Driving season opened

Yeaah! Yesterday evening I took the Porsche out for a spin and it felt good :)

TwoZeroZeroEight

It's '08 now :) We changed our year at Korpilahti.

Pics here.

Christmas in Kuhmo

We spent the christmas in Kuhmo with Mallas folks.

We had a jolly good time and there was even some snow :D Something that people here in the south know nothing about.

Fourth of Dubai

One more Dubai trip behind me. Business wise everything went well and even the weather was much more tolerable then in July. Now temperature was just little over 30 degrees celcius.

Pics can be found here.

Helsinki Motor Show '08

I and Antti visited the Helsinki Motor Show.

As usual, pics here.

Study and Talkoot

We are currently working on the lower floor study. The cealing is already painted, so today I was planning to get the first layer of paint to the walls.

Yesterday evening we had our first "Talkoot". Basically that meant cleaning leafs of the lawns and moving them. Nice time with people from neighbouring houses.

Amsterdam

Vacation is almost behind us and it's been a great one.

Amsterdam was a great place to visit and fulfilled our expectations.

'Dam pics here.

Still alive ;)

Yes, it's been a very busy couple of months. So updating the blog has been slow. I'll try to speed up again.

Tomorrow we start a holiday week and on Monday we head to Amsterdam :)

Published Photographer

Today I officially came a published photographer when one of the big finnish rock bands, Kotiteollisuus, chose to publish four of my photos on their website with my credits. I'm one of three photographers that covered their gig in Ankkarock.

I couldn't be happier. This is a great step forward in this hobby.

New Home :)

We have now moved to the new premesis :D We spent Friday and Saturday moving our stuff and finally on Sunday we gave the keys to the old appartment away.

It's been really hectic organizing everything, packing, carrying etc. Therefore, it was great to have some of our friends to help us on Saturday. Thanks Tomi M, Tomi A, Matti and Anu. You helped a lot.

Next, it's time to start ripping the place apart and start the renovation.

M-Day approaching

The Moving Day is coming closer and closer. Next Friday will be a holiday for us to pack the rest of the stuff. On Saturday, we have a van and friends coming to help us move our "shit" ;)

At the moment, our stuff is partially packed so our place is full of moving boxes that one has to try to evade in order to move from room to room. Now we are just eagerly waiting for the moving to to be done and over with.

Last weekend, we spent at the cabin with Antti and Suski doing all the cabin stuff; sauna, grill, swim etc. :) Oh, and Malla also started her studies to become a cosmetologist. That means 4 evenings a week of hard studying.

Ankkarock 2007

This Saturday we spent rocking in Ankkarock at Korso. We started the morning with a brunch at the Holma residence and moved to Korso from there.

The shows we saw included Kotiteollisuus, Von Hertzen brothers, Maija Vilkkumaa and Hanoi Rocks. This gave me the change to get some kick ass rock pics with my 300mm lens (see here).

All pics here.

At the cabin

Last few days we spent at the cabin with Anu and Matti. First we met with them at old Werla cardboard factory and countinued from there to the cabin. At the cabin, we spent a great few days just enjoying the finnish nature :)

Images here.

PCF Trackdays

Once again it was time for the annual Porsche Club trackdays in Ahvenisto. As usual, I had a blast driving as hard as I could during the two days.

Pics can be found here.

Kuhmo week

Once we had jazzed our souls out, we pointed Audis nose torwards north and drowe to Kajaani via Vaasa and Kokkola. After spending the night in Kajaani we continued to Kuhmo.

In Kuhmo we had all sorts of activities. For example, sunbathing, crab hunting and eating, Kuhmo Chamber Music festival and visiting Raatteentie museum in Suomussalmi.

On our way back home on Wednesday, we stopped by at Koli and Outokumpu mines.

As all ways, frames here.

Pori Jazz

After getting all the appartment issues settled. We packed the car, fetched Tero and Maiju and headed for Pori. The trip was rainy but we got there in one piece.

Once in Pori, we bought some picnic gear and entered Kirjurinluoto, the Pori Jazz main arena. In there we enjoyed The Roots and Sly Stone. The atmosphere was great event though it rained from time to time. Last bits of the evening spent in the night clubs of Pori. We even saw a few celebrities, Sedu Koskinen and Mika Kallio.

Jazzzz pics here.

We have bought a new home!

Like the title says, we have bought a new home. This thing has been bubbling under for a few months now but now it is a reality. Today we signed a deal for "an end of row" row house thats actually only about 400 meters from our current place.

The appartment has 144 square meters total in two floors. It's 4 rooms and a kitchen with warm garage and workshop. It even has a front yard. Finally I have a garage and Malla has an own yard. We are really looking into moving to the new place at the end of August.

Today I also accepted an offer for our current apparment. I only took about a week to sell it :) So now that the old one is sold and new one is bought, we can just relax and start thinking about the interion renovation we are going to do to the new place.

We are thrilled :D

Holiday is GO!

Summer holiday has started and not a moment too soon. :)

Today after I arrive home from the airport, we head for cabin we my and Malla's parents are waiting.

Dubai the Third

To really finish off the work before summer holiday, I did a third trip to Dubai. This time a had my collegue Kai with me to see how business is going in that part of the world.

On the way back home, it actually felt funny to fly from a warm place to a cold place to start summer holiday (42Celsius versus 15Celsius) ;)

Pics.

1st anniversary

This weekend we had our first anniversary. Originally we were planning to go to Aulanko at Hämeenlinna for a spa & cruise weekend, but the cruise part was cancelled so we changed plans. We reserved a room from Hotel Torni and spent the day in Helsinki.

Some images here.

Midsummer

The middle of the year is here again. We spent Juhannus at Korpilahti. We grilled, went to sauna and did all the normal midsummer stuff. Oh, and we also built a horse pen with an area of around 900 square meters.

Pics here.

Spider spider on the wall

While visiting the cabin few weeks back, I really took my time to take some nature shots. The end result was somewhere around 300 pics. Some came out pretty nice. Here's they are. Enjoy.

Shots of spider number uno(pics 1, 2, 3, 4) and another smaller one. Then there are these two, that are mating? And we all now what happens to the male... I really like the new 300mm lens since now I can even count the number of eyes on these guys :D

Moving on... now I have a whole folder full of water meter shots. These guys really are the surfers of the insect world. Some of those pics are almost poetic.

On the insect side, here still a house fly and "kimalainen".

Then the birds. A very nice trio of seagull in flight (pics 1, 2, 3). That a very versatile bird, almost looking like an eagle at times.

Here a photo of a pair of birds taking off and three pics of Iso-Koskelo taking off and lounging at rocks.

I also took some abstract shot that I think that this feather and this stick are the best.

Hmm... that all for now ;)

PCF Slalom at Hollola

Today was the second event in the Porsche Slalom Cup. This event was held in Hollola at Kaukokiito premesis and it was the first event of the year for me. The weather was nice and while I was driving, Malla was soking in the sun rays. Between driving I managed to even shoot some photos. Those pics are here.

After getting back home, we visit a house showing. Those not knowning, we are currently looking for a new place in the Espoo-Vantaa-Helsinki region. Possibly a pairhouse or a connected house with 4 rooms, kitchen and about 90-100m2 in size. Luckily, we are in no hurry since a good place is hard to find. :)

Kallvik Picnic

This evening Anu and Matti invited us for a picnic at seaside. The place was in Kallvik at East-Helsinki were there is a private beach for a surf club. We had the whole beach to ourselves and had a good time eating, playing cards and enjoying the sun. When the sun started to set, we headed for home.

Some nice pics from the picnic here.

First trip to cabin

Last Friday, we a little free time with my collegues so we went to eat at Villetta, then carting at VM-Carting Center and later to sauna and drinks. We had a good time and I placed second in the carting race.

On Saturday morning, Malla turned the Porsches nose toward cabin and we were off. Few hours later we arrived to Voikoski. During the weekend we and my parents had a good time enjoing all the luxuries of cabin life. And of course I did some photographing ;)

Pics from the weekend here.

Second trip to Dubai

Now I'm back from my second trip to Dubai. I was of course work filled, but everything that was scheduled was also done.

