Gracious Lady Fate has guided me to Barcelona, Spain. One of the first excursions was to the bustling marketplace of produce, meat, cheese and other delicacies – La Boqueria. The fridge is now full of fruits, Cava, jamon and chorizo. A delightful city!

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Alex Raymond and Rip Kirby 3

Because Raymond’s death in a car accident came so suddenly, the fateful day has taken on the qualities of myth, of speculation, of a death foretold.  This strip was the last time he would draw Honey and like all of the late strips seems to hint at something deeper.  When John Prentice took over two months later, a post he would have for close to 43 years, the Syndicate told him to copy Raymond exactly so Prentice made sure to let the ink spill beyond the borders. A sad touch, I think.  Raymond’s portrait above was done by Drake in 1979, as part of a series of famous cartoonists and was taken from the photograph that accompanied Raymond’s 1946 King Features biography.  It is included in Alberto’s Glamour International book on Bob Lubbers so perhaps Lubbers owns the original.

For some strange reason the newspaper man has been delivering Helsingin Sanomat every day even though the subscription is only for the weekend issues. It is a traditional and, to be honest, rather high-quality newspaper. It has a sort of monopoly here and the many sections have long traditions.. they have remained relatively unchanged for a long, long time. The comic strip section features Hagar the Horrible and the one and only Rip Kirby. His good manners have been imprinted in the collective subconsciousness of the readers for decades. Rip Kirby is still being published as a re-run of old strips. I’m not a big fan of the strip, but I do appreciate the continuity that his inky and idealistic presence creates in people’s lives.

Posted by api at 21:53 - 24 Comments »

Subterranea Britannica: Sites: Tower Subway

The Tower Subway consists of an iron tube, 7 feet in diameter and about
1235 feet in length, laid some 18 feet below the bed of the Thames.
It runs between Great Tower Hill on the north side of the river, and
Tooley Street on the south. It belongs to a Limited Liability Company,
and was opened for tramway traffic on the 12th April, 1870. Being a
losing speculation, the tram cars ceased to run on 7th December, 1870;
but it was opened for foot-passengers (toll, one halfpenny) on the 24th
of that month, and the Company have successfully continued it only as
such. It is reached at each end by a spiral staircase of 96 steps. The
Subway is well lighted up with gas, the average heat by the thermometer
being 65 degrees Fahr. Those, however, who are afflicted with chest
complaints should not attempt to make use of it, owing to the extreme
closeness of the atmosphere and the limited space in the tube, which
renders stooping necessary. It is open from 5.30 AM. till midnight.

This week the big news in greater Helsinki area has been the decision to build the extension of the Helsinki subway Westward to Espoo. I searched for a website about the abandonded tube stations in London to illustrate the point that, no matter how modern they may seem at the moment, all subway stations will be abandonded or demolished sooner or later. The best I could find was the description of the Tower Subway in Subterranea Britannica.

However, building a subway to Espoo instead of extending the road network was a major environmental policy decision and I’m really happy for it for many different reasons.

Posted by api at 09:27 - No Comments »

I once saw a wall cloth with a television test transmission picture stitched on it. I’d love to get some sort of textile pixel art piece. Something that would be suitable for hanging on a wall. Endfile.com has a lot of stuff related to this subject.

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Golf clubs have a long tradition of being exclusive hideouts and meeting places of the business elite. There are national equivalents of such clubs in every country, but golf is indeed unique in that respect that it is a truly global stomping ground for the business movers and shakers. Cory Ondrejka from the Linden Labs, the producers of Second Life virtual world, remarked that World of Warcraft is the new golf. There is an interesting discussion about the subject at Terra Nova and, more recently, at Joi Ito’s blog.

As a former Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) addict, I tend to agree with Chris Goggans who said:

If your business partner is addicted to crack, and the only way to consistently reach him is at the local crack house, you would not say “Smoking Crack is the new Golf.”

You might say, “DAMNIT, why in the hell do you not answer your cell phone, forcing me to drive over to the crack house at all hours to get your comments and signature.”

Even more likely, “Get some help. Please.”

Ahem…

WoW is highly addictive and the social aspects of it are as important as the game itself. However, if golf is the single malt whiskey of social clubs, WoW is the Coca-Cola. Whiskey is an expensive, traditional and, in a word, exclusive treat. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, can be bought at any convenience store and it is being consumed by practically everyone. In the words of Andy Warhol:

“You know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”

Nobody’s saying that you can’t mix coke with whiskey, though. The “new golf” metaphor doesn’t refer to playing the game itself, but to the fact that there are guilds within the game which are every bit as prestigious and admired by the players as their real-world counterparts, the golf clubs. Sometimes, nobody knows if they are run by a teenager, Tom Hanks or a dog, for that matter. It doesn’t really make a difference and that’s the beauty of virtual worlds and Internet in general.

