Archives for "Recommendations"
The Easter Egg In Hans Zimmer’s ‘Inception’ Score
I saw Christopher Nolan‘s Inception film last week and loved it – just like everyone else.
I never realised that the stretching of time in dreaming was also built into the music score: Basically, every level of sleep in the film stretches the time – 5 minutes of sleep gives you 1 hour of dreaming time in the first level of sleep (12 dream minutes per 1 real minute). On the second level, one gets 1 hour for every 5 minutes spent in the first dream, which means that 5 minutes in the real world turn into 12 hours at dream level two.
So, Hans Zimmer used the same slowing down with the Édith Piaf song “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”, the song used as a countdown marker for the team. Pieces of Piaf’s interpretation of the song were stretched, manipulated and woven into Zimmer’s score. The following YouTube video shows how it works:
“You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next,” Zimmer says. Simple and yet such a brilliant idea! Great film on many levels – well worth watching.
Here’s a video of Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr perform live in the Inception premiere:
Every Death Star Has Its Exhaust Port
Toupé have just released a new album Duninadé and have allowed the album to be Downloaded For Free.
These guys are not only supertalented but also superheroes: if you wanted to show your support or enjoyment of the album then they ask you to make donations to Burma Campaign or Refuge (the domestic abuse charity).
Since every good album needs at least one Star Wars related tune:
04 Every Death Star Has Its Exhaust Port
Lyrics: EVERY DEATH STAR HAS ITS EXHAUST PORT.
(This song will mean nothing if you haven’t seen, memorised and quoted Star Wars (ep. IV, V, VI) or The Last Starfighter. The word FRAK comes from Battlestar Galactica. I’m saving Quantum Leap for the Q album.)Are you gonna let them talk to you like that?
Live your life under tyranny…well FRAK THAT!
I ain’t standing for this bubble of shat,
You’re incredible, right? It’s time to be incredible.
They aren’t the dogs with the biggest teeth no more,
You need to use your noddle if you wanna win a war,
This is what rebellion is for,
We’re invincible, right? It’s time to be invincible.
And you can start by singing a song like:YES THIS BATTLESTATION IS FULLY OPERATIONAL,
JUST REMEMBER THAT KICKING ASS IS AS SIMPLE AS SHOOTING WOMPRATS BACK HOME!
(they’re no bigger than two metres, they’re no bigger than that!)“Greetings Startfighter you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier agaist Xur and the Ko-Dan armada,”
A-Team, Airwolf and Street Hawk too,
Taught a little boy what he really had to do,
And that’s to help get the message through,
That you’re incredible, right? It’s time to be incredible.
And now I’m getting a chubby for justice.YES THIS BATTLESTATION IS FULLY OPERATIONAL,
JUST REMEMBER THAT KICKING ASS IS AS SIMPLE AS SHOOTING WOMPRATS BACK HOME!There is no try, only do or do not…Karl.
You gotta STAY ON TARGET!
Come on, Kid.
Let’s blow this joint and GO HOME!MANY BOTHANS DIED TO BRING THIS INFORMATION TO US.
(Ewoks! UNITE!)
Xmas Party in Shire
Last night I joined the Xmas party of my hobbit kin Defenders of the Shire. I did! And here’s the proof
First there was the feast outside the Kinship house, Opale is playing lute:
Preparing for the group photo – I am the ginger one in the front row. I made the classic mistake of choosing the same party dress with Jordetta 
All stay still…
…and catch fire. Weird things do happen in hobbit parties.
Piippola Village Idiots
Last week when was lying in bed with the cold, so I made a big cup of tea, buried myself on the couch and went to see what Piippola villagers in have been up to.
I’m talking about Animal Crossing, City Folk, the computer game that has a never ending storyline, days and seasons passing in real time. A character moves to a town and begins to live like a villager: house mortgage need to get paid, harvest gathered and friends visited. Activities and events take place same time they happen in real life and there is not an ultimate goal. Life is what one makes of it.
Season had changed, but the villagers are still adorable nutters. Here is a selection of screenshots of what happened.
Baabara was standing outside her house – way past her bedtime. She told me her key fell in the river (even though I am sure they throw it there on purpose). I fished for over an an hour. When I finally found it and rushed it back to her, she thanked me:
Next I bumped to Merry, a new cat in town. She was wearing a pink daisy shirt and carrying a watering can, so I expected her to talk about furry things. But the looks are deceiving in Piippola. Her first words to me:
Derwin is my favourite character, an insecure nerd house full of fossils and junk. He approached me sweating the huge drops of anxiety. Big boys had been bullying him again:
It is absolutely ok to talk about vulcans, I told him. Relieved, he went back home and I continued to look for Harry, the bully. I put on a hockey mask and bun wig to look more intimidating. Finally I found him, an old hippo with no fashion sense and who mostly comes out at night:
Hmm, seems like he has adapted the word himself. Great, no problem there.
