December 2006 – Page 2 – frans goes blog

Independence is fire in the air

(I discuss this also in the global group blog I participate in: http://topics192.blogspot.com/2006/12/finnish-independence.html). There was again some really great fireworks in the central square of Tampere today, to celebrate the Finnish Day of Independence; this is also my first YouTube video — what a masterpiece! 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiHWn7OoNQM

(YouTube video embed code does not work with WordPress, but I attempted to install “MyTube” plugin, and embed the video below using it:)

TiHWn7OoNQM

SingStar in Pikkujoulut

SingStar performance in Pikkujoulut-2006
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

SingStar is a karaoke-style, singing game for PS2 that fits perfectly in a party or other social settings. Our department staff had the “Pikkujoulu” (Pre-Christmas party) night yesterday and this game was of course part of the fun. Other photos can be found in Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fransmayra/tags/hypermedialaboratorio/

FAlbum integration issues

I have been trying to tie in all the various areas of digital media, games and online services where I have invested portions of my digital identity. One step to such a direction would be to have a working photography–blog integration, that I have been trying to achieve by installing FAlbum (by RandomByte). As you should currently see from the main page of this blog, the “Random Photos” sidebar element should now work (“Recent Images” function did not really work; it seemed to skip most of my photos). And in the /photos/ sub-page also rest of the Flickr integration is otherwise functional, but the WordPress theme that I have breaks apart — the stylesheet does not work, and the FAlbum installation instructions do not exist for fHeaven template that I have based my design upon. Take a look at:

falbum:installation_instructions [RandomByte]
Flickr Tag Cloud for all my photos
(the Scandinavian characters break down, for some reason…)

Mikko Lehtonen's half-centennial seminar

Mikko Lehtonen’s half-centennial seminar
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Professor Mikko Lehtonen, one of the leading figures in Finnish cultural studies turned recently fifty (congratulations!) and the network of colleagues and students had edited a book (Tutkimusten maailma – “The World of Studies”) and organised yesterday a seminar to congratulate him, and to stop for a moment to celebrate the growth of this interdisciplinary field. In the attached shot professors Hanna Suutela, Anu Koivunen and Seppo Knuuttila ponder; other speakers included Kaarina Hazard, Sanna Kivimäki and Teemu Taira. And of course Mikko himself, who decided to confuse everyone in the end by reading a work-in-progress paper that discussed the need for non-substantive, more process-oriented cultural studies (if I understood him at all correctly).