finnish-ity is seen. This and the school shootings. Yay. Being a Finn is not obviously just nature, midnight sun, little introverted but all in all quite friendly people. There is the famous "sisu", guts to go on whatever the odds, this we nurture remembering our wars and our suffering under the foreign rulers.

I used to live abroad for more than two years. Coming back to Finland hasn't been easy. Somehow, I seem to notice all kinds of small things I never saw before, and they annoy me now enormously. Maybe I am cynical, maybe unfair, but this has been in my mind for some time now:

We live in cotton. We don't want to take responsibility for our own actions, the society is always to blame. If there happens a shooting somewhere, that's because the police didn't do their work right, the parliament should have banned the guns years ago or there hasn't been enough money for mental health. The media goes on and on and on, how terrible it is that these kind of things can happen in Finland and how terrible it is that no one does anything and how many candles there are in the place where it happened and after a week they have the complete profile of the shooter from since he was a baby and why he did what he did and how everyone is missing the people he killed and how terrible it is that it can happen in Finland. This goes on until there is another headline.

It's also amasing, when during the winter one MP mentions that it would be good for people to clean their roofs so that they won't collapse and few people fall off and get killed, it's the MPs fault, because he asked them to get to the roof in the first place. Just last week I read from the newspaper how you should "refer to your knowledge about past experiences" when you are thinking whether you should clean your roof or not. It's good that media is here to tell us these things. We live in cotton because our wits are constantly stupendously underestimated and we like it since we don't need to hurt our brains thinking.

The other thing which has really really gotten into my nerves is the lack of Finnish optimism. There is no such thing. We always wait for the worst. We have our sisu to get through it, but it's not optimism - it's stubbornness. The day just can't be good if it's raining and if the sun is shining it probably won't be in the end of the day anyway. During the long winter there's either too much snow or too little and at least it's slippery all the time. When there's a transporter's strike starting, the first headlines tell us how fresh food will disappear from the shops in a couple of days and there won't be any fuel left in the end of the week. The mass hysteria in this country is something amazing. We see it around constantly, whether it was Kaarina Hazard or national railway problems. The media tells us about it and boy, we believe, the worse the better. When Saku Koivu boosts the self-esteem of the Olympic icehockey team when they are losing 1-3 and they manage to win the game 5-3 in the last period, it's not optimism either. It's sisu again - the same "we don't have anything to lose" attitude we saw in the Winter War. We have gotten far with it, no doubt, but it does make me angry when I hear the Finnish people repeatedly saying "I did this, but it's not so good as I intended". (I do that from time to time and that makes me even angrier, it just proves how affective that attitude is.) This country has some huge self-esteem problems. We are always ready to give up, but then don't after all, when we go forth with our sisu.

While abroad, I learned how powerful tool optimism really is. Or at least the faith for the future. What does it matter if it rains in the morning or evening? What does it matter if your bakings didn't turn fabulous or tasty, why do you need to apologise it in advance? I believe the world is a marvellous, interesting and funny place with lots of possibilities as long as you are ready to explore them. But that's it, isn't it? We have these things we don't want to give away. We live in cotton and we are so afraid of the future (and our possible death) that we always try to be ready for it by waiting for the worst - and we never succeed.

I must admit it has been really hard for me to come back here and notice, how I'm slipping back to that Finnish pessimistic attitude. That's why I can hardly wait that I get out of here again, because I can't afford another depression. I want to live my life to the full every day and enjoy it now. I don't want to sit in a dark house and wait that the roof will fall over me because it's so packed with snow. Maybe as a Finn I'd be able to get out of the ruins, we always do, but it would be so much easier just to walk out before it even collapsed.

Composition

2010-02-27T18:13:00.002+02:00

Phew, it's been a week since I updated this last time! I was having a short trip to Tallinn and having lots of things to think of. I actually took a false start to our winter leave, since it's starting now. Tomorrow, I'll drive to Turku. Hopefully I'll have time to do some school things during the week! (I'm hopelessly behind in some on the things and because it's been so eventful week now, I haven't even thought of doing them yet.:P)

Couple of weeks ago, we were talking about composition with our IMP Design club. I compiled a short introduction to some of things I've heard of with the composition. (It can be downloaded as a pdf file here.) I find the whole subject fascinating, it was one of the reasons I originally applied to TAMK. I wish I had some more time to get into it. But I'm far too organised just to browse through the things. I'm much better while doing some project work and learning the things for that. (E.g. putting that pdf together was quite a lot of fun!)

