DSP and Finland (Suomi lovefest).

[Xenakios]

Yaaaaaawn... Mitä vittua, täh?!

Never been that much into low level DSP coding myself, but I do know a few people here in Finland who have done things more in that vein...I am probably the only person doing anything like audio programming in my own city, though...

[ksandvik]

- F1

You don't say! If you meet a Finn male the chance he has raced in Formula One is is about 1 in 500 000 (may not sound like much but compared it to any other country). And if you do, the chance that he's a champion is like 50/50. That's pretty astonishing.

If you learned to drive outside the main cities on the twisty dirt roads across forests in a snow blizzard and elks suddenly crossing the road, then an F1 race is a no-brainer.

[ksandvik]

No takers on the Nokia Effect theory ? From what i've heard and experienced Finland was a pretty poor (as in no money) country before Nokias success with mobile phones and now they're not. It wouldn't be that far fetched to think that Nokia has invested in a good DSP university to ensure future engineers.

When I graduated from college in Finland in the mid eighties, the norm was that the industry told the universities and colleges how many engineers and other professionals they needed, in what domain. And the higher education schools conformed. Pretty good idea, me thinks. Especially in a small country that has to compete in the big world.

[jupiter8]

Damn now i got all inspired by that badass of the week site. Finland is without a doubt the most badass country on the planet.

Mitä vittua

This for example,they course like nobody's business. Vittua,unless i'm mistaken, is the female genital parts and not the good word either. The worst. I had an co workers mother scream that to my face once. Why ? She had stalled the engine of the car. Without a seconds hesitation: WITTU!

One of the most badass men i've ever seen was one really old guy (looked about to croak any second) who was participating in one of their favourite pasttimes: Winter swimming. This particular year it was colder than usual. Like a lot colder. Like -40 degrees Celsius (funnily enough -40 degrees Fahrenheit too). The Swedish TV reporter asked if it wasn't hard to swim in such cold conditions ? His calm reply was:the colder it's in the air the warmer the water feels. And the funny thing was this guy was nothing special (like a Navy Seal or something) just a regular Finnish guy plus he was like 80 years old.

When swimming in artic temperatures isn't challenging enough they go to the sauna.Or both. And if you think you've been in a sauna,you haven't unless it's a Finnish one. They like it about 110 degrees hot. Now i'm not talking about 110 Fahrenheits scorching Arizona desert hot,i'm talking about 110 degrees Celsius. Well gee how hot is that ? Well, water boils at 100. That obviously isn't enough so they pour water on the heater so it gets 110 degrees hot and humid. You can't even imagine that.It's like being hit by a freight train. Now you're probably thinking they can't be any more badass than that. You'd die.

Well you'd be wrong. If that wasn't enough to feel like your skin is falling of your flesh, they start to spank each other with birch branches!!! No joke.

Finland we salute you,always stay crazy.

[mkdr]

Finland we salute you,always stay crazy.

Haha
That Häyhä page is so badass: "Throughout the Winter War (as it would come to be known), Simo Häyhä ran around being what experienced HALO players would call a "camping fag", and scoring enough kill shots to make f**king RoboCop and the Terminator hide their heads in shame."
"Häyhä not only passed out long-range silent death to anyone with a red star on his hat, but he did it without the aid of a telescopic sight. He preferred to use the rifle's regular iron sights"

"Throughout the war, Häyhä raked in a total of 505 confirmed sniper kills (in some sources he is credited with 542). On top of this, he also mowed down two hundred men with a Suomi 9mm submachine gun, bringing his total kill count to over 700 men in under 100 days."
That is f**king crazy. And probably why there are strict gun laws in Finland.




Btw. Sauna is actually very relaxing. The spanking with a birch is like a massage that relaxes the muscles and the skin. Gives out a pleasant scent too. I usually go to a sauna atleast once a week. Couldn't live without it


Also, Made in Finland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Oasis_of_the_Seas

[mystran]

Damn now i got all inspired by that badass of the week site. Finland is without a doubt the most badass country on the planet.

Mitä vittua

This for example,they course like nobody's business. Vittua,unless i'm mistaken, is the female genital parts and not the good word either. The worst. I had an co workers mother scream that to my face once. Why ? She had stalled the engine of the car. Without a seconds hesitation: WITTU!

That particular word is pretty much like the word 'f**k' in English, except it's not used for it's original purpose quite as often (in fact it's almost never used for it's actual meaning).

You certainly don't want to learn the "worst" words for that particular part of female anatomy. There are quite plenty, though.

That obviously isn't enough so they pour water on the heater so it gets 110 degrees hot and humid. You can't even imagine that.It's like being hit by a freight train. Now you're probably thinking they can't be any more badass than that. You'd die.

Actually, 110 degrees and dry is rather awful. In practice most people don't really heat their saunas quite that hot, rather something like 80-90 and VERY humid tends to be ideal. While the steam (from pouring water on the hot stones) can initially feel quite sharp (depends on the sauna and how you throw the water; most normal people prefer it smooth), sauna is actually more comfortable when it's humid enough. For electrically heated sauna's especially, some people might even throw water around the room when heating just to make it less dry.

Anyway, this stuff isn't specific to Finland; we might be the most famous for it, but Russians and apparently other eastern European people do it as well.

Well you'd be wrong. If that wasn't enough to feel like your skin is falling of your flesh, they start to spank each other with birch branches!!! No joke.

Generally I'd say the result of doing that is that you end up feeling LESS like your skin is falling of your flesh. It's funny that people always think there's something strange about it. It's not like you're supposed to hit hard enough to actually cause any sort of pain (which arguably is hard to do with a properly constructed vihta anyway; and don't get me started on how the other half of Finland calls those 'vasta' instead).

