Clocks got adjusted again today, this time one hour backwards. So while for a moment the sun will rise sooner, the trade off of it setting sooner in the afternoon is harsh especially after leaving work in the dark on a soon rainy November.
Indoor activities
I finished reading the book about why one should stop using social media services. They still don’t make us happy. While I won’t delete my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts now, I will try to live without them for the rest of the year and see what happens (probably not much as I haven’t been using them that much anyway). Also, I can cheat by using Bluesky in case of emergency (which I haven’t been using either).
I’ve also continued watching some football on TV and I have to mention something that is really distracting: flashy animated LED advertising across the sides of the football pitch. Really made me think if someone would create some middleware to streaming to block them out in the same fashion as in websites. Football is going downhill in so many ways.
In the gaming front, I’ve played maybe three hours of Final Fantasy VII Remake and so far I’ve been annoyed yet again that I have to relearn how the command buttons are laid out differently to the previous game I played. Frustrating for instance when I try to evade, my fingers are used to it being a certain button after 150 hours of playing Stranger of Paradise, but now it opens a menu instead. But I’ll get over it eventually.
Okay, visually there is a notable improvement from the original PS1 version.
I’ve also been juggling between the Japanese and English voice-over. The Japanese is fine, but the English subtitles don’t always match and my Japanese isn’t that good that I could live without them. The English voice-over is okay, but the so-called “anime-grunts” peppered around the dialog sounds plain awkward.
But it looks great and there are some nostalgic vibes going on. Not sure will this turn out to be one of the best Final Fantasy games I’ve played. Time will tell.
Photography giants (in Finland)
Outside of home activities, I went to see a photo exhibition of Pentti Sammallahti’s work. I’ve admired his work for a long time and even though the exhibition showcased work I’ve mostly seen before, I noticed I couldn’t resist smiling while looking at his more humorous compositions of animals. Truly great stuff then, highly recommended.
Didn’t leave the exhibition empty handed. It didn’t come cheap, but I had this on my want list for a long time.
Another photo exhibition I saw this week was also something I enjoyed, especially when the theme happened to be Helsinki. Made me think should I focus my photography on documenting my home town.
I have a soft spot for old photos of Helsinki.