Funky youngster are hanging around

As the weather gets warmer, the more ppl are out there in the city. Many graduates are hanging around with funky toys and stylish clothes with nostalgic memories reflecting from theyr happy eyes :)


I don't know who's in the picture, if you happen to know, please tell me as well :)

piece of spring - tiny blue lily-like flower.. what might it be in English?..

Estonia from Outside :P

Pretty interesting reading, especially for those who live in Estonia.
Estonia From Outside

Here's also a link to a site containing brief information about Estonia.
Estonica

Tech Day

This is Estonian rally star Urmo Aava. He was in the "Motorex 2006" show today kindly sharing autographed postcards. Mr Aava still drives a JWRC car Suzuki. I hope we see him in real WRC one fine day, but we should also be ready for the worst scenario, as there are big money in WRC/F1 game, so they are like some competitiors (rumours say F1 wants to kick WRC).

If you haven't seen how the heart of the Suzuki looks, here it is:



Markko Martin was even more famous lately but he decided to step back from WRC arena last year. Mr Martin does not like to talk too much, so we don't know the exact reasons. I believe he is remembered as a Ford Focus driver who won outstanding bronze medal in WRC back to 2004. He has also won many rallies. Respect, Markko.

Okay what else did I see in Motorex. First, I believe I last visited this exhibition back in 1995. Today is more like a show, a lot of cute girls hanging around, a lot of performances and games, and if you do not play music so loud that your ears hurt, you don't rule. In comparison the exhibition was a lot larger also. Sitting in a new car is a good feeling, and car manufacturers know that, too :P We all want new, stylish, economic, safe cars with extras, don't we :P

Now that's interior of the Saab 93 - marvellous. Stylish design, automatic transmission, perhaps some 2.o Turbo Engine.


Okay, I'll go on with it some other day. It was a great experience over eleven years :)

april :)

.. it's a very special day today :) it's my wife's birthday! Happy birthday! :) .. which also means that the day is very busy and I have no time to update my blog again.. ugh.. :P

Pic is from back to 2004, "leaving Heltermaa Port" haha, sun, clouds & sky is saves us when there's nothing else particular to shoot :P .. I had a lovely Panasonic FZ10 camera these times, this was my first, and I'd recommend it to anyone.. aha. I have a plan to review some digicams and other tech stuff one day, so let's see it I can handle it :-)

shallalaa

shallalaa, i'm lazy updating my blog.
but let's see how it goes in near future - who knows.

Two years ago I wanted to start a freelance project - dlancer.net freelance community. One of my friends even helped me with starting the phpBB forum. However it seems I'm not a good project manager :) and these days, we have tons of forums out there, don't we. So my apologies for all who joined this forum.

I'm patiently waiting for the trees and plants to becobe green. Tired of gray landscapes and even grayer clouds. The photo is from April 10th, now that's some Estonian landscape. Looks a bit muddy though, I guess I should use film in summer (instead of digital, which is muddy, muddy, MUDDY. OR I haven't found the right one).

Estonian lead ornitologists also announce, that it would be great to watch birds someday these days. I totally agree. There are many of these little warblers hanging around here in spring, so if you have a second to visit forests, just do it.

Simple Minds..

edit: 22.april 2006 - here's finally the only pic from the concert:

.. performs live well :) music is a sophisticated piece of art, and I'm glad to see that there are still good musicians among all this crap available today. So the concert was very good, maybe a bit loud in terms of sound for my ears, but hey I might have stupid ears :) ..

Simple Minds is a kind of music that you might consider buying a few albums on your CD-shelf. It is powerful, vital music, that makes your hair rise and fears fall. There are other great artists too, but this is another topic :-) .. (I'll try to upload a pic later - i have one tiny mp-camera pic :P)

I hope this blog won't turn "photos only" :)

anyway, we are waiting for spring here in Estonia, but as with today, still snow here and there, and below zero here and there.

Cuba pics

Found this Cuba gallery today while browsing the holy internet.. excellent travel pics!

recommended artist

Rufus Wainwright

a quick link:
signs of the times
also this nice flash intro about if boeing attacked pentagon or not (thanks for the link to Marcela)

different people

What can be more enjoyable than different people in different countries? Today, while browsing the holy internet, I found this interesting travel page with some masterpiece travel pictures

Today I was trying to capture incence smoke again (I've tried this before, actually).
Now that's it. More 1337 news later on :P

car cult

Today, I found an interesting article while browsing the internet - why people love their cars. It is a phenomenon what we can understand, but which we do not want to change thill there another way around. Do you use a car? I do, my family and friends do, everyone who can lease a car, does it. Highway is freedom, there's still gas in the station?All the Europe and US are using cars, and car (+related) industry is one of the most profitable these days. Cars are even usen in not so highly advanced societies, like in Africa. They use europeans old cars, and meanwhile the picture might remain ratten.com, the cars are still in use.

