So it has begun! We are building a house! :D A huge credit has been assigned to us and Vårgårdahus has begun building our exterior walls and roof to be delivered week 4 next year. What's visible now is that the digging and filling has begun. Since last monday Gravanders Gräv have been on the propery digging up dirt and draining the water. They have also done the road and the ground for the house. Soon KMI Bygg will be able to make a solid concrete plate for the house to stand on. After that there'll be a long wait for the house to come :) And even longer wait for the house to be done, we reckon it'll be done sometime in late April or May.

Now there's a whole lot of detailplanning to be decided on. So much fun :)

Some pictures here: http://www.slowdays.org/files/?dir=pictures/smeagol/house/, I'll keep uploading stuff there so keep an eye out.

Hehe, a while has been since it was the time I blogged anything (wasn't it when the last LAN was on), though not as much as the time when Smeagol had written something. And by the way, there will be a blog about the last LAN, as soon as I'm energized enough to write it down. I actually were writing it like 3 weeks ago, with the SD's blog system, when I accidently pressed the X with my mouse, and didn't have time to save the text. And then I was adviced to write the blogs with a text program before putting them onto SD blogs. (A good advice, I must say!)

Last weekend, 24.8.2008, Sigur Rós was here in Finland. Can you believe it? It's been 4 years, since they were here last time! And that was a time when I didn't even know they exist. But yeah. Me and my friend were there, watching their beautiful show.

The day started quite late for me, when I was already a bit tired of Saturday's Christian gig called Ristirock which was a full day happening in Tampere. I headed to Tampere railway station, and travelled for almost 2 hours to get my ass in Helsinki. Of course it was my luck that when the time of my arrival celebrated its birth, it started to rain outside. The rain changed from medium showers to drizzle and back to showers. We managed to miss few quite important road turns in our jazz towards the Kulttuuritalo, which made the way quite longer than it was on our printed map. Somehow we still arrived to the right spot, and we were amazed of how big the fan base of Sigur Rós is in Finland. There's not much of concerts where I have seen as big croud waiting to get inside. And Sigur Rós is a band, that no-one knows over here, from my experiences at least!

Well, we waited our turn in the rain. Luckily my friend who came to Helsinki a bit earlier bought an umbrella, which were something one can explain by saying: "Hyvä kun selvisit! *peukku pystyssä*" roughly meaning the same as: "Hella good job!" (actually it doesn't mean anything even close the same). When we got in, we thought about buying a t-shirt, but they were... Expensive. Too expensive for my budget at least.

When we were already waiting inside Kulttuuritalo to get into the place where the concert itself was held on, I was shocked that one must leave his/her backpack to the rack place, where they take these monies from people, and guard them during the gig. I was already on the line, when the doors opened and I had to run downstairs and back upstairs. If I hadn't done that mistake, I would have had much better place to jazz with the music.

But still the gig was perhaps the best where I have ever been, though I must say I haven't been in many. But still. The light show was quite impressive, Jónsi's voice, charisma, and the way he played his guitar with the cello bow was something one won't forget for a while, even though I didn't see it very well! Here's the setlist:

01. Takk...
02. Svefn-g-Englar
03. Glósóli
04. Ný Batterí
05. Fljótavik
06. Við spilum endalaust
07. Hoppípolla
08. Með Blóðnasir
09. Festival
10. Svo Hljótt
11. Heysátan
12. Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur
13. Sæglópur
14. Hafsól
15. Gobbledigook

1st encore. Popplagið
2nd encore. All Alright

The song choices then. I was much satisfied with them. Svefn-g-englar, Ný Batterí, Glósoli, Sæglópur and many others are big favourites of mine. One song I would have wanted to hear, was Hjartað Hamast, but one can't get everything one wants! Gobbledigook from the new með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust album (released on June) was awesome live. The first times I listened to it I didn't like it so much, but slowly I have started to like it more and more.
At first I concentrated on knowing the songs they played, and on chatting with my friend about which song they are playing, but after Ný Batterí I stopped that nonsense, and started to jam around. The music was absolutely brilliant to listen to and I just couldn't stop my foot bamming the floor, my head swinging smoothly and my hands drumming on my legs in the rhythm of the songs. I can't disagree with the fact that Sigur Rós is with no doubt my favourite band.

The band played long, and we got two encores. The first one was Popplagið (The pop song), also known as Untitled #8. During the song, the lights were something, brilliant. The feeling was high. And I must say, there were no epilepsy warning during the song! (As there perhaps should have been!)

The second encore came after a 2-3 minute of handclapping and shouting. The song, All Alright, is an Icelandic lullaby and Jónsi explained the song choice by the fact that we all were quite tired at the time. After I got back home, I also heard Jónsi had actually struggled few times with his voice during the show.

I got back home by night train, slept for 3 or 4 hours, and went to school. I was surprised that I wasn't even a bit tired at school, though the next day, I was deadly tired.

