2002

Tue, Jul 30

<17:43> There's some funky stuff around 800 kHz AM[bient] radio. Interludes sound Russian so this might not be audible outside the Baltic region. I checked out the AM frequencies for nature's own ambient, but this one sounded too kewl to be stochastic noise. My equipment sucks (FM/AM Walkman, no external antenna, connected to my precious Latvian amp) but the added noise isn't really that bad :-)

Sun, Jul 28

<23:48> Such a trippy day. The realization that I'm profound bored. Hope next week at work could bring some challenges. Watched the film Fisher King in quite a sensitive mood. Thought my mind was temporarily shattered and focusing on the film was one way of keeping it all moderately together. In essence I feel exceptionally weak of psyche right now.

New incidents of Illuminated number mysticism keep appearing. One of them is particularly interesting, so strong but unnoticed because it was so familiar: This town Varkaus is situated at the intersection of highways numbered 5 and 23.

Tue, Jul 23

<23:05> Last week, among other books, I read the rather fresh novel by Risto Isomäki, "Herääminen". Again there is more than a hint of enviromental propaganda involved, as the story is built around an end-of-world scenario based on the accelerated greenhouse effect. The scientific background is now more convincing than before, and the author's afterword reflects his own surprise because more evidence has been gathered after he formulated the plot.

On the negative half-space, the general effect and immersion of the story has not developed significantly since his previous novels, "Gilgameshin tappio" and "Pimeän pilven ritarit". This is not to undermine the fact that all three novels are brilliant; rather it's an interesting fact that the style is so consistent, even disturbingly so. Also I have the familiar feeling that I could write something like that myself -- which of course is stupid because I still haven't. Work and/or studies are just bad excuses.

Talking about work, there have been moments lately when I've woken up in the early hours, seen the sun rising, and all I was thinking of was the light's spectrum. And how we only measure three distinct wavelengths instead of the hundreds accessible via modern instruments. Imagine the beauty if we could see that way. Or perhaps it's more interesting to imagine the brainpower necessary to comprehend all that visual data.

Mon, Jul 22

<19:23> Willow resurrected after a week's sleep. More than the fuse had been singed in the power supply. It was too complicated even for me to fix, and for some ingenious reason they couldn't either, and I had to spend a whopping 80 ebucks for the new one. PRKL. Though I must admit it's been nice and quiet at home without it, and I've got my net fix at work.

Mon, Jul 15

<00:28> Tommi's graduation party in Kuopio last night was a decent reflection of our past IB student life. Sauna, the traditional coffee and cakes, auxiliary fluids, night out, a swim on the way back to more sauna, more fluidics, lasting until about 9am Sunday morning. Lots of good discussions on reality and other stuff. Minibar was an interesting place that specializes in cocktails. It was a good induction for Antti into Tommi's gang as we will probably be meeting again.

<23:26> Lightning got close. Looked like it fried Willow's power supply. Love the smell of burning electronics.

Hate the way they make them these days. No screws at all. Pried the damn thing open. There's a fuse to replace, but to access that one I'll have to open a metallic sheath (soldered together) and solder off the fuse from the board. Insane, innit? Like it ever was meant to be replaced. At least the fuse stopped the surge from going up the willow trunk. But now it's too late for soldering. It's friggin July and some people are going to work tomorrow morning.

Fri, Jul 12

<23:34> Done with the first week of work. There's a lot about this lifestyle I don't like, and these days it's physically hard because of the heat, and lack of decent air conditioning. On the other lobe, there's something absurdly fun(ny) about the whole thing. Like my dad said the other day, life is just a big show.

Sun, Jul 7

<01:41> A weekend at the summer place
or
How the two masters doctored up the pike with the Professor

Friday to Satruday was my first whole night at the summer place. Dad had bought the property at Rantasalmi last year, and so far there's only a simple logde and a storage/sanitary unit. No sauna or kitchen or anything yet. So we (me with parents) prepared not much differently from a camping trip in a tent, except the lodge is of course more protective.

There's a lot of hard work to do there, and I won't bore you much with the details. Suffice to say that the groundwork for the upcoming cottage with sauna is progressing.

Friday afternoon looked warm and sunny, in fact the best weather ever I've experienced this summer @fi. Surprised we were as the thunderstorm approached. The colour scenes were interesting and I went to the shore with my camera. It was one of the heaviest winds I've felt and it was massive cool. Rain and lightning started, and mother called me back inside. I guess it wasn't going to be really fun after all. It would have been hard to catch the lightning pictures anyway.

After the storm passed, we had some typical camping dinner (remember I'm not a hardcore vegan), and around 10pm dad and I went fishing on the boat. At the opposite side of the lake there was a nice rushy area. Eventually, as I had red-lined silver Professor 4 on my ultra light set, I got lucky. It took several minutes to tame the pike (later estimated to be around 1.5 kg) and it was great fun with my UL set. For the record, I have a 0.18 mm line with a tensile strength of 2.4 kg. Dad (M.Eng.) helped getting it up to the boat. That one pike was enough so we headed back.

Late into the night, around 0:30 am, I got out to take a leak and noticed a bright dot of light on the ground, some dozen meters away. Getting closer the light looked exactly like a green LED. Some wild ideas went through my mind. Alas, it was a glow-worm, but it was cool anyway as I'd never seen one before. I saw one more, and dad saw another.

Pike for lunch the next day. Delicious. News of the previous night's storm reached us and it had been a major disaster in many places @fi. We'd been quite lucky with all the trees and buildings remaining intact. I'd been lucky fishing, and happy to see other wonders of the nature. I've mentioned the psychedelic textures of nature before :-).

Thu, Jul 4

<00:33> Wednesday's visit to the summer cottage was a major improvement on the previous, as the weather was brighter and without any rain. Barbecued corn and painted some walls.

There's yet another flashback/connection I got the other night. Recall Leena Krohn's anthology Mitä puut tekevät elokuussa; its titular story is basically a psychedelic trip in a botanic garden. I read the book months ago, but now I understand much better what really happened.

<01:21> Light outside, and it's nearly a fortnight since the summer solstice.

In the Easter holiday I started reading Mirrorshades (you know, the anthology that defined Cyberpunk) but couldn't finish as I had to return the book. Now as I'm continuing, the first story is Solstice by J. P. Kelly where psychedelic substances converge with the history and power of Stonehenge in a midsummer festival. Remember the date of my trip?

So many coincidences that I'm starting to ignore the effect. It's like I'm on a well defined path in life, getting 'signs' more and more often, as if there's an important destiny for me. Will this ever end? On the other hand it could be my 'pattern recognition' working overtime -- of course there are myriads of non-coincident events taking place all the time.

I still think this mysticism with numbers and other interlockings is just a good laugh, and might make good material for fiction. But like any joke, if it's constantly being repeated it's not fun any more...

Mon, Jul 1

<23:17> So much things to organize here at home. I'm more concerned about the state of my room now that I'll stay here for several months.

Playing with the old AST 486-33 again. Crunching d.net RC5 at a slow but steady rate of 32 kkeys/s :-). It's so quiet it can be running all the time so it's worth about one hour of Willow time per day.

A pleasant surprise on TV: Watched the talk show Kirvesmiehet whose topic was Steiner pedagogy. One of the guests was my friend Juho, whose mother is a Steiner activist, and he himself is the head of the youth section of Kokoomus party.