Thread To Break The Forum Silence

Just bought a 2 year subscription. Jan Heine’s blog is awesome too :heart_eyes: Thank you very much! Too bad they don’t have a digital download purchase for the magazine though…:cry:

agreed that digital would be great, but you will like the actual mag when you get it. Very high-quality printing and paper and lovely bike pix. Some things are just better when you can actually touch them (in a modular synth group I don’t really need to sell that point :slight_smile: )

If you want to get the Japan info quicker I can take photos of that article and email them to you.

He he, accident of birth more than anything @josker I’ve just lived much of my life in the bush, and when you have temperature variations of -5 to 49 you have to have a degree of robustness to extremes!

That being said I much prefer the warm, and do indeed like a hot shower at the end of the day :grin:

I certainly wouldn’t have survived the army with any degree of decorum, so hat tip back at you :wink:

Yeah I was, in our respective vernaculars, taking the piss :grin: I know what you mean. Our -5 mornings actually give way to beautiful clear, sunny Winter days, whereas the days when its overcast and above zero can be bleak and hard with driving winds coming up from the South (ie Antarctica by way of Souther Ocean). I was in -25 once in the US, and it really was not much different, perception wise, to a frosty morning in Australia (apart from the heavy blanket of snow!)

…and definitely sleeping outside in those temperatures without a sleeping bag is madness!

Haha yeah I know… when I was young we had nothing to eat but coal :joy:

Indeed! You would eventually die :frowning: Just for the record, iIn previous years I did have a sleeping bag, actually 2, and a load of blankets, but it just wasn’t enough, no where near enough.

Another really good thing about the Ventec is that it’s big enough to roll over in - not to be underestimated as a contributory factor to many comfortable nights sleeping outdoors.

Apparently I am a sleeping bag geek.

For us it’s the North-Eastererlies that are the cold winds, the SouthWesterlies are much warmer in comparison.

To nicely tie together the two outdoorsy trains of conversation: I’ve been itching to do a summertime biking tour complete with camping! Maybe I’ll take notes here and be ready come summer :slight_smile: Now all I need is camping gear and saddle bags…

( @sixnon – it was 6 mo’s of conscript duty, bet it was nothing compared to less pacifistic countries with angrier armies :slight_smile: But it was Finland, so some cold weather!)

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Hehe, you wouldn’t get the Ventec on a bike - well, maybe if you had a bike trailer - it is huge!

Hah! I was just listening to Oi Mutsi Mutsi ten minutes ago, which I discovered by way of Kaurismaki…

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I hear you regarding roll-overability, I often err on the side of coldness as I don’t like the constraint of the tight bags…so I roll it down.

I’m a swag traditionalist…by dint of income rather than ideology :wink: yer basic canvas oblong. Nowdays they’ve got tent poles and flyscreens (probably usb chargers!) but if there’s mosquitoes I just get to pull a slab of canvas over my head! Not much fun in the heat! One of these days…

(we had a handful of hot gravel, us)

Thankfully mosquitoes are not a problem here, midges sometimes, in some places, but we’re generally pest free in that regard here in England at least. Scotland is another story, the midges there are legendary!

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Wow, that’s crazy! Tidbit: It’s written in old Helsinki slang, which is pretty hard for even Finns to follow nowadays :slight_smile: 'oh mom, mom, light the lamp, i’m about to die. i suppose you’ll get me a white suit, ‘cause i’m about to be put into the cold ground’ – with the slang adding a humorous effect.

Thanks for that. I don’t actually have a clue what the lyrics are saying, just love the melody and delivery. It was the Tuomari Nurmio version.

I was also just showing my wife a few days ago a quirky Finnish (?) band who do bluegrass covers of rock anthems…their name escapes me.

I really like/am puzzled by your (Finland’s) cinema output, but really don’t have much idea of the culture.

(20 years ago I saved a young Fin from potential decapitation in a Himalayan chai shop as a result of a cultural misunderstanding around money :grin:)

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Finland is one of my favourite countries, I’ve visited there many times and although I don’t know the song you are referring to I also have a strange fascination with the culture, the heavy metal scene, the architecture of Helsinki, the forests and of course the lakes, but likewise, I don’t know much about it really either.

My friend there has a summer house in the north, the middle of nowhere, surrounded by endless birch forest, herds of deer. It’s beautiful. I found a few photos:

I particularly liked the heating system that comprises a large box of bricks (say 6ft square?) with a regular sized fire place that runs the full depth. The idea being that you light a fire at the front, gradually add fuel pushing the embers back a little at a time until the fire is ‘full’. then let it go out. The heat is stored in the bricks and is then slowly released to maintain a warm and comfortable 20 degrees for a few days. It takes ages to get going, but once it is releasing the heat it works extremely well and makes very efficient use of the fuel. Here’s a photo of my friend next to the fire:

And the summer house environs:

I have always loved sauna, one day I hope to build my own, but in the mean time this film does a very good job of good job of representing the culture:

Bizarrely I learned to snowboard (not that I am any good - at all) in Luosto while staying at the amethyst spa

https://luosto.fi/en/business/lapland-hotel-luostotunturi-spa

Who knew? :smile:

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^^^ Love all of this - scenery, snowboarding, sauna :+1:

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Yes that’s a great design. I’m oft astounded at the lack of use of thermal mass in building design in Australia. The current fashion is that reverse cycle airconditioning is the most effective form of heating, but to me it’s like warming yourself with a hair dryer. As soon as you turn it off you feel the cold again, and whilst it’s on you are in a stuffy environment. Definitely wood heating with radiant mass for me the most desirable of domestic heating.

Saunas as well, great technology!

The landscape does indeed look beautiful.

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Well, this is a turn of events I didn’t anticipate :slight_smile:

But yeah, that fireplace arrangement is the go-to solution for heating up summer cottages (which are huge in Finland). Fun fact – army tents use a similar, portable stove made out of metal that get so hot it glows red, radiating heat. So one guy has to stay awake, watching that the stove doesn’t burn the tent.

Over in Finland, British houses are a joke, engineering-wise (sorry!). Separate water taps for hot and cold, single-layer windows, poor insulation… But on the flipside, we have many houses that are too well insulated; there’s a lot of problems with air circulation, and especially if moisture can’t escape, mold starts to set in. A lot of schools are closed because these problems.

(I always feel kind of guilty writing something this much off-topic on a forum, but I suppose that’s what this thread is for!)

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Random tangent, but this is so funny I had to pass on the laughter; the real world Ableton 10 promo:

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This is like if Ableton had a “shreds” video…:expressionless:

hahahaha!!! :joy:

Thank you for the offer! However, since I’m not in a rush I’ll just wait for the print version to arrive. I also emailed BQ for a list of all their back-issues with articles on Japan touring. I got a response in less than 24 hours with a list of 6 issues which I have also ordered. :heart_eyes:

Happy new year!! :smiley:

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