It's amazing how much one can tell with just the picture composition. The force lines through the picture, the golden ratio, colours, symbolism... And most of the people don't even know how they are manipulated while watching! I like the examples in that Kimmo Pälikkö's book I've mentioned before. It opened my eyes to see why many famous paintings really are so famous. We often think that people were somehow more stupid during the Middle Ages, but at least in the arts they seemed to master many things.

Paper crafting

2010-02-20T23:31:00.005+02:00

Today, I finally finished a project I've been playing with for some time. Couple of weeks ago, I got an idea to try to make a paper model of my fav band, Eisbrecher. (Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm hopeless.) I made the stage by computer but had to draw the band members by hand first before transferring them to the electric form. It took me some time, but it was fun! Maybe I should start a career as a paper crafter? ;)

Edit: Since there seems to be some traffic to this site from Google, here is the link to the .pdf file you can download and craft yourself. Have fun! (I would be happy to see a pic of the ready made model just to see if it works for anyone else than just me. ;)

If you want to see some more fanart, check my homepage's fanart section. ;)

Colours

2010-02-15T21:46:00.004+02:00

Last week, we had some talk about colours at school. How to implement it to web pages, what amount is good, what is a good way to use it, etc. It's all very interesting, of course, since most of the people only know the colour wheel from the primary school. Since I've done some drawing and painting in my spare time I know a bit more than that... But nowhere near enough!

To design a colour scheme for a web page, for example, is not the easiest thing in the world. One of our homeworks includes to do exactly that, based on a wireframe model of the navigation of the page. How do you create a harmonic and balanced colour scheme without being too dull and highlighting the areas of interest? Luckily, there are many webpages to help you with that. Especially Skout has several good links in the colour section to help one through. (I played a lot with them last week.) The approach for design starting from navigation, colours, etc. suits me perfectly, since I'm rather organized. We have to code a homepage in few weeks, I have to start thinking the colours for that soon, too.

Here are some random parts from Coloria.net. It's only in Finnish, but astonishing with the amount of information about colours...

Red: On top of the typical ones, red is also "the colour of imagination which evokes feelings of celebration".

Blue: There are no known mentions about blue from the time of ancient Greece. Maybe the people didn't see it as we do?

Green: The colour of persistence, pride, even youth.

Yellow: Black text on yellow background is the best combination for printed paper. :o

Black: "Put on your thinking cap." The saying comes from the habit where the judge places a black cap on his head before announcing a capital punishment.

White: There was a white stone in the temple of the Oracle of Delfoi. The stone was said to be the center of the Earth.

100 Suns

2010-02-13T13:12:00.003+02:00

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

There is something otherworldly in nuclear explosions. The amount of power, destruction and death is overwhelming and completely unimaginable for people who have not witnessed them firsthand. Hopefully no one will ever need to witness them again.

But from the artistic point of view nuclear explosions are very symbolic. Michael Light's book "100 Suns" takes a photographical approach to the subject.

(Pic from Amazon)

I bought the book years ago fascinated by the powerful images of different nuclear bombs, their form, shape and history. The book describes each of the explosions in short details, the name (yes, each bomb was named, and often with very macabre names, too!), where it went off, how big it was and so on. Even if it sounds a bit weird, I used to use the book as a sort of coffee table book, watching the pictures and trying to realise what happened in the explosion, when the atoms got split (or fused if it was an H-bomb) and caused the chain reaction. I find it captivating to think what happens to the air in the explosion, when the shock wave forces clouds to form from clear air, how it proceeds forward and creates a short-lived vacuum until the wind blows back to fill it, etc. It feels completely insane to think that people have ever been able to create something so powerful that it's completely out of their hands when it goes off. No wonder some people said those explosions look like harbinger of death itself.

