gamegrrl advance had this link to funny and touching video, lovingly designed to pay homage to the consoles of the past, fighting against the rising dominion of PSP-type ‘convergence device’. Oh dear… Someone can really love these old pieces of plastic. (Choose: New Game in the start.)
no sleep until vancouver
I feel slightly drunk. The consequence of chronic lack of sleep in this case, rather than merry life, it nevertheless has some uplifting potentials. Last days and nights have been marked by the proximity of DiGRA 2005 full paper deadline, which was finally passed last night. Despite all advance planning, there is always rush and hurry at the final hours. In this case there was also the coincidence with the reviews of ACE 2005 coming within the same hours, people puzzling over where to submit and where to withdraw. Seven people from our lab will fly over the Atlantic for several days, which is a sizable investment of course, but I trust it will be worth it. Not everything will be on everyone’s key interests, but I am looking forward to several sessions, already.
There has been something wrong with Bloglines today. I can see in my Notifier over hundred new posts, but I cannot access them. The service won’t accept my password, and while I tried ‘recover password’ function I get two messages, the first one saying that I had entered incorrect email address, and the second one claiming that the password has been emailed to my email address. Huh??
bye bye ftp
Ok, I finally got around to leave the world of FTP (mostly because of security concerns). Now, lets just hope that the new file transfer standard will work with this Blogger, too…
animal crossing and spring potatoes
This weekend has proved finally to me too the addictive powers of Animal Crossing by Nintendo. Discussing with cute (or irritating, depending on your view) little animals in a colourful little town that you learn to know and which learns to know you, decidedly carries much charm. In terms of addiction creating qualities, AC:
- is easily accessible, yet immediately rewarding
- provides a form of personalised content and characters which you form personal relationships with
- is endless in offering new upgrades or extensions into your house, clothing, fashion designs, insect & fossil collections and so on.
This last part got me thinking about the similarities of this game with so-called real life. You all have seen how people spend their free times acquiring, fixing and maintaining their houses, cars, clothes and other belongings, while their working days are providing money to get more of those things. AC is one of those games that nicely captures the endless and addictive character of our lives as consumers: running around in our little errands, trying to get the new parasol with the design of this summer’s fashion. There is something deeply rewarding and even instinctual in all this; maybe some kind of echo from our hunter-gatherer days?
Btw – Nikon has been promising a late April release of an upgrade for D70, as well as an entry level digital SLR (D50?) So, I might wait until May to see the situation before getting my new system.
Tried to shoot some extra-close details shots of earth, sand etc. today, but Ixus and its optics just cannot handle so close macro work. Particularly the auto-focus did not work at that range. Well, here are some Easter-time pictures instead: the first spring potatoes and the first spring beers in a (freezing!) terrace by our merry hyperlab group.
on wheels again
There was an accident in 1994, after which I did not drive bicycle for a decade (bike vs bus kind). Last summer I finally invested into a new bike: Nakamura Xrider. Going round Tohloppi lake, I saw a wedge in the sky. Cranes? Too far to see, really.
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games for a change, too?
There seems little genuinely exciting at the games front, currently. Recently I have been testing out mainly Xbox games (with an idea that the fixed system might offer starting points for game studies use, too), but not really so much has come across my path that would seem to have lasting value. There were in an Official Xbox Magazine cover disc (#40) these samples: Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict (Xbox Live multiplayer mayhem), Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (this actually appeared rather interesting spy-action, but I got stuck to the seashore), Area 51 (were they serious? no…), TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (actually I did find this rather fun, even if the in-out-phasing alien FPS does not deliver so much originality after a while), Constantine (I love demonic gothic, cannot help it, but the screen was too dark to play-test this during daylight hours), SNK Vs Capcom: SVC Chaos (oh boy does this arcade translation seem old – nostalgia value for some, no doubt), Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams (the colourful graphics really made you want to explore the world, but the little gaming skills I have are from mouse & keyboard era, kids’ games are just too damned hard) and Star Wars: Republic Commando (original Halo somehow succeeded in making Sci-Fi action more interesting). After some hours with these, I was left with lots of pretty images, but feeling that I have seen these games, albeit in slightly different guises, many times before.
