General Discussion Thread

[Jitter]

Midwestmutt, it’s good to hear you are ok. The winter has been quite wintry here too, we’ve had properly cold weather and lots of snow even here in the Helsinki area for weeks. Normal, proper winter actually, but this has been rare for a couple of decades now. Good thing we had the heat storing fireplace built last year!

[midwestmutt]

Is it a Finnish stove like in A Red tail's Dream?

[Jitter]

I can’t recall what it was like in A Redtail’s Dream, but it looks like these: https://www.suomenponttouunit.fi/galleria

The name pönttöuuni means something like tincan oven or bucket oven. It’s massive, built of fire bricks and the smoke goes around inside it, heating the brick mass before the chimney. The outside is steel plate, painted dark blue in our case (so looks very similar to the dark blue ones on the gallery page). One batch of food keeps it warm for 24 hrs or more.

It’s a fairly traditional style although this house probably originally had tiled ovens. The metal plating was the affordable version. But the overall upright design was most likely the same (the house was built in 1904 as a villa for people who would probably have been characterized as very prosperous).

[Keep Looking]

I've heard there's been a lot of cold weather all across the US right now - glad to hear everyone's alright.

[midwestmutt]

I can’t recall what it was like in A Redtail’s Dream, but it looks like these: https://www.suomenponttouunit.fi/galleria

The name pönttöuuni means something like tincan oven or bucket oven. It’s massive, built of fire bricks and the smoke goes around inside it, heating the brick mass before the chimney. The outside is steel plate, painted dark blue in our case (so looks very similar to the dark blue ones on the gallery page). One batch of food keeps it warm for 24 hrs or more.

It’s a fairly traditional style although this house probably originally had tiled ovens. The metal plating was the affordable version. But the overall upright design was most likely the same (the house was built in 1904 as a villa for people who would probably have been characterized as very prosperous).

Sounds like the same tech. I had never heard of such stoves before aRTD. You can find it starting on page 262 in the archives.

[Jitter]

On p 272 you can see the ruins of the fireplace in ARtD and it looks to be empty. Which makes no sense, so I assume it has more to do with Minna’s level of expertise regarding heating ovens Even more so does the fact that if there were seams like that where the front and side wall of the oven are just placed next to each other, the smoke would come in. So the outward stones would be only the icing on the brick or stone cake that is the oven proper.

So yeah, I think it’s meant to be more or less the same type as ours, with the exception that ours is round. The inner workings of an upright heat storing oven was a Swedish innovation from 1800’s.

[Yastreb]

Now I know three Finnish words...

Motti originally referred to the bundling of firewood; it's widely used to denote the tactic of bottling up an enemy unit, breaking it down into smaller groups, and defeating them one by one. If you read about the Winter War, you learn about the motti tactic.

Sisu is "a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness. It is held by Finns to express their national character" (from Wikipedia). A film was recently released with that as a title, and sums up the major character.

And now... Perkele; apparently a profanity akin to "God damn it!" And how did I learn about this one? It's the title of a piece of music that doesn't seem profane at all. Judge for yourself.

[midwestmutt]

Happy first day of Spring to us Northern Terrans and happy first day of Fall to all you Southern Terrans.

[thorny]

Merry Equinox to everybody!

[Buteo]

A joyful Equinox to all, whichever season you are headed into!

[Róisín]

A good Equinox to you all!

[Keep Looking]

An excellent equinox to everyone! I'm definitely noticing it getting darker here, it's now dark at 7pm!

[midwestmutt]

An excellent equinox to everyone! I'm definitely noticing it getting darker here, it's now dark at 7pm!

Same here at the moment, but for us it's a big improvement.

[thorny]

An excellent equinox to everyone! I'm definitely noticing it getting darker here, it's now dark at 7pm!

And it's now light here till past 7 PM! though that owes something to Daylight Saving Time. (Despite which, don't get me going on DST.)

[JoB]

If you thought that, four-hundred-some years after the arrival of those snoopy Europeans, Australian wildlife ought to be out of new tricks and surprises ...