Half of evening training this simple rhythm game, coated with all essential rock clichés. I wonder why they have not hailed Guitar Hero as the current top serious game? At least it gets me working with the chords like no guitar tutor has been able, so far.
(Damn, Blogger is getting issues again. Up and down. And yet no categories or tags system available for separating postings in different topics. Should I move to Movable Type, or WordPress?)
It appears that a social activism group pulled an interesting spoof at the Serious Games UK conference; take a look at the detective work in: Water Cooler Games – McDonald’s Interactive Sticks it to McDo… or do they?
Multimodal gaming holds the promise of expanding both casual and more dedicated gaming experiences – point that got Nintendo’s Wii lots of attention in E3. But this weekend is for Mölkky, the ultimate realistic game interface.
“Tuomi kukkii”, bird-cherry is in flower. Somehow the English expression does not carry the same feeling. “Tuomi” is the name of this sweet-smelling white-flowered-tree for me; and it is also one of the fragrants that carry the unmistaken message: summer is here. “Suomen suvi.”
Last night, an increasingly amazed and exited audience followed how a Finnish monster rock band “Lordi” won the Eurovision song contest. This is good news for Finnish fantasy art (in which heavy rock is actually a major element), the band (which can continue rocking with increased popularity) and to the song contest itself — it is high time for someone to break the tired format. And that Lordi had such a clear victory was just amazing, too: their final points were highest ever recorded in the contest. Being myself from the same town (Rovaniemi, in Lapland) like Mr. Lordi, I just toast happily: congratulations guys, and good luck!
There are many interesting options that things like cameraphones and mobile blogging have opened for us: the instant thought or sight, documented right at the spot. But an early summer’s day like this one (very welcome after the cold spring) would require much more to be mediated with any kind of fidelity: how can I capture the sounds of birds, the warm touch of wind, or smells of fresh leaves and earth itself? Will there ever be a true mobile blogging device that would reach into any of these?
Back in Finland: there is a veritable heat wave now going on, which is a perfect excuse to enjoy the first cone of summer!
This weekend there is a trip to Estonia: Mauri Kaipainen and the IMKE program kindly put out an invitation to come and hear about this new international, interactive media master’s programme. Summer seems to be already reality in Estonia; we are staying in Sausti Manor, and frogs are making conserts in the pond (herons are nesting also next to the manor). Beautiful, interesting and relaxing at the same time.
Ok, this is sample photo from 6630 from the dinner. It is clear that cameraphones are getting better, yet it is easy to find problems with the sharpness and colours.
Since yesterday, I have been trying out Nokia 6630, which has now replaced my worrisome Vodafone mobile data card. As far as I can tell, it turns out that my Thinkpad T43 uses a version of bluetooth stack that is not supported by Nokia PC Suite (a Broadcom one), so a USB cable is the only option for getting online; that seems to do it. But the phone itself seems to work fine. The camera resolution is 1,3 megapixels which is much better than the VGA of my old 6600, but way behind the 2 or 3 megapixels that the latest multimedia models are packing. But the OS is reacting fast, screen is clear and I like the touch of the keyboard. As the Nokia N series still has various baby illnesses, and E series delayed until summer, this model appears to be a nice compromise if mobile data is mostly what you are looking in a phone right now. The new HSDPA models are not far in the future also, and obviously we need a new communicator model with 3G/3,5G connection speeds. Until then, I will ride with this 6630. (Coming in from a bicycle trip, it just automatically transferred all shots via bluetooth to a date-format folder in my laptop, perfect! Now, if it only could use that bluetooth for a PC modem connection, too.)
frans goes blog 
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