Month: October 2013

conference

Playful13 – Nature of Games

Pippin Barr – What are curious games Pippin is a game designer, artist and critic who has done many wonderful things that you’re probably already too busy cooing over to bother finish reading this. He’s just spent the past month working to create the Digital Marina Abramovich Institute, where visitors can experience exercises designed by […]

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conference

Playful13: Making Mishief

Dani Lurie. Making Mischief Graphic designer and a writer. Is really highly excitable. Especially about getting people to interact with the world in interesting ways. So that brings us to mischief. It has traditionally been bad. Associated with troublemakers. So why is it good, why worth talking about. When a toddler, her and her brothers […]

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conference

Playful13: Designing Controllers

George Buckenham – Things that go Squish George “makes games and things” – often silly (Punch The Custard, A Bastard), often hacking existing things (Proteus Frog mod; Sweareoke Guitar Hero mod) and sometimes just straight up, fiendish games (Hell Is Other People, CUBES). George is going to be talking about videogames and their relationship with […]

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conference

Playful 13: Designing with playfulness

Duncan Fitzimmons. Director at Vitamins A small and nimble design agency; they work across a wide range of industries and applications and everything is multi-disciplinary. Look to create a sense of magic and wonder in everything they do. The talk is about how they do that and how playfulness is involved. Samsung came along; about […]

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life, travel

Japan: The Last Days

After the touristing of the last 2 weeks, the last 2 days were basically travel. First of all we travelled from Hiroshima back to Tokyo via Shinkansen, the bullet train. We were staying in the Shinjiku area, so wandered along to the park Hyatt (as all the reviews say, made famous by the film Lost […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 14: Hiroshima

Today feels like our last full day in Japan – tomorrow is travelling back to Tokyo and getting ready to leave. We’re still in Hiroshima and the plan today was to walk round the Peace Memorial Park and visit the museum and memorials there. First was the A-bomb Dome. As a concrete building, it was […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 13: Hiroshima and Miyajima

An early start to the day as we headed to the station to catch another Shinkansen, heading further west to Hiroshima. It takes just over 2 hours (discounting the standing at stations) to travel the 224 miles, speeding through the countryside. Except it wasn’t really countryside, as you’d call it in the UK. There’s no […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 12: Nara

There’s so much to do in Kyoto we haven’t even started to scratch the surface. But today, we took the decision to head to Nara, the old capital of Japan. Or should I say older, as it was capital from 710 for 75 years. It’s about an hour SE of Kyoto. Like most of the […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 11: Kyoto

A day in Kyoto. Despite the many, many temples and shrines, World Heritage Sites and Cultural Treasures, the main part of Kyoto is basically ugly, like most cities in Japan it appears. Any charm has been destroyed as buildings are built and rebuilt, modern, flat, grey. Electricity lines snake down streets, not underground but in […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 10: Kyoto

A new city! Today we travelled from Nagoya to Kyoto, to continue with out sightseeing touristy part of the trip. We boarded the Shinkansen for the 40min trip. We had intended to forward the luggage, but it turns out, that it takes 24 hrs, so we took them with us. Somehow, despite not really buying […]

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f1, life, travel

Japan Day 9: Race Day at Suzuka

Today was the day of the Japanese Grand Prix. The 15th race of the season. A race where Vettel could win the championship. My second GP of the year. And the reason why Sofia and I are in Japan. But this isn’t a race report. These blog posts are more about my travels in Japan. […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 8: Still at Suzuka

Another day at the races. Today was qualifying. We got there for 10ish, plenty of time to wander around and watch weird audience games, people watch and then take in final practice. We met up with Hiro, whom I had met last February in Barcelona for F1 testing. He’d managed to go to 4 GPs, […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 7: Suzuka

So today was the day, the start of the event we have built our holiday around, the Japanese Grand Prix. At the start of the week, rain was predicted, but the day dawned sunny and bright and stayed that way. it was 29C at the track and the only use of umbrellas was for shade. […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 6: Hakone and travel

Sleeping on a futon to the sound of a waterfall is definitely an experience. A good night sleep. The breakfast this morning was also an experience, very, very different and will no alternatives. Grilled fish, salad, pickles, chicken/okra, miso soup, rice and a soft boiled egg. I had a go at everything – and finished […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 5: Hakone

So today we said goodbye to Tokyo and escaped to the wilds of Hakone, a mountainous region to the south-west of the capital. First up, we said goodbye to our suitcases, sending them by the luggage transport system direct to Nagoya. The we boarded a series of trains. First the underground line. Then the local […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 4: Tokyo still

Our last full day in Tokyo. As I said yesterday, we were planning a split strategy. Sofia went off to the zoo to see pandas and then to an out of town theme park to see Hello Kitty! I carried on in town. First up, the Tokyo National Museum, to look at the history of […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 3: Tokyo

Tokyo, Japan, Day 3. Today was a day built on changes. The original plan was to visit a bunch of museums, all around Ueno Park. The problem was that neither of us had properly read the guidebooks and failed to realise that they all close on a Monday! We first of all wondered through the […]

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life, travel

Japan Day 2: Tokyo continues

An early awakening, 6am, but nothing earlier than usual. So jetlag appears to not be hitting too hard today. First up, the hotel breakfast. Rice and meatballs and miso soup. Plus coffee and chocolate bread. Today was going to be a fairly light day. We caught the tube over to Shibuya to take a look […]

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travel

Tokyo Day 1

After landing in Tokyo this morning, I can say that the extra money spent on flying Premium Economy was well worth it. I got some sleep (thanks to super-duper earplugs that managed to block out most of the crying and screaming baby) plus enough room to get comfortable. It was an easy trip into town […]

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