frans

On (Not) Remapping FN key in Vaio Z series

I have mostly loved working with my Vaio Z31WN — it is clearly the best laptop I have used so far — but there is a small annoyance that keeps disturbing the work flow daily: Sony did not include PageUp and PageDown keys in their keyboard layout, even while there would have been space enough for that. You need to use two hands: the other to press and hold FN key at the down left corner of the keyboard, and simultaneously press either up or down arrow. As browsing documents using PgUp/PgDown keys is one of the very basic and standard activities that you do on a PC, it is important that you can do it using only one hand, preferably on easily accessible, corner positioned keys. (Some tap or swipe gesture on a touch screen device, or dedicated buttons on the sides of eBook reader or something like that would work, too, but that is different from a standard PC laptop.) But the two-hand style of Sony does not work at all, really. And doing regular scrolling with the touchpad or arrow keys only will just strain your eyes, during a longer working session.

I have been installing and trying out various keyboard remappers in order to move/copy FN key functionality to e.g. right Control/Alternate Menu key, but it seems that these FN keys are often handled at hardware level in a way that is not open to an OS level remap/registry hack. That is no good at all. No single key solution have appeared so far. The second best that I am using now is to use Spacebar / Shift-Spacebar to reproduce PageUp/Down functionalities while on a browser window. Not perfect, but at least a single hand solution is possible using those keys. Any better ideas, anyone?

Considering migrating from Flickr to Picasa

There have been several recent (and not so recent) improvements in Picasa web service that Google owns, making it serious challenger to Flickr, which I have long used. (See a list from here.) There is also a cost issue: the Pro account of Flickr is $25 per year (unlimited uploads, unlimited storage), but you can get 20 GB of disk space from Google/Picasa with $5 per year. Rather than cost, it is really the privacy controls that start to concern me more and more as the kids grow up. Picasa web albums makes it a bit easier to share private photo albums (you just enter email addresses and send the invitation link). This, and other reasons have led me to consider migrating my photo galleries from Flickr to Picasa. As I have several deep integrations set up (particularly all photos in this blog actually reside in Flickr), it is questionable whether this transition really makes sense. On the other hand, I hate being tied to any single service, without ability to change service provider when needed. Flickr has not been particularly dynamic in coming up with new functionalities recently. Yet, integration with my mobile camera phones and mail systems is something that works well with Flickr, and I am not sure how such things would appear under Picasa/Google. But we will see. I am using the holiday period to do some tests, experimenting first with the free Migratr tool to backup and transfer all my Flickr photos into the Picasa account. It appears a bit buggy/easy to crash, but lets hope for the best. It is interesting to see how the transfer works out, and having backups in several places is a good idea in any case.

Avatar: The Second Nature?

Planet Pandora in Avatar (2009)

I just saw Avatar (dir. & written by James Cameron), in 3D, and I must say I am impressed. Not necessarily deeply moved like some other great films I have seen, but impressed as in made to think about cinema and the role it will have for us in the future.

Many people who have written about Avatar have started by dropping a long list of other movies it has borrowed from; my take would be Avatar is “Aliens meets Dances with Wolves meets Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” style of movie. But there is enough originality in this particular blend that the intertextual or -medial reference listings do not make justice to its real essence.

Looking at the film through the thick and rather dark 3D goggles, I felt the basic scenario built around the avatar technology of the movie was sort of metaphor for my own situation Continue reading “Avatar: The Second Nature?”

Where the Wild Things Are

Everyone seems to be talking about Cameron’s Avatar these days, but I am actually waiting even more this film to get over here: Continue reading “Where the Wild Things Are”

Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta

Another new piece of software that I have been testing lately has been the new free Beta version of Lightroom 3:

For the development of this latest release, we’ve focused on what we believe are the fundamental priorities of our customers: performance and image quality. Lightroom has been rebuilt from its core to provide a performance architecture that meets the needs of photographers today and into the future. The raw processing engine has also received an overhaul in order to ensure that you’re maximizing the potential in your images in terms of sharpening and noise reduction. And, a number of other new areas have also had new features added and enhanced. Like any beta, Lightroom 3 beta is unfinished, which means some of the features we have planned are not in this release, and some of the features in the beta are not yet complete.

