Fmylife, MylifeisAverage and MylifeisG
I recently stumbled over a website, fmylife (that is fuckmylife or FML in short), where people all over the world post short comments on just a few sentences why their life sucks. Some are just funny, while some really make you loose faith in humanity. So beware, FML is not for the light-hearted. I have included some of the best (or worse) comments below, you be the judge whether to visit FML or not. 
“Today, my friend had to take my cat who has a tumor to be put down when I wasn’t home since I couldn’t bare to take him myself. I have two cats. He took the wrong one. FML”
“Today, I looked down to see a tiny spider crawling on the inside of my leg, very close to my crotch. When I tried to brush it off, it only flew a couple inches because it was making a web between my legs. Even a spider knew that it’s been awhile. FML”
“Today, my mother told me I should think about quitting school. She explained that the reason was because she didn’t want me to be more successful than my older sisters. FML”
“Today, my girlfriend of 8 years attempted to explain to me how the Egyptian pyramids were built by aliens from Mars. I have a BS in Biology and a MS in Anthropology and I am working on my Phd and she thinks I am being an irrational idiot for telling her she is wrong. FML”
“Today, I found out that 15 years ago my father threw out my college acceptance letters so that I could stay home and take over the family’s funeral home business. FML”
Luckily fmylife has two sister pages, mylifeisaverage (MLIA in short) and mylifeisg (mylifeisgreat or MLIG in short). All three sites combined seems to cover the whole span of people’s opinion of their lives, written in a humorous way. Obviously MLIA is a site where people post comments on why their life is average, and MLIG somewhere people post their comments on why their life is great. MLIA leaves you much lighter at heart than FML and is in my opinion the site where you are left less “messed up” compared to FML and MLIG. Below are some MLIA comments.
“Today, I realized that since switching from an avid FML reader to an avid MLIA reader, my life has seemed a lot less terrible, and a lot more average. Needless to say, I’m pleased with the trade-off. MLIA.”
“Today, my friend asked why I was so slow in replying on msn. I told her I was doing homework at the same time, but actually it’s just really hard to type when you’ve taped your hands up like a dinosaur. MLIA”
“Today, I was in the mood to hear a certain song, and when I put my iPod on shuffle it went straight to it. I said, “Whoa, iPod! Can you read my mind or something?” The next song was called ‘I Can.’ I am genuinely terrified. MLIA.”
“Today, my girlfriend and I just finished moving into our big new house that my grandparents gave us.There was one room left that we couldn’t find a use for. We filled it with pillows and foam swords for forts. I’m going to get an engagement ring tomorrow. MLIA”
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Free, online browser-games that deserve credit
First, I got to admit that I have never been a fan of online, in-browser flash games. Even though I have spent many breaks between classes at high school playing around on the Norwegian site 123spill.no. It’s probably because I have pretty high standards to games, especially to its graphics and “cleverness”. I like puzzle games which don’t have a timer, and provides intricate levels where you really have to think to solve it.
Still, through the years I’ve come across a few free online games I really think deserves credit. Some of the games contain great (though simple) graphics which is crucial for me to even enjoy looking at something more than five seconds. Other games are more clever and good at keeping the challenges.. well.. challenging and fun.
“Oil Panic” – move and react fast!
A typical level of Oil Panic
It’s rare that I enjoy an arcade game, where time matters. “Oil Panic” is one. It’s a very old game and I’m suprised that it’s still active. It’s in Norwegian, but you don’t need to know more than using the arrowkeys to move left, right and down and Space bar to retreat the oil drill. The goal is to gather all blue drops (presumably oil drops) in the level. The challenge lies in the enemies (in form of flames, red stars or other things) that suddenly appears at the border’s edge and move horizontally. The only way to kill them is by hitting them with the drill head – if they hit your extended pipe you die. That means that even though the drill head is picking up drops way at the bottom, if an enemy appears in the upper rows, you need to climb all the way back up before it hits your pipe and then climb back down again. Special walls and items appear in the later levels, as well as faster enemies and shorter time to react.
“Shift” – think in black and white
A Shift 1 level with a reference to Portal
There are now four “Shift”(s?), but i prefer the first two, “Shift 1” and “Shift 2“. These games don’t consist of many levels, but have a clever gimmick. The game is in black and white for a reason, because pressing Shift inverts the board. Otherwise it appears as a platform-game where you move and jump your way to the exit door. Reaching keys, switches and avoiding spikes have never been as challenging as in “Shift”. The games got humor too, including several obvious references to the great game Portal. I haven’t played “Shift 3” or “Shift 4” as much mostly because the last game runs on a timer.
“Fragger” – ninjahunting with grenades!
A typical Fragger level
I recently discovered “Fragger“, which is basically the traditional Tank Wars dressed up as throwing grenades killing ninjas in a more “urban” setting. You can set your angle and velocity using your mouse, and click to throw a grenade. You only have a limited amount of grenades, but unlimited retries at all levels. “Fragger” consist of 30 creative and challenging levels, where not only adjusting the angle and velocity is crucial for completion. When you have completed all 30 levels, you can play them again using a harder difficulty level.
“Orisinal” games – just cute
A selection of Orisinal games
Games created at “Orisinal” is not really games per se. They are more pleasurable for the eye than actually providing you challenges. The site provides no less than 60 individual games, all in the same style. Each game consists of really just one simple challenge, e.g. stack pigs in order to reach floating muffins high up in the air, or control a squirrel hunting for apples. What really attracts me is their beautiful appearance. My favourite games are the jumping rabbit in “Winterbells” and stacking pigs in “These Little Pigs“.
