Saturday 08 January 2011 at 12:01 pm
The development of the internet technology has not only brought us dozens of social networking sites and streaming media, but also an improved access to gaming treasures of the past. Thanks to Flash and Java, and the enthusiastic retro community, there is no longer a need to fiddle with emulators and ROM files when hit by the sudden urge to revisit a game from ones childhood. Admittedly, for the most authentic experience emulators are the way to go, but for that quick 8-bit spree these sites are marvellous.
Take a look at
C64i.com for instance: within a click you have dozens of classic Commodore 64 games to play, including
Commando,
Super Sprint,
Spy vs. Spy and even
The Great Giana Sisters. It's fair to point out that while most games do seem to run flawlessly, there are cases when the emulation is less than perfect. It's only a minor annoyance, however, as the site features more games than one can ever hope to complete.
Besides, the mighty C64, Nintendo's
NES and
SNES, and
Sega Master System are well-catered for. Even
Apple II has its own site of browser-playable games. What does put me down a bit is that I've been struggling to find one for my beloved Amstrad CPC.. but I'm not worried, with the fanbase it has in the UK someone is bound to set one up soon enough!
Thursday 06 January 2011 at 3:22 pm
The Nordic film channel
Silver has proven to be an excellent discovery. The film selection is varied and top-notch, rivalled only by YLE Teema in my books. While admittedly they do tend to show some films over and over again, every now and then it is possible to discover unknown gems. Here are some that we've stumbled upon and couldn't help watching straight to the end.
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Thursday 16 December 2010 at 12:12 pm
Sometimes it's really hard to find anything good to read. The internet is a great source for reviews, but even the highest-rated novels are potential disappointments; Jan Guillou's
Road to Jerusalem (the first Arn novel) was one, for instance. It is hugely popular and received heaps of positive reviews, and yet it turned out to be hollow and amateurish in comparison to the true classics such as
Alamut by Vladimir Bartol, or Mika Waltari's entire biography.
After agonizing over this for some time, it occured to me that literature award winners/nominees would be a good source for quality - and I was right! After reading a bunch of Nobel prize winners I'm convinced that the Swedish Academy has awarded top-notch novels and novelists (even in the old days when the Nordics seemed to win every year).
I recently took a tally of how many Nobel winning authors I have read, and I was pleased with the result: 17 so far! One from almost every decade, too; only missing the 1910's and the 2010's. Still a whole lot to go of course, but I have only just begun..
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Wednesday 24 November 2010 at 4:52 pm
At
A Click for the Forest Foundation website you can donate 1 SEK (equivalent of about EUR 0,10) for forest preservation with a simple click of a button. The funds are used to protect old growth forests of Sweden.
"The amount of forest saved per click varies between 2-30 square decimetres depending on how many sponsors we have at the time of your click and how much the sponsors are paying per click."
On the same site it is also possible to buy for example a whole tree for the price range of SEK 50 to 350, among other products. Nature protection made easy - heartily recommended!
Tuesday 12 October 2010 at 5:20 pm
Some time ago I took a count of all the novels I've read since we moved to Sweden; I got to 35 without trying very hard, and without consulting the booshelves, and I believe I could get close to 50 if I did so (and if I counted collections as separate novels).
Here are short reviews of a books that I have truly enjoyed and would readily recommend to anyone asking for good reading.
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Tuesday 01 December 2009 at 12:42 pm
Every day I travel between Malmö and Copenhagen by the Öresund train. The view from the bridge is quite nice, but not spectacular enough to have hold my attention after the first couple of passes. So, I have spent my time (about two hours each day, unless the trains are late) by reading. First I went through our bookshelves and read most of those novels that I always hoped I'd have the time for, and then started ordering books from the net (mainly from
play.com, and recently also from
AdLibris).
Covering three of the five Nordic countries, I figured it would be a good idea to find something to read from each country. I was surprised to find out that one major characteristic that Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and Norway all share is a heavy, social depression; misery, ill luck, poverty, and general unhappiness run amok in the melancholic literature of each country. Sweden is an exception, as for some reason I'm yet to find a Swedish book that would carry the same sense of depression.
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Thursday 08 January 2009 at 10:50 am
Some time ago
I wrote about a rare sequel to the legendary Afrikan Tähti board game that we scored from an online auction. However, it's not the only game we have bought lately.
This time I will write about two great Viking board games that we have enjoyed a lot;
Walhalla and
Fjords.
The Vikings are coming!
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Tuesday 16 December 2008 at 12:39 pm
Cute, isn't he?
The Church Foreign Aid will transport him to those that need his help in surviving poverty. Maybe in Ruanda, maybe in Nepal, maybe in Afghanistan.
We think this kind of campaigns are a great way to share wealth. There are dozens of similar organizations all around the world; find the one nearest to you for example from
here.
(Note: Of course our money doesn't go directly into purchasing a specific goat. It goes into a charity fund that is then used for purchasing livestock to poor families. More about it
over here, for instance.)
Monday 24 November 2008 at 10:53 am
Afrikan tähti (Star of Africa) is a legendary game, one that nearly every Finn knows. Designed by late Kari Mannerla in 1949 (at the age of 19), it has thus far sold 3,5 million copies (1,7 million outside Finland!) and is cherished in childhood memories all over the country. It has also been translated to 16 languages, and is still available in nearly all Finnish supermarkets and bookstores.
Why am I writing about this? Well, browsing an auction site, looking for a fun board game to play, we found a rare sequel!
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Wednesday 17 September 2008 at 1:02 pm
When I was going to Poland for exchange studies, I had with myself an ancient, bone-crushingly heavy laptop for typing essays and whatnot. That relic of a computer featured a black%white screen, a highly unresponsive keyboard, and a disturbingly slow 386 processor that barely ran DOS and Windows 3.11 (and looked like
this). Before the trip I downloaded a few games for it, to keep me entertained in that strange country I knew next to nothing about.
The time in Poland was awesome (in fact so awesome that I went back there a year later!), but I did find some time to try out the games, too. I was happing to find that I had made some excellent choices - and one of them turned out to be The Very Best Computer Game Ever Made!
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Take a look at C64i.com for instance: within a click you have dozens of classic Commodore 64 games to play, including Commando, Super Sprint, Spy vs. Spy and even The Great Giana Sisters. It's fair to point out that while most games do seem to run flawlessly, there are cases when the emulation is less than perfect. It's only a minor annoyance, however, as the site features more games than one can ever hope to complete.
Besides, the mighty C64, Nintendo's NES and SNES, and Sega Master System are well-catered for. Even Apple II has its own site of browser-playable games. What does put me down a bit is that I've been struggling to find one for my beloved Amstrad CPC.. but I'm not worried, with the fanbase it has in the UK someone is bound to set one up soon enough!