This time I also visited a new mall, Ibn Battuta Mall. A big place with 7 different themes from around the world.

Images from the trip here.

Renja's birthday

We celebrated Renja's birthday at Korpilahti last Saturday. Later that evening I left for home to be at the airport at Sunday morning.

Naturally I took some pics that can be found here.

First spring day

Today was the first real day of the spring. That made us go out for a walk and to get some ice cream. While we we walking, I also snapped some pics of the spring nature. The "voikukka" here was the best shot that I got. Also got a rentukka, some blue flower and valkovuokko 1 and 2.

Yesterday I, Malla, Anu and Matti went to Hotel Vantaa to have some good time. And we sure did, Paula Koivuniemi was performing so we also got a good show ;)

Tomorrow we will head for Korpilahti to celebrate my god-childs 1st birthday. I'll be returning from there on Saturday night since I have to be at the airport the following morning.

Edit: I also added a couple of seagulls to the Birds section.

Eurovision weekend

So a busy Eurovision and ice hockey worldchampionship weekend is behind us. In Eurovision song contest, we were 17. and in ice hockey 2. So I'd say that in total the performace was fair.

On Friday, we opened the our balcony season by cleaning the balcony and eating there with some Prosecco wine. The weather was a bit on the cold side (maybe 13C) but it was nothing that a warm pullover couldn't manage ;P

Saturday morning we headed for Hämeenkylä mansion. There was a BMW testdrive event that we got invited to. I guess it was because we have a fairly new Audi and beemer wanted to show their fleet. Anyhow, we registered there and signed up to drive a brand new BMW 750i (price around 130.000 euros) that was "a pretty big boy". I have to admit that it took a while to get the car moving since there was so much electrics and computers onboard. Once we were moving everything was simple. The car is totally isolated from the surrounding enviroment, there is no wind, tire or engine noise in the cabin. Only slight hum when I floored the gas pedal on Kehä III to see what that 5.0 liter V8 has to offer. In short, an excellent executive shuttle, but I like to be more connected with the car and the road.

Later that day we went to Iina and Osku to go to sauna and see the Eurovision... and of course have some refreshments ;)

Sunday was mothers day so we visit my mom and dad. I wonderful weekend in total.

Click, Click, Click

I found a few continous shots from last summer featuring Endurance Saloon Porsche at Ahvenisto. I put it though my panorama software, photoshopped it a little and look what came up. Awsome :)

Dubai calling...

So today I found out the dates of my #2 trip to United Arab Emirates. I'm leaving on 20th of May and returning on 24th. It's looking out to be a busy trip filled with business engagements, but I guess that's the whole point. After this trip we will have a better picture of weather or not I should go back again in June.

This time I'm traveling back home alone since my collegues will fly home from various parts of Middle-East.

The pic her is a bubblebee I catched in Wappu at Korpilahti with my new 300mm lens. It has more artistic merits then technical, but I still like it. It has that "spring is coming" feeling.

Btw. Did a racing panorama from old Ferrari pics from Alastaro. The end result is huuuge!
Btw2. Here's another one from the grand stand.

Wappu

Few hours after I returned from U.A.E., we were off to Korpilahti to spend Wappu there.

We had a nice time and I got a chance to test my suvenier from Dubai, the Sigma DG 70-300mm Macro :) Mostly I tried taking some bird pics, samples here.

Saturday, Minna and Marko had their 10th anniversary so the spent it in Kuopio while we watched after the kids. Congatulations guys! :D

Dubai for a week

I spent the last week in Dubai on business trip. Our company has a client in that direction and I'm the technical lead for that project so I paid them a visit.

Dubai is definetly a city worth seeing (although being away from my darling is never nice). Some say that one third of worlds cranes are in Dubai... that's the speed they are building new buildings there. Days were busy with business and in the evening we visited "sights worth seeing" in the city. These included places like Buddha bar, 360, Dubai Marina, Jumeirah and many many more. As usual, I had my camera with me -> pics.

The project there is progressing in such a pace that I might have to visit Dubai once ore twice more before summer holidays.

Pics madness

Last night I got some pics done and transfered to web.

