First Photo Assignment

I've dabbled around with photography for a bit on my free time for a while now. Last weekend I had my first real assignment. Well there was this one time when I shot some promo material for a company a long time ago but that doesn't count. With my new camera in hand I set out to take the first real pictures with it and have a go at wedding photography while I was at it.

The wedding was a good friend of him from mine named Ivan. His wedding was very much a Stockholm summer wedding inspired by the region and their personalities.

My shots depict the wedding preparations and despite I made a lot of mistakes, used a lot of less than perfect settings some pictures turned out OK none the less. For a first session with the camera I'd giving myself the big stamp of approval. After all I only had about 20 minutes to get to know the camera.

Naturally the starting settings as ISO, aperture and some program specifics were way off for the couple of first shot. It was quite interesting to see the chronological changes for the first 20 shots where I adjusted the settings after every picture.

Something that was vary nice for this event was that I was shooting with my dad. As we could purposely choose differing lenses we could build a much more complete and varied visualisation of oru surroundings then one photographer working alone.

The result was quite nice. In fact it was good enough for my dad to suggest we start a photo business together. Coming from my dad, that's a very nice compliment. Probably the best one I've ever had =D

Photo vs Video

The camera or the camera? I know it's not a dilemma most people face but I do. I often struggle with the choice of camera. Mostly weather to take pictures or to film. They both have their benefits and definitivily appeal to somewhat different sides of me.

The downside of using the video camera is that is usually takes a lot of time and footage to make something decent and even more time and planning to make something great. At least with a normal camera (in my case a Nikon D700) one can usually just pay attention and wait for those good moments to pop up.

I'd really like to get better at both Photography and Film but it just takes to much time to do both at the same time. Well at least without taking pictures and filming being the main focus. After all for me the primary thing is usually doing something else and just having the opportunity to snap a few shots. Now if those shots happen to be good that's totally a nice bonus.

Come to think of it, I've only ever been on a pure photographic mission. It was the Jungles of Sumatra and we where trying to get a few good clicks on some orangutans. Other than that there's been a few times I've been out purely to grab a few shots but not really as a real mission so to say.

This weekend was the last sailing trip with the long-ship Helgaholm and I figured I'd give just snapping a few frames the primary seat. I did bring a video camera but only pickled it up once. Not wanting to bring a lot of lenses due to my weight and size limiting mind set for adventure I went with a zoom lens. Something I think is fine these days. Yeah sure fixed lenses do get better Images, but not that much better warranting hauling around a lot of extra weight and the time changing lenses and/or cameras.

It was a short two day trip. But two days was enough to give me a cold. Coming back from the tropics less than 24h before departure, rain, wind, jet-lagged and sleep deprivation KOed my immune system. Still if was a real nice trip with a mix of all kinds of weather. Sun, Rain, Wind, in other words a typical Swedish summer. The crayfish where amazing and it was a good thing everyone brought lots and lots of extras as I did not have time to go procure food after arrival. In fact "bosö båtklubb" (or Bosö Boat Club) had gotten a whole lot of extra craw fish making the crawdads more than plentiful. Me likey very much =D

Best of North Sulawesi

I found my Sulawesi gem as my last few days and my last destination in Sulawesi. Tankoko Reserve hit me with a mellow atmosphere and lots of wildlife to see. It's easy to get to and there are several trips available there from most dive resorts and travel agents. However the local transportation there is a bit trickier, but a lot cheaper. Besides a couple of hours of "rough" travel only makes it more genuine. Just ask the microlet drivers how to get there and they will help you catch the connecting microlett, buss or back of a tiny truck. One can easily get there from Manado, Tandano and Bitung.

My favorite part was walking around in the Jungle and seeing all the cool animals. The best part might have been the lack of mosquitoes. I don't think I encountered a single one. Which was a releif since I had no malaria meds. From what I heard the risk was non existent to low locally but looking at the maps from home most of Sulawesi lit up as a malaria zone. It seems as this is no longer the case however.

