Mindtreking Mindtrek, Part 2

So we continued the day, some of my classmates and me were interested in some talks, some in others so we changed our groups a bit.

This next talk Open Data - End Privacy, was one of those times where the presenter asked "who can define privacy" and no one answered, quite some time went by and no one would answer. Again I felt bad for the presenter so I attempted to say something coherent but failed miserably and babble something that didn't even made sense to myself, hahaha making up stuff as you speak is not the way to go. But in any case i think we circle back at "It's so hard to define because it's easy to understand" I think it applies well here, too. He corrected my failed attempt and defined privacy as "Control over data about you". Well put sir, well put.

Among other things, he introduced a few new terms to me. Such as:

Stop cyber bullying!

Doxing: Online bullying. Posting private information about someone trying to harm them in any way.
Swatting: Literally calling the SWAT team on them, just to cause them trouble.

He talked about the RTBF (right to be forgotten) and how it applies nowadays. International laws are a pain.

The rest of the day went on and I was trully sad not being able to go see the robot. Having met some other intelligent robot in the past, The iCub that my friend Juxi worked on, I was really looking forward to seeing this other one, but then I had to pick up my toddler from päiväkoti (daycare) so alas, my day was done. I was so sad at home accessing the Mindtrek page on my phone and reading the questions people were posting. Meh.

He was not this Adama tough.

The next day, we started with Pierre A. Damas, who's name could only make me think of this Adama. Yet he reminded me more of another famous tv character. In any case, after all the useless character references, He spoke of how the E.U. was using Open source. He also very briefly talkedabout 3d printing, which is something I like, so I was hoping he spoke more of that, but alas he did not.

We later moved onto the academic part of Mindtrek. We went to the game's area of the "trek". We were introduced to the other university's Game research lab. We were presented with several projects they had and got to learn a bit more about what they did during those researches.

uugg, I can't finish this now. too much stuff to do, So I will continue on part 3.

Mindtreking Mindtrek, Part 1

So, from the beginning. What is MindTrek?

The answer is: I have no clue! I spent all day there listening to some interesting, and some boring talks. I still have no clue. It sounds like something to do with exercise for the mind. I think, in that sense, they nailed it since a lot of stuff was baffling to me. But instead of ranting about how I don't know what it's supposed to mean, I will go on to talking about the highlights of the things that I did understand, or so i think.

Luciano Ammenti on FITS format, etc.

In the morning of the first day, Luciano Ammenti was talking about the systems that the Vatican is using to safeguard some of humanities greatest achievements, ancient manuscripts. It was quite interesting that they made up a new file system to record all the relevant data of the scans of the manuscripts, the FITS format. From this format, they can export as any common format type like pdf, jpeg, etc. It is kind of like having a RAW picture taken with all the information it can have, and then just saving a jpeg copy of it and give it to whomever needs it.

Another interesting thing was the island high tech storing system they have. Each island is cooled independently, and all of the hard drives in the island are separate units.

One more thing about the first talk. He lied. I asked about the copyrights for those documents. He said they didn't want to put any restrictions on them (I assumed because, you know, Vatican's money comes from donations from all over the world, kinda like praying taxes, so technically, the copyright should belong to everyone.) He only said they put a watermark. But lo' and behold.. a huge copyright sign at the bottom of a randomly found manuscript : Check this link to see what I'm talking about.

It really doesn't matter if its copyrighted or not. To me the crime is in lying about it.Well, it kind of does matter, why do they own the rights to something that belongs to humanity. But I should stop about this and move on to the rest of Mindtrek.

Iron Sky's Jarmo Puskala on conspiracy theories.

The Hearding Cats talk was pretty much what I have seen in other conferences: self promotion. It seems that people use conferences a lot to say who they are and advertise themselves. That I noticed very strongly on Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki last month as well. We had free tickets to the event (and by free, i mean paid by the school, who gets the money from our taxes, so technically we indirectly paid for them) but for the people that paid a lot of money to be there, it sounds like a drag to pay to get advertised upon.

But in any case, Jarmo talked a bit about the importance of being different from the others to get attention. He metaphorically said how each snowflake is different and amazing, but it it a storm out there full of million individual snowflakes. He also spoke about how crowdfunding should not be a democracy, just because people are paying, doesn't  mean you have to bend to their will.

Watching Geometrify on the Oculus

While walking about, Eeva and me saw a man who had an Oculus and a Samsung Gear VR. He seemed to be also self promoting, but I was so interested in seeing what he was doing that I didn't mind approaching him and asking if he would show us too. So for a while we lingered there and watched his geometric fractal VR scenes meant to visualize music and help users relax in a meditating-like state. I had a lot of questions and a lot of comments too, but i didn't get to express them because apparently a VIP showed up and the man, well, he put all of his attention to the VIP and just ignored us. I guess there is not time for students. We didn't even get to properly say thanks for the previous attention and move quietly out of the way.

Then on we went through the day. The next relevant place we ended up on, was actually by mistake. We were heading to one of the rooms upstairs and we got intercepted by a "facilitator" that asked us to join an API workshop. My friends were easily swayed with the promise of handouts and prizes. So we went in and started discovering a bit more what API was, and even though i'm still not quite clear on it, I now at least, have some reference to it. Its a translator or backdoor for developers to get access to tons of data to use it elsewhere. In any case I realized yet again that while I seem to have no difficulty saying things out loud, most people find the prospect terrifying. I'm able to participate and I actively try to find what to say, but yeah, sometimes it ends up with me participating with some half formed sentence and end up not being too coherent at all. It's just that i feel bad when a presenter or teacher asks for participation and all that can be heard is the sound of silence.

I will continue in the second part of MindTrek's posts. Click Here to check the next part.

Textual analysis and other trippy things not to read when sick...

Apologizing for the late time I'm posting this task. Catching the flu and having a baby with fever doesn't help much, but mostly I've got to say that reading Diane Carr's article was more difficult to read for me, than I care to admit.

All in all, i think that the player is very much in a Schrodinger's state when it come to affect the meaning of games. One one side, if games are such that the input from the player is considered in the creation of the playable character itself or in the storyline, then the players are themselves part of the story and therefore affect the meaning of the game. For example Roleplaying games expect the player to contribute in the development of the story and hence in the creation of meaning.

If the game doesn't expect the input of the player to form part of the game, then the meaning from the player is diminished. For example a game where the skill of the player, while moving a rolling ball across a table with obstacles, is the only interaction that the game has with it's player, then the player doesnt really alter the meaning or story of the game.

I think, in my own opinion, that the best games are those that involve the player with what happens and how it happens.

One of my all time favorite game is Chrono Trigger, where you can finish the game in one of the 13 - 18 different endings, now that's what I call choice! So the final meaning of the game is greatly influenced by the player. Love it.

You even go to trial. Your good deeds are taken into account by the jury.

In other media, mostly things are shown in a single way, basically you are let to whatever the maker wants you to learn or reinforce. An add wants you to see all the greatness of a product, and they leave very little room for misinterpretation. Or at least, they try.

In this sense, media uses meaning in a direct way, because they want to achieve something directly. Games, well, they want you to enjoy yourself and the game, so you buy the next one, and the next, etc.

For example, again with Chrono Trigger, the meaning is created by the choices you do while you play. There is a little girl who lost her kitten in the fair. If you go around you can find the kitten and give it to her. You can do this or skip it and go on with the game, but eventually, for example, there is a scene where you are on trial and the little girl testifies on your good nature if you helped her before.

This game in particular deals with time travel and the effects of doing something on the past and the repercussions in the future. You Take your Robot friend to the past and leave him for a few centuries caring for a patch of land, and it comes to be a forest in the future. I think that giving the player so many choices helps define what the game is. it's not a linear Rpg where you do as you are told and that's it, It is a game about choices where even the little things matter.

Compliments to Space.com

Besides randomly checking what my friends in Mexico are up to, and the occasional group posts from school, I have for some time now, found a better use for my facebook account: Keeping up with stuff that interests me.

I have been, for example, following the adventures of Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Space is quite interesting to me and following a real life astronaut on her journey through space, and her return back to the land of gravity, has been quite a treat.

I have also been following Space.com's facebook page. It shows me stuff that I like and manages to change the monotony of human stupidity that usually fills my whatsitcalled ... "Needs feed" (yes i had to google how facebook calls the page where you get all the "news", silly me)

So today, it gave me a fun fact video game spaceship article. "Evolution of Spaceships" which you can read ==here==. Basically the article showcases a large image where you can see some of the iconic spaceships that have been developed over the years.

They mentioned the Guinness wold records 2016 Gamer's edition. Sounds interesting, I might or might not buy it and see whats it about.

I though it was cool since last tuesday, at class, our teacher mentioned that we will be doing a pre-task for next week's class involving video games. So yeah, I though it was cool.

The Epoch, one of my all time favorite spaceships.

The irony, Oh the irony.

