…reminds me of this 2004 Spongmonkey classic We like the Moon from Rathergood:

…the moon
it is up in the sky
it’s up there very high
but not as high
as maybe
dirigibles or zeppelins

or lightbulbs.

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

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.

I have this simple one liner in the header.php file, so there is not that much margin for error:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.venla.net/favicon.ico”/>

The latest Flock, Firefox, Opera and Safari are all happy with it. I have checked all the forums, but still can’t get it to work in IE7. Anyone, any ideas – I’ve started to think that ignoring IE7 might be a good general rule.

Flock, Opera and IE7. One of them is wrong.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is released in the UK on 21 November. Time flies, it’s already 8th game in the Tomb Raider series, I haven’t bothered after the 3rd one, but I admit Lara was fun when she first appeared in what…1996! BBC is showcasing some pics of the new marketing face of Lara, and damn, she looks scary.

There are still plenty of apples left, but I need to start quickly experimenting with apple recipes. Does anyone know how to make cider?

A modern Eve and a web-monkey

I am trying to re-establish my relationship with the nature after the years in London. The coming weekend I plan to go to look for mushrooms.

Last Saturday we drove to Kalkkijazz, a one-day-one-stage jazz festival taking place in a random but interesting setting outside a Nordkalk, a chalk factory in Sipoo in South coast of Finland. Sipoo is the rebellious countryside neighbour of Helsinki that has been in the news in negative light the past year or so. The capital area getting densely populated (in a Finnish scale and Helsinki needs more land to house the new inhabitants. Sipoo was not willing to give much demanded land, so it was taken by force. Wikipedia describes it:

Helsinki announced plans to annex a part of the municipality in order to respond to population growth pressures. The Finnish state council voted in favour of the annexation on June 28, 2007

Sipoo couldn’t live in the past forever. The capital area is growing and Sipoo is now finally having to face the facts. Its eternal love for countryside and green meadows is at the same time amusing and painful to watch, but the times are changing nevertheless.

Few empty chairs make a typical Sipoo festival

The jazz was great and program varied remarkably; a four-piece harmonica band Sväng, Iiro Rantala trio featuring saw-playing Irina Björklund, funky Tuomo Prättälä band, Claes Andersson’s jazz trio (Finnish MP and previous Culture Minister) and talented singer/piano player Anna-Mari Kähärä. I really enjoyed the variety of music styles.

The weather was cold but sea breeze and live jazz make good for the brain. It was actually so cold that the bar ran out of coffee instead of beer, which is not the usual thing to happen in Finland.

Kalkkijazz was held in this charming setting

The chalk covered the soil

Another great discovery of the weekend (thanks to Lorry) was The Guild:

The Guild is a independent sitcom webisode about a group of online gamers. It is written for gamers, about gamers by a gamer. Episodes vary from 3-6 minutes in length, and follow the Guild members’ lives online and offline. The Guild is the winner of the YouTube and Yahoo 2007 Video Awards for Best Web Series, as well as recipient of the SXSW/On Networks 2007 Greenlight Award for Best Series.

It is genius and so painfully and adorably accurate. I recommend it for all you fellow gamers out there.

The climax boss fight is about to begin… spot the rogue, anyone?

(a screenshot from The Guild final episode)