QBlog

Memories of Malmö

I'm sitting in an airport departure lounge (Copenhagen — price to get here by train from Malmoö: 107 Swedish Kroner, or somewhere between £10 and £11) so it must be time to blog.

Here's a picture of a twisty tower they have in Malmö:

It's called the "Turning Torso", which I hope is Swedish for "twisty tower" and not "turning torso".

What did I know about Malmö before I came here? Well, I knew it was in Sweden, I knew it traded with the Hanseatic League in the late Middle Ages (on account of having played The Patrician — good for wool, not bad for cloth, pig iron, leather and meat), I knew it was connected to Copenhagen by bridge (but not the size of the toll), and I knew it had this statue:

I think it's a statement about Swedish neutrality.

This is an entertaining piece:

Old meets new:

Actually, the McDonalds may be the older, as the griffon statue is dated 1999.

If ever Second Life breaks into the mainstream globally, I foresee trademark problems...

Well, that's one way to stop anyone from stealing your bike, I suppose:

I used to teach people to program in this language in the late 1980s:

Either this doesn't mean what it looks like it means, or Sweden's druids are a bit more contemporary than ours back in the UK:

Worth photographing, but not worth buying then attempting to get through customs:

The guy on the bike here behind the statue was picking up a coke can and a paper plate that had been left by a couple of teenaged boys about a minute earlier:

I saw the lads leave their rubbish behind, and could have binned it myself, but I thought I'd take the photograph first to see how Swedes reacted to it. Answer: much better than Brits would.

This fountain stopped working when I was about to photograph it, so I walked away and then it came on again.

I think it may be coin-operated, as those people to the right of it seemed to be at a set of controls and acted as if it were "their" fountain.

I suspect this guy may have permission to do this. You could smell his spray paint half a street away.

I quite liked this chap:

Malmö has quite a few elegant buildings, but not as many old ones as I thought it would, given that unlike many European cities it didn't have bombs raining down on it in the middle of the 20^th century (see statue of gun above — although a lot of good that would have done you, Sweden, if the British, Americans and Russians hadn't taken on the Nazis).

Here's a fountain in front of the town hall, featuring a statue of, er, er ... well, featuring a statue, anyway:

Oh my! Those letters can only have fallen off at random, which means..!

It should say ENGELBRATSGATAN, by the way, which is the street name ("gatan" means street or road or something similar).

Here's a wind farm seen from the train from Malmö to Copenhagen:

I saw lots of these last week in Germany, too. It would appear that the citizens of some countries don't regard them as blots on the landscape to be resisted at all costs, unlike the narrow-minded people of England who can't even bear to think that their view of the horizon from the beach may be obstructed by something providing them with low-carbon energy.

FTP Woes

Wuh? FTP from this hotel doesn't work either! What gives here?! I just overwrote all of QBlog with blank data again!

Smell of the Day

Coffee.

Smell of the day was going to be bacon, because that's what I could smell when I woke up. Bacon is right at so many levels: it smells great, it meant I wasn't awoken by my alarm clock, it gave me an incentive to go down to breakfast because I knew there was something I'd like, and it would have annoyed the hell out of any vegetarians in the building.

However, smell of the day is coffee, because that's what I could smell for most of the day on account of how I dropped a cup of it over myself moments before the beginning of the panel on which I was speaking.

Across the Border

My flight landed at Copenhagen airport, which is in Denmark of course, but thanks to a splendid bridge connection it's only a 20-minute drive from Malmö. There's a train that does it in 15 minutes, but at 11:30pm I didn't want either to wait for the next one or figure out what the ticket regime was. Hence, I took a taxi.

The taxi ride cost me 743 Danish krone, which equates to £83.18 .

I'm thinking that perhaps I'll take the train on the way back.

Waiting to Fly

Here I am at Heathrow, waiting for the gate to open for my flight to Copenhagen.

I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to make it, but I was lucky: the bus from West Bergholt to Colchester railway station was unusually undelayed, and the 16:03 from Colchester to London was usually delayed, so I managed to get onto the latter and ... oh, you're no more interested in reading this than I am than writing it.

