Just a quick note: I will be speaking in Helsinki, in 16th August (Saturday) in Art Goes Kapakka, science talks session, about our relationship to technology and discussing social media. For more, go to http://www.artgoeskapakka.fi/ and click “Tiede on Taidetta – Science Is Art”.
Category: media
media, culture and society
Mass Effect
Summer and games: not really football or Olympic field sports to my taste, but every now and then I cannot resist a proper RPG adventure. This summer it is Mass Effect from Bioware. I am not so much a fan of first person shooters, but occasional action sequences are ok when they are integrated as parts of a larger, fascinating universe as in Mass Effect. The game is very cinematic, and that sometimes means gameplay locked on rails, but when the outcome works fine as a science fiction movie, I do not complain. Problem is really that as we need to do other things during daytime, it is only nights that are available for gaming… Also fine voice acting, by the way (from Mark Meer/Jennifer Hale for the protagonist, and likes of Martina Sitris, Lance Henriksen and Seth Green in other roles).
Maximum T-8000 CX-CI
A new digital set-top box: Maximum T-8000 CX-CI (the old Topfield started to be a bit unreliable and out-of-date). This new one has more powerful processor (=faster in certain areas), more HDD, HDMI output and an ethernet connector to the LAN. Minuses so far: no automatic search programming from EPG (this was a TAP add-on in Topfield, hopefully something similar will be developed for Maximum, too) — and an irritating bug: if recording starts when the box is in stand-by, the recording will work ok, but the box will remain unresponsive until you exit the recording. Thus, it is best to keep it turned on all the time and not use stand-by (great, no power save benefits). Otherwise a decent box. More: http://www.5wwwww5.com/maximum/index.php?mforum=maximum
(Summer starts in flu; sneezing and updating gamestudiesbook.net.)
Beauties of Translation, pt.2: Lempiä lainausmerkit hänen
As I wrote earlier in my post about Dr Okell’s Wondrous Beer Translation, I am great fan of machine translations — they sort of underline our close and affectionate relationship with information technology, and the current (rather cute) state of artificial infan… I mean intelligence. This time I dedicate my love to a sidebar widget provided by Google, titled “Lempiä lainausmerkit hänen”. I suppose the original title has something to do with memorable quotes about love, but the machine translates ‘quotes’ with the Finnish word for ‘quotation marks’, and also the actual content of these “quotation marks” follows the same, delightful logic:
This is so cute — just think about it: the machine even has translated ‘Honoré’ as ‘kunnioittaa’ (meaning ‘respects’). *smileysmiley* Link to widget’s page:
http://www.google.fi/ig/directory?url=charles447.googlepages.com/love.xml
Edit: the original de Balzac quote is probably this: “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.”
Vista Movie Maker Black Screen Bug
This appears to be a somewhat common problem among the users of Vista/Windows Movie Maker, and I did not find any help, so here is our solution.
- Issue: the movie previews work fine when you watch it within the Windows Movie Maker. However, when you publish it, the video is just black screen, but you can still hear the audio. Changing publishing settings does not help, and the video files themselves are ok, no codec problems etc. there.
- Solution: the affected clips in our case had “mute” setting applied to them (in order to have a separate soundtrack; click under Timeline to expand > Video > Audio [rightclick] Mute). When mute was removed, also video was published fine. This must be a bug, and a weird one. Well, setting the sound level for each clip to zero worked fine for us as a workaround, but MS should fix the software, of course.
Our system uses Vista Home Premium, the Movie Maker was version 6.0.6000.16386. Video clips (mpg) were produced by Sony DCR-SR52 camera.
Nokia N95 8 GB and the era of ultraportables
Along with some new research projects where we look into the service distribution models of games, my new primary work phone has changed into Nokia N95 8GB model. So far I have been mostly satisfied; and in contrast to E70, this time it is possible to connect my Sony DR-BT50 headphones to the mobile phone (N95 supports A2DP over Bluetooth). N95 is also a decent media player and it is possible to listen to mp3 music and watch videos. Internet browser has improved and social media sites like YouTube and Flickr are taken in with some special consideration – image upload from the camera application to Flickr is now just one click away.