Some of the awesome animals we encountered where giant tarantulas at night, über cute primates known as Tarsiers, Makaks, exotic birds and Dolphins.
My only regret is that I did not have time to do any muck diving close by but that's ok. I'll soon be diving in some new cool places.

After some checking around we stayed at a home stay for 200.000 IDR per night. This included 2 meals a day for 2 people. In other words quite cheap. Fresh fish was on the menu just about every day. Breakfast could be a bit small for people like me who are used to a proper meal for breakfast but one can always request some Nasi Goreng instead which was much to my pleasing.

In this place I met an Indonesian - German family which was quite interesting. Although their kids where about 10 years younger than me, I kept thinking that it could have been my life would we have not returned from Indonesia after moving there as a child. This could have been a defining moment in my life and I become a tad bit happier every time I think about it. I'm very happy I got to have the background that I finally got. But more about that another day.

If you are ever in North Sulawesi, pop by Tankoko for a few days of relaxing and enjoying nature.

Sulawesi Higlands

In the center of the Sulawesi Highlands is a city called Tomohan. It's not the biggest city but it's one of the most well knows for travelers in the area. Due to it's shape it seems a lot bigger than what it actually is as it's cramped between the volcanic mountains around it.

I spent a few days here and the area has enough things to do for half a week to a week or so. More if you want to climb all the hills around. A few interesting things include doing to the market where they happens to deal in the more unusual food stuffs. Dog and rats being on the menu feels quite weird but it's forth taking a look.

I enjoyed getting around with the local transportation such as microlets, local buses and hitchhiking on the back of trucks. In general one of the good things about the area is that cold beer is quite readily available. A nice change from many other non tourist destinations in Indonesia.

A Paradise Polluted

Outside the coast of northern Sulawesi lies Bunaken, a small island with the potential of some of the greatest diving in the world. It once ranked in the top five dive spots in the world but had lost rankings in recent years.

As a diver I went in search of new wonders and to marvel while doing my flights through alien territory. The underwater world is truly an amazing one, with creatures one would think lived in the world of fiction.  The waters of Bunaken have a diverse marine life and focuses mainly on the smaller life forms. There are a few turtles guaranteed to be seen but sharks and bigger wildlife is not as common.

It all started out with a very promising afternoon wall dive. The reef where I dived was in relative good shape and there was plenty to see. Then the local influence started floating by in the form of plastic and garbage. As the growing city of Manado is quite close by and up current of this “could be island paradise”, a lot of things tend to float by. Not uncommon are, plastic bags, dead animals, diapers or other random junk. It’s worst for the snorkelers on the south and east side who must experience all the floaters but it’s horrible for me as a diver as well.

After a few dives I had enough and could no longer stand the pollution of humanity and left the island after far fewer dives than I had initially hoped.

Without this pollution I’d easily rank Bunaken among the top 10-15 dive sports. It the reef was in perfect condition it would be even better but there is some damage due to earlier dynamite and cyanide fishing.

For those who do not want to dive there are a few other activities on the island. The beaches are not that good and quite polluted both from the wash up of Manado and the locals habit of throwing garbage about. The snorkeling is good if one can disregard the foulness floating around. There is a dolphin tour for about 80.000 IDR which is worthwhile and quite cheap for this type of thing around south East Asia.

It’s good to know that all the places to stay charge per person and not per room. All meals of the day are also included in this price. The cheaper alternative is to stay in a homestay in the little village on the south end of the island. The less cheap alternative is to stay at one of the many resorts with ad hoc dive centers or dive centers with ad hoc resorts. I stayed at Raja Laut (meaning Ocean King) and enjoyed it.

The price was 250.000 IDR per person and both food and accommodation was very nice. The diving part of our resort/dive center as also good but I think they value what you can see higher than what you don’t want to see. I although the corals might be more damaged on the North West part of the island I’d easily trade it for less garbage any time. Most of the prices for the resorts are in Euros and the local exchange rate is quite bad. So it’s much better to bring your own cash that you conveniently exchanged in your home country. There are also no ATMs on the island so bring plenty of cash. Although I felt quite safe ant not too worried about my gear in our bungalow it was still nice to be able to put out valuables in the dive centers safe.

