Trips to Tampere and Joensuu

Moikka,

Today, I’ll talk about my trip to Tampere, where I’ve tried Aurasma (an augmented reality application) and at the same time had fun with my friend Mari (I met her during the Innovation camp in Estonia 🙂 ). I’ll also say a few words about my trip to Joensuu (Eno more specifically) where I’ve been welcomed by Maarit (I also met her in Estonia! 🙂 ). 

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A few weeks ago, I went to Mari’s place in Tampere. She has been a fantastic host 🙂 ! Our task was to try Aurasma, which worked, well, sometimes… First, we had to understand how it worked, so we watched some tutorials and tried it in her living room. I wanted a bee to appear and it worked 😀 . Well, the bee (which was a GIF) was supposed to move its wings but this didn’t work, I still don’t understand why. I also made a Smurf with wings appear at the top of the Näsinneula observation tour, from there we enjoyed a wonderful view over the whole city 🙂 . The Smurf has a white background, but at this moment I didn’t have the right program to remove it.

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It was hard to find good trigger images (which defines the “place” where you will see the thing appearing), because the light is a major factor (any changes in the light will make it not working). For example, the overlay (so the thing that you want to make appear, like the bee) I had chosen was a rainbow. I wanted it to appear over a lake. One day, I took a picture of this place, went back home, did the work on my computer so that the rainbow would appear.  The next day, we went back to the same place and tried for a long time without success (yes it was frustrating 😀 ). The reason is that it was sunny the day before, and cloudy the next one… So this problem has still to be solved, as the aim for using the augmented reality within the Lights on! Project is to make the characters appear on the sites, which are all outside… 😀 It would be nice for visitors to be able to take selfies with those characters, whatever the weather looks like 🙂 .

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Apart from practicing our Aurasma skills, we also went to the Pyynikki observation tower, where we enjoyed a stunning view over the two lakes, we went to the Moro Sky Bar (one part of the bar doesn’t have a closed roof, so it was snowing inside!) img_3520and also to the cinema 🙂 . At the beginning I was trying to read the subtitles in Finnish but soon it was too hard so I had to concentrate on the English 😀 . One big discovery is that in Finland, people eat salty popcorns, with many weird tastes, and with Coca-Cola… That’s unthinkable for me 😮 ! In Belgium we eat caramelized popcorn… 😀 I’ve tried the sugary ones here but they were not good, very different from the Belgian ones… During those days, the weather got much colder so we had to rush to a clothes shop to buy me a legging and socks, as I was really freezing 😀 !

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Now a few words about Joensuu 🙂 . It took me around 7 hours to get there, totally worth it! Maarit picked me up at the station and on the way to Eno, I already enjoyed snowy landscapes 🙂 . We went to Koli National Park, which was stunning! There was a lot of snow (I LOVE SNOW, everybody here knows it 😀 ) and it was around -20° (I finally got to experience this cold, Nina had told me that I would look like an Eskimo 😀 ). We went to the theatre, even if I understood only a few words, it was nice to have experienced it, as theatre is a popular activity in Finland. We also went to the church on the Independance Day, I’ve tried a sledge, I’ve discovered some lovely handcraft shops and I watched the sunrise over a lake, what could I ask more? 🙂 .

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Mari as well as Maarit and her family have been more than welcoming, I’m so thankful 🙂 . Those two trips were just perfect, I had so much fun and will never forget them <3

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I finish my internship next Friday, time has passed so quickly, I can’t believe it’s almost the end 🙁

My last post will be about my whole experience and what I’ve learnt here :).

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