Month: February 2007

Evening of klezmer

Tonight was one of a rare cultural experience. Tapani Jämsen invited us to the consert of his band, Doina Klezmer, in the Tampere Hall. Not knowing anything about klezmer music in advance, I was surprised by its emotional range and simultaneous rhytmic, dance-like qualities. You can learn more about klezmer from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klezmer and below is link to the band’s home page, where are also mp3 samples available.
See: Doina Klezmer website

Game design research workshop

Game design research workshop
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Janne Paavilainen, the GameSpace project manager is here getting ready to close the first of our two game design workshop days. Meeting this time at the new Helsinki headquarters of our partner Sulake (the creators of Habbo Hotel), our theme was ‘multiplayer’. GameSpace is researching the methods for mobile, multiplayer casual game design, and we got particularly strong input this time from Sumea studio of Digital Chocolate. There is much interesting research going in that project — hope we’ll get to publish some of that soon!

Home electronics for sale

Carrying loads and loads from the old home to the new, I decided it is time to get rid of some of this stuff. Much of the furniture went to local second hand/recycling shop. Some things I simply gave away. But there are couple of nice home electronics items, so I decided to make them my first Huuto.net objects: a big (=huge) 32 inch Sony Trinitron flat-tube television set, and a Sony midi stereo series. If interested, take a look at these links: Sony TV, Sony stereo set.

Water, oil and the Internet

Water, oil and the Internet
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Learning the ropes in detached house living; there must be at least a dozen contracts you need to negotiate and sign before your new house is linked with all those invisible networks this society consists of. We got water, we got electricity — but we never got the process of
acquiring and comparing competing bids from oil companies finished until the oil actually run out. In -30C nights, in an oil-heated house, having no oil is not fun at all. Happily Esso (Exxon over there) managed to deliver us this precious, soon-to-be-extinct stuff in six hours next day — with some extra cost, of course. In the evening, feeling the warmth come back, and seeing the online content (and hearing it, Last.fm is now available across the house, Wi-Fi) come streaming in, it occurred to me that with water, warmth and Internet you could probably go pretty far. Or then again, I am just being nerdy.

View into the night from the new home

View into the night from the new home
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

There were some ice chrystals in the air when I took this photo from the upstairs window of our new home. The neighborhood appears quiet, beautiful even when the Finnish winter shows its better sides. Now I just need to learn much more about boiler systems, oil heaters and water circulation piping, pressure levels and ventilations, among other things. But it is good to be this far, already. Following couple of weeks will be filled with housing work, in any case. Keeps you in a hurry.

Eric Zimmerman's workshop closes, day of ice and trains

Eric Zimmerman’s workshop closes, day of ice and trains
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Today I participated as an informal reviewer into the game design
workshop Eric Zimmerman organised in connection of our Games and
Storytelling series. I hope the week was productive for all involved —
the final day presentations at least appeared to involve several
inspired designs that also embodied some design research philosophy.
Special thanks also to Jesper Juul from Copenhagen for filling in
Thursday when Eric needed to be elsewhere. In terms of climate, this
week has been extremely cold, cars and trains stuck and frozen. I am
writing this in an evening train going to Tampere, and it appears to be
c. one hour late at the moment. But it is still moving, so lets not
complain!

Smash Asem and the freedom of speech

The Finnish police has now decided to press charges and accuses 86 persons of various crimes in connection of ‘Smash Asem’ demonstration last fall. Negative anarchism and intention to create harm is one thing, but the right to demonstrate and the freedom of speech are fundamental rights for our society, and when people are jailed before they actually commit any crimes, then we have actually entered a police state. Please check one story of this event, as recorded in Jere Leskinen’s video documentary:
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