frans

puzzle ball game

puzzle ball game
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Ravensburger has created this transgressive concept: puzzle ball of the globe. If puzzle is no game (Crawford), then at least you can use it, ball game, puzzle and some education, all wrapped in one.

You might as well start making the new year’s promises already. Since my server started losing connection to the main disk drive, I have got some creeps. All electronics will fail, sooner or later, and always in a bad day. So, why not promising to better your ways, and regularly back up your data? Finally today I got around to getting a USB 2.0 disk drive (‘Fujitsu-Siemens Storagebird XL’, a 250 GB model with a funny name). Now, Windows XP contains a backup utility (‘Backup’, ditto), the only trick is to get it automatically do the thing. You can take a look at how this is made in this article at the Microsoft site. The test run seemed to go fine, but the real test involves being able to recover some of that data too, I guess…

[Edit: Of course it did not work without some trouble. This time, the Windows Scheduler encountered the notorious ‘keyset does not exist’ error. Or, the scheduled backups just quietly did not happen. Luckily, at least the scheduler keyset issue can be fixed, see this link: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21317289.html]

a gift (Switched On Santa)

Here is a little gift to all of you geeks wondering what to do with this Xmas thing, anyways: FaLaLaLaLa – Switched On Santa by Sy Mann (the entire vinyl album & artwork in c. 45Mb zip download).

happy holidays

Moderately Technological, (Al)Mostly Human, and Appropriately Fantastic Christmas for Everyone!

wow group101

Interested in the gameplay strategy issues, I came across this flash “101” strategy guide into WoW group dynamics. Any other interesting ones out there?

fantasy season in WoW?

Now, during the Christmas period, there is of course an excellent opportunity to open that thick fantasy novel, and spend relaxing evenings, long into the night, immersed in an adventure. Or, then you can also spend also those precious moments by grinding in WoW. This night was actually rather fun, thanks to Aludra and Siedga who helped my poor old Dur Ût-Thure to get along in the hard road of saintly paladinhood. And the full moon is always perfect in the virtual world. I wonder how those weather effects will change the situation in the extension release? In any case, it will be a hard choice: an entertaining book, or entertaining adventure with your friends are both good ways to spend your holidays, even if very different ones.

microsoft's vision of the future

On the BBC’s Click Online site, you can find this fun snippet on Microsoft’s vision of the future. Some of these concepts actually sound useful (“Whereabouts Clock”, your basic social context awareness tool), but some are just plain silly. Interactive bowl?

graduation party

graduation party
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Once more: a great party. Tonight the University of Tampere celebrates its graduates. Evening in the great hall now has a distinctive feeling of a family event, academia opening its doors once for families and the surrounding society in general. Congratulations, Laura!

player-centred game design (pcd.. pcgd?)

I noticed T.L.Taylor posted this note about Olli Sotamaa’s and our team’s paper in DAC into Terra Nova (her last there, btw, pity), and discussed player-centred game design also more generally. There appears to be several interesting developments in this area, both in research world, and within the industry, but we also have to remember what are the realities particularly of the smaller studios and focus on how to make the player-centric processes also more designer-friendly. But I am a firm believer in PCD philosophy: only by hearing real people out there (rather than only following our own tastes and instincts) can we see the culture of gaming facing some real fundamental changes.

w-zero3 or communicator?

Gizmodo ran a short story about this new smartphone, nicely named W-Zero3, which appears (with its large screen, full qwerty keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera – plus Wi-Fi, bluetooth and all the other usual communications stuff – as a worthy competitor for the Nokia Communicator line. Only question: will it come to Europe (and will I get mine with a Finnish keyboard). Make a guess…