I was happy to see that Buck was sporting DS9 Julian Bashir uniform I had designed. And boy, was he feeling frisky in it:
I have to admit the shirt looks great on him.
Next one out and about was Twiggy, who seemed to have a great night. The canary bird chick seems to have lost all his marbles. Note that it’s not even full moon yet:
Before I finished the game for the night, I bumped to Baabara again, who commented my new style:
Six mad villagers. Piippola nights out, of course I am excited
Late from meetings – now also in Second Life
This evening I took part in an interesting virtual meetup. I have been very frustrated with the recent Finnish political decisions considering digital media and laws. Jyrki Kasvi, member of Green League in the Finnish Parliament, is a candidate in the oncoming elections to become one of the representants of Finland in the Europe’s Union. I was keen to hear what he has to say a month before the voting.
The meetup was taking place in Second Life, the grandmother of all the virtual worlds. I have tried the service several times, but due to its clumsiness, dreadful lag, difficult user experience and generally annoying control system, I never got far. But this meeting sounded so interesting, I was willing to give it another go.
I created a default style female avatar, activated my account and the brand new me was ready to hit the road and the skies:
Hello Venlala Petrolhead, Welcome to Second Life! Now, get ready for some fun. A whole new world awaits you where the talk is free and there’s no limit on what you might discover alongside millions of other Residents from across the globe.
Traveling should be easy in virtual worlds, but it never is. I have spend hours on the backs of griffons, bats, raptors, wolves… Name it, I have done it. The instructions say I can simply type “EduFinland I” to the search box and hit teleport button. Brilliant. I do that, but nothing happens. I am still standing in the noob landing platform and there is no error message of any kind. The help guide suggests that I press ‘Detach All’ option before the jump. I obey, but only succeed in losing my character’s helmet (Nice terminator style cloth disappearing effect 
Now I am bald and still stuck.
Next the help guide suggests is to fly up to 200 metres height and try to teleport from there. I fly up and press the button. Nothing. The first first fifteen minutes of the meetup is already over. However, I am getting more determined to continue to solve this problem and find out if anyone else has succeeded to turn up.
Five more minutes of scanning the help guide and pressing teleport button repeatedly and then I receive an error message: too many people in the other end prevents me from teleporting. I double-check to find out how big the crowd is. 62 people in the area of 1,000 square metres! There are more people in Orgrimmar AH on all the time on an average Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.
I go make a cup of coffee and wait. Half an hour after the meeting began, I finally manage to teleport to the green Island of Finnish Education. Almost there: the instructions advice me to walk to the signpost and press a red dot labelled ‘meeting point’ . Pressing that would get me to the right place, but none of the meeting points have red dots. Sigh.
I fly around the island, it all looks empty. I manage to find couple of ducks. I give up and sit down in front of the signpost and wait. Another character approaches from the horizon. He comes to me and says that he is lost. Together we explore the terrain until we finally arrive to the meeting. We manage to catch the two last sentences before it is all over.
I managed to get a screen grab and looks like some people had really made it in time. I am the bald one in the front right corner.
I wonder how Second Life can still be as clumsy, difficult and flaky after all these years in development. I was so frustrated after missing this virtual meeting that I did not continue to the virtual beers with the other participants.
I decide to customise my helmetless bald avatar instead. After a good half hour I still haven’t found any decent tools or textures to create anything but solid ugly flat coloured surfaces that would not even qualify for clothing. So, I ask Google for help. How to create skins in Second Life has been queried 14 million times. After scanning through the first tutorial, I don’t even really care anymore. It is amazing how difficult everything is. One has to be good in Photoshop to create anything decent, and even though I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, I just do not have the patience for it.
I hope the next virtual meetup will be held in Habbo, Azeroth, Norrath, Middle-Earth or Eve Online – I might even make it there in time to participate in the debate
The Federation of Planets FTW!
In the latest South Park episode Pinewood Derby, the world leaders are concerned Finland is going to squeal and nuke it off the map.
Here’s a spoiler:
This species failed. No s**t, Sherlock.
Viacom is currently taking all-too-familiar action removing all the clips from Youtube quoting their usual copyright issues. And more cold water to the Finns – I tried link to the full episode in South Park website, but got this message instead:
Fingers crossed South Park manages to get rid of those pre-existing contractual oblication jerks asap.