I am not sure which parts of the new Lightroom are still not complete, and which are related to the supposed performance and image quality improvements, but according to my experience this Beta version is really slow! Every time you navigate from image to image, it takes several seconds to get a sharp preview. I think at this point the lack of performance really makes this tool pretty useless. The built in previews of Windows 7, and the Windows Live Photo Gallery are fast, and then you can open the shot into Photoshop if you need to get into serious editing. Maybe I am missing something, but what is the real benefit of paying for software like Lightroom?

Ubuntu under a virtual machine

VMware Player running Ubuntu under Windows 7

This is a system you are most probably already using, if you are akin to test driving various operating systems and software combos: VMware Player is a free virtualization software tool that can be easily applied to set up different, “virtual PCs” inside a single OS installation. Very useful, if you do not want to mess up your primary system each time a new interesting tool or OS comes available. I followed these instructions to set up Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala to run as a virtual machine inside my Windows 7 workstation. Seems to run just fine.

Gamelab at Facebook, Twitter

We are adopting a more active role in our utilization of social media networking tools in order to distribute information and awareness of what is going at the Game Research Lab at the University of Tampere. You can now both follow us in Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/UTAgamelab) and in Twitter (https://twitter.com/UTAgamelab). See you around! 🙂

New faucets

27.11.2009, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

This is probably the least sexy topic for techno-blogging like, ever, but here we go. Our old faucets were having rather bad leaks over the tables and over the floors, I was getting water to my head from the shower while trying to fill a bucket with water from the faucet underneath, and so on. It was definitely time to move on. After some deliberation and consideration, we ended up ordering the installation of Oras Vega (the new eco-button model) to the upstairs wash basin, the slightly more fancy Oras Vienda faucet to the parade side basin in the first floor, and two Oras Optima thermostatic bath and shower faucets to the bathroom in the cellar. There are all sorts of nice engineering details in the valves etc., but I really liked the overall functionality of design and the feeling of workmanship. Using the shower faucet is now a small, everyday pleasure: the control movements feel natural, and mechanisms react with pleasing, muted ‘clicks’ and ‘snaps’. Donald Norman has written about “emotional design”, and this is exactly it. Oh, and we bought a new toilet seat also. IDO Seven D Image model. It has something called Siflon on its inner surfaces (no need for detergents, I am told). Dunno. But it looks cool and feels good…

DVD collectors' databases found missing

I have been using some DVD collection software before, but inserting all the movie details manually has proved too much work, and my collection listing is seriously out of date (meaning that with this lousy memory of mine, I am likely to start buying doubles at some point). A practical solution would be to use a bar-code scanner that would produce the product code that then would be used to automatically fetch the right details from a movie database. However, I test drove two programs/services tonight — www.dvdcorral.com and www.collectorz.com/movie/ — and at least in the new Finnish market blu-ray releases that I tried to input, could not be found in the database (Collectorz could find the new Star Trek blu-ray, that was the only match). It looks like the databases these solutions are using are rather heavily relying towards the US market data, or that was the impression I got at least. Oh dear. Need to work on that long-term memory of mine, then.

Future Play and GIIP: new research projects

Some news: our team has been awarded with funding from Tekes Verso programme to two new games research projects. The other one is GIIP (Games Industry Innovation Processes), which aims to survey and strengthen the state of innovation processes in Finnish games industry. This project is part of the TDP (Transformation of Digital Play) research consortium, and continues the work carried out in GaIn and GameSpace projects earlier. The other one is called Future Play and it will look into the future of game design, play and technology through expert interviews and analyses. Particularly it will pay attention to the digital distribution and publication models as well as to the games becoming embedded and integrated with online social media, thus continuing the work carried out in Games as Services project particularly. For more information, please contact the project managers: Annakaisa Kultima (GIIP) and Olli Sotamaa (Future Play).