Friday, March 30, 2007

Perttu Rulez!

I just came from Perttu Hämäläinen's defence of a doctoral thesis. His thesis "Novel Applications of real-time audiovisual signal processing technology for art and sports education and entertainment" describes his innovative and inspiring works from the viewpoint of UCD (HCI). Opponents Prof. Aaron Bobick (GeorgiaTech) and PhD Tony Manninen (Oulu University) chivvied the debater for a couple of hours. At the end they stated that the work Perttu has done is more significant that he (debater) understands -- and I definitely agree! There are so many anecdotal notions (as Perttu calls them) and observations to learn from. I suggest everyone dealing with novel HCI technologies and spatial/haptic interface designers to read his papers/thesis. Also do check out his HCI experiments from: KickAssKungFu, QuiQui and Animaatiokone.

Friday is just a perfect day to chill and relax. For Finnish speaking readers, I suggest to check out Herkkusia.tv (7th episode). At least I laughed my head off while watching (Seppo was hilarious!)! For those more in the mood of meditation and stocktaking, check Did You Know? clip from YouTube.


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