The cheapest alternative for diving and also maybe staying is Daniels. I think the dives where 25€ at Daniels as well. At Raja Laut they were 30 € is you do 3 or more dives. For one dive I think it was 35 €.

On the unfortunate side of things I lost one of my go pro cameras with its new underwater housing and head mount. It will be interesting to see how to handle my insurance. And if I need to make some sort of report. After all I lost it in the ocean, do I still need to make a police report?

All in all, go dive Bunaken and see for yourself, if you are in the area. If not, go somewhere else. There are plenty of great dive sites in South East Asia to the west, north and east of Northern Sulawesi.

The Five Days of Crayfish

Crayfish season is coming up again in a few weeks. I however happened to get invited to a pre pre-crayfish party. Being me and having awesome friends, we decided to go by Kayak and adventure.

The plan was to kayak for three days hit the party just in time and kayak back. It did not go quite as planned though. It turned out to be a hell of a chill out place and thus we decided to establish base camp.

Using Karolinska Institutets (KI) place in the Archipelago we did daily trips by kayak in the archipelago. Rock Climbing, Fishing, Kayaking and the occasional crawdad was achieved.

I strongly recommend kayaking the in the inner archipelago of Stockholm. It's a great way to get to know the land and waters which make up Stockholm and have contributed to what the area is today. In my opinion it might be the most beautiful archipelago around.

There were more than a few homely culinary treats out in our back yard. Fresh berries really helped give the pancakes that little extra touch. Who in their right mind can fail to appreciate fresh pancakes, ice cream, whip cream and fresh berries? Oh and so the pancakes here are the thin ones, the ones Americans call crepes, The original pancakes :p

Ending every night with a fire is more or less the rule out in our summer life style. Although "Danger Mouse" and associates had a fascination for huge fires we all escaped unharmed, something the leftovers from the burnt down sauna did not.

Sällskapsresan - På Tur

This weekend I had a true Sällskapsresan like experience as we headed north for a mini expedition of hiking in the Swedish "wilderness". first of all It might be good for me to explain the concept of sällskapsresan. It's  a classic series of movies written, directed and starred my the Swedish icon Lasse Åberg. The movies all star a quite geeky and a bit lost guy who is not always in touch with the times.
Read more about the original movie here. there are however several follow ups and the one called snow roller is definitively my favorite.

Our mission this weekend was to climb Sweden's tallest mountain, Kebnekaise. Despite only bolstering a 2102 meter rise above sea level it's trickier to climb than one might think due to fickle weather and that it's way into the polar region. There are two essential ways of getting to the top. The west route and the east route. Taking the west one is the technically easier alternative but also more physically demanding, while the east path heads over a nice glacier and sport a short stretch of climbing. I'ts about the easiest climbing one can think of and would most likely be a French 3 on the free climbing scale (basically a ladder or a stair). We aimed for the est path, booked a guide and got ready to get up. After walking up by, not the alarms, but by the wind pounding the canvas over our heads, I had my suspicions. Although out alpine tent managed just fine in the wind it was soon made clear to us that the wind might be a bit rough. Estimating it to be around 15 m/s we figured we'd give it a go. The guide disagreed.

The wind was in fact 25 m/s. It was cloudy and snowing. Although hoping for better weather throughout the day and night so that we might see the top, no such luck was to be found.
The back up plan was walking around in the area, taking in the sites and enjoying trading stories with other hikers. All in all a quite leisurely time spent.

I learned and relearned a lot from this trip and I think it was a great refresher for my trekking experiences. After three days and 54 kilometers my muscles are remarkably ok considering I haven't exercised trekking or any serious attempt at running in years. What I felt was a problem physically was my endurance, my tendons (particularly my paterllar tendon) and my ankles.

