Oh Laleh, Laleh!

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During this autumn TV4 has sent the second round of their successful program Så Mycket Bättre (So Much Better) and it’s the same every time: ”Oh Laleh, Laleh…” Everyone that has seen the program loves it! The idea is to gather a group of artists in different ages and different song styles and then each of them is given a day. On that day they decide the activities and all the other artists performs this artist’s songs. There is so much love and respect in the air. We also get to know the artists in a new way and there is a lot of talk about the programs. And then everyone says: ”Oh Laleh, Laleh!”

When Laleh performs her personal interpretations of the other artist’s songs I feel happy shivers in my legs. This Saturday it was time for the other artists to perform Laleh’s songs and I think they did it with a special sense of solemnity, respect and joy.

I don’t know what it is that she does this fantastic girl, but she enchants them all. Now we also learned more about her background, how they escaped from Iran and that her father was a hero that was the publisher of a forbidden, political newspaper.

In addition to all this Gotland and Grå Gåsen gets a lot of PR! Living on Gotland I’m very grateful for that!

The old train puffing further…

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The picture is borrowed from Gotlandståget.

A group of nerdish men in Dalhem have continued to play with train and switched to play with real trains. They have done that so good that the old railway station has became a popular attraction on Gotland, but then they started to think it wasn’t enough to just drive the train to the Oak… They continued to lay rail to Munkebos and then Tule and after that I guess it was impossible to not want to go all the way to Roma.

Today Radio Gotland reports that the group has been granted with 4,3 millions sek to continue to lay rail all the way to Roma.

I lived in Roma 1968–1980. Now and then we took our bicycles and went for a tour passing Roma Kungsgård and then going by the old railway embankment to Tule station. I know the area and it will get so fun to be able to go between Dalhem and Roma by train for the first time in my life. Like my mother and father could while we still had trains on Gotland.

You can read more about Gotlandståget on their homepage, but unfortunately their English version is very short. There fore I recommend you to also check the Swedish version and at least look at the pictures.

Where is the sun?

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I don’t know who’s the artist that has made this beautiful boat, but I took the photo at Kneippbyn south of Visby. I guess it shows a ship carrying the sun. That ship is now about to leave Gotland, it seems… Our days are getting darker and darker. We want to take a walk a day and if we can’t make it around lunchtime, then it gets too dark the next time we think the thought.

Last year we had snow by this time, but this year is much warmer. The roads were icy this morning but we haven’t yet seen any snow. Let’s hope that this winter will be a snowless one – well, it’s okay with some snow at Christmas, but otherwise I won’t miss it.

We went to a Christmas fair at Bläse on Sunday and there were also a lot of Christmas activities in Visby. So, Christmas is on it’s way, but I have not started to get the Christmas feelings yet. But as the days go by, the Christmas feelings will branch out from person to person, what you feel, I feel.

Our cats appreciate the warm weather. They like to spend time outside and it’s a lot easier to entertain them when they can run and play outside.

December 1st. The first day of the last month of the year. This has been quite a challenging year but also a very happy year. To live on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea takes it share of efforts and survival skills. In twenty days the ship that carries the sun will turn around and get closer again. We will appreciate every minute of daylight that it brings to us. Until then I am very grateful for all the electrical lights that we put up in the windows in almost every house. It makes it easier to stand the darkness.

Sketching and creating with digital tools

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Right now I’m working with a slideshow presentation that will contain several drawings and I feel very pleased with the way I use the digital tool that I have available.

If you are interested, this is the way I work:
1) I did my first daub sketches in Muji Notes with a Wacom Bamboo Stylus – that is a stylus you can use with your iPad. The stylus is rather clumsy, so there’s no point in trying to make the pictures detailed and that’s in fact good when you are in this first stage.

These simple sketches were easy to show to a couple of persons, I just took my iPad from the bag I was carrying when I met them and then we could talk about the sketches, they gave some comments and in Muji Notebook’s overview it was easy for me to change the order of the drawings.

2) I started to try out how to draw some of the figures in Corel Painter 12. Then I draw with a very old Wacom Intous digital drawing pad that still works after I don’t know how many years… This is like drawing with a pencil and with this pencil you can draw details with precision. Painter is an outstanding artistic software with no competitors.

3) Then I tried out the slideshow in Keynote which is the software I use for the presentation. Also an outstanding software!

4) When I was getting closer to the full idea of how to visualize this story I go back to Muji Notes and export all the sketches as jpg-files and mail them to myself. Then I place these pics on slides in Keynote to get an overview. I watch them in the light board mode which makes it easy to arrange them. When I am content with the order I print the slides, nine on each page, and now I can go through them all once more and make notes about exactly which drawings I have to to in Painter and which I can create in Keynote.

I like this way to work because I don’t waste paper, I can work creatively and cooperate with others. To draw pictures digital from start makes it easier to make changes – maybe you need to adjust a line or change a color?

I am so happy to live in this time when I have the opportunity to work in this way! Job satisfaction and happiness!

Seven years of persuasion and at last: he buys a Mac!

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Roine and I are constant missionaries for Apple’s products. That’s the way it has been since we bought our first Mac in April 1989. Since 2004 I have tried to make a person interested in buying a Mac. This man have thought of himself as a person who ”doesn’t understand computers”.
–That’s exactly why you should buy a Mac! have I persistent repeated.

Sometimes he has sat beside me at the office and watched my computer.
–Everything looks so cool in your computer! I have replied:
–Well, all you have to do is to get yourself a Mac you see…

At other times he has asked me to help him to perform something in his PC and I have stared with horror on his PC and said things like:
–I don’t understand PC! I get the shivers when everything looks so PC-like. Everything seems to get so complicated when it’s in a PC…
And then I have made brave attempts to help him. Most of the times I have succeeded, but not without a lot of searching and trying and sometimes I even had to get help myself.
–Please, why don’t you just buy a Mac? I’ve asked him.

In the beginning of this year we managed to convince him to buy an iPad for a certain activity, but then he didn’t really use it as much. But, this autumn he asked me to give him an iPad lesson. It so happened that the screen on his PC laptop got broken about the same time and a week later he came to me and said the magic words:
–I have decided to buy a Mac and an iPhone, can you help me?

At last! Hooray, hooray, hooray!

The Apple stuff got delivered last week. I have promised to give some Mac lessons but we still haven’t found the time for it. This man used to sigh a lot over his PC, but now he’s a happy man despite the fact that his iPhone was broke so that they had to deliver a new one to him.
–Before I used to get angry when something didn’t work in my computer, but now I think that this is a school that I have to go through, says the happy man.

He has asked me a couple of easy questions and every time he’s happy. Above all it seems like he thinks it’s fun to try and see if he can manage to find out how to do things all by himself.

He hasn’t yet had his Apple devices for a whole week, but I sense that his self confidence when it comes to using computers is about to grow. I think this is one more confirmation of that Apple’s user interface really is more intuitive and contains a pedagogy that boost the users confidence in stead of making him/her feel dumb. That’s why Apple’s devices becomes your friends.