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Taking a trip to Skeikampen
Skeikampen
Sindre and me
Kjell, Sindre and I spent almost a full week at a cabin at Skeikampen, July 12-17. The cabin was great, but unfortunately the weather was not. It rained every day, stopping us from taking walks outside, especially up to the Skeikampen itself. Sindre’s brother Robin visited us a few days and one evening Robin, Sindre and I visited some relatives of Robin and Sindre “close by”. But we didn’t let the bad weather ruin our spirits, we played a lot of Monopoly and cards and took trips whenever the weather was fit.
View the photo album for all 43 photos.
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New interest: 3D modeling and animation
Introducing my new interest, digital drawing with an added dimension; 3D. It seems like 3D is moving fastforward as a squirrel on RedBull and is seemingly used everywhere, replacing good old 2D as it goes. When the first 3D movies rolled into the movies right after year 2000 (e.g. Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Ice Age, Shrek ++), I remember I was astounded and fascinated by the technology advancement (yes, I am and always will be a geek). The idea of creating something so alive, expressive and artistically beautiful through only the computer impressed me, and the limits seemed endless. Drawing attracted me mainly because it is absolutely no limit whatsoever to what you can create, only your own imagination. The 3D movies had taken that even a step further.
I’d never tried creating anything in 3D nor tried any 3D-software until about six months ago. It was just one of these days I decided to seriously look into something, and I aquired the two most used and attractive 3D softwares at that time, Autodesk’s 3Ds Max and Maya. I threw myself onto countless online tutorials, forums and even boughts some books to learn. The softwares were more complex than anything I’ve ever encountered in a computer, and they were admittely a bit scary at first. But starting with detailed tutorials with a lot of images or even videos, really helped in learning to create my first 3D models and animations.
My very first 3D model:
“The Scientist”
After a few months I created my first full character in 3Ds Max, “the Scientist”, following a long but good video tutorial. I’m still at the pure modeling stage, so no textures (other than normal materials) are applied, and I’ve not used any other software for further detailing (e.g. Zbrush or Mudbox). I haven’t learned much about lighting either. It’s coming, it’s coming! I’ve also made some short animation movies, but they are too noobish to show to anyone. 
Hopefully I’ll improve my modeling and animation skills, and eventually learn to create and apply textures (UVW mapping), rigging, lighting, compositing, (properly) rendering, and creating details and texture on my models using the digital sculpting softwares Autodesk Mudbox or Pixologic ZBrush.
At the moment, I’ve decided to take some official education within 3D modeling/design after I’ve completed my Master’s degree at the university. I’m considering two schools, Noroff and Idefagskolen, whereas the first one uses 3Ds Max and is mainly focused on games, and the second uses Maya and is mainly focused on film-making. I’ve still not decided which one, but at the moment I’m more comfortable using 3Ds Max. I still have a year left to decide, and much time for practice on my own.
If you’re interested in 3D forums, I’d recommend the Norwegian forums dedicated to 3D, 3Dhue and Det Store Dyret. Unfortunately they are not as active as the larger international forums, but they cover discussions about 3D stills and animations, feedback, some 2D, educational matters and job offers. In English, CG Society and game-artist’s forum are both forums covering several art-topics such as 3D, animation, rigging, 2D, painting, some scripting, film-making etc. They run excellent and serious modeling, animation, texturing and more challenges at all times, which I’m too noobish to participate (yet), but find very interesting to follow.
Hopefully I’ll update my portfolio with 3D models and perhaps blog some of my advancements in 3 dimensions.
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Extreme Sheeping (for laughs)
These herders and their dogs got some serious skill in herdsheeping! Animation of a big walking sheep, ping pong among others. Don’t miss the sheep-fireworks at the end.
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Game nostalgia: Strategy games
During the last few weeks I’ve digged around in my hard drives and resurfaced the old strategy games I used to spend so much time playing when I was younger. Strategy games and in some cases adventure games were the only games I was allowed to play by my parents at home, even on my own computer. So, of course, after having spent hours after hours playing certain games during my early teens, I still get a tingle of a smile and nostalgia looking at screenshots from the games I loved then. They had such a special charm.
I’m talking about computer games from 1998, 1999 and 2000, so they don’t have all that super-duper-fantastic 3D graphics in a super-omfg-high resolution. Instead they feature fixed isometric perspective. But it was, and still is, amazing how they managed to cramp up such details on such a small surface – on maps, buildings, and people – so that everyone could easily figure out what it is and appreciate the details.
I have yet not experienced such appreciation of details and addiction of a cleverly designed game since that time. They don’t make games like this anymore.
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Photography 2
Photo of Oslo’s Royal Castle
Photo taken at Frognerseteren
It didn’t take long for Sindre to get more interested in his new hobby, photography. In January he bought a digital SLR camera, Nikon D90. Even though I’m a little bummed that “Widey” (my Christmas present for him, a Panasonic compact camera) isn’t getting all the attention anymore, he makes it up by taking excellent photos!
Edit: I am now publishing photos inside this blog, instead of “externally” on lillarosin.com. All photo galleries can be found at the Photo gallery link at the top navigation bar. The albums are sorted after year taken. Click on a year in the dropdown-menu to see all photo galleries within that year, then click on a gallery link to see all the photos taken at your chosen event. Clicking on thumbnail photos will display the photo in a large version.
I will not publish Sindre’s photos taken with his D90 (some with Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3) here unless it is a special event – they can be found at Sindre’s blog.
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Photography
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3
Akershus festning at night,
taken with the new camera
Sindre wanted a digital camera, so as a christmas gift combined with birthday present (his birthday’s in early January) I bought him the camera he wanted, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. After only a few days Sindre has already been into several museums and trips around Oslo (also at nights) and taken some great photos. Apparently he seems to like my gift.
View a few of his pictures in my new camera photo gallery, and more on his site.
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