Straight Out of Oblivion

While browsing through my pictures I repeatedly stop at the photos of this church. It some how reminds me of something that I have seen somewhere. Not before my trip to Budapest but after that and I am pretty sure the only church I've seen up close since my return to Finland is here in Viikki which most certainly does not look like the church in the photo on the left.

Then suddenly it hit me. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the newest CRPG from Bethesda Softworks. It has towns with similiar architechture as this church here. The big round window looks very very familiar. The two towers and so on. I tried to find a screenshot that would present a similiar looking building but this is the closest I found.

The feeling was quite astonishing when the revelation hit me. Even though I run my Oblivion with low to mid settings the immersion in the game is very good. What would better demonstrate that than that something that you saw in game resembles something out of the real world?

The Adventures of Space Agent Valérian

I came back from my a little over week trip to Budapest yesterday and have been sorting out the pictures I took there. So much to show so little decent quality pictures. I know I am propably too hard on myself on this one but that is just the way I am even if I am trying to learn myself out of it.

Anyways, I was taking a nice little stroll (which ended up lasting for seven hours) with my wife on the Buda sida of the river Danube and we came across many buildings in various states of deterioration. Most of those building definitely were once very beautiful but alas the pollution and wars have left their scars on the city.

When we walked by this particular structure I felt like I was in some album of Jean-Claude Mézières'. It just felt so surreal. I mean it felt like I had come from different planet or time, just like Space Agent Valérian, and was now looking at the structures left by now passed civilization. Like the people that lived here now had nothing or very little to do with the building they lived among.

Maybe that is because here in Finland we have so very little anything as old as these buildings in Budapest. Or maybe it is because these places we do have old buildings didn't see the World War II so up close. And maybe the Soviet domination has left the Hungarian state in far poorer situation than what Finland has ever been. Maybe Finland just has had more money to keep the old buildings in good shape.

I am sure that the money matters since I did see a lot of buildings in various states of restoration but more of it at some other time. 

Child's Play

Opportunity makes a thief they say and on some occasions I can relate to that. I was walking with my wife in the City Park of Budapest when I saw this little girl playing, dancing, on this rock. I had my attetion focused more on an old castle just about in the opposite direction but then this girlie threw her ball towards us.

The girl was having a ball (pun intended) and was laughing away so happily that I just had to take a picture of her. A little too late to catch her laughing it seems. But then again the situation had changed from dancing to laughter and now it seems to trust.

Blowing Bubbles in Heureka

In Heureka, the Finnish Science Center, there are many neat gadgets and stuff but just about the most fascinating to me was this thingamajig. It has a pool of soapwater and a horizontal bar with strings in the both ends. This bar could be then lift up from th water so that it formed a film of soap water between the strings, the bar and the water surface. And naturally you blow to it to make big soap bubbles!

It was rather challenging to get a good picture of transparent and moving film of soap water. And the rather dim lihting of the exhibition hall was of no help. Finally after trying without flash and with built in flash I took out my external flash and set the camera to the sport mode and just shoot a series of photos while my friends blew the bubbles.

A little something about the dimension of the film since I cropped out the blowers: The film was a little less than a meter both horizontally and vertically and the bubble forming in the picture comes out of the surface of the film some good two dozen or so centimeters.