today, i heard about, downloaded and watched valkaama, a movie released under one of the creative commons licenses. (this means that you can actually download the sources of the movie and make your own version. and, probably more important to most people, you can just copy and watch it without restrictions.) technically speaking, the movie is of good quality, except the audio, maybe. i’ve listened to the movie with headphones, which was a bit annoying since voices were often only audible on the left or the right channel, but almost never somewhere inbetween. on speakers, this is fine, but with headphones it sucks. but besides that, everything’s great. so go and watch it, but maybe not with headphones :-) the movie also features inarijärvi, one of the largest european lakes, located in northern lapland.

after attending the joint mathematics meetings in san francisco, i want to share two points you should not try to copy when you’re organizing a conference.

• in case you have a lot of parallel sessions, try to schedule sessions with similar topics in parallel. this minimizes the number of days people from these areas have to attend the conference.
• promise wireless internet, but do not provide a backbone which can handle this. after noticing it is too slow, simply turn it off for the rest of the conference.
• this applies more to conference center owners. do not install power plugs anywhere near to areas where tables and seats are placed. and by any means, never install power plugs in rooms where talks are held.

people will really appreciate this and regard your conference as one of the best ever.

for new year’s eve, we traveled to oldenburg. on the way back and forth, we saw some interesting things in osnabrück. finally, on the way to dresden, we saw a historic train of the deutsche reichsbahn in leipzig. here are some impressions.

osnabrück, covered in snow.

new year’s eve.

osnabrück, outside the train station.

a historic train in leipzig.

on christmas, my girlfriend and i visited lüdinghausen, my home town. we visited two castles, burg lüdinghausen and burg vischering, and my old school, the st. antonius gymnasium. here are some impressions.

location.

they are all located relatively near to each other:

the first castle: burg lüdinghausen.

my old school: the st. antonius gymnasium.

the second castle: burg vischering.

in case you wonder: the right photo in the second row depicts a pranger. one can actually try out this one :)

last year, some days before christmas, we attended a concert by swallow the sun in leipzig, germany, with support by insomnium and omnium gatherum. it was the last concert of the new moon tour. (no vampire shit, though ;-) ) you might know that swallow the sun is one of my favourite bands. they played in a small youth club, conne island, which wasn’t the easiest to find. but eventually, we found it. fortunately, nobody complained that i took my favourite toy with me; so this time, i managed to make some good photos.
i think that this concert was the best one i attended in 2009. ok, i have to admit there haven’t been many concerts in 2009 anyway. but nonetheless, this one was very good. the bands played great music and obviously had fun. (and: they played the giant, one of my favourite songs, in the encore!) unfortunately, the audience didn’t manage to sing “we want more” in finnish, so most sang a few times “zugabe” and then stopped doing anything at all, resulting in an awkward half-silence. but the band fortunately still came back.
now have fun watching some of the photos. if you want to know more about the concert, read someone else’s report ;-)

omnium gatherum.

insomnium.

during the concert of insomnium, members of the other bands showed up on the stage, and equiped insomnium’s singer niilo with a funny hat and a sign saying “korpiklaani”. he eventually removed the hat by banging his head:

swallow the sun.

during swallow the sun’s performance, members of the other bands had fun installing a pink dildo first at the keyboard and then, later, at the singer’s microphone:

as opposed to the korpiklaani “hat”, the dildo stayed there for the rest of the concert.

well, in december i didn’t managed to post some of the things i wanted to, for example something on a squash soup. i got the recipe from a friend and mixed it with some i found online. it consists of squash, cut into small pieces. note that it is a good idea to take squashs whose hull is edible, like hokkaido squash, butternut squash and buttercup squash).

the pieces are cooked a bit with onions, garlic and spices such as cayenne pepper and curry, until water with stock is added:

after cooking it for 30-40 minutes, one can add crème fraiche (or sour cream if you live in a country where you can’t easily get crème fraiche).

enjoy!

last weekend, it was rather cold outside, and pretty white. i did a walk to the nose hill park, enjoying the beautiful snowscape as well as the icy wind. here are some impressions.

it’s white outside. for a couple of days now. after a few white days during october, and rather warm temperaturs during most of november, the coldness finally returned, and with it the whiteness. an unfortunate companion of snow is ice, and by now, there’s plenty of it. mostly on sidewalks, sometimes on the roads. let’s see when the next chinook is coming.

after sharing one pancake recipe more than ten days ago, i thought i’d write about another one which i tried more often. it’s the result of preparing enough spinach sauce for a few days, and trying to combine that with pancakes.
i again made a lot of spinach sauce today, so i can eat a few days from it. i took one onion, one garlic bulp and one red chilli and chopped them. then, i put them in a pan and roasted them gently, adding “some” cayenne pepper.

after that, i added the frozen spinach, and let it defrost. during the process, i added some hot water, some more water with corn starch, and some whipping cream.

as usual, i prepared pancakes and added some of the spinach sauce on one half.

finally, i flipped the other half over, and obtained a small stack of spinach pancakes.

often, i experiment when cooking. adding or removing or exchanging ingredients, changing the result a little every time; i guess this is not that uncommon for anyone used to cooking. sometimes, i do some more experiments, like today. two days ago, when shopping, i got a spontaneous idea, namely to try a omlette with zucchini and cheese. well, i bought everything i needed, but on the way home, i continued to think and planned to replace the omlette by pancakes. well, and today, i finally tried it out. first, i cut the zucchini into small slices:

then, i prepared pancake dough – flour, a few eggs, salt, milk, and mixing it together. then, i started baking pancakes.

for the first try, i took the done pancake out of the pan and placed it on a plate. i added grinded mozzarella on one half, put on some of the zucchini slices, and flipped the other half over:

it tastes good, but i thought i can do better. so i tried to add some spices, in particular cayenne pepper, after putting the cheese on. i also put on the cheese while the pancake was still in the pan, as otherwise the cheese doesn’t really melt. it then looks like this:

finally, i had a small stack of pancakes, part of whom i enjoyed eating, while putting the rest in the fridge to enjoy it at tomorrow’s lunch.

on one of the last days, we did a small trip to calgary’s nose hill park, where i have been before as well. here are a few impressions: