» Paddle 2008
Paddle, relax, repeat
Well now. My plans for this year's expedition are already up and out of bed, and it's time to start getting organised. If you'd like to join in with the excitement of Paddle 2008, you'd better have a look at what we're planning. It looks like this year will be on Päijänne during June, and will include waterproof videography!
» More gear
Things I've bought
Yay! My 18m throw/tow rope finally arrived, and I'm pretty darned impressed with it! I can't wait to give it a go in a real-life situation - no, wait a sec, I meant I hope there's never a situation in which I'm required to use it, it being a safety tool and all.
*grumble*
» Break free, ice style
IceBREAK FREEstyle!
For those who don't know, this officially OPENS THE SEASON for kayaking - it's a great way to see kayaking, there are organisers and clubs and retailers present, as well as a very cold river and some complete (but highly skilled) nutters in playboats.
You can see photos of slalom (just like for skiing, but in rapids), kayak polo (with the ball), and freestyle (where they're just doing stunts and tricks) from the links below.
It's run by Kohina, which is the former whitewater/koskimelonta branch of my very own Marjaniemen Melojat, who broke off and became independent after they became too large. Or something.
Here's a link to last year's event, details of this year's event, and some excellent photos from last year's event here and here. This is one of my favourites. Vanhankaupunginkoski lies somewhere between Kumpula and Viikki, I reckon, and it's easily reachable by a bunch of buses starting with a '7' which go through Sörnäinen.
» Gear
Books roundup
Well, it's that time of year again - getting new stuff. This year it's been mostly books - and I can heartily recommend the excellent Sea Kayaking Illustrated by John Robison, the cartoons inside it are funny, instructive and intuitive, as well as quite cute and very well drawn.
Other books (starting at £0.08 for good quality copies on Amazon Marketplace) include The Savvy Paddler, by Douglas Alderson, with over 500 interesting and useful tips; Handbook of Safety and Rescue by Doug Alderson and Michael Pardy; and The Complete Sea Kayaker's Handbook by Shelley Johnson.
And just five minutes after I finished writing this, what dropped through my letter box but a 1992 ex-library copy of The Essential Sea Kayaker by David Seidman, freshly arrived from some ex-library warehouse retailer in Canada. The best bit is, it's probably not even out of date. I doubt that kayaks or water have changed so much in the last fifteen years.
So what's next on the list? Well, that's pretty much covered everything, but just for fun, I'm going to keep my eye on Extreme Sea Kayaking by Michael Powers and Eric Soares - after all, you never know! However, things don't generally tend to get very 'extreme' around the placid coastline of Finland, but if they do, rest assured my obituary will tell you so.
One last book which I bought some time ago but I continue to find useful and informative, with clear pictures and instructions, is Kayak Rolling: The Black Art Demystified by Loel Collins - however, it's still no replacement for getting out there, and getting cold and wet, and trying, trying again.
I'm also waiting on my 18m throw/tow line to arrive - it will be useful when taking the beginners a long way, I'm sure. But I think that's all of my kayaking budget consumed for this year...
» Kayak forum!
And for everything else, too.
It's alive! Visit the forums at http://bbs.filecore.net/.
» November kayaking
Yes, I really mean that
Yup, I went kayaking today. It was extremely cold and raining +5'C rain. Not the most pleasant, but surprisingly not so bad either. I'm waiting until it snows more so I get some nice wintery kayak photos for my gallery.
» Kayak gallery
Photos of my adventures in kayaking
You can find the gallery at this location.
» Welcome to filecore.net!
But what, I hear you ask, is a filecore?
As those of you who know me won't be surprised, it's a computing term. Specifically, the FileCore, which is an integral part of ADFS, the filing system of the RISC OS operating system, which runs on Acorn-native hardware, and uses the ARM/StrongARM processor. I have been a lifelong user of RISC OS from my early Archimdedes to my current pair of RISC PCs (dating from 1996 and 1997 respectively. Find out more on RISC OS enthusiast site The Icon Bar or visit my Acorn Iron Lord and Archimedes Elite pages!
» Paddling
Kayak the planet!
The time has come for me to decide what to do with filecore.net. Why not put up my kayaking photos here, then? There's no other purpose for this site, really. Apart from hosting files of a dubious nature for my friends to download.
I think that, in addition to my own kayaking tales and photos, I might put up some links to useful sites and resources for kayakers. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there, and, even if there are a thousand pages already linking to it, I sure as hell can't remember what they are, so it'll at least be handy for me.
Oh well. Elämä on, as the Finns say. That's life.
» Rant away
Cancel the ASBOs, Kill the killjoys.
On a website I frequent, I stumbled across an article about putting metal detectors in schools to catch those children with pointy weapons. One of the anonymous comments on the article was quite well put, and I couldn't agree more, so I have reproduced it here:
Start by removing ASBOs, it should be perfectly OK for teens to congregate or look scary, teens are scary to old people, get over it!
Remove all the discretionary police 'area exclusion' orders. There are no public areas out of bounds to the public. We have no second class citizens without a judicial process.
Stop with this obsessive CCTV. People don't even window shop at night on CCTV monitored streets for fear of being seen as a vandal/lout. Which idiot put the speakers on them? He should have a web camera fitted in his living room so we can all gawp at him.
Stop with the endless 'sparklers are killers' safety drivel. How many bonfire nights were cancelled over safety fears? The one UK event you have and it was cancelled!
Kill 'No win no fee', if you feel strongly enough to sue, you should feel strongly enough to lose something if you fail. Kill the BS lawsuits that people fear will bankrupt them.
