More hours on the road than I care to think about. Pretty jetlagged. But it is hard not to like California: it is warm, tolerant, multi-cultural in the American way. And that chilli bowl really hit the spot. I’d just love to see more LA some day than just the airport.
Category: moblog
mobile blog notes
london queuing
Big airports are problematic places. That is, they are both troublesome, and it is also questionable whether they are places at all, or just some kind of limbo (remembering what Dante wrote about limbo in his Inferno). Bad organisation, humiliation and suffering. The bland everyday drama. Kind of reminds you of today’s mobile data services, my favourite. Just spent two weeks, literally, trying to get Elisa (our university’s mobile operator) to make my laptop’s mobile data to work before this travel. Boy, did they fail, in multiple ways and with sort of consistency in inability to deliver a working solution. Now, lets see if I can configure this old Nokia 6600 to access my emails, somehow. With all this waiting, at least I have some time.
international study of games cultures
I woke up in snowy Espoo today, feeling slightly gnomish. The Finnish Cultural Fund granted support to our new initiative, International Study of Games Cultures in their annual Gala yesterday. This work will start this summer, initially looking at similarities and differences between Finnish, Korean and American games cultures. Cool!
amputated by travel
I am one of those people (an increasing breed) whose work largely consists of maintaining processes that are based on messages, meetings and other collaboration via communication (or waiting/dysfunctionalities of that communication). In many days there is a train-trip to Helsinki (2 x 2 hours), or a flight travel to some foreign destination (anything up to a dozen hours in bus, taxi, airport and aeroplane – and then the same back again). It is an eternal frustration to get the work done with the whatever limited online time I have available. Tampere – Helsinki train trip for example should be optimum working time, particularly when you are equipped with a 3G/GPRS network card, like my laptop. But no: the connection is breaking down, the email programme is all the time jammed, and it is very hard to participate in any of those oh-so-urgent processes. (Why they are urgent, what is happening to all of our time these days…) I try to keep travels to old-fashioned reading of paper documents, but many issues are those oh-so-urgent ones, and if a full day is spent off-line, that will only mean that you need to take care of all those messages in the evening, on your “own time”. Even air travel carriers are now talking about allowing mobile communications; when shall a simple train travel stop meaning becoming an amputee, unable to hear, see or participate? (Make your refs: cyborg subjectivity, posthumanism, prosthetic and/or amputated condition, posthumanism…)
pervasive england
Well after midnight yesterday I got back from last week’s IPerG pervasive games workshop in Nottingham. If you take a look at my Flickr photos, you see lots of swan, geese and other wildfowl, that I only afterwards realised are the prime candidates for getting a lethal bird flu these days. Well, the flu seems to be the same old I had even before the trip, or maybe you could mix them together, coming up with new viral combinations, then letting them fight it out in your own body? Oh, just another rather tired game idea…
experience amplifier?
Out whole day today, shooting mostly landscape photos in crisp winter sun. Luckily the battery did not run out, temperature was again c. -20C. This image of frost flowers was slightly edited afterwards in Photoshop, and fine-tuning the light levels did make the shape stand out more clearly. On a more philosophical tone, I have been following the discussions of some people on how the desire to photograph, or otherwise document your life and experiences potentially alters the situation and thereby your entire life. On the other hand, you might start seeing everything you do just as a raw material for your productions, but on the other hand it is also possible that you pay more attention to the tiny details of life – your activity might be the amplifier to life experience.
dinner in helsinki
Jane McGonigal gave an interesting lecture on pervasive games and puppet mastering in Helsinki tonight. Afterwards, a dinner in “Marco Polo” (old Paasitorni). Fun! And food was nice, too.
time goes by, digi-tv
The most powerful technology in the history? Perhaps clock, according to some techno-historists. This Saturday, at 12 noon, Peeko Näränen has his thesis defense, subject: digitalisation of television in Finland (not so smooth process).
-20C
Brr. Cold wind from Siberia this week, -20C — -30C. In my childhood this was the usual weather, but things have changed. Is it only the greenhouse our life is located within, or are we changing?
graduation party
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!
frans goes blog 
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