Jan 21
Todos for 2008
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 01 21st, 2008| icon3No Comments »

Alright, it’s about time to write up my todos for this year. Last year I did okay, but not great. This year, it’s time to improve a notch. Also, this year I intend to actually put a quantifiable goal on some of the todos. So without further ado.

Diversify my tasks at work

While I already started down this road in the end of 2007 by switching employer, this year is important for me. I hope to do projects of a wider variety than before.

Finish up my reference application

I got this reference application that I’ve used for prototyping new technologies. However, it needs a heavy face lift to really provide me with enough code and functionality to try out some of the more complex stuff, right now for example Spring-OSGI^H^H^H^H Dynamic Modules.

Learn Scala and dive deeper into Ruby

I’m very interested in the concurrency models of languages like Erlang and Scala. And since Scala is syntactically closer to my background, it’s my choice. For this year, I intend to learn the basics, port my reference app and maybe start up a new open-source project based on Scala. For now I won’t talk more on that, but I got an interesting idea that I would like to try out.

Ruby is my favorite scripting language and this year I hope to start using it for production code rather than play projects.

Blog more

This one keeps coming back each year. But then again, I really need it. For this year, I intend to write 150 posts. That’s very ambitious for me, but should be doable.

Participate more

I had this goal last year and did terrible. This year, again, I intend to be less of a lurker and participate more in discussions that interest me. This includes mailing lists, conferences and personal meetings.

Exercise regularly

Here I did real good last year. This year, with two kids, I realize I won’t be able to get out as much. However, I still hope for 80 sessions, most of which will be MTB.

Get back into DJing

I love DJing. So do Eva. But for some years now, we haven’t had any turntables. With the move to our new house, we now get some space for having a set. This will be the enjoyable goal of all to accomplish.

Cook more and better

I also love cooking food. But, I tend to get a bit boring, doing that same old dishes all the time. This year, with a great new kitchen, I will experiment more.

We’re pretty good at buying ecological food. Being vegetarians, that means vegetables. This year I intend to get even better at choosing ecological and locally produced products whenever possible.

Now, what are your goals for 2008?

Jan 2
State of the todos
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 01 2nd, 2008| icon31 Comment »

A year ago, I posted my personal todos for 2007. Before doing the same for 2008, it’s time for some book keeping. Now, how did I do.

Web hacking: recent years has been very focused on integration/SOA/messaging kind of stuff. So much I’m actually hungry from some web development again.

On my way: switching job is a major part in this, as is getting involved in some open source projects.

Release: FtpServer 1.0 should be released. Some of the stuff in my private SVN repos should emerge in the open.

Done: for various reasons, FtpServer wasn’t actually released, but even better, it was graduated from the Apache Incubator (more on that later). Also, some of my private pojects has been published, but I need to write more on that *add todo*

Scripting: get decent at at least one scripting language. I know JavaScript pretty well (due to earlier excursions into web hacking) but I would really need to refresh it, or get really good at Ruby like everyone else seems to.

On my way: still learning Ruby and Rails. But my focused has shifted somewhat so I’m currently focusing on Scala. This is mostly due to my interest in highly scalable and distributed systems.

Switch: The last three years I’ve been saying “this year I’ll switch to Linux as my main OS”. Thanks to Ubuntu, this year I actually think it might happen.

Done: finally a happy Ubuntu user.

Blog more: well, that’s pretty self explanatory, 2006 was crap. Won’t be that hard to get better.

Not really: 2007 wasn’t a great year for my writting, although it was better than 2006. More on this for 2008.

Discuss more: I’m a lurker on a ton of mailing lists and blogs. However, I do not post frequently on more then three or so. This should change, I should get more involved on the stuff I’m interested in.

Not really: like blogging above, expect more here for 2008.

Get to know more people: there’s a ton of people in this industry that I deeply respect. I should get to know more of them. This goal also includes going to more conferences in 2007 (the end result for 2006 was bad, 1).

Not really: I keep repeating myself. However, this is looking better for 2008, already the first conference booked.

