-Forbidden by Balakov, Deviantart

Epilogue

Venlala has left the Love Boat and returned to the shore.

Many of my work colleagues are talented artists. The Love Float was intended to be published in our collaborative comic book project. Little did we know back then that 2009 would bring unexpected and difficult changes that would eventually affect all the people involved in the project.The book never happened, but this story survived.

It all began a year ago, when I received a one-liner email from my friend Cathy: “This wasn’t your doing, was it?”

The mysterious Brighton Lego Man was all over the news: BBC, Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun, Flickr and Youtube:

The story of the lonely floating Lego man started to live in my head. It had to be told, it had to be drawn. I dedicate it to:

Cathy: You asked – this is what happened the night before.

My Sulake colleagues – especially Juha, who only has three days left: What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Thank You!

Luckily, next Sunday I might get my revenge and pass the bug on, when my god-daughter Kaisa also turns seven. I asked her mum what I should get as a present. Katariina (my cousin) replied:

Do NOT under any circumstances bring any small animal toys, anything to do with princesses, any pink items or cute fluffy toys.

I guess raising three daughters leads to a parental pink overdose.

Anyone who has experience with working with a designer knows that they tend to be moody, oversensitive, egoistic and unorganised people with absolutely no concept of deadlines . If project managers didn’t have to spend all their time whipping their backs, nothing would ever get delivered. Ever.

And this project had no manager.

Neil Gaiman once visited Helsinki Comic Festival and told the audience one of the wisest pieces of advice I have ever been given:

How does one get published?

How do you do it? You do it.

You write.

You finish what you write.

I don’t think this comic book will see the daylight, so I am going to publish my own story page by page every Monday. Print is overrated anyway

So, Here is the first page of The Love Float. I will tell more about it after the last page, I won’t spoil the plot for you. Starring Venlala, hope you will enjoy it.

Now how much FUN is this going to be!

I will participate in Valentine’s party Saturday evening, because of the tiny voice in my head reminding me that I have to socialise more to meet guys that are not made of polygons. Blah blah yawn, but at least I got the whole Saturday morning for the ultimate coolness of building a Lego house from the scratch.

Talking about other fun things to do during the dark Finnish nights, I bought me a copy of a computer game based on Sapkowski’s best-selling book The Witcher – Thanks Bohdan for introducing it to me last year in Sydney . The stories are far from the typical fantasy-for-kids genre and at least the following review hints that the style has been maintained in the game:

…a bit of gore and also some heavily implied sexual themes and nudity. Decapitations do happen, and people can get incinerated by flames; nude or semi-nude bodies are shown as well, with sexual hookups occurring throughout each chapter if so desired.

If so desired? Hmm. Who wouldn’t so desire?

The Last Wish book cover

Even more cool stuff: this morning it was published that Google bought an old paper mill in Hamina from Stora Enso and will turn the empty factory to a full blown data centre. I first thought that the story was an April fool leaked too early, but it all started to make more sense when the news revealed that the real reason behind the deal was Google’s interest in Russia. Previously the Russian data traffic has been managed from Sweden, but the new FRA law, a Swedish legislative package that was launched in January, angered the Russians. Can’t blame them, since the FRA law “authorizes the state to warrantlessly wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses Sweden’s borders” (Wikipedia). What an idiotic law is that, and furthermore, why would anyone ever vote for it… This is madness

Now that Sweden was mentioned, I actually did recently ordered me a Piratebay T-shirt for support: the court case against four TPB related people begins next Monday charges being ‘assisting copyright infringement’. Several copyright holders are claiming over $100 million in damages. Phew, that is a lot of money. TPB will stream the audio of the trial online from their übercool bus a.k.a. TPB Media Center.

Enough for slagging off Swedes, Finland currently has its own ongoing legislative issues with the proposed Lex Nokia:

The so-called ”Lex Nokia” – also known as the ”snooping law” – would allow employers to investigate the log data of employees’ e-mails, if the company has reason to suspect that corporate secrets are leaking out of the company or that the employer’s communication networks are being misused.

It is a dorky proposal indeed, because it doesn’t only allow employers, but also schools, universities, libraries, councils etc. a greater authority than the police currently have. To gain access to similar information, the police need to get a warrant from a court if it has reason to suspect that a crime has been committed. It has been hinted that Nokia has been putting pressure on the legislation. In a country this small, the company the size of Nokia has a huge influence. I will keep my fingers crossed that the politicians do not vote for it: I have joined Pysäyttäkää Lex Nokia (Stop Lex Nokia) Facebook group and signed the online petition Pysäytetään Lex Nokia. Please, do the same, it is for a good cause.