Actually, some of the Nintendo DS games might be offering fresh touches: I am looking forward to at least the DS version of Animal Crossing and “NintenDogs”, whatever will finally come out of it.
Took a nice walk in the sun during Sunday afternoon; then went for dip into avanto (hole in the ice) at the Kauppi winterswimmers’ sauna. Took also some pictures, but the limitations of Ixus are more clear than ever, as compared to the cameras and lenses I have been considering lately. Doh.
camera comparison aches
In Saturday I took a quick check-out of the Canon EOS 350D in a local warehouse in order to get a better idea of how it actually feels and behaves. And to check that my old EF lenses work with it. Oh damn. The first I tested was my old Tokina AF tele-zoom, and then it happened: the lens jammed. It just did not get off from the 350D body! There were several of the shop personnel trying their best, but it started to look like they would break it, so I agreed to leave my lens there. Lets see; they promised to contact a Canon service, and I have their phone number.
The incident really got me rethinking about the whole deal; if my old lenses do not work, I might as well got something different than the EOS. So this weekend I have spend way too much time looking at several sites and hunting for more information particularly on Nikon D70, which couple of people I know own and are happy with. For more, read Phil Askey’s review: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond70/
The comparisons are really interesting, and when put to side-to-side, with real money involved, this is not an easy decision:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp?method=sidebyside&cameras=canon_eos350d%2Cnikon_d70&show=all
http://www.digitalreview.ca/cams/NikonD70versusRebelXT.shtml
There are many differences, but both are clearly good cameras, so it really comes down to the possible future uses. Whether to emphasise the light weight (Canon), or more extensive range of functions (Nikon)? The decision of which lens(es) to take adds even more elements into the equation. Created an Excel sheet already to keep track of the options, oh dear…
touch of spring
iTunes or Radio Paradise?
I’ve got my iPod (the 20-meg, click wheel model), but I often forget it home these days, and not really even miss it. What’s the problemo? Well, first of all, this is clearly a life-style issue. If your days are filled with meetings and seminars from morning to evening, there is not so much opportunity to don those earplugs (even if there is the temptation, sometimes…) Also, if you are almost all the time surrounded by computers with broadband access, there are so many other and more comfortable ways of listening to music than a portable with headphones. Also, I admit, I do not seem to have the patience to build playlists, so my iPod is in permanent shuffle mode, which is interesting to start with, but I have head all records in my collection several times over the years. Online radio stations, on the other hand, have people to search and programme their shows with classics but also with new finds from music frontiers that I cannot keep up with. On yet other hand, my favourite net radio, Radio Paradise, plays that kind of golden-oldies-tilted eclectic mix, that is probably just reveals how middle-aged I have become. 🙂 -From yet another point of view, skimming through SHOUTcast, I find it rather difficult to find really good net radios. Nevertheless, if I were forced to decide, I would probably choose net radios over iTunes. But most flexibility you’ll undoubtly get with the combination: your own collection as the home base, net radios for variety.
research in wiki
Thinking about the strengths of new media forms is an interesting undertaking. Are there new possibilities opened up by new applications and services? Or are traditional means actually still better? Is new media actually just old wine in new flasks?
After some days of experimenting with my OpenWiki, I think that wikis are Internet like it was planned in some of the early, utopian visions (for the better or worse). Collaborative projects are clearly the forte of this tool, as projects like Wikipedia prove. Thinking about it, my own wiki might best be used to gather together some research resources I have find useful, particularly as our DiGRA.org facilities like Digital Library do not work yet like they should. (There is work undergoing there, too.) A wiki is perfect for this purpose, as anyone can add or correct entries in it freely.
frans goes blog 
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