5th Dec 2007 - Iirorantala.com online!
Iiro Rantala is no doubt one of the very finest and argueably most internationally recognized Finnish jazz pianist. He's now touring the world with his new Iiro Rantala Trio. Read more about Iiro's projects and check out my latest web design here:
12th Nov 2007 - Our Talent Semifinal TV performance airs 18th Nov at 8pm on Nelonen!
Vilhelm and Jay's Talent Finland semifinal performance will be on air this coming sunday at 8pm on Nelonen! If you're in Finland, make sure you catch the show and
vote us to finals! More info (in Finnish) can be found at the Talent Finland website.
4th Nov 2007 - Talent...we got into the semifinals!!
Watch the performance here:
1st Nov 2007 - I'm in Finland's got Talent (Talent Finland)!
My duo, Vilhelm and Jay performs in the first public round in Talent show.
It airs on national Finnish TV this Sunday, 4th November at 8pm, channel Nelonen.
If you can watch that, make sure you do! If you can't, just go into Talent website
and click "esitykset".
Apologies for not blogging that much in English. I've been busy with lots of stuff, recording drums, playing some gigs, arranging Vilhelm and Jay material for Talent, developing websites and trying to continue my studies as well. Sorry. I'll try to post more often but if you understand Finnish, just read the Finnish blog instead. It's updated a lot more often than this.
1st Nov 2007 - FireGrape.com published
My Web Design firm's website has been published. Go check it out:
26th Jul 2007 - Tokyo trip blogged
Finally. If you're interested, go read it here. : )
10th Jul 2007 - Merilapinsuunnittelu.fi published
I got some work done too: A Finnish company designing electrical works (design, consulting etc) got their site. If you don't understand Finnish, you won't be having much of a reading experience (they didn't feel they need an english version). Here's the link: Insinööritoimisto Merilapin Suunnittelu.
9th Jul 2007 - Home sweet home!
Wow. What an amazing trip I had. I thought I already blogged about getting back but since it seems I didn't, here we go.
For those who have absolutely no clue what am I talking about, I'll try to give a gentle hint: I spent the last 5½ months in Southeast Asia. I was on an exchange study program in Singapore, studying computer science in National University of Singapore. I've been blogging my little journey in the Singapore section. Go check it out if you feel like reading a bit. Anyway, I came back to Finland on the 16th of June and have been trying to blend in for the past weeks. The whole trip was incredible. I travelled a bit too visiting Japan, Malaysia and Thailand twice. The experience to me was nothing sort of amazing. If you're a student thinking about exchange, I hope you stop thinking and decide to do it. I was thinking it's gonna be huge to me but the experience was so much more I could have imagined - in every way. So do yourself a favor and go! This is the time of your life when it's still relatively easy. I decided to maximize so I went for a distant place with new cultures and different ways of life to explore. Yeah, you still didn't get it, it's not about studying. It's about living on your own in a new place, possibly with a new language and certainly with new friends. The amount of things you learn about life...It's priceless.
Okay, now that I've done the marketing part I'll just say that I'll still continue blogging in my Singapore blog for a while since so many things are still unsaid. I'll probably forget lots of things but the around 6500 photos I have from this period will surely help me remember. After all that I've been through, I've come to realize how great a country Finland really is to live in. Well, I admit, the weather could be better. But still, I've come to value lots of things we take for granted. In my opinion, that, if anything, is a good lesson to learn. #
20th Jan 2007 - Singapore, baby!
I'm now in Singapore for exchage studies at National University of Singapore! My blogging during this time will take place at my Singapore blog. If you want to know what's happening here, go check it out! Again, I'll probably be blogging more on the Finnish side so if you know your Finnish, click the flag to see more messages. Today I'm going to the gym and then...to Sentosa beach! Aloha.
14th Dec 2006 - Peter Engberg's website published!
Peter Engberg is a Finnish professional guitar player who's (among many things)
been Scott Henderson's student in the USA. He's know working for serveral
Finnish artists, both in studio and live. Check out the pages:
http://www.peterengberg.com
17th Nov 2006 - Download YouTube videos
http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/
I tried it and it actually works very well. If you just watched the video
in YouTube's website, (so that it's fully buffered) the video will be in your browser's cache and
it's going to be downloaded in seconds! YouTube already sent a letter to
techcrunch.com complaining about the copyrights. Ironic isn't it, YouTube
willing to sue people for copyright violations! I find it hilarious : )
Well, of course, it has to look like they care and find the guilty one
before everyone is blaiming YouTube. Anyway, the download service works
like a charm. Go download your favourite videos quickly before it's forbidden!
7th Nov 2006 - Fighting spam
Again, I got the pleasure of getting spam into my guestbook. And yeah, I really don't need any viagra. Honestly. I got completely fed up with spammers so I made a new guestbook which uses my own CMS. Yes, I've been building a CMS (content management system). There are some free systems available but I felt none of them was going to do the trick for me and my customers without some serious coding so I thought why not make my own. And with the help of my team -- now I have one...coming up. At least I don't have to deal with other people's buggy code. I just have to give my customers the best service possible. Well not have to but want to! And that means, they're going to be able to update their own data. Completely. So as a pilot user, the new guestbook I now have is handled with the CMS. Let's see how it goes. I'm not excepting spam bots to crack the captcha. If spammers manage to crack captchas, I'll recommend all web developers to load their shotguns...let's go hunt some spammers. Anyone with me?
