Wizardry for Apple II (1981) is perhaps the most influential of the early sandbox-style computer RPG games. There was no plot to speak of, but the gameplay mechanics were revolutionary compared to earlier computer adventure games. I got a serious nostalgia overload while watching a youtube clip of the gameplay.
The almost complete lack of a plot was an integral part of the charm of this game. There were no walk-throughs available at the time and every new encounter with a new monster sent my blood rushing through the veins. Like a drug addict, I find myself looking for that same buzz on all the new games I try, but somehow it is precisely all the bells and whistles that make them a bit too predictable for me. Somehow a lot of the modern games seem like a scripted rides through the ghost train. A tutorial level makes me feel like I’m at a driving school, not in some faraway imaginary world.
Shadow of the Colossus and We Love Katamari are great examples of the kind of games that provide a background setting and sandbox-style environment to explore, but still leave a lot of room for the imagination of the player. I wish there were more games like that available. For me, a true sense of curiosity and discovery is a really essential element of an immersive gameplay experience. I’d be happy to hear any recommendations of modern PC game titles to try out and satisfy the explorer in me.
OK, let me begin this post with a disclaimer: I am an Apple fanboy, there’s no denying it. I’ve been using their products practically for all of my life and, professionally speaking, I’m not sure what I would be doing without them.
After the iPad announcement there has been a lot of posts in the blogosphere about the apparent shortcomings of Apple’s new tablet computer: no multi-tasking, no voice calls, no built-in camera, thick bezels, no flash, no 16:9 form factor, no OLED display. Personally, I was completely thrilled about the feature set of the device. Frankly, I am a bit surprised that so many people are concentrating on minor details that are completely irrevelevant, in my opinion. This is the first generation of a completely new class of device and adding a voice call capability or a camera would be completely trivial from a technical point of view. If you think about it for even a second, there is completely rational explanation to all of the shortcomings. They didn’t make these engineering choices because they didn’t know how to add the missing features, but because they chose not to.
I am excited about iPad precisily for the same reason that some others are disappointed in it. A lot of the excess crap has been shaved off and a brand new platform for truly elegant computing solutions has been created. There are no bootloaders, no trashcans, no display drivers, no extra ports. Some of the other companies that have tried to make this happen like to slap on all kind of extra goodies on products without really thinking that much about the entire pipe-line of events and files in the life of people leading a digital lifestyle.
I, for one, don’t listen to FM radio broadcasts anymore, I don’t like looking at snapshots taken by a crappy $10 cell phone camera module, I do not want to download themes to customize desktop. I think Apple did a superb job of simplifying both the user experience and the channels for both content and software developers to deliver products on a platform that is lightweight, stable and fast. Windows Mobile, Mameo and Symbian are literally years behind with this stuff.
I don’t really need an iPad, but I’m getting one anyway. I think that choosing a computing platform or game console is a lot like buying a hand bag or a bottle of wine or a sports car. You are not only buying a physical product, but an entire philosophy and lifestyle with it. This is something that the pixel counters often miss when they get a knee jerk reaction because of a missing feature. More than anything else, iPad is about simplicity and minimalism.
In the words of Bruce Lee: It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
I stumbled upon this highly iconic and symbolic image while I was checking the daily news stream. Those target crosses and the numeric temperature values just take a whole new meaning in this context. A cross is a universal symbol for disposal or erasure. And how about those numbers.. if they are too high, you are immediately and automatically moved to a lower caste as a human being. You become a potential risk to the society and the environment.
If pandemic threats become more serious and outbreaks threaten bigger populations, it doesn’t take much imagination to see this kind of routine monitoring happening on the streets as well. The surveillance cameras are already there and it doesn’t take much to retro-fit them with additional sensors. And while you are at it, why not add breathing gas analyzers to elevators or rotating doorways, heart rate monitors on door handles and automatic chemical analysis at bar restrooms for example.
One of the most universal aspects of various subcultures in the Western civilization is appreciation and pursuit of everything that is “cool”. There are dozens of different kinds of cool: Steve McQueen cool, Miles Davis cool, Snoop Dogg cool, James Bond cool, Bjork Cool, Steve Jobs Cool, Kaurismäki Cool etc. The difficulty to precisely define what makes something cool is in fact one of the most certain signatures of all cool things.
