It is that special time of year again. Here’s a collection of images from my archives to enhance your holiday spirit.

If that didn’t help, try one of the Christmas radios

Posted by api at 08:30 - No Comments »

Well, I finally made it to redrum last night. To warm up for a night out, we doped up with some cava (Conde de Haro) and a nourishing meal at Grotesk. The tuna pastrami appetizer at Grotesk was excellent, by the way. Grotesk is a fancy fine dining place with relatively high prices on the menu, so I was surprised to see a high profile biker gang complete with emblems over there enjoying the creations of the chefs. It greatly enhanced the already eclectic atmosphere of the restaurant.

After a quick taxi ride, we ended up at Redrum, the club with allegedly best sound system around. Well, after last night I can confirm that the sound system is indeed unbelievable. It is built by Funktion One and combined with the unique interior the music sounded totally out of this world. Maybe I’m just used to the el cheapo systems at other clubs or maybe it was the Cava, but the acoustics in the wood paneled club sounded practically studio quality to me. You could easily chat with your friends without shouting and still hear the music with vibrant clarity. The bass was superbly satisfying as well. I think there are at least 6 or 7 layers of acoustic material on the walls.

If you are visiting Helsinki and dance music is your thing, I highly recommend redrum for the acoustic experience alone. Sometimes they host rock concerts as well.

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Philips, Computed Tomography – Brilliance CT – 64-channel configuration

The Brilliance 64-channel configuration breaks through previous boundaries in CT imaging, providing large volume, thin-slice coverage to improve diagnostic confidence, image quality and productivity.

With 40mm of thin-slice coverage, the 64-channel broadens horizons in cardiac imaging, allowing for unprecedented coronary artery evaluation. The 64-channel configuration also provides breakthrough performance in advanced  pulmonary imaging, multi-organ trauma evaluation and low-dose pediatric applications to boost your clinical capabilities to the highest level attainable.

Remember that story about Tom Cruise buying a $200000 ultrasound scanner for personal use to check his unborn baby? Well, if you have the money to spare, here’s a gadget that any budding scientologist should love, the 64 channel Philips Brilliance! Who wouldn’t want to reach the highest level attainable?

Perhaps one day you will be able to search Google not only for people’s names, but also for their pictures, fingerprints, internal body structure or DNA.

The hottest Christmas present tip this season: a personal fingerprint or DNA poster!

Posted by api at 11:23 - No Comments »

Reuters – EU agrees public funding for satellite project

Supporters say it is a vital technological platform for Europe, but critics say it could be a costly white elephant because the U.S. system already has a dominant market position and Russia and China are working on their own systems.

Berlin had been blocking the use of unspent EU funds partly because it feared German firms could be shut out of major work under the initial tendering scheme, but also out of concern at the precedent of using unspent funds that would otherwise be repaid to member states.

TENDER REDIVIDED

To placate Germany, diplomats said EU leaders could issue a declaration next month pledging that the use of unspent funds for Galileo would remain an exception.

The total cost of Galileo — 3.4 billion euro ($5.1 billion) — is being raised from public funds after private companies declined to carry the risk.

Uncharacteristically, I am going to a political rant mode for a paragraph or two.

“…because the U.S. system already has a dominant market position and Russia and China are working on their own systems”? Isn’t this the main reason why this system is being built in the first place? I am amazed that it has taken this long and that people are not seeing importance of this project. As a mental exercise, just imagine someone pressing a big red button to turn off GPS for everyone else except the American Army. Is it an unprobable scenario? Perhaps it is, but if it happens, there really is no place to call and ask for your money back.

GPS has grown from a military platform to a global, ubiquitous navigation system that has thousands of applications all over the world. It is a mind bogglingly powerful ace card that USA has up their sleeve. They can use that big red button any time they see fit. GPS system’s selective availability could probably be enabled at a relatively small geographical area for a short period of time if needed.

In my opinion, 3.4 billion euros is pocket money to neutralize that threat. Well, granted, it doesn’t take much shoot down a competing satellite positioning system, but it is not only military threats that this system could be used for. Anyway, sometimes it is just time to bite the bullet and show that you have the muscle to get by relatively independently if need be.

This was a tiny little news item at Reuters which probably goes unnoticed by most media. I wanted to highlight it a bit to underline the importance of projects like this instead spending 200 million euros a year on MEPs commuting between Strasbourg and Brussels.

OK, rant mode over, thank you for listening.

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A designer friend of mine, Tuija Järvenpää, has come up with the idea of selling pictures of Christmas trees.

She’s been working with the concept of disposable objects of art for quite some time now. One of her earlier projects was a paper wedding dress. The works are dancing around in the gray area of ecological statements, conceptual art, household items and commercial products.

The paper Christmas trees are actually very large scale ink jet prints. They are 134 cm * 280 cm in size and can be stored in the shipping tube for the next year.

I helped her put together a little online store to make it easier for clients to place an order for the tree. Go ahead and mail her if you want one shipped outside of Finland.