The reason I thought I might be late was because I had to hang around at the university until 3pm, as 6 of my students were taking one of my exams (well, 6 of them were supposed to be taking it; I don't know how many actually showed up). There's some regulation or other hailing from gawd-knows-what obscure level of university administration that says lecturers have to be in their offices and reachable by phone whenever one of their examinations is being taken. I managed to get special dispensation to leave after an hour, because one of my colleagues agreed to cover for me. If I'd left an hour later, at the end of the exam, it would have been touch and go as to whether I'd have reached Heathrow in time for my flight.

As it happens, if I had decided not to ask to leave early, I almost certainly wouldn't have made the flight. The reason is that one of the students on my course has dyslexia and gets an extra 30 minutes to do a 2-hour examination. Yes, that's a 25% bonus. I don't know which of my students has the problem, despite having marked an assignment that they handed in in five, weekly installments, so either this dyslexia has come on suddenly or the other five students should be asking to be assessed for it, too.

The process that surrounds these exams is stifling. We're told when to pick up our exams to mark them, when to hand them to the general office to be second-marked, when to pick up the papers we're second-marking, and when to had them back. There are no sanctions that can be invoked against us if we choose to ignore any of this, so a good many members of staff will do just that. This will cause the administrative staff to draw up even stricter rules next year, crushing those of us who follow them but having no effect on those that can't be bothered to do so.

We have special marking orders, too, after comments by the external examiner last year. We have to put a mark on every every page to show it's been marked, but we're not allowed to use the traditional method of striking out the bits we've looked at. That's going to make it a pain to track whoat's been marked in shared papers. I'm planning on using a rubber stamp to indicate which pages I've looked at. I haven't decided whether to use one that says RICHARD or go for something sarcastic instead like a princess. Or maybe I should use stick-on stars, like primary school teachers do?

Process — it's just another chain holding me down.

I'm waiting to fy.

Duologies

At the Indie Games Convention, Brian Green recommended the book Banewreaker. It's basically a standard the Lord of the Rings epic as seen by the (supposedly) evil side. I was quite enjoying it, but sensed that feeling of under-editing that you often get in books that are more than one volume long. Of course, if I'd read the cover ("Volume One of The Sundering") I may have realised this sooner...

So, my problem is, do I buy volume two?

[Warning: minor spoilers ahead.]

The plot of the book concerns a prophecy. The way things stand, at every single opportunity for the prophecy to be deflected or derailed or stalled, it's carried on serenely. From this, I deduce that there is pretty well zero chance of the prophecy's failing to be fulfilled, which means volume two (the final volume) is going to be one almighty train wreck. Knowing that the bodies of all those characters in possession of an ounce of sympathy will be strewn around in pieces, should I buy it anyway? I don't actually want to see it happen, so not reading about it is the wise thing to do, but then there's a faint chance that some may survive, or that there's some kind of redemption, so it won't all be grimness. That said, everyone who's died so far has done so in a fairly pointless manner and with pointless results, so I don't expect things to change there, either.

Oh, maybe I'll just read the other book Brian recommended, The Innkeeper's Song...

Back Home

So, I'm back home, at least for one day. Tomorrow, I'm off to Malmö for the Nordic Games Conference, where I'm on a panel about social worlds. I'm usually on game worlds panels when I'm on panels at all, so this is a little different for me; it'll be fun to be able to say different things for once.

I'm still trying to complete the remnants of the uploading of QBlog's Potsdam pictures. Two of them (the first and the seventh) are still being timed out by BT's wonderful "high-speed download, when-we-get-round-to-it upload" broadband system. If I don't manage to get them uploaded soon, I'll give up and do it from the university tomorrow...

Pictures of Potsdam

I found out that if you deliberately drop broken camera, it can make it take photos again. I also found that it takes only 6-8 photos before running out of battery — and that's if you take the batteries out between pictures. If you leave them in, you're lucky to get 3 snaps before they're spent.