A lot of people devote countless hours in trying to improve their personal aura of coolness. There are two factors that usually work in all scenarios and many people concentrate on them. First of all you need to have some sort of secret and hard to obtain knowledge that can be shared with your peers as valuable drops of trivia to be used in their own quest for coolness. The second important thing is to appear to maintain your composure and remain under control in all situations. Freaking out, messing around, raising your voice or waving your limbs uncontrollably will likely make you “lose your cool” in the eyes of your peers.
The pursuit of coolness may hinder your learning process in other elements of life. Sometimes people who have plenty of cool do not have much else. The willingness to make a fool out of yourself and let yourself make mistakes will help you obtain other individual and valuable characteristics. Embrace erros and failures as an integral part of success.
Even if you don’t initially enjoy a new style of music, a new art form or the way that some people interact or lead their life, do not condemn them and put them in a mental wastebasket just for not being cool. By doing that you will gradually lose your understanding of the big picture and drown in your own increasingly shallow pool of approvable ways of doing things. It is an ever present danger for all connoisseurs of subcultures.
Synesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. A popular example is seeing colors while listening to music. Anyone can experience it in it’s adventitious form while using psychedelic drugs. There is also another form of synesthesia that is genetically based and constantly “on” with some people. The estimated prevalence of this in the population have varied between 1:20 to 1:20000. As a matter of fact, some might argue that “seeing stars” is a rather common experience.
There was a phase of scientific research between 1880’s and 1930’s, but due to difficulties in assessing and measuring subjective and internal experiences, the studies gradually waned. In the recent years, with the advent of more sophisticated neuroimaging methods such as fMRI, scientists have begun to study synesthesia again and synesthetes have formed organizations and community sites on the Internet.
It is a fascinating phenonomen and if indeed every 1 in 20 persons have mild synesthetic experiences there are a lot of implications in education, for example. The strength of the phenomen varies greatly and there is also variance between the prevelance of different forms as illustrated in the table at Richard E. Cytowic’s Encyclopedia of Neuroscience.
There are a number of other genetically inherited abilities (color blindness, perfect pitch, etc) that can produce rather unusual combinations if the person also happens to be genetically inclined to synesthesia.
While reading about it, it occurred to me that it is possible that some of the paranormal abilities that people are describing are in fact nothing more than a rare form of synesthesia perhaps combined with another extremely rare and unresearched genetically inherited sensitivity. People who claim to see “auras” of other people may be associating another ultra low level sensory experience with colors and therefore have a strong sense of color in the presence of another person. The physical or chemical activity that triggers the color experience could indeed be something as simple as the odor cues that the other person is emitting. The smell receptors in the aura-sensing persons nose could be transmitting the signals to an area in the brain where the cross-signalings takes place although they are not consciously experiencing any kind of peculiar aroma. As an analogy, it is well known that dogs have the ability to detect various forms of cancer in humans just by sniffing.
To take this theory a bit further and just for the sake of discussion: What if there is a gene that increases the magnetic sensitivity in humans on a cellular level, but it normally causes no sensory experiences whatsoever and therefore is quite difficult to study? Now, what if that gene is combined with an equally rare, say, radiation → visual or radiation → spatial synesthete gene? Again, it is easy to draw a parallels between species with primitive limbic systems that can predict earthquakes and use magnetic fields as a navigation aid. It has been found out that there is a tiny magnetite crystal in the ethmoid bone of humans. The ethmoid bone is located between the eyes, behind the nose. This magnetite is speculated to be vestigial, i.e. lost most of it’s original function during species evolution.
I would like to explore this idea in the form of an art piece or perhaps a short film. I welcome comments by anyone interested in this subject.
My tropical hideout for this Christmas only has electricity from 6pm to 9pm, so I decided to get a Solio to charge my cell phone and digital camera. So far I’ve been very satisfied with this little gadget. You can charge it from a small wall charger or aim it to the sun for 10 hours or more to charge it’s 950 mA internal li-ion battery.
I also bought an ipod cable for it, even though I don’t have an iPod yet. The digital camera battery can be charged via an optional universal 12 V cigarette lighter adapter.