Posted by api at 13:09 - 2 Comments »

Sunshine

The director also considered the story of Sunshine as an appropriate counterintuitive approach for the contemporary issue of global warming, with the death of the sun being a threat. Originally, Sunshine was scripted to begin with a voiceover talking about how parents tell their children not to look into the sun, but once told, the children would be compelled to look. Boyle described the sun as a godly personality in the film, creating a psychological dimension for the astronauts due to its scale and power. The director also described the film’s villain as based on light, explaining, “That’s quite a challenge because the way you generate fear in cinema is darkness.” The director also sought to have the characters experience a psychological journey in which each person is worn mentally, physically, and existentially and is experiencing doubt in their faiths.

I like to get a little dose of science fiction every now and then to keep the subconsciousness nourished with far-out ideas. Sunshine was just what the doctor ordered as far as the science part of the movie is concerned. In the movie a “Q-Ball” , the nucleus of a supersymmetric particle, gets itself lodged in the Sun. The hypothetical Q ball eats through normal matter, ripping apart the Sun’s neutrons and protons and converting them into supersymmetric particles. The Earth’s last and only hope? Why, to launch and detonate a gigantic nuclear bomb to fix the problem, of course!

Here’s an interesting review with the scientific advisor of the film.

Well, science aside, I think the film makers did a pretty good job with many other aspects of the film. The art direction and visual effects in general were well made. More importantly, they were also original and refreshing, which is not an easy task to accomplish in this day and age.

I found it particularly inspiring that the sun was treated as a god-like entity much like the ancient egyptian Sun God Ra and the aztec god Huitzilopochtli. As a matter of fact, sun has been worshipped for all of recorded history.

My personal prediction is that the Sun God is about to get quite angry while us mere mortals are thinning the ozone layer which is protecting us from his angry UVB eye.

Posted by api at 11:43 - 1 Comment »

Scientists develop Terminator-style helmets which allow fighter pilots to see through their planes | the Daily Mail

A futuristic helmet which allows fighter pilots to see through the walls and floor of their aircraft has been developed by scientists.

The high-tech head gear is attached to cameras on the outside of the aircraft, which project pictures of the plane’s surroundings onto the inside of the pilot’s visor.

The pilot then has 360 degree vision of the world around the plane, allowing x-ray style vision.

This is for the European F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It will also impose infra-red imagery on to the visor to allow the pilot to look through the cockpit floor at night and see the world below.

Posted by api at 19:09 - 3 Comments »

Eye-Fi Wireless Card

Eye-Fi uses home wireless networks to eliminate the time-consuming chore of dealing with cables, card readers or software plug-ins associated with uploading photos. Users simply turn on their digital camera and their pictures are wirelessly uploaded. The Eye-Fi Card works with existing and new SD-compatible digital cameras and stores photos like a conventional SD memory card.

How on earth did they manage to cram a 2 GB memory chip and a wi-fi chip the same card? I remember when a 1 GB hard drive used to cost a thousand dollars and wireless networking required great big satellite dishes.

Well, times they have a-changed and now you can pop in a memory card that uploads your photos automatically via wi-fi as you take them. I am curious if you can also upload your photos directly to iPhoto or if you can only upload them to online services. It does seem to support a wide variety of different services including Facebook, Flickr and the open source Gallery software. At $99 it’s not an expensive add-on if you need something like this for real-time coverage of an event for example.

Posted by api at 11:44 - No Comments »

Micro-Compact Low E-Home

The micro-compact low e-home is all-electric and powered by photovoltaic solar panels of 8 sqm with a small diameter vertical axis wind generator.

Day-time excess power is diverted into the grid. Night-time power is provided by the wind turbine and reserve batteries. Heating and air conditioning is ducted to each of the four function spaces. Long duration LED lighting is used internally and for the external walkways.

I wouldn’t call it exactly portable at 2 metric tonnes of weight, but it is an interesting and quite well though out concept. The Micro Compact home web site has several other variations of this shelter. The price is around 34000 euros per unit.

On my recent trip to Lappland, I met a guy who had built a small transportable fibre glass home mounted on a sledge. It could be moved around with a snow mobile and could house him and his dog. I think that architects who design miniature houses like the Micro Compact home could really learn a lot by interviewing people who have actually built and used homes like this in the real life. Sometimes there is a bit of an ivory tower situation between the architects and the real world users of portable homes.

And don’t let me get started on the huge RV truck conversions that they are building in USA. Sometimes they have a small garage built in the truck for another vehicle. Check out this example of these gas guzzling monsters.

Posted by api at 10:35 - 1 Comment »

CSS: CANSEI DE SER SEXY “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex”

This is the soundtrack to a consumer made iPod commercial that made it big time. It’s being remade in hi-def by TBWA for broadcast use.

Consumers creating commercials “is part of this brave new world we live in,” said Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer at TBWA Worldwide, based in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa del Rey.

“It’s an exciting new format for brands to communicate with their audiences,” Mr. Clow said. “People’s relationship with a brand is becoming a dialog, not a monolog.”

Check out the YouTube video that caught the eye of the ad agency.

