Here there be Tygers

Back from the EC

So, the VTES 2009 European Championships are now over, and we’re back from Palma de Mallorca (Spain). Us Finns didn’t score too well this time around (with a couple of exceptions), but otherwise the trip was a blast. Flying from cold, dark and drizzly Finland to warm and sunny Mallorca was a nice beginning, and for once the hotel actually did live up to expectations and pictures. The rooms were nice (our apartment suite was close to the pools), the food was excellent, the staff friendly, and in general almost everything went smoothly. The games did have a tendency to start very much behind schedule, but since I could spend that time sipping sangrias on the sunny terrace I didn’t mind too much.

I was already qualified (thanks to running the Ropecon tournament), so on Friday I decided to play in the sideline “Friday the 13th” tournament, organized by Tiago and Teresa. Was a lot of fun, though my Akunanse deck wasn’t quite up to the challenge; managed to scrape together two half-VPs due to two timeouts. The storyline rules did slow the game down a bit, so we had more timeouts than normal. Still, had a lot of fun. I thought I was packing a lot of combat, but the first round stuck between Matt’s Potence rush deck and someone else’s celerity gun intercept deck taught me differently.

Saturday it was time for the EC day one tournament. I picked my Anarch Cry Wolf Khazar deck for this… it has a lot of bounce, some rush, and I thought it might have a chance. Well, it didn’t work out, the day ended with zero VPs. There were a few close calls where I almost got a VP, but “almost” doesn’t count. In the end, the deck (though decent) wasn’t quite resilient enough and it was simply too slow for this metagame. Lots of powerbleed, fast votes (Panders etc) and other fast, brutal decks. Oh well. The games were fun in any case, and everyone was very nice and sportsmanlike. After talking about it, I got some nice ideas from Janne and other people, and have since tweaked the deck to be more efficient – dropped it down to 80 cards, tightened up the combat module, etc.

Sunday was the First Chance tournament, where I tried out my !Toreador/Daughters tap&bleed deck. Still not all that much luck, but things went a bit better: got 1 VP on the third round, and both of the first games had me with my prey at one pool. One is unfortunately a lot more than zero, but still… I’m pretty happy with how the deck performed in general. In hindsight, I probably would have gotten another VP if I had played my hand (a combo of tap cards, Freak Drive, and Siren’s Lure) a bit differently. I’ve since also modified this deck, also paring it down to 80 cards and hopefully making it run a bit more tightly. Will need more playtesting.

Janne had better luck, he was playing his deadly Fortitude weenie horror all weekend. He almost made it to EC day 2, which is very well done. On the other hand, lots of normally high-scoring Finns ended up at around my number of VPs (i.e. zero-to-one). Weird.

As traditional, I didn’t get all that much sleep. Usually went to bed around 2am after playing all day and night and drinking quite a bit on the side…. and then it’s up before 8am, in time to register for the next day’s games and eat breakfast. Still, those 6 hours proved to be enough, I wasn’t totally zoned out or anything. We played quite a few games with Team Denmark (great guys), with some of the games held at out apartment suite – we had a fridge, lots of salmiakkivodka & beer, and two game-worthy tables. Luxury.

So. Great trip, really felt like a vacation (despite lack of sleep and little real “rest” at any point). If was great to meet and play with lots of fun people once again (LSJ&Oscar, we demand that Imbued toilet paper!). Huge thanks to Ginés for organizing this, and to everyone else who helped. Meeting the Portugese guys was great, thanks Tiago and others! Likewise for the Italians, thanks Paolo and everyone for great company and fun games. Even though not everyone could speak all that much English (hey, my Italian is worse!), things worked out.

This was probably the best EC so far, for me. The sunshine and sangria helped.

Extrala brings us some VTES EC essential vocabulary, along with results and some pictures.

Oh, and Scott is a Cylon. Duh. […]

Card with an identity problem

Got a call from Luottokunta (the company managing most/all Finnish credit cards), asking me if I was in Finland at the moment. I said yes, and that I had been here for 3+ weeks now. Turns out that someone has been using “my Visa” in the States during the weekend, buying all sorts of weird stuff from K-Mart, Stop&Shop (whatever that is), and even a burger from McDonalds(!). Since it obviously wasn’t me (hell, we didn’t even visit McDonalds once during our trip), I told them to close the card at once.

