My wife was writing our weekly food/groceries order online tonight and asked me: “What would you like to have for dinner this Friday when your friend visits us?”. I couldn’t think of anything. Isn’t that interesting? I have all the possibilities in the world and come up with no answer. Had she instead asked, “Would you like to eat pancakes or meatballs?” the problem would have been extremely easy. Voila, we just created a boundary condition. There’s clearly a flip side with total freedom when it comes to creativity.
Read MoreI have been visiting my mom and dad during the Christmas holidays, and the visit has clearly demonstrated the importance of routines and habits. When you are administering a two kid-two dog family, routines are very important to get anything done. But the challenge is to keep the routines going when you’re away for a couple of days. One of the habits that did work though, is the writing practice. I was about to go to bed, when it hit me “What a minute, it’s Monday and I haven’t written my weekly piece.” So, not allowed to go to sleep yet. This is the 108th weekly piece without interruption and I am not going to start tonight. My writing habit has become like a giant flywheel that is spinning at high speed. There is MORE resistance to NOT write, than what it is to fire up the laptop in the middle of the night and get going. How interesting!
Read MoreI’ve been publishing content daily for more than two years by now and this is the most important lesson that I’ve learned. Never pre-produce your content! The best blogs and videos are created on the fly when you’re in the zone. You cannot pre-plan flow. However, writing a blog or recording daily videos has a flip side. What do you do when you are all out of inspiration? Sometimes life sends you a curveball and it is all but impossible to create. Today is one of those days, and I now wish that I had some pre-produced content ready to publish. But I don’t, so here I am anyway. And I guess that might be an even more important lesson.
Read MoreA couple of years ago, I had a strong gut feeling that something bad was going to happen. Something really bad, and I told my wife that “we have to get out of here”. We had to get away from our nice apartment in the city and settle down in a house in the countryside. That gut feeling should not be dismissed. It has never failed me. Unfortunately, I have never been so right about anything in my whole life. Out here, in our new home – nothing, and I mean NOTHING has changed since 2019. A solid foundation keeps you sane.
Read MoreI’ve been doing a bit of simulator flying this last year in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I’ve mostly been doing some sightseeing occasionally, using an old Xbox gamepad. It gets the job done, however, when I started flying in VR some problems arose when it was time to land the plane. I find the landing the most challenging part of a flight, by far. One critical aspect of landing is throttle control, because when landing you want to go slow, but not below the stall speed. I have lost count on the number of times I plummeted from the sky because of stalling and hopeless throttle control. Last week, I had enough and started scanning the 2nd hand market for a HOTAS system (Hands On Stick And Throttle). That is the flying equivalent to getting a steering wheel for your racing games. I finally found a seller, and it turned out to be a real feelgood story.
Read MoreA couple of days ago, winter arrived in all its glory from one day to the next. It dumped a lot of snow in just one day, and the ice on the sea started to form. However, with snow comes the need to displace snow for walking paths and accessibility. There’s nothing wrong with getting some physical exercise, but a snow blower can be a wonderful companion throughout the winter season. Unless they suffer from gasoline incontinence, like my trusty companion developed last spring.
Read MoreI have been working with the acoustic design of timber buildings my whole career, but it isn’t until this past year that actual buildings are inaugurated, and people move in. The building process is slow, and it takes several years from the start to the end user getting a new home. And even then, it’ll probably take another six months until you know whether you did a good job. If you hear nothing, that is. If something goes wrong and the tenants perceive annoyance, you will probably learn about it much sooner.
Read MoreA couple of days ago, I opened the Microsoft Whiteboard app that I have been using for a couple of years. It is one of my most used apps. And they had released an update, probably to do something nice with the release of Windows 11. But this new version was a total disaster. The update was a complete downgrade in my usage scenario. I was so mad, that I published a video about it in frustration. How wonderful it is when the internet community responds. In no time at all, I had a solution on how to roll back to the old usable version and as of this writing the issue has been fixed.
Read MoreYesterday I listened to a Podcast with Bret Weinstein (DarkHorse) on the topic of how to think like a Nobel Prize winner. The key takeaway is the same title is this blog post. The message resonated very strongly with me because I have used a similar approach for the past decade in various endeavors. The beginner sees a lot of options but has very few tools to use. The expert on the other hand, tends to see few solutions to a given problem, and has many different tools to solve them. To take the best of both worlds would indeed be a lot of options and many ways to approach the problem.
Read MoreMy favorite system update with bad timing was last year when I had scheduled an online tutoring activity on Zoom with about 40 students. I made sure to test and connect every piece of equipment the night before and it worked like a charm. The next day, I was almost an hour ahead of schedule and fired up my system to make sure there would be no issues. Then, my HP Elite X2 decided it was time to conduct a major system update with BIOS flash. You cannot skip it; it just begins the update process when it feels like it. Even if you are standing in front of an audience. And this is a time-consuming process. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry as I watched the counters on the clock come closer and closer to 13:00 when the lecture starts.
Read MoreIf you don’t have time to take a five-minute break, you should take a ten-minute break. I don’t remember the source of this quote, or even the exact wording, but there is a lot of wisdom in it. From experience, I have learned that when your workload increases until the point tunnel vision starts to kick in, it is critical do remember this simple rule. When it feels as if the to-do list grows faster than your ability, some of the first things to skip is breaks, exercise and decluttering. Last week was just one of those weeks. Really, the whole last month has been like that. I had so much stuff to do that I had to work the whole weekend. So, I applied the rule and spent two wonderful days with my family, took long dog walks and cleaned both my office and my home.