MMORPG players are often trying to find justification for all the time and effort they are putting into their addiction. It is true that playing MMORPGs can be very educational, entertaining and rewarding, but keep an eye for the compulsive pattern. Games can, and do, break perfectly functioning relationships. Some addiction clinics are treating the compulsive gamers together with chemically dependant people, sex addicts, eating disorders etc.

For the record, the collage above was done with Creative Commons licensed material on Flickr.

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What do you get when you mix Spike Jonze, David Lynch and Bjork, sprinkle it with a little Monty Python and roll it carefully in a layer of John Woo? The one and only Beat Takeshi!

Helsinki Film Festival has faithfully been showing Takeshi Kitano’s latest creation every year. Like a deer in the headlights I’ve been mesmerized by them every single time. This time he has created a retrospective, highly symbolic and dream-like look at his career and movies. The movie is called Takeshis’ and it is once again a bizarre and eclectic mix of seemingly unrelated elements. Conceptual art, yakuzas, violence, comedy, dance, women, noodles, blood, existential philosophy, star constellations, slow motion, show business.. just throw it all together and blend thoroughly. His artistic process is obviously greatly influenced by dreams and the subconsciousness.

Many of the user comments at IMDB focus on the fact that the movie is a lot more approachable to someone who has seen his earlier work. To quote one of the comments:

Quirky? yes. Disjointed? Yes. Hysterical? Absolutely. Having watched Kitano’s interpretation of Zatoichi, Blood and Bones, Brother, Kikujiro and Battle Royal I and II, this movie is a complete spoof of his recent movie making career. How he managed to bring so many actors from all of these previous films onto one stage is quite something. In all honesty, viewers shouldn’t try to read too much into Takeshis’. It’s Kitano. It’s Kitano showing us what he feels we know of him in his films. Explosive, comical, distant, a little off the hook. Takeshis’ won’t make much sense to someone who hasn’t at least seen some of the aforementioned movies. Takeshis’ is classic Kitano. You either like and understand this fellow, or you scratch your head in wonderment.

According to his own words, this film marks the end of a specific stage in his directing career. I hesitate to call it a spoof.. it is much more than that. Just like the lonely fan in the film, I admire his work beyond words and consider him one of the most brilliant film makers of our time.

Posted by api at 09:07 - 1 Comment »

There was a little news story about plans to introduce free Wi-Fi in public transport buses and trams in Helsinki. If the pilot goes well, the system will be introduced “as early as 2009″. The system will apparently utilize the new 450 Mhz Flash OFDM network that is currently being built by Digita.

Well, I have nothing against the project. Helsinki has often been criticized for being so far behind in providing decent public Wi-Fi infrastructure and this gap has been filled mostly by private restaurant and cafe entrepeneurs. This is obviously the same phenomen that has happened in most other metropols in the world.

The new @450 network will most probably be the first nationwide wireless broadband network in the world. You simply need a WiFi-like adapter (or a hybrid Wi-Fi/Flash OFDM adapter) and an account with an ISP to access the Internet at near-ADSL speed no matter where you are. Considering this, how many of the potential commuters using laptops will be using the @450 network directly instead of using the Wi-Fi gateway in the buses?

Digita.fi – @450

Digita aims to open the @450 network in early 2007. At first, the network will be available in the north and on the coast. The network will cover most of Finland during 2007 and the entire country by the end of 2009. The rollout will depend on the needs of the service operators and the areas.

Digita will utilise the open network model for the rollout of the @450 network. This means, that Digita’s role is to be the network operator and offer network capacity to all interested service providers under equal, non-discriminating conditions.

The @450 network utilises the frequency of the NMT 450 network freed from mobile phone use. The frequency band of the network is low, which means that large geographical areas can be covered with one base station. For this reason, the network is well suited as a connection network covering the whole of Finland. Thanks to the @450 network, Finland still has a clear chance to be the pioneer in wireless broadband connections, that is, to be the first country in the world with a nationwide wireless broadband network.

The @450 network will not be free to use though. I think that it’s a very positive thing that the network operator (Digita) and the service provider (read ISPs) have been separated into two operational categories.

