Sweden, Spain, Germany, USA, London, Japan - here we come!

It's been a long time since my last post. Since then Joke and I have been traveling a lot & made a lot of plans for future journeys.

In July 2010 we visited my mom and Petra in Spain! we had the most wonderful time there. I hadn't visited them in their Spanish casita in an awfully long time. It was also great to see everybody there, like Bernado, Chelo and Vanessa!
While being there we went for hikes in the nearby sierra, swimming in the ocean, shopping at local market places and out eating at nice restaurants. And although that schedule was filled with physical activities, I still managed to gain a lot of weight. Totally worth it, though! As I said earlier, I had the greatest time!
Thank you mom and Petra for a wonderful vacation. I am looking forward to seeing you again in may!

October 2010 we spontaneously decided to take a trip to London. We were both very exciting about it, mainly because it was, as previously mentioned, a very spontaneous trip. That's a very unusual thing for us to do. On the other hand we had both never been to London or any English-speaking country for that matter. I was excited to be able to communicate with everyone there without sticking out as a tourist.
Unfortunately the trip turned out rather boring - London in cold October is really not our thing. Luckily we met a good friend of mine there, which lit up the mood immensely. Also: we were able to get last-minute tickets to The Lion King Musical. 60€ per seat (with bad view). I was against it at first but... Very much worth the money! After having seen the musical I would now be willing to spend 100€ for the same seats - and don't even ask me what I would spend for the good seats! haha :D

The 1st of February was another busy day for us: early that day we had to catch yet another flight. This time to Germany. It was about time that I would visit the good old Hulha-Team at home! And a lot of things had changed there. R&Y's three children have actually grown older (!), JTs company is awesome and doing really well and Mom and Petra call Spain their home. We booked the return flight for a 10-day stay. Plenty of time, I thought. Except that 10 days is nothing when you haven't seen your family in over a year.
So after a while we decided to extend our stay and rebook the flight. That turned out to be quite the hassle with this particular airline, so we simply canceled the return flight and booked a new flight with a completely different airline. All this extended our stay from 10 to 16 days. That way we weren't only able to spend more time with our loved ones, but we were also able to witness the 10-year anniversary of R&Y! Congratulations, you two! I am so glad I could be there with you and help you treasure that moment :)

The cake

The "secret" gift

The ring revealed!

Y&R's wish-balloons flying into the air

Y&R

A little Thank-You Note to the guests

After the Rain

Writer's Block
So I've been asked by Yvonne Hulha if I stopped blogging. The answer is: I don't know. I've been kinda busy lately and I kind of didn't have the feeling that anybody was really interested in what I had to say but then I also might just have been having a writer's block.

Taikonauten, The Dark Side of the Force
Recently work with CardCoaches (lets refer to them as CC from now on) has become much tougher and challenging than ever before. My status there has become quite serious. In fact, I get to do a lot of the design decisions myself nowadays. Let me tell you how the work-flow changed from a few months ago to now.

Before I would get a ready made scribble, do a little tweaking and send it to the designers DieTaikonauten (lets refer to them as Taikos from now on). Nothing more. As Part of the contract between the Taikos and CC The Taikos have to do all the design work for the homepage for set price. Now that is a good deal, considering that CC change their minds like 10 times a day. The problem with that is, that I never got to do any actual design work that would then be published, since the Taikos would always go ahead and change something to their liking. My workflow looked something like this:

Wireframes (Systaro & CC) » Scribbles (me (10%), Taikos (90%)) » Design (Taikos) » Final Touch-Ups (me(5%), Taikos (95%)) » Programming (Systaro)

Then my workflow shifted a bit and I got to do the final tweaking and the scribble. So this means:

Wireframes (CC) » Scribble (me) » Design (Taikos) » Final Touch-Ups (me) » Programming (Systaro)

And now I basically have my hand in everything. (notice how it all turned a shade of green =) - Red is evil btw!)

Wireframes (CC & me) » Scribble (me) » Design (Taikos & me) » Final Touch-Ups (me) » Programming & Final work on the PSD-files (Systaro & me)

Oh yeah, baby! =D And For everyone who is influenced by Joakim into thinking that I work TOO MUCH: When I was in workflow 1 I worked about 3 hours a week. Now I work like 30! Imagine what that does to our economy. It's totally worth it. Seriously... :)


University
apart from that I've been working hard in university. My course is called "Web Design" and, surprise, I have to design a website! ;)
The cool thing is, that I work in a group (new to me) for an actual client (not new to me, but still exciting)!
The client is a Fast Food restaurant called "Billy Boy's" (isn't that a condom brand, too?). Anyway.. since none of my group members know anything about design or programming I was elected group-leader. A role, which I really didn't want. Now all the work load is on me and I know myself - I'm not good at delegating as soon as the work is lying on my desk. But I have to involve my team-mates somehow so I figured I would take the laptop with me to school and we do the design together (with me handling the mouse plx)

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures yet but I have a little poll that I would like your help with!
We looked at the restaurant's web-based competition and we narrowed it down to two basic layouts. Please tell me which you like better. Personally, I like Layout 1 better.


