Chicken-potato casserole

We cooked one of my current favourites: chicken-potato casserole. Riksu's mom makes something like this, but we developed the recipe by adding blue cheese, and now it is delicious.
The recipe (in Finnish, sorry):
400 g kanan filesuikaleita
1–2 pussia peruna-sipuli-suikaleita
ruokakermaa
sinihomejuustoa
valkosipulia
mausteita (mustapippuri, timjami, basilika, rosmariini jne.)
Paista kanan filesuikaleet pannulla. Kaada paistovuokaan peruna-sipuli-suikaleet ja kanasuikaleet. Murenna joukkoon sinihomejuustoa ja pieneksi silputtua valkosipulia sekä heitä mukaan mausteita maun mukaan. Lorauta kaiken päälle ruokakerma ja laita vuoka uuniin (225 °C) noin tunniksi. Kannattaa välillä vilkuilla, ettei pinta pala. Jos pinta alkaa ruskistua liikaa, laita päälle folio.

PS. I have decided to use coloured thumbnail photos from now on.

Fish parade

I spent almost one hour hunting my fishes with a camera. There's now a photo of each species. A much bigger job would be trying to take a photo of each fish, since there are 28 of them all together:
1 Bristlenose Pleco called Rousku
4 Otos
5 Skunk cory
5 Bronze cory
3 Bolivian Rams
10 Flame tetras

Progress on my fish tank

The plants in my aquarium have grown a bit already. There used to be nothing on the back of the tank, so you could see the wall through the tank. A while ago I put some dark green cardboard in the back, but I'm not sure, if it's working... What do you think?

Fog

The temperature has risen and it now hovers around 0 °C, which is probably the cause of the fog we experience tonight in Kaleva.

Salmiakki

I love salmiakki, and I love the new Fazer salmiakki mix. I had to buy one bag for my train ride back home. Although it can be tiresome to travel between Tampere and Helsinki every week, I quite like the Thursday night on the train: There's never too many people, I'm always pretty tired, I usually read something not work-related, and very often fall asleep.

Bloodworms

It's Friday, so it's time for a treat for my dear fishes: frozen bloodworms. I hope they will never get mixed with anything else in the freezer...

Algorithm march???

What in the world is algorithm march...? And that music...????

Desktop background photos

Now that I have this big new wide screen, I wanted choose a nice desktop background photo. Since the screen is 16:10 and my camera produces photos sized 4:3, my photos don't work on the new screen. I started photoshopping and then, as usual, got a little carried away... :) Feel free to use the photos on your desktop. There are shots from Boston, NYC, Oulu, Rio de Janeiro, Hailuoto, etc.

Subway systems on the same scale

I keep coming back to this site over and over again: subway systems of the world presented on the same scale. I hope they will add Helsinki metro soon.

VR

Once again my friend VR works against my going back home to Tampere. This winter has been especially hard on our friendship. Usually it's been because of the weather, but now it seems to have been a technical problem on another train. When one train dies on the tracks, it messes up all the other trains, too...

Metro-map-like trend map

I found an interesting map on Future exploration blog: a metro-map-like trend map for 2007. I love maps, I love trains, and I of course love all metro maps. The blog definitely got my attention now! :)

Brilliant anti-war poster

As I was going through my favourite blogs, I came across a brilliant anti-war poster.

New trolley bag!

I finally got myself to buy a new trolley bag! The one I had was not very high quality, and I was not able to change the wheels that had cracked in the middle and were making a lot of noise. I could have lived with the noise, but with the damaged wheels that don't roll well, the bag was not exactly fulfilling its purpose. My colleagues have been making fun of me and my noisy bag for a while already, but next week they are going to be disappointed. :)

Cold but sunny

It's been quite a cold week in Finland. The good thing about cold weather is that usually, when it's cold, it's also sunny. We geared up for the weather and walked to the centre to run a few errands. I should have worn sun glasses, as the sunlight was pretty bright because of all the snow.

Cognac

I am a fan of Cognac, so I decided to treat myself by buying a nice small bottle of VSOP.

New screen

While I was in Helsinki, the new computer screen Riksu had ordered had arrived. It was nice to start working on Friday morning. :)

All about fish

It's all about fish again.

Fish news

Fish news: I bought 4 adult Otocinclus catfishes from a person who had to get rid of one of her fish tanks. They are algae-eaters, so them together with Rousku (she's a Bristlenose Pleco) will take care of all excess algae in my tank. "Otos" are 100 % vegetarians, so if the algae runs out, I will need to feed them cucumber etc. If someone is interested, there are also new videos shot earlier today...

weather, fish, carpet

1) As any other true Finn, I pay a lot of attention to weather, and also like to talk about it. (This is probably because the weather here so often sucks, and we feel grateful and overly happy when it doesn't.) So I must declare today the most beautiful winter day so far (this winter). :)
2) They had an open house today at Tampereen Akvaarioseura (Tampere aquarium association or something like that), and since their premises is just around the corner from where I live, I had to pay a visit. (I have been a member for about 3 weeks now.)
3) We went to pick up the white carpet we had ordered for our living room. It's quite nice.

Birthday present!

Yipee! Katja B's birthday present arrived!!! :) This will definitely come useful later this spring, when it's time to pique-nique. No more squeezing wine bottles into socks for protection and warmth... It will be an end of an era. Thank you Katja!!!