This will be the last Christmas for the Hypermedia Laboratory in the University of Tampere: our new media research unit is going to fuse together with another department at the end of this year. The new name will be Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media. We will be bigger, stronger, and able to open MA as well as PhD courses in new media and game studies. Otherwise, the location and most of the practical things will remain the same for a while — welcome to visit us in the old premises in Pinni B building of the Tampere Uni campus area. Merry Christmas, everyone!
Category: personal diary
mostly personal, notes on the road
Lenovo T500 could not complete the installation
Finally, late in the evening, I was able to press the power button of my brand new ThinkPad T500 for the first time. First I was greeted by the Vista error menu: Windows was not closed properly … do you want to safe start / start normally etc. That did not look too good. I pressed “Start Windows normally”. Disk clicking. Then an ominous error bling. Then the dialog window (pictured). Could not complete the installation? I thought this was supposed to have a preinstalled OS, straight from the Lenovo factory? I attempted restart. I tried pressing the blue ThinkVantage button. I tried pressing F8. F11. Always the same sequence: I can get either to the bios setup, or start-up the broken Vista, and be faced with the “Install Windows” message. Not even the Rescue and Recovery workspace, so that I could restore the factory default settings of the OS. Damn. Looks like this is not my lucky Friday.
Testing new workhorse: ThinkPad T500
This is not the most ultra-light, or most powerful option, but hopefully T500 will be the reliable compromise.
Streaming media into PS3
I have made various attempts to get media streaming in our house from a server in cellar to clients set up in various other rooms. So far the only system that has really worked well has been the Squeezebox (Logitech, previously Slimdevices). They have dedicated server software that runs very well in a Linux server and integrates perfectly with the well designed player, both over Wi-Fi as well as Ethernet. Otherwise, no luck. Now, after investing to a Sony PlayStation 3, I got dedicated enough to try and solve the media streaming issues to really use this high-powered gaming console as a network-enabled home media center. It turned out that it was finally impossible to get PS3 to connect to anything without investing to more hardware: our home network has been build gradually, connecting piece to piece, and universal plug-and-play and other necessary media discovery protocols did not work if PS3 was connected wirelessly into a separate Wi-Fi router, and that was connected to another ADSL-modem-router (plus external switch) combo that I had piled up in our network cabinet. After getting rid of the old ADSL-modem and Wi-Fi box, and instead getting a combined Wi-Fi-modem-router device (Telewell TW-EA514, pictured), the problems appear to be solved. Now PS3 can at least see the Vista machine downstairs having a Windows Media Player 11, and connect to media shared through it. Several steps were, nevertheless, yet required before anything else beside music files could be seen through the media player. I am still unsure whether the settings in Control Panel/Network and Sharing Center/Media Sharing, or the paths added into the Media Player Library, or paths in the Windows Media Center finally did it, but now I seem to be able to access all my media also through the PS3. (Oops, while writing this, Vista crashed, lets see whether anything at all works after this…) Only thing I can say is that the era of effortless, transparent home networking and media device interoperability is not yet here.
Winter Shoes
The greenhouse effect takes its toll, and winters are no longer what they used to be (in Finland: white). Walking the rainy streets, I have been looking for shoes that could handle the constant “interim” climate that we are now living in. Got mysef a pair of Merrel Outland Mid Waterproof models yesterday — they feel great and the quality of design is convincing, but lets see how they handle out there. More:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Merrell+Outland+Mid+Waterproof&btnG=Search
Personal profile (in Finnish)
Just noticed that the University of Tampere information services has published a personal profile of me and my work on game studies, nice (only in Finnish, though): http://www.uta.fi/ajankohtaista/tutkijaprofiilit/2008/1011.html.
Luka & Linux
A clip where Luka demonstrates how difficult it is for a novice to grasp the fine details of a Linux OS. “Password?! What password? Cookie, cookie!”
Autumn vacation
I have been spending this week with my family, after a few months of busy working and traveling schedule. It has been mostly raining (slowing down some of the gardening work), but this has allowed me to spend more time with my son (pictured). Luka is growing very fast, running around and learning new words and tricks every day. Glad we got these few days together to learn to know each other a bit better (last autumn, when he just had born, I was all the time traveling around the world, and promised to change the situation this year).
Visiting Admiral
This and the next two weeks are probably the busiest ones in entire Autumn term (at least that is what I keep telling myself — we’ll see). There are many wonderful things in this fall, too, including spectacular crop yield of mushrooms. Also, Laura’s work on flowering plants is starting to yield results, as this visiting Admiral also proves. Other regulars have included peacock butterflies (neitoperhonen) and Camberwell Beauty/the mourning cloak (suruvaippa).
More disk
There has been some pretty complicated issues with this server, once again. My current hypothesis is that the combination of badly configured backup processes and the buggy CUPS server together filled up the root disk, leading to a situation where MySQL database was not able to start any more. And that led e.g. me being unable to log into Ubuntu regularly via Gnome desktop. Also, it appears that either caused by this mess, or regardless of it, my main data disk (external USB Lacie) had got its “superblock” corrupted — and I did not find a way to fix it so far.
Well, luckily it was possible to log in via console, and (with some help) I have now deleted enough stuff from the root so that this system runs again. I also took the opportunity and finally did some memory upgrades: firstly, the default memory chip (512 MB in this Proliant ML110 G3) was replaced by two 1 MB chips (regular Kingston DDR2 value chips). Secondly, I got a bigger disk (not USB this time) and plugged it into the second SATA slot inside the Proliant. Seems to run ok: it is Samsung Spinpoint F1 750 GB model (more info here; a promo pic below). Now, if I only can find a way to access that corrupted Lacie USB disk somehow — it was formatted in FAT so using Windows software is an option here, too. And understanding what crashed the disk in the first place would peace my mind as well.
frans goes blog 
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