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Treetents

Originally developed by Dutch designer Dré Wapenaar—who was commissioned by a non-profit to make the lives of tree-sitting activists a little easier—these tear-shaped tents hang suspended several feet off the ground. Though never actually used to stop chainsaws, since 1998 they’ve been in use at the Hertshoorn campsite, sleeping up to a family of four on the interior platform, which has about a nine foot diameter. More recently Wapenaar’s also added a bivouac for mourning the dead and an orb-shaped birthing tent (featuring a central pool) to his repertoire.

I’ve slept in a hammock out in the woods a few times just to test it out, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not all that practical for most environments. For some unknown reason, all these different variations of tree based shelters really fascinate me. It must some sort of primal instinct of getting up there on a tree for safety during the night.

On a totally different note, I remember reading a detailed description of a radically different kind of tree shelter. I think it was in a Vietnam war related book (perhaps the sniper autobiography One Shot, One Kill which Reko borrowed to me?). Anyways, it was a square metal platform that was secretly placed to the upper foliage of a jungle by a transport helicopter. It acted as a base for a group of commando soldiers who lowered themselves to the ground every now and then to fight behind the enemy lines. The only safety it provided was that you couldn’t see it from the ground unless you knew what to look for. Somehow, metal doesn’t seem like the right kind of material to build a stealth base like that. One would think that every little trinket you drop on the platform would make a loud noise like a church bell.

Stealth camping is a concept that is closely linked to hammock camping in general.

camping overnight on land that is unmarked or signed, unimproved, unfenced and away from habitation without anyone’s consent or knowledge using the Leave No Trace principles.

Posted by api at 08:16 - 4 Comments »

RISCON Tokyo: Security and Safety Trade Expo 2007

*RISCON：A word coined from “Risk ( Danger, Crisis )” and “Control ( Administration, Management )”. This word connotes our aspiration to: “Control risk to the fullest despite unavoidable difficulty.”

Seriously, how far can you go with this anti-terrorism thing? It seems to me that in many historical periods there has been an external threat that has kept the society more or less organized.. keeping busy to keep the threat at bay.

Wrath of Gods, neighbouring nations, dragons, terrorist cells.. there is always something to keep an eye for.

Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but the it’s practically impossible to avoid this subject matter while keeping up to date with the modern media. I stumbled upon this picture while browsing China Daily!

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To create truly striking digital art images, it is often necessary to combine computer procesesses with various analog source material. It’s difficult the resist the abstract beauty of the digitally colored incense smoke photographs. I think the whole concept and production method was invented more or less single handedly by Graham Jeffery. He shared his method at his Sensitive Light site. The Flickr group Art Smoke now has more than 500 photographs.

Posted by api at 20:11 - 2 Comments »

Well, I’m back from the wilderness. The bogs proved to be way too deep for my Scarpa alpine hiking shoes. I spent quite a few nights by the campfire drying my feet, shoes & socks. I also spent two nights at one of the most scenic wilderness huts in Lappland, the Vaskolompolo hut. Two other outdoor enthusiasts joined me to spend the night at the safety and comfort of the hut. One of them was Reijo, a retired border guard and the other one was Ivalo-Joe, a friendly gold miner who was hunting for bears in the area. He had a superb hunting dog with him called K.A. Lotti. I spotted a few bear droppings myself.. and half a dozen moose who chose to run away with great commotion and noise when I approached them.

We spoke about the habits of the animals, gold mining legends and other interesting and very non-urban subjects. During the first night there were some nice Aurora Borealis on the sky and we took the opportunity to take a few long exposure shots of them. (The new Aurea models by Philips remind me of them, by the way)

Once again, I was completely enchanted by the nature and the people of the North. I plan to return over there again and perhaps even do some gold panning one day. I heard that many men have panned the gold for their own wedding rings in the old days.

After I’ve returned to Helsinki, I’ve been a bit busy with work and real estate deals, so I haven’t had time to upload photograhs from the trip, but I’ll try to do it later. We’ll be moving to a new address next week.

Posted by api at 10:01 - 1 Comment »

Great Worldwide Star Count

Bright outdoor lighting at night is a growing problem for astronomical observing programs around the world. By searching for the same constellations, participants in the Great World Wide Star Count will be able to compare their observations with what others see, giving them a sense of how star visibility varies from place to place. The observers will also learn more about the economic and geographic factors that control the light pollution in their communities and around the world.

“Without even being aware of it, many of us have lost the ability to see many stars at night,” Ward says. “The Great World Wide Star Count will help raise awareness of the importance and the beauty of the night skies.”

My father’s father was a bit of an eccentric. Among his other achievements (of being the director of an aeroplane factory and a fire station) he painted stars on the ceiling of his sauna. The exact reasons for this remain a bit unclear to me.

Light and sound pollution are an increasingly serious problem, especially in densely populated areas. In this year’s Banff Mountain Film festival I saw a collage-style animated film called Conversing with Aotearoa. In an interview segment, various outdoor enthusiasts were asked “When do you feel that you are out in the wilderness?”. I couldn’t agree more with the person who said “When I can no longer hear the sounds of the civilization.”

On Monday, I’m off to the most remote village in Finland. The village of Lisma is located deep within Lemmenjoki national park in the parish of Inari. It is my departure point for a 10 day solo expedition to the Øvre Anarjóhka area in Norway.

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