“Hold on, we’re in charge of the machines”

I just read this brilliant interview with Aleks Krotoski in The New Zealand Listener about her new book, Untangling the Web. You should buy it NOW – I just did!

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Me behind Aleks Krotoski at State of Play conference in Singapore. I told her I was a fan right before or after this was taken. I’ve never felt more like a stalker!

My enthusiasm escalated quite early here:

Dr. Aleks Krotoski, a US-raised writer, broadcaster and academic, says real serendipity in online searches or online dating, for instance, requires an aspect of “wrongness”. “I’d be fascinated if, when you hit on Google I’m Feeling Lucky, instead of delivering exactly the results that the machine thinks you want, it delivers things that are kind of wrong, and you as a human being would go, actually, that’s taken me off in a completely different direction.” Sometimes you want exact searches, she says, but sometimes you want stuff that’s a little bit different from what you are looking for.”

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Me and the film business

So I’ve had a brief encounter with the film business the last 3 weeks and it’s been so much fun and way too much work than I had time for. I was in charge of getting extras and to be perfectly honest, I amazed myself at what I managed to accomplish and get. I have a really lovely network that are just so incredibly helpful and lovely!

It’s a web series made by the incredibly hillarious Pistol Shrimps and Flimmer Film. The webseries is amazing! I had such a great time and needed to be away from the filming as much as possible because I was in stitches. A lot of fun! But new territory for me, so I made a lot of mistakes which in return taught me so much. Scary as hell to be out of my element at this age, but so humbling! And such a privilege to be around such a lovely group of talented people!

The loveliest thing about working with these guys was that they have fans! They have inspired teenagers to tell their own stories and make their own films and I think anyone that reads my blog knows that I adore FANS! And I LOVE it when teenagers find new ways of expressing themselves.

So here’s a lovely little short that was made by two fans after our big zombie shoot on Friday! Isn’t it lovely? I think they’re great!

A little inspiration from a designer

My wonderfully talented friend, Tini Malitius, sendt me this very inspirational talk by Tina Roth Eisenberg (Swiss Miss): The Power of Side Projects and Eccentric Aunts. I would also add that it’s also about the power of community and how important it is to surround yourself with smart people. Not to mention the acknowledgement that haters are gonna hate! It’s a very personal talk as she bases it on what she wants to teach her kids. It gave me the boost and inspiration that I needed, hope it does the same for you!

 
The Importance of Side Projects
http://typotalks.com/embed_video/s/131

Excuse me while I talk a little about food

I’ve been having a lot of fun with food lately. I’m finding creativity in the kitchen a great way to just completely unwind. My extra curricular activities have had an increasing tendency to become serious work and even more time infront of the screen. I needed something where I could let my thoughts and creativity flow freely without having to sit infront of a screen as I think I was in danger of burning out. I’ve rediscovered my pallet after quitting smoking 2 years ago. I recognise the flavours, smoking doesn’t completely kill the tastebuds, but taste has a whole new potensy for me now. And of course, I’ve been writing a lot about the taste of coffee lately – which makes me yearn for taste adventures. The added benefit of cooking is that it’s a great excuse to invite people I adore and find interesting for a meal – I learned so many new interesting things last night when I served this dish to the WPG crowd. It’s a special feeling to have your living room filled with such potential and greatness.

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World Peace Game and my first steps into game mechanics!

In October I was very privileged to attend a dinner organised by Bergen International Film Festival – BIFF (falls under the category “Love my job”). Here I met a very enthusiastic gaming man named Erik. BIFF is one of, if not THE, largest international documentary film festivals and one of the things I adore about them is that they go out to schools and show important documentaries and discuss them. Erik was one of the discussers and when he got a whif of my gaming interests he went in a trance like state talking about this great gaming documentary that they were talking about at these schools. I have to admit, I wasn’t convinced – it sounded way too classroomy for my taste. But I gave it a go – and admitidly I too was smitten! The documentary was called “World Peace and other 4th grade achievements”. Here’s a little teaser:

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Is Facebook a virtual world?

