Like last year this is a pretty long post. It details what happened to me over the past year.
This year had some downs, but luckily it also had a lot of ups. In the end I definitely came out on top, even though it looked bleak for a while!
Let’s see what happened:
I go to Belgium
Prior to going to Belgium I had not left the country since December 2008 (/o\). But, it was time. The destination was to go to FOSDEM 2014, the biggest gathering of nerds on the planet. Being in Belgium of course entailed a lot of beer being drunk, usually even at the university where the conference was.
I saw some interesting talks, but most of the time the really interesting rooms where so super packed that there was a line to get to the line to get to the room. I did meet some interesting people, like the dude that made grml and had some good beers and foods!
Belgium is weird.
Oh, and I had a really nice talk with a guy that was a serious tinfoil. I love talking to people that genuinely seem to believe that the world is led by lizards in black helicopters!
All in all it was nice, and I needed to travel a bit. I’m not sure if I’ll return to FOSDEM next year since it seems to require a ton of planning and camping to be able to attend the really cool talks. However, since it is a free conference and you can drink Belgian beer on tap, there is quite a chance that I will anyway! :>
The Github Contribution streak ends
I was super proud about doing the Github Contribution streak. Unfortunately, it ended on a ironic note. Just a few days after I surpassed the original 177 days, I failed it. I tried to pick it up again, but it didn’t really stick.
I did get into a very good streak in the middle of September to October. I revamped the idea of “commit once per day” to be “spend two hours a day on doing something creative”, and suddenly I got a shitload of things done. Unfortunately, this was also disrupted when I moved into my new apartment.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the streaks I’ve done and that I challenged myself to see what I could do with habits. I’ve concluded that habits do help, but one should not be too strict on to follow them. Life is pretty chaotic after all.
Drunken TowerFall becomes a thing
Last Christmas, we didn’t give each other our hearts. We had the very first showdown of what would become Drunken TowerFall! Now, TowerFall is a beautiful little retro game for the Ouya in which players pit against each other in an archery fight to the death. Late last Christmas Eve, Sam, Dala and I were done with all our Christmas events and families and presents so we sat down to play a bit of TowerFall to relax. Being the sane and responsible adults we are, it took a full three minutes before we had turned the game into a drinking game.
And it was beautiful.
The game is simple; whenever you make a mistake and lose a point in the game, usually because you accidentally killed yourself, you take a shot. When you do, you refill the shot glass. As such, you have some control - if you suspect that you might get a shot again, you can fill a little and vice versa.
We immediately realized the hilarity potential in this. Our first idea was to conceptualize this and make a YouTube channel and become internets famous. In our drunken haze we forgot that we are supremely lazy and that making things requires effort, so this unfortunately has yet to happen.
However, we decided to make it a tournament instead. We invited some friends, and in April the second tournament, Drunken TowerFall II: The Quickening, was held. We noticed that the game is very easy to learn and reasonably easy to master. As such, our very first Champion had never played the game before the night he took the throne. We have continued to hold tournaments and we held the sixth edition, Drunken TowerFall VI: Captain Ramirez’ Revenge, in the middle of December. January will see the light of Drunken TowerFall VII: Circle of Freaks!
Drunken TowerFall V: Dawn On East Mountain in action
I am very proud of this and I am very happy whenever we organize it. It’s awesome to see so many friends so excited and to hear the roars of the audience when interesting and beautiful things happen. The only thing that I don’t like is that I have yet to win any of the tournaments! I’ve been in the final every time, but I always fall short in the finishing line! Not only that, but the last three times (!) I’ve come second with one point! To get an idea of my pain, watch the video from the final round of the last tournament. If it is not obvious, the screams of agony are mine.
It’s a good thing that pain is a very good motivator. Victory shall be mine!
I go to Switzerland
Just going to Belgium was not enough! In April, I travel to Switzerland to visit my good friend Francesca! She showed me around the nice little town of Lausanne. I got to see the cathedral and we took some very nice long walks along the shoreside of Lake Geneva.
I constantly reflected on how very quirky and tiny everything is in the town; They’ve basically crammed in a large city on the slope of a mountain, and it shows. Also, the nature outside of the city looks like something out of a video game:
Switzerland or Skyrim? I think no one can tell.
I also got to experience Raclette for the first (and still only) time. Damn that shit is tasty. Oh, and Francesca’s father had some studio space with two drum sets, so he and I had my first (and still only) drum-off!
It’s difficult to describe this country in a way that gives it justice, but it definitely gets my recommendation of something that should be seen at least once. I hope I will return one day soon!
The MovieNight tribe is formed
Game of Thrones is a fairly popular TV series. Almost everyone in our group of friends were into watching it. As such, a natural thing to do is of course to watch it together! When the fourth season came around, we all gathered every Tuesday (we couldn’t Monday because Sam is an ass and works night shifts then) and watched it together.
Unfortunately, like most good things the new episodes were over way too soon. We had all really come to like the idea of gathering during the week to hang out, have a glass of wine and watch something. So, we decided to have Movie Nights!
Now, most people know that I really enjoy coding and creating stuff, so it didn’t take me long to actually create an app for this:
MovieNight in all its glory
The app lets users collect movies they would like to watch. After we have watched a movie, we click the “Roll next” button and the app does a roulette animation and lands on a randomized movie. Everyone gets one movie per season, and once everyone has had their movie the app creates a new season. We are currently on S02E08!
Now, the gang we hang out with were good friends before we started doing this, but having this solidified us as a group. I first only jokingly called us a tribe, but there is probably an actual tribe feeling around us now! I mean, look at our Christmas dinner:
It looks like I’m photobombing but I swear I am part of the group!
Love all of yous. <3
I fuck up Bråvalla
Browalla Festival is a special thing. The festival is hosted in my home town very close to a house my family lives in. As such, we gather friends and let them camp out in our yard for the duration of the festival. This is awesome, but unfortunately this year was not so very awesome for me.
After a couple of romantic setbacks earlier in the year and close to the festival, I was feeling fairly sad and hadn’t really had any good time to process it. As a fairly sad man with almost infinite access to alcohol and party, I reacted as one would suspect a fairly sad man with almost infinite access to alcohol and party would.
We could’ve easily added more!
Now, I usually get some gaps in my memory when I drink. It’s not my favorite, but it’s manageable. However, most of the entire festival is either blank or a blur for me. I only recall three of the bands I saw, and I can’t even seem to recall the rain everyone was complaining so much about, heh.
It’s not that I did something wrong or bad, it’s just that it does not feel good at all to not be able to recall multiple days of what’s supposed to be a good time. When I got home I was depressed, and luckily I had the rest of my vacation to actually sort that out. I had like a week of bad sleep and feeling horrible until I got out of it. Doing cardio helped a lot; getting endorphins in your system is vital when you need to get out of a bad place.
Browalla 2015 will be different. It’s good that I learn from my mistakes.
I reconnect with Sandra
Last year I broke contact with Sandra completely. Radio silence style. Late during this summer one of us reached out (I don’t actually remember who; and it does not matter) and we met to have a beer at the local vattenhål. I had a very nice time, and we caught up over what had happened over the past year when we had no contact.
Reviewing my past mistakes and explaining Browalla wasn’t really super nice for my already kind of fragile confidence, but when we said goodbye at the end of the night I was still happy. Sandra and I might have had our differences, but we still have six years of friendship, and that’s the kind of connection that will stay valuable.
We are still in contact, and we’re probably better as friends than we’ve been in a very long time. I call her out on her bullshit, and she calls me on mine. It also helps to have several years of in-jokes and the like, haha.
As I wrote in last years post I was not very happy with the way things ended. I am however very happy that that ending ended and we’re friends again. Friends are always better than not friends. <3
Everything happens so much
Qouth the horse; everything happens so much. In the beginning of August, namely the 4th, a lot of things were happening at once. They all had pretty big significances. They were as follows:
I cut my hair
After fourteen consecutive years of having long hair, it was the time to end that era. Quite frankly, I had grown a bit tired of it. I also realized a bit of hypocrisy on my side. If a friend asked me if they should change something with their hair, I would always tell them that change is the best thing there is; I always prompt for the radical fun thing. Yet, there I was and I had done nothing special with my hair for more than half of my life.
