Main stuff

Mun Jonneilud!

Okay, sorry, this story is in Finnish due to awesome epicness and stuff like that…

Ebin juddu diägs, oldii sergun gaa ruoddii menos, ja sid laival gesgel yöd gadoi lombaggo. guusgyt senaa. No, heidin ne sid simmoddeese peligoneesee jos sid hedge belaili, jossai vaihees gadoi handuu. guus nelgyd egee. “No hiddo!”, mä duumasi, “Dällähä osdaa mazzundsa gylläsegs!”. Eli, läheddii sergun gaa pizzal!

Sid gu bääsdii ylägerdaa (laivoil o humalaiddi jodga yriddi dul doivoddaa hyvää bääsiäisd, vaig oli uusvuos ni gesdi yhe hedgen), ni gadoddii rafla menuu. Viddu, ygz pizza seidsemä egee. No, go oli dollane hirmune mäihä gäyny, ni gogladdii sergun gaa sid hedelmäbelii. Heidin egen inee, painoi viiz linjaa (soli sellane ebin masiina josd sai egel viiz linjaa). Ega pyöräydys, neljä egee ulos.

Däs vaiheez oli semmone “vidu oo jumal” olo, mud sid guidengi dyynen mendii hagee pizza. Kassal neidi sanos ed “Anteeksi mutta meillä ei ole juuri nyt muutakuin tonnikala- tai salamipitsaa”. Olin vähä ed wud, VAAN zalamipizzaa!? Paggoha sid oli oddaa se, ja sid gu saadii pizza pöydää sergun gaa ni katotaa täytteit. Ginggu. No, syödii pizza, 4/5, ei maisdunu salami.

For the pathetic people who can’t understand Finnish, it’s a story about me on a boat between Turku and Stockholm, winning my own pizza-money and buying a pizza. Sorry, you can’t get the joke here, but it certainly is there.

Salo 2012 – Regional Session of EYP Finland

Woah, what an weekend with EYP… European Youth Parliament had a meeting in Salo, Finland, and I was there too (as a delegate). The whole happening was hellishly awesome in total, and I’m damn tired now.

So, what did we do there then? Our main task was to discuss and make solutions into problems we find out in the subject we were discussing. I went into (mostly due to the fact that the other good options were already taken) FEMM, Female rights and gender equality. Turned out that a friend of mine from school had had the same problem as I did, and we were the only boys in the FEMM-group x) That wasn’tas bad as we thought at first, and we (or atleast I) did came up with nice solutions too. In total, the “work” part of the EYP-meeting was quite hard, but fun at the same time. Ofc, that wasn’t all we did… not at all ;)

About the other stuff we did, as in, free time. It was the “awesome” part in my original statement. We actually didn’t have very much of it, but we did have some small games the chair persons arranged for us, and FEMM even won 3 other committees in fearless combat of say, going bananas ;) But boy when the chair persons left us alone and gave us free time until the next activities, THAT was fun. Well, at least “fun” as in changing opinions and life-stories with fellow delegates (I think I even shared quite much of my latest musical career at something around 1am and 2am), playing (god I wish they had a piano :((), singing, dancing at a party and so on.. long story short, it was fun.

About our language-usage. The activities were (pretty clearly) in English, so we spoke English while working with our stuff and playing with our chair persons. At first it felt quite stupid to speak only English with a group in which everyone spoke Finnish natively (apart from a Finnish-Swedish girl). I quickly got used to speaking English as the ‘main’ language of the event, and actually writing this post in English is easier now than usually, since I’ve just been speaking English for the past 3 days. In fact, mostly it was a pain in the ass to try and speak Finnish during some of the small breaks, and even more a pain to try and convert En to Fin or Fin to En, It’s just, like, I understand both languages, but thinking of how they connect is difficult x) Other languages that could be heard — or at least what I heard — were Swedish, Chinese, French, Czech and a small bit of German.

So about the statement I made in the beginning, the event was divided into two subsets, Awesome and Hellishly Awesome, the work being the first and the free time being the latter. 