8th Oct 2006 - Videos, a new menu, Vilhelm site
I put up a website for my band Vilhelm (the drums and bass duo
featuring Valloittaja on the bass!). It's
http://www.vilhelmband.com.
Go have a look! There are some videos to check out. Beware, it's very
crazy stuff. I also added some links to my download section.
Yeah, the new menu. I thought that the old one just didn't fit the
site style that well. I think the new one is quite cool. Hopefully
you'll find it nice to use. What's been up lately is that
I'm very busy with my web projects and studies. Well,
at least I'm getting some feel about tight schedules and hard working.
I've heard that they work really hard in Singapore... Speaking of which,
I'm really looking forward to! I'm trying to organize things right now.
Man, this stuff takes it's time. There's so much take care of. Stipends,
accommodation, visa, insurances, a new credit card, flights & travelling, vaccines,
a new passport, filling a lot of forms and writing papers... But I'm sure
it'll be worth all the hassle.
6th Aug 2006 - Break performed at mr. Lordi's wedding
Yesterday a true rock wedding took place in Rovaniemi, when Tomi "mr. Lordi" Putaansuu got married. Unfortunately no detais can be shared so this post is going to be a short one. Tomi has helped Grandevils a great deal (Grandevils has played warm-up gigs for Lordi etc) so this was a very appropriate way for us to give Tomi something back. Good luck, Tomi and Johanna! Rock on!
2nd Aug 2006 - Singapore Blog!
I got the official letter of approval for my exchange studies in Singapore. So this is a good time to put up a new blog for Singapore-stuff-only. In case you didn't notice, the link has appeared into the menu bar, so here you go. I'll still have to buy a laptop before the exchange period... So I'll be working like a nutcake to get enough money for everything. That reminds me of the end of my lunch break so gotta go now!
21st May 2006 - Hard Rock Hallelujah & Algorithm March with ninjas!
Amazing. Finland, the ever-loser in the Eurovision "music"
contest just won the whole thing. We have never had
such success, mostly last places. The contest is not
about music, it's about voting your neighbour countries,
which Finland has like next thing close zero. Anyway,
Lordi,
who happens to appear on our Grandevils EP,
(Shameless advertising. Sorry about that.) rocked
the house and here we are celebrating the victory
that should never ever have taken place. Wild.
I bet Lordi is going to sell millions of albums
only becouse of the Eurovision victory. Not Bad.
Next year we're going to see only rock bands there,
I guess.
Much has happened since the last English
blog entry. I know, I know, there's quite a delay
between the last two entries. I'll try to write down
something more often. I usually just quicky blog
in Finnish. I'm just too busy. So here come some quick news
before going to bed
(it's 4:06 AM right now).
Gary
Novak, my personal drum idol, visited Finland. He played
a jazz gig with a finnish jazz/fusion star Lenni-Kalle
Taipale. It was wild. And man, he could play his butt off.
He learned Lenni's killer-tricky tunes very quickly
and made the band sound more brilliant than ever.
And he is also a very nice guy! Hope to meet him again some time.
I have some photos with Gary. Some will show up here when
I get to have a taste of the luxury called free time.
...Speaking of which, haven't seen any of it in a while.
I have been struggling with a ton of projects
(mobile games, web-projects, other software and
multimedia projects, etc). I begin to work full
time (for the summer) as a web developer. That's cool.
Gigs with Vilhelm seem to do the trick. Today it was
another two-encoré-night. And they still wanted more.
After hearing over twenty tunes (including medleys, about 50
tunes overall). People has never seen anything
like that (any song played by only drums and bass).
Well, this is quite extraordinary that we do. We're going
to film some video clips to get the word out..but it's going
to take some time before our schedules match. This summer anyway.
What else... I just recently found this site containing
Japanese TV clips. Some of those are hilarious making
absolutely no sense. Ok, maybe they are cool in Japan.
If anything, TV in Japan is very, very weird and kind of funny.
Go see yourself:
TV in Japan.
For instance, if you have anything to do with developing software,
you have to see "the Algorithm march with the ninja". It's just
so...Japan.
12nd Feb 2006 - A Drum Video added
I added a drum video few days ago (9th Feb) (get it here). It's getting download hits quite fast so I decided to set a mirror server to handle half of the downloads. This should help with the traffic.
7th Feb 2006 - Planning exchange studies
I'm just about to drop the application papers at the international relations office in Oulu University. Yeah.. I'm going to Asia. Well, not quite yet. Let's say it's a definite maybe. Ok, I don't have a clue about my changes. Just. Be. Patient. Oh yeah, I kind of finished making this site. Well, it's about time. There are plenty of projects requiring my time both music and IT. A month later I'll be recording the drums. Have to try to get some sample out of that. I also ordered a bunch of drum mics. Maybe I'll record a sample cd next summer. Like a drum loop kind of thing. We'll see about that. Got to go now. A system requirements document for a web software project is waiting. Sweet.
25th Jan 2006 - www.jarmovalmari.com
I got the domain up and running. Been quite busy with a lot of stuff lately. I'm trying to develop this site day by day - at least for now. There will be some files to be downloaded and photos to check out. But now...back to work.
14th Jan 2006 - Building a new website
Yeah. I have been thinking about doing this for few years...and finally it's happening! : ) There won't be much content in English before I get the pages done. And it's going to take some time. I'll get back to this when I'm at least mostly done with the crucial features. It's still a mess, I know. But I'm working on it every day...