[t3toooo]

and how can anybody forget this?

http://jeskola.net/


i thought it will eat any daw for breakfast but now i know it'll eat each of them three times.
x64 works perfectly.


sorry, couldn't resist.

[ras.s]

While you're joking about that man Häyhä, there's been a shooting in Hyvinkää, with someone snipering from a rooftop, injuring seven and killing two. In some of the news article it say him 'like' that Simo Häyhä on Facebook. In english.

Still one thing to consider when talking about finnish mentality, is that our country was urbanized in the fifties and afterwards, it hasn't been a long time since we still used to live in the bush. Our material development has skyrocketed, yet I think our culture hasn't evolved in the same pace.


On topic of finnish DSP, just discovered Mausynth myself, mighty nice. What else out there? Mystran's works yea (nice and stable methinks), Buzz already mentioned, Antti @ smartelectronix, that one guy with Kingston on his name, some crunch effect... I think there's couple more.


I did quite a few tracks with Buzz back in the day, graduating from Modplug before that.. Probably got stuck with the idea of modularity from that time on.



And much appreciation for sauna. Heating it up tomorrow.. Puukiukaalla, ou jea.

[Borogove]

i see finnish names more often on research papers than in books.

maybe this:

http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/

is rather big?

Yeah, I think this is the reason. There's not many places like that, where DSP for musical applications is pushed forward.

Stanford CCRMA is another one, but it doesn't seem as influential as the Finnish bloc in the trenches of the Music-DSP development world.

I think there's some kind of complex Finnish feedback loop between acoustics.hut.fi, the demo scene, Linux hacking culture, and techno music.

[EvilDragon]

The only other thing we have is this:
http://dieantwoord.com/

ZEF SO FRESH!

[EvilDragon]

You certainly don't want to learn the "worst" words for that particular part of female anatomy. There are quite plenty, though.

PIPARI!?!?!

[mystran]

You certainly don't want to learn the "worst" words for that particular part of female anatomy. There are quite plenty, though.

PIPARI!?!?!

Well, that's not uncommonly used to refer to such body parts, but really 'pipari' is short for 'piparkakku' which is a type of traditional Christmas cookie. I don't think that qualifies as a bad word.

[horsma]

[quote="Xenakios"]Yaaaaaawn... Mitä vittua, täh?!

Tervee.
I think this "mitä vittua" translates to "what the f**k"

[bmanic]

While you're joking about that man Häyhä, there's been a shooting in Hyvinkää, with someone snipering from a rooftop, injuring seven and killing two. In some of the news article it say him 'like' that Simo Häyhä on Facebook. In english.

Yeah this is very unfortunate. Being on vacation in Seoul, south korea, I only got the news yesterday. Very unfortunate indeed and what's worse is that this kind of incident isn't exactly unique in our country.

Cheers!
bManic

[ras.s]

Hope I didn't kill this thread by bringing that killer on the topic. It's just disturbing thing really, one of those collective drama moments we've been having plenty as of late. It's not unique anymore though I hope it's not common yet either.

Just some 18-year old kid, went home after hanging with his friends, picks up some guns from his parents' gunlocker and goes to town, trying out his airsoftgun skills on real people with heavy ammo. Some six hours later after fleeing the scene, he sees a police car and goes and surrenders. Now they've been questioning him for few days and it appears he doesn't have much for a motive, just says he's sorry.


??


Some years back there were two separate school shootings with several people dead. Few months ago some young man shot a SOS flare at his ex-girlfriend's father, then went to the school of that girl, the teacher stopped him at the classroom door and he started shooting through the door. No one dead but could have gone real bad.

And it's not just the youths. It seems like there been a whole lot of family murders recently, especially within the last decade. Those kind of situations where the man kills the wife, the children and then himself. Or mother killing the children.


I understand suicide is one thing to want, but why want take the life others? Some people today really see this kind of gore violence as the last resort. Especially the children born in the 90's, living their youths during last decade, I think some of that generation really messed up. Now some people say there's more pressure on the individual in our society today, but it's not true; man don't have to work for his survival like he had to before. I think it's more that people don't teach their children proper survival-/behaviourmechanisms - either they themselves don't have those or they're too busy careering or something to attend to their children and see how they are doing. And sisu already mentioned, think about the energy that build up if you can't embody that properly - so many people feel there's nothing in life to aim for.

It's like we don't know how to deal with anger or frustration and we manifest that in different ways, few individuals going to the extreme - and today's extreme is really grim.

On world scale this is still really small and petty. In some place like Mexico or Syria you can just find pile of one hundred dead bodies and cry and wonder why anyone would do that. Still in this country, these are big things, signs of the time and so on.


[/end venting -- hope this doesn't end up in HPC because of this]


I'd like to hear more what kind of image world people have of Finland?


Here's a list of finnish schtuffs I can gather, pretty much just list of folks appearing on this thread.


Xenakios, mystran / signaldust, mkdr (vain joku kontrollerihässäkkä tuolla! vitsivitsi), mausynth, Retroband, Jeskola Buzz, antti @ smartelectronix.

No audio companies with consumer products? Genelec's quite reputable but they don't deal with DSP. Anything? Come on folks, I know you know more than I do .. A DAW should come from this country, Finland could once again go and beat those pesky swedes and conquer some germans aswell.

Here's something to reap from the acoustics.hut.fi-site: Pori Concert Hall IRs (haven't tried them yet though).

And here's a pretty picture for the end. I hear they make sounds aswell!