The recent promise about the full movies and TV shows to be made available in Youtube sounded great, but don’t believe it, wrote Mark Hachman yesterday in PCMag:
Partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate and Starz made thousands of TV episodes and hundreds of movies available on Youtube for consumers to watch for free beginning on Thursday, in a bid to challenge Hulu for dominance in the online video space.
Don’t believe it. Google has amassed a TV lineup only a sick old retiree could love, with movies that belong in the dollar VHS bin. At this point, the shocking lack of content only highlights how competitors like Hulu can and will succeed in a cutthroat market where content is king. Quite frankly, it’s a little embarrassing.
The full episode isn’t available in Hulu either, so it looks like Viacom is simply trying to prevent earthlings from watching online how Finland gets nuked. Luckily, all Scandinavians are taught in elementary school where to search for the full South Park episodes. 
Off to Annecy with Minna and Hiia!
Four days of girly fun up ahead in French Alps with Rundgren’s Angels. Chamonix here we come!
I asked Minna what to bring along and she replied: dress and high heels. The suitcase is all packed and tomorrow 5am will get here soon, so it is time for a holiday song!!!
Hey Adam – this has dirty lyrics, so you should like it, too. Youtube probably punishes me for uploading the song and will pull it down in an hour, but I am in too good mood to go about ranting about music industry’s stone age approach towards video distribution. Dinosaurs will die. Enjoy the song (Grrr just noticed that the song cuts in the middle – full version that doesn’t allow embedding here. Man, the copyright/region issues suck, but it’s the thought that counts).
Take care & see you soon!
Nice Guys Finish Last
Couple of photos from Grand One digital media awards last Thursday in Apollo:
Antti & me – guess which one the photographer liked more… Or perhaps I am just blurring out from the photo Back to the Future style, eventually disappearing for good.
Our contest entry, the Habbo Xmas Campaign didn’t win, but we still had great time in the jacuzzi where you can leave your hat on…
The last photo of the evening taken from the dance floor shows how nice guys finish last AND in style. Natsku and Jaffa are in the zone, Mario & me in the back are admiring the mysterious hand Jaffa is carrying on his shoulder.
Afterwards we conquered Redrum dance floor. And yes, Friday morning sucked big time.
Watchmen, Stormtroopers and Pon Farr
Stormtroopers + Prince Charles + Companion Cube + Admiral Ackbar = a motivated designer
I have been really looking forward to the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. I first read the graphic novel masterpiece back in 1998 when visiting Chema’s home in Villamartin, Spain, and it immediately rocked my socks off. Chema has had a massive influence in my life; he also introduced me to Preacher and Sandman and I ended up doing my MA thesis about the narrative personas of Sandman comics. I remember sitting on Chema’s couch in Sevilla reading the complete Sandman saga in one go. This took several days, which he spent programming (the bizarre preference of old-skool green text on black screen) and listening to Pi soundtrack. I won’t ever forget crying uncontrollably, when I realised Morpheus was going to die. 
I also transferred from graphic design course to multimedia design in Uni after meeting Chema’s mate Syncro, who showed me how fun making computer graphics can be. Shortly put, Chema has changed my life in more than one occasion.
All this leads to recent fantastic news: Congratulations to Chema & Laura for their first child! Lovely baby girl Angela was born 18th of February 2009. I hope to come and visit you soon!
Back to Watchmen. The film was finally out in Finland last week. After a marathon of changes and delays in production, it was directed by Zack Snyder, previously known for directing Frank Miller’s 300. I was expecting the film to be done in similar style slow motion with limited colour palette, but was I wrong, the film felt nothing like 300 at all!
In the comic book Rorschach had been my favourite character, partly because the story narrative is told through his diary. However, in the film I really enjoyed the love story between the Nite Owl II (Dan) and Silk Spectre II (Laurie). They both had had predecessors they felt inferior to (Hollis Mason being the first Nite Owl and Laurie’s mum Sally Juspeczyk being the first Silk Spectre). In the comic book I merely saw them as weak dorks and sidekicks everyone was bossing around, but my favourite part in the film turned out to be them fighting their way together skillfully into the prison to free Rorschach (in the comic book they didn’t fight to get in, but I am glad they did that in the film).
A big reason why I didn’t relate as deeply to Rorschach in the film was that much of his character development had been left out of the story. Hopefully the extended version shows how Walter Kovacs really became Rorschach. In the film he felt harsh and a bit too much of a sociopath; the comic actually shows his reasons to get a new face – as he calls the mask – and the reader sympatises and understands why he left his old character behind. Another reason for me to look forward to the extended version is that it also contains the animated storyline The Black Freighter. And this is not all: the dvd will also include a documentary-style film called Under the Hood, which will reveal more of the character back stories. I am definately getting the extended dvd the first minute when it is out.
