24.08.2009, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Photo from today’s press conference that announced the collaboration agreement between Nokia Research and University of Tampere. The idea is to expand the research collaboration into interesting new fields and strengthen existing collaboration areas, such as Human-Computer Interaction and Games Research. Pictured is professor Roope Raisamo (speaking), Rector Kaija Holli and Laboratory Director (NRC) Jyri Huopaniemi (sitting).
21.08.2009, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
The second lion to our family, the little brother was born to Luka today, at five minutes past seven in the evening. Long waited, the birth was finally quick (albeit not painless, like these things tend to go). Happy? Yes. Tired? Very. Now we just stare at his little round face, and try to understand.
I have been having bad luck before with various companies, but this is now getting epidemic — are all of these delays explained by the economic recession, of some other such factor? For example, I pre-ordered my iPhone 3GS from Sonera (the exclusive carrier in Finland) already late June, I think — and was promised a delivery in July 31st. Then I received a call from Sonera telling that it will arrive in 5th of August instead. Then nothing happened. I have been calling Sonera and Verkkokauppa.com where I should be getting the phone delivered, but no-one have been able to give any sort of estimate for when the phones could really become available.
The delay was particularly nasty for me, as I had ordered my previous mobile subscription to be closed at July 31st, and then needed to get to Sonera to have a new subscription opened, without the phone yet available. I had also scheduled some work with analysing iPhone apps for August, but now it seems that I need to get my hands on an iPod Touch in order to be able to do that work. Damn, such delays are irritating in an already too busy schedule.
On another front, we are still waiting for two armchairs we ordered from Asko more than four weeks ago (the delivery promise was 2-4 weeks). No contact to the customer, no explanation. Is Finland just the country of bad customer service, or is this universal?
It looks this book is now out: Digital Cityscapes – Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces (Peter Lang Publishers, de Souza e Silva & Sutko, eds.) discusses location-based, hybrid-reality and pervasive games, featuring contributions from me and Petri Lankoski, as well as Hannamari Saarenpää from our lab, among others.
More information:
Got finally a camera today that can produce HD (720p) video clips. Testing the low-light characteristics of Canon PowerShot SX200 IX in the shot below: night time, HD and imported directly from .MOV into Youtube — the you can see that auto exposure creates lots of grain. Still some nice sky tones. (Click the “go full screen” symbol below, in the low right corner of the player.)
There will be a couple of more experiments posted into my profile later. My first impressions of this small camera are positive. It is surprising to see how versatile system this kind of pocket camera can today be. Digital photography has gone long way, at least as far as technology is concerned.
frans goes blog 