Should not be a problem financially, I can easily prove that I was on the other side of the globe at the time. But it is a big hassle. I have to change my card info to various places (Eve Online, EMusic, etc), and to begin with I have to wait a week or so till I get a new card. Since that thing also contains my debit card, I’ll have to resort to the old-fashioned visit to the bank in order to get cash in the meantime. And of course I have to write a letter to Luottokunta once I get this month’s bill, itemizing which charges aren’t mine. Sigh.

Oh well, at least Luottokunta monitors card use in a competent fashion. Apparently the fact that the same card had been used on opposite sides of the globe at more or less the same time raised some red flags.

So… apparently someone managed to copy my card at some point when it was out of my grasp (restaurant, most likely). Or there was an illegal card reader installed at some gas station pump, or some such. It happens, but it’s always annoying. […]

...and back

Back in drizzly Finland. Actually, back almost a week ago.

Trip went well, and even though it was a very “active vacation” it left me feeling relaxed and I feel I’ve been away for a long time (even though it’s only been a month). We visited Iceland, then flew over to California & Burning Man. Janka provides some trip recap in her blog, so I won’t repeat (much) of that here. I took a ton of photos – nearly 2000 – but then again more than half of those were 3-picture HDR composites, and then after the obvious failures are weeded out… well, the number of “reasonable” shots left is a lot smaller. Still, took lots of pics. The batch from Iceland is now available (slideshow), I’ll add the rest later once I get them processed.

Since I don’t have pics available yet I also won’t talk about the U.S. or Burning Man here, leaving that for later.

So, Iceland. I found the country quite amazing. Sure, it was expensive, and sure, it’s small and insular – but somehow, that insularity wasn’t as annoying as it can sometimes be in Finland. Maybe it’s just the fact that I was only on a short visit and didn’t see the reality of things, or maybe it’s also other things: I found the Icelandic elitist megalomania quite refreshing (compared to the Finnish traditional cultural inferiority complex), and the fiercely independent ethos of the people was also very appealing. Sure, Finland is supposed to also have some degree of that, but I think that died out at some point in history and was replaced by a general “it’s not my fault, I’m a victim of society!” outlook. Having said that, there do seem to be a lot of common points between Finland and Iceland: tiny, insular societies that speak an incomprehensible language, endless long dark winter months, a love of (lots of) alcohol, lots of beautiful unpolluted nature.

…but as always, it’s the differences that charm you. I’m a sucker for harsh landscapes, and the Icelandic volcanic wasteland was just too cool for words at times; especially so during our hike of the Laugavegur 55km mountain trail. Some of the scenery up there was just breathtaking. Culturally, I mentioned the elitism… I guess it’s because according to the Icelanders, the Vikings did pretty much everything first, better and with more style than anyone else – and naturally enough, Icelanders are direct descendants of said Vikings. Somehow, all the rape and pillage involved gets a lot less press over there… In any case, while the place felt very insular, it didn’t feel annoyingly so; in fact, it felt quite charming to me. Oh, I’m sure the “everyone knows everyone else” thing gets old fast if you live there, but that’s just how it goes.

The music scene in Iceland is amazing, and the same applies to the arts scene in general… for some reason, it seems that arts are very much respected there culturally and pretty much half the population dabbles into some artistic pursuit. You could explain it away with “well, they have to do something during those long winter months”… but then again, why do Finns use those same months to plan suicide (or axe murder) and drown their depression with Koskenkorva?

Yes, I kid. Finns get artistic too, and I’m sure Iceland has its share of suicides, alcohol and depression. But still, you have to admire the amazing artistic scene in Iceland, especially when you compare to the population count (about the size of your average larger metropolis). To me, the music was (and is) especially impressive.

