One of the problematic issues is how to allow file access to a Vista system in a secure manner. One nice distribution is copSSH which includes OpenSSH, CygWin and some utilities. Installation is a breeze, you just need to activate the user and realise that the home directory is provided as a symbolic link within the SSH daemon home directory. See: copSSH – OpenSSH for Windows. From within Linux/Ubuntu the best client to file share/transfer into a MS Vista system appears to be Nautilus, the standard file Ubuntu browser (use File > Connect to Server, then bookmark the ‘myhome’ location that copSSH has provided you).
Month: November 2007
Joensuu, Tuusula massacre
Joensuu, Tuusula massacre
Originally uploaded by FransBadger
I am today and tomorrow visiting Joensuu university on the Chancing Views in Technology seminar; pictured is the early morning in Joensuu market square. – Yesterday the news of Tuusula school shootings caught me in the airport. The entire day was spent in deepening feelings of sadness and shock. Today there are already news being published how the Internet is responsible for the massacre, or the shooter games (the school shooter was a fan of shooter games as well as real guns, and übermench style of extreme philosophies). I cannot but just repeat what I have said many times: please care of people in the real life, and they are also better capable of making positive use of the virtual worlds. If the society and people near to a mentally sick person abandon him, there is not much a virtual reality can do to him.
WordPress.com broken?
Something very strange is going on in WordPress.com right now: people report entire blogs of messages gone missing, stats pages broken, categories messed up, all sorts of weird behaviour that could perhaps best be captured by the expression: “this service is broken”. Several of my blogs (some of them related to my teaching) are hosted in WordPress.com, so lets keep our fingers crossed. One of the discussion threads runs here (hopefully, if the forum area does not broke down, too): http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=17723&page&replies=6
Day of the dead
Night ride
Originally uploaded by FransBadger
All Saints’ Day is Pyhäinpäivä in Finnish, but I like to look how the pre-Christian times resonate in this kind of celebrations. Samhain, and Day of the Dead (Vainajainpäivä) are some associations to this direction. It seems that there is some controversy around Samhain as the ‘Celtic New Year’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain ). The first day of November is nevertheless when Marraskuu starts in Finland — ‘marras’ an ancient word for death. Thus: drink well, eat well, remember the dead and be glad while you are alive!
More pics in: http://www.unet.fi/pics/2007-11-03-pyhainpaiva/ and in my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fransmayra/
Skellefteå teaching visit
Skellefteå teaching visit
Originally uploaded by FransBadger
Air travel in practice has relatively poor effectivity ratio: for one hour of flight you might spend one hour to get to the airport, one hour in queues, suffering security check humiliations, and then perhaps spend three more hours waiting in another airport for your connecting flight. And then back through all those steps again, in reverse.
Today I have been in Sweden, as a visiting lecturer in Skellefteå, at their Luleå Tekniska Universitet’s Game Design degree programme. An interesting blend of technical university and art school, they are now moving in to provide game design education, and many researchers from our team are providing their expertise on various subjects as visiting lecturers. My offering was focused on some conceptual and theoretical fundamentals of Game Studies, and largely based on my forthcoming textbook on this subject. Now — just to be home already. Weather forecast promises snowfall to Finland tomorrow. That would be a welcome change in this darkness.
frans goes blog 