Q4 How long does it take to charge Solio?
In optimum conditions it will take at least ten hours of direct sunlight (longer in cloudy or weak sunlight conditions) to fully charge Solio, but this will give you enough power to charge an average cell phone more than once or give your iPod up to an additional 9 hours of playtime. Apporoximately 4 -6 hours of direct sunlight to your Solio will let you charge an average mobile phone about once depending on temperature conditions and intensity of sunlight, and the type of phone you have. Charging the solio from the mains power supply will takes 4.5 hours using the dedicated Solio travel adaptor (included).
This fine building is incidentally also the headquarters of Nodium. I’ve been a board member for a while now and volunteered to make a web site for the house. There is a really nice section on the history of the building written by Kirsti Toppari… all in finnish though. It is based on the 100th anniversary book which was published last year.
Being able to digitally capture moving images with an apparent quality of 35 mm film has been the proverbial Holy Grail of many people for a long, long time. Independent movie makers with a micro budget, art students, video artists, video production companies and a whole bunch of other organizations and individuals would love to have that elusive “film look” in their productions.
There are quite a few big time Hollywood productions being made with digital image acquisition right now, but the new thing is that some of these technologies are beginning to trickle down to a price level that small companies and even individuals can afford. Here’s a quick round-up of three solutions at a price point of less than 10000 dollars including a lense or two (say, a Zeiss
Planar T* 1,4/50 for example).
Nikon D90 and Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Nikon and Canon have both introduced DSLR cameras that can capture HD video. Nikon’s D90 and Canon EOS 5D Mark II can both capture decent HD video. Nikon is using motion JPEG compression and Canon is using the more efficient H.264. Nikon is capturing 720P at 24 fps and Canon is using 1080P at 30 fps. Unfortunately both of these cameras have only an exposure lock, but ISO and shutter speed are automatically controlled by the camera. This is not a very desirable behaviour for more ambitious film projects. Nevertheless they are a huge step up from video capture capabilities of previous DSLR models. A lot of people will most likely be using these cameras, especially the 5D mark II for a new style of independent film production called “web cinematography”. It’s basically a video/film production where the end product will be available only on the web… perhaps as a embedded video in a browser window, a downloadable quicktime file or even an entire film distributed over Bit Torrent. Have a look at this video by the cinema accessory manufacturer Zacuto to get a feel on how to pimp up a DSLR for professional productions.
The other big news this year was the announcement of Scarlet… a more affordable version of the Red camera, which has already been used in several Hollywood productions as the main camera. A price point of 3000 US dollars for a camera that can capture 3K resolution images would have been a laughable proposition just a few years ago. Some of the high-end digital cinema cameras such as the Panavision Genesis are not even available for purchase, but are for rental only. Scarlet has been projected to ship in 2009, but with a small and unique company such as Red, one never knows.
One of the many desirable qualities of the “film look” is the shallow depth of field. It is more easily created with a fully open aperture, but the effect is more noticeable with a larger sensor size. The most economical Scarlet will only have a 2/3 inch sensor which is the same size that is most commonly used in broadcast video cameras. To get as shallow depth of field on a 2/3 inch sensor as on a 35 mm sensor one would have to open up the aperture about 2 and a half stops additional stops. That is, on a 2/3 inch sensor you have to shoot at T1.9 to have the same depth of field as T4.0 on a 35 mm sensor.
2/3 inch is often seen as a completely inferior format to a “full frame” 35 mm sensor. If you have any doubts that a smaller sensor can’t be used for big time productions, have a look at the trailer of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The entire film was shot with a Thomson Viper, which has a 2/3 inch sensor. A very interesting interview with Claudio Miranda about the workflow can be found at the Studio Daily web site.
Besides shallow depth of field, “Film look” does have numerous other components to it. Sound is actually very important as well. One of the other key components is the latitude of the image, or the depth of the dynamic range in an individual frame. Scarlet has an obvious edge in this respect, because it records what is essentially an equivalent of RAW images in still cameras. It is a compressed image, but it does have high bit depth and therefore malleability that one needs in order to color correct or to put it in film terms “grade” it in the post.