About that music… I have to mention the record store 12 Tónar. At the time we visited I wasn’t aware that it’s also a record label, and “home” of many known Icelandic musicians. We just saw an advertisement about “lots of Icelandic music!” while strolling around and decided to drop in. Glad we did. Since I didn’t know much about current local bands, I walked up to the guy behind the counter and asked for some recommendations, saying I was familiar with Björk & Sigur Rós and had a fairly eclectic taste in music. Now, that sort of approach generally tends to work in many non-chain stores, but here I got especially nice treatment. The guy gathered a pile of 8-9 CDs and said “start with those”, then sat me down at one of the many eclectic CD-players scattered around. He also brought me a cup of (free) espresso. That’s what I call service. In general, the place was what a good record store should be like (but all too seldom is): knowledgeable & friendly staff, comfy surroundings, and freedom to listen to a lot of stuf in peace. I ended up buying two records: “Það kólnar í kvöld…” by Rökkurró (excellent alt-folk-pop sung in Icelandic) and “Clangour” by Sin Fang Bous (weird but fun music, sung in English). Janka picked up an album of Viking poetry set to an ambient music soundtrack.

So… yes, I liked Iceland a lot. The food was great (though expensive), the atmosphere was nice, and the scenery awesome. I also really liked the language, it’s actually the first Scandinavian language I have any larger interest in learning – which is inconvenient, since it’s also arguably the most generally useless of said languages. Whatever, it’s quite pretty (in a weird fashion), and while it reads a small bit like Swedish etc, the pronounciation is almost totally alien.

I probably want to visit again, sometime down the road. Armed with a large travel budget, since the place was very expensive – and I say this as someone from Helsinki, one of the more expensive cities in the world.

After 1.5 weeks in Iceland, we hopped aboard a plane again and headed off towards the land of the free(ish) and home of the paranoid. More about that later. […]

Leaving normal, once again

Now I’m leaving normal and I’m heading for who knows where

–Cowboy Junkies, “Leaving Normal”

More or less dropping off the grid now. Flight leaves in… all too few hours, I should already be trying to grab a few hours of sleep. Maybe I will.

Tomorrow Iceland, then in a few weeks Black Rock City. I can already smell the playa dust.

P.S. The Ropecon VTES tournament report is now up. Enjoy. […]

Scorchio!

Even though it’s hard to believe it now, with rain drizziling down from a leaden sky, last weekend was “Scorchio!”-tastic around the Turku-Hanko seaside (Kasnäs, to be more exact). Even though there’s a lot of trip prep stuff to do, we decided to take the weekend off and go sailing for a few days on a friend’s boat (well, boat belonging to a friend’s parents, to be more exact). We drove down there Friday after work, arriving at the marina a bit after 9pm, after which we settled down for a quick onboard dinner and some drinks. The marina had wifi connectivity, which was a new feature for me even though I’m told it’s quite common nowadays. Somehow, sitting in a sailboat and browsing the web on a netbook was a bit strange. I got over it.

The next two days were hot. Unfortunately they were also a bit on the overly calm side, so we just motored around on Saturday. Sunday the wind had picked up a small bit so we unfurled sails and did some actual sailing. Nothin fancy, but it’s always more pleasant to move on windpower instead of marine diesel… at least when the weather is nice.

Good short trip, and it helped reduce pre-vacation stress levels a bit. Now we’re approaching the point where we actually have to start packing soon; so far we’ve just made checklists of stuff to bring and have done some shopping along the same lines. I got a new camera bag (well, two actually), a new carbon fiber tripod, a small Gorillapod, and some other stuff. Photowise I should be all set now, and I also tested the workflow from CF card to card reader to netbook (Lightroom) to home workstation (Lightroom with some actual processing power). Seemed to work fine. Also cleaned the camera sensor (long overdue and cause for angst on previous Lapland trip) and updated the camera firmware to latest.

It’s always the same thing before a long trip abroad. The few weeks before are hectic; you try to tie up loose ends at work, you try to think of all you’ll need, you try to finish off the most critical parts of your “todo” list. Once you actually get on the plane things lighten up, before that it’s always a bit of a hassle. All this is magified a bit, since we need to do some “extreme packing”: first we go hiking in Iceland, in an area in which there is a real possibility of snow even at this time of year. Then we go to the Nevada desert and Burning Man, where temperatures around +40C are quite possible. Oh, and everything needs to both fit in the airplane loggage allowance and be as portable as possible. We have some experience at this already so it’s not as bad as it could be… but it still needs quite a bit of planning. This will also be the first actual field test for our new high-tech Hilleberg Nallo 3 GT tent, both in Iceland and at Burning Man. If our trusty Terra Nova Ultra Quasar has managed Burning Man, the Hilleberg should too. But we’ll see. […]

Back in from the cold

We’re back, more or less in one piece. Was a great trip; even though I was initially a bit sceptical of the idea of camping in subzero temperatures for a week, it turned out to be very cool (pun intended). Nice physical workout too – even though our daily distances weren’t much worth mentioning, the act of skiing with a backpack on your back is work in of itself. It was a strange and somewhat alien feeling to find out that you can both survive and be quite comfortable while camping out on an icy plain, in temperatures that would kill an unprotected person fast. As long as you have proper equipement and know what to do, you don’t have a problem.

In total, we slept 4 nights out in the wilderness in a tent and 2 in wilderness huts. The first “hut stop” wasn’t an intended one; we originally intended just to stop there for lunch and then soldier on, but then Janka’s ski binding suddenly broke (in a non-fixable fashion) and our stay became an overnighter. The hut (which thankfully was close by at that point) was out of GSM range, so we sent a written note back to Kilpisjärvi via some snowmobile-equipped visitors and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, the next morning the Border Guard guys came along and dropped off a pair of skis plus ski boots, obtained from the Kilpisjärvi Travel Center (Retkeilykeskus). Wow, that’s both “my tax dollars at work” and damn good service. A huge thanks to both parties, and also to the couple who carried our note back.

Things I learned:

• winter/arctic camping is actually quite fun, assuming you have good gear and good company
• despite what some claim, for a beginner it’s not easier to ski with a backpack as compared to a pull-along sled (“ahkio”, in Finnish). The weight of the backpack made ski control a lot more tricky than it needed to be, and during difficult descents my legs tired very fast – and the backpack wasn’t even that heavy, 18kg or so.
• always remember to check camera lens for dirt after each day of shooting. Didn’t do it this time, and as a result I have a lot of nasty splotches in the raw “footage” that ends up consuming a lot of post-processing time.
• even though it’s not a pro body, our trusty Canon 20d performs well in subzero extended stays, too. A week in arctic temperatures and 300+ pictures: no problems, and no need to swap batteries. Impressive.
• next time I’ll take along an extra pair of “technical” long underwear. Even though I did ok with just one, baing able to switch to a clean set halfway through would have increased my comfort level.
• wool-padded winter (rubber) boots plus thick wool socks rock for camp footwear.
• next time I’ll probably want to have my own set of skis, preferably with some (small) telemark-suitable site cuts. The borrowed set I had along now performed fine, so this is more of a “tweak” than anything else.
• The Kilpisjärvi area of Lapland has pretty awesome scenery.

All things considered, a huge success (cue “Portal song” here). Even though I guess it goes into the “extreme camping” category, the trip felt like a wonderful vacation and I feel mucho relaxed now. Seeing how we were all already talking about “next time” after the trip, I think everyone felt pretty much the same way.

The weather was (mostly) fantastic. Almost too hot in the beginning, it dropped to a wonderful “few degrees below zero” for the rest of the week. The coldest temperature we recorded was -16C one night just before crawling into the tent to sleep. That started to be a bit on the chilly side, but not too bad. The final day was very windy, and our last few kilometers of travel were done in the middle of a honest snow storm; visibility in the 20m department and wind howling. Fun at that point, but would have been a lot less fun further out in the field.

Huge thanks to Timo for both the initial idea and for being the “winter camping expert” of the expedition – and for being a great field chef, as always. Our pizza and lasagne (made in a camp cooker oven thingy) in the middle of the wilderness raised more than a few eyebrows and got us some envy points.

I’m still working of doing post-processing for the pictures, but a small selection from the first 3 days is available now. I took a lot of handheld HDR pictures, using the 20d’s auto-bracket feature (+/-2 EV). Some pretty nice results, though the dirt on the lens I mentioned forced me to do a lot of post-proc work – and some of those still need more tweaking later on, you can still see artifacts here and there that I want to clean away at some point. Still, for handheld HDRs I though some of the results were quite acceptable. […]

Summer scheduling

Looks like I need to start scheduling my summer right about now, a lot of things need decisions round this time. For example, I just heard that The National are coming to Ankkarock… and of course Ropecon is on the same weekend. Gah. I really want to see The National, they were one of the best “new finds” of last year for me. Good news is that they are performing on Sunday. I’ll probably be able to combo the con Sunday with a rock festival. Somehow. It might involve beer.