First of all there are some new "blue pics". These pics (the last seven on the page) were taken on the deck 10 of m/s Galaxy during our cruise to Tallinn. I think the full blue background and setting sun colored face gives a nice image.

There are also some new "fashion" pics. I came up with that category just to organise the photos some. These also mostly taken on the sun deck during sun set. Again I like the blue wall and green floor.

Finally I managed to process some floorball pics I took during the Christmas holiday. That's my brother-in-law in the goal cathing the balls. I took the best floorball pics and placed them to a new category "Urheilu". I'll be adding more sports frames there as soon as I get some.

Weekend trip to Tallinn

First of all, our kitchen renovation is finished and now we have whole new tiles :) Now the kitchen has moved from the early seventies to 2007. Very nice...

Last Wednesday Malla decided to book us a trip to Tallinn for the next weekend. It was a spur of the moment kind of a thing and a good one in that. On Friday afternoon, we were on our way to West-Harbour and m/s Galaxy. It's a pretty new ship so everything was still shiny and all.

We spent the night on board and first thing in the morning we were off the boat and heading for the city. First we visited the old town since you just can't get too much of that place. So much to see and fotograph. After that we headed for Tallinn's center and Viru keskus which is a fairly new shopping center. After walking for about 4 hours we decided to head back to the ship.

After that it was just a three hour cruise to Helsinki. Streight from the terminal we went to get the Porsche from winter storage. The driving season has begun.

All and all, it was a fairly busy weekend, but a good one since we got so many things done.

Pics from Tallinn trip here.

Kitchen tiles

We decided to renew the kitchen wall tiles. Professional handyman Osku from Malla's work offered to help us and we didn't say no :) Yesterday we went to buy so new tiles and wall lamp from Bauhaus and K-Rauta. Today the actual work starts and hopefully we'll have the new tiles in place by the end of the week.

Pic here is a "blini", we ate at my parents place during winter holiday. Tasty ;)

Ice fishing in Kuhmo

This weekend we went to visit Mallas parents at Kuhmo. As always, we had a good time. On Saturday the sun was shining all day and we went to ski and ice fishing. On our way back to south, the weather got really ugly after Lahti and it was a tough job just the navigate the car home through the snow storm.

Since the wather was so nice on Saturday, I got a chance to take some pics of ice picks, dropping water and frozen berries.

All the pics can be found here.

Turku weekend

We spent a wonderful weekend at Turku. We visited more places than I can remember, ranging from Turku castle to Sibelius museum. During the weekend we dined at three restaurants: Enkeli ravintola, Harald and Rocca. In all of them, the food was good but in Rocca it was excellent.

We also visited Turkus city theather and saw Thor's hammer musical. It was definetly the most visual spectacle I've ever seen on a theatre stage.

This weekend was definetly a great end to a great winter vacation week.

Pics from the weekend here.

Night moves

I took the opportunity to go take pics at the highest point in Helsinki, the land-fill-hill in Malminkartano. It was fairly cold so most of the camera adjustmests we're done in a hurry. Also the squating at the gym the day before didn't help the stair climing ;) My aim was to get a fair panorama of the lights of Helsinki and I think I even got one.

On my way back home, I also stopped at a bridge going over Vihti highway. That gave me the opportunity to practice on some "headlight-streak" pics.

All and all, it was a good first practice on this subject and I hope to get another change to get some night fotos before summer comes and everything lights up.

Pics here.

Flying tulips

Inspired by Denis Darzacq's fotos, I set up a foto shoot to make some flying objects. The first thing I had on hand was Aalto vase full of tulips. After that it was just shooting pics and combinign the with Photoshop. I'm kinda glad how they turned out.

Verstas

Since there is much design and foto stuff in the web. I needed some way to store all the cool stuff. There for I and Mr. Karitsa put up Verstas. I blog that holds all the good things we find in the net concerning design... either ours or others.

You can find Verstas in here.

Korpilahti-Orivesi all night long

Last weekend we visited Korpilahti and Orivesi, in out round-trip to meet friends and relatives.

