Tec
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Launchy it up
Posted by Suzi on 03 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Tec
My beautiful new Sony laptop arrived on Monday morning. It’s a 14″ e series with a 500GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM and an i5 processor. It took me a good few minutes to depackage it because I was so worried I was going to break it - it’s pretty terrifying being left alone with something you’ve worked for 3 weeks to pay for! Despite this I would highly recommend it to anyone - not only is it aesthetically pleasing and the keyboard lovely to use but the spec is pretty good for the price. I’ve spent the week getting used to it and transferring everything over from my old laptop. The most exciting thing I’ve come across so far is the voice recognition - a programme I have spent many happy hours trying to convince of its ability to understand me. I’ll keep working on this. Tonight in celebration of finally accepting that the fantastic new thing is mine I’ve installed launchy on it and now it feels like home.
Things to do in Helsinki
Posted by Suzi on 05 Apr 2009 | Tagged as: Art, Cafés, Museums, Places to visit, Tec, Things to do
I got up this morning to try that most Finish of things - a sauna. The hotel has one for boys and one for girls and it’s not just a sauna - it’s a whole complex complete with room to put your clothes, a relaxation room, shower room and sauna. I had the whole thing to myself and spent a good half hour in there. Another day and another ridiculously huge buffet breakfast. We then borrowed some bikes from the hotel and cycled round the city. We stopped and looked at the Finish Orthodox church - which stands on a hill looking down over the harbour. The air was heavy with incense and the the floor packed with worshipers. I then headed off randomly cycling around the city to get a feeling for the place and ended up at the Botanical Gardens. There was much outside but the glasshouses are beautiful 19th century glass constructions. I even saw some little kids dressed up as witches which is apparently an Easter tradition very similar to ‘trick or treat’ at Halloween.
It’s an easy city to cycle around and I managed to see some of the landmarks including the massive white Lutheran Cathedral.
I ended by back at Kiasma - the Museum of Contemporary Art and spent a very pleasant afternoon inside. The entrance fee was a hefty 7 Euros but you can leave your coat for free as well as take a free audio guide round with you so it seemed reasonable enough. My favourite was Drop by Heikki Ryynänen.
After a cup of tea K and I were ready to find a bar for a drink and a catch up with the author of the Globos project.
First time in Helsinki
Posted by Suzi on 04 Apr 2009 | Tagged as: Cafés, Museums, Places to visit, Politics, Tec, Travelling
I flew to Helsinki from the Landvetter Airport yesterday after work on one of Blue 1’s uncrowded planes. It was a real pleasure after flying on Ryanair. The staff were really friendly and even gave me a map of the city, as well as directions to my hotel and information on which bus to take into the city. To get into the city centre you take the number 615 from just outside the airport - it takes you to the bus/train station in the centre. We’re staying in a hotel in the Katajanokka area- which is to the west of the city centre. It’s easy to walk to from the station. The weather is somewhat drizzly and the water is frozen with chunks of ice in it. The city has a 1930s feel to it due to the architecture and it really is surprisingly soviet as well. Apparently Finland is often used instead of Russia when filming Russian based films because it looks so similar. Most of the signs here are in Finnish, Swedish and English which makes everything easy. Generally people seem quite comfortable speaking in English too - which makes travelling here nice and easy.
Today after gorging ourselves on a huge buffet breakfast, we wandered up to the Museum of Contemporary Art only to find a demonstration outside protesting the situation in the Congo. Find out a bit more here. They are preparing a petition to give to market giants such as Nokia in a bid to make them more ethically responsible. After this sobering start I spent the day at Pixelache drinking coffee in Cafe Kiasma and checking out what was going on. I went to the Open Forum and got to hear lots of interesting talks about projects past, present and future. Afterwards I went to listen to someone from Art+Com speaking. The stuff they are doing is really inspiring but it clearly takes a lot of money so it’s just not possible without corporate clients to pay for it.
