Outlines, August, late summer - pt. 3

Outlines, August, late summer - pt. 3
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Further on the road into impressionism -- I decided that the pixel-sharp shapes and unprecisely captured colours really do not convey my experience of this hazy, hot summer (30-32C is what my thermometer is constantly saying these days). Heat is something oppressive, smelling of dying grass.

This Photoshop cutout conveys better some of that feeling.

Tohloppi moblog-watercolour-sunset, part 1

Tohloppi moblog-watercolour-sunset, part 1
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

There is always a beautiful sunset, rare bird or butterfly flying by when you do NOT carry your best camera and lens with you. With the crappy cameraphone, you can not really get the tones, nor details of the scene. What to do? Well, how about stepping away from the pursuit of realism for a moment, and try aiming for something clearly impressionistic instead? Couple of experiments with a cameraphone and a Photoshop filter.

475 + 1 FONero

The UPS courier brought today my FON router (I think the price of shipping was actually more than double the price of the €5 router), and after some tweaking, this is now written wirelessly, as a proud member of the world-wide FONero community. Cheers! However, more fellow Linuses would clearly be required to make this genuinely useful, rather than just philosophical or ethical investment. 475 users in a country as large and sparsely populated as Finland is not much. But now there is 475 + 1. See: fon maps: Finland.

law makes social software illegal in american schools

This is a rather curious development; it appears that a law was recently passed in the Congress which would ban American schools to allow access to any sites who 'enable communication among users' or permits 'personalised information.' Wow, they really hate the development of Internet over there? Read: 'US House: Schools must block MySpace, many other sites' in Techcrunch

tech guides my way

tech guides my way
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

One of my recent uploaded pictures in Flickr of summer travelling with TomTom GO 710; and related to my considering whether to install WordPress, or to continue using Blogger.com -- the other has more features, but can you achieve similar integration with Flickr and other services? Don't know, have to study.

houses with work and screens

Vising the 2006 Housing Fair in Espoo during the week-end, I almost got an overdose of expensive, modern design. It seems that a modern house is build around kitchen and home theatre with a flat-screen television or video projector. It also appears necessary to have a working room in the home so that work life can continue also when not officially in work. Tells something about the direction our lifestyles are taking?

See: www.unet.fi/pics/2006-07-22-as-messut

immersed in a book project

I am spending most of this summer immersed in a book project, so there are few notes into this forum. I hope though that during the fall I am able to post more information about its progress; now just the title: "Introduction to Game Studies."

game conference travel photos

As a continuation to the listing of forthcoming conferences, here are some memories from game conferences of previous years. Listed are travel pictures from:

• GDC Europe 2002: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2002-08-GDC-Europe/
  
• GDC 2003: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2003-03-GDC/
• DiGRA 2003 Level Up: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2003-11-Utrecht/
  
• Korea Games Conference (& Tokyo trip) 2004: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2004-10-japan-korea/
  
• Other Players Conference 2004: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2004-12-12-oplay-copenhagen/
• Creative Gamers Seminar 2005: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2005-01-Creative-Gamers/
• DiGRA Futures & Playful Subjects seminars, 2005: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2005-05-Bristol/
• DiGRA 2005 in Vancouver: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2005-06-22-Vancouver/
  
• DAC 2005 in Copenhagen: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2005-12-04_DAC/
• GDC 2006: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2006-03-24-GDC/

-- Whew, some years of travelling! I try to keep more to home from now on.

navigating with a tomtom go 710

It appears that ubiquitous or pervasive computing is just making more effect in our everyday life, year after year. Small smart applications or services are combining the information of virtual world with that of our physical living contexts.

Experimenting with some of the consequences personally, I yesterday got my first GPS navigation system, the TomTom GO 710. After the first try it seems a well-designed and smartly functional gadget; I particularly esteem the speed it can recalculate new route if you missed a turn. The only downside so far is that my Nokia 6630 is not fully supported in the bluetooth handsfree function: it cannot access the contact list, making it very hard to make phonecalls using it. Well, at least you can aswer calls.

And the real value is in the community, as this can be considered 'social software', too. There are many individuals and groups preparing and publishing GPS coordinates in TomTom's POI/.ov2 file format, or in others. And GPS navigators relate to the future of pervasive games, too.

Some links:
http://www.tomtom.com
http://konttinen.1g.fi/tomtompoi/
http://www.abico.liitin.net/TomTom/
http://www.gps-waypoints.net/gps/
http://hain.fi/poi/
http://www.jahi.net/TomTom/index.htm
http://www.expansys.com/forum.asp?man=TOMTO&code=TOMTOMGO
http://www.iperg.org/

 

vihta - the art of beating

vihta - the art of beating
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

There is a fine art in Finland, related to Sauna culture, called vihtominen - the enjoyable form of beating you with twigs of birch. Happy summer, everyone!