What is the phenomenon of the car? I did not find too much information about that today while browsing the web & squeezing search engines, so I can tell you why I'm using the car. I'm sure sociologists have paid attention to it timeby time, though.

Now down to the business, why it is hard to relinguish our cars.

1) Car gives you a freedom to move when we want and where we want (opposite to every kind of public transport)
2) We are egoists, we love to be alone in our cars (opposite to public transportation where everyone can disturb you)
3) Cars look good.
4) Cars are durable these days - you can drive a few hundred thousand kilometers without major maintenance.
5) You can install an expensive hi-fi sound system, so music makes you feel in heaven.
6) When it rains outside, it is dry inside (opposite to bicycles and bikes)
7) Pretty cheap to drive around because of the (still available) cheap oil
8) We may love to investigate in our cars to make them look better and run faster (new wheels, engine tuning)
9) Owning car is an advantage (= speed, mobility) in business. In the same situtation, in the same business, the one who owns car, can probably manage business faster.
10) We feel ourself safe in our car, so we can provoke our co-drivers and police, can't we. And it gives us so much self confidence and adrenaline, ain't that.
11) Etcetera.

So in general, we are comfortable, egoistic, lazy, vain, indolent.

We won't die when we would not have cars. But two or more of them are nice also, don't you think. The more newer, faster, stylish, durable, multifunctional the better.

inking and drawings

This post stands for a picture I drew a few weeks ago. I attend in drawing courses with my wife, so time by time I digitalize our drawings and upload it to DA. As I now have my own blog (still poud of it, aha?), why not to post some work besides thinking about if there's fuel in the gas station tomorrow or if the protocol of the Kyoto makes sense. ain't that?

Drawing / designing has been one of my favourite doings since secondary school, I had all my math marks low because I designed cars while the others learned algebra. My math teaher told me that I won't reach anywhere if I if I do not learn math, but I did not like that kind of method of teaching, so I still drew cars in my math books. It was more than 10 years ago when I made a decision to learn sciences instead of arts, but today I still prefer arts, I even make some living out of creating art. Yes. Okay I think that's it, drawing/art is a very interesting topic so I'll continue some other day, comprende? :P

comic strips can cause trouble

I'd like to tell a few words about why comic pics can be dangerous. I'm sure you all already know a lot about it, but hey, I have to continiue by blog :) The pic with the cows stands for peace, it is taken in south-west Spain near Cadiz, which is a very beautiful district. I have more than 1,000 pics from my trip there from 2005, so you'll see a tons of them appearing here when I'm out of ideas/pics related with the article. You can click on the pic, for bigger size. I try make it a tradition from now on.

So one day a few moths ago a scandal flared up caused by pictures in danish second-rate newspaper. It has became one of the most serious conflicts these days between EU and the Middle East, I think it is sometimes considered even as a global issue. So what happened was that Danes were publishing silly pics about muslim extremists, which caused a huge hullabaloo
in many of the muslim countries. I'm not able to understand that kind of things, because I'm not very educated (I haven't read the bible nor the koran), but there's an incident related to that all I'd like to share with you.

One day while I was hanging around in orkut (oh holy internet, you are so great), I got a friend request from a guy from Algeria - seemed an interesting aquaintance for me, so I accepted it and we later talked a lot via msn. We had a lot of talk about - progressive rock (he's a real audiophile), global problems (why Kursk went down, why 9.11 happened, and so on, very interesting topics), why pakistanians are going to search a new life in UAE, and everyday's life.

Well, I enjoyed these intelligent conversiations much, till one day he came online and asked: "man, what do you think about this danish cartoons?" well, as much as I know, religions is always extremely sensitive topic. But I love to say to my friends what I really think ( = I want to feel myself free while being with my friends), so after introducing my background him ( = that I do not know much about chrisitians' / muslims' values), I said that I personally do not care much about the pics in some secondary newspaper. So that was the end of the story, my answer angered him so much that I did not meet him online for many weeks.