Remember when, once upon a time, Steve Jobs said that having to use stylus was a nuisance? How it was best NOT to go there technologically?

http://9gag.com/gag/aOmZVPN

Well apparently Apple's new management chose to simply ignore their leader's point of view, and went on and made one. Not only that, but instead of making a simple pen.. why not make a $99 pen?

His face says it all.

I can't help but thing whoever is running Apple is an idiot. Their direct competitor is Microsoft's Touchpen which costs 4€. Seriously Apple? What does your pen do? Does it come up with bad ideas of it's own?? 

I bought a Circuit Scribe for my husband. A pen that has conductive ink for sketching electronic circuits on paper. I bought him the kit with all the extra fancy stuff and it was still no more than $45.

Even the 3Doodler has much more use at the same price range. There is a reason why Nintendo's Gameboys come with 2 or 3 extra stylus'es, their use life is pretty much the same as a common pen. It gets lost faster than the ink runs out. If you run out of ink, then you are a true master. The same goes for stylus'es.

Sorry, this is more like a rant than a proper post, but it's just that idiotic things bother me too much. And every time apple presents something it just feels like they target rich dumb people. Sadly enough, there is a large market in that area.

I'm not an apple person, I love my self-built PC. But to be fair I loved my old iphone 3gs, until it took a microscopic pebble to the screen and broke. All new gen phones are terribly big and thing. 

Ok, in any case, that's it for now. I should stop rambling about these things.

How do I keep a media blog?

Some men, just want to ...

I have been wondering about how to approach this task. I am not usually exposed to traditional media in the sense that I don't listen to the radio, I barely watch tv, and I really don't look at the news. So how do I even find out what's going on in the world?

This morning, about 10 minutes ago, my husband said to me "Hey, the Prime minister ..." and I interrupted him by saying "yeah, I read about it, he is offering his house to Syrian refugees".

He gave me a funny look and asked "How did you know?" (he knows I don't read the news and tend to complain when he turns the tv to watch the news because i find it too boring.) He paused for a bit and asked "Don't tell me you saw that on 9gag!?"

We laughed, and then I just slightly corrected him. "From Facebook."

So, on the usual "what-shall-i-do-with-my-time?" segment of day during my early mornings, I usually give a glance at Facebook to see if there's anything I should be keeping up with from back home. I actually saw the news about the PM from a post a friend of mine from Mexico posted, the funny thing is he is living in Austin, U.S.A and hasn't ever showed a particular interest in following Finnish subjects. No idea where he heard this from.

The original post I saw was -This One-

When I saw the post, i wondered about the veracity of it, since my friends tend to post a lot "articles" that are made by parody or fake news sites.

I googled just "Yle" and the first link I got was -This other One-

So after confirming that the news was in fact real, and after having a few laughs with my husband, I started realizing that in fact, the most important things I hear about, usually don't come from the news or traditional media.

I started thinking how i usually hear about important things from uncommon sources like 9gag.
According to Google "9GAG, Inc. operates an online platform and social media website. Users upload and share content either user-generated or found on other social media websites."
This social media site mostly has jokes, awkward experiences that users go through or things that users find interesting. These ideas or experiences are usually shared in the shape of images or memes.

My husband, on the other hand, is usually reading the news websites almost daily, or the tv segments. You would think he would find out about important things faster than me. But it seems that what seems to be important to the people, is usually posted BY the people way faster than the news can catch up on. In some cases I have noticed that I have heard about earthquakes, explosions, and/or rare cases, from social media, even days before they are in the news. I would guess that having teams of experts working on finding out what is going on in the world, you would get to the news faster, but that seems to have changed now.

Before I keep wondering out loud about the source of news, maybe I should stop and continue this little experiment some other time. Let's see if there is a discernible pattern here. Now I see the purpose of this exercise.

Introduction

I will be using this blog to follow the assignments set by our teacher from our Media Channels and Platforms class.

So first I will introduce myself a bit with this video... I have to say i'm not comfortable with posting a video talking about my life on a public space such as this. But then i would also be uncomfortable not doing a task as required. Oh the conundrum.

Now a few words from my one and a half year old who is trying as best he can to reach the keyboard and type something...


jnmbnkl nff                                                        dvnbcxcnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn



(he now resumes to watch Pocoyo)

In any case I have no idea how to actually make and continue a blog. We are supposed to keep track of our media consumption. But I see some flaws, I don't listen to the radio; if I watch tv, I either watch something on dvd/blue ray or just pre-record shows (and skip advertisements). That is, when the little time I have allows it, and also whether it's something i can watch while my kid is playing around.