Read more books: last year was a terrible reading year for me, probably the low point for at least the last two decades. I read a ton of stuff on the web, but actually sitting down to read a book has a lot of additional values to me.

Done: 2007 meant a lot more reading for me, very happy about that.

Catch up on biology: my university training was in molecular biology. Since switching field I feel like I’m quickly forgetting stuff I knew by heart before. This year I will start reading more on biology and science in general again.

Not really: I’m hoping for my new job to help me get back into this area, however it will likely take some time, probably not for 2008.

Spend more time outdoors: this year I’m really going to drag Eva and Albin out to do more trekking and hiking than last year. Not that hard given that we didn’t do any thing at all.

Done: I spent a lot of time outdoors this year, unfortunately mostly on my bike and not with the family. In two months we’re moving to within meters from the great woods, that should help.

Do continuous exercise: last summer got pretty hectic when we decided on doing the Swedish mountain bike marathon and I realized I wasn’t nearly fit enough for it. Since we’re doing it again this year, I should keep up the training for the entire year.

Done: Training was great this year, lots of biking. And I’ve continued all into the winter.

Finish games: right now I got five or so console games that I’m in the middle of. I really need to finish them so I can move on to Wii :-) Here I’ll also include getting stable at Prince level in Civ4.

Not even close: This area has only gotten worse :-( We got a pretty unused XBox 360 and Wii, have to make more time for gaming, tons of exciting games coming out all the time. Got to finish Halo 3 and buy Guitar Hero and Super Mario Galaxy.

Sep 30
A new start
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 09 30th, 2007| icon33 Comments »

A week of vacation with the family turned out to be exactly what I needed. Now feeling very relaxed and even the kid has overslept the last couple of mornings.

Tomorrow I start my new job, at Callista. Hopefully, at least that’s my reason, I will get to work in more diverse assignments than was possible at the very focused Zystems. My almost five years at Zystems has been the most rewarding in my career, so I hope I get to continue working with them. Given the small IT community here in Sweden, that’s seems pretty likely.

Anyways, of to new goals.

Jul 9
Known from TV
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: , . | icon4 07 9th, 2007| icon31 Comment »

Today, we had a house call from the major news show at the national Swedish television. They’re making a segment on kiva.org and wanted to interview us on why we choose to use it. The reporter found us from me and Eva blogging when first starting to use the site. Luckily, I managed to almost completely escape to camera, Eva took the biggest hit.

The topics of the questions focused on how we found Kiva and why one would choose Kiva over a more traditional poverty fighting organization. The also interviewed another guy in Stockholm, should be interesting to watch.

Should air on the news tomorrow, it will be interesting how their story ends up and how Eva looks on TV :-). The segment should appear online, I’ll add a link when it does. Okay, it aired today and is up on the web. Based on Eva’s face I really wonder what is on that screen :-)

May 16
Danskjävlar
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 05 16th, 2007| icon32 Comments »

This weekend, me and the wife will be on our own in Copenhagen, one of my favorite cities. We’ll even be staying at a five star hotel (warning: Flash and sound ahead). Expect lots of good food and general slacking.

The titel refers to Riket, go see it if you haven’t.

May 12
15 seconds
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: , . | icon4 05 12th, 2007| icon3No Comments »

On Thursday I was interviewed by a journalist from the Swedish computer magazine Computer Sweden. The topic was how it has worked out to take paternity leave as a dad in the IT industry. I was probably a pretty dull subject since I’ve only experienced the positive sides of staying home.

Today I meet up with a photographer who took some shoots of me and Albin. Hopefully he’ll choose one with Albin in focus and me as a blur somewhere in the background. I’m no good on getting this kind of attention.

Update: rumour has it that the article was in the paper today. I haven’t seen it so I have no clue as to how stupid I look in the picture or how cute Albin is. Can’t seem to find it online and I’m not a subscriber.

Jan 6
Email backup
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: , . | icon4 01 6th, 2007| icon31 Comment »

I got some 4 Gb of Outlook .pst files that I use for email backup. A few days ago I got kind of tired of having these in a proprietary format that I could not search together with the rest of my emails. And I planning to switch to Ubuntu which makes things even worse. Also, the GMail-looses-your-mail news going around made me really want to get that GMail backup up and running.

