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.

Posted by api at 09:47 - 1 Comment »

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.

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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.

Posted by api at 11:39 - 1 Comment »

As a follow-up to the article below about “low” and “high” culture, I decided to write a few words about the relationship between fashion and art. I visited the Espoo Museum of Modern Art last Sunday. The main reason for the visit was the Claude Monet exhibition which is on show over there, but I did take a good, long look at some of the more contemporary stuff that was on show over there. Although some of it was thought-provoking and interesting, I sometimes can’t help but wonder if some of the most creative people are not working as artists after all. There is a huge amount of creativity and depth in modern advertising landscape. Diesel is one of the big brands that has a long tradition of mixing art and fashion in their advertising, but after seeing a blog post about this Viktor & Rolf store in Milan, one can hardly blame them for lack of courage either. Sure, it’s a gimmick, but you have to give them props for actually building that space with that degree of accuracy and commitment. But.. just to put my personal view of art in perspective and for the record, I thought that the Borat movie was a great piece of concept art as well.

Posted by api at 14:37 - 1 Comment »

Modern Plasztikai Sebészet

The philosophy and technics of the operative procedure was developed only a few years ago, but our experiences on more than one thousand ears revealed the fact, that the operation is safe and well-tolerated by patients. We perform the operation as a one-day-surgery, mostly under local anaesthesia.

The procedure itself means a very careful dissection of the structures at the upper pole of the earlobe. The required reshaping is achieved by modellation of a specially designed chondro-cutaneous flap (a flap containing the own cartilage and skin of the patient). The new shape is fixed by means of absorbable sutures, skin closure is made with unabsorbable uninterrupted sutures.

Postoperative care is very important. The bandage protects the new ear for one week. Suture removal is performed after the second postoperative week. The result is seen immediately after the removal of the bandage, but total resoption of the soft tissue swelling and appearance of the very final shape usually needs three or four weeks.

I’ll be participating in a LARP conference this weekend. Upon researching the subject I found out that some people have actually commissioned pointy elf-style ears as a cosmetic surgery. This is a totally novel and exciting genre of body modification.

(Update December 16th, 2009: As J pointed out, this image is indeed a digital manipulation. The clinic seemed authentic enough so I didn’t notice it myself.)

My own personal experiences with larping are limited to a few games of Steve Jackson’s Killer in the 1980’s. At the kick-off party I learned that there are still groups actively playing it.

Posted by api at 18:57 - 8 Comments »

It is that special time of year again. Here’s a collection of images from my archives to enhance your holiday spirit.

If that didn’t help, try one of the Christmas radios

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RISCON Tokyo: Security and Safety Trade Expo 2007

*RISCON：A word coined from “Risk ( Danger, Crisis )” and “Control ( Administration, Management )”. This word connotes our aspiration to: “Control risk to the fullest despite unavoidable difficulty.”

Seriously, how far can you go with this anti-terrorism thing? It seems to me that in many historical periods there has been an external threat that has kept the society more or less organized.. keeping busy to keep the threat at bay.

Wrath of Gods, neighbouring nations, dragons, terrorist cells.. there is always something to keep an eye for.

Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but the it’s practically impossible to avoid this subject matter while keeping up to date with the modern media. I stumbled upon this picture while browsing China Daily!

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Bruce Schneier, dubbed as a “security guru”, has written a great article draft about the psychology of security.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SECURITY

Security is both a feeling and a reality. And they’re not the same.

The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. We can calculate how secure your home is from burglary, based on such factors as the crime rate in the neighborhood you live in and your door-locking habits. We can calculate how likely it is for you to be murdered, either on the streets by a stranger or in your home by a family member. Or how likely you are to be the victim of identity theft. Given a large enough set of statistics on criminal acts, it’s not even hard; insurance companies do it all the time.

…

You might feel that you’re at high risk of burglary, medium risk of murder, and low risk of identity theft. And your neighbor, in the exact same situation, might feel that he’s at high risk of identity theft, medium risk of burglary, and low risk of murder.

