I just finished Alastair Reynold's sci-fi opera, Revelation Space. Reading it now, 13 years after it's publication, the book still feels fresh. The concept of quite hard sci-fi without FTL travel (and, obviously, the modern social media enviroment that was successfully embedded into Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince) works well when you do just what Reynolds did: add a pinch of decline and post-apocalyptism, mix it with Lovecraftian concepts of horrors from beyond the stars and stir. As a result the book's visual storytelling was enjoyable, plot was a rollercoaster of twists and slowly unraveling revelations, and in the end - yes, there are horrible machines that kill all sentient species if they can. You can now cross over that pesky Drake Equation, boys.
Monday, May 6, 2013
The 335 Towers - 4.5.2013
BirdLife Finland has been organizing a combined birdwatching-competition / birdwatching introduction day for twenty years now. The basic concept is simple: a team is gathered, they pick a birdwatching tower ("tower") and try to see as many species as possible in a limited amount of time. Recently the time has been limited to about 8 hours (5am-1pm) and date has been the first saturday of May (unless it's 1st of May, which is a traditional holiday in Finland). This year we even had a Twitter hashtag. How delightfully modern - Twitter is practically unknown in Finland.
This year we (Elina, Pirita and I) decided to capitalize on the heavy birdwatching effort around North Karelia and decided to go on a field trip to Tohmajärvi, again - third week in a row. Weather forecast had changed from extremely favourable to slightly favourable, but we took off anyways. Maybe we would see something or got a chance to twitch something spectacular...
Day gave us a whopping 96 species. Best among the bunch were Jack Snipe, White Stork, Black Kite, Horned Lark, lots of Lapland Longspurs, two Peregrines, three Black-Tailed Godwits and a female Capercailie. We missed a Black-Legged Kittiwake and didn't stay long enough for a Greater Spotted Eagle. We also didn't see a number of common species (eg. Goldcrest, Dunnock, Hazel Grouse, Blackbird), but 96 species in North Karelia in one day without too much effort was great.
This year we (Elina, Pirita and I) decided to capitalize on the heavy birdwatching effort around North Karelia and decided to go on a field trip to Tohmajärvi, again - third week in a row. Weather forecast had changed from extremely favourable to slightly favourable, but we took off anyways. Maybe we would see something or got a chance to twitch something spectacular...
Day gave us a whopping 96 species. Best among the bunch were Jack Snipe, White Stork, Black Kite, Horned Lark, lots of Lapland Longspurs, two Peregrines, three Black-Tailed Godwits and a female Capercailie. We missed a Black-Legged Kittiwake and didn't stay long enough for a Greater Spotted Eagle. We also didn't see a number of common species (eg. Goldcrest, Dunnock, Hazel Grouse, Blackbird), but 96 species in North Karelia in one day without too much effort was great.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)