Mr. Politically Incorrect

Ever since the DnD song found it's way into my Pen and Paper RPG group many years ago, I've been a fan of the musical genious that is Stephen Lynch. There's something about the combination of boyish charms and inappropriate jokes which really works, and being entertaining and talented doesn't hurt either.

So when I happened to see a notice for his show in a student newspaper I picked up a pair of tickets right away. Jostein wasn't hard to convince, and as the word spread more friends found that they wanted to tag along to Grieghallen.

Crowd was decent, and only one guy got thrown out, which I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing. Two hours later and with grins plastered over our collective faces we headed for beers, high on jokes about aids, jews and dubious sexual intercourse. Quality night all around.

Shopping Elsewhere

Finding the lectures at the University to be somewhat lacking when it comes to practical examples and instrumental knowledge in the field of teaching, I didn't hesitate when I saw that a childhood friend of mine was hosting a weekend seminar through Mental Helse Ungdom on how to hold good presentations. Finally something I could use!

15 hours spread evenly between Saturday and Sunday meant no lounging around the apartment during the day and made for a somewhat different weekend then I'm used to. While leaving Batman: Arkham Asylum behind was somewhat hard and getting up after a hardcore Harley Davidson party at Ricks Saturday night was even harder, it was well worth it. Getting advice from someone with hands-on experience from holding and watching lectures is golden. He gave us directly applicable pointers on how to structure a lecture, what to watch out for and how to pace our voice and use body language. Then we got a chance to apply what we'd learned by preparing and holding a short presentation and get feedback on our performance.

All in all a weekend well spent, leaving me with quality notes I will be referring to when preparing my own lectures in the future.

Oh, and the Harley Davidson party was totally sweet. Those people know how to party!

Defining Twitter

Social media is becoming an integrated part of our daily lives, a way of keeping in touch with our social circle on a day to day basis. But as with everything else people are resistant to change. When I was a kid it was a social stigma to own a mobile phone, but as they became more available people caught up and now it's hard to live without one. Few people install hard lines in their homes these days, and most people have color TV's.

Twitter is the latest addition to the social media scene. But compared to email, blogs and Facebook it's slightly more complicated in it's simplicity. With its 140 signs "it's like a Facebook status update and a blog merged into one" as people tend to explain it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It started out as a simple idea, the SMS of the Internet; a way of exchanging brief messages with friends. However, anyone could pull out tweets (Twitter posts) from the network and sort them in whatever way they wanted. You could browse for keywords, read the trending topics and follow random people. Then some clever fellows figured that if they used a hashtag (#) and a codeword, they could easily sort out the tweets they wanted. A myriad of supporting sites started popping up, and a simple tool became a community.

It takes a while to wrap your head around what Twitter actually is. Here's one way of looking at it. Imagine you walk into a party with millions of other people. Everywhere people are talking, some talk to their friends, some talk to large groups, some about specific topics and some about their lives. As you step into the room, you realize that you have no senses or mental systems for navigating at this party.

Twitter is that system. It allows you to focus your attention towards what you want to hear. You can chose which people to listen to by following them, which topics to listen to following hashtags or search for keywords, and see what discussions are currently taking place by looking at trending topics. As an added bonus, any time someone mentions your name you will hear it.

Facebook is for your old friends, Twitter is for your future friends. Use it well.

Great Expectations

In many ways our expectations guide our perception. When you go to see what critics have named "the best movie of the year", it doesn't always live up to your expectations. The reverse is also true; a movie that's supposedly horrible and unwatchable isn't always that bad. Maybe it has something to do with the concept Dan Ariely discuss when he talks about filling in the blanks. When you have sketchy details about something you fill in the gaps in a positive way, and so the good movie is expected to fill your criteria for a good movie, the bad movie fill your criteria for a bad movie.

My expectations for PPU was a mixed bag, a hoping for the best while expecting the worst kinda deal. So far I've been very positively surprised by my seminar group; the students are an interesting bunch and the seminar leader knows how to stimulate discussions. I'm still curious as to what the lectures bring, though I expect to figure that out soon enough. Answers to the question "what will we learn" is still sketchy, but judging from the seminar group it seems people will be pushing for hard facts on how to deal with concrete situations. I know I will.

Most concept has an inner and an outer component. The outer component when it comes to expectations is what you expect from other things, the inner component is what you expect from yourself. Supposedly, Henry Ford once said that "whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right". There is power in belief, be that one way or the other. These are subjects best discussed over beer.

Back to School

I've always been interested in the mechanisms which shape the human mind, a quest which has taken me down many different roads. One of these are teaching, or to be more specific; teachers. Whenever I meet someone who work as a teacher, I make sure to ask what they learned during their education. I have yet to receive a decent answer.

As with all things, if you want something done (or in this case, answered) you have to do it yourself. This, and a desire to give Bergen one more chance before going somewhere else to get a job in the gaming industry, led me to what the University of Bergen has dubbed "Practical Pedagogical Education". In short, it's a one year addition to an existing bachelor or masters degree which gives you the tools you need to be a teacher. Or so they claim.

Lectures start next week, and the introductory information meeting was held last Wednesday. After being lectured on the values of being a "moral person" and the importance of "treating people as people", I feel slightly dumber then before the meeting. There might be a very good reason why people with a teachers degree can't tell you what they learned..

Bachelor Party

This weekend spelled bachelor party as Daniel, an old friend of mine I haven't seen in ages, is getting married these days. His best man Arne had rented a cabin in the middle of nowhere, rounded up Daniels friends from then and now, and off we went.

Picture stolen from Facebook. Share it there, share it everywhere.

Most of us know Daniel from a from a pen-and-paper RPG background, and the first part of the day was spent running the groom through different trials with various personal references. The second half was spent drinking and on subsequent shenanigans.

These things call all sorts of social oddities out of the wood works, which is what makes them interesting in the first place. It's the perfect place to analyze human interaction, as people who don't know each other are friends for a day, locked together far from civilization in a cabin filled with alcohol. Drinking tends to remove the usual filter people use to judge appropriate behaviour, and entertainment ensues.

Dear Funcom

How many applications have you read so far? Are you getting tired of the same old lines? Age/sex/location. Education? Yes I have that! Who doesn't in this day and age? Academics are a dime a dozen, and lets be honest, most students spent their time at the university drinking anyway. I did, you did, yet here we are. You don't want papers, you want social skills. You want flare. And most of all, you want a friend.

Someone with a sense of humor. Who can brighten up the office and bring cookies on a rainy Friday, who sends you funny links just before lunch and tells inappropriate jokes by the water cooler. The guy who turns the company into a place that's better then your own home, and before you know it you're telling your wife you will be working overtime when in reality you're racing office chairs down the hallway. The winner gets his name on the hall of fame. Screw employee of the month.

All this is within your grasp. You can always tell your boss I wrote a nice and formal cover letter. It will be our little secret, and I'll cover for you when that cute new intern pulls you away at the christmas party.

Because that's just the kind of guy I am.

Sincerely,

Frank