Friday, November 3

I started the morning by preparing for tonight’s session of the Digital Mediascapes course. Since the students had not starting talking unless prompted I decided to add a TEDtalk to tonight’s mix.

I noticed that the BuddySchool site now plays the video automatically. I then realised that Emilia’s inability to organise a clear system of versioning meant that she had made the last corrections on top of an older version of the files, and thus reintroduced a series of errors we had already solved. I had to stop what I had planned in order to get myself a versioning system for the various zip files. Having done this I uploaded another set of files that solved almost all the issues, except the one Emilia set out to solve yesterday.

At 10:00 I started work on the files for the Nobanet Topic 9 that I will premiere at the meeting next Thursday in Copenhagen. At 10:50 I made a video for the topic, introducing the theory section. I improvised it and wondered afterwards if it had made any sense at all. I expect I will find out later when Aki send me a copy of the file.

I then carried on working on my material for the Nobanet topic. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, none of them my doing, I have become a one-man group. Originally we had a team of thee lined up to research and organise the topic. Nowadays I play the part of all three.

At 12:10 I left Arcada and walked to Dylan, to have a lunch with Stefan, who has returned briefly from Austria to gather up his remaining books. I arrive a little early and so I walk across the road to take a photograph of Dylan. I would not describe the building as exciting or noteworthy architecturally, but it does look like a building in this part of Helsinki. I know that I could look back at this image in twenty years and remember the Helsinki of a particular period.

I will say hello to Milla, who has run Dylan since before I organised the conference dinner here four or five years ago, and Stefan and I will help ourselves to the soup and buffet. We will talk for an hour and a half about Vienna, Helsinki, Tallinn, and other places. Stefan plans to bring students to Helsinki next October and we will agree to see if we can arrange some joint activities for them.

I will get back to Arcada just after the rector’s coffee party has started, so I will sit down with my slideshows and modify them for this evening. I made the movie this morning in front of a green screen and I will get a sample movie from Aki showing three possible backgrounds. The first shows me standing in the Antarctic surrounded by penguins, and I will immediately choose this one. I will ignore the African plains and the jungle.

Maria will tell me that today’s coffee party buns have Turkish Peber cream, and so I will shoot upstairs to get one. I will find the room deserted but ful of buns. I will leave feeling full.

At 16:00 I will begin the second session of the Digital Mediascapes course.