And for the end, some news about the show:
Plaza.fi
Iltalehti.fi

Such a long time since i last blogged! Poo, where to start.

As you might imagine there's been alot in the works regarding building of the house. The plan is still on for next summer (i hope :D), and recently we got the builder's/building permit which tells us that we are allowed to build the house we want at the location we want which feels so fricken good. Didn't cost too much either which was a pleasant surprice (the permit that is). Now we're really crunching the details with the kitchen, bathrooms and so on. Didn't think that windows would be such an issue, so damn difficult to get it right :P. We're getting there though! The kitchen took it's time but it started feeling totally right when we moved it to the other end of the room. That reminds me, i got to share the planning with you (note that the kitchen isn't in proportion):
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We've been at the location as well cutting down trees, chopping wood and burning branches, lots left to do! Good thing i got a chainsaw (Manlyness +2). Here's how it looks atm:
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Been watching lots of anime recently, some good some not so good :P. I can recommend some even! .hack//SIGN was way different from what i expected, and in a good way. It's very much about gamers and where the world is heading. The best part is that it doesn't get too corny with all the IT talk which you sometimes get when seeing similiar shows. Also enjoyed it's prequels/sequels but they felt a bit like you needed to have played the game before. Hitsuji no Uta is another anime i've seen which was surpricingly good, for all you vampire movies/shows sceptics/lovers, very simple art but the story is very interesting and keeps your eyes peeled. On lighter notes (yet not close to Sailor Moonish), Aishiteruze Baby, about a little child getting abandoned by her mother and taken care of by her cousin.

Got my KAKA shirt a while back too! Wore it for the first time last week going to work and i must say it was a very weird feeling. Didn't think of it first but when i got outside and walked on the train platform i started thinking. "What if people misinterpret the message", i started feeling really uneasy :D. It might just be me but "Hail" is so connected with "Hail Hitler" and i got the crasiest ideas x). However i wore it proudly and people looked strangely at me during the rest of the day and i hoped it was for the Kaka part :P.

Holy Western Digital, Batman!

You all probably know by now - having been subjected to my sad smilies at #kaka - that I have been losing data and struggling with my external Western Digital My Book Premium Edition drive for the past week (months, actually - the drive has been troublesome for a good while now, but never before this strongly). I don't think I can be blamed for exaggerating if I claim to have tried every possible combination in terms of utilizing various setups of USB--FireWire--Crossover and Macintosh OS X--Windows XP

I went so far as to install experimental NTFS support on the MacBook Pro. I tried all the tools in the boo... www. After three long days and nights of struggling to transfer whatever files on the drive I became disillusioned, grey-haired and altogether defeated. Risto graciously offered support with whatever ideas he had (and, in the meantime, actually managed to fix a software issue we had been having with the Amiga CD32/PC combo, by replacing the serial driver with a faster one... apparently the driver files had corrupted at some point.Typically, I had spent days trying to find a fault with hardware - mostly on Zezwe, too )

So just as I was finally going to quit and send off the bloody thing back to where it came from, we decided we would give the drive one more shot, this time with Risto's computer, "Fartbox". We waltz downstairs, we plug in the drive, attempt to copy some random files... and bits and bytes start trickling in!

In the words of one Nickster, "Le gasp!"

All we could do is shake our heads in disbelief as on my computer, the symptoms were incredible! CHKDSK would freeze, Western Digital's own tool would say "Too many bad sectors" and quit, TestDisk would claim the partition was corrupited and the MFT altogether missing, and every single back-up tool would fail at one point or another.

Oh! I forgot to tell you, this all started when I first started getting the dreaded and elusive "Delayed Write Failed" error... Microsoft seems to be just as dumbfounded by this terrible error as we users are. Anyway! We badly needed a break so we drove over to the local fast food joint. Sadly, as we got back, we discovered the hard drive had finally failed with Fartbox too. That's where we started thinking overheating. At no point in time had we considered the existence of a mechanical fault, but it really does seem that this particular drive gets incredibly unstable after some use... I'm very, very relieved that I was annoyed enough to use WD's RMA service and get myself a replacement.

After three days of sorting the issue out, I now pretty much have everything covered, but no matter how I look at this I do feel like I've just lost way more than the three days (and the 120gb of lossless audio I accidentally destroyed) I've put into trying to recover the files

Today, with the brand new Kaka T-shirts, a group of kakaists has together built a Lan Happening, in a Wood Warehouse in Vesilahti. The place has been moved here, from the Cellar of Dorden, because it has more space, and isn't all cold, because it's middle of summer.

Somehow Mortis already slipped some Spam into his desk. Ain't good, if some Spam is splattering all over the desk so early.

I'm looking forward to use Karaoke-Tommi's seal of approval once again, and eat his delicious and extra cheap kebabs!