As a side note, the fon wi-fi community has been making it’s first steps here in Finland lead. I was eager to join myself, but it is simply not an option for people who can’t start juggling between ISPs if the provider decides to mass ban the people who are basically sharing their connection with a WLAN router from a third party operator. Any kind of connection sharing is explicitly forbidden in the fine print on their terms of service. Sure, it will work for a while, but once it reaches critical mass, all it needs is the proverbial short unix script to make it collapse like a house of cards. Personally, I’m putting my bets on the @450 network for ubiquitous wireless internet access in the future.

Posted by api at 09:32 - No Comments »

Rovaniemi is the 8th largest city in the world by surface area (8016 square kilometers).

I stayed there for a night while I was on my way to hike in the Urho Kekkonen National park.

Lapland is one of the biggest wilderness areas in Europe. It’s well worth visiting, if you are interested in hiking and other outdoor pursuits. Rovaniemi is one of the few urban areas in the region. There are reindeer crossing the road all the time, but yet people seem to have traffic accidents mostly with street signs.

Lapland – Wikipedia

The area covered by Lapland lies mostly north of the Arctic Circle. The western portion is an area of fjords, deep valleys, glaciers, and mountains, the highest point being Mount Kebnekaise (2,111 m/6,926 ft), in Swedish Lapland. Farther east, the terrain is that of a low plateau, containing many marshes and lakes, the largest and most important of which is Lake Inari, in Finnish Lapland. The extreme eastern section lies within the tundra region.

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The 9/11 eve tributes have been a big topic in the news recently. I’ve been cleaning up my attic and I found a lot of magazines, vinyl albums and other material from the 80’s. As a little memory exercise, I’ve been trying to figure out what has (and what hasn’t) really changed in the most powerful country in the world. It is the 21st century version of the Roman Empire, so to speak.

Prince – Sign O’ The Times Lyrics

Oh yeah
In France a skinny man
Died of a big disease with a little name
By chance his girlfriend came across a needle
And soon she did the same
At home there are seventeen-year-old boys
And their idea of fun
Is being in a gang called The Disciples
High on crack, totin’ a machine gun

Time, time

Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling of a church
And killed everyone inside
U turn on the telly and every other story
Is tellin’ U somebody died
Sister killed her baby cuz she could afford 2 feed it
And we’re sending people 2 the moon
In September my cousin tried reefer 4 the very first time
Now he’s doing horse, it’s June

Times, times

It’s silly, no?
When a rocket ship explodes
And everybody still wants 2 fly
Some say a man ain’t happy
Unless a man truly dies
Oh why

Time, time

Baby make a speech, Star Wars fly
Neighbors just shine it on
But if a night falls and a bomb falls
Will anybody see the dawn

Time, times

It’s silly, no?
When a rocket blows
And everybody still wants 2 fly
Some say a man ain’t happy, truly
Until a man truly dies
Oh why, oh why, Sign O the Times

Time, time

Sign O the Times mess with your mind
Hurry before it’s 2 late
Let’s fall in love, get married, have a baby
We’ll call him Nate… if it’s a boy

Time, time

Time, time

This song was released in 1987. Nintendo had just released the Legend of Zelda. Anti-AIDS drug AZT and anti-depressant Prozac had just been approved by FDA. The first versions of The Simpsons are broadcast as short animated segments on the Tracey Ullman Show. Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded a year earlier, killing seven crew members. The use of the solid version of cocaine, Crack, had reached epidemic proportions. Republican Ronald Reagan was on his second term as the president of USA. He had cut the income tax by 25% and increased the military spending considerably.

This was the time before the Gulf War, 9/11, the suicide bombers, Columbia shuttle explosion, the Columbine school shootings and hurricane Katarina.

Posted by api at 10:04 - 3 Comments »

I recently finished the production of a biofeedback based multimedia program entitled On the World’s Pulse. It is designed to promote the Millennium Technology Prize. The program shows six different image sequences to a viewer while simultaniously measuring the heart rate with a custom made Polar heart rate monitor. The sequence with maximum heart rate is automatically chosen for a further quiz about that particular subject. After the quiz there are a few info screens about the prize itself and previous winners. This year’s winner is professor Shuji Nakamura.

The Millennium Technology Prize

Professor Shuji Nakamura is one of the most significant inventors of our time. In 1993, he stunned the optoelectronic community with the announcement of very-bright blue GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs). In rapid succession, he then announced a green GaN-based LED, a blue laser diode, and a white LED. All these developments were things that other researchers in the semiconductor field had spent decades trying to do.

Professor Nakamura’s story is unique. Born in 1954 in Japan on the island called Shikoku, he received his master’s degree in 1979 at the University of Tokushima. He started his scientific and technological career outside mainstream Japanese technology, working as an engineer at Nichia Chemical, a small phosphor company in the countryside.

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