I remember being absolutely gobsmacked when I first read about Edward Castronova and his economic analysis of the online game Everquest. And it all spiraled from there … do you remember? We all got caught up in the rights of the avatar. I remember being enthralled in discussions about what is real and what is not real and what rights avatars have in games such as Everquest. Because we  saw avatars as extensions of ourselves, therefore we should have the same human rights as we have in our own ‘real life’. Ownership issues and freedom of expression where things that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring and debating.

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Plans for the fall

Let me first start off by saying that I love my job and I think I’ll be able to share my experiences there in the upcoming

Linn cupping kaffehuset friele

This is me cupping at my job at a coffee roaster here in Bergen.

year. I haven’t decided if I’ll start a new blog or continue writing here, though. I like this space for all my “other” activities. But there are few of them and I suspect there’ll be fewer still. One of my main goals for the rest of the year is to do a little analysis of how I see my education being put to good use. I keep noticing skills I learned from Media Studies and I’m thankful for having them.  I really do feel like I have the right skills to do this job well – and that’s reassuring. I want to spread the confidence to other media students, you know? Because there is little understanding of what Media Studies skills can be used in jobs and the corporate world – but I see myself using these skills all the time.

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The Story

I can’t believe it! Tomorrow night I’m off to London to attend The Story on Friday! I am soooo looking forward to it – and I’m just soooo hungry for someinspiration. And just the name “The Story” inspires me to start writing and creating!

The Story will be a celebration of everything that is wonderful, inspiring and awesome about stories, in whatever medium possible. We’re hoping to have stories that are written, spoken, described, enacted, whispered, projected, orchestrated, performed, printed – whatever form stories come in, we hope to have them here.

I hope so too!

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Girl Geek Dinner

I’m organising a Girl Geek Dinner this year. Last year I organised an Ada Lovelace Day Dinner – although – saying that I “organised” it implies that I actually did any work. I really didn’t – I just told all the women I admire “hey – wouldn’t it be cool for all of us to meet up for dinner one day?” and just picked a date. Ada Lovelace Day seemed like a great opportunity. This year – I’ll be on the plane to Chicago on the 24th – so I thought it a good a day as any – to organise an event on the International Women’s Day.

This year – we’ve got something resembling a theme. I felt that finding a common theme was challenging – and suddenly I thought about the Interesting conference which I learned about after reading the fabulous Roo Reynold’s blogpost. I was so smitten by the context, and thought that was rather geeky of me. So of course? How do you define a girl geek? You really don’t – except I find that girl geeks always get enthusiastic about something interesting. Something you’d like to learn more about. And it’s always such a joy to listen to someone who is passionately interested in something. And I think girl geeks, are always passionately interested in something that is interesting. So the theme is “An interesting Girl Geeks Dinner on International Women’s Day”. We’ll be picking out 3 girl geeks to give a 10 minute talk each on something they find interesting before dinner – and then 3 after dinner. I’ve booked a room at the back of a restaurant – Wesselstuen, to be exact – and you’re more than welcome to come!

There’s a Facebook group here. If you’re in Bergen on the 8th of March, please do join us!

“The news has been gamed”

I love that sentence! It’s from MEDIAite’s article about a piece of Machinima that’s been making rounds about the Tiger Woods incident.

So apparently – a Chinese or Taiwanese news agency has made this machinima film re-enacting the “said” incident by using The Sims! I’m not really clued into what the news has been saying about the accident or whatever. It doesn’t interest me – but it does interest me that someone – or not just anybody – a news channel! – has reenacted the events through the Sims.

Very intrigued! And the skills! Dude! They’ve really got their The Sims skills down to make this!

Gizmodo has more.

Thanks to Snorre Bryne – superstar game journalist – for letting me know.