Friday night we drove to Korpilahti in a good weather although the temperature was way below -25 celcius. Anyhow, the conditions were good so driving in the dark didn't matter. On Saturday before noon, the skies were clear and I took the opportunity to foto my god child. I also got some nice shot of the horses.

Later on Saturday we drove about 100km to Orivesi, near Tampere. There, we visited Eve, Teno and Teemu. We had a great time talking and playing Cranium. On Sunday, drove back home in time to get to pratice.

All the pics from the weekend are here. And a great panorama from the horse pen.

Warm Apple Pie

Today I found this great Apple Pie recipe from Presso. It was by Hans Välimäki and used Calvados cream as a sidedish. I decided to give it a go and it even turned out pretty well. :)

And it gave me a reason to buy some Calvados...

Since I've been getting so much feedback from my whisky cake, I decided to put the recipes for that and this apple pie to my cuisine blog. So here you go -> Whisky Cake & Apple Pie

Stockholm

Last weekend, we went for a cruise with Tomi and Tanja. The ship was Silja Serenade and it took us for a splendid weekend abroad. On Saturday, we spent the day at Stockholm visiting the sights. I can't even remember when was a last time I visit Sweden with a Silja ship.

Once in tax-free, I took the liberty to update my whisky collection. I found a nice bottle of Talisker and Glenfiddich to go with it :)

Once in Stockholm, I took some panoramas that came out pretty nicely with the right tools. Here's the harbor, a courtyard, some old house and an alley.

The rest of the pics here.

Whisky cake

I decided to bake a cake. The inspiration came from my workmate Kari, who made a whisky cake using Laproiag. Since that is a fairly strong tasting smoke flavoured whisky, I decided to make another one using 12 year old Balvenie Double Wood. Balvenie is a bit mielder, but we'll see what happens.

At the moment, my cake is waiting is the fridge taking in the taste. On the otherhand, Kari's cake is already good to eat so I think I'll get to it :)

It's '07 now

Happy New Year! Although my pic is a bit a head of time showing 20007 ;)

The year has turned again. 2006 was definetly a busy year with ups and downs. On the up side, there was the wedding, getting a dog, renovation etc. And on the down side, there was losing our dog.

All and all, I'm looking forward to 2007. Can't wait to see all that it brings :)

My new year pics are basically everything but the people :/ Sorry folks. But here's some apples from Ahtola's garden and fireworks. I think both came out nicely bacause I used a tripod and new remote-shooter.

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas time again. We spent the holidays at Korpilahti with Mallas side of the family. I must have been good since Santa was so good to me.

I and Marko also built a treehouse for the kids. It took us two days, but this hut is definetly going to set the bar on what treehouses should be in Korpilahti... or even mid-Finland for that matter ;)

Now during the "middle-days", Malla god-child Tiia is staying with us. We have all sorts of plans for Tiia. For example, she and Malla will go see Suden Arvoitus at the local cinema. We'll return her back home once we set out to spend the New Year.

Christmas pics here.

PS. Few new pics published. Fluke, birdhouse1, birdhouse2, corners of Massey and handle. All from Korpilahti.

Trip to Kuhmo

We visited Kuhmo this weekend. Up there in the north, there was even some snow :) And naturally we ate some great game foods.

We also catched some christmas spirit so now it's just forward to next weekend. Christmas here we come!

Mallas mom had made some really cool Tiffany glass pieces, so I made a collection from them. See it here.

Formation skating

Malla co-worker has a daugter that skates in a formation skating team. Saturday morning, they had a competition near our place at Myyrmäen ice arena. Malla was going so I tagged along and brought the Nikon with me. The skating was very good and I even got some suitable shots although I had to use ISO 800 which caused some noise in the pics.

Anyhow, here are the fotos.

Lux luxus

We went to see Jean S perform at Lux nightclub. It was my first time at that club and it was certainly up-class. I digged the place, but of course the prices were horrendeous. For example, battery-kossu was 9 euros. Cool...

Mother-in-law visiting

Mallas mother was in town for a conference and stayed the weekend with us. On Saturday night I took the girls to se Nutcracker at the Opera.

