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!
Month: March 2006
joensuu
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?
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
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
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 california
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
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
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.
frans goes blog 
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