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Here’s all the best for your end-of-the-year celebrations, whichever shape they may take. Stay safe.
We’re vacationing for the rest of the year, very much enjoying not being bored at home. 🙂
Until 2026, Happy Merry!
Image: screencap from World of Warcraft
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We started this blog together back in June 2015 with no grand ideas or plans, just wanting a place where each of us could post about the things we geek about and where we could post jointly about the things we geek about together. We had no idea what the next decade would bring us, but it’s been a fun ten years, and we’re still at it!
For a little celebration, we decided to take a short trip to a place we’ve both been interested in visiting for a while: the old town of Porvoo. Porvoo is a small city on the Finnish southern coast a little to the east of Helsinki. It’s like most Finnish cities except for its remarkable old town.
A large portion of the northern half of the city is made up of well-preserved colorful old wooden houses along cobblestone streets, all surrounding a medieval church.
While many of the house exteriors are legally protected, it’s not a museum or living history exhibit, just a part of town where ordinary folks and families live. Walking around there, though, is a little bit like stepping back in time.
Whatever brought you to Co-Geeking, we hope you’ve enjoyed our work. We look forward to another ten years, and who knows how many more!
Images by Eppu Jensen
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2024 was again a tough one, for me at least. I wasn’t the only one in my extended family dealing with unforeseen health issues. The situation is, fortunately, improving slowly but surely. And, at the very least, my circumstances allowed me to read a lot. 🙂
We’re vacationing for the rest of the year. Until 2025, Happy Merry and a Happy New Year! We hope your end-of-the-year celebrations bring you joy, whichever shape it may take. Stay safe.
Image by Eppu Jensen
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Well, how about that!
We just discovered that our recipes for the Riders of Rohan were referenced in a piece of Middle Earth fanfiction over on Archive of Our Own. The story is called “she had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours” by shOokspeared, and it’s a lovely little slice-of-life tale following Éowyn on a visit to the Shire in the days of peace after the War of the Ring. In a letter home to her husband Faramir, Éowyn mentions enjoying the familiar tastes of braised beef and saffron and cream pancakes for lunch with her Hobbit friends one day.
We’re astonished and delighted to see that our work is still interesting and useful to others!
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Midsummer will be upon us at the end of this week (or midwinter, depending on your hemisphere). In Finland, this is one of the most important holidays of the year, and we’ll be taking time out to relax and enjoy the long, light days. Whatever your midsummer plans may be, we wish you all a very happy one, whether you’re out reconnecting with nature, staying home to read a good book, or just going about your business as usual.
Image by Erik Jensen
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2023 is behind us now, so we’ve had look back at what posts got the most attention this year. Among the things we posted during 2023, here’s the ones that got the most views:
The lion’s share of views on our site in this past year, though, went to posts from a few years back. Here are the posts that got the most views overall in 2023:
Thanks for visiting in 2023. We’ll do our best to keep sharing things worth reading and looking at in 2024!
Messing with numbers is messy.
Happy end-of-the year holidays, everyone!
May 2024 both cheer up and challenge you—but in good ways only.
We two can still tell the effects of the pandemic in our daily lives, so we’re taking the rest of the year off, bloggingwise. Stay safe.
Image by Roger Ahlbrand via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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A book-keeping / back-end type of notification: There won’t be any more automated tweets for new posts.
We decided to disconnect the Co-Geeking Twitter account from WordPress. (To be specific, WordPress had to remove the automatic-posts-to-Twitter functionality due to Twitter changing their API on short notice.)
You can keep checking manually, or subscribe to be notified of new posts.
Image: Computer Technician, detail of a Scandinavia and the World comic by Humon
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Ukraine has been at war for 105 days now. That’s 15 long, grueling weeks. (Also the length of Finland’s Winter War with the USSR, which is why the number is significant to me.)
Russia’s craven attack (despite the incompetence it seems to have been implemented with) did change the world, albeit a bit differently than intended. Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia have submitted their applications to join the EU.* There’s an unprecedented feeling and showing of solidarity towards Ukraine in Europe. Russia—and especially their petty, piddling thing of a presidential figure—is becoming something of a pariah at least in the Euro-American world. Furthermore, Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, ditching their long-cherished military independence.**
That’s in the first three months. Much like the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, it’s felt three times as long. Unfortunately, I’m afraid this conflict will be a matter of years. Sigh.
World, any time you want to return to duller times is okay by me.
*) Getting even a membership candidate status isn’t simple, though, so this isn’t happening soon.
**) And thanks to Turkey’s pretentions of power-playing, this isn’t going to be as much of an open-and-shut case as we thought, either. Ohwell. I do believe Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership will happen eventually.
Image: Helsinki City Hall lit in blue and yellow in solidarity with Ukraine by the city of Helsinki on Twitter
When the suckage just sucks too much.
Russia has attacked Ukraine, and I’m not okay.
Russia’s unprovoked attack is not okay. The Russian president’s mumbo jumbo about annexation of historical areas is exactly that. Neither the Russian Empire nor Soviet Union exist anymore. If we go down that path, we might as well cry out for the restoration of the Roman Empire, other empires, or basically any polities for “historical” “reasons”.
As a Finn, I am not intellectually okay with this.
Nor do I feel okay.
My age group has grown up in peace, but we have grandparents who lived through our two modern wars with Russia, and you can bet your pants some of our parents carry some inherited wounds. I have a friend, in fact, who grew up in the east near the Russian border. People there had a habit of saying “When the Russians come, [blah blah blah]”. Not if—when.
We remember.
The responsibility for this heinous act lies with Russia, and Russia alone.
Ukraine may be a lot bigger than Finland, but I wish them every ounce of dedication, not to mention willfulness and obstinancy I can muster.
I’m not okay. But I will be better. In the meanwhile, I’ve made donations, and I’m following the situation.
Images: Map of the Mongol empire by Arienne King via World History Encyclopedia (CC BY-NC -SA 4.0). Map of not Russia via Jon Cooper on Twitter.
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