Movers

Tonight we helped Antti and Suski to move together. Luckily the distance between the apartments was only 50 meter :) That meant that we got all the stuff moved in about two hours. Now we'll just wait for the house warming party ;)

Oh, I also decided to start working with Adobe Illustrator CS2 and the imagenary "Teddyland"-logo here is the product of the first 5 hours of practising :) Heh...

Final touch

Today, as a final touch, we cleaned up the appartment and re-arranged the living room. Now we just enjoy and start prepairing for christmas. :)

Here are the pictures of the rooms: Living room, Bedroom, Kitchen and Hall. I did them with Autopano Pro software and I have to admit, they are a bit raw but all fix them some day ;)

PS. Last Saturday we had nice "Cheese and Wine" evening at Tomi's and Reetta's place. Thanks guys!

Evita

We went to see the musical Evita last night at Helsinki citys theatre. It's only showing a few more times so this was the time to go.

It was of course epic and it was my first contact with Evita since I haven't seen the film (with Madonna and Antonio) that was done according to this musical.

The pic here is an acrobat that was performing at Sirkus Finlandia a while back.

We are done!

The renovation is finished! Only a few minor tasks like hanging pictures remain. We got everything squared last Friday. Then on Saturday morning we attacked the shops to get some decoration stuff and furniture. We ended up buying a new coffee maker, bed cover, drawer, drapes, two stools, two bedside tables, a floor lamp and some other things. It was a hectic 4 hours but we covered 7 stores around Uusimaa so we can be proud of ourselves.

Then on Saturday evening Antti, Susanna and their dogs showed up to spend the evening at our place. We had a really nice time talking, eating and playing Ticket to Ride Europe.

The pic here is of the Moet & Chandon champage we drank during the evening.

btw. Boring meetings at work can transform a plastic coffee spoon into an art ;-) I have few others in store also...

Elk hunting

Elk the king of northern forests. But also "a top five" cause for road accidents. That's the reason for elk hunting every autumn. This time I was tagging along :)

I drove to Korpilahti on Friday evening. Malla was already there since she was in Pori on business trip and move streight from Pori to Korpilahti. Then on Saturday morning I and my brother-in-law Marko set out to go elk hunting. There was some ten men in the hunting party with a few dogs. We spent the whole day standing in post to catch the king of the forest. Unfortunately this time the elk managed to avoid us, but that was ok for me since it was still a great experince. While we were on post, I took a nice panorama image.

On Sunday, it was fathers day and once we got back home, we visited my folks for some coffee and cake.

On other news, I hope we can finish the renovation this week.

PS. I'm severely lacking in pictures in this blog, but I promise to catch up once our apartment is in order.

Halloween

It's that time of the years again. Halloween and my birthday :) On Friday night we installed tapestry in the bedroom and afterwards had a glass of red wine from Chile called Yali. Malla also gave me my birthday gift: two wine tasting glasses, top-notch cigar cutter and a book about cigars. What a wonderful gifts! Thanks, babe!

On Saturday, as a part of my celebrations, we went to see Borat and eat at Henri'x BBQ House. The movie rocked and so did the food at Henri'x. After eating we were off to home to change halloween costumes on. The rest of the evening and night we spent at Iina's and Osku's Halloween party. We had a great time and everyone had their costumes on. The Halloween 2006 pics.

To round up the weekend, the bedroom was painted on Sunday and it's now ready for the new cabinets we'll be installing today. After only garnish is needed and then the bedroom is done. Only hall and kitchen to go then ;-) Current time estimate: done before 18.11.2006.

PS. The halloween party had one of "the smartest costumes ever". It was the "Anti-Warren commission JFK Mask". That meant a guy in a suit wearing a rubber JFK mask with bullet hole in the forehead. What makes this one special is the fact that Warren commission claimed that the first shot came from the library storage to the back of the head; and this mask claims completely opposite. That's just plain scary!

Out with the old

Last Saturday we disassembled the old bedroom cabinets and hauled them to local recycling station. Then on Tuesday we installed new maple laminate in the bedroom. We were pretty snappy since it took under four hours.

Next we have to even the walls with putty and paint the door frames. After that it's time for the glassfiber tapestry. We're also looking to get the room painted before next monday when the new cabinets arrive.

