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.

oh well, I guess I'll let you go now...

What a rediculously common way of telling people that you, yourself, are bored with the conversation and want to end it now.

It occurs quite often when talking on the telephone. When silence sets in and both parties don't really know what else to say, one of them usually goes - "oh well..."
That says it all, in my book. Already then you know that this person is not ready to continue with the conversation much longer.

If you were rude or insensitive enough to ignore it, though, and continued talking, or if you were even so wicked as to finish their sentence for them, you might just have provoked a discussion of colossal proportions. And since you might potentially end up critisizing social behaviors and interaction methods you run the risk of hurting the person you are talking to.

Today I was contacted by an old, distant acquaintance from greece that I have not exchanged so much as an email with for at least 2 years. If such a person suddenly chats you up you can go down one of two possible roads: either you are warm, welcoming and eager to catch up with the other with the utmost of attention to detail Or you are cold and cool and distant, since there might not be too much connecting the two of you in the first place.

Since I am not one for social conformities I ended up being the coldest, most distant I could be, considering the circumstances. And it wasn't like he didn't follow along - he played the careless, unemotional greek to perfection. When all our superficial conversation material was used up and we found ourselves looking at a still skype window he said the magic words - "oh well". I got very emotional all of a sudden and translated his following lines, which read "I think I bored you enough for one day", into "This bores me, I think I'll say good-bye now". I then told him about how I understood what he said, which set the ball rolling.

I actually don't think that my claim was that far fetched - I mean, honestly. Who hasn't been in this situation? Maybe when you experienced it, you knew exactly what the person really meant, just like I did, but you went with it anyway? (Either to evade conflict or because you yourself are bored).

Either way, he got pretty upset and we started discussing the conversation we had up to that point. We even went as far as to point out that we really don't know each other and that we acted cold because of that.
It was all very stressful and confusing. And all of that, just to close the skype window after a weird, overanalysed good-bye, while shaking my head in confusion about what just happened.