So, at great expense in battery purchases, here are some pictures of Potsdam...

A leaf stuck behind some bark on a plane tree:

Yes, I'm aware I didn't exactly make every shot count...

Here's a windmill:

According to the tourist map, it had to be repaired in 1998 after being badly damaged by fire in 1945.

As capital of the region of Brandenburg, Potsdam has its own Brandenburg Gate:

It also has its own rhinosceros hanging from straps:

These look so bad I guess they must be art:

I took a picture of this street because I thought the houses looked Dutch:

When I looked at the map, it turns out Potsdam has a Dutch Quarter...

The Germans don't seem to regard dandelions as weeds. There are huge carpets of them growing everywhere:

It's Spargelzeit here in Germany at the moment:

"Spargel" is one of those random German words I somehow know, like Zauberlehrling and Zimmer: it (Spargel) means "asparagus". Many restaurants put on a special Spargel menu, with half a dozen different Spargel specialities that are pretty much the same as every other restaurant's Spargel specialities.

Potsdam used to be in East Germany:

I wonder which building the communists constructed?

British Scientologists try to ensnare you in their lunatic cult by offering a free personality test. Not so in Germany:

Remember: the "-ology" part is the same as in "astrology", not as in "psychology" or "sociology".

What happens if no-one ever removes the posters that are stuck on walls?

You could build a papier maché house from enough of that stuff.

Instructions to the masses always work best in English, don't you think?

See this mosque?

Ha! Tricked you! It's actually a pumping station for the local landscaped gardens. I wonder if the Moslem population of Potsdam has a mosque disguised as a pumping station?

The buildings in the centre of Potsdam are all in good order and often very elegant. Walk a bit off the beaten track, though, and you find things like this:

The communists didn't deliberately demolish old buildings, but they couldn't organise the resources to stop them from decaying.

Finally, it turns out I'm not the only person mentioned on lampposts after all!

The Joy of Design

Today, I missed the final third of the Philosophy of Games conference to go to the Media Design Institute in Berlin, which runs a games degree. There, I spoke to about 20 of their students for around two hours, giving them my complete theory of why people play MMORPGs.

That 20 final-year undergraduates had come in to hear me talk on a Saturday morning in a language foreign to them was remarkable enough (especially given the attitude of many of my own students to attending my lectures), but after lunch (cookies and gummy bears) they presented their own ideas for an MMO. There were four of these, but we only had time to listen to three before we were thrown out of the building.

Now these students had only been working on their ideas for about 4 weeks, so things were a bit patchy. They'd gone into lots of detail in some places and less detail in others, so often they couldn't see what the consequences would be on later parts of the decisions they'd made in the earlier parts. As a designer, I could also sense they had conflicts between what they wanted to express and what they were expressing; for example, they might want a sandbox world, implying great freedom, but then impose unnecessary limitations on what the players could do in some specific aspect of play — an obvious tension to me, but one they wouldn't necessarily pick up on themselves until they'd spent lot more time on their designs. I think this was basically down to their not yet trusting their instincts: all the projects had elements to them which had come from other virtual worlds, but they hadn't yet figured that they were allowed not to put those things in if they didn't fit. So, they mainly had a lack of self-assurance, but that will definitely come.

Oh, and they were all blissfully unaware of the devious, scheming nature of some players, and the susceptability of their designs to griefing. I suggested they might want to consider how they could break their own designs (which is actually a good exercise anyway, because it means you get to understand your designs more). Hmm, maybe should have asked them to try to break each other's too, come to think of it...

If this were all there were to the day, I'd have returned a happy man. I love talking to people who are willing to listen, but also willing to challenge; who can be effortlessly inventive; who become excited by ideas, and can convey that excitement through their designs.

That wasn't all there was to the day, though. There was something else that was, alone, worth this four-day trip to Germany just to experience. One of the teams had an absolutely beautiful — that's beautiful way of handling religion. In the nearly 30 years I've been working in virtual worlds, I've never come across it before. It was stunningly elegant — I'm almost welling with tears here just thinking about it. It was one of those moments of designer joy that can't be expressed in words, that, I don't know, perhaps only 20 people in the whole world would fully appreciate, but is just awesome if you're one of those 20 people.