But still, nuclear explosions are good material for designers. The colours, the mushroom shaped cloud, the force and impact... All is fare in graphic design and war. The winners will eventually set the rules.

Featuring Grable (left), 15 kilotons, Nevada 1953 and Mike, the first fusion bomb, 10,4 megatons, Enewetak Atoll 1952.

Google Street View

2010-02-10T20:10:00.002+02:00

Yes, I admit. Like x number of people in Finland, also I've been checking some familiar sceneries in Google Street View. First, it's a lot of fun, but after some time you start to get tired of the sceneries you see every day anyway. At the moment, though, when the world here is covered in snow and ice, it's quite relaxing to watch the neighbourhood in the summer, as it was when the pics were taken. It's funny how the year is such a long time that you tend to forget about the other seasons...

For me, thinking how it all was about 20 years ago, it feels amazing to browse through such a database. I always wonder what to say, when the children ask me how did it feel like when there was no internet. What did we do with our pastime? (Yes, what did we do? Anyone?) And about 40 years ago they were asking "where were you when Kennedy was murdered?". Now they are bound to ask "where were you when Google car drove past?". And you have to be pretty disciplined, if you go to the Street View and not think even for a second "I wonder what I did last summer". Well, if you are a lucky (or unlucky) one, now everyone will know what you did last summer. For me, it took some time to locate my car, but I'm pretty sure I finally found it. (No, I won't tell you where it is. I leave some room for your dirty imagination.)

Anyway, browsing through the Street View sure gives me some ideas. I wonder if you could use it to ubiquitous or interactive media. When people get tired of geocaching in real life, they can go for the Street View. There sure would be some room for looking for clues.

This pic is by Google (surprise, surprise!)

Breaking the ice

2010-02-08T18:25:00.007+02:00

When it comes to music, my favourite genre is Neue Deutsche Härte. Rather unfamiliar to many people, the only band that's really made it through internationally is definitely Rammstein. I've been a fan of Rammstein since 2000, but it's not the only band of NDH there is. My other favourites in that field are Megaherz and Oomph! but especially Eisbrecher.

I tend to use music as my inspiration, I don't normally use it as a background noise. I love to really listen to it, the words (yes, I can speak German), sounds, mood, etc. I love to close my eyes and feel the energy. And I love to draw ideas and strength from it to create something new.

Some time ago, I used my newly discovered skills with Adobe Illustrator to create this pic of an icebreaker (Eisbrecher in English). I think it became out pretty nice, even if I "only" created the wireframe out of a picture template. Clickety click to see it bigger.

Btw, it's funny, but my favourite cloth brand is also Icebreaker. I fell in love with it in New Zealand.

2010-02-05T16:17:00.005+02:00

In this period, we are learning html coding. It's actually one of my favourite subjects. Looong time ago, I taught myself some basics in it. I didn't get very far, since e.g. CSS was quite new at the time, and I found it too challenging to learn. But I see now that I still remember quite a lot about the subject. I'm happy about that. (I have incredible persistence in certain things. I dwell into the subject for several hours a day. Some of the things I remember learning in such way are html and German language. I wish I could be so enthusiastic about everything. :P)

I don't really know why I like html, I guess I'm nerd enough. (Maybe that's become clear from my previous posts?) I like the organisation in the structure and the "code", when you need to code the special characters, like è, ë or €, into it. Maybe I have masochistic trait in me, huh? But I see every code as piece of art and sometimes I see the whole world the way John Nash sees it in "A Beautiful Mind".

We are still in the beginning of the course, lots more to learn. This weekend I'll try to recall my long-forgotten skills in the field. In a bit more than a month we need to present a self-coded website, so maybe I should start planning. There are so many different group works on at the moment, that I need to organise.

Today is 5.2., Runeberg's Day. For the date, I baked some Runeberg's tortes. It's an annual habit of mine. :) Omnomnom!

Heh, I'm famous

2010-02-03T17:07:00.002+02:00

There is a blog entry in our school's media blog about us IMPs (Interactive Media Programme students) doing the film assignments I talked about in one of my previous posts (here).

I seem to be using the camera as a pro. :) Way to go!

