Oranse

Enkelilahti, Finland

2012-02-15T17:56:45Z

Finns should found a new city. In Turku archipelago, near the city Sauvo, approximately on this spot, and name it Angel Bay, Enkelilahti.

Why?

Well, below is a great circle, the shortest path on the surface of a sphere, between Arkhangelsk, Russia, and Ängelholm, Sweden.
Arkhangelsk is commonly known as Archangel in English, Ängelholm in turn means Angel Islet.

It crosses mainland Finland’s coastline in this manner:

So, how awesome wouldn’t it be that three different coastal cities named after angels would all be on a mathematically straight line?

Damn awesome, that’s what.

[ Postscript: I cannot give the URL to the map with the path, but you can calculate it yourself at http://www.acscdg.com ]

On motivation

2011-11-21T20:06:26Z

Lying in bed last night, or morning, I think I discovered one core reason for my ‘procrastination’, laziness, or lack of motivation.

Setting the scene: The current tropical climate in Finland has hindered me from doing pretty much anything. I think it has to do with us being used to endure cold. Whenever I start to do something advanced or strenuous, like move about, my brain is forcing me to calm down so I won’t overheat. Even when I get excited, I feel my innards boiling. The air in my apartment is saturated with humidity, so my body cannot cool itself by sweating. Probably one of the most difficult things in the universe is to create coldness. You just have to create a lack of heat by moving it elsewhere, and even then you’re creating heat, otherwise uncle Newton gets upset.

But fleeing inside my school’s AC’d classroom hasn’t helped much. Now one core function of motivation, getting things done, is to have a designated location for it. An office, shed, your desk, bench, lathe, your tools. It’s rooted deep, a bit like conditioning; when you enter the place, you shift gears in your head and you just start to work. The problem of feeling unmotivated persists, because the classroom isn’t mine. I don’t have my tools or my environment. The problem also persists home, because that’s a place you make cozy for yourself. That’s your place for relaxing. That’s why people have home offices or studies, and don’t do work on their sofas.

The notion of a workplace is connected to a periodical rhythm, which also turns out to be a pretty rooted-in concept in our functionality. You have this time for that, then you do those things, you eat inbetween, and later you do XYZ. Your brain optimizes them into routines when possible, and you start to feel good carrying them out. The XYZ, apart from your duties, is obviously your basic mental needs. Social interaction, happiness, solitude, relaxation.

To the point: Yes, it’s the web and IRC. But not how you think it is.

I’ve seen countless times people go on “strikes” from IRC or IM’s, and I’ve never actually understood its benefit. To me it felt like self-deception; you’re having interaction because you need it, not because it’s dragging you in against your will. They start to loathe or belittle social media to invent excuses to stay away from it, because their need for it scares them. But yes, the abstinence does motivate to look for better options.

I’m probably quite liberal thinking that interaction is interaction, speaking audibly or textually has as much impact on your (existing) relations as the other. Text does have a damn low bandwidth carrying the bulk of our communication compared to face-to-face, but I’ve never felt the need to belittle textual interaction.
Now though, the thing I discovered, is that in my moderate lack of personal interaction, I’m more dependent on the small dose IRC provides.

It’s quite simple, really. Take a generic student; his or her day is partly filled with social interaction in school, work and friends. Let’s measure this dose between 8-12. Her daily need is 10, so after a few days of twelves she’ll withdraw a bit from feeling tired, and keep the day to herself.
If we take into consideration the low bandwidth of textual interaction, a daily dose from IM’s is for instance 7. You keep filling that gap constantly, because you don’t want to feel lonely. We even have a very strong need for just outputting information.

Simply said, the struggle for social fulfilment is filling your days, if you won’t get a healthy overdose of it. Afterwards you can set your mind on getting things done, because you’ve satisfied the more pressing needs.

Highway

2011-11-24T00:17:56Z

Sture

2011-11-21T23:11:41Z

There is a beautiful metalwork grate above a doorway that leads into the courtyard of a city block near me, on the street Sturenkatu.
The grate consists of abstract loops and straight lines, but create these letters when combined correctly. I decided to trace it, I may even create a font off of it some day.

Why isn’t architecture like this done anymore. I wish Art Nouveau had never stopped.

[View in Google Streetview] [The Sture family on Wikipedia]

Logo: Radioon

2011-11-21T22:56:17Z

Commission for a web radio station Radioon, “into the radio” in Finnish, containing the pun Radio On.

Diverge

2011-07-29T08:42:01Z

I decided to try on a more unforgiving media than computer graphics; ink.
This was just mindless sketching, to see how my hand reacts to signals and how the ink reacts to the paper.
Turned out nice, this organic circuitry, so I decided to vectorize it. Maybe this could evolve into a new style for textile printing.

Ghost of light

2011-07-29T08:26:37Z

Alternate symbols

2011-11-24T00:25:40Z

Inspired by the article Realism in interface design [via], I started to contemplate on our symbols we are very familiar with, but rarely are aware of their origins. Of course, they are obvious origins, otherwise they wouldn’t have established such a firm root in our culture(s).
And in my normal manner, I started to question them.

Take for example, the arrow, →. A line and a triangle, signifying movement by pointing a direction, quite often two-dimensionally, by assuming a start point and a destination. The origin is quite simple; you take a long straight twig, sharpen its one end, apply acceleration, it goes in the direction you point it at, it kills an animal, you get food. The tool has been such a milestone in man’s development that it formed the symbol for a direction.
Now imagine a culture, or a species, which hasn’t developed in such a manner. How would they signify movement?

What I came up with is quite simple and, I hope, unambiguous.
I assumed the species in question has stereoscopic sight, so that it at least has a concept for perspective. With perspective, moving objects may appear larger or smaller, depending on its distance to the viewer. I also assume that the culture’s (or a creature of it) default grasp of movement is from left to right. I chose this for the sake of familiarity. I also assume the creatures are moving mainly horizontally, so the system isn’t vertical.

Further points;

the focus is “me“, the observer
the system is only two-colored; a simple tool can create a filled or an empty figure (a blunt end, and a sharp end)
“me” is black/filled, because it’s heavier, has more contrast, so it’s higher in hierarchy.

The basic structure is a signifier of movement, if one would imagine the smaller circle to be approaching the viewer, by two frames of the motion. The circle doubles itself in size, and their distance is parallel with tangets of a 30° inclination.
These numbers have no larger meaning, I only found this to be symmetrical and harmonic. Although, isometric projection is often displayed as a 30° inclination to the horizon, as in many games, so it has an easy connection with perspective.

I also thought about our symbols + and -. Obviously + has two lines, so it’s more, and – is less. But less than… what exactly?
By turn, the spherical symbols could also substitute these. The black circle is again the basic component, and adding a smaller circle on top you naturally add. Here I assume the culture has gravity, so by adding simple objects to a whole, you stack them on top of each other. The less-symbol is inverted because of semantic and visual reasons; they are easier to discern from each other, and less is the inversion of more.

Lastly, I came up with entry- and exit-symbols, which have the same visual and semantic structure as above.

These symbols were heavily influenced by a brilliant webcomic, Rice Boy.

Emergent movies

2010-07-07T19:39:32Z

In a very odd and strange dream I saw last night, I came upon a thought inside the dream of a movie, that would have a “dynamic” plot. In other words, the plot of the movie would change every time you watch it. We could potentially possess the technology for accomplishing this.
Then I started searching for similar content, because this would hardly be such a unique thougth.

Turns out, there isn’t such a great deal of information of this.
Of course, what this needs is
1) a powerful AI to decide when to change plot, to what, in every plot turn.
2) Either a) a great deal of pre-produced content to replay at will, or b) a very powerful AI (or several) to produce the content as the movie runs.

I’m not thinking about interactive movies, what I’m looking for is more like procedural or emergent.
Everything starts with computer games, and what is called non-linear gameplay, where the player has eg. geographical or narrational freedom (like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Fallout series or Assassin’s Creed)

A new milestone in emergent narrative is the game Left 4 Dead and its AI Director, which changes the gameplay in a way that suites the current state in the game (changing the difficulty, amount of ammo, supplies etc).

Something other I stumbled upon in this search was a Markov chain. From Wikipedia: [A Markov chain is a sequence of random variables X1, X2, X3, ... with the Markov property, namely that, given the present state, the future and past states are independent.] [A Markov process, named after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov, is a mathematical model for the random evolution of a memoryless system, that is, one for which the likelihood of a given future state, at any given moment, depends only on its present state, and not on any past states.]

In essence, the movie at point T1 (time) will have a plot turn to A1, excluding the other alternatives, which can affect the ending. At a further key point, the plot will change at T2 to A2, and thus excluding further developments that are dependent on A1.
I’m a visual person, so I drew a small figure to understand this.

Here is naturally only one possible beginning and seven different endings, depending on how the plot advances.

The technical limitations are beginning to diminish, because an emergent movie needs a lot of filmed material, a point which is kinda moot, given the thought how many hours of footage the clients do not see. I guess it wouldn’t be that hard to film multiple variations of the same scene.
And if it wouldn’t be accomplished with live-action actors, computer animation nowadays is very powerful (if Disney/Pixar wouldn’t use it as a money-printing device with the same dull one-liners and the same goddam fish).
I a sense, animation would make a more powerful impact, with much more possibilites than pre-recorded footage. Key points would be truly random.
The only limitation is naturally the narrational AI running everything, and there’s not coming anything out, maybe in a decade.

Still, a fascinating idea. Imagine a horror movie which surprises you at every time. Or what will happen when the bad guys do actually win.

[This is not a wallpaper meme]

2010-12-12T11:37:40Z

Participating to a Livejournal wallpaper meme with my previous wallpapers, as far back as I can remember, chronologically backwards.
(free for taking, I’m feeling generous)

[personal photo]

[Can't remember, google 'earth orbit' etc.]

[Carina Nebula and the dying star Eta Carinae]

[In the shadow of Saturn]
Notice the dot near the main rings on the upper left side. That’s Earth.

[Saturn in blue and gold]

[Middelgrunden, source gone]

[Range Murata: RE:Futurhythm]

[Trigun Maximum 1 p.100]