The film succeeded in changing my thinking without giving the feeling that the changes were wrong; the costumes had been upgraded and modernised to look sexy and that made the characters feel more cool. I wonder if Alan Moore would like this feature, since in his comic the characters were deliberately broken and faulty and very human. But then, Moore has said numerous times that he is not going to watch the film anyway, so doubt he will lose any sleep over the matter.
The squidless ending has seriously disturbed some people (see this hilarious video), but I can live with it. I will buy a pint for Zack for a job damn well done, if I ever meet him in person.
Another film I am looking forward to is the new Star Trek, which will be released in May. This new trailer was played before Watchmen and looked great on big screen!
More spice to my forthcoming Star Trek experience was added today by Chicago Tribune – this spring will be all about Pon Farr for me: three Star Trek-themed scents will be released on April 24. Two fragrances are for men, but the third one is where it gets good:
…it’s the Pon Farr perfume that may require a double take. That’s right, it’s for the ladies. Perhaps a great gift for mom for letting you crash in the basement for 50-some-odd years? Maybe not. It actually refers to the Vulcan mating ritual that occurs every seven years. So maybe this one’s only for special occasions?
Yay! I am definately up for some Pon Farr! I don’t even care what it smells like – I will order three bottles of it immediately when it is out. That should be enough for both special and not-so-special occasions to come.
Legocam, Floobs, The Witcher, Piratebay & Lex Nokia
Most of my friends know about my years old plan for 24/7 livestream Lego house, but so far I have struggled with both the bandwidth and the platform. Now that there is the brilliant new Finnish streaming tool Floobs (YAY ^^), I can finally do it. Since all my Legos are neatly packed in a storage box in London 
I opted for Huuto.net, the Finnish alternative for eBay. It only took a minute of ‘Buy it now‘ magic, a short train ride to Puistola to get the bounty and here is a photo of my weekend to come…
Now how much FUN is this going to be!
I will participate in Valentine’s party Saturday evening, because of the tiny voice in my head reminding me that I have to socialise more to meet guys that are not made of polygons. Blah blah yawn, but at least I got the whole Saturday morning for the ultimate coolness of building a Lego house from the scratch.
Talking about other fun things to do during the dark Finnish nights, I bought me a copy of a computer game based on Sapkowski’s best-selling book The Witcher – Thanks Bohdan for introducing it to me last year in Sydney . The stories are far from the typical fantasy-for-kids genre and at least the following review hints that the style has been maintained in the game:
If so desired? Hmm. Who wouldn’t so desire?
The Last Wish book cover
Even more cool stuff: this morning it was published that Google bought an old paper mill in Hamina from Stora Enso and will turn the empty factory to a full blown data centre. I first thought that the story was an April fool leaked too early, but it all started to make more sense when the news revealed that the real reason behind the deal was Google’s interest in Russia. Previously the Russian data traffic has been managed from Sweden, but the new FRA law, a Swedish legislative package that was launched in January, angered the Russians. Can’t blame them, since the FRA law “authorizes the state to warrantlessly wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses Sweden’s borders” (Wikipedia). What an idiotic law is that, and furthermore, why would anyone ever vote for it… This is madness
Now that Sweden was mentioned, I actually did recently ordered me a Piratebay T-shirt for support: the court case against four TPB related people begins next Monday charges being ‘assisting copyright infringement’. Several copyright holders are claiming over $100 million in damages. Phew, that is a lot of money. TPB will stream the audio of the trial online from their übercool bus a.k.a. TPB Media Center.
Enough for slagging off Swedes, Finland currently has its own ongoing legislative issues with the proposed Lex Nokia:
The so-called ”Lex Nokia” – also known as the ”snooping law” – would allow employers to investigate the log data of employees’ e-mails, if the company has reason to suspect that corporate secrets are leaking out of the company or that the employer’s communication networks are being misused.
It is a dorky proposal indeed, because it doesn’t only allow employers, but also schools, universities, libraries, councils etc. a greater authority than the police currently have. To gain access to similar information, the police need to get a warrant from a court if it has reason to suspect that a crime has been committed. It has been hinted that Nokia has been putting pressure on the legislation. In a country this small, the company the size of Nokia has a huge influence. I will keep my fingers crossed that the politicians do not vote for it: I have joined Pysäyttäkää Lex Nokia (Stop Lex Nokia) Facebook group and signed the online petition Pysäytetään Lex Nokia. Please, do the same, it is for a good cause.
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