Layout 1
Layout 2

Please ignore the content - The question is only: do we have a busy content on a plain background or do we have a busy background (image) with a plain content-area?

Birthday
On September 1st I turned 21 and Joakim did the nicest thing for me! He bought 900 post-it hearts and stuck them over all the walls in the apartment and - which is 50% cute, 50% mad - all over the floor in the hall-way up TO our apartment! Take a look at this gallery to see what I saw when I came home from school that day.


The weekend after that we went to Aros Fortet, which is a little bit like an adventure game but IRL. You go into small room where you have to solve a riddle or just climb over stuff in a given amount of time. If you fail, a light on the ceiling turns red and you have to leave the room (now you can either try again or go on). If you succeed, the light turns green and you won a certain amount of points. We played in two teams agains each other, 4-5 in each team. We in our team were sooo sure we were gonna win this but in the end we only had 300-odd points, whereas the other team had 560-ish points. Fail. But this was an amazing birthday! I totally want to show this place to all of you guys!

Photography
So I was actually thinking of creating a blog solely on photography but then I thought: hell.. if I can't even update this blog more than once in two months, how am I supposed to keep up with two? So I am just going to spam my newest images here instead! Enjoy :)

the note

Since my last post I bought a new bike, a new object lense and I received a note from Joakim.

After my first bike was stolen I was so frustrated that I decided to take any bike that I was going to buy in the future up into our apartment. I then looked around at second-hand shops and bike stores for the kind of bike I wanted - unfortunately successless. All the second-hand bikes looked like they'd been in the second world war and the new bikes were way out of our price range. Still I was really close to buying a brand-new bike when suddenly someone called me who had seen my add on the swedish second-hand homepage www.blocket.se. He had a bike just like my old one and he would take 100€ for it. To cut to the chase I drove there, looked at it, fell in love and bought it for the asked price.

The new object lense cost me another 180€. And so far I have not quite determined whether it was worth the price. If it turns out that my old lense can do just as well I will return it for a full refund - I actually called the store first and asked about the open-buy policy in case I wasn't 100% pleased. Since the lense is a 70-300mm zoom-lense I figured I would have some fun taking makro-images - and I did :) I got a lot of close up images that are wonderfully rich in detail. But Portrait-photography is the thing I most care about. So today I will schlep Joakim outside for some photography action :)



Which brings me to my last thought. Today when I was making a bread for myself I discovered a little green paper, folded into a tiny square. Unfolded it read "I love you very very very much!". It was a note written by Joakim. When we bought the bread he snuck away with it, took half of all slices out of the bag, put the note inbetween two slices and put all the others back as they were. I didn't really like the bread that much, though, so I froze it. When he realized that I was freezing his little note, too, he got quite worried that I would never get to see it. But today I felt like it after all - and I saw the note :)
Thank you sweetie pie!

bike

About a week ago I bought a bike (first bike in 8 years) and I kind of re-learned how to ride on it because I hadnt done it in so long - Im not really the outdoorsy type as you know. Well I kind of fell in love with that bike - every day I took it out for a ride, even if it was just to the local grocery store - even if it was raining like mad. I bought it used and when making the deal I got one of those chains to protect it from being stolen. It was kind of thin but I figured: ill have enough time to get a stronger one. for now this will do. I even put the bike into this bike-cellar-ish thing where only people from our house have a key to. Anyway, this morning I woke up and wanted to go out with the bike and it was gone. The chain lay on the ground, cut at the lock. God how much I cried. And the bike was only worth 1000sek. But I cried anyway. I guess it meant more to me than the money, since I thought over and over again: I would pay 200€ right now just to get it back.

It was this feeling of being exposed. I just couldnt do anything. I had done everything in my power at that time... there was a chain, there was a locked cellar, and still people fucked me up and took something from me.This happened to me before.Right when we moved here that someone broke into my car, taking the GPS. Stupid of me to leave in plain sight, but i come from a tiny town where everyone knows everyone and no one would do such a thing to someone who has lived there their entire life. But here people are so ruthless - so merciless. I just freaking got the bike a week ago and I really really loved it. in a way I guess it symbolized me becoming a little more swedish. I always just went from home to the car to school and back home. Never did I just drive or go somewhere just for the ride. The bike did that to me. I went for rides just for the rides.