Books and other essentials

2010-02-02T19:12:00.005+02:00

There is quite a lot of professional and not-so-professional literature we need to read for our classes. (We have a great library at school and it's always good for browsing.) I list here few books I've been reading recently. Most of them are mine, start of a good collection, hopefully.

Dinucci/Giudice/Stiles: Elements of Web Design (2nd Edition)
A bit outdated and very basic, but good glance at what is the whole www about. A good read, even if some parts feel like Windows 98.

Steve Krug: Don't make me think!
Entertainingly written package about good webpage design. What to do so that your page won't look like a lawnmower when it's actually V8.

Matthew MacDonald: Creating a Web Site - The Missing Manual
As stated. When you master this, you can code a perfect website and retire to Bahamas when you are 24. Or at least buy another pottle of milk.

Maggie Macnab: Decoding Design - Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication
About subliminal messages in symbols through numbers. (Especially good in logo design.) You never knew how obvious it was, until it was obvious.

Kimmo Pälikkö: Creating Art - Theory & Technique (This book's net version is available for free in the author's website.)
One of my favourite books about picture composition and how to guide the viewer's gaze across the pic to where you want. It has also great examples from famous painters which reveal why some works are so impressive. All in all, an olive in my martini.

Timothy Samara: Design Elements - A Graphic Style Manual
Appealing volume. Know the rules and know when to break them - only in graphic design, not suitable for societies.

Smith/Smith/Gerantabee: Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium All-In-One for Dummies
When you master this, you can create perfect webcontent, retire to Bahamas when you are 24 and shoo off desperate companies wanting to hire you. Or get another pottle of milk.

No book is really worth reading without a proper drink. In New Zealand, I learned what good coffee is about. Unfortunately, in Finland it's pretty impossible to find, so I too often settle for filtered coffee. Here is my friend, George, enjoying some great coffee in the observatory cafe I used to work in:

Power in the lines

2010-02-01T19:00:00.004+02:00

After a weekend packed with two days of work and one exhilarating evening with my two best friends in Turku, I returned to Tampere by train. I've been travelling in trains quite a lot during my life. (Six years ago I underwent women's voluntary military service here in Finland. The garrisons I served in were both pretty far off, so I travelled around 9 to 10 hours a week, mostly in trains.)

There are many things one can do in a train. One of my favourite pastimes is to watch the railroad overhead wires hanging against the sky. Because the sky is often rather featureless and the train is moving quite fast, I soon get the feeling that I am standing still and the wires are the ones that do the movement. Watching them rush forward, cross each other, duck under bridges and avoiding poles is relaxing and extremely hypnotizing. I often listen to the music at the same time and always end up thinking about staff lines, because the wires seem to be moving in the rhythm with the music. The dance with the wires also reminds me of young calves when they get to the spring paddock for the first time. They are leaping around in joy, curious to find out what's behind the next pole.

I am obsessed with power lines in general, too. Currently, I live right next to a railroad and during these severe frosts in Finland this winter I've been adoring the bright blue sparkle between the train pantograph and the contact wire while passing. (When it's cold and moist enough, the wires get frosty and the watery connection forces the electricity to be visible.) Especially when it's dark the sparkle is bright enough to light up my whole room and the surrounding scenery as well with its gloomy cold power. (Heh, the blue-cold notion again. The wires have 25 000 volts and the sparkle can reach 5000 degrees C, so not that "cold"!)

Also plain power lines are close to my heart. When I see power grid lines, I'm often thinking how the electricity hastes through the cables with almost the speed of light across the country. No rush hours, no street jams. Just electromagnetics and pure power. When I was a kid, I thought the grid poles always seemed to look like giant men who are holding the cables up so that they won't touch the ground. Sometimes I just go for a walk outside to follow the lines or to take pics of them. My favourite power pole is located close to the place I used to live in. I always thought it looks like some character from Transformers firing its weapons.

00111010 01000100

2010-01-29T18:11:00.005+02:00

Some time ago, we launched a design club at school. The purpose was and is to help each other with new ideas, share information and give feedback from our works. So, we created IMPD. So far, we've already had some great time with each other. We started a group in deviantArt, where we show our works for evaluation. Today, we got a get together in a form of stencil workshop where we just taped and clipped away for few hours. I didn't really feel like the ultimate-never seen before-oscarpulitzerworth of inspiration coming, so I just ended up with this.