Read MoreThere’s a Swedish saying “En olycka kommer sällan ensam” (When it rains, it pours). If that is true, the opposite must also be true, but I don’t know any similar saying by heart. So, I prefer to think of it as if the universe is smiling at you. Because it sometimes feels as if the whole universe conspires to help you. When I have had those positive experiences, the typical scenario is that I am extremely stressed out about something, and then suddenly the problem just solves itself without attention. Yes, sometimes the best solution to a problem can simply be to just ignore it. Last week I experienced one of the most enjoyable smiles so far.
Read MoreOne of my favourite PC games was Diablo 2 from around year 2000. I have countless hours in that game. And recently, Blizzard released a resurrected version with updated graphics for modern systems. It is a perfect cash-grab targeting guys like me, but honestly, it is still a very good game so I bought it instantly. I was just too curious to find out what the magicians over at Blizzard could achieve with modern tech. The way that system performance has improved according to Moores law compared to 20 years ago is almost incomprehensible. They have also implemented a button in the game that instantly toggles between legacy mode and modern graphics. When I pushed that button my jaw dropped.
Read MoreWhen I first tried Microsoft Flight Simulator about a year ago, it was the most impressive thing I had ever done on a PC. The ability to fly literally anywhere in the world cannot be described, it must be experienced personally. Now, Microsoft has also implemented support for Virtual Reality, which makes something that was already awesome even more impressive. If your PC has the horsepower to drive it, it is by leaps and bounds the coolest thing I have ever done on a computer. The only thing that comes remotely close would be the first time I tried the Super Nintendo for the first time.
Read MoreThe company Kodak had a slogan many years ago – The Kodak Moment. That was a very good tagline that meant that the best photos aren’t the ones that are staged and prepared. The best ones are taken in the spur of the moment. Because they are real. The picture you see here is one of those moments. I was visiting my great grandmother this weekend with my family, and when I was playing around with my son I looked out through the window and the view stunned me. The lake was literally 100 % calm, like a mirror. Not a single ripple on the water. I knew instantly that this was a picture that was to be taken now or never. So, I grabbed my phone and took the shot right through the window. It turned out pretty good. This is one of the best things about modern smartphones. A great camera is always nearby when you need it.
Read MoreThe year 2020 and 2021 have resulted in some interesting alternatives for live music. With most concerts cancelled, some artists went online instead and started to livestream. I personally find this approach very interesting for several reasons. The ability to play live to anyone in the world is the primary factor. And the possibility to experience it even after the concert is over is another. It opens a whole new forum for musicians to interact with their followers. However, I do suspect there is a huge technical barrier for many musicians. Personally, I love to figure out how things work and bang my head on a problem until I find a “perfect” solution. Learning how to livestream drums AND play the drums at the same time might perhaps be my most ambitious and rewarding project yet. Because there is no end in sight of technical problems to be solved!
Read MoreWhen I was a kid, I had a Lego semi-trailer truck that must have been one of my very first sets (I was too young to remember). It was released in 1984 when I was two years old. I cannot ever remember this set ever being built. It had some special pieces with stickers, so I knew it was there. Here’s the catch: The instruction manual was shredded (probably by yours truly), and I only had some fragments but not enough to build the set. This has frustrated me sub-consciously for about 37 years. Until now.
Read MoreThis weekend we decided to go all in on potty training our son. The plan was simple. Bring out all of dad’s old Legos and just play with them and observe and act when necessary. It worked very well but there was a small bump in the road. You will be hard pressed to figure out which one of us had more fun with the Legos. I remember thinking to myself, whatever you do don’t let him pee on the carpet. Seconds later, I turned around, and he hasn’t just peed on the carpet, but right in the middle of the poor old instruction manual… I had so much fun building Legos down memory lane that I completely forgot my important job.
Read MoreWhen laying a puzzle, I usually start with the edges and create the frame. Those parts are the easiest to identify and combine, because it is obvious where they should go. After the frame is completed, I then pick out some key part of the motive. A couple of years ago me and my wife built some geography puzzles of a world map, and one such key part could have been to “let´s build Africa”. And then the other components. Finally, we laid down the oceans, which are all blue and thus by far the most difficult. That’s why they came last. Because without a framework it is almost impossible to place them at all. A very interesting fact about puzzles is that the closer you get to the goal, the speed of the building process accelerates. Just think about how quick you will lay down the final three pieces compared to the first three!
Read MoreThis last weekend I experienced freedom of a kind I haven’t felt in years. I went on a road trip with my 2,5-year-old son Elis and my Labrador Jussi. I had been looking forward to this trip and been prepping the whole week. Elis is now old enough that he is no problem at all to travel with. And he loves anything with an engine so long car journeys are pure fun. We would spend the night south of Luleå at my friend’s house. After a quick stop in Skellefteå where we both had a smoothie as a snack something unexpected happened, that made the road trip even more enjoyable. Around 21:30 Elis suddenly decided to replicate Gary´s puke scene from Team America in the front seat of my car.
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