Month: May 2011

DIGAREC book and the immersion paper

For your information: there is an interesting collection of papers available online, putting together the keynote presentations of DIGAREC lecture series that took place 2009-2010 in Potsdam. Germany. The immersion paper by Laura Ermi and myself, titled “Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience” is published there (with a new foreword), and there are interesting chapters by Espen Aarseth, Lev Manovich, Katie Salen, and Mark J.P. Wolf. The direct link to downloadable PDF:

http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2011/4978/pdf/digarec06.pdf

Rhetoric of Death

I was happy to work as a pre-examiner for an interesting PhD thesis which will now be publicly defended in the University of Turku. Titled “Rhetoric of Death and Generic Addressing of Viewers in American Living Dead Films”, Outi Hakola’s thesis is an interesting exploration of “Living Dead” phenomena and its significance in the American culture and cinema tradition. You can download the full thesis from this page. More in Finnish:

Väitös kauhuelokuvista ja kuolemasta 28.5.2011

FM Outi Hakola väittelee lauantaina 28. toukokuuta 2011 kello 12 Turun yliopistossa (Tauno Nurmela -sali, päärakennus, Yliopistonmäki) aiheesta “Rhetoric of Death and Generic Addressing of Viewers in American Living Dead Films” (Kuoleman retoriikka ja katsojien geneerinen puhuttelu amerikkalaisissa elävä kuollut -elokuvissa).

Virallisena vastaväittäjänä toimii professori Kendall Phillips Syracusen yliopistosta (New York, USA) ja kustoksena professori Jukka Sihvonen.

Elävä kuollut -elokuvat ovat eri vuosikymmeninä tarjonneet uusille sukupolville mahdollisuuden käsitellä kuoleman ajatusta ja kuolemaan liittyviä tunteita ja käsityksiä fantasioinnin kautta. FM Outi Hakolan väitöstutkimus nostaa esille, miten Hollywoodin vampyyri-, muumio- ja zombielokuvat 1930-luvulta 2000-luvun taitteeseen keskustelevat modernin länsimaisen kuolemakäsityksen kanssa.

Väitös on julkaistu Turun yliopiston sähköisessä julkaisuarkistossa: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/69580

Online Gaming in Context book

We have a new publication date for Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games book, edited by Garry Crawford, Victoria K. Gosling and Ben Light (published by Routledge). My own piece is titled: “Games in the Mobile Internet: Understanding Contextual Play in Flickr and Facebook”. The new date is in September. You should be able to get discount if you order in advance. Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415556194/

Edit: here is a link to a form that you can use to get 20% discount.

VanderMeer on Finnish SF and Fantasy

Jeff VanderMeer and his wife Ann made recently a visit to Finland and talked with the members of SF/speculative fiction community/fandom members around here. The results are documented in a highly interesting series of blog posts, well worth checking out:

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2011/05/finnish-sf-and-fantasy-an-established-community-a-surge-of-talent.html

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2011/05/finnish-science-fiction-and-fantasy-johanna-sinisalo-hannu-rajaniemi-and-moomins.html

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/05/the-finnish-sffantasy-community-an-interview-with-tero-ykspetaja/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/07/finnish-fiction-viivi-hyvonen-on-the-monkey-and-the-new-moon/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/09/finnish-fiction-an-interview-with-anne-leinonen/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/12/finnish-fiction-saara-henrikssons-cool-concept-moby-doll/

Great stuff!

Garden working

Garden working by FransBadger
Garden working, a photo by FransBadger on Flickr.

Sure sign of summer: our garden work has begun again. I have e.g. operated our overgrown apple trees with a chain saw, washed away old paint and repainted (a bit hastily) all our wooden garden furniture, plus the terrace, then delivered sand, gravel and flagstones required by various paths and other constructions that look like becoming the main garden project of this summer. Here the foundation for a swing.

Garden working

CloudMagic, with offline search

Another interesting tool/service: CloudMagic is a Chrome/Firefox browser plugin that provides enhanced search functionality in Gmail, Google Docs and Contacts. With the latest release they also added the ability to do searches offline, which is a great benefit if you rely on Google services a lot, and also travel. I have not tested the offline side yet, but the search seems to work fine, even though it might take some time to do the indexing, if you have massive amounts of mail. Download from the main page: http://cloudmagic.com/. The release details: http://blog.cloudmagic.com/category/releases/.

Wuala, a Dropbox alternative

There is an interesting alternative to do cross-platform / cloud file syncing, Wuala. I haven’t used it myself, would love to hear comments of its positive sides and potential weaknesses. Here is a story: http://lifehacker.com/#!5798179/wuala-is-a-powerful-cross+platform-file-syncer-with-lots-of-tricks-for-extra-free-space

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