Fantasy in Super Mario Galaxy and Terabithia

I usually enjoy fantasy in pretty much any form — I think that the real base and mode of human existence is fantasy, but more about that another time — and this weekend I have been also trying to get my fix in that area. In the ludic frontier, we finally started playing Super Mario Galaxy in co-op mode. This is the latest major release from the Nintendo’s major Mario franchise to their Wii console, and even as a fan of more adult or dark fantasy, I must say I have enjoyed this game. There is particular, surrealist pleasure in flying among stars, conversing with mushroom, and navigating through puzzle-style platform planets where the laws of physics and forms of space are used in endlessly imaginative, original ways. A real treat, great trip!

A Super Mario Galaxy planet (Peliplaneetta screenshot)

In this evening, we will also watch a modern fantasy movie, called Bridge to Terabithia. It is coming from Walden Media/Disney consortium, so I am not sure what to expect, but at least playing a fantasy game and seeing a fantasy movie, one after the other, will again highlight how the different mode of engagement affects the experience of fantasy. Links:

Bridge to Terabithia, movie poster

Vista sleep and power save states

Vista Home PremiumI had long wondered about the Vista power save schemes, and about sleep state — particularly that it did not exist; even when you tried to force the computer into sleep or hibernate, it would just wake up immediately, after a couple of seconds of flicker in screen. This weekend I finally got a half an hour and looked into this, and the problem was in BIOS settings. The default BIOS power save setting in most motherboards/BIOSes is S1 (POS, Power-On-Suspend), and that does not work with Vista. Vista expects the setting S3, which you need to set by pressing Del or F8 key during the power-up sequence, then use keyboard-only to navigate to the “Power” BIOS settings, and change S1 into S3; then press F10 or similar to save settings and exit/reboot. This was the way for me at least to get this damned Vista machine finally to get some sleep. For more, see e.g. these pages:

Stansted



Trying to catch some sleep in an airport hotel: engaged in a curious form of travel, that of airport meetings. I am pushing the use of Skype or videoconferencing instead, but I guess that kind of change of culture still requires some rise in the oil price before it becomes dominant. (Edit: for some reason this message had originally got truncated somewhere on the road between my phone, carrier networks, Flickr and my WordPress server…)

Oulu

IMG_0380.JPG

During a short Spring break (traditionally there is something called “Skiing Holidays” in Finland) we visited Oulu — a nice town (I have actually born there), but the weather was a bit cold and windy during the weekend. In the picture we are walking around in Sunday morning and trying to find a place where we could get in, to get some warmth, but everything was actually closed until 12 noon. Rauno’s party was though great, and very warm.

Freezing sunrise

16022008(018)

After couple of days of Northern wind and freezing temperatures, we noticed a really beautiful sunrise today while going to baby swimming in Nokia Eden Spa. It is damned how you never have your camera with you when you need it (these are pale shadows, really, taken with my E70 camera phone).

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

Internet censorship in Finland

There is an escalating row currently in Finnish blogosphere and media about Internet censorship: there is now a special law in Finland which allows police to create secret lists of materials that they deem ‘inappropriate’ with some criteria and other, and ISPs are required to block access to those addresses. The law was pushed through with arguments of blocking child pornography, but now it seems that also other kinds of pages, or entire domains, are being blocked, and police declines to give any information about the censorship lists, or publicly defend their decisions. You can read more in Finnish from blogs of Jyrki J.J. Kasvi, an MP, and Petteri Järvinen, an IT author, who comment on the blocking of access to activist Matti Nikki’s anti-censorship site. An issue of fundamental rights, and I hope there will be more serious discussion about the overall ethical problematics of censorship after this.

Operating the operating systems

!– @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>I have been using now a pretty eclectic mix of different OSes (what’s the plural of OS in any case?) for some while now, on a daily basis. My ThinkPad laptop deals with the business matters with its Windows XP Professional, in home I edit videos and photos mainly using a Windows Vista Home Premium edition gaming PC, the home media and web server is based on Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS server edition, the living room Mac Mini is OS X Tiger, and there is also Laura’s XP Home Edition desktop upstairs, oh yes, and the Vista thing in basement can also multi-boot into an Ubuntu 7.10 desktop edition (and then there are all those gaming devices with their native operating systems). And all of those different packets of code have their problems, all of them. Too many problems to even start blogging about them. But there are individual strengths, too. Continue reading “Operating the operating systems”

Read eBooks, save the planet

There is apparently something called ‘Read an eBook Week’ being celebrated during the first week of March (talking about festivities I did not know existed). A real eBook would require a real ePaper/eInk solution, and unfortunately those are not yet at our hands (even if Amazon Kindle and its kind are making fast progress). But there are actually some worthwhile points to support literature to go ‘e’; see:

http://epublishersweekly.blogspot.com/2008/02/30-benefits-of-ebooks.html

Future Play proceedings in ACM library

You might be interested in taking a look; the Future Play 2007 conference proceedings have been published online in the ACM digital library:
[click here]
However, this is yet another closed, pay-to-view repository, so the Pervasive Games in Ludic Society paper by Jaakko Stenros, Markus Montola and myself might be locked in there for some. Lets see if it is possible to upload an authors’ version somewhere for open access.