It was a bit more of a difficult decision than I had thought. For one thing, I really liked my locks. And I was never alone about that. It was a common occurrence for me that girls I’ve never spoken to or even looked at would come up to me at a pub just to ask if they could touch my hair. This is always a welcome thing, but once you realize the hair was all of it; that you were just a cute toy doll for a couple of seconds; it wanes off. I even got in touch with some other guys on the internet that were in the same situation; they had long hair and described similar situations. Some even cut their hair and noticed a general different direction when approaching the opposite gender in bars and the like. I even joked that I’ll get laid pretty much directly after cutting my hair off.
First pic of short hair! I chose another since I didn’t really like this one. Shared here for its historical value and magic.
Luckily, I loved my new haircut. It was weird in the beginning, mostly since my face looked a bit different given its new frame. I also struggled with some muscle memory things, like not feeling hair on my shoulders when entering the shower or going to bed and then automatically reaching to untie my hairband to let my locks down, haha.
Either way, I felt super handsome and found myself constantly checking myself out in any reflective surface I could find. Change is the only constant, and I have not regretted my decision for a single second.
Oh, and the getting laid part? Didn’t even take a week. :>
I become a Product Owner
On the same day as I cut my hair, August 4th, I start as a new role for my team; the Product Owner. For those not in the cray-cray industry we are in, the Product Owner (PO) is the person responsible for three things:
- A vision for what the team should build and where it should end up
- Help the team organize what to do and when
- Meet other POs for other teams to get requests and sync that the team is doing the right things
So, I basically switched coding/sysadmining for planning and meeting people. I was also not completely new to the role. Our previous PO worked 80%, and whenever he was out and a PO decision was needed, I filled the role.
As this happened, a new initiative spanning three large squads was formed. As this initiative had a lot to do with the things I own, I became one of the de facto leaders of the entire initiative. This meant a lot of responsibility, tons of things to remember and to solve, and many meetings and relationships to tend to. After a while, I felt stressed for the first time in my life - the kind when you cannot relax and not really sleep and so on and so forth.
Luckily, in the end the project is considered a massive success that has helped improve the overall quality of the Spotify client by a lot.
(Sorry for the vagueness, but I cannot go into details for obvious reasons)
OP moves out, Sam moves in
The time finally came, and OP moved in with his girlfriend in her awesome apartment. This left Li and I, and once we felt the feeling of paying rent for our large apartment on just two people, we decided that we needed a third roomie again.
However, both of us were kind of on the way out. I was looking at apartments to buy, and Li was looking to exchange the apartment with something smaller that she could live in alone. So, finding someone new to live with us was difficult: -"Yeah, we need someone that can stay with us for like a month or maybe two because we’re both moving out soon hehe."
Understandably, no one was super excited about that. So, when I talked to Sam, I offered that wherever I would move when I moved out, he would come with. He instantly signed up and moved in the following day.
We still live together in the new apartment, and I couldn’t be happier. <3
I pass below the 100kg mark
I’ve been doing a lot of working out in 2014. Mostly I’ve been doing cardio at the gym and I’ve been documenting the results as I went:
Personal best on bike: 15km in less than 29 minutes!
Over the year, I did cardio workouts 74 times. During these times, I was in constant motion for a total of 41 hours, 9 minutes and 19 seconds; I traveled 557 kilometers and 509 meters, and I burned a total of 39920 calories! During this, I lost a total of 14 kilos, moving from 112 to 98!
Woooooohooooo! |o/
I’ve also added a Google Plus album with the pictures I’ve snapped. No citation needed here! (I did however estimate the times of the pictures where the total time was not visible.)
#beastmode
Everything in your life gets better when you lose weight, especially sex. Gods damnit does that improve by a million when you reduce body mass and increase stamina! Oh, and this meant I could donate two thirds of my wardrobe to charity since most of it was many sizes to big and made me look or feel like a fat clown:
Begone, overly large items of clothing!