More things to do, free music festivals in town squares, buskers, fire jugglers, community art projects, mountain climbing, geo caching, community walks, rubber duck races, night cycling, balloon festivals, street break dancing with boom boxes, ...stuff! Heck if they like racing cars and shouting, close a quiet road and let them have drag races and car shows! I go to events here, and there's music and dancing and beer in town squares. Stuck for ideas? Try asking people for ideas.
Why do you need council permission for events? By default it should be allowed unless THEY can show it is a danger to others. This means that B&Q should be able to host drive in movies on their car parks without permissions, Tescos should be able to have sausage day festivals selling sausages and beer to pull in punters if they wish. If there's a river, why can't I rent a canoe? How many morons will call the police if I jump in and swim (hey what if a current gets me and drags me near the sparkler factory danger danger!!).
Keep ON the grass, lay a mat down in your local manicured park and have a picnic. Why not? Is the park there for the people's benefit or for the gardener benefit?! Have a beer too! Since when has drinking in public been so bad that it's outright banned in parks?
You can sit inside in the UK, you can go out, but only if you keep moving so as not to congregate, and don't look suspicious so as not to get stopped. You can go to a bar and drink, but only if you're 18, and most bars won't have a license for any entertainment, so all you can is sit and drink. What kind of a life is this? A sh*t one, that's what.
Kill the killjoys.
» What now?
I stole the BBC's clock
» Silly things my wife says
Number 8,942 of 4,682,991
This week's number 1: "Hey! You can't advertise my stupidity like that!"
(Upon being informed that the previous quote was going onto the website.)
» Silly things my wife says
Number 8,941 of 4,682,991
This week's number 1: "I was under the depression that we were married..."
(Hopefully, a mispronunciation of impression.)
» Hmm
Something random
No sex
no drugs
no wine
no women
No fun
no sin
no you
no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger
That's why I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
» Good riddance
Independence Day
Well you know, it's not nice (although exremely popular) to be nasty to our slightly retarded cousins across the pond. However, it fascinates me even more that the British are so caught up in American culture ('culture') that many of them are happily celebrating Independence Day.
Independence from whom, I may ask...
On the lighter side of the news, yesterday marked two years since my wife and I got engaged, and we celebrated by taking a paddle out to one of the Villaluoto islands and having a picnic. The weather was fantastic and we had a good time, so that's really all that matters.
» Silly things my wife says
Number 6,658 of 4,682,991
This week's number 1: "I'm bored. But at least I'm bored with you..."
(While being bored on our honeymoon in Bali.)
» Aargh!
Blog off
Despite the fact that this is so infrequently updated that I didn't bother with your stupid Web 2.0 technologies - this is all hardcore Notepad HTML - I notice that it seems to be approaching a blog. No wonder they coined the phrase blogroll - that's what I need to wipe this with. Me, a blogger? I can't even type words like blogosphere (as used by the BBC, no less) without cringing.
Me, a blogger?
Jesus wept.
» Anniversary
It's Scotland 2007!
Well we've decided we're going to celebrate our first anniversary in Scotland, during the summer. We've got the date organised and are looking at finding accommodation in Edinburgh - the Finns have never been to Scotland before (or the UK, most of them) and so they're all excited about it. I hope it all goes well.
» Home at last
The honeymoon is well and truly over
The honeymoon actually is over. We spent a (mostly) lovely three weeks' honeymoon in Indonesia (Bali and Lombok) and Hong Kong. I have to say that Bali was the overall favourite; Hong Kong was a bit too much after two weeks trekking in the jungle, and it wasn't helped by Laura getting a bit of an upset stomach.
Lombok, on the other hand, had some good moments, but wasn't terribly nice. The locals were needlessly grabby, and constantly took the opportunity to push it in your face that all the "tourists" were "spending their money in Bali", and "why didn't they come here, to Lombok?" Of course, we're tourists, and we did come to Lombok - so don't ruin our time here by bitching to us about it!
Seriously, though, the holiday was good overall and although we didn't get much tan, we had a great time and have got a little of the travelling bug (no, the emotional sort) and will probably start thinking about where to go next...
» Welcome Aboard
Can anybody see me?
Actually, let me amend that to if you see this, then you're looking at my new host's package. There was a long and awful debacle regarding domain renewal but I hashed that somehow together. Welcome to a whole new era!
» Termination
The End Of An Era
Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will be changing my hosting companies - I have to centralise my websites in Finland now. This will undoubtedly cause utter chaos with databases and scripts, so don't expect any forums or guestbooks to be functional around the 21st.
I'm leaving my old host, 34SP, not because I've been unhappy with their service - well, a couple of times SQL has fallen over and died, but for the last three years it's been pretty much excellent, and their technical support are wonderful - but rather to do with matters of centralisation and financing.
So expect some changes. I'm going blind into my new webhost, so let's see what they're like... and I hope I'll see you all in the future.
» Silly things my wife says
Number 247 of 3,725,042
This week's number 1: "I love you despite your face."
:-(
» Take me! I'm Free!
Free! Magazine, for Helsinki area
I know in some circles it's considered unethical to edit your posts. I don't see why. This isn't a sodding blog, you know. I can do whatever I want. It was incorrect; I changed it. (Edited 02/04/07.)
» Personal
About me
Late-twenties. Geek. Grey eyes. Dark hair. Bad skin. No glasses. No fashion sense. But passionate about kayaking and the interweb. Speaks fluent English, passable Finnish and atrocious German.
Oh, recently married too. Can now be considered as owning flat and wife. No car. Excellent public transport except on the way home.
I recently decided to set up my own company to try and make my living as a full-time freelance proofreader and editor. At some point I might even achieve this goal. Until then, I'm mainly just sitting around wanking.