Sony PWM EX-1 and Letus adapters
As far as HD image capture is concerned, what’s happening on the prosumer / low-end professional video front? The new big dog on that field is the Sony EX-1 / EX-3 duo which is Sony’s counter strike to Panasonic’s P2 format. Sony is using a new SxS card as a solid state storage solution for their new camera which can shoot at 60 fps for slow motion effects. The DSLR cameras mentioned above cannot do any slow motion effects, by the way. But the DSLR cameras do have that beautiful and saturated film look that everyone is after. How do you recreate that on EX1? The answer is a depth of field adapter that projects the image of a 35 mm lense on a ground class for the video camera to capture. You can get absolutely beautiful results with these, but they are bulky, very sensitive to calibration, inherently lose a lot of light in the optical path and they are quite pricey. However, at the moment, many people think that they are the best that current techonology has to offer for a relatively inexpensive way to capture film like footage on a digital camera. The XDCAM file format, while not as flexible as REDcode format, is still a step up from the DSLR video file formats.. as far as the flexibility for color correction is concerned.
For an assortment of sample videos with a depth of field adapter, have a look at these videos at Vimeo.
I believe that in the very near future there will be a revolution in the sheer amount of indie film production made with these new, affordable tools. I am eagerly waiting for more news about Scarlet. I can hardly wait to jump on this wagon and finally be able to produce relatively film like results without breaking the bank and virtually switching careers.
I produced a micro website for the finnish version of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening. In addition to information about the musical itself, the site contains a grungy typographic motion graphics Flash intro produced in Final Cut Pro and a web form to invite your friends to watch yourself on the unique stage seats on a specific date. The stage seats are likely to be sold out rather quickly. I advise to hurry if you are a student and you are interested in this sort of thing.
Spring Awakening is a Tony Award-winning rock musical with music by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Steven Sater. The musical is based on the controversial 1891 German play of the same title by Frank Wedekind. Set in late-nineteenth century Germany, it concerns teenagers who are discovering the inner and outer tumult of sexuality. The original play was banned in Germany due to its portrayal of masturbation, abortion, rape and suicide. In the musical, alt-rock is employed as part of the folk-infused rock score. During the musical, characters sometimes break the fourth wall to express their motivations and desires directly to the audience.
Edit: I ended up repurposing the flash intro as a full HD pre-movie commercial for theatrical release. It was heavily modified and sweetened with a 5.1. surround sound track.
The Magsafe connector on the Macbook Pros works really well, but the connector on the power supply cable doesn’t have adequate support and will eventually fail if used roughly. I decided to add an additional support structure to the connector using shrink tubing and a champagne bottle cork. While at it, I documented the procedure and made an illustrated guide on how to do it.
Materials and tools used: 12.7 mm shrink tube, a champagne cork, a sharp knife, a kitchen temperature meter, a gas stove.
The Year of the Rat, 2008, in the Hsia calendar, is symbolized by two elements – with earth sitting on top of water. According to the cycle of birth and destruction, which governs the inter-relationship between the elements, earth is the conqueror of water. Therefore, earth sitting on water is a symbol of control.
On the 16th of November in 1974 an crude 1679 pixel image was broadcast to space from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It included simple, low resolution images of human beings, solar system and the formula of DNA.
After 34 years another message is being broadcast towards an earth like planet called Gliese 581C. The transmission is being sponsored by Bebo, a social networking site. The content of the message is a collection of the most popular images from their users based on a vote.
Please observe how the increased resolution of imaging technologies and our magnificent advances in the understanding of the universe and life itself are present in the content of this new message.
Practically all apartments being sold in Helsinki center are actually shares of housing companies:
Housing companies are a typical housing system in Finland. The shares in a housing company confer on their owner the right of possession of a specific apartment. The shares are treated as personal property and can be sold and used as collateral for a loan. The company is responsible for the management and upkeep of the building and joint facilities. The housing company system makes it possible to have non-subsidised owner-occupied apartments and free-market rental housing, as well as State-subsidised owner- occupied or rental apartments all in the same building.
Sales of housing company shares and single family houses are most active among the seasoned housing stock. New production brought to the market by the building companies is only part of total yearly sales of apartments in housing companies. The number of dwellings changing ownership has varied greatly according to the economic trends, interest levels and the development of household incomes. Naturally, the prices of owner-occupied dwellings have followed supply and demand on the housing market.
