rpg scholars gather in tampere

There is busy RPG oriented activity currently in and around Tampere, as role-playing games scholars and students are gathering here from around the world. The event is already more than full-booked, but you can take a look at the programme from the web pages at: http://gamelab.uta.fi/rpg-seminar . Looking towards really interesting couple of days!

joensuu

joensuu
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Yesterday in Helsinki, today in Joensuu, eastern Finland. All this would be fine, except for the flu - and that there is still no working mobile communications from Elisa. And my car broke down. So I take a taxi from the airport to the office to access my email. Bumps in the road to the mobile information society, I guess.

home sweet home

Very late last night, after multiple connecting flights, I arrived home again. Finnair, British Airways or American Airlines lost my luggage though. It is not optimum to be made to travel from Helsinki airport to Tampere in middle of the night, in well-below-freezing temperatures in your California-optimized travel clothing (my all winter clothes were in the lost luggage of course). I think I caught cold. No sight of the luggage so far. But: the functionality, security and familiar beauty of Finland make this clearly the place for me. Home is the best place. :)

what' next?

what' next?
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Having just listened to two GDC keynotes, Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and Will Wright, that is still the question: what's next? There are no major revelations, new revolutions taking place every year, and this year's GDC appears to be such intermediate show, mostly just adding detail to yester-year's news. Will is always inspiring though, in encouraging us to cultivate our obsessions. Astrobiology rocks!

lord british

lord british
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

That little speck in the middle is Lord British (Richard Garriott), a childhood hero. His perspective is interesting both historically and because of his later experiences in cross-cultural collaboration with NCsoft in Korea. It proved very soon difficult to serve both American and Asian sensibilities in one project, Tabula Rasa.

gdc gameplay

gdc gameplay
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Third day of GDC'06 and first moment I have a moment to sit down and relax a bit. First day I was on the Social Dimensions of gaming, the second on Curriculum. Tragic part in GDC is that there is always something seriously overlapping, and at least I seem to miss the essential sessions, they are already overbooked etc. So I hang around in a cafeteria, or end up listening some amusing and/or irrelevant programming session because it is the only one with any free seats. Meeting people is fun, though.

oranges of kalifornia

oranges of kalifornia
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Fruit used to be one of the main incomes in Santa Clara Valley, before it became known as the Silicon Valley. Took a long walk along Guadalupe River today, trying to readjust myself to the climate and time difference before GDC starts. Lovely country.

la chilli

la chilli
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

More hours on the road than I care to think about. Pretty jetlagged. But it is hard not to like California: it is warm, tolerant, multi-cultural in the American way. And that chilli bowl really hit the spot. I'd just love to see more LA some day than just the airport.

london queuing

london queuing
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Big airports are problematic places. That is, they are both troublesome, and it is also questionable whether they are places at all, or just some kind of limbo (remembering what Dante wrote about limbo in his Inferno). Bad organisation, humiliation and suffering. The bland everyday drama. Kind of reminds you of today's mobile data services, my favourite. Just spent two weeks, literally, trying to get Elisa (our university's mobile operator) to make my laptop's mobile data to work before this travel. Boy, did they fail, in multiple ways and with sort of consistency in inability to deliver a working solution. Now, lets see if I can configure this old Nokia 6600 to access my emails, somehow. With all this waiting, at least I have some time.

blogjects and pervasive internet

For some reason, this actually sounds like fun: in the "brave new world of 'blogjects" (according to Julian Bleecker) various objects and "things" will be having an influence in our lives to the point that they will "dissimate a record of their experiences to the net". Hmm. It would be actually interesting to read the blog of my car.. or keys. My mobile phone would perhaps have too much sensitive information -- would I want to allow it to start its own blog in the future? Of course, most of these would be private or restricted access only, I suppose.

testing the ubuntu linux in web server use

I am now starting the experimental migration from Windows world to the great unknown... that is, I am trying to run my own server now in an Ubuntu Linux box. The initial impressions are that this is an awkward hybrid: half graphical OS, yet more than half needs to be done with the command line. Might suit some, but I am really a graphical UI oriented person these days. Grrrr...

Edit: tonight, I have now configured and reconfigured both the Apache webserver, SSH/SFTP services, the user accounts and associated home directories and use rights a few times, in various combinations. While also being perplexed why some directories, terminal windows or applications follow the UTF-8 character set, while others go with the old (Latin1 / ISO 8859-1) scheme, and how to get them work together, why VNC clients (Win --> Linux box) do not appear to be able to transmit AltGr keys (needed in Scandinavian keyboards to input such essential keys as '@') like the Windows XP Remote Desktop... And so on and so forth. But: if you are able to read this, then this OS/application set works at least to some point, and thus Ubuntu cannot be so bad? :-)

logitech (dis)harmony

Never repair problems caused by an excess of complex technology by adding some more complex technology. Could it be named the Occam’s razor of IT? In Saturday, I bought a Logitech programmable remote control “Harmony 525” from a campaign in Stockmann warehouse store. I had two needs: to replace my pile of remote controls with a single one, and to use a programmable remote to finally make my Sony DVP-NS92 player region free -- and now it seems that this damned thing wont do in either role. It was not so bad to be requested to locate and input all brand and model codes from every device into its control scheme: supposedly, after all, you are going to do this only once. But the outcome (after spending all the free hours in my hard-earned Sunday vacation) of the configuration process was that now my TV is in whatever input every time I use Harmony, and I need to find the other, original Sony remote in any case to correct Harmony’s tracks. The problem is, as far as I can tell, that the Sony TV is not using specific codes to go directly into specific inputs, and it also does not always go into the same initial input when you press the “Next Input” remote button -- so, as the Harmony does not have any feedback channel from the systems it is trying to control, it will get it almost always wrong. So, I am just unlucky? It is so shame; the advertisement of the “truly universal” remote, based on a database with over 80 000 IR devices got me. The handset appears to need manual reconfiguration through a highly unreliable web/java client interface in all cases, as it gets all its default settings wrong. Spent more than 10 hours working on it, and just got a headache. And, to top the bill, I cannot even find a way to program Harmony to do the region-free trick. Doh.