So, I fired up the trusty Thunderbird and set GMail as my POP provider. 10 minutes later, all email in GMail was nicely backed up as mbox. Now, how about those .pst files? I googled, found some tips but none of those that looked attractive and efficient actually worked for me. Having Outlook Express around might have helped, but I don’t any longer. So, the obvious but boring choice of using IMAP to transfer all the emails was made. And, for the last couple of days my poor laptop has been humming away transferring email back and forth to the IMAP server I installed locally. More than half of the data has now been migrated and the result looks really good. Before the weekend is over I should hopefully own my data for good :-)

Jan 4
ToDo for 2007
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 01 4th, 2007| icon3No Comments »

Bill de hóra inspired me to do a list of goals for 2007. I’m pretty shitty at actually keeping these promises but I’ll have another go :-)

Web hacking: recent years has been very focused on integration/SOA/messaging kind of stuff. So much I’m actually hungry from some web development again.

Release: FtpServer 1.0 should be released. Some of the stuff in my private SVN repos should emerge in the open.

Scripting: get decent at at least one scripting language. I know JavaScript pretty well (due to earlier excursions into web hacking) but I would really need to refresh it, or get really good at Ruby like everyone else seems to.

Switch: The last three years I’ve been saying “this year I’ll switch to Linux as my main OS”. Thanks to Ubuntu, this year I actually think it might happen.

Blog more: well, that’s pretty self explanatory, 2006 was crap. Won’t be that hard to get better.

Discuss more: I’m a lurker on a ton of mailing lists and blogs. However, I do not post frequently on more then three or so. This should change, I should get more involved on the stuff I’m interested in.

Get to know more people: there’s a ton of people in this industry that I deeply respect. I should get to know more of them. This goal also includes going to more conferences in 2007 (the end result for 2006 was bad, 1).

Read more books: last year was a terrible reading year for me, probably the low point for at least the last two decades. I read a ton of stuff on the web, but actually sitting down to read a book has a lot of additional values to me.

Catch up on biology: my university training was in molecular biology. Since switching field I feel like I’m quickly forgetting stuff I knew by heart before. This year I will start reading more on biology and science in general again.

Spend more time outdoors: this year I’m really going to drag Eva and Albin out to do more trekking and hiking than last year. Not that hard given that we didn’t do any thing at all.

Do continuous exercise: last summer got pretty hectic when we decided on doing the Swedish mountain bike marathon and I realized I wasn’t nearly fit enough for it. Since we’re doing it again this year, I should keep up the training for the entire year.

Finish games: right now I got five or so console games that I’m in the middle of. I really need to finish them so I can move on to Wii :-) Here I’ll also include getting stable at Prince level in Civ4.

 

I’ll follow up on these in a year. This is my first list like this so it will be interesting to see how I do.

 

Update: Danny adds his plans

Jun 22
Albin does Tuscany
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 06 22nd, 2006| icon3No Comments »

So, our trip to Tuscany went almost as planned. The flight to Rome was very easy with Albin (our 6 month boy) sleeping all the way. While at it, he pretty much sleept all the way on our three hour ride to Sienna.

We then spent a couple of days in Sienna before moving our lazy asses some 10 km north to a small (5 buildings) village with beatiful view over the valley below. Now, with every day, Albin was getting more and more grumpy and on our trip to Florence, he pretty much spent the whole day yelling at us. So, we cut the trip a few days short and went back home on Sunday.

But, even with the shorter trip, the experience was very good. Excellent wine and food (one evening we had the best pasta I’ve ever had) as would be expected and stunning landscapes and historic villages whereever you turned. I sure would expect us to go back within a few years, there’s more pasta to be eaten :-)

Jun 12
Italy, watch out
icon1 Niklas | icon2 Tags: . | icon4 06 12th, 2006| icon3No Comments »

Tomorrow morning, me, the lady and the baby are taking the plane to Rome for nine days of pasta, grappa and tiramisu in the northern parts of Italy. It’s hard work, but someones gotta do it :-)

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