Tse Moana

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Kickstarter

Happy New Year!

Friday, January 1, 2016 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

20151227_150522May 2016 be good to you all 🙂

I’ve been colouring my new Cat colouring book, it has really fun pictures.

I also received  one of the Kickstarter rewards that I was waiting on. It’s a book called Dry Season Only, about a trip to Botswana. A group of artists went on a two week trip there with the express purpose to get inspired and make art. The kickstarter was to raise funds for the trip and the printing of the book. The book is absolutely beautiful. Filled with travel journals from all of them with text, drawings, paintings, photographs and tutorials how some of the bigger art pieces were made. A very fine showcase of the beauty that is Africa’s wild nature.

20151228_222317Yesterday was a fun day, in so far as national-blow-shit-up day can be fun. I worked during the day so that was business as usual. In the evening we watched TV, ate tasty shit and even played a board game. At Nienke’s suggestion.

So I pulled out a game I got a while ago but had’t gotten around to playing yet. It’s a game based on Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. The game has three characters that move around the board. That board is divided in three parts.

In the first part all characters move separately without being tied to a player. That means that every player can move whichever character they want. The goal of the first part is to collect items. When the first character reaches the lake, the second part starts.

Now, all characters get on the raft and try to cross the lake. Again, each player can move the raft and the goal for the players is to collect items. When they get to the other side, the end is in sight. All they need to do is go up the lava stream and reach the exit. The players take turns and pay for the moves with the items they’ve collected. When the characters have reached the exit, the points of the remaining items are tallied. Player with the most points wins.

I got lucky with my item finds and won the game.

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Today was a work day. At work we had divided the three holidays between the six of us. I chose today. There wasn’t a lot of work to actually do so it was a nice and quiet day of working at home. Followed by a nice and quiet day of relaxing at home 😀

Posted in: General, Photos Tagged: Art, Board Games, Books, Colouring, Games, Holidays, Kickstarter, Photos

City Stuff

Saturday, November 28, 2015 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

20151122_18024320151123_191302I’ve been colouring in my Animorphia book some more and last weekend finished this bird. The day after I made gorgeous burgers with cheddar, alfalfa, jalapeno, fried onion and American sauce. They were delicious.

Wednesday I hit the city with Mom to go shopping. We’d been talking about doing a day out like that for a while but never got around to it until now. We started at the market square and I showed her Sostrene Grene.

They’re one of my favourite stores with knick knacks and random things that change regularly. This time around I got some fabric, some stickers, some cards, a blank book, a bell jar, wood chips, some christmas puppets and a tote bag.

20151125_131550We also went to the Bristol and there I found a nice pair of ankle high shoes for only € 35,00. Since winter is coming and I need a new pair that is warmer than what I now usually wear, I snagged them up.

After the market square we made our way down the main shopping street. We took our sweet time for everything and when we got to the Hema we decided a break was in order. We had some food and I had a beautiful iced coffee.

Then, from the Hema, we stopped at Zara and I bought the sweater I left behind earlier this month when out with Gert. Except I got it in a darker colour now. When we were done there, it was time to go back home.

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The next day I had a double movie date with Gert, again. We saw The Good Dinosaur and Mockingjay, part 2.

The Good Dinosaur is a fairly standard Disney story. It takes place on a planet earth where the dinosaurs didn’t get wiped out. Main character is this dinosaur kid who’s clumsy and feels like he doesn’t fit in. His dad tries to help and sets him the task to protect their crops from vermin. The kid fails at that so he and his dad go out for some character building. Bad stuff happens, dad dies, kid feels guilty. He gets accidentally lost and needs to find his way back home. He then comes across the vermin, which is a little human boy. Except the humans aren’t very developed yet and the human kid basically acts like a dog. Together they set out to get dino kid back home.

The travel part where they try to get home is the best part of the movie. It’s funny and sometimes touching. The beginning of the movie where they give a peek into how dinosaurs run a farm is fun too. The emotional stuff is a bit heavy handed sometimes. The animation is very nice in some places, but okay in others.

Mockingjay was a very good film. As far as I can remember it’s still very close to the book. I liked how Katniss is really getting into her own and seeing through things now. I think I wanna see it again.

When I got home that night, a package was waiting for me. In it was this little statuette of Jonas. It is the final piece of my Kickstarter reward for the Wormworld Saga book 2.

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Posted in: General, Photos Tagged: Bristol, Clothing, Colouring, Food, Friends, Gert, Hema, Kickstarter, Mom, Movies, Shopping, Sostrene Grene, Zara

Legion

Sunday, November 8, 2015 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

20151106_225052It’s BlizzCon weekend!

I hooked up the laptop to the TV and I’m spending a lot of time in my comfy chair watching the panels. With an occasional cat as decorative lap ornament.

Bring on Legion!

I also found this awesome Kickstarter: Music for Cats. It’s this dude, David Teie, who’s been spending his time figuring out what kind of music animals like. He started with dogs, but is now working on music for cats. He’s been doing research into how cats hear and what sounds they like and then composes pieces based on his findings. With the proceeds of the Kickstarter he wants to record and release the pieces.