On my way up I had just thrown the stuff I could fin on very short notice and some extra stuff that I had managed to get on the way, resulting in a extremely poorly packed backpack and plastic bags. Having struck camp I finally managed to fix this and the rest of the walk was quite different in terms of weight and comfortability of my backpack.
I'm a bit interested in going again as we never hit the top but I might be even more interested in doing it winter time.

during our time in the region we realized me and Stefan where quite like the main characters in sällskapsresan. Stefan sporting shorts and knee socks was obviously playing Stig and me wearing my colorful clothing, taking about gadgets, and to random people, took on the role of Ole, despite not being Norwegian. We even added an excited Brit to our party, Snowroller style. We met him on our way up to the fjällstationen (alpine station) and he was the only party we did not overtake trekking up there. I think he was the most stoked about climbing the mountain of all the people in the region. As this Scotsman was as hindered as we were from climbing we ended up sharing a few cold ones instead which was not at all a bad way to go when you can't trek.

Trekking Prepp

I haven't been hiking in a long long time and so when we booked our trip up north to climb Sweden's tallest mountain, Kebnekaise, I was stoked.
I soon realize that I was firstly way out of shape for hiking and secondly that my gear might me equally out of shape.

This is what I planend to bring:

Clothing and Footwear

• Rain Gear
• Underwear
• First Layer/Second Layer
• Second/Third Layer
• Third/Shell Layer
• Hat and Gloves
• 1st layer socks
• 2nd layer socks
• Short Pants or climbing pants
• Hiking Boots
• Rock climbing Shoes

Shelter

• Ground sheet
• Sleeping Bag
• Hygiene Bag
• Alpine Tent

Cooking and Hygene

• Water bottle/Hydration System
• Thermos
• Portable Kitchen
• Cooking Fuel

Tools

• Sharp Knife
• Multi-Tools
• Lights

Safety

• Sun Glasses
• Tape
• Sun Screen
• Med pack

The Gadgets

• GoPro Camera
• Lumia 800, Smart Phone 
• Nikon D200
• Sony HDR CX-180

This is what I forgot to bring or did not have time to find:

• Sun Glasses (can't find mine)
• Tape (forgot)
• Sun Screen (Not a priority)
• First Aid (don't have one)
• Multi tool (I got my knife)
• Lights (not a priority as it's light all night and day)
• Water bottle/hydration system (frustrated over not finding any of my systems. I would have liked to bring my camel-back system.)
• cooking fuel (no time)
• ground sheet (can't find it)
• gloves
• Salt, pepper and spices

I also noticed I might need:

• Utensils
• Washing equipment
• Mosquito repellent
• Lighter

Since I have a few hours during work today and also between work and catching the train I'll try to get these items in the following order of importance:

1. Water bottle
2. Utensils
3. Mosquito repellent
4. Ground sheet
5. Lighter
6. Washing equipment
7. Gloves

I'll outsource the cooking fuel to Stefan ;)

I'll let you know how the trip went.

Them Were Some Hard Balls to Crack

As the the peeps in the Big Bang Theory we are a bunch of over educated boys gone.. older. So we decided to  have a go at playing war again, just like kids. In other words it was Paintball time.

Seven of us made it there through the hardships of being far away out in the woods outside of Stockholm. These where however seven damn brave samurai. Yup, damn right we were.

Realizing we where playing pros with pro guns and shit it was a bit more scary, but we had a blast anyway.
Besides it was a good opportunity to try out my new GoPro mounts. Sadly I have no other fast way to mix my footage than using MS live movie maker which keeps messing and bugging out.

Sadly I have no other fast way to mix my footage than using MS live movie maker which keeps messing and bugging out.

The evening was rounded off with some nice Indian Food with birthday boy Stefan who I think might be hurting the most of all of us. So it was almost like an Indonesian style birthday event, except for the cake.

Post Mortem from Technical Writing in a Surprise Lean/Agile Environment

Not too long ago I was assigned the task to write the documentation for this new product. although slightly bigger than the standard document size in my field I did no think it would be a big issue tackling the task.

I would be gravely proven wrong. In fact this project would grow and eat up all my time leaving my looking like a question mark a whole bunch of times.

The main reason the this project came to be more complicated that is should have been was in my opinion these factors.


Inconsistent Project Directions from customer
The documentation type, quality and target audience requirements kept changing for about half the project.