Geez, this religion has some power! I was thinking, and I was right. When I meet him later online again, we discussed about what has happened. I apologized and sayd I did not mean anything bad with saying what I said. No good. Religion was the most important thing for him, so today I do not have this contact anymore. So what I learned from this lesson? Uncountable list of things. First, never underestimate the power of religion. Second, that it is hard to discuss religion related issues with a seriously religious man in a neutral ground. .. and so on.

Religion is a very interesting topic, so I'm about to discuss about it here more closely one fine day I hope. I believe religion is related to so many things, that you can't ignore it, and I'm sure we all have examples from here and there about it. I believe religion has another dimension of power these days again, a good example is that when sms was sent to millions of muslims on middle east, the result of that was disastrous. and so on. So dangerous stuff :)

I love my naighbours

I love dogs, too. We moved from flat to a tiny house three years ago, it was sometimes interesting to see our naighbours' dog to visit our garden. The breed should be Moscow Watchdog, if you care (I'm not sure though, because the colors do not match).

Okay this dog sometimes managed his dog business in front of my window while I was eating coffee in my kitchen. Time went by and I hoped my lovely naighbours do something to restrain their dog, but no luck. So one day I went to talk with them, hey, you dog runs in my garden, he shits around while I drink coffee, and dig up the flowers my wilfe plants every spring. Well they looked at me like I was their utmost enemy, and said they do not know about the problem. But the problem became more global (the dog jumped over the fence and walked around the streets and so), so one day a poor doggy was chained.

As with today, they do not have this dog anymore, so I have no-one to scold about anymore. But don't worry, we have a new trend to complain about these days - naighbours' children love to run through my garden to get shorter way to the street (I love in a corner plot). I noticed that a few weeks ago and I was thinking - hey, these are kids, so okay, we all have been kids and have been making stupid things.

But today they also used this cute shortcut through my garden so I opened the window and squawked them, what's going on??!! - which caused them to hide behind the trees, and run like hell when they realized they were caught in the act. My wife and I do not like that kind on lovely things, so I jumped in my car to catch these poor fishes, but no luck - young people are fast! Consider this when they walk in your property next time! So I visited my naighbours again over 3 years today hoping to get an audience to the boys' parents. I had no luck, so I speaked with one young lady and asked her if she could pass my best regards, and I'd also be interested to hear from them about the reasons why they run through my garden. I also find this is not very smart to do this when there's snow covering all the garden, so their footprints are all visible.

Well that's the story this time - small place, small problems, sometimes funny though :P

A great way to start ..

.. learning spanish :) download the exe file from here - link - (for windows).. the interface is very easy & logical, the program also contains audio files so you can learn how to pronounce the words :) hasta luego!

spanish

pic is from Spain, from april 2005. What a country! (this is pic is also available in my dreamstime galleri, if you'd like to purchase it)

I'm trying to learn spanish, but I don't know if I succeed. I tried this last year at the same time, then I failed. I think it is a matter of diligence & laziness. I have resources to learn it, so if I fail again, I'm too lazy :P

When I learned German in secondary school, our teacher said that one talented german learned estonian language within 3 months. Unbelievable, but who knows.

oil age

yes, it seems to be a matter of time. What do we do after we're out of cheap oil? There are many alternatives actually, which are more or less not so easy to use today. Oil production is near maximum these days, and because of the lack of the new huge oil fields, big crude oil refineries are not built anymore. Demand for fossil-based fuel increases every day, but the production can not follow the speed. What is also interesting, is that we don't know if the information available in internet/media about oil resourses is accurate, because oil business is too big business to declare that.

So, what is the solution? No one knows so far, there are only speculations out there. Alternative energies are not so easy to take into use, all the infrastructure is based on cheap oil, producing alternative tehnologies to replace current infrastructure (solar panels, etc) takes too much fuel. Nuclear power yet to be developed to be effective and safe at the same time, meanwhile it is times more reconsidered than 20 years ago (Chernobyl disaster).

It has been told us that we're running out of oil, but we're still driving cars, heating our homes, and using this resource for many other applications. What will we do when it ends? Time to think about it, though there are still some big oil fields discovered, time by time ;)

here's also a pick of related links:

DIE OFF
Life after the oil crash
Alternative energy resources (1998)
EurekAlert (US science news)
Hubberth peak theory
NY Green Guerillas
revolution in public transport
ITER - new generation nuclear power
bio-diesel
price of oil over years & decades
energy bulletin