TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

8:54 PM
Posted by jodi rose

ok that's a bad in-joke, based on a conversation kate had with the head of dept here about the centre for music, mind and technology.. why didn't we think of that.. trying to come up with alternatives.. sisu is a finnish concept of chutzpah which roughly translates as 'able to go out in the snow and kill a bear' or something like that

anyway, I digress
had a very productive discussion with sophea and john evans (aware mobile media guru yes you remember him and andrew from january, now back in helsinki from oz) after he finished building our new database for all the ääniradio sound files - what a legend, knocked one up in a few hours! - asked about how exactly i would get the sound into the nokia 6630 3G phone I was advised would be the best way to get cable sound streaming from the bridge in helsinki. if we don't have a wifi spot by some chance floating out the back of media lab or over near the science centre in tikkurila.

In my complete technical ignorance my first thought was we could stream via a gprs card in the laptop - but apparently it has two bandwith option - crap and really crap!

The idea now is to use a 3G data card, although the only ones available from the shop I went into today were 100mb for €18.30 per month, and then €1.74 per mb after that - which could get very expensive very quickly especially after a few tests...

John pointed out that 3G has a lot of latency and dropped packets (neither of which are good things particularly in a live performance) also we know the 3G cards are meant to have good download speed, but not much about their upload facilities..

I thought that we could send the files through bluetooth, then john suggested using a laptop and connecting to the net via the phone - but then he remembered that model doesn't have a network serial connect - the earlier models do, but nokia took them out due to security concerns.

Now, we're back to the original idea which I had mistakenly thought was gprs, but is in fact a 3G data card, that goes straight into your laptop and you can go online and send huge files to your hearts content. or at least I hope so.

sophea's alternate suggestion is to use the phone line - hey, that sounds kinda cool and very simple - and mix a couple of lines to increase the signal quality - we have to contact someone who may have done something like this and get more info about the details... anyway, I really like this option, cause my original idea about the glebe island bridge is that the cables are the voice of god, and when I made the first recording the fabulous peter wellings, chief engineer at rta came down the stairs with one of the models of the bridge in his hand, saying, it's god on the line! it was a very cute moment and even though I can't defend this notion in an academic theory paper, it has a certain currency and intrigue for people who aren't stuck in a world where everything has to be referenced and proven.