DOA - for reals

I'm pretty sure I killed the Zombie. Or maybe I'm becoming one myself?

I have no clue.

You know what? I should put up a new sign next to my thesis office.

Don't Dead. Open Inside.

DOA

In case you didn’t know, writing a thesis is freaking hard.

I’m up in my elbows of the guts of this paper. I made quite a mess of the analysis. Words are splattered everywhere. If this was a murder scene, then the analysis would be the guts sprawled all over the floor. It’s bloody. It’s messy. Something has clearly gone very wrong.

But I’m going to ignore it for now.

I have to tackle the discussion.

So I’m staring at the head of my victim, trying to figure out how to cut into the brain and get the pieces out I need.

I don’t want to make a mess again. But I think I’ll have too.

This thesis writing is brutal business.

And somehow my thesis ended up being a metaphorical murder victim?

Also, I’m not sure if this metaphorical murder victim is alive or not.

Oh well. It’ll probably end up being zombie. I can deal with that.

A Sunday in Copenhagen

I’m back in Denmark again and I feel like I’ve been hit with a sledgehammer.

Is it possible to get a hangover without actually having any alcohol? This is the worst.

Anyway.

The leaves on the trees are pretty. All yellow, red, and green. The skies are grey and everything is wet.

I’m trying to get my brain into gears. I have tons of work to do on my thesis.

And this is where I’m supposed to be positive about my thesis-progress, so here goes: I think I’ve finally found the right angle in my discussion. For the first time in months I actually have an idea of what my final conclusion will be. Now I just have to line up all the arguments for and against, and write a discussion that effectively demonstrates that I know what I’m talking about.

Ha. What do you know. The sun is shining again. It’s breaking through the grey clouds.

And now I’ll get to work.

Have a wonderful Sunday out there.

Btw, I've started reading Deadpool. He's awesome. I love my characters a little crazy and with a ton of bad puns.

Hocus Pocus

I wanted to explain to my sister how my thesis was going along. I used the metaphor of magic.

It’s not that I have extensive experience crafting spells but I’ve read enough urban fantasy to know my way around an incantation or two.

The first step is to pick the spell you want to use and then line up the ingredients that you need. Now some of these ingredients might be a little hard to come by (e.g. blood of a dead sinner or the last breath of a virgin).

But you know it’s possible to collect these things. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. It’s just a matter of hard work and knowing a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy. Either that or you sell your soul to a demon to get some of these ingredients. I’ve watched enough of Supernatural to know that that isn’t a good course of action though.

 Halloween in San Francisco.

Once you’ve gotten your ingredients all lined up, you start to mix them. You say words of meaning. You stir a pot of green goo and watch as the bobbles pop in sync with your incantation. You do the witchy stuff that ties the spell to the purpose at hand.

It’s important to stay focused at this point. You have to make sure that all ingredients are used in the correct manner, and applied in the correct order. The devil is in the details, and if you don’t pay attention to him (and the details), he might come after you.

You’re getting close to the really exciting part now. You’ve done the tedious work. You’ve done the hocus-pocus witchy stuff. But you’re still not done.

You need to center yourself, collect all of your intentions and will this spell into actual existence.

It’s going to take determination. It’s going to take will-power. It’s going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

It’s not easy to create something from nothing.

You need to know with every fiber of your soul that you’ve completed the previous steps perfectly, because they are your foundation now.

You need to be steadfast in your determination to complete this spell. Doubt is not a luxury you can afford.

For some this last step is done in a frenzy of activity. For others it’s a slow burn, where you enter a meditative state. Regardless, you cannot stop until you’re done. And the last step will always be the hardest.

Hopefully you’ll succeed in the first try. The alternative is that you have to collect ingredients anew and start over, paying extra attention to ensuring that your foundation is sturdier this time.

 More Halloween in San Francisco. I really love Halloween.

I’m at the stage where I’m beginning to mix my ingredients. I’m binding my spell to the artifacts I’ve chosen to be a part of my thesis. I’m still not quite sure I’ve gotten everything just right yet, so I’m moving forward slowly, double checking that everything fits together as it should. That my ingredients complement each other as intended.

So please excuse me while I continue working my magic.

Fake it 'till you Make it

I’ve been having difficulties with my master thesis. Every time people have asked me about how it’s going, I’ve told them that it’s hard and I’m struggling.

I’ve been complaining about my master thesis so much lately that even I am getting tired of hearing about it.

No more talk of me being tired. No more ‘woe me, life is hard’-shit.

I am going to fake it until I make it.

And believe me I’m going to make it.

Hand-in is in 71 days, so let’s get down to business.

I’m writing a case-study about hitREcord.org

hitRECord is an open collaborative production company that has produced several short films, books, posters, t-shirts, etc. It is directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and I think the mention of his name, merits a picture of him.

 
I have a folder in my thesis project called motivation, which is filled with pictures of JGL. Yeah. Don’t judge me)
hitRECord is currently producing a TV-show to be aired on Pivot, a new cable network, in the spring of 2014, and from what I can gather, they are on track to deliver eight episodes as promised.

Showing their content on a cable network is bound expose hitRECord to a new audience and to attract more users to their website. I’m curious as to whether they have the organizational, managerial, and technical infrastructure in place to handle this expected growth.

The hitRECord website already has 200.000 users, so they’re not a small organization – this is not a case-study of how to go from a small entrepreneurial company and onto the next level. This is a case-study of how to transform a thriving business into a noticeable player in the ‘major league’ of Hollywood movie production.

I could go on but I’m finishing up a section of my theoretical foundation.

I will talk to you later.

It's Messy Before it's Clean, Right?

My room is a mess. I suck at doing stuff like vacuuming and putting clothes on hangers. Not a good combination of things to be sucky at.

Update on the friend business: It wasn’t what I thought it would be. But nothing is broken so that’s good.

And other than that I’m trying to get myself into thesis-writing mode.

Like for real. I have 6 months where I have to write a thesis. It’s really doable. But I’m pretty stumped by the step of finding a problem to write about.

So to remind myself that I’m further along than I think I am, I’m going to make a list of stuff I’ve done:

• I found a subject that perfectly combines Technology and Business: YouTube
• I wrote a list with 16 areas of YouTube I’d like to investigate further.
• I wrote a 20-pages paper about user interaction and gamified processes on YouTube
• I found my thesis advisor
• I’ve read about persuasive technologies, gamification, business models, motivational theories, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember.
• I went to a lecture about big data and found out that it really is just a buzzword.
• I’ve bought books about behavioral and cognitive economics, information visualization, and the fallacy of technological solutionism (give them to me Amazon so I can read them!)
• I’ve investigated the business model of YouTube and found that they are constantly trying to increase their revenue, currently by diversifying their products.

So I’ve done stuff. But I want to do more. And most importantly, I need to find my angle on this project. So far I’ve found that even though I knew YouTube was a huge area to tackle, it is even larger than I thought. Maybe even larger than life? Anyway. All I need is a good title and the rest will follow.

Ideas so far include “YouTube: A Case Study of a Persuasive Business” and “How YouTube Creates Revenue: Aligning Consumers, Contributors, Creators, and Customers”. Maybe I should go in a totally different direction: “Why YouTube Trolls are the Best Trolls” or “YouTube: It’s the Shizzle!” or “YouTube: The Parasite of Google?”

I mean, the possibilities are endless, and that’s kindda the issue. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.