Light Our Path

I thought about an old guidebook that I studied on some or other scoutmaster course several years ago, I think the Swedish title was "Lys vår led" (which roughly translates to light our path), and how one sided it was. Being the project manager for this module I've had to look back and reinvent my leadership style. Old stuff like lys vår led drifts ashore from the large ocean of passive knowledge. back then I thought it was quite a crappy book, it presented theories on how to make the kids listen to you, how to make the program well balanced and of course the basic "do this in case of emergency" instructions. Everything hard about being a scout master I had to learn myself, courses and seminars served as a good way to hear how other people did it and maybe give them something to try as well, but it was mainly easy stuff like where there was a good cabin to rent for a weekend in the forest with the kids or how they planned their trip to Iceland or some other whateverness. How to make an imprint and hopefully add something to the kids was something I had to learn by trying, trying and then trying some different stuff. In the end the control and comfort I and the kids felt with each other was in proportion to their age. I work best with the oldest age group that are somewhere between ninth grade and second/third year into the Swedish gymansiet (16-19 year olds). My leadership is sort of sneaky and from the backline at this point. I try to find out what they want to do quite early in the year, let them rediscover it a few months later, sometimes i decide but make them think its their own choice and so on, I provide the solid wall they can lean upon and the one to ask about stuff they don’t know, but mainly I try to make them reach their own goals and to make them feel as strong and independent as possible while reaching it.
However during my time on Hyperisland I found this entire method unfitting. Mainly because hyper island is not a place you show up to once a week to do something you and your friends have decided to do. It’s a simplified work simulator.
I needed time and practice from IS and exp-tech before daring to try the Project Manager role. Time to dethatch from what I used to do and how I used to do it. These two first weeks in the rearview mirror, I’m not really sure I've succeeded. Yet. It's really hard to say, the strangest thing about our group is that whatever we decides I have to repeat once before it actually counts. I've been saying "So, it’s the meaning of the group to.." and "Yes, We all want to [insert diction here] right? then let’s do it." more times than I thought was possible.

Let’s see how it plays out..

Everything I know about Cool I learned from watching The Warriors!

The Warriors might be the coolest little flick ever made. At least it’s by far the coolest film I've seen to this date. Why, do you ask, is this a blogworthy topic?
Several reasons. Firstly, there are three of the credits that are LARGER than the rest, the regular writer and director but in this case also the ART director. And what art direction it is. From Gramancy Riffs, Baseball Furies to Warriors and of course the boring outfit known as Orphans style and personality is the key to gang colors. If gangs in real life looked like that I’d sing up as foot soldier for my local gang of boppers and heavy mother-dudes today. Looks, style, music, camera movement is so... cool. There is no other word for it. Look at the trailer!

Also, the villain is the same guy who plays Jerry Horne (Ben's brother)in Twin Peaks!

Fifty ways to kill yourself and seven days to die

So; we have been popping ideas like euro-disco-kids in the in nineties popped pills for the last few days. Today we hit our goal, fifty or slightly over. This gives us pretty much an whole day off tomorrow, there is some group evaluation thingies going on but it will take like one hour or something, the only disturbing thing is that we don't know when it’s going down. We wrote a sort of von-oben letter to the coworker responsible for telling us what time we should be in school.

I have also made the maybe not so wise decision to watch Snakes on a Plane. A film with its title spawning from actually trying to come up with the worst title for a script at that moment called Venom. I will tell you more about what I thought about it in a while.

I’ve started to feel even more isolated in Karlskrona. Meting Palle for coffee the other day sort of reminded me of the spare time away from the laptop that I used to have. Something g has to be done before I get the blues and start to shut down mentally.

Post experience-tech

So our wonderful marble track did only work for a few hours before it went bonkers again... it meant that we spent most of the day explaining to people how it was supposed to work and was unable to show them, which was kind of a drag. But tomorrow there is a new module and a new battle to win. Concept and Development, I'm looking forward to it. It sounds closer to what I really want to do then anything we have done before. I like concepting and could really have use of some development-skills.

On my trip to Stockholm the other week i found a whole lot of new and nice T-shirts... that i didn’t buy for some strange reason. The si-fi bokhandeln has a quite nice line of cthulhiana, my favorites read "Insmouth high school swimming team" and "Miscantonic University Astronomical Society: the stars are bright". It makes me want to take up screen-printing T-shirts again.

On a happy note: My friend Palle texted me today and said that he was in town, I was somewhat shocked that someone would just be in Karlskrona for no obvious reason but then I remembered that his grandparents live in Ronneby.

Paint the exebition red!

My Vaio have returend from its trip to France.

I thought we would get the whole thing were building for EX-TECH done by today but a million of things got between me and actual work being done. Things like lectures and presentations. In the end we actually had time to put the large pieces of wood together and the so to say frame for Marble Inferno was real. And red. Really red. And now there is lots and lots of stuff left to do before Thursday when I will make my fist trip back to Stockholm since I left.
Today I also found out that the Stockholm hyper kids have planned some sort of presentation that will be rolling for the main part of the evening where people are meant to stand and represent their class. We are meant to bring a 15" macbook pro to make it look "professional" it will display what we have done so far in the classes.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
I don’t even know where to start on this one... It’s just too much.. Firstly I’m there to get drunk for as little cash as possible with the Stockholm ad-biz. Secondly how does a 15" macbook pro look more professional than a 17" or a regular macbook or any other laptop for that matter? Thirdly how does my future career get a boost from showing 15 second long motions by people who can't actually use after effects properly but have done so anyway? Fourthly why didn’t we get our hands on this info ages ago, like the 26: th when it apparently went out to the co-workers?

On a happy note: The new season of Weeds is so much better than the two earlier ones. The plotlines and the dialogues are sharp. Have they changed the main writer of the show or did Showtime finally cut the old one loose to do what she actually wanted to do from day one? Keep it up Jenji Kohan!