Or, more generally, you can be secure even though you don’t feel secure. And you can feel secure even though you’re not. The feeling and reality of security are certainly related to each other, but they’re just as certainly not the same as each other. We’d probably be better off if we had two different words for them.

This essay is my initial attempt to explore the feeling of security: where it comes from, how it works, and why it diverges from the reality of security.

I am a very security conscious person. I’ve had a few accidents with motorized and non-motorized vehicles and they were real eye openers in both literal and metaphoric sense. These days I always wear a helmet while snowboarding or riding a bike. I also spend extra cash on insurance, fire extinguishers, floatation devices and all kinds of gear and practices.

But this article did make me think… Am I investing all this time and money and effort just to increase the feeling of security or is it for a real, tangible, mathematical increase in safety? Like Mr. Schneier notes, it is true that people often exaggarate rare, but spectacular risk and downplay common risks.

One of the reasons that I’ve been pondering this theme is that I’ve recently been considering about getting a mortgage for the second time in my life.

The photograph above is of a Japanese “capsule hotel”.

Posted by api at 10:36 - 2 Comments »

Although I am not playing DAOC anymore, I was shocked to hear that Sanya Thomas is leaving EA/Mythic. There is an exclusive interview with her on WarCry Network. It is an interesting read although she doesn’t reveal much about the reasons for her departure. Good community management is indeed an incredibly important ingredient in creating a succesful MMORPG. I agree with her that her biggest contribution to the game industry was to demonstrate that you can be friendly, transparent and truthful while still maintaining a completely professional and official attitude. She is a great creative writer too. It’s a pity she doesn’t tell the names of her characters in the game, because I am sure that many of the players have talked with her in-game in incognito as well and would die to know who she really was.

Interview with Sanya Thomas

WarCry: When you began at Mythic, prior to Dark Age of Camelot’s launch, you were one of the – if not the – first community managers. Now it’s a full blown profession people can get an education for. Tell us about how you see community management, its evolution and your role in it.

Sanya Thomas: Oh, I wasn’t the first. Jon Hanna was the Ur-CM. And Gordon Wrinn was already famous before anyone ever heard of me. But I definitely have the title of longest-lasting. It would have been six years in June.

Somewhere, I have a copy of a message board post that says “she won’t last six months.”

Originally, community work was reactive. Something happened, and some poor schmuck was assigned to hit the boards and respond. Or worse, it was considered marketing, and not even GOOD marketing – carefully controlled information leached of all life by someone who wants to “control the message.” And either way, the community manager was to blame if players didn’t like what they heard. At a lot of companies, it’s still no different. Even companies that start well sometimes morph into a more marketing/reactive pose.

I think my greatest contribution was I demonstrated that it doesn’t have to be that way. I used my real name, and shared actual information. I felt that a community is a living entity that cannot be controlled, and deserves respect.

If you hire someone off the board who “seems really nice” and pay him minimum wage, you will get what you deserve. Community work is a professional specialty, with standards of communication, turnaround time, media responsiveness, and more. There are known benchmarks for message board personnel requirements, beta cycles, and professional behavior. There are techniques that can be mastered, assuming the basic skills are in place.

Good community is a little marketing, a little CS, and a little old-fashioned mud-wrestling on behalf of your players. It’s important to work with the whole team to achieve a consistent message, of course, but at the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the community weenie to stand up for players, for player feedback, and for realistic expectations. If that means a few bruises (from all sides), so be it.

Posted by api at 12:40 - 1 Comment »

• Almdudler is the second most popular drink in Austria after Coke
• Empress Elisabeth a.k.a. Sisi had a cocaine bottle the size of a salt shaker in her travel medicine case
• The max speed the GPS recorded at Ischgl was 76,6 km/h
• The canned sparkling wine is actually pretty decent!
• Flesh wounds take a lot longer to heal at high altitude
• TVTV has a widget for local tv programme. The local tv programme generally sucks.
• Alphaville has a free rental on your day of birth
• Remember to check out Ulrich Seidl’s other earlier work.
• Musik Kiosk has a “Sitzdisco” or “Sitting Disco” on Tuesdays. Dancing apparently forbidden.
• Aromat
• The banks act as ticket outlets for concerts.
• Remember to cover the flesh wound on head for today’s Nouvelle Vague concert so other bossa nova fans won’t get scared.

