…reminds me of this 2004 Spongmonkey classic We like the Moon from Rathergood:

…the moon
it is up in the sky
it’s up there very high
but not as high
as maybe
dirigibles or zeppelins

or lightbulbs.

Oh, should I taste it.

A smoke test trying to submit a blog post from my mobile. Featuring summer, sauna and a butt print.

Why am I staring at the peas? Must be the heat effect.

I’m talking about Animal Crossing, City Folk, the computer game that has a never ending storyline, days and seasons passing in real time. A character moves to a town and begins to live like a villager: house mortgage need to get paid, harvest gathered and friends visited. Activities and events take place same time they happen in real life and there is not an ultimate goal. Life is what one makes of it.

Season had changed, but the villagers are still adorable nutters. Here is a selection of screenshots of what happened.

Baabara was standing outside her house – way past her bedtime. She told me her key fell in the river (even though I am sure they throw it there on purpose).  I fished for over an an hour. When I finally found it and rushed it back to her, she thanked me:

Next I bumped to Merry, a new cat in town. She was wearing a pink daisy shirt and carrying a watering can, so  I expected her to talk about furry things. But the looks are deceiving in Piippola. Her first words to me:

Derwin is my favourite character, an insecure nerd house full of fossils and junk. He approached me sweating the huge drops of anxiety. Big boys had been bullying him again:

It is absolutely ok to talk about vulcans, I told him. Relieved, he went back home  and I continued to look for Harry, the bully. I put on a hockey mask and bun wig to look more intimidating. Finally I found him, an old hippo with  no fashion sense and who mostly comes out at night:

Hmm, seems like he has adapted the word himself. Great, no problem there.

I was happy to see that Buck was sporting DS9 Julian Bashir uniform I had designed. And boy, was he feeling frisky in it:

I have to admit the shirt looks great on him.

Next one out and about was Twiggy, who seemed to have a great night. The canary bird chick seems to have lost all his marbles. Note that it’s not even full moon yet:

Before I finished the game for the night, I bumped to Baabara again, who commented my new style:

Six mad villagers. Piippola nights out, of course I am excited

One of the photos a drunken photographer took in Espa in June.

Eppu Normaali live ^^ first time ever for me. Jannen Jamit, Järvenpää, Aug 2009.

My mum takes awesome photos, it was just a really blurry day A rabbit holding a candle, a gigantic balloon and me. Taidehalli, Aug 2009.

Fingerboard park, Kasarmintori, Helsinki.

Pipilotti Rist‘s video installation in Kiasma. Or a red-haired Finnish fairy. You decide.

Far too soon the evenings have been getting darker and weather colder. Only last week it was hailing when I cycled home from work and I froze half of my remaining brain cells in one go. A bonus pic from Torni‘s ladies’ room; this is what Helsinki is going to look like from now on – but much darker.

From the random photos to Great News: my dear friend Roi is now a married man (Hooray!), the bun is in the oven (Hooray!)  and in April Roi will start a new hobby changing diapers (Hooray!). Gratz to Sonja too, well done! ^^

With Roi in Tuska metal festival, June 2009

Roi has been a great friend of mine all the way from our studies in Southampton Institute. Together we have been to more gigs than an average kid sees in a whole lifetime and now Roi gets to pass his great taste of music to the kid. How lucky is this baby going to be: falling asleep listening to the sweet Gothenburg sound. And naturally, Roi told me these great news in Raised Fist gig. All this will naturally mean less gigs for us together, but it sure happens for a good cause! From metal babies to last weekend’s CLUES TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR: Planet Fun Fun exhibition in Keravan Taidemuseo, where a workmate of mine is one of the displaying artists. Check out the piece below by Petri Ala-Maunus called There is a Place in Heaven for Me and My Kind. I am happy to live  longer knowing I will eventually get to this Jehovan style paradise with added lambs and flames:

In September I turned 35 and am now officially old enough to fit into the cougar age group (aka hunt, prowl, corner, pounce):

A cougar, by my definition, refers to a woman over the age of 35 (or 40 depending on who you ask) that goes out looking for younger dudes to prey on to fulfill their mature urges. While cougars have been around for a long time, they have become increasingly popular over the past few years thanks to the antics of high-profile cougars like Demi Moore, Linda Hogan and Debbie Rowe.