The students who described it liked it, and knew it was good, but I don't think they knew quite how good it was. That's as it should be: they included it because it said something they wanted to say, and the fact that it was a brilliant mechanic was just a bonus. It was there because it needed to be there, but my oh my, it was sweet.

Yeah, I know, you want me to tell you what it was they came up with so you can judge for yourself how good it is; sadly, I don't feel I can tell you. In part, this is because if you're not one of the 20 people who'll go OH MY GUCKING FOD when you hear it, you'll either take that as an insult or as evidence that I'm an addled old timer. However, the main reason I'm not repeating it is because it's not my idea to repeat. It would be like telling you how a magic trick works before it was performed. I'd prefer to give the magicians chance to show you the trick first — they deserve it.

Jeez, though, why has no-one thought of it before?

This is why I'm a virtual world designer.

Curious Facts

Roughly the same proportion of German people think English people watch Dinner for One on New Year's Eve as English people have never heard of it.

An innocuous riverside café in Berlin can serve Vienna Schnitzel that tastes better than the ones you get in Vienna.

All German T-shirts made for teenaged girls have words on them in English. If those words are: "I'm a fucking princess", that isn't apparently a problem.

The bridges over major roads look exactly the same design as the bridge over the A12 near where I live. The same blue arches, the same white support struts — they're identical.

German radio stations in taxis can only play songs sung in English, even if they're being sung by Germans. This includes the jingles.

If you accidentally turn your bag upside-down when getting out of a car, causing your camera to fall a metre to the ground, it can stop said camera from being able to take photographs. So, no pictures of Potsdam tomorrow...

Pay Attention, Essex University

This is what a university campus should look like:

My Name in Lights

It's a little odd to see my name everywhere:

It must be on every tree and lamppost in Potsdam:

Some Things I Learned Today

Unlike every other major city in Europe, people live in the centre of Berlin and commute to work in the suburbs. Normally, it's the other way round.

The Danish language has two genders, both neutral.

If you don't mark taps so people can tell hot from cold, then they can unknowingly drink water from the hot pipes that they really shouldn't be drinking.

There are laptops out there with a 6-hour battery life. That's 5 hours more than mine can manage...

Americans pronounce the surname Crowther with the first four letters having the same sound as the bird, "crow", rather than rhyming with "cow" as they do in the UK.

Post-modernism only gets worse.

Five attempts at saying the word "cinematographically" isn't enough for me to get it right.

For me, French is the opposite of art. I can understand French but can't generate it; I can generate art, but can't understand it.

Using slides as an aide memoire is now old-fashioned. All but one of today's speakers presented slides but read directly from their printed notes. One didn't even notice that her slides weren't showing until someone pointed it out.

There are 72 channels on the TV, all in German except BBC World (which is on twice).

It's possible to have an Internet connection that will open an ftp connection but won't transmit data on it. That's why the QBlog index page has disappeared...

Strange Words

I've heard people with bad speech impediments before, but the man sitting in front of me on the bus this morning sounded like a wookie. His wife understood him just fine, though.

The people doing the security checks at Stansted were talking to each other in French, which was a surprise. Normally, when they talk among themselves, it's in some language from the Indian subcontinent.

My 3-egg omolette with bacon at Frankie & Benny's was supposed to come with hash browns, fried bread and grilled tomato. It actually came just with the hash browns. When I queried it, I was told that the menu was wrong (although apparently not the part with the price on, of course).

To Potsdam!

I'm off to Potsdam in Germany today, for the Philosophy of Computer Games conference. I'm giving a keynote tomorrow evening which leads up to a panel, which makes it a little awkward — it's only 30 minutes long, and rather than answer any questions I have to set the context for a lively panel discussion. So, nothing barnstorming, then.

Hmm, my bus leaves in two and half hours, I should maybe think about packing...