Another day of doing nothing useful

Let me just begin with commenting on the sensational fact that my neighbour doesn't seem to have had a party tonight. So I can leisurely listen to some nice Barry McGuire, T-rex and so on (the good music in my opinion... as opposed to the noise from next door that usually accompanies my Friday nights) while doing everything but what I should be doing.

I've mostly spent my day re-reading some manga (for those unfamiliar with this word it can, although not completely accurately, be described as Japanese comics). Now, the fact is that this is probably the umpteenth time I'm re-reading these particular series. However, I smoothly explain it with it being me "organising" them... in a nifty little list. All to make it easier for me to find them again for the next time I find a good reason to explain away my method of procrastinating through re-reading of course.

As most people have probably noticed (and probably a lot sooner than I did) it's the Olympics right now. I'm not much for watching sports. I used to be back in the days before the Swedish Hockey team started to disappoint me at every turn. Nowadays I'm too cynical, always waiting for them to screw up at the last minute, to actually give a damn about the individual matches. So I just check the results when they're out and shrug my shoulder. Or there's also the comfortable option of having friends who watch sports and willingly share the results...

For example, I got a nice summary of some of the highlights (and low-lights) in today's competitions, with focus on the Swedish competitors, from one of my friends and classmates. He's posted some nice comments on today's hockey game between Sweden and Belarus, among other things, on his blog for example.

Those of you who can read Swedish, I recommend you to check his blog out: http://www.marjon.st/

And now, let's leave sports for a while (it only reminds me of the fact that I should visit the gym but probably won't). This same friend brought back to memory the ordeal we had to go through last year around this time.

I'm studying journalism. And it's more or less tradition that the freshmen of journalism at our university put together a magazine of sorts, called Inkognito. It's funded by the student association of our faculty but we, the students, are more or less given free rein as to the content and layout of the magazine. However, last year (our year) the association decided they wanted a bit more say in it. So half of the magazine contained interviews and articles connected to the university and our student association. While the other half went black... As in black as a theme.

It was wicked fun to plan for it, but also incredibly stressful since we did it parallel with our regular studies. I got to write about Film Noir, an era within the movie business that's always interested me. But the best, and I guess the worst, part of making that magazine was the last few weeks before it was off to the printer's. It was me, doing layout and cursing over the proofreading, and two others, the chief editors, sitting there trying to do layout and put all the articles together into a nice-looking magazine. And the program we used froze every other minute or so throughout the layout and editing process. I'm just incredibly grateful that the ones I was working with were so great. Because otherwise I probably would've broken down into a nervous wreck. Thanks to trouble with the settings in our editing program we had to re-do the final copy two or three times to make it printable. I still vividly remember the message I got from one of the others after he had gone to the printers for the third time.

"It's done!" was all the message said (in Swedish though) and to me those few words felt like the same sort of miracle as some might view Moses parting the Red Sea in the Bible. It was like cutting a tightly wound rope that'd been pulling at my neck.

And yet, looking back at it right now (and yes, wishing we'd had more time to go over the proof-reading, grammar and text layout) it was, despite the stress and horror and frustration, probably one of the most fun things I've ever done. And the fact that I got free hands to design the front page of the magazine... Amazing! It was such fun and it really awakened my interest in graphic design and image editing.

In the end... It was a good experience and, considering how little time we had and all the problems we encountered, I think it still turned out quite well. It helped me get closer to a realisation of what I might want to do in the future.

So, bottom line(and link I guess): GO INKOGNITO! (Do respect the copyright, please)

(It's entirely in Swedish unfortunately. But for those who don't know Swedish... The frontpage I designed is nice to look at =D )