About in Helsinki

I happen to be in Helsinki this week; and unlike back home, there's lovely weather here right now. It might not be nice enough to justify the hassle of air travel, but it's nice enough to start a blog post with. However, like many other parts of the world, Finland has seen unusually low rainfall this year. The locals keep telling me that it's the least rain in over 100 years—and when the Finns are complaining about the heat and freakish weather patterns, the realities of global warming become strikingly apparent. Although if they start discovering gold under the melting ice caps, Finland could easily become the next California.

On a brighter note, in one of those "it's a small world" moments, I happened to hear that Matt Biddulph (www.hackdiary.com) was speaking at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, and fortunately I was able to stop by. Matt gave a nice talk about "the Open Data Movement"—the idea that opening free access to data will be just as important in shaping the future internet as the open source software / free information movements have been.

Matt in action (and a little bit of Jukka's ear, for you hardcore PyS60 stalker types):

While I'm sharing pictures... Here's a few more images I snapped with my N90 while walking about town:

A quick shot in front of the main train station:

A crowded tube stop:

Ghosts in the street: