It’s been a while
Hi everyone!
It has been a while since i wrote anything, because i’m actually very busy IRL, and when i get a free moment, i don’t really think about updating my blog. Well right now i feel the need to ventilate, and that’s when my blog feels handy.
If you are wondering what i’m so busy with, well… 4 main things and one side thing. The biggest of them all is my Bachelors Project, the so called ‘examens arbete’. That takes about 10 hours of my time every week day, or less. I am working with Cia on a community developed digital game, which we hope will adress the problems that we think exist with todays playtesting session in mainstream game development companies. My personal interest in the project, which we have to have and it has to be different from the main problem of the project, is making decisions in a community driven design. We acctualy have a pretty good site, blog, and forum up for the project, but i can’t link to them yet as we haven’t ‘gone official’ with it. I will as soon as we have, which i hope is soon.
The next big thing is continueing my Digital Storytelling final project, which is the Pappas Orgel… It’s a musical instrument that alows you to play samples of music and videos in a very simple way… It’s not so impressive when i describe it, but it’s been a big hit at the locals clubs and with the people we’ve talked to… there will probably be a very good site about it up on the net in the comming months, or at least a Flash game that lets you play on it, so i won’t go into the details. I presented it today together with it’s main creator, Tobias Lilja, to a group of reserachers. All of them loved it, and amongs them was Pelle Ehn, one of the fathers to participatory design… i’m so…. i just lack to word to descirbe how i feel by impressing such a great man. Most of the credit goes to Tobias, tho ^^
The third big thing is hardly worthy mentioning, it’s simply my job. That’s the place i go to to make money. It’s acctualy very boring , but the pay is good, and i can work whenever i want to, so it’s okay… It takes time tho. I… really can’t come up with anything more to say about it.
The 4th but none the less importan thing is Beeing Myself. It’s what Swedish people call having some time for yourself to relax and enjoy life. Because when you are running around working, you seldom have the time to appriciate life. So i take some time every day to see something nice, do someting fun, or go somplace interesting, or just… be myself, do whatever i feel like. Right now i have very little time for beeing myself, but i don’t mind as i have had a lot of time to do that before. It feels nice to be productive.
The side thing is a roleplaying game i’m going to be the Story Teller for. Story Teller is the World of Darkness name for a DM, Dungeon Master. I can’t say all that much about it, because i don’t want to spoil it for the players. It will be a colaborative effort with my friend Michael Eringsmark, and we will really put a lot of effort into it. I have led some very good campains before, so i have very big expectations of myself on this one, i want it to be my best, and perhaps, final roleplay… Anyway, it will be set in a post apocaliptical world, with much inspiration taken from polish books, ‘Where once sang a bird’ by Kate Wilhelm, and Fallout games. The players will be Vault dwellers, if you know what i mean.
And that’s the reasons i haven’t been feeling like updating untill now. The reason i felt like doing it, is because… I was feeling very happy, and i realized i don’t have anyone to share it with. Of course, that’s not true, but at the point i thought about it, everyone i could talk to was either asleep or unavailible in some other way. I’ve pushed so many people away, and so many people scared me away, it’s not fun to think of that at all… I really have to rething my social strategy… I wonder if i’m still a nice guy at all? There’s so many factors that could affect it….. *mumbles* 6 months *mumbles*
Well… that’s…. a bit of what i want to say 
For now, it’s too much anyway. I hope anyone acctualy is interested enough in this to read it. See you next time ^^
Oh my god!
I just saw a disney movie! I didn’t notice untill half way in! The voilence never came!
Relationships
Sorry, this will need to be in Swedish. Anyone care to make a translation as amusing as the original?
“I förhållanden måste man vara som Fantomen. Hård mot de hårda.”
M M M MEGAPOST part2.
Alright, so i’m continuing now.
Part 3. Pat Metheny.
So there is this artist called Pat Metheny, he’s been playing jazz music for quite some time now (like 30-40 years or so). In fact he’s my dad’s favorite musician, and has been for as long as i have been born. There’s a story right there, but for it to make sense i need to start from the beginning…
Before my parents divorce, we all lived in this big 4 story house in Lodz, Poland. The bedroom was on the top floor, rather big. The bed that we had there though was really big, left just enough room for you to walk around it. you could put three madrases in it, and it was custom made by my dad especially to fit the room. I really have no idea where he learnt that, i will have to ask him at some occasion…
Anyway, as the bed was big enough for my whole family, we all slept in it. Each person had their own madras, so it wasn’t really a problem, at least for me. I don’t want to think what repercaussions that had for my parents marriage, but i was little and that time and i’m pretty sure i didn’t even know that word back then. Some people will probably the whole thing a bit odd, but i don’t care.
Before my dad fell to sleep, he used to allways listen to music. He had one of those big stereo head phones, he had to sleep on his back to have them on. I wasn’t even allowed to touch them, so i remember i had this sor of awe and feeling of holiness emanating from them… I remember lying close enough to my dad and looking at those big head phones, acctualy listening to music…
And that music was Pat Metheny. When i was in Poland this christmas, my dad happened to be listening to him while working one time when i entered his work room…. And i recognized the music directly! After a couple of songs all the memories i wrote about here hit me, and stuff like that comming to a 22 year old… well, it can get pretty nostalgic, give you a lot to think about…
Anyway, i got a couple of his albums, and have been listening to them ever since, and i really know them all by heart, which is a little bit scray… i mean i can put on a song i never heard of , stop it in the middle, and then whistle the rest of it…
To be honest, i’m rather tired of it now *laughs* i prefear a little bit more energetic music. Don’t get me wrong, Pat is a real master, his contribution to the world of music will never pass. I’m posting a guitar , which he acctualy plays on, and he himself designed.
So yeah…. even f i get tired of the music, the memories will remain, now written in the stone of the internet.
PS. I’ve decided to start a new addition to this blog, a Wisdom For Tommorow. Often i have thought which are somewhat filosophical, and allways amusing, but i seldom share them, and when i do people usualy don’t get them. Now i will post them here to see how you respond to them….
M M M MEGAPOST
Oh wow now that i’ve chosen this name i really hope it will be at least slightly longer than the ordinary post… but i do have a lot to say. To make it easier on you i’ll split it into parts.
Part one. Back from Edinburg.
So yeah i’m back home now 
Boy is it hot in here! First thing i did was turning down all the radiators to bare minimum and opening all the windows. Second thing was to water all flowers as my roommate has forgotten. My beautiful paprika almost died! *pouts* But i managed to save it. There’s a lot of work to be done here back at home, but i actually so much stuff to do the actual house work has to wait, which is a little bit embarrassing. After all, i try to keep a respectable household.
So Edinburgh was great! I really loved the people, and i was very positively surprised about British women. No offense but everyone that’s been to England or somewhere else in Britain told me the women are rather plain. Well, in my opinion, quite the contrary! British women are all unique flowers of womanhood! How i enjoyed listening to their soft language and admiring their fresh, new and interesting looks! Yes, i’m rather queer, ain’t i? But seriously, i’ve met many a good looking girl, and all of them had a nice personality from what i gathered in that short time, too. Why am i telling you this? Well, mostly because i like sharing my point of view.
Other good things in Edinburgh are pubs, whiskey, architecture and food. I ate Fish and Chips, very good and cheap, and Haggis. It was exelent! It tastes just like polish blood sausage which i deligth in devouring. I’ve also taken quite the fondness to whiskey, now that i have actually tried some that’s good. The architecture is something in the lines on ‘10000001 Building You Can Make Out Of Stone’. Original, new, and interesting. For me. I can tell you with no embarasment that i walked into many people and things on my first day of sight seeing because my head kept turning all ways to catch all the sights. This is about the girls, too.
Alas my great enjoyment of that wonderfull city was cut short by an unfortunate event. You see, i have lost my wallet, with all my credit cards and money in it. I was acctualy very reluctant about writing about this in my blog, but what the hell i already told everyone, i obviously want to talk about it. I acctualy don’t know if i misplaced it, or if it was stolen. Either way, i lost it on saturday evening, leaving me with no money at all, so i had to skip some parties and outings. We actual had problems getting food, but that was shortly fixed. *hums* I get by with a little help from my friends…
All in all it was exelent trip, even with the major stepback, and i am looking forwards to going back in the summer. I hope i can.
Part two. Between school and a hard place.
So now that i’m back i obviously have a lot to do. I’ve missed a week of work, so i’m catching up on the clipping and socializing that needs to be done…. and yes socializing in the form of work, as in having meetings with groups and talking to important people. My workshop is finaly at it’s end, and my final project looks interesting. It is an electronicall instrument allowing you to play the artist known as Pappa Di. Play how? Intrigued? Come to InKonst on Saturday and find out, we will be having an exhibition there.
Also, my ‘examens arbete’ proposal has been finally accepted, and we were given just the adviser we wanted. I’m really looking forwards to the first meeting, whenever that might be, as it will help us figure a lot of things out, like for example if we are getting an office. We really need one, i’m not kidding when i say that i believe it would improve my efficiency by 100%. We will create a blog for the project very soon, i will link there so you can read more about it if you are interested.
Also, loosing a wallet causes a lot of work! You have to get some money, and that’s hard because the closes money i had was in Malmö, and i didn’t have enough money for the ticket! And then you need to call the banks, the school, all the other people like CSN who’s card was in it, get new ones, transfer money, blah blah blah blah….. Jeez it’s a lot of work loosing a wallet! As if in itself it wasn’t bad enough! I’m also taking driving lessons because my final exam is in exactly two weeks, soooo, wish me luck!
As you see i have a lot to occupy myself with, and on top of that i have the ‘work’ i do for my EvE Corporation, White Wolf Enterprises. Yes, it has a lot to do with the White Wolf company that does the role playing books…. Anyway, i just got a promotion, and that means new responsibilities. I’m working on remaking the project status page into PHP, and some money making shceemes in the game…. It’s nice that the people from my corp acknowledged the amount of work i’ve put into this project so far, i really appricate it. Non the less, with the amount of work i need to do i’ll have to cut down on the playing.
Acctualy…. uhh…. this post is so long, i’m tired of typing it… i’ll type some more on another occasion, there’s one more chapter i wanted to write, which is about Pat Metheny’s music… i’m not writing this down to tease you, it’s so that i will actually write about it….
Well… i’m tired now…. thanks for reading, and see you soon…
Eejit = idiot
Man i love this place. It’s been less than 48 hours and i’ve alredy made lots of new friends and met a nice girl at a party. Talk about cultureal differances.
The biggest problem i have with staying here is acctualy Sanne’s and Janni’s appartment. It’s not the mess, i like a crative enviroment, it’s the cold. I kid you not when i’m saying that i barely feel a differance when we go out. So if i’m supposed to spend any time indoors i usualy have two pairs of pants, two sweaters and an long sleeved tshirt. Or i sleep because i can’t keep my energy up. I hope i get use to this soon as it’s the only negative experiance i have had here so far.
Edinburgh is made of stone and three dimensions. It really is kind of gray but i don’t mind because everything is so well done and clean. They also have built the city like some of the highays are built, it happens often that streets are positioned above each other, which is kindof fun. you really don’t see any differance from a distance, but sometimes when yo look to the side of a street you discover that it’s in fact a bridge, and that you have been walking belove some 30 minutes ago.
A couple of things that are typicaly Edinburghian. Kilt shops / Turist Traps. There’s a lot of them about and they sell anything that even resambles a kilt. Subway, there’s as many subways here as McDonalds everywhere else. I’m thankfull i’ve only seen one McDonalds so far. Whiskey Shops. Are you surprised? Do i need to explain? Indian people. I don’t know, don’t ask me.
Yesterday we were at a party. Two of the Indian guys were leaving to visit home, so they threw a party. It was really nice, they had a great appartment, offered me food and drink, and i’ve talk to everyone. And i don’t mean ‘How you doin’?', i acctualy talked to them. And, as i mentioned previously, met a very nice girl that dosn’t really know what to say when i asked her where she comes from. She’s also some 10 years older than me, which makes it all the much interesting. Hope i’ll see her again ^^
Back here in the apartment i usualy have my laptop on and acctualy in my lap to keep myself warm. I must say it’s never worked so fast. I need to go take a shower now …. that’s a very scary thought in 10 C…. I won’t update much more, as i’m stealing someones internet connection. I’ll be home by wednesday tho. See you soon.
I don’t have a problem with my sexuality, it’s other people that can’t handle it.
Hi all.
The topic won’t have anything to do with the post.
So i’m going to Edinburgh tomorrow, this might be the last post untill the 15th when i come back, but you never know. I heard they do have interent there. My friends who i’m visiting, not the Brits. I’m all packed and set to go. I’m taking most of my fun things with my, and they are already packed because i have to leave at eight, when my brain capacity is at 1% of it’s usual. And for this reason i’m acctualy kindof bored right now, and i miss living in Malmö for the first time. I can’t invite anybody over on short notice, because i live far away, the trip costs unresonably much and take like 1,5 hour. So acctualy kindof down and anxious right now.
As to what has been happening in my life i guess the two biggest things are my return to Uni and sucesfull career in Eve. At Uni we still haveour Digital Storytelling workshop, with one week to produce the final project. It’s going to be interesting to watch how i pull this one off, seeing as i leave on the day it starts and come back on the day before it needs to be handed it. I’m still extremely excited and happy about the ‘examination work’ comming up. It is going to be the culmination of my education, and i’m really looking forwards to doing it.
It’s been nice to see Cia in School, haven’t seen Nuxx yet as we don’t have any common classes.
As for Eve, my career i White Wolf Enterprises is going really well. Since my promotion i’ve been organising the people of the corporation to build a wonderfull ship called the Rorqual, and it’s going really well. After little more than a week we have something around 20% of all the materials we need. I’m really interested to see how this develops, and i am not ashamed to say that this is first time i’ve acctualy build a connection or relationship to a MMORPG, as Eve is one of the most advanced and sophisticated games out there. If you want to know more, i invite you to their home site, www.eve-online.com, they offer a 15 free trail and the fee is 10$, much less than Warcrack. There are many unique things to the game which make me interested in it, but i think this blog as had as much blatant advertising as it can take. But if you do decide to join, my in game avatar is called Cousk, drop me a line.
That’s it for now i guess. I’ll find something else to do, and i hope that you are having a nice evening. See you next week?
Chief Big… Feather
So most of my friends don’t know what it is i do in school. I don’t blame them, up untill year 2 i had a very vague idea myself. But now that i really know what i’m doing, i’m enjoying it so much more. And also i can finaly explain it. But i won’t coz it’s really borgin for me. Instead i’ll tell you about my bachelors project, or what’s it called in english, and how it got me to play Indie Games.
What we’re doing in the project is rather complicated and may seem banal for people not involved in the same sciences or buisnesses. In laymans terms what we are trying to do is to open up the digital ame design process with greater interaction with the community, possibly via modding, community portals and indie gaming. During this project we will do research around developing games with comunity interaction, resoulting in a digital game product, hopefully some time around April.
And this really puts us on the Indie Game scene. To be honest it’s rather unfamiliar territory for me, i don’t even use mods, modifications for games, all that much. And now with the end of the year many sites release ‘top 10 games of 2007′ lists. So i took the opportunity and went to an indie game site, http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=661, and i downloaded every single game of the top 10 list. I’m half way thru them, but i can tell you there are some real gems there.
My favorite so far is Aquaria, a exploration adventrue game that stars you in the role of some sort aquatic humanoid girl. The music and artwork is really beautiful and the gameplay is fresh and enjoyable. I really recommend everyone to try it out. Here’s a link to their site.
Now if you like the game even a little bit, and have some money on you, i really encourage you to buy it. The reason is that you not only get a great game, but you also support a new way of developing games which is much more friendly than the ordinary one. Ever thought ‘I hate EA so much!’, or heard the phrase ‘So what games have you released? Oh we’re sorry we only hire people with five years of proffesional experiance’?. If you have, support indie gaming. Pay a little money if you like any of those games, especialy now when the dollar is so low. You’ll do a great service to the world of game development. And if you ever get into indie gaming yourself, wouldyn’t you like for some stranger to send you some money because you did a good job? That’s how i would like the world to be, at least…
On a completely different note, i have been paying some attention to this sites statistics. It’s acctualy very heart warming, on an avarage i have about 10 visitors per day, spinking on lows of 0 and highs of 20 on any given day. In total there’s been some 400 views on this page, and i’ve only had it for some month? For comparison, my Helgon presentation has had 1500 visitors since 2002 when i created it. I even noticed that someone googles ‘adam politanski cousken’, which made me wonder who that was. In a nice way.
Anyway, on this note i would like to thank all my readers for visiting my page freqently It’s really motivating to keep this going, and maybe acctualye ven pay that small fee to get my custom CSS up here. As a token of gratitude you will get this picture.
Thanks again and see you soon ^^
iTouch me
So today i got myself a new iPod. It was a semi spontanious decission as allways with me, initialized by the fact that my old iPood had a battery time of more or less two hours, and my roommate getting a iPod Nano. I was out yesterday shopping and player died when i was half way thru the shopping mall. When we were talking i asked Ahrens how long does the battery last on his Nano, and after he told me it lasts for 24 hours i was all WTF O.o So i did my research overnigh and got this one today. The research part was acctualy very much fun, and it went somewhat like this in my head:
“Ok so i need a new mp3 player… The stores don’t have the 4 gig nano, and that’s a good thing when i think about it because i really need the 8 gig to put some movies on it but now that i’m thinking of movies why not get a PSP it’s cheaper than the nano 8 gigs and has a bigger screen altho it needs an extra memory card and other peripherals for it so maybe i should just go for the shuffle it’s really cheap GAAAH! *goes online to browse forums, ask random people in Second Life and his friends last* oh fuck it i’ll just get that touch and feel pain in my wallet for the rest of the year. Yay!”
Acctualy two things helped me make my decision in the end. As an itneraction designer i really think i should have one, as this is a nice first step into the world of human-machine interaction, maybe even a step in the right way. I played around a lot with touch screens, touch buttons and interfaces in school, so this is acctualy proffesionaly interesting to me.
The other thing was that nuxx said he will be envious if i ever get a iPod Touch.
Also, on the way to the store i noticed that the Scandinavian winter finaly hit. It’s been snowing all day, but not heavily, leaving snow powder all over the place. And it’s so cold that when the wind blew in my face my teeth hurt from the chill. We have very strong winds you know.
That’s it for today, i’ll tell you tommorow how playing with my new toy is. I’ve prommised to play some online games with Lylat and Zolomon tonight, and maybe even nuxx. See you soon.
PS. Ahrens says hi :=)