After I did it, I realised how me it is. :D

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Featured article

2010-01-27T16:03:00.005+02:00

I bought this graphic novel "Laika" by Nick Abadzis some time ago from Stockmann. I had browsed through it many times there before and when no one else seemed to be interested in it, I bought it. It's one of the very rare books that make me cry every time I read it.

What I really like about the novel is that it's so well thought over. The facts are quite accurate (and the author stages everything that's not) and the storyline is pure and easy to follow. What I don't like in it is that the pictures are so small. Because there isn't enough room to the drawings, it looks slightly childish. That doesn't create enough respect for anything so professionally done as this novel. It's impossible to say if Laika (or Kudryavka) was so beautiful by nature, but the way it's been depicted here is so cute! I also like the Soviet feeling in the book, it comes out in so many ways from the colours and clothes to the talks and behaviour of the characters.

Laika is a piece of history of spaceflights. I think this novel pays great respect to that poor little dog which became a pawn in the armstice race of two big nations.

http://www.nickabadzis.com/laika/

Inspirational strategies

2010-01-26T19:05:00.007+02:00

Today, I went skating on the ice of the lake Näsijärvi. It was cold, about -20C, but the scenery was lovely since the sun was shining for once. I wondered about the colours of the view. Why is it, really, that cold is always bluish, also in the colour principles? (We had some colour teaching at school last week. It is amazing what you can do with that stuff! Check Coloria.net for more info, even if it's in Finnish only.) Blue is also the colour of extreme heat: the blue part of the flame is the hottest, as are the blue stars, too. (Really blue stars are hotter than 30 000 K.) I guess the blue caused by the refraction is different than emitted blue, but it has to do with the spectral specifications of light, anyway. Cool stuff, literally speaking.

Nonetheless, it was very pretty scenery. I skated under the water vapour coming from Naistenlahti power plant. Under the cloud, the vapour deposited into ice crystals which then snowed over the ice causing some atmospherical phenomena. It all reminded me why I like cold so much. (As long as there's a place where I can get warm.) And it's pretty for inspiration, too.

Today's really been filled with colour after I changed my bed sheet into very bright lime green. I always slightly envy my friend's place. She's got a huge number of small, pretty and personal things which make her place feel more like home than anything I've ever seen. (Well, I must take in account that I've been roaming around the world for few years and still try not to keep too much stuff with me.) Today, though, I was happy after I noticed how nice my bed looks now. It's funny how little extra work like placing pillows nicely on the bed can make you feel so much more relaxed. Here's a detail:

My Indian sari is in the background adding some colour to my room's blank walls. The beaver is my sleep companion I got when I was 3. The pillow is just one of four I've made during the past years. I tend to have fixations towards German bands...

Weird wonders of Ikea

2010-01-25T15:26:00.004+02:00

The design starts from the smallest things. During the Christmas leave I visited Ikea, since my brother wanted to buy a bed and he asked if my car wants to give him a hand. So, we made a short trip deep into the huge blue-yellow box, where everything is perfect and world smells of plastic dreams and global.

Every time I visit Ikea or read their catalogue, I always start to wonder about the product names. They sound Swedish, they look Swedish, but are they Swedish? In many cases, yes. But there are words which don't come up in any dictionaries, even if they do wake associations in the real life. Ikea is an international company, though, and they don't expect everyone in the world to understand Swedish. But in Finland, where it's still our second national language, we are bound to connect the names into something very people-homeish. And Ikea is very good at that.

So, is there somewhere some kind of an Ikea name generator, which spruits out these names when needed? Some kind of a huge Ikea computer (blue-yellow box, of course), which creates random words out of letters? (Of course it discards all of the names that would raise negative feelings, like Gävla, Sjutton and Skit (I did actually check these!) and also everything that hints to racism or other indecent arousals.) Whenever useful words are created, they will be stamped to the products and trolleyed into the vast vaults of Ikea warehouse department.