Thanks for all the EYP-members who took part in the event, it was absolutely amazing :9

- Elias “Wing” Linjama

Wärkfest and some tracking

I can’t really parse my feelings about last weekend… as I expected something quite different from what I got. In a positive way thought :)

Wärkfest 2012 was nice, and I got free tickets to it since I was a ‘Wärker’ with our computer-culture magazine Skrolli. On Skrollis behalf, Wärkfest was really good, we published our 0th edition (a 4-page teaser), and we got lots of great feedback, and a couple of completely new people with us to develop the magazine. When it comes to me, I was there representing Skrolli with couple other people form Skrolli (couple friends that is), and I programmed a advertising banner, which basically ran on my laptop for the whole time. So I had time to do something else than be nerdy and spend the time on that computer (apart from the programming part). I then walked around, socialized, spread Skrolli, made new friends and stuff like that. In a shorter form, had a good time there, like usually on events like Wärkfest.

Now the odd thing about this event was the compos… I entered a real real time -compo, which basically meant that your compo-entry needed to be made during the compo, on stage, live and in front of the audience. My entry-idea was to compose a tune with MilkyTracker, in the allowed time.. which was about 8 minutes (that is NOT much). The entries before me were great and I was kinda nervous to get up on the stage to spend that 8 minutes sitting on my computer on the stage :DD

Now, when I climbed on the stage, introduced myself, sat on my comp and started composing, the crowd was quite amazed (at least I think so). I quite quickly got some real rhythm out of the tracker, and crowd started clapping along the rhythm — right until I stopped it to edit it.. A sad ‘awh’ from the audience, with me responding to it by playing back the changes I made; A quite basic drum-beat. Audience; *clapping to the rhythm* Me; “now wtf am I going to do now?!”. Quickly I decided to go for a bassline, and after another ‘awh’ from the audience, I started making it. After the bassline, someone yelled “make the melody on the 4th channel!!” (I was planning to go for a 6-channel tune, but I had only 4 there at that time). So after that it was clear I needed to squeeze the tune into 4 channels… not really great for my plans of making a phased lead or any kind of chord-instrument. I scratched those ideas pretty totally. I then pleased the crowd by making the melody, stretching it for some 2-4 patterns and then listened to the whole tune. Audience; *cheering after the tune had played* Me; “Now what?!”. Meaning to be quick, I decided to make a smallish variation to the current pattern, so I cloned it, removed one instrument and replaced it with the phased lead I had planned. Yay, plans working again \o/. Then I went for an intro, that wasn’t really that hard, and after that, set the loop-point correctly, made other small finishing touches and started to play it. I wrote the greets/some randomness into the instrument list (as usual), ‘named’ the tune, and waited for cheers. People were amazed, basically whole room (a smallish hall or somesuch), about 200 people, cheering, yelling, clapping and some even dancing. And the tune was about 20 seconds long. “Really, me this good?”

Well, the jury loved the tune, as did the audience. Recieved comments from the jury, bowed, and packed my computer and went back to my place around the first row of the audience. Listened to the couple guys after me, went to chill out a bit, and then came back. On the break between the real real time and scene -compos, there was quite a hassle about me (on IRC atleast), I made even more friends, got fans and stuff like that. My friend didn’t really believe her eyes, but the biggest surprise (for both of us) wasn’t the reaction.. It came after the scene-compo, when I won that real real time (and got the laptop I’m now writing with). She was quite amazed (as far as I could tell), and even more amazed after I won the ‘best in show’ price too (for being the best entry during the whole evening!) and got a 200€ gift card to some internet-PC-store.. After all, I think I can now call myself a scener, and a professional musician (at some degree at least)

After the compo, I needed to sleep somewhere so I went to my friends house (She was a bit worried about her aunt, who didn’t really like her staying at Wärkfest up until 01 am instead of 11 pm :DD). So I slept there, woke up at something around 08.40 and then prepared to get back to Wärkfest. Sunday was definitely more chilled than Saturday, less people around, and I did some more of ‘sitting at Skrollis table handing out our teasers and telling about the magazine’. Time flew by and then I faced a problem.. for I had won a laptop, but I only had one bag to carry my stuff in.. and I had already brought my older laptop with me :DD I just hoped nothing would broke when I packed both laptops into the same bag, and got off to the bus-station, and from there back to Turku. A nice weekend indeed :3

- Elias ‘Wing’ Linjama