:(

The dreaded judges

It is this time of the year again. Talent shows are roaming the channels and I get to sit at home and watch how people show their talents to an amazingly large audience. And whereas Britain's got Talent has its finale sometime this week America's got Talent just started a fresh season. This is just perfect for me, seeing as I have two equally entertaining shows following one another. This means, that I am constantly kept on the edge of my seat in awe or well .. disgust. Both are pretty much 50%, 50% represented on these kind of shows.
And evehthough one show lacks in quality when it comes to the choice of judges (America's got Talent) and the other annoys with its host-duo (Britain's got Talent), both make up for it with the one thing that really matters: the talent. I have seen things on these shows that I never believed to be humanly possibly, let alone that anyone would get the idea to try something like that. Apart from that you hear the stories of the performers. Sometimes there is a tad too much focus on them, though, creating a sort of artificial sympathy for the performers, which ultimately influences the voting. But fear not! After thousands and thousands of auditions, in which 3 judges decide over the fate of the acts, the public becomes the judge with what are probably millions of phone calls. That is where these shows make their big bucks, allowing the winner to walk away with $1.000.000 or £100.000 respectively.

Since I am so awestruck by some of the acts on these shows I figured I would share my fascination with you guys and keep you posted on some of the most amazing acts.

First up is a video of a very talented singer Michael Grimm who wowed the judges on America's got Talent



This is followed by a very strange but impressive act from Britain's got Talent



This is the audition of young Taylor Matthews who wowed me despite his nerves (look at the dad, by the way)



And finally I want to give you my personal top three List from previous AGT and BGT seasons:

The incredible Illusionist



The fabulous looking acrobat who is not your typical archer



and finally the best 6 year old singer I've ever heard




Enjoy!

Done and done!

So I got my grades last friday - and I exceeded my own expectations. But doing well wasn't all that made me happy. It was mostly the possibilty to prove my teacher wrong. He has a tendency to talk down to his students. One time, when I got a good grade on an exam from another teacher he told me "well ... I guess even teachers can misgrade every once in a while". That was encouraging -.-

Then when I was making plans to get going on my finals he told me, it would be a waste of money/time to take them, because I'd probably fail anyway. Now I didn't only not fail, I passed with the best grade possible. Ha! In your face, mean, pessimistic teacher.

Other than that I don't have too much to tell. I am done with my homepage, or at least the basic structure of www.DularionDesigns.com and I am soon going to start working on the portfolio-Area and a nice photography Gallery. Also my business cards are printed and fabulous!

Recently I've been working on a video-editing project - my first. I of course used the wrong program in the beginning, which made me get all confused, but when I finally found out which Adobe software works best for this kind of project, everything just fell into place and went very quickly. I don't know if the video is going to be uploaded on youtube or not, but if it is I'll enter a link in my next blog. (by the way, for people who are interested in starting with video editing: look at the trial version of Adobe Premiere. Even as a trial there are almost no limitations!)

And of course I have been working quite hard on my first real photography assignment: my boyfriends cousins  mothers wedding. It was a lot of fun and some of the pictures look really professional if I may say so myself. I had the greatest time putting together all kinds of collages and playing around with light & shadows. But while on the wedding I soon reached my memory limit. I frequently had to pack out my laptop and copy the pictures to create some room on the camera, which made me miss a lot of the action. That is why I have been eyeing a bigger memory chip ever since then. We'll see how much money it'll take to save up in order for me to be okay with spending a tiny amount of it.

Saturdays Basketball Tournament

Yesterday, which was a saturday filled with sunshine and happiness, we drove out to Västerås, picked up two good friends on the way, unpacked our basketball and hit the court. We decided we wouldn't play 2on2 in the beginning but 21. 21 works in such a way, that everyone plays against everyone, trying to score a point. If the person scores, he may go to the 2-point-line and try his luck there. He may remain at that line as long as he hits the basket. If he fails to hit the next one in line will try to get the ball as fast as he/she can, because that person has to try to hit the basket from where ever it was they picked the ball up. Since that doesn't require even numbers I figured I'm just going to lean back and take pictures. Hundreds of them. When I looked through them yesterday it seemed almost like I was watching a movie. I used this adjustment where one can make 5-6 pictures in a row, just by holding down release a little longer. We had tons of fun!