Not knowing what type of work process the customer used
Previously not dealing with lean/agile methods for this customer, not knowing they started using this for this team made previous processes quite inadequate.


Previous projects of this type did not follow the guidelines
In addition to creating new documentation it was later added to merge similar projects not following the specified requirements into this project.


Time Constraint
This was all done with a very short time frame. I believe it was the fasted up to date for our customer.



This in turn lead to a series of problems. I have listed the ones I found to be the most time and energy consuming below.

This Specific Project

• Not knowing the project used lean/agile methods of working
• Having my assignment description changed
• Doubting all information channels
• Not being on site
• Inconsistency in input documents

Agile/Lean

• Not attending daily project meetings
• Working with off shore assets
• Doubting all information channels
• Weekly changes due to the scrum iterations

I'll try to illustrate by showing where my time went at first.

When I realized that they where working in a lean environment with daily project meetings. I started attending them and changed my approach. I found out that information flow to follow and somewhat decided on one of the order requirements. As a result my time could be spent somewhat differently.

Looking at the purple section which shows the time where I can actually produce content one can instantly see a huge increase in time spent (This is a good thing). Freeing up time from getting the right information made and instructions made it at all possible to finish this project although many a late night was required.

From this experience I take some lessons learned with me for future projects. Some are general issues that

Lessons Learned

• Know how your team is working
• Attending daily project meetings
• Work flow focus
• Review Process
• Communications in and outside the team
• Workload
• Identifying and contacting SMEs
• Identifying project goals and project type early
• Identify document type
• Who is the target audience
• Key points to cover
• Document style

Let me know if you have any ideas or opinions on this.

Bouldering Getaway

This weekend we focus on some more physical activities. The name of the game is bouldering. Bouldering is a part of the general sport of rock climbing. What makes bouldering bouldering is that one only climbs lesser heights and without the aid of ropes.

Getting back into the Stockholm scene I decided to get into this sport which has seen a high increase in popularity during the last few years. After all it's like this almost valid excuse to climb trees and be a kid again ;)

I've engaged in bouldering for about two and a half month or so now after getting back and I've finally gotten to the level where I don't fall down on everything. Yay!
After our usually sauna time after hanging upside down Stefan told us about the cool spots on Åland that we could climb.
Åland is technically a part of Finland but they speaks Swedish and actually wanted to belong to Sweden back in the day when the decision was made.
Ok, lets go! I replied and so we arranged to go two weekends after or so.

Getting to Åland is quite simple and one can just take the ferry over from a number of locations.To find some good info just check out Ålands tourist office. To find more specifics about bouldering spots take a look at 27crags.com

The bouldering was fantastic and it's was an awesome weekend. I recommend this to anyone that likes rock climbing and nature.

Career Change

Thinking a bit about what I want to do in the future and what I want to learn at the moment I weighed my options. Naturally I had to think about it visually.
Before that I should note my experience so far in CPI.
First of all Having worked in the field for short time and during that time having been in charge o one of the more complex and daunting projects I have learned a lot. Starting off from my tests they estimated I was on the level of a professional with five years in the industry. I´m not sure I agree with those assessments but I have developed a lot during this time. Although I still have plenty and then some to learn, I feel I could do this job for any company at this point.

To decide where to go I had to decide what I wanted. I started by identifying my primarily values at a workplace. Then I continued by approximation what each company and career or careers within that company could bring in terms of those values.
I did this estimation over a time span of 15 months.

The values I decided to list where:


Development Potential
How much I can still develop within this field at this point
Economic Conditions
Pay and other economical benefits
Flexible Working hours
How and when I have to work.
International Opportunities
The possibility or obligation to work abroad
Networking
The possibility to improve my professional network
Rate of Learning
How much I will learn per time unit
Skills Development
How many and what skills I may develop
Training
How much time the company will spend training me
Vacation
Vacation time and vacation benefits
Work Environment
Administration, management, co-workers and other soft values


Lets start with the value division of each company for me.

Moving on to Specific values over time we find this:

By summarizing the total of these values and displaying them over time we can clearly see what company that can provide me with better long term situation.

Graphics don't lie :p
I start in September.