Games are still perhaps the biggest question mark of the upgraded N-Gage brand. I am not particularly enthusiastic about rally or sports games, and those feature visible in the opening portfolio. More games should be arriving soon, including pet simulation (Dogz), more pets simulation (Sims 2 Pets), golf, yet another Worms and Snakes, plus action: Brothers in Arms, ONE. The service in itself looks interesting, with player profiles, buddy lists and other social service basics in place.
All in all, it is surprising how powerful contemporary mobile phones already are. Yet, the usability of Nokia OS is still seriously behind e.g. that of Apple iPhone. Where you just want to have one thing to happen, N95 will still ask you verifications for this and that, get stuck in dialogues or wait for input from softkeys, where iPhone would automatically just have started the default action. But I have not yet used iPhone for anything beyond most casual first impression, so a more thorough comparison needs to wait for later. (Timetable for 3G iPhone launch, anyone?)
I must admit I am so text oriented user, that the biggest drawback of N95 for me is that it does not have a QWERTY keyboard. The size is compact for that reason, of course, but this means that I still need to carry two devices with me always.
The happy note is that ultraportable laptops like Asus Eee PC, HP’s 2133 Mini-Note PC and other UMPC and upscale/next gen PDAs are blooming and a gadget freak will have happy times ahead. (Asus Eee PC 900 review here: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/asus-eee-pc-900-video-review.html)
Using Gravatars in WP2.5
Edit: this site should now support gravatar images, and I recommend going to http://gravatar.com/ and registering a character/image to your email address. This helps identifying people who comment and participate in blogosphere discussions.
I have updated the software running this blog into WordPress 2.5 which brings along some nice, behind the scenes enhancements. One thing that could also show here in the user side is Gravatar support: it adds ‘global avatar’ images next to your comments automatically. But there is still something wrong with this, or I just could not get it to work. I tried editing comments.php with these sets of instructions, but I would only get empty ‘default gravatar’ images:
Home music, Heima
Music and dance are those areas of expressive phenomena that have power to address emotions more directly than the conceptual thought, text, or speech.
Images have also wide scope of communicational potential that often escapes any conceptual definition.
Music videos are an area where many of these strengths supposedly come together. Sadly, they seldom reach their true potential.
This weekend I have been watching and listening to Heima, a film by Sigur Rós. A group of Islandic musicians, this documentary relates to the significance Iceland as spiritual, historical and geographical home has to its people. Powerful visual as well as musical experience, the movie manages to touch, move and impress. It stirs emotions and inspires thought.
This is definitely a film that any lover of photography will appreciate. The care it pays to shadow and light, textures on sand, stone, old wall and on human face is impeccable. Some parts actually look like slideshows of images, taken of still life.
The two-disk DVD is of high technical quality, but it is also possible to download a trailer clip that shows some of this material in full HD — amazing! I have been trying to see if this is available in Blue-ray, but so far, no success. You can access the HD trailer here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/heima.html
(Thanks go to John, who mentioned how they had enjoyed watching this film.)
Pixar exhibition
Today I had a meeting day in Helsinki, and after some episodes ended with an extra hour in my hands. Luckily the Tennispalatsi Art Museum had an open doors day, and they were having a visiting exhibition from Pixar, the makers of digital animated films. I have always wondered and admired the amount of manual labour animations require, and digital cinema is no exception. Available in Finland through an arrangement with the Barbigan centre, London, the Pixar exhibition includes hundreds of drawings, paintings and model sculptures, along with some special exhibits. The Pixar Zoetrope and the Living Landscape made the strongest impression to me. In the former you can follow the wonderful process of still life waking up, as the rotating installation is lighted with the flicker of strobos. In the latter, the long wall in a huge darkened room becomes a window through which we are provided with a trip through digital, animated paintings. An impressive experience!
Speaking about horror in tv
Today Inari Uusimäki called me and I agreed to participate in next ‘K-rappu’, a culturally oriented television show in YLE1 channel. I will be talking about horror, possibly also in terms of games, but mostly from a general cultural semiotic perspective, so stay tuned: the show will go live at 19:20 in Tuesday, 19th of February. Link: http://ohjelmat.yle.fi/krappu/k_rappu
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