Die Krähe

The long awaited course on flamenco singing was last weekend. Sadly Inmaculada Rivero had trouble with her voice and could not teach us. Nevertheless, we had our course, as Jesús Flores (sang in Kromosomi 47 Flamenco!) took the task. He was absolutelu wonderful and also rather patient and understanding with us timid Finns.

We mostly worked on tangos, also buleria and finally a shy (that’s me being shy, not Jesús) attempt at soleá. I am still processing it all, but it was really all a realization that there is only so much you can do on your own with records. My biggest problem is with the rythm - in classic training you are supposed to follow the beat and not slip - in flamenco you always slip, follow, lead, it’s more of an organic connection. I honestly thought I had a hang of it all at one point, but then when it was my turn to sing alone I did not know when to start. That is something you can not train with a record - the song will not wait, and you will believe you started right even when you did not. But we decided on the course we will bribe a guitarrist to work with in the future, see if we will find one…

Well, I had to try it out and I can say for sure now. Telecommuting is not for me. I’m a social creature so sitting isolated at the home office for 8-10 hours a day was doing some serious damage. The other part is how much the boundaries between work and … er, different work… blur when you have a home office. It’s one thing to bring tasks home with you, that I’m accustomed with, and do not excpect things to change as long as I actually like what I do for a living. But when I also have home interferring with my work throughout the day, with unwashed dishes and, just now, cats meaowing for food and demonstratingly jumping on the keyboard, that’s when the equation stops making any sense.

So, set on a steady path to find me some colleagues and a place to hide from cats and dishes, I had been checking out open positions for a while when I accidentally stumbled upon my dream job. Turned out they wanted me and I want them, harps and violins played in the heavens and… I will start at The Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory at Helsinki University of Technology in March, as part of the Art & Magic research group headed by Tapio Takala. My first task will be with the research project Interactive Embodied Emotional Experience (IEEE for short) involved with research on embodied experiences, mimic interaction and emotionally responsive user interfaces.

As I am writing this, I feel really happy with my decision, even more so than yesterday when I went there to sign the papers. The combination of hardcore technology expertise with artistic and expressive interfaces is a delicious blend as such, but it does also provide for means to investigate many serious questions concerning user experience and interaction with/within information systems. This project will also allow me to return to my investigation of interactive sound interfaces, which has been on hold too long already.

Now this is something for forgetful people - PassPack is a service for saving your passwords online. Concerned about security? Well, I’m suspicious enough I don’t think this is something I’d put my credit card info on. But I can remember only so many passwords and at the moment, I’ve way crowded my memory space. The biggest problem is actually those services I don’t use so regularly, those are the ones that are really hard to remember when you finally need them. So there’s acutally a whole bunch of passwords of rather low sensitivity I’d rather not have to remember. This is certainly a better alternative to writing down passwords on small paper notes (which I am sure to misplace) or using the same passwords over and over again.

Found via franticindustries.

The 10th Helsinki Flamenco Festival is near and to my delight, I noticed the festival courses include one on flamenco singing, taught by Inmaculada Rivero. I have never sung flamenco, but I do look forward to it!

From a physical health perspective, this winter has been close to catastrophy! The finishing touch was last week, when my lower back broke down leaving me more or less useless for almost a week. But yesterday was quite ok, and today I intend on doing a full days work.

The good (?) thing with all this back trouble, I am now extra consciencious with my exercising. Bought one of those big gym balls, too, because the doctor recommended it and it felt like a good way of motivating myself to work out more. One of the exercise movements with the ball is to sit on it and balance with your feet off the ground. Sitting is not really something I like, since that still makes my back hurt quite a bit, but I had to try out the move. Surprise, it felt really fine and did not hurt a bit! So today I tested sitting on the ball instead of in my work chair, just for a change to see how it feels - what a difference! I think I may well use the ball for a while instead of the chair, see if that helps keep my back in better condition. Should do so, since sitting on the ball it is nearly impossible to maintain a static position that will kill your back. Plus now whenever I feel like a short work on my abs, I can lift my feet up and try to balance. Tricky and effective! Oh, and I can bounce, too!