desirable things

Video Game Table

After lecturing at Södertörn University College I was given a tour of the department and to my joy I came across a functioning tabletop version of Pong.

Pong is a first generation video game released originally as a coin-operated arcade game by Atari Inc. on November 29, 1972. Pong is based on the sport of table tennis (or “ping pong”), and named after the sound generated by the circuitry when the ball is hit. The word Pong is a registered trademark of Atari Interactive,while the term “pong” is used to describe the genre of “bat and ball” video games. (wikipedia)

Check it out its beautiful

Just check out the amazing controls for the game!

Posted on by mklang

Run Fatboy Run

This post was almost called Run Forrest Run but the comedy Run Fatboy Run (it is a must see!) is more appropriate for several reasons – which will become obvious if you read on.

As a writer I am always slightly surprised and very flattered when someone says that they have read something I have written, it makes no difference whether the text is my blog or my PhD. When someone comments on my writing or responds to it the text becomes alive and an exchange of ideas begins. This is fun.

A few people seem to read my blog as a way of keeping track of me and what I am doing. To be fair this group mainly consists of my mother who likes to know where I am in the world (and occasionally why I am there) – Hello Mum!

With the dawn of social networking sites and microblogging more people are subjected to my shorter bursts of everyday information. Updating my status via ping.fm means that the trivial status line in facebook becomes a part of an ongoing background chatter. My friends can see what I am doing and some of them will comment on my actions. My comments on their comments will turn the whole thing into micro-conversations of massive trivia. Something is happening here – not sure what it all means… Yet.

Anyway this all came about when one of my work collegaues (and FB friends) dropped by my office and commented on the fact that many of my status updates on FB involved my running. She asked why this was. Suddenly all the little micro-comments had been harvested and analysed – in the nonchalant way in which the mind works and formulated into a question.

So it’s time to officially announce the fact that I am officially training for a specific goal. My running became vaguely serious in September last year when I succumbed to temptation and bought real running gear. I discussed this online too in a post called Slippery Slope to Spandex. Since then I have been running for fun and exercise.

Then a couple of weeks ago in a fit of misguided hubris I registered for my first ever race. And I mean EVER. I never even did sports as a kid. So now on the 16 May I shall be running a local half-marathon called Göteborgsvarvet. I will not be alone in this there are already over 36 000 runners registered.

So why write all this here? Well to paraphrase an aweful song which I haven’t been able to lose since my teenage years: it’s my blog and I’ll write if I want to. But in reality I want to write it down to increase the pressure, to make sure that I will go through with the whole affair. By placing this text online I am bringing to bear the tools of reputation and public shaming to make sure I will go through with this impluse decision.

Photo: Running man by Tleilaxus (CC BY-NC-SA)

All I can say is: run fatboy run…

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Post FSCONS procrastination

Now that the weekend FSCONS conference is over and I am sitting in front of the screen again I have that all to familiar feeling of emptiness. I know there is work to be done. I know which work needs to be done, it’s just that I really do not feel like doing it.

This emotional drain occurs most often after handing in a major work or after (as this weekend) a major conference (especially if you are on the arranging team). It’s as if the mind needs to take a break and actively works against serious work.

Bodil Jonsson wrote in her wonderful little book Ten thoughts about time about the concept of “ställtid”. I read her book in the original Swedish so I may translate some words differently. Basically the concept of ställtid is the time you need to arrange stuff around you before you can actually begin doing something. This is particularly important when moving from one task to the next since we often forget to factor such time into the equation.

This arranging time varies in length. Easy and enjoyable tasks require little or no time while complex or dreary tasks require a lot more time before they can be carried out. In some cases these tasks cannot be carried out until the absolutely final moment.

So the fact that we know that we must do something is not enough. Even facing a punishment, fine or dissaproving look is not enough to actually make us do what we must. All this is due to the need of the mind to come to terms with the old tasks and begin preparing for the new tasks.

Most probably this eminent theory of procrastination was written during a period of time when the author was avoiding doing something she really was supposed to be doing. It does not really help me in my situation but it is always nice to know that I am not alone.

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FSCONS & Free Beer

Today was the pre-launch of FSCONS and it’s soon time for the registration and social event. During the social event there will be Free Beer – free as in libre!