After a while they asked me if I wanted to join and soon enough we started playing a serious game of 2vs2. I ran and blocked and caught the ball and scored 2 (!) and then, after four points in total for me and Joakim, I got reeeeally tired and exhausted. I had to take a break. Soon all the others came to the bench as well. Motivation to continue was at its lowest. But that was all right, since we wanted to go to this stakehouse which only had lunch-prices for another hour and a half. So we got our stuff together and  headed into centrum -- I actually think that where we played basketball was already centrum, but as long as I don't see any stores around, I don't regard it as such! :)

The stakehouse was very good, looking forward to taking JT and Katrin there when they come (In one week, wehoo!) and the whole atmosphere was just very relaxed and nice. We talked about a lot of stuff and I felt really included! After lunch we got ourselves some ice-cream. Daim and Strawberry Cheesekake. I totally got to show that to JT and Katrin - at least the daim. I've never had anything like it while I was in Germany.

After that we went for another round on the court, this time with another friend joining - Johan. And he didn't come alone. He brought with him his beautiful son Elliot and his girlfriend Madeleine. I chose to sit out together with Madde and talk instead. We had some very good conversations and I had a very good time. The good thing is, I know she had a good time too, because we are invited to join them in a cozy BBQ later today!
Of course I couldn't just sit there, look at this beautiful baby and not take any pictures. So I asked for permission and fired away. I got some nice results out of it and she seemed really thrilled about them, too.

On our way back home we drove through a little town that has two lakes on either side of it. Usually we just drive through there but yesterday I suddenly slowed down, looked for a parking place and stopped the car. I took out my camera and took some amazing shots. In the beginning I focused on a scenery with a lot of stones in the foreground and the water in the background. Then I crossed the street and went to the other lake where I took some interesting pictures of a fisherman's hut. At that point I was already very happy and wanted to drive on when I discovered a dock. That was THE find of the day. It was so beautiful and the angle of the sun just made it all the more interesting. Coming home I picked out one of the best pictures (see to the left) and started retouching it. I started by taking away some of the ropes that were dangling above the water. Then I took away the tires in the back. And after about 2 hours I realized, that I had taken everything away that was in any way bothering me about the pictures: ropes, tires, the little silver plates at the sides of the dock, some chains, some metal planks, some extra wooden poles. And eventhough the picture was already nearing perfection I decided to work with the tones - heighten contrasts and deepen the colors. In the end I came up with a B/W version, a selective coloring version focusing on the water, and a colored version (if you click on both the before and after pictures and then switch between the browser tabs you can see the retouching process).

Breakfast in the car, having the cold and much more

Hello everybody!
So nice to be writing again, been some days.

Ever since I got the camera I have been taking pictures non-stop. I would sit at the pc and take 120 pictures of my hair brush, just to figure out the right settings and exposure for the current circumstances. And in focusing so much on photography, my father and I have come to talk almost every day. Feels really great, especially since Mom and Petra have recently been cut off the internet and aren't able to come online. Ever since then my days were lacking that little piece of home that a daily conversation with them brought me. Now, through the talks with dad I am getting just that: A piece of home and a lot of affection. Plus I learn a lot about taking great pictures!

Yesterday I came down with a cold. Nothing serious, just annoying. Can't go to the gym, can't go out to take pictures. But I got some work done with CardCoaches, a company that is on it's way to creating a very sought after and thus successful homepage. The general idea is to teach - through hundrets of articles, vidoes, interactive flash-applications and actual games - the art of playing poker. I'm their "design-handy-man", which means, that I do every work that comes my way, as long as it in some way or another has to do with design. I've got really lucky though, seeing as the project leader of CardCoaches - in other words my boss - is really nice. I have a great time working with him. Just yesterday I came up with an idea to improve the experience that a newly-registered member would have on their future homepage: buttons that show him the way to certain places within the homepage that are otherwise a little harder to find (which disappear as soon as the member reached a certain stage). Instead of dismissing it, since it comes from a student who is a part-time wanna-be designer, he went ahead and made a note of it - even telling his partner about it. Made me feel very included in the whole project, which I am sure you don't feel very often when you are in my position.

