I write in margins

Where can you find a start up which has permission to run a bank? In Finland. Holvi.com is perhaps the most interesting start up over there offering handy banking services to the customers over the internet. Holvi.com is the future of banking. Why? The idea of Holvi.com is fantastic. It brings together all the major functions which businesses, organisations and even events need when administering their finances. It offers a online store fuctionality which can be used for instance in fundraising or selling tickets to the events an electronic billing services through which companies can send out their invoices to their customers an automaticed real time accounts for the incomes and expenses - this means that you have all the time real time and accurate book keeping made by your banking system. I wonder why banks did not invent that superb idea. Holvi has also an intelligent account system which enables the user to administer all the accounts he has right to handle. In other words, as ...

Arvostan suuresti lihajalosteitanne. Makkarat, leikkeet ja muutkin tuotteenne ovat tulleet vuosien varrella tutuiksi. Lisäaineettomuus tänä E-aikakautena on kiitettävä valinta ja kuluttajana ainakin minä suosin mahdollisimman puhdasta vaihtoehtoa. T änään kuitenkin onnistuitte tuotteellanne pilaamaan perheemme yhteisen illallisen. Lähikauppani sisäänostaja näyttää arvostavan lihatuotteita, jotka kelluvat marinadeissa. Itse en koskaan osta marinoitua lihaa. Ainoa marinoimaton lihatuote hyllyillä oli Viljaporsaan lihasuikale (yleensä vältän myös suikaloitua lihaa, ja syystä, kuten tulette myöhemmin lukemaan). Ostin kaksi pakettia ja lähdin tyytyväisenä kotiini valmistamaan illallista. Voisin sanoa olevani keskimääräistä parempi kokki. Ostamani liha oli ala-arvoista. Tuoteselosteen mukaan sisältö on 100%:sta viljaporsaanlihaa, mutta tänään ostamani oli vähintään 60%:sti syömäkelvotonta viljaporsaanjännettä ja muuta jätepalaa. Tästä johtuen makuakaan ei voinut juuri sanoa kehuttava...

Great News for the Finnish Classical Art Got just message from Facebook wall. Ateneum (National Gallery of Finland) pages for the Google Art Project have been published today. Google Art Project's ambition is to collect the best of the national treasures around the world and bring them alive to everyone in the world. What is specific for such a art lover than myself is that you can get closer to the paintings through the internet than in real galleries. You get the details of brush work and colours better from the high resolution images than from the real ones. Today, Google Art Project have artwork from 230 different galleries. Eero Järnefelt's Under the Yoke photographed with Google's Gigapixel technique. You can go even closer. Click the link below. Thank you for the Great Name, Our Ancestors! Now, when pages opened in the internet we can congratulate our ancestors when they named our National Gallery as Ateneum. It's a bit odd name for the Finnish ar...

Today, before heading to the office I went to the carspotting. Gumball3000 2013 supercars arrived this morning (the 20th May, 2013) to the Turku harbour in order to drive further to Helsinki. This created an opportunity to spot them from the roadside of E18. Perhaps one of the most special car today was Mercedes McLaren Stirling Moss (photo below) of which there are only 75 cars produced totally. Wikipedia writes: The SLR Stirling Moss is a limited edition (75 vehicles) of the series, which uses a speedster styling that does not include roof or windscreen. The design is inspired by the 300 SLR race car, and was by Korean designer Yoon Il-hun. Mercedes McLaren Stirling Moss Another special one was - also stopped by the gas station I was - Swedish pro-skier Jon Olsson's Rebellion R2K. Based on an Ultima GT-R, this thing has a twin-turbo R8 V10 engine in the back... but no air conditioning! Rebellion R2K based on Ultima GT-R, in Gumball3000 's YouTube channel And...

I remember my first encounter with illustrations of Science Fiction and Fantasy landscapes. It was in a library in Eastern Carelia near the Russian border. I had found these huge American illustrated books presenting architecture, vehicles and landscapes of the worlds which did not exist - but which made me wish they would. Today I saw some images of Asian concept architecture on my Facebook friend's wall. Suddenly, I had a dejavú and started an hour long journey to the worlds which do not exist. I have travelled beyond stars, to our unknown past and our frightening future - and again these fantastic drawings got me out Science fiction and fantasy has always presented images of something unexisting or presenting a dream where our world should be heading to - or dystopy of a future we are heading with our current lifestyle. Most of the Art Critics doom these paintings and illustrations as a pulp art. Figurative painting, even of fantasy worlds, has not been taken seriously by...

FC TPS:n ensimmäinen kotiottelu Tapiolan Honkaa vastaan pelattiin Turun urheilupuiston keinonurmella. Koleassa säässä paikalle oli saapunut 1250 katsojaa. Kenttäolosuhteet olivat todella alkeelliset. Suomalainen jalkapallo on nappikauppaa Olin eilen katsomassa Veikkausliigan ottelua, jossa viime vuoden mestari HJK ja hopeajoukkue FC Inter ottivat yhteen Turun Veritas -stadionilla. Paikalle aurinkoisena kevätpäivänä oli saapunut ainoastaan 2050 katsojaa. Tämä antaa kuvan siitä, missä suomalainen jalkapallokulttuuri tarpoo tällä hetkellä. Jalkapallo ei kiinnosta, vaikka kyseessä on upeita elämyksiä ja yhteisöllisiä kokemuksia tarjoava laji. Olen nähnyt paikan päällä kaikki turkulaisjoukkeiden Veikkausliigaottelut tällä kaudella. TPS :n ensimmäiseen peliin Honkaa vastaan Urheilupuiston yläkentälle raahautui 1250 katsojaa. FC Interin ottelut ovat saaneet paikalle 1068 (Jaro) ja 2050 katsojaa. Yhteensä kolmessa ottelussa on ollut siis 4368 katsojaa. Samaan aikaan entisessä koti...

Last week I held a lecture on comics in The Knowledge of Art course. While thinking of examples I would speak on the class I popped in to my old favourite comic books: Corto Maltese stories by Hugo Pratt . I bought my first Maltese books in Danish while I worked in Stockholm. The first one was Det gyldne hus i Samarkand. So, I spent some good times with comic books which definetly can be classified as literature. Corto Maltese is a soldier of fortune living in a turmoil of the early 20th century. Many stories handle the chaos and culture around Europe and the world before, during and after the First World War. What happens to an idealistic individuals during a brutal war where commanders neglect the human rights and see their subordinates as cannon food? Pratt's stories are epic and even romantic stories of a time when the foundations of the post modern era was laid. Extremely well written and full of accurate pictorial historical data. Costumes, vehicles, architecture are ...

Remember the Grandpa who was tired of following his wife to the shopping at Wallmart and got banned from the supermarket because he - among other things - placed condoms in other people's carts and made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women's restroom. * Image often attached to the Wall Mart hoax. A documentary photo kind of makes the story more valid? Or perhaps you remember the story of a 87 year old Rose who fulfilled her dream to study in college - and died just one week after graduation? ** Photo of a 87 year old college student Rose is actually a photo of  Nola Ochsin who in 2007 got in to the Guinness Book of  Records as the olders college graduate (95) ever Or a farmer who made gigantic table and chairs to his horses when he was denied construction permit by the local government? *** These furniture are not constructed by an angry farmer. Anatomy of an hoax All these are good examples of the stories which have been circul...