In addition, a friend’s paintball weekend thingy lands on top of Provinssirock. Probably choosing the paintball there… sure, it would be nice to see Placebo (again) and Nick Cave, but now that (another) friend no longer lives nearby that would be a pretty expensive trip – I think I’ll opt for the cheaper “run in the woods and get shot” option. Oh, and of course there’s a KMFDM club gig on that same weekend. Already have tickets for that, but not yet sure how I’ll combo everything.

Oh, and we’re planning of maybe visiting Iceland in August, and continuing from there to Burning Man (once again!). Still in the planning stages, but that one will eat up both our vacation time and a chunk of cash. Why Iceland? Because we can. And because it should be less horribly expensive now, due to their financial crash. Sucks for them, good for us.

Having fun takes work, I tell you. […]

Off to the frozen wastes, ho!

A hiking & wilderness -expert friend made a suggestion somewhat along the lines of “let’s take a week off over Easter and go ski-hiking in Lapland in the snow! It’ll be fun!”, and Janka & I replied with “sure, why not” (in the grip of some dementia, no doubt). I have some amount of hiking and outdoors experience (and gear), but the last time I tried skis was… 20 years ago or so, and I’ve never been on an extended winter outdoors trip. Janka has, but said she’s never liked it before. So why go? Who knows. It might be fun, this time. We’ll see.

So anyway, in a few weeks time we’ll be packing a ton of winter gear on the train and heading towards Kilpisjärvi (almost as far North as you can get in Finland). The plan is to spend about 6 days out in the snow, sleeping in a tent (or an igloo if the snow is suitable and we feel like it). It might be really cool. It might be miserable. At least it shouldn’t be boring.

I still need to locate some warm mittens for myself, and some extra warm footgear for the non-ski times. The good point here is that due to the time of year, we’ve been able to get lots of good gear really cheap from all the “X% off!” sales. I found a brand-new ski coverall (also suitable for snowboard use) for 20e. Not complaining.

If we don’t come back, send out the huskies. We’ll try to survive by eating lichen and the occasional stray raindeer. […]

Minireview: Sons of the Profits, by William Speidel

While touring the Pacific Northwest during our honeymoon some years back, we stopped by Seattle. Now, I have no idea why some people tend to diss the place, I kind of like Seattle myself. Sure, the weather is… temperamental and it does rain a lot – but so what. Anyway, we went to check out the Seattle Underground Tour, which proved to be a lot of fun. Due to the way the place was built (and due to various natural disasters), the old sections of the town have multiple layers, with the current buildings having been built on top of older ones – and the tour goes in and out of old cellars, some of which used to be streets. I found it very interesting – though, as some drunk has commented, “I have no idea why these folks come here to root through our dirty cellars”. Like most tours, it ended up at a gift shop, where among other things they had a book on sale on the history of the city, written by the founder of the “underground tour” thing. Bought a copy.

Sons of the Profits (subtitled “There’s No Business Like Grow Business – the Seattle Story 1851-1901”) does what it says on the tin. Focused mainly on economics and business ventures (some more sane than others), it outlines how greed and the race after the allmighty “profit” created the city and made it one of the bigger cities in the Northwest. Here “greed” isn’t seen as a bad thing as such, more as a defining characteristic of the “founding fathers” of the city. It’s an entertaining tale, especially the beginning parts, and told in a folksy tone as if everyone were sitting in the living room after a good meal, and some old guy was telling stories from his younger days. It works pretty well, most of the time. Towards the end the book gets bogged down in a lot of (to me) less interesting moneytary details, but parts of all that (especially the fights with and amongst the “railroad barons”) is interesting.

A fun look at Seattle local history, and gets bonus points for not painting the “city fathers” in an undeservedly favorable light. Some are called “bastards”, quite unashamedly, while some others are praised while not forgetting their less glorious moments. It seems quite even-handed, though of course it’s impossible to know for sure. […]