There is really only one drawback. If I do any kind of minor physical activity, like running 10 meters to get to the subway that’s about to leave, my body instantly thinks “oh, you’re doing that workout thing again, ok” and then I start sweating like a fully dressed Eskimo running a marathon in the desert. I start sweating like that for everything. But hey, I can pay that price any day, haha!
Other than that, it’s basically the best thing you can do. Get more fit, it’s so fucking worth it!
I buy an apartment
The housing market in this city is well known to be about as sane as The Joker popping LSD. I was looking for quite some time, but didn’t really find anything that was a good fit. Then, I finally found something that was super nice, pretty large, and actually within my price range (with no margins, but shh). It was private showing only, but I signed up to see if I could come by anyway. I never heard from the real estate agent, so I forgot about it. A month later I saw it again, but then the showing was open.
We (Sam, Nikki and I) were the only couple at the showing. I signed up for the bidding, and I was the only one bidding. This is weird, but apparently they had tried to sell the place twice, but it fell through both times. It’s hard to re-put a listing without buyers becoming suspicious, and doing so twice was apparently pretty devastating.
Since no one else bid, I won by default for the asking price. On October 24th I signed the contracts, paid the monies, and got the keys to the apartment.
And what a feeling it was.
The apartment is 75 square meters and is located on the top floor of a building on top of a hill. We can basically see all of southern Stockholm from here! While the idea of being in debt isn’t really super cool, it’s totally worth it. This is a place I will own for quite a while. <3
I go to the USA
Just going to Belgium or Switzerland was not enough! A fun thing about being a Product Owner is that you sometimes have business relations internationally. So, for two weeks in November I was sent to the American offices of Spotify!
It’s so oddly beautifully broken.
I have no extraordinary events to report from there actually, but I did realize something when I was there; I need to live in a culture that is not Swedish for a while. People are so different - they are open and sociable in ways that don’t really exist here. I dunno, as I was walking down 6th ave and just saw life happen everywhere I just really got a feeling of… home.
Via Spotify I might actually be able to have means to do that given that we have US offices. I’ll see what can be done! To be continued it shall!
New Years is a blast
In late November I started to form the idea that I wanted New Years to be somewhat calm and that I wanted to cook a nice 3-course dinner for just a few of the closest lovelies. However, Sam got very excited and started inviting people left and right, and suddenly:
Not sure what I was expecting other than this, really…
Notable events happening:
- Everyone was looking forward to seeing the entire Stockholm sky light up with fireworks. Come midnight there is a fog that quickly turned into smog from smoke from all the fireworks. We barely saw the fireworks people shot next door.
- My cell phone got to see a whole of two minutes of the new year before I dropped it on the floor and cracked the screen.
- I got to stand on the table and address the entire party three times! Once to organize everyone to go outside because it was about to be midnight; Once to announce a special Drunken TowerFall Champions match; and finally just because I was drunk and I like the rush of getting people exciting and cheering. :D
Proudly sporting the Wizard’s Hat of Charisma +5
According to multiple witnesses, basically no one knew what I was on about during the last one, but it was exciting and fun, haha!
What about 2015?
Being a Product Owner for a while, I’ve finally realized the power of having goals set. So, my ideas for 2015 are as follows:
- Increase frequency of blogging by 9000. (I’m too hilarious to not blog <3)
- Send some irredeemably bad software into exile.
- Create a software project that gets users outside of people I know.
- Go live in another country.
- Lose another 14kg (or more).
- Start dancing at least two different kinds of dance.
- Put a quarter of what I make into savings.
- Learn trickier and tastier vegetarian dishes to cook.
- Learn at least one new programming language, probably Go.
- Start making paintings again.
All of these are obtainable and fairly easy to measure success of. Now all that’s left to do is to actually do these things and have a successful recap in a year.
All in all, I’m glad everything happens so much even though it sometimes takes a toll. Thanks for being a part of it and making it worthwhile. <3