Glad that aging women are trendy now. However, does this mean I will need to start checking ID’s now? Somehow, those hot calculating, man-eating huntresses couldn’t be further from me – I feel more like MacGyver instead. Anyone else old enough to remember the following dialogue in the first ever MacGyver episode:

Colson: “You know, it’s gonna take alot more than you can carry in that knapsack to get you through all this.”

MacGyver: “Well, the bag’s not for what I take Colson, it’s for what I find along the way.”

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Receiving a eggplant from Leena, a representative of the jury.

My kitchen has been under construction since Christmas and only consists of microwave, toaster and kettle. Being a lousy chef, I had no idea what to do with my prize, so I asked my workmates for cooking tips.

Afterwards I found myself suppressing the eggplant in Kaltsu’s comic blog. Gordon Ramsay beware!

Venla Cooking

Venla: Bad eggplant! Bad eggplant!

…

Venla: I have been adviced that one has to make eggplant cry before cooking it.

Kaltsu: I understand.

Turns out my method wasn’t quite what they had in mind. (Tip for other noobs: I now know that making eggplant cry means salting, drawing out the moisture, so that the end cooked product is denser.)

This evening I took part in an interesting virtual meetup. I have been very frustrated with the recent Finnish political decisions considering digital media and laws. Jyrki Kasvi, member of Green League in the Finnish Parliament, is a candidate in the oncoming elections to become one of the representants of Finland in the Europe’s Union. I was keen to hear what he has to say a month before the voting.

The meetup was taking place in Second Life, the grandmother of all the virtual worlds. I have tried the service several times, but due to its clumsiness, dreadful lag, difficult user experience and generally annoying control system, I never got far. But this meeting sounded so interesting, I was willing to give it another go.

I created a default style female avatar, activated my account and the brand new me was ready to hit the road and the skies:

Hello Venlala Petrolhead, Welcome to Second Life! Now, get ready for some fun. A whole new world awaits you where the talk is free and there’s no limit on what you might discover alongside millions of other Residents from across the globe.

Traveling should be easy in virtual worlds, but it never is. I have spend hours on the backs of griffons, bats, raptors, wolves… Name it, I have done it. The instructions say I can simply type “EduFinland I” to the search box and hit teleport button. Brilliant. I do that, but nothing happens. I am still standing in the noob landing platform and there is no error message of any kind. The help guide suggests that I press ‘Detach All’ option before the jump. I obey, but only succeed in losing my character’s helmet (Nice terminator style cloth disappearing effect

Now I am bald and still stuck.

Next the help guide suggests is to fly up to 200 metres height and try to teleport from there. I fly up and press the button. Nothing. The first first fifteen minutes of the meetup is already over. However, I am getting more determined to continue to solve this problem and find out if anyone else has succeeded to turn up.

Five more minutes of scanning the help guide and pressing teleport button repeatedly and then I receive an error message: too many people in the other end prevents me from teleporting. I double-check to find out how big the crowd is. 62 people in the area of 1,000 square metres! There are more people in Orgrimmar AH on all the time on an average Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.

I go make a cup of coffee and wait. Half an hour after the meeting began, I finally manage to teleport to the green Island of Finnish Education. Almost there: the instructions advice me to walk to the signpost and press a red dot labelled ‘meeting point’ . Pressing that would get me to the right place, but none of the meeting points have red dots. Sigh.

I fly around the island, it all looks empty. I manage to find couple of ducks. I give up and sit down in front of the signpost and wait. Another character approaches from the horizon. He comes to me and says that he is lost. Together we explore the terrain until we finally arrive to the meeting. We manage to catch the two last sentences before it is all over.

I managed to get a screen grab and looks like some people had really made it in time. I am the bald one in the front right corner.

I wonder how Second Life can still be as clumsy, difficult and flaky after all these years in development. I was so frustrated after missing this virtual meeting that I did not continue to the virtual beers with the other participants.

I decide to customise my helmetless bald avatar instead. After a good half hour I still haven’t found any decent tools or textures to create anything but solid ugly flat coloured surfaces that would not even qualify for clothing. So, I ask Google for help. How to create skins in Second Life has been queried 14 million times. After scanning through the first tutorial, I don’t even really care anymore. It is amazing how difficult everything is. One has to be good in Photoshop to create anything decent, and even though I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, I just do not have the patience for it.

I hope the next virtual meetup will be held in Habbo, Azeroth, Norrath, Middle-Earth or Eve Online – I might even make it there in time to participate in the debate