Posted by api at 11:24 - No Comments »

iCarta-Atech Flash Technology

Now you can Enhance your Experience in any room with your favorite music from your iPod.

Features:

• 4 Integrated high performance moisture-free speakers deliver exceptional clarity and high quality sound
• Charges your iPod while playing music
• Audio selector allows you to play iPod shuffle or other Audio device
• Integrated Bath tissue holder that can be easily folded as a stereo dock
• Requires AC Power (AC Adapter included)
• Easy to remove from Wall Mount

For your information… the item above is a genuine “Made for iPod” product.

Posted by api at 20:38 - 2 Comments »

Suddenly the title, phone number and e-mail on your business card seem more familiar than the ones you used to have before the job. You know your colleagues better than your neighbours or relatives. All of a sudden you are forty years old and there is a reputation, a family and a mortgage to take care of. No more art projects, no more eccentric acquaintances, no more risky business.

Universal declaration of human rights

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

A career is a path, but so is life. Sometimes they are parallel, but sometimes they seem to split into different, unknown directions and you can’t really see into the hazy future to see if they are about to join again. It is at moments like that when you have to ask yourself: Do I really believe in the values of the organization I am working for? What is the difference between being a human being and a human resource? Will my final bottom line be written on my tomb stone or on my last tax report?

As you can see, I’m slowly emerging from a mid-thirties crisis and smoothly transitioning to a pre-forties crisis. I’ve once again been dreaming about a number of alternative, hippier lifestyles.

Posted by api at 10:21 - No Comments »

After having found the excellent Hel Looks Helsinki street fashion site, I’ve been increasingly interested in the fashion scene. Our flat in Barcelona was located near the artisan area with several designer stores and I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy a new blazer by Modern Amusement.

I don’t like ties and I practically never wear them. Cufflinks are another one of those strange, useless fashion accessory inventions that I never fully understood. Out of curiosity (and a desire to upgrade my style), I decided to google around for a pair to complement the suit.

Fortunately there seems to be a good selection of cufflinks that are geeky enough for programmers.

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I can’t believe there are International Championships in Rock, Paper and Scissors

The expanded or extended version of the game pictured above is rather intriguing.

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Disco Stu – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Disco Stu is a fictional, secondary character from The Simpsons. He is a disco aficionado and is usually featured wearing a rhinestone-encrusted leisure suit. He often refers to himself in the third person (putting a big emphasis on “Stu” and then pausing before saying anything else) and is noted for being mentally stuck in the Disco Era.

He first appeared in the episode Two Bad Neighbors, during a neighborhood yard sale day. Near the beginning of the episode Homer and Marge search their attic for items that might sell. Marge suggests Homer’s old Rhinestone Night’s Fashion Gun. Homer protests, “…I need it to rhinestone up my old clothing!”. Marge then holds up Homer’s old leather jacket complete with rhinestone lettering. “Who’s Disco Stu?” Marge asks, referring to the words on the back. Homer explains, “I wanted to write ‘Disco Stud’ but I ran out of space” then mutters to himself “Not that Disco Stu didn’t get his share of the action”. Disco Stu becomes a character later in the episode as part of a callback gag. Homer solicits his jacket to patrons of the rummage sale; One of them calls out “Hey Stu! You should buy that!”. Disco Stu is revealed and says, “Disco Stu…doesn’t advertise”. He was probably intended to be a throwaway character but he turns up in many later episodes.

We had a little house party last night. After dinner, an obligatory Sing Star session and a few cocktails we were ready to hit the local hot spot, Kaivohuone. It is owned by Sedu Koskinen, a well known restaurant mogul here in Helsinki. He operates a whole bunch of restaurants under the corporate umbrella of SK-Ravintolat. Just like Disco Stu, Kaivohuone or Kaivo as it is sometimes more affectionately referred to, is mentally stuck in a forgotten era. It’s well worth visiting if you are interested in seeing a big crowd of all kinds of pumped up people preying for a one-night affair or preferably even shorter relationships.

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