Here is an excerpt from wikipedia

Free Beer, formerly known as Vores Øl, Danish for Our Beer, is the first brand of beer with a “free” recipe – free as in “freedom”, taken after the term “free software”. The name “Free Beer” is a play on Richard Stallman’s common explanation that free software is “free as in speech, not free as in beer.” The recipe is published under a Creative Commons license, specifically the Attribution-ShareAlike license.

The beer was created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen together with Superflex, a Copenhagen-based artist collective, to illustrate how concepts of the free software movement might be applied outside the digital world.

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Protecting Digital Rights

Internet service providers are hardly known for their efforts to protect the rights of their clients. This is hardly surprising considering they low amount of money they make per client compared to the legal costs which would be entailed in attempting to defend a client. For example: A cheap web hosting service costs less per year than a lawyer costs per hour. It’s not too difficult to work it out.

At the same time the ISPs are our lifeline and basis of our ability to participate in a digital society so this lack of help is a serious flaw. So it was nice to see that the Council of Europe have published Human rights guidelines for Internet service providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for internet service providers (ISPs). While underlining the important role played by ISPs in delivering key services for the Internet user, such as access, e-mail or content services, they stress the importance of users’ safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the providers to be aware of the human rights impact that their activities can have.

in addition to this document the Council of Europe have also published Human rights guidelines for online games providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for online games providers and developers. While underlining the primary value of games as tools for expression and communication, they stress the importance of gamers safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the games industry to be aware of the human rights impact that games can have.

Documents such as these are the early steps at ensuring the protection of individuals online rights and as such should be applauded even if it is kind of worrying that we still see a need to attempt to define rights in online environments as something fundamentally different from human rights in the offline world.

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Spineless Academy

In 1786 King Gustav III founded the Swedish Academy to preserve the purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language” (Svenska Språkets renhet, styrka och höghet). The Swedish Academy is most famous for decideding who will be the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in memory of the donor Alfred Nobel. A task it has been carrying out since 1901.

The motto of the Academy is “Talent and Taste” (Snille och Smak) and apparently neither talent nor taste have anything to do with any form of courage.

In connection with the Rushdie affair when the Iranian mullahs pronounced the fatwa against him. The Swedish academy decided not to make a statement in favor of Rushdie and denouncing the death threat he now faced. The academy naturally could comfortably rely on old principles that they should not make political statements. Two of the members of the academy left in protest (Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten).

So now when the Italian author Roberto Saviano is revieving death threats for writing a book about the Camorra and several notables (amongst others: Michail Gorbatjov, Desmond Tutu, Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Günter Grass & Salman Rushdie) have shown their support, the academy when asked formally to show support replies (my translation)

It is extremely sad that a writer in an European country is in mortal danger because of something he published but it seems to me [Horace Engdahl the academy secretary] to be a police errand and not a question of protecting principles of freedom of expression.

The people of talent and taste are hiding behind their non-political stance to avoid taking formal moral stances. Everything a body like the Swedish Academy does is political. Every time they make a choice in litterature concerning the most author most deserving of the Nobel prize – it is a political choice.

Therefore the decision not to stand up for freedom of expression or, at the very least, to condem death threats is moral cowardice.

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The why question – again

After recently reading Andrew Keen’s book the The Cult of the Amateur I found myself nodding in agreement to the fact that I would rather listen to talented person than a bunch of amateurs. Much of the book is filled with contradictions, errors and digressions but his main point is that we shouldn’t be so happy about the amateur productions occurring online since they are effectively killing of the professional market.

My main gripe against Keen is that his arguments against online amateurs can also be used against others. Crappy musicians, tv shows, movies & reporters all steal attention and market shares away from the talented few. But sure the online medium is particularly good at allowing a lot more crappy amateurs to participate.

While thinking about these things I came across Andrew Sullivan’s article Why I Blog in The Atlantic. The why question is an old one which seems to affect all bloggers at different stages. Most probably because someone around them will eventually ask the question: but why do you do it? This can at time set of a wave of introspection and a need to self justify.

Way back in 2005 I explored this myself and linked to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang site (no longer available but a excerpt here) on 4 reasons why academics should blog. In April this year Henry Jenkins wrote a piece on why academics should blog.

