Taivo Lints Blog

A fake travel guide, from 2003.

I picked it up in a bookstore in Stansted airport, London, in 2005. It was 5 a.m., and I had been up since the previous morning, but this book still managed to make me laugh, so there wasn't much hesitation left about whether to buy it or not.

"...Despite being one of the smallest countries in Europe, the Republic of Molvania has much to offer the discerning tourist. Panoramic scenery, magnificent neoclassical architecture and centuries of devotion to fine culture are, admittedly, all in short supply. But the intrepid traveler will still find plenty to enjoy within this unique, landlocked nation state -- from the capital Lutenblag, with its delightful gas-powered tram network, to the heavily forested Postenwalj Mountains in the south, where visitors can share a glass of locally brewed zeerstum (garlic brandy)..."

"...Dzrebo was first discovered in AD 6 by the Roman centurion Callus who, while leading an expedition through the region, became bogged on the flat, swampy plains. After several fruitless weeks attempting to extricate himself from the mosquito-plagued, leech-infested, stagnant wetlands, Callus is said to have declared 'this would make an ideal place for a village'. Whilst historians have subsequently conjectured that he may have been speaking sarcastically, his comments were soon acted upon and a small town sprang up..."

"...After the war Molvania found itself under Soviet control and endured many years of hardship and authoritarian rule. The turning point came in 1982 when the famous Lutenblag Wall collapsed, not due so much to democratic reform, but just shoddy construction..."

If you appreciate irony, creative humor and a good laugh, then this travel guide is highly recommended. For the rest of the crowd it is not recommended, as they might be offended (see those 1 star comments in Amazon).

More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1843542323/

An updated 2004 year version of the book originally published in 1986.

It's a 576 page book filled with practical information about "how to survive in the wild, in any climate, on land or at sea". Topics include: the will to live; survival kit; knives; acquiring water and food (including how to test unknown plants for edibility, and how to catch animals, birds, fish without proper equipment); car and plane accidents; survival strategies in polar regions, mountains, seashores, islands, arid regions and tropical regions; campcraft; navigation and weather signs; traveling on foot and on rafts; first aid and medical treatment; survival at sea; rescue operation basics (for the one being rescued, not for the one conducting the operation); strategies for surviving in natural and man-made disasters.

Highly recommended for everybody, especially for travelers.

More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060578793/

A book by Ricard V. Solé and Brian C. Goodwin, originally from year 2000.

The cover gives an impression that the book is a discussion about what life is, but this is not the case. Instead, it is a good and relatively easy to read overview of a large number of tools and approaches that are often referred to as complexity science. There are deterministic chaos, emergence, criticality, self-organization, patterns in excitable media, entropy, Ising model, information theory, renormalization, self-similarity, sand-pile model, metabolic networks, genetic networks, cell differentiation, reaction-diffusion systems, biological clocks, neural nets, phase transitions, ant colonies, nest building in social insects, biodiversity, ecological stability, viral quasispecies, catalytic chemical networks, evolution and extinction, stock market fluctuations, urban growth, traffic models, etc.

As the page count is around 300, the book obviously doesn't go into great details of every concept, neither does it always have all terminology explained, neither is there a coherent overarching story. Thus I don't know if it would be a good reading for somebody who has never heard most of the presented ideas before, but for me it is a good collection of notes that can be used for sparking inspiration and for quickly remembering the key concepts, the details of which should then be looked up from other sources. So, in general I like it.

More information at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465019285/

and if you have access to Wiley InterScience, then: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/97519452/

(click on pic to see full size)

A digital painting I made recently. It is supposed to show how nice are Estonian (or Nordic, in general) sunsets and how good a place it is for a scientist to sit in fresh air and think about the research without being disturbed by anybody, but still having a wireless internet connection (almost all of Estonia is covered).

If you wonder why the heck I would make such a picture, it was actually for an Estonian computer drawing contest "Draw me a scientist". As I'm not very good at drawing people (yes, I know, I should practice), I decided to minimize the "scientist" part on the picture. Probably not a very good idea from the competition viewpoint -- I didn't get any prize :) But I enjoyed the painting process anyway. Maybe I'll remove the scientist and laptop from the pic, when I have some time for it.

Tools: ArtRage 2.2 Free, Wacom Graphire4 A6, and my almighty self-assembled PC.