We went shopping yesterday. As soon as we were done and reached our homely parking lot, a sudden rush of fatigue came over us both. We reached down, next to our seats, and pulled that lever that controls the angle at which the backrest is positioned. So while we were half sitting, half lying in the car, we figured: why not have breakfast in the car! So we took out the rolls that we just bought, used our fingers to pry them open and then... well then we wanted to put on cream cheese and ham. But it was too exhausting and too crammed, so I had an idea. I wanted to tell you guys about the breakfast in the car, and I wanted it not to be a lie, so I decided I would eat bread with cream cheese and ham on top, except I would leave them packaged while holding them atop the bread, biting into it. Kinda wacky, I know. But it was fun! And I almost went for it too, writing here that I did, in fact, eat bread with cream cheese and ham on top. Bending the truth to your will can be a lot of fun :) I guess I've been watching too much survivor recently O.o

Some weeks ago I started getting obsessed with the idea of knitting. I don't really know how it started, but I just wanted to have some nice caps. I guess I saw so many creative ones in "Life Unexpected" that I just was like a little child - you see something -> you want it! As you can see on the picture, my first try was.. well - a lot of work, but poor at that. The colors don't look sophisticated together and the whole thing just has the wrong shape. It's way too wide around the forehead. Instead of giving up, though, I looked up a sort of cap-knitting recipe and, as you can see on the lower picture, It payed off! I think it looks preeeeetty damn nice for a second try.

Well, well. I got to go to school now. Today is an important day, and sick or not sick, I really feel like I got to go there. I just hope that what I have isn't catching.

New Camera = New Hobby?

Today I received a package. While picking it up I already knew what it was going to contain - my dad send me his digital reflex camera. Together with some extra material (that he bought just for me) the packaged weighed about 1.9kg. Between electronic parts were wads of plastic bags - not a bad way of securing the package - and by pulling it just one of them, almost the whole content fell into my lap. There was the camera itself, some cables, batteries and a 2gb storage card. And then the most precious - the lense. Since I knew nothing about reflex cameras I didn't even dare to put together camera and lense. Instead I went ahead and read the manual. 167 pages of pure fun -.-

It wasn't all bad, though. I learned a lot about what functions this camera has and how things are called. Plus, of course, I actually used in a good way, i.e. not just playing around with it but actually going for an effect. I looked at the black/white functions and some interesting toning options. What I am most interested in are blur-effects. If you for instance have an object that is close up to the lense and the background is significantly further back, then the person in the foreground is, of course, crisp, but the background isn't just a little blurry but extremely blurred out. I love the effects that this creates, which is: making the eye focus on what the photographer intended it to focus on. Very powerful.


Soon I will take the camera to the city and see if I am confident enough to simply walk up to people and ask them if they are willing to pose for me :)

What are you willing to do?

Imagine a situation in which a man, a speaker, talks infront of an audience, asking them questions. Imagine yourself in that audience. And now imagine him adressing you, infront of everybody.


He asks you how much money you earn a year. You are hesitant to answer. He offers you $200. You answer.
He asks you if you wear clean underwear. You might not want to answer this. But if he offers you $300, will you answer then?

Now he offers to double your anual salary, for one year, if you undress yourself infront of everybody in the room. Now some of you might jump to the oportunity. But bear with me and imagine yourself declining the offer. Now imagine him increasing his offer to be triple your anual salary. It's getting interesting, don't you agree? If you have a partner with you in the room you might find yourself looking at them with the words "should I?" written all over your face. But imagine that you would stand strong and refuse again. The speaker gives you one final offer - triple salary for the rest of your life - that would pretty much make you a millionaire.

Most of us would've gone for it by now, I believe. But if the person in question happens to be religious, she/he might still refuse. At that point the man will stop asking you. But what might happen is, he might address your partner.
He might ask your partner, if "they would". The partner would wonder, what it is that is asked of him/her. The man clarifies: if they would take your clothes of - you being the one who just refused to do it yourself. Depending on the level of financial frustration brooding inside of your partner, he/she might just be willing to do it - After all, we might be talking several million dollars.

The scene that might follow, could look like this:

the partner might glance at you at first, checking how mad you would be at him/her if they did it. Seeing as you completely refused to do it yourself, there is no reason to believe that you would be okay with your partner doing it for you. And your partner knows that. But he/she wants the money so bad, they start undressing you. You try to fight him/her off, and when your partner realizes he can't do it alone, he shouts into the crowd: "$100 for everyone that helps me hold her down!". And suddenly a wave of people errupts, everyone fighting to get to the woman struggling with more and more hands touching her, pushing her to the ground.

In the end I am sure the partner would have succeeded in undressing you. He/she might even receive the money, depending on the level of legitimacy of the speaker. But what about your marriage/relationship? Is it going to survive this act of pure egoism? Or was it egoism, really? Since your partner was looking out for the financial well-being of both of you. Was your partnership healthy, to begin with? Of would anyone in their right mind have done this?

This is extreme. This is more than extreme - it's barbaric. But don't you agree that this is more than possible? That people, even those that are in a loving, commited relationship, are willing to do this to their partner for this kind of money?
This shocks me. And if you agree with me, I'm sure you are just as shocked as I am.