The first snow came yesterday and it came in numbers. That meant that it was time to switch to winter tires so I also did that yesterday. So all and all, it was a pretty hectic day.

The pic here is a few of my Warhammer miniatures that I macro photographed. Afterwards I added some find edges and overlay with Photoshop to give it a kind of a comic like feeling.

Renovation blues

It has started. The great renovation of the bedroom, hall and kitchen. Yesterday we started it all by scraping the tapestry from the walls. We hope to get everything finished by the end of the year ;-P

All three rooms will have new ceiling, walls and floor. The bedroom will also get new closets. The next step is actually to teardown the old closets and deliver them to the junkyard (or recycling station). The new closets will arrive at 6.11.2006 so bedroom has to be finished by then...

Renovation pics here.

The poker pic here is shot in my home studio with a few dices. Gaussian blur and overlay gave it a nice glamour feeling I was after.

Matti and Anu

We spent a nice evening at Puistola eating, drinking and going over wedding and honeymoon pictures. There were many similaraties since they spent their honeymoon at the same place as we did :)

The pic here is a panorama image from Concours D'Elegange at Kakskerta, Turku last summer. I made with this program called Autostitch that does a pretty nice quality thinking that it's free.

Sirkus Finlandia

We went to see the circus at Aurora field next Finlandia house. We had great time :) It had all the classic ingredients of cirkus: the clouns, horses etc. Pics here.

Kuhmo weekend

We visited Kuhmo last weekend which made about 1300km of driving during the weekend. Once we were there me and Mallas dad went out to hunt for birds. Of course, he did the hunting since I don't have the permission yet. We saw so much game: black grouses, few heathbird, hazel grouse and few rabbits. Thanks to everyone who helped in translation ;)

Since we were in the nature, I took the opportunity and took a few shots at some berries (up close), mushroom, and leafs. Also did some macro on green and red leafs.

Wi i ide

It's finally here, my new monitor. Now I have the setup that I wanted for graphic work. The new 22" wide Samsung SyncMaster 225BW is huge compared to the old 15". Just check this out. The usable screen area is about the witdh of a normal keyboard. The wide screen is perfect for Photoshop working since there is the extra space in the sides for all the tool menus.

I love it ;) Not to mention that it's also really nice for my winter traning with GTR2 now that Porsche is going to winter storage.

The pic... that's one of the red ass monkeys from Korkeasaari. I couldn't decide is it better in color or in black/white. You decide. Here is the original image.

Popcorn burns

I, Malla, Tomi and Tanja went to HIFK-JYP game last Saturday. HIFK won 5-1 and we were pleased of course.

After the game we decided to continue the evening at our place with some drinks and popcorn. The pic here shows what happens to popcorn when you leave to the microwave for "just a minute more". ;) That looks like the the cancer of popcorn world. Not to mention that the apartment smelled like burnt popcorn for a few day.

After the popcorn incident we decided to move to the restaurant On The Rocks, where we spent the rest of the night.

Alastaro sessions

Sunday was a track day again. This time I lost my "Alastaro track virginity" ;-) It was Audi Club Track Day so I took the Porsche for a spin (A4 Avant in not an actual track day car ;). The arsenal was mostly Audis, naturally, but there were three other cars also a Vette (Juha driving), Porsche 951 (me) and a BMW M3.

After learning the track and finding the driving lines, I clocked 1:40.16 lap time. It's not a good time, but it's my first benchmark for this particular track.

As usual, I had a blast and the hunger to drive more track just keeps on getting bigger. And the winter is coming. Noo!

The pic here is from the grand stand at Alastaros main straight. That's Juha, Jyrki and Mika having some snack between track sessions. I actually only took 5 pics the whole day...

Digi digi digi

I finally moved to digi-time. No, I didn't buy a bigibox. I bought a digiadapter for the computer. I was much cheaper than a digibox for the tv and I'm still waiting for the price to drop on those.

Anyhow, I was suprised how good that thing work. Although I have some problems with YLE subtitles... but so seems to have everyone.

