Cookie travels

Tampere, the third largest city in Finland, is a city in the Southern region that lies on a strip of land surrounded by two lakes: Lake Näsijärvi in the north and Lake Pyhäjärvi in the south. Linking these two lakes is the Tammerkoski rapids that run through the city. Tampere is also known as the capital of Finland’s Western Lake District being surrounded by 200 lakes within the city limits and considered the largest inland center in the Nordic countries. Pyynikki and Viikinsaari near the city centre are the popular nature reserves in Tampere. You can get more information about this city in The City of Tampere website (Finnish and English).

Lake Pyhäjärvi © City of Tampere

Tammerkoski rapids © City of Tampere

City of lakes © City of Tampere

References: www.tampere.fi, wikitravel.org, wikipedia.org

Our internet connection was out for a couple of weeks due to the internet spat between Cogent, an American network operator, and TeliaSonera, our internet service provider. Although I managed to publish a few posts using a proxy server in North America, frankly I was not so enthusiastic about blogging during this period. I had to face the reality of slow internet connection from the first proxy server I used. It was too slow in loading a page so that I have to switch from this proxy server to another until I found a faster connection. It meant traveling from Hong Kong to Central Europe to North America. It was a good way to travel. But today I’m glad to get SMS from Sonera that our connection has been restored. So I’m now. Geee…

Easter Monday was a holiday in Finland. It was a good time to visit the church in the city center, the Keski-Pori Church or Keski-Porin kirkko in Finnish. In full English, it’s Central Pori Church. We haven’t taken a closer look at this church yet except views from afar during our first traipse in Pori and our numerous trips to Kirjurinluoto.

As we moved closer, one can simply admire the Gothic revival architecture designed by T. Chiewitz and C.J. von Heideken. The Keski-Pori Church is the main church of Pori. It is the largest church in the Satakunta region (consisting of 25 municipalities) with Pori as the main city.

the Keski-Pori Church tower is 72 meters tall and made of cast iron

the close view reveals the 1863 inscription in the front of the building

the Keski-Pori Church, another view

Reference: wikipedia.org

I was on my way to the supermarket passing Itäpuisto Street, and I was greeted with this sight:

welcome spring: yellow Narcissus flowers, chickens and a sailboat

Yeah it’s spring. It was a bright sight to behold after the dark winter, with Narcissus surrounding the wooden sailboat and yellow chickens in and out of the boat. The sun was also shining brightly amidst the cool weather. This is our first spring experience and I assume this sight is a tradition in Pori city to welcome the new season which begins on 20 March and ends on 20 June if we follow astronomical definition (this date is based on archaeoastronomy.com’s 2008 vernal equinox data).

I’ve come across a few web 2.0 name generator software which I find helpful especially if you’ve already spent endless hours thinking of a name for your blog.

Benjamin’s name generator software has an interesting way of generating a name. I got curious how this name generator software would generate the best name instead of ‘Cookie travels’ so I typed the words: travel, blog, destination and it generated the word ‘t’. When I added few more keywords, the result was ‘olid’.

There are also sites that will more likely generate good names. Hacklash.net suggests 15 names per page (like simply20, techclick, webmix, broadconcepts, coolstuff, others) for you to choose from and allows you to click ‘make more’ at the bottom if you want more names. Another handy web 2.0 name generator is by Kira’s. A name is suggested per page but you can generate more names by clicking ‘Generate Name’. And if you like a name, it enables you to immediately ‘Check availability!’ However, if you want to create name combinations, you can try Kira’s dotomator.com. Every possible combination of the word will be displayed in the ‘Results’ box, you can save the name in the Scratchboard, and you can also check its availability.

Next time you come looking for a name or just want to get some naming ideas, try any of these web 2.0 name generator sites for free. You might end up registering one of the names generated.