randomfire

2022 – a year in review

2023-01-01T14:58:04Z

We had a lot of plans for this past year, but this little thing called life happened. After January at home enjoying winter weather we started the travel year with a winter trip to Pyhä (a ski resort and national park in Lapland) for some snowboarding and relaxing winter treks in nature. It was a wonderful trip and the few times I managed to go off-piste it just strengthened my conviction to learn to be a good enough snowboarder to be able to freeride more.

Originally our plan was to drive south to Spain in our van after leaving Pyhä. However the increasingly poor COVID-19 situation in various parts of Europe caused us to cancel our plans and we returned home. Which was good since the day we were supposed to arrive in Spain Russia attacked Ukraine.

Very quickly after that the fact that I’m now qualified to be deployed as a part of the Finn Rescue Team technical assistance and support team meant that I and everyone else on the roster got asked for our availability to help in the European Union’s response to Russia’s attack as a part of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. In my case it meant responding yes when resources were requested to go to Moldova to support the local government in the refugee crisis caused by the war.

I was deployed in the second rotation so I had a bit more time to prepare for deployment, but I really have to thank my employer, Solita, and clients that I was working with for allowing me to put everything on hold at work for three weeks while I was deployed.

It was an experience I would not change and strengthened my resolve to keep training to further my skills and usability in responding to crises around the world. But at the same time I can see that from the start of the current escalation of the war I have been too tied to following the news from the area and paying more attention to Moldova – a part of Europe that I honestly had no knowledge about before being deployed there.

In addition to my deployment, I also had a week long exercise in Sweden for FRT in May and a week long course in Romania in July where COVID-19 finally caught up with me and I tested positive on the way home which pretty much took care of our plans for July.

All this meant that by July we’d done only one short vacation in our campervan in which we drove down to Helsinki for one of my business trips and then took some vacation time to slowly make our way back home. And then there was the surprise trip just before me leaving for Romania from home to Stockholm to pick up a puppy that we hadn’t planned on getting quite yet.

Finally in August we had a chance to take some time off and go on a small road trip in Finland and just enjoy summer. We had a chance to help my parents empty their house in preparation for a move, see some friends around Finland and just relax by various lakes and enjoy the summer heat. And get to know our new family member, Kulo.

Getting Kulo also meant that our initial plan of taking a longer road trip in August-September had to be postponed since he couldn’t be taken out of Finland until he was 19 weeks old (i.e. had his 12 and 16 week vaccinations and a 3 week time for the vaccinations to take hold). So once we were done with previous engagements in Finland mid-September we took a ferry across the Gulf of Finland and headed South.

Our road trip consisted of hitting dog shows in Riga, Latvia and Wroclaw, Poland on the outgoing leg and once my client meeting in Amsterdam was completed we had two weeks of vacation to head towards home. On the way back we managed to head a bit further west to visit Belgium and the battlefields of Verdun in France before hitting some castles in Germany, the cities of Vienna and Bratislava and the mountains between Slovakia and Poland.

Since we were in southern Poland we also finally went to Auschwitz. I’ll only echo what so many other have said. It is definitely worth a visit. And in addition to visiting it it is important to remember that silence in the face of fascism or any other form of authoritarian rule only enables it.

From Auschwitz we made our way to Krakow to recreate some of the photographs we took with Kamu five years ago when we picked him up. And since we were in the neighborhood we had to go see his breeder and spend the afternoon there. Finally on the way back we hit a couple of shows in Estonia as well.

Kamu’s success in the shows – he completed his Polish championship, and got Estonian and Latvian Champion titles as well – meant that we ended up going down to Vilnius in Lithuania the weekend before Christmas to try for the title of Lithuanian Champion which he got and thus also got the title of Baltic Champion. Two of the shows this autumn were also Crufts qualifiers and he got the qualification in both. So our plans for next year now are in a state of flux as we try to decide if Crufts is happening or not…

All in all, despite changes in plans regarding travel, I ended up being away from home for about 122 days – a third of the year – in 14 foreign countries. Luckily 80 of those days were spent traveling with the whole family mostly in our campervan.

And for 2023? We shall see what it brings. What this decade has taught us is to seize the opportunities that come across since you can really never know if the opportunities will exist sometime in the future.

Sólstafir @ Kerubi 27.11.2018

2019-03-03T09:56:23Z

Iceland’s atmospheric metallers (seems like most place call Sólstafir post-metal – what the hell is that?) came to Kerubi last fall and where the perfect ending for a fall of seeing Omnium Gatherum, Dark Tranquillity and Amorphis live in Baltimore MD and Zeal and Ardor live in Prague.

For me Sólstafir is one of those bands that I enjoy listening to in the background to give some atmosphere without having to focus too much in the music. Much like Swallow the Sun. Hallatar on the other hand is a bit too intense to just keep as background music.

The gig in Kerubi was excellent – the crowd was lively enough but also knew the band well enough that the spirit of the music was honored. Although there was an idiotic drunk that was even reprimanded from on stage until finally his friends dragged him further away from the stage. I suspect he wasn’t far from being thrown out…

Photographically the gig was fairly challenging. The first three songs from the pit were covered by strong colors without any white light. While more neutral white light did make an appearance later on in the show, the lights were quite nice and added to the feel. From a photographic standpoint a group of elderly fans in the audience with a large Icelandic flag were a good little detail – although much too hard to get in a good shot.

I really need a wider lens than the trusty 50mm for my 6D…

The 69 Eyes @ Kerubi 17.2.2018

2018-03-12T16:19:40Z

Following the gloom of Hallatar, Kerubi hosted the goth rockers from Hellsinki, The 69 Eyes. I was certain that the gig would be photographically easier the dark stage of Hallatar, but I never expected there to be 4 stops more light…

As always, The 69 Eyes kept the house rocking and rolling. What I really love about shooting them is that Jussi69 isn’t hiding behind a large drumkit. He is quite visible and very much a part of the show.