The image here is from Ruoholahti. Malla is standing next a wall situaited near the water front and htc building. Right next to us was a coal ship called Kontula that had the surreal robot like cranes on the deck. Talk about 70's scifi movie...

Endurance Saloon at Ahvenisto

This Sunday I, Juha and Mika went to Ahvenisto to see some Endurance Racing. It was actually more like a study trip since were thinking of starting our own team in the coming years.

The actual scale of thing actually suprised me a bit. Some teams even had buses or even motohomes! That's totally out of our budget, but naturally there also we're team with more modest accomodation.

We were very excited and this trip also gave me a change to practice some action shooting. And some frames even came out pretty well. It took some 300 pics in total.

btw. We watched "Matti" movie on Saturday and it was pretty good. Basic finnish movie, drinking and all things going bad. A comedy or a tragedy how ever you want to take it.

Selected pics from Ahvenisto here.

Merihaka fototour

This Saturday Malla had an exam at Helsinki center so I decided to give her a lift and go take some photos at Merihaka... the vision of futures society. Grey concrete in real life.

After that we went for a cup of coffee at Kappeli and decided to visit Museum of Photography and Museum of Hotels and restaurants at Kaapeli. Interesting places both.

Any how, the pics from Merihaka are here.

Cuisine

I decided to put up a second blog to cover all the things related to food, drinks and such. You can find it here. I'll also put a link to the side bar.

The pic here is Petri's RUF 911 Turbo MegaStrosek from few years. These days the car has a much more aggressive shell and it's packing around 600bhp. The image is processed with some layer effects (vivid color) and Photoshops Shadow/Highlight tool. Oh, and I used the tool that I hate, lens flare, to make the lights shine.

Ciao!

Last weekend was truly italian... at least on cuisine-side :) On Saturday, I did some Stuffed chicken breasts with air-dried ham and red wine sauce and on sunday I did home made pesto with pasta. And of course, there was the fruit dessert and espresso.

On Friday night we went to see The break-up at the movies, Saturday was for shopping and Sunday we went to hand-crafts fair at Wanha Satama. I all and all, we had a splendid weekend.

As a suiting pic, heres are frame from last year. "Malla feeding the pigeons in Venice" :)

Cabin again

We were at the cabin again this weekend. On Friday we drove to Kotka to train Nero with local service-dog people. From there we continued to the cabin were my parents were waiting. On Saturday we went to Mäntyharju to visit the local market place. Then on Sunday on our way back we visited the breeder of Nero and her two dobermanns at Pyhtää, near Kotka.

In all and all, we again had to terrific time and the weather was on our side. This time I had a chance to shoot some spiders and Nikon did what I asked for it ;-P

The best of the spider shots are here.

Taiteiden yö

This night was the "night of the arts" at Helsinki. I and Malla went to participate in that. Of course since the next was a working day, we didn't stay until the morning, but we still had a nice time.

I even had my camera with me but I somehow managed not to catch any street performers. The pic here is from the Forum parking garages lift. I took it as we were on our way up, it's a bit unsharp but I really like to colors and the reflection.

New machine

We finally decided to buy a new computer. It's been a few years since I had a desktop computer and now it feels great to have on. The technical mambo jambo of the machine is something like

"AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4GHz), 300GB, 1024MB, DVD+-RW DL, GF7600GS".

At the moment we have a 15" flat monitor, but I plan to upgrade to 20" to get some image handling performance.

The pic here is taken by Malla at the summer cabin next to the lake.

Performance piggy

The Porsche now has some more muscle. I guess the nice round numbers are something like little under 300bhp and 400Nm. I love it. The boost now comes much stronger and the torque curve is much wider. Now I'm just waiting for the other packet of my Ferodo DS2500 brake pads.

Cabin fever

I, Malla and Nero went for a weekend at the summer cottage. It's the first weekend for this summer, and it's August already. Anyhow, we had a blast swimming, playing, eating, going to sauna etc. Even Nero was one tired dog after running around the woods and water all day :)

I had a chance to foto some dragonflies and even got some fairly good shots. The dragonfly in the pics is a tummasyyskorento female.

Pics of the weekend are here.