The blog posts represent what might be called “just-in-time scholarship,” offering thoughtful responses to contemporary developments in the field. Because they are written for a general rather than specialized readership, these short pieces prove useful for teaching undergraduate subjects. We are seeing a growing number of colleagues using blog posts or podcasts as a springboard for classroom discussions and other instructional activities. Having developed a steady readership for such content, we are also able to use our blogs to showcase innovative ideas and research from colleagues around the world.

But Sullivan is more brutal about blogging this may be because three years later the blog has come of age. Indeed media has predicted the death, rebirth, redeath, rebirth of the blog several times since they discovered them in 2006.

The blog remained a superficial medium, of course. By superficial, I mean simply that blogging rewards brevity and immediacy. No one wants to read a 9,000-word treatise online…the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.

In addition to this need to keep moving is the results that the blog has on the writer. Sullivan again

Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader… It [writing] renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship.

And that is the main point of the blog. It is a conversation. Naturally a rather one-sided conversation. In part it is the enjoyment of writing, in part the need to comment on life as it occurs but at best there are reactions to the ideas expressed within the words in a way which rarely happens anywhere else. This is why I blog.

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Unapologetic

This poor ignored blog has been silent for a few days (and less prolific before that) while I have totally and unashamedly ignored it for the world beyond and outside the computer screen (well almost). Traveling to Seattle has been great and the experiencing both city and suburbia life in America has been an eye opener.

An added bonus was coming here during the presidential campaign so the experience of politics in the making was part of the trip. Most of the time is spent sightseeing, visiting friends, relaxing, shopping and experiencing the US. I have been here a few times before but always as a tourist in big cities not as a part of everyday life. For example Friday night football at the local high school, to the outsider this is a marvelous experience.

photo Lines by Wrote (CC BY NC)

The highlights of the trip include grocery shopping in so amazingly overstocked stores it is almost frightening, a Jackson Browne concert, good food, great sushi, going up in the Space Needle… you know, the turist stuff. Anyway this blog will not be back to normal for a while longer but if you really want to see what’s happening I am posting lots of pictures on my flickr page.

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Perspective

Points of reference are important but we tend to forget how much we rely on them. Speed only feels relevant to other objects (stationary or in motion). The completion of major tasks, overcoming obstacles, passing exams, finishing thesis etc are only important if they can be seen in relation to other forms of motion.

Captain Joseph Kittinger as part of research into high altitude bailout made three parachute jumps from a helium balloon. While he was falling at speeds of over 200 meters per second he did not have a sensation of falling. He was so high up that he had no points of reference.

  • The first, from 76,400 feet (23,287 m)
  • The second from 74,700 feet (22,769 m)
  • The final jump was from 102,800 feet (31,300 m)

During the final jump he fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds reaching a maximum speed of 614 mph (988 km/h or 274 m/s). He opened his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He set records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest drogue-fall (4 min), and fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere. (wikipedia)

Somehow this makes me happier…

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My camera history

The first camera I remember was my grandfather’s Ikoflex 1A 854/16

This is a very cool camera which I never really mastered. I now have this as a memory of my grandfather but after reading Ivor Matanle’s article on the history and use of the Ikoflex TLRs Classics to Use (Amateur Photographer, 29 October 2005) I have been inspired to test the camera.

My first camera was nothing this complex. I was eventually given a Kodak Instamatic with a cubeflash. I used this to take my first pictures.

There was an especially long gap between the Instamatic and my next camera. With my first paycheck I bought a Nikon F-301, a really cool toy which I used to experiment with. I tried out different lenses and external flashes. The only drawback was that I did not develop my own photos so experiments were slow and expensive. So I really did not make much progress. Eventually I dropped photography.

My hobby came back when I bought a Canon EOS 30 which was a really cool camera but still had the main drawback in that I needed to develop the photographs before I could analyze the mistakes I had made. Actually I should have gone straight to a digital version but due to some misguided snobbery I chose not to go digital.

Finally, I made the move to digital and got a Canon EOS 400D. Now I am happily taking photos, attempting to understand the results and develop what I see and learn. In addition to this, thanks to my Flickr account I am able to easily upload and share my photographs.

So by going digital I was able to develop my hobby to the extent that it actually can be called a hobby.

Posted on by mklang