So far, the Kickstarter is only a week and a half old and he’s blasting through his goals. I pledged to get a CD set with the music. One regular CD and three CD’s that have the music with silence in between so I can put on a CD in the morning for the cats and it will play throughout the day.

Posted in: General, Photos Tagged: Captain Blackbeard, Cats, Kickstarter, Music, Photos, World of Warcraft

Goodies

Tuesday, January 13, 2015 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Last year I backed the IndieGoGo campaign to fund season 3 of Table Top, an awesome web series hosted by Wil Wheaton wherein he plays board games. Every episode features a different game, and three different guest with which he plays. I’ve been watching the first two seasons and it has given me many new games to put on my wish list.

I’ve really grown to love Kickstarter and likewise crowd funding websites the last two years. They are an excellent way to support people that do not get mainstream publishing or funding while getting some loot in return 🙂

Crowd funding has the artist or producer present their idea and plans, set a monetary goal to be raised in one or two months and list a number of rewards people can pick. People then pledge an amount of money, and select a reward, or perk, they want. At the end of the campaign, if it’s funded, credit cards get charged, the thing gets made and people get their rewards. It functions more or less like a pre-order system.

There is an element of risk, though. There is no safeguard in place if the project creator does not come through with what they promised. If they don’t it will ruin their reputation and such, but you’ll still be out of money.

Kickstarter and IndieGoGo are fairly similar, with the difference being that IndieGoGo offers flexible funding and Kickstarter doesn’t. So with Kickstarter, if at the end of the period the goal isn’t reached, the campaign fails. No money exchanges hands, and the thing doesn’t get made.

On IndieGoGo, with flexible funding, the campaign gets all the money pledged to it during its runtime. This makes IndieGoGo ideal for charities and for campaigns that either feel secure in their plan, or already have back-up money.

So far, I’ve backed a dozen campaigns on Kickstarter, and the TableTop one on IndieGoGo. They were for music (Amanda Palmer album), books (The Charmed Realm art book, Short Fantasy Story), comics (WormWorld Saga general support, and first English edition, Borthaniel, What’s Normal Anyway), movies (Veronica Mars, Afronauts, Blood Kiss, LFG comic animated short), and other random things (Wooden Tarot).

20150113_120203I’ve ended up with books, comics, t-shirts, stickers, postcards, CDs and other fun stuff. It’s always so much fun to receive packages out of the blue 🙂

The only tricky thing is usually balancing the additional shipping. As a lot of campaigns are based in the US, shipping over here tends to be steep. I always have to carefully wage whether I find it worth it. This is why I generally skip board game campaigns, even though I’ve seen so many gorgeous ones, as the shipping cost for getting the game here, is often almost as much as the game itself. Like it would be $40 to get one copy of the game, but also $30 shipping, that’s not worth it.

I am also careful in selecting projects to minimise risk of the creator failing to deliver. So far, only one of my backed projects seems to be heading for failure (Blood Kiss, no updates in months and they’re still not shooting…), the others all delivered, and mostly on time.

For Table Top, I pitched in on the $100 level which offered as perks DVDs of season 1 and 2, a t-shirt, a special set of Cards Against Humanity cards, a button, a sticker and set of TableTop Dice.

Yesterday, the perks got here, and they are fantastic! Captain agrees.

Posted in: General, Photos Tagged: Captain Blackbeard, Cats, Crowdfunding, IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, Photos

[PBP] D is for Divination

Saturday, August 16, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Divination is a practice wherein one, through ritualistic method, tries to find meaning and gain insight to answer a question or help make sense of or deal with a situation. The name implies that the found insight is given by a a deity. However, I believe that the answers and insights found are a combination of factors. We have many layers of consciousness and are often unaware of a lot of things inside our own brain. Working with a divination method can bring things to the surface. Also, the energy with which you surround yourself influences how you see things. And beyond that, I believe the universe, or even one or more entities can push things when you’re interpreting if they feel you need to know something, or take something into account.

There are so many forms of divination, but I am mostly interested in two of them: tarot/oracle decks and runes.

Tarot and Oracle Decks

Tarot is a deck of cards with a specific set of cards divided in two subsets. The full deck consists of 78 cards of which 22 numbered ones make up the major arcana and the remaining 56, split up into four suits, are the minor arcana. There are many variants in design for a tarot deck, but all generally use the same terms and numberings. Oracle decks are similar but generally have different terms, different number of cards, different themes. The general idea in using them, though, is mainly identical to how you would use a tarot deck.

For a standard tarot deck, like the Rider-Waite version and direct spin-offs, there are standard interpretations of the cards. However, interpretation can differ from deck to deck as the individual designs evoke different feelings and insights. Plus, I’m notoriously bad at remembering the standard meanings, and don’t like to continuously consult a book or booklet. So for me, a more organic reading feels better.

Oracle decks are generally already built for a more organic reading, and I think that’s why I like them. There is no implied ‘right’ way to read a card. Plus since they lack the constraint of the standardized tarot deck, they can be in literally any theme you can think of.