Afterwards we walked up to Töölönlahti which is a large lake behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and then past the Opera House and round the north bit of Helsinki which wasn’t that nice. We then dropped down to the train station and ended up in a little cafe looking out over Kiasma. After a quick wander round the city we headed out of the perpetual drizzle into nice warm hotel.
Pixelache, Five Filters and The Bay
Posted by Suzi on 31 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Music, Tec
I’m off to Helsinki this weekend to go to Pixelache where K is going to be in the spotlight for a couple of minutes talking about his Five Filters project. Apparently there is snow on the ground there - so it will be like travelling back in time to the winter. I’ve got four books out of the library on Helsinki and fully intend to read all of them so that I will well prepared to see all the sights the city has to offer. That is if I get a moment off from writing articles for Now or Never and working.
Sadly all this travel to the far corners of Scandinavia means I can’t go to Storan to see Sahara Hotnights playing.
Meanwhile the Pirate Bay trial has come to an end. A verdict isn’t expected before April 17th and the defendants are facing face up to two years in prison each and $180,000 in fines plus millions in damages. If all this seems too gloomy then check out xkcd great cartoon to lighten the mood.
Media Lab Prado
Posted by Suzi on 01 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: Politics, Tec
Keyvan is still at Medialab Prado and although he hasn’t taken any pictures himself you can see some here. He now has his very own team of collaborators and they are well on their way to make the Five Filters a reality. It totally looks like a teccie workaholic’s paradise.
In the gaps between work and fika breaks I am still busy with the Occupations website.
The Five Filters - Garage Science meets the Propaganda model
Posted by Suzi on 23 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Tec
K is off to Madrid next week to the MediaLab-Prado Grange Science Interactivos workshop. He is going to be making a project named after and based on The Five Filters from the Propaganda Model as put forward in the book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky called Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. If you’re interested in collaborating you can sign up here and they’ll put you up in a youth hostel.
Slimbox, Simple+ and Zenphoto
Posted by Suzi on 04 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Tec
Hip hip hooray - my photo gallery looks better today. As you know I use Zenphoto to display all my lovely pictures and today disheartened by the fact that although the theme I use with it is great to look at, sadly there was no functioning JavaScript (such as Lightbox) to make the photos look great. So I set K the task of finding out why Slimbox wasn’t working with the Simple+ theme as was so claimed on the descriptive blurb and here is what I found out…
He managed to sort out the problem by installing jQuery Lightbox. It turns out that Simple+ was written using Slimbox and Mootools at a time when Zenphoto didn’t use any of these Javascript libraries. But then Zenphone re-released with jQuery built into the application and this was incompatible with Mootools. Although the new Slimbox is supposed to support jQuery - on first go it didn’t seem to work.
So if you too want to use Simple+ with something Lightbox-esque then try installing jQuery lightbox -
1. Go to album.php in the theme/simple+ folder
2. Remove references to Mootools
3. Replace links to Slimbox with links to jQuery lightbox
and Bob’s your Uncle - you’ve got yourself a beautiful photo gallery!
FSCONS
Posted by Suzi on 26 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Tec
It’s wet and a bit windy here in Gothenburg but still pleasant to walk the streets and see the lights reflecting off the puddles and the river. I’ve just spent a very a pleasant weekend at a free software conference at Chalmers University. There were quite a few interesting talks and ideas flowing and everyone was enthusiastic about using open source code which was nice.
It’s website tastic here
Posted by Suzi on 14 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Education, Sites, Tec
So I’m really in the website mood and I’ve finally updated my own website struggling with photoshop in the process and I like to think succeeding to some small degree. I’ve also refreshed my Gothenburg and Norwich pages and the whole bundle of pages and sites is starting to feel a little more ‘mine’.
The weather here in Gothenburg is starting to get cold and sandals and sunglasses have been pushed aside in my attempt to shut windows and snuggle into jumpers. I’ve been steadily working my way through the Linguaphone course material I borrowed from the library and I have to say it’s good solid stuff. No wonder it’s so expensive to buy. Horrary for libraries!!