frans

FAlbum integration issues

I have been trying to tie in all the various areas of digital media, games and online services where I have invested portions of my digital identity. One step to such a direction would be to have a working photography–blog integration, that I have been trying to achieve by installing FAlbum (by RandomByte). As you should currently see from the main page of this blog, the “Random Photos” sidebar element should now work (“Recent Images” function did not really work; it seemed to skip most of my photos). And in the /photos/ sub-page also rest of the Flickr integration is otherwise functional, but the WordPress theme that I have breaks apart — the stylesheet does not work, and the FAlbum installation instructions do not exist for fHeaven template that I have based my design upon. Take a look at:

falbum:installation_instructions [RandomByte]
Flickr Tag Cloud for all my photos
(the Scandinavian characters break down, for some reason…)

Mikko Lehtonen's half-centennial seminar

Mikko Lehtonen’s half-centennial seminar
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Professor Mikko Lehtonen, one of the leading figures in Finnish cultural studies turned recently fifty (congratulations!) and the network of colleagues and students had edited a book (Tutkimusten maailma – “The World of Studies”) and organised yesterday a seminar to congratulate him, and to stop for a moment to celebrate the growth of this interdisciplinary field. In the attached shot professors Hanna Suutela, Anu Koivunen and Seppo Knuuttila ponder; other speakers included Kaarina Hazard, Sanna Kivimäki and Teemu Taira. And of course Mikko himself, who decided to confuse everyone in the end by reading a work-in-progress paper that discussed the need for non-substantive, more process-oriented cultural studies (if I understood him at all correctly).

hdtv adventure game

Now this is actually rather fun: as a an indication of games becoming the vernacular of Media Era, read/play this Dethroner spoof on adventure gaming books (remember them?) and ongoing HDTV discussions.

http://dethroner.com/index.php/2006/11/28/choose-your-own-adventure-the-cave-of-hdtv/

(Gizmodo, thanks for the link)

presenting on social gaming

Today was another busy day; meetings and then a quick trip into Helsinki, where I presented with Sonja Kangas on the social dimensions of digital gaming. The event was organised by the Finnish importer of PlayStation, and thus the PS2 party games (SingStar, Buzz etc.) were on the main focus in that sponsor part of the presentations. SingStar is actually rather fun: we tried that out some time ago with the Finnish “Legendat” version. I proved to be even worse singer than I had suspected. In Finland the pre-Christmas party tradition is quite active and this kind of performance oriented games are at their best in such (suitably relaxed) party setting. Pikkujoulut, here we come…

social media and context in mobile

This is one of those areas where much interesting is going on: using mobile devices to keep track and share your life with your friends, coworkers and family. Several interesting applications and services are in the works, most of them still in beta, though. I have been particularly looking at these: Merkitys-Meaning, Context Watcher, Jaiku. As more people subscribe into these, the context information becomes more useful and interesting. I tried to install Merkitys-Meaning because of its integration into Flickr, but currently it cannot be signed into my E70 mobile (Symbian 60 3rd edition not yet supported, should be in January). Meanwhile, I continue testing Flickr integration into WordPress (attempted also the del.icio.us integrator plugin, but that did not work).

back online

There were some serious problems with the network settings of unet.fi server — hopefully this temporary connection will work for now. I have ordered a new, business ADSL connection from a small local ISP (WLANnet), hopefully I can actually get from some service from them (knocking wood). But since they need to order the copper connection from Elisa, it can take three weeks before this transition happens.

IST 2006

IST 2006
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

This day and tomorrow will be spent in IST 2006 conference, which is the annual get-together of eurocrats and us “information society technologies” people. Full with ambient intelligence, social media, tangible bits and all sorts of other marvels, IST is a curious hotbed of activities, few actually ready for the streets, most staying eternally in prototype, or beta.

dark falls

dark falls
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Now that rain has melted away the snow cover, it is apparent that we have entered ‘marras’, the season of death. Dark falls, tiny lights are set up to fight its domain, only accenting its depth.

window into winter, blogging around the world

window into winter
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

I was invited to participate in this global blog where people around the world write about their daily life:

http://topics192.blogspot.com/

In classic Finnish spirit, I used the opportunity to nag about the weather (only the British compete with Finns in their passion to discuss weather, as far as I know). And with this apparent climate change, there are obvious reasons to pay attention to what is going on in this blue-and-green planet of ours.

lecture about gaming skills/games literacy

I will be today presenting a lecture where I outline some of the fundamental skills and learning processes that are involved in playing digital games. It is a public, studia generalia lecture, so welcome to listen; it is part of the Media Education project that our department participates in, see https://www11.uta.fi/blog/mediakasvatus/?p=16