Enjoy the time off, spend it with your family & friends, don’t be irrtated by all the red and the obligations that come with christmas, after all you should simply spread some love, bake a few cookies even though they are unhealthy and just have a good time.
Enjoy the holidays & take care,
Sven

Hopefully you can enjoy some time off and spend it with your family or friends. Take a moment to reflect on yourself and don’t be angry if you could not afford that shine bling to give away. Rather spend time with the ones you love and show them that you care. If they can’t appreciated they should be working on themselves.
Take care,
smashill

As some of you know from previous posts, I really like what Tim Ferriss has been doing. His intellect and hobbies are stuff to aspire and his blueprints, or rather his detailed reports of his ventures are always great for entertainment and educational purposes. Want to become an entrepreneur? Rather become a fulltime adventurer.
Here is his speech from Le Web where he talks about how to start with less than 10.000$ and succeed launchin a book into the top lists.

Stupid movie quotes can really make my day- There is the all-time classic Rambo III dialogue, that shows that there can be too much minimalism. Some designers and Zen followers should think about that.

Hamid: What’s that?
Rambo: It’s blue light.
Hamid: What does it do?
Rambo: It turns blue.

As you can see, all relevant information have been delivered, and a few laughs. This is just one example how movies can teach us about life. Another one of my favorite movies, not to say that Rambo III would be one, is Predator. Thinking about becoming a freelancer? Watch Predator and learn from it. Let’s start with my favorite movie quote ever:

Poncho: You’re bleeding, man. You’re hit.
Blain: I ain’t got time to bleed.
Poncho: Oh… Okay…
Poncho: [shooting grenades to a MG-Nest] You got time to duck?

Again, we can find some sparse dialogue, but this time there is actually a message. “You’re bleeding, man. You’re hit.” Poncho underlines something that has happened and that seems to be important, at least to him. Now as a matter of fact, this might not be important for you. Even though Poncho is in your team, bleeding is something that you do alone, as are most creative processes, sure you can teamwork, brainstorm and get information from others, but after all, it’s up to you. Don’t let others tell you what’s important unless they will take an active role to change it.
This leads right to the second part of the quote “You got time to duck?”, which tells another simple truth, even though there are a lot of things (such as bleeding) where you make your own decisions, sometimes you have to listen to your teammates & friends or you will get hurt.

1. Follow your own sources of inspiration, as there is no one who can do that for you.
2. Listen to your friends when trouble is ahead.

Predator inspired work-flow

Now you could be of the opinion that after such an amazing inspiration delivered by Predator, that there is nothing more in it. That’s completely wrong, if you look closely you can find some other gems in there that will take your creativity and freelancing to another level.

• Technology is king.
  The Predator has some fancy stealth armor that allows him to hunt without being seen, which makes him pretty badass. Not only is he invisible, he also has some nasty weapons to toy with. In the freelance world this means for you that you should get some decent equipment and make sure you stay up to date, it will make most of your tasks easier.
• Even though technology is king, fancy is not always enough.
  Having the latest gadgets and tricks and being the meanest motherfucker on planet earth, even though you are an alien, does not make you prone to winning every time. Same goes for artists, just because you have the best technology and tools does not guarantee that you will create great art or get every job. You are just as good as your competitors.
• Always have a backup plan.
  No matter who you are, always have a backup plan, Arnie had two traps to catch the predator. The predator had a nuclear bomb in case he lost. Someone dependent on creative capital should always create more than one project to have a backup plan, you always have to eat, and shelter in a cozy home is not bad as well.
• Run when things are about to blow up.
  At the end Arnie was the winner, nevertheless he had to run like hell. This is one of the most important lessons you can learn as someone creating creative capital, no matter if you have to deal with jackass clients, or people who want to tell you how you have to create your art. Have your rules, stick to them and when someone else breaks those rules, don’t hesitate to take steps so he won’t break your rules again.
• Don’t drop your equipment into the water.
  Mr. Fancy Predator jumped into the water, lost his invisibility as his gear was not waterproof and revealed that he had infrared vision, not being able to see cold targets. After all, this is what caused Mr. Predator to lose to Arnold, besides that it was an action movie in the 80s. Relates to the creative capitalist as following:
  1. clean your brushes, cameras and equipment.
  2. take care of your paperwork.
  3. use gloves when you work with prints.
  4. …

The scene

This theme is just running since the middle of april, so I finally took the time to even out a few bugs. You can’t do that fast enough. It’s just 8 months and no one complainded, which just underlines that there are only people trying to get their link on my site when they post their comments.
Content related changes hit the info text on the right side, the subheadline (that is not even displayed on this site as I did not incorporate the call in the design, but hey, never judge a book by it’s cover ;)) and furthermore I reduced the titel to “living in svensworld”, as this is what the blog is all about.

Refined Comments

The comments had no background, so they were kinda hard to read, I changed the commenting policy, so you can still post comments on recent posts, but you can’t post comment on posts older than 14 days. Happy time. I added a different, even more in the face than before introduction to the comments. Maybe some people will take time to read it before they attempt to spam. Still I really enjoy deleting the hand written spam, as it takes more time for them writing it than for me deleting.

The plans

You can always tweak and rework a site until you have enough, but after all this design is still lovely. *patting my own shoulder* The only improvement that is on sight for this blog is a higher posting frequency. Which will do more than any redesign could do.

This year’s crisis has been an inspiration for many artists, and this video is one to either love or hate, don’t know if this is save for work, but there are no nude people and nothing besides some blood. It reminds me of one of my favorite movies originated in Japan called Battle Royale. The whole sickness lies in the playing of deadly games to entertain the masses, especially when it involves teenagers. We are still far away from Running Man, The Gamer or Gladiator games on primetime TV, at least that’s what we can hope. Enough talking, enjoy the videos:

Metal on Metal “BASTARD” from The Glue Society on Vimeo.

and the Battle Royale trailer, which is probably not save for work:

As you are still reading … this is about the best present for your usual chritmas rejecting friend that relates to those two videos, especially the first one … christmas granades, where you can actually do something good, as parts of your purchase go to charity.

A few weeks ago I have been reading a post over about how photographers are very often only part-time employed as they have a very hard job, or rather have a hard time making money with it. This is only partly true, there are simply a lot of people who know how to use a camera, but know next to nothing about taking good, or respectively unique pictures. They are taking snapshots.

The woman writing this article lacks one quality. By telling us that it’s hard to find a job as a photographer she lacks one thing, taking great, and I mean great as in I would by this, pictures.
I can understand that it’s hard for her to find jobs photographing. I don’t want to sound offending or rude, but it’s annoying that everyone who owns a camera thinks of himself as a photographer. It takes a little bit more than that. And while it is rude to disrespect her works, it’s far more interesting that noone seems to care about quality when it comes to such a thing as design or photography.

At my job I have to fix so many pictures (”Make this look good” - A group shot where the background is sharp and no face.), there is one substitute for good photos, editing them for hours, you can fix a few flaws, but bad perspective and boring motives are not that easy to repair. Instead of telling people it is hard to find a job as a photographer, she would be better of reducing her mediocre portfolio (most pictures there are mediocre at best from a professional aspect) and only putting up good works. If that is too hard it would probably be better to simply start over and make a few better pictures(see darren rowes digital photography school). There are so many amazing pictures over at whatever stock site you find, it’s hard to compete against those guys if you are not shooting technically perfect pictures.

Everybody has to start somewhere, but it takes work and persitence to improve to a level where you can make money with it. As quality still matters, or you can depend on pictures taken by your relatives. Start taking unique pictures, stand out of the crowd.