I think I might have some use for such a name generator. Few days ago, I had great difficulties deciding about the name of this blog, for example. Or think about what kind of ideas you could get out from clever names. If you got an assignment to design, let's say a poster for an anti-nuke campaign, you could just type in the names of the former nuclear devices, set the theme ("explosive" or "radiant") and let the machine work for you some intelligent idea suggestions.

After all, design is all about creating feelings. To know how human mind works is to use it to one's advantage. The key to clever design is the thorough-thought package from the form to the meaning, use and name.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread

2010-01-24T22:34:00.007+02:00

Nothing is cheap, so I have to fund my studies by working. Unfortunately, my current work place is located in my former home town Turku. So, I can mainly only work during the weekends. I guess I could try to find another place here in Tampere, but I love the place I'm working in so much that I don't think I'd be able to find an equal place anywhere. My work place is located on the bank of river Aura, pretty much in the best spot in Turku. It's a big building covered by red bricks and it is surrounded by parks. It is also quite old, this year it will have its 710th official birthday. It is sitting in the middle of Finnish history and culture and it's one of the most famous places in the country. It's also the national building of the Evangelic Lutheran religion in Finland. The place itself is extremely beautiful and filled with stories of the past and present generations. I enjoy profoundly working there and wouldn't be easily lured away from there - even if I needed to travel to Turku every time I wanted to work.

So, this weekend I was working again. Being a caretaker in the Finnish national church is sometimes rather challenging, but it suits my persona. I've been there since 2001 and there're still so many things I don't know... And when you thought you knew all, there's always some tourist coming to ask some really weird stuff and you just have to try to help them the best you can. To get to the grips what my work really feels like, here is a small joke I made during the Christmas period. (Everything always gets accumulated in Christmas and Easter.) The funny part is that this is not really a joke, but rather close to the truth...

Behind the scenes

2010-01-22T21:07:00.004+02:00

Yesterday at school, we studied how to make some video content to homepages, etc. It's actually a longer project, we'll be into it for a few weeks (one day a week). Last week we talked about scripting and a bit about genres and styles to do film shooting. Yesterday we talked about cameras and our teacher showed us how to set the camera settings in professional cameras. It was quite a lot of fun, but really hard to remember since we are not continuosly using those cameras... Setting the white balance and using zebra stripe function in the camera is not exactly what I had in mind when I entered the school, but it's quite useful. And it feels cool to use camera equipment as a real pro. :)

Later, I went to the movies. Some time ago, I got a free movie ticket from our line's teacher, because I had excelled in some organisational things. I had to use the ticket before it expired and it took me some time to decide what to watch. (I'm really bad at going to the movies, I prefer books.) Eventually, I ended up going to watch The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, mainly since it had pretty convincing actor selection. I was amused also to notice how I paid close attention to the camera angles since we had just been talking about them in the school. I also loved the 3D animated parts of the movie. Doing something like that for my work would be awesome!

New beginnings

2010-01-21T21:17:00.004+02:00

After blogging to Livejournal for several years, it feels funny to start a whole new blog in the blogosphere. Still, I find a need for it now. Last autumn I started studies in Tampere University of Applied Sciences (or TAMK) in the line of Interactive Media. I noticed quickly that my old blog felt a bit patched with my personal life and my student life all mixed up. So, with this blog I try to concentrate in the world of media and design, while my old blog at Livejournal can still fulfil its purpose as a window to my life outside school.

I hope I manage to use this blog also as a part of my portfolio, which can later work as an aid when I'm ready for working life. Since my degree in TAMK is conducted in English, I will also write this blog in English. The name, Beta Pictoris, is a name for a star in the Southern Hemisphere sky. Its spectral class is A6V (V being Roman numeral) and it lies appr. 63 light years away. It is specifically known for the protoplanetary disk surrounding it, even if the star itself is not very bright.

I've been amateur astronomer all of my life, and before starting my studies here in Tampere I lived few years in New Zealand. Most of my time I worked as an astronomy guide and I often pointed out Beta Pictoris from the sky. Thinking of new stellar systems being born even at this minute somewhere in the vast depths of our Universe always makes me want to reach for the stars and discover the beauty of imagination. That imagination is something I want to convey in my life and work, too.