The housing company often sub-contracts the actual management of the house to a management company that acts as a middle man between the shareholders and the various physical service providers such as cleaning companies, waste management companies and other maintenance services.
Kiirava is one of the high profile real estate management companies in Helsinki. Nodium was commissioned to do a complete make-over for their web site. To emphasize their broad and prestigious client base, a photograph of a random client is shown each time the front page is loaded.
In 1982 Steven Spielberg bought the Rosebud sled used the film Citizen Kane
Substance:
That which underlies all outward manifestations; substratum; the permanent subject or cause of phenomena, whether material or spiritual; that in which properties inhere; that which is real, in distinction from that which is apparent; the abiding part of any existence, in distinction from any accident; that which constitutes anything what it is; real or existing essence.
Cathexis is a Freudian term referring to the process of investment of emotional energy to an idea, object or a person. Although I’m not a big fan of Freud (and who is?), I do think that he is onto something with this particular concept. People do, more or less consciously, invest serious amounts of time in contemplating about their favorite thoughts. Whether they are about ideas, physical objects or persons is really irrelevant.. you become more and more emotionally attached to your “pet thought” as you pet it by thinking about it. This is a mental mechanism that enables advertising to work so well. It enables products to be sold for much higher exchange value than their actual use value is. A beauty product is not only some cheap mixture of chemicals in a jar, but a symbolic vessel of an entire lifestyle carefully constructed by the manufacturer and the marketer of the product. A heirloom signet ring of a family is a circular, metallic concentration of generations of memories and traditions. A special photograph or a letter can be the most valued possession of a millionaire. Emotionally speaking, objects like this are worth thousands of times more than a seemingly similar, but a “non-authentic” e.g. copied or pirated object. Even if it has the exactly same signature, logo or picture on it, a non-authentic object may fail to satisfy the emotional desires of the observer.
As technology proceeds and memories are more and more frequently stored in digital form, an interesting dilemma with emotional attachment is bound to emerge. When a particularly meaningful photograph is originally stored only as a digital file only, are the identical, bit-for-bit copies indeed as good as the original? Will people store and cherish old e-mails, screen shots, text messages and chat transcripts with as much care as people used to store their love letters? How about the cloning of pets and, who knows, perhaps even children in the future? The insurance companies sure are careful to include a clause to not compensate for the “emotional value” of anything.
Cathexis is often a pro-active process. An individual’s hopes are sometimes projected and concentrated onto a single target. It might be their family or a business venture or a piece of art they are creating. The more time we spend thinking about a single subject, the more dependant we become on it. In the film Citizen Kane, the word Rosebud written on a sled is a token for poor, but happy childhood. It is sometimes worth to stop and think over what are the most valuable Rosebuds in one’s own life. They are often much more vulnerable and fragile than you might initially think. If you do not prepare for it, suddenly you realize that you’ve lost some of them only when it’s too late. A loss of inspiration or dignity can be just as devastating as a loss of a friend or, to some extent, even health. To quote another great film, Fight Club…
You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself. You’re not your name. You’re not your problems. You’re not your age. You are not your hopes. You will not be saved. We are all going to die, someday.
Valentina Tereshkova was born to a peasant family in the Yaroslavl’ region of the former USSR in 1937. Yaroslavl is now a part of Russia.
Soon after starting work in a textile mill at the age of 18, Valentina joined an amateur parachuting club. She was a hard worker. Later, at the age of 24, she applied to become a cosmonaut. Just earlier that year, 1961, the Soviet space program began to consider sending women into space. The Soviets were looking for another “first” at which to beat the United States.
As per the paranoia of the time, the entire program was shrouded in secrecy. When she left for training, Tereshkova reportedly told her mother she was going to a training camp for an elite skydiving team. It wasn’t until the flight was announced on the radio that her mother learned the truth. The identities of the other women in the cosmonaut program were not revealed until the late 1980s. Valentina Tereshkova was the only one of the group to go into space.
According to the about.com article she became a rather influential figure in the politics. She was a member of the parliament and the president of the Women’s Committee. In recent years, she has lead a quiet life in Moscow.