There isn’t much else to say. If good old hard rock is your jam, go give them a listen. And enjoy the photographs.

Hallatar @ Kerubi 16.2.2018

2018-03-01T16:42:04Z

I briefly described the evening with Hallatar in Kerubi as atmospheric, moody, gloomy, dark and almost like a funeral. Which in a sense it was. I’m not a writer, but you can ready the gig reports from Stalker Magazine, Dark Art Conspiracy (interview with Juha Raivio), Imperiumi (in Finnish) and Kaaoszine (in Finnish from Kerubi).

What else can I say. The night was magical and the band was on point. I’ll let my photographs do the rest.

Recent Fire and Rescue videos

2017-11-02T20:11:25Z

Two recent videos that I made to share on the fire department social media channels. The first one is from the water rescue course that I participated in, and the second from our flashover/backdraft simulation session. Quick and easy GoPro videos and edits.

I an athlete

2017-04-03T17:52:26Z

Despite the fact that CrossFit considers all crossfitters athletes and that I’d already competed in two CrossFit Games Open’s, I haven’t actually considered myself to be a competitive athlete. (Note, at the time of this writing I’ve completed my third CrossFit Games Open.) However, during the summer of 2016 I started reflecting on my Why for doing CrossFit.

I honestly don’t remember where the off and on reflecting of my why came from – most likely from something Scott McGee said during some episode of the Wodcast podcast. I started CrossFit originally to finally get myself in shape to better function as a firefighter. I was barely passing our three yearly physicals and knew that something had to be done. But as time passed and my conditioning, strength and what not else got better I began to notice that just doing the daily WODs wasn’t enough for me. I started hitting some other stuff every now and then either to improve my skills or specific weaknesses or just to get something more.

While Anna and I were helping build CrossFit Paja we were doing a weightlifting program which was good – but it also clearly showed me that pure weightlifting wasn’t something I wanted to do. So I had to face the fact that my why had changed from just wanting to be in better shape as a human and firefighter to something more. Or to be clear, I had to make the choice of whether I would continue training just to be a stronger human or for some other goal.

Since at the same time I was approaching the magical age of 40 and being able to compete as a CrossFit Masters athlete I started to seriously consider if ramping up my training and aiming to be a competitive athlete would be a viable goal. The end result of the reflecting that I did during the summer – and of course the discussions I had with Anna – was that I would start putting a bit more time and effort to my training than I had been.

(Another author’s note – like many over 40 year old masters I consider the new 35-39 masters category as baby masters.)

So I decided to participate in the Linna Masters qualifiers and managed to get a spot in the 40-44 age group. So now I really had to start consider myself as a competitive athlete. Which honestly was a bit of a mental shift for me since I never was one for competitive sports when I was a kid or even younger…

So in all honesty, be prepared for this blog to cover much more CrossFit related posts in the future as I walk down this path of being an athlete – and firefighter, computer nerd, photographer and crazy dog person… :)

Grow agile, don’t scale

2016-07-28T05:56:54Z

A quick link to a small post I wrote over on LinkedIn on growing agility into an organisation instead of…

Sawotta 2016

2016-07-03T09:25:36Z

A few weeks ago I spent the Saturday again at Sawotta judging and photographing between the heats in which I was a judge. This year the event had moved to a new venue – the Savonlinna Ice Hall. The new venue had more space for the audience, but since it was a cool summer day no part of the venue was especially warm even though there was no ice to be found.

I have to admit that I enjoy the double role of judging and photographing functional fitness events. Sure I could live with just photographing, but only judging would find me somewhat frustrated during breaks since I would be annoyed with the missed photographic moments while watching heats. And also when tiredness starts to kick in (as it always does in long events like these), photography keeps me more alert even during the downtime.

This time I also managed to be quick and go through my photographs and do some quick edit quickly so that I could get them out to the world. It’s been fun to see my photographs show up on Instagram in athletes’ own feeds. That’s all the thanks I need for this sort of photography which is done to support the growing CrossFit community in Finland.

I’m also overjoyed that the athletes appreciate and share also the images in which they don’t look handsome and pretty. I guess all of know full well that the faces we make during grueling WODs will never be pretty or handsome…

From a judges perspective the events this year were well planned and easy to judge – well everything except the double unders which are always hard to judge… There were some challenges that came from the change of venue, but on the fly changes to how some things were handled solved those quite well and the ability of the staff and judges to quickly adapt to changes allowed even quick paced heats to be handled with limited amount of hassle.

From a photographers perspective the new venue was much better than the previous one simply because the white floor provided a neutral color when compared to the wood floor of the basketball court. Of course as is the case with any indoor venue, more light would have made photography easier but it was still a piece of cake when compared to shooting a gig in a small club ;)

Sprinkled throughout the post are some of my favorite photographs from the event. For the full set of over 200 or so, head over to our photogallery: Sawotta 2016.

2016-06-29T06:25:53Z

My first post on LinkedIn: Don’t over-engineer, listen to your customer. If software development / web app development is of…

Housekeeping

2016-06-19T11:57:10Z

A long time ago I decided to get rid of my other blogs, Shutterclicks and Satunnaisia leiskahduksia. Both blogs content has now been aggregated into this blog. With SL the merge was easy as had the same URL structure and all that. With Shutterclicks the change wasn’t so simple and unfortunately all post from there will redirect incorrectly due to a different URL structure. Also, it seems that the featured image etc. information of at least some of the latest Shutterclicks posts didn’t come through correctly. I guess I’ll go and try to fix all of that at some point. Maybe…