The use of a deck is also varied. You can pull a single card from the deck as a card-of-the-day type thing or have an elaborate layout to answer questions or process complicated situations. I prefer simple spreads because I like to ponder over the result and extrapolate from there. So card-of-the-day things, or maybe a basic three card spread in a past-present-future setup. There, the first card details what came before the current situation, the second indicates what’s up at the moment, and the third card gives insight in what might happen.

It’s important to have clear, before you start a spread, what the function of each place in the layout is. If you use the aforementioned three-card one, you need to narrow down what exactly you need it to show. Because ‘the past’ and ‘the future’ are too broad. If, for example, you feel stressed out at work, you can define the past-card as ‘what is the root cause of the stress’, the present-card as ‘what is currently the main thing keeping me stressed’ and then define the future-card as ‘what do I need to focus on to get past the stress’ . While not strictly foretelling a future here, it can give you insight into what to do in the future to help your current situation. Extrapolating, you can build a spread to suit your question or situation.

As such, tarot isn’t so much ‘telling the future’ as it is a tool to help you understand yourself, your situation, your life.

I’m a very minor collector of decks. I don’t have as many as I would like, but good decks can be pricey. I started out with a regular Rider-Waite deck, bought in my teens during my first steps on the pagan road. For years that was the only deck I had. I used it occasionally. It’s only been the last year or two that I’ve gotten more interested, even though I still don’t read as much as I’d like. But step by step we also get where we go. I have in that last two years acquired more decks, and it’s fun to see that each has its own vibe and different decks fit different moments, questions or feelings.

I’m currently eyeing this oracle deck. I bought her tarot deck in the same style in her previous kickstarter and it is fabulous.

Runes

Runes fascinate me because they are also an alphabet. And languages in all their forms are like magic unto itself to me. Plus, they have this long history, which is another passion of mine. Runes were in use among Germanic tribes in the first couple centuries of the common era and evolved in form. In Scandinavia the Elder Futhark was simplified into the Younger Futhark with less characters, while Frisians and Anglo-Saxons did the opposite: they created the Futhorc which had more characters.

Every rune isn’t just a letter, it is also a word. And from and through that, it derived meaning. The runes were used as signs and charms, ascribed magic powers they got imbued with it. They were also used for divination by throwing them on a piece of white cloth and then taking a number of them and interpreting their meanings together.

As such, they are still used today. However, since very little is known about how the divination was done exactly, there are different interpretations on how to do this. Some people use runes in a way that is similar to tarot/oracle decks in that they use spreads and layouts where runes are placed as they are drawn and then interpreted according to the layout. I, however, prefer to use casting whereby I throw the lot of them on a cloth.

I then take the ones that fell blind (since the rune is only on one side) out, as they don’t count for that casting. I also take apart the ones that fell outside the cloth, or the shape that I’m using. Depending on the question, these runes either get interpreted as being outside influences, or also get discarded. The remaining, open, runes get interpreted together.

A quicker method, for a simple draw if you have little time or a simpler question is to cast your runes as above. Discard the blind ones and the ones outside the perimeter and then grab three at random from the remaining open ones to interpret. You can also use a daily rune draw as a motivator or power word for the day.

If you want a middle ground between casting and spreads, you can construct a pattern with different areas and then cast the runes on to that. This allows you to interpret groups of runes together, as they apply to the area they fall in.

 

In the end, for both systems, it’s important to do what feels right for you. Only you can tell what does and does not work for you.

Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: Communication, Future, History, Journey, Kickstarter, Language, Me, Mindfulness, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism, Self-Discovery, Spirituality, Thoughts

All Over the Place

Sunday, March 23, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

It wasn’t very  busy at work on Friday, so when I got there a wee bit before twelve to start my shift at noon, I figured I’d ask for leave. I had some reporting stuff to do later on, so I just asked for leave until 16:00, which I got.

Then Nienke suggested we go to the movies. So she asked for leave, and then Thomas was game for movie as well. We harassed traffic for quick answers, which we got, and off we went to the cinema. We decided on Need for Speed which was actually a pretty good movie. There was a decent plot, nice actors and very pretty (and fast) cars.
Afterward we went back to work until the end of our shifts, it was hilarious seeing everyone’s faces when we showed up again after leaving earlier 😀

hemnesSaturday we went to Ikea, really early in the morning. I got the big Hemnes cabinet along with some fabric baskets to put inside it. When we got to the kitchen part, I fell for the dishes there. I’d been bored with my regular whites anyway so I got new plates and bowls in dark purple and faded green. Also two picture frames to display some of the Paul Kidby prints I got as a Kickstarter reward. After getting home I spent the rest of the day building the bloody cabinet. By nightfall it was ready so I could put stuff in it. It will probably take a little bit of getting used too, as it’s a wee bit deeper than I anticipated/remembered. But it does already look much better than before. It’s real nice to have a proper place to spread out the altar.

This morning in Pilates class we got a new series of excercises, ouch! After lunch I removed all the winter decorations still in place and put up the spring stuff. It looks nice 🙂

Posted in: General, Photos Tagged: Altar, Decoration, Friends, IKEA, Kickstarter, Movies, Nienke, Pathé, Photos, Review, Shopping, Sports, Spring, Work

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2017 Reading Challenge

2017 Reading Challenge
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If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.

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