We’re looking for a new kitchen. We don’t want to spend a fortune, so we’re going for an Ikea solution. Trouble is, I can’t bring myself back into their store, only to be stuck for hours in a 20+ customer queue in the kitchen department.

In the beginning, I did everything right. I downloaded Ikea’s software and designed our new kitchen. I measured every detail and had it all figured out. Printed out some nice layouts in 3D. Then I brought along my wife to place the order. We parked our kids at my parents early one sunny Saturday morning, and drove down to the warehouse just as they opened their doors.

Somehow, inexplicably, by the time we got to the kitchen department, dozens of people were already crowding the place, occupying every single Ikea employee in sight. I hate queues. We were there for about an hour, then I’d had it. We left the building, dark clouds hanging over our heads.

I came up with another plan: I left work early on the following Monday to get there ahead of the afternoon rush. What happened? I stood in line for another hour and a half. In the end I actually got to speak to one worn-out employee “ready” to take my order. But no.

They had to plot every single piece of material into their computer all over again, my drawings more or less completely ignored. Why Ikea, why bother with the software!? Really… I spent hours on those drawings.

5, 10, 15, 30 minutes passed - I had to fetch the kids from daycare, so I just couldn’t wait for Ikea to finish any longer. They had to print me an unfinished offer that I grabbed hastily as I left, running out the door, hoping to avoid the traffic rush. I didn’t, as it were…

And this is where I’m stuck. I refuse to go back in there. I hate Ikea. I hate crowds. My wife’s complaining. My dad, who’s offered to help us build the kitchen, is constantly on my back, the old kitchen’s falling apart, door by door.

… …

I’m hiring an architect. F*** Ikea!

I’m reading a biography of D.H. Lawrence at the moment. He was born in 1885, the child of a miner in a coal mining town in England and of course, he went on to become a major voice in English literature.

At the same time I’ve been scanning a lot of old photos from the collection of my grandparents dating back to the early 19th century, pictures of my ancestors. It’s a treat for me to see these images. Most of them I’d never seen before; it was my mom who first showed them to me just after my granny died last November. I never even knew they existed.

Being a conservationist at heart, I immediately asked to borrow them in order to scan them on to my computer. As far as I’m concerned, my parents have no sense of history, and they don’t appear to be able to recognize the value of such things. So in order to save these photos for posterity I had to act quickly.

Really, to be fair, my parents don’t throw away photos. But, over the years they’ve thrown away a lot of other stuff, and it’s taught me always to be on the alert. Probably the most traumatic moments in my childhood (which says a lot about my childhood) is the day I realized that my parents had disposed of a fine set of old vinyl records that I loved and used to sit and admire for hours to end (we didn’t have a record player at the time). I was 8 and I was devastated for weeks.

So, what does all of this have to do with D.H. Lawrence you may ask, impatiently? Well, it’s just that I’m so fascinated by all the accounts that remain to document Lawrence’s life. Interviews, biographies - first-hand descriptions of important moments in his life - personal observations from his contemporaries that all together give a very precise impression of the man.

But when I look at the photographs of my ancestors, I realize that I don’t know the first thing about them. Nothing is ever written about them, and all who knew their stories are long gone. Most of my ancestors were simple farmers, and they probably didn’t even know how to read or write. But I can’t help but wonder how they felt about the things surrounding them. What were their personalities like? How did WW1 affect them?

I know from stories told by my granny that in the early 1920s, my great grandmother still sowed clothes to her children using fabric remnants from a German zeppelin that crashed close to their farm during the war. A few such fragments of information still exist, but by and large these people are forgotten. The only thing left after them are these images - bearded, serious and obviously hard-working men with their strict wives in black dresses and underfed children with a blank stare in their eyes. No humor, no joy.

And when I think of my own grandparents I realize that the same thing could very easily happen to them. Of course, there are many more pictures documenting my grandparents’ lives, but nothing is ever really written about them. They were certainly no writers, they just went through everyday life, paying their bills, going to work in the morning, raising kids - no diaries, no blogs. It’s the same with my parents - my dad, for instance, can’t begin to comprehend the crazy notion of me keeping this blog, considering it a complete and utter waste of time.

But of course it’s not a waste of time! Whether I’m able to get the stats for this blog up or not (10-15 viewers a day, btw), it’s good therapy for me to write, it keeps me focused and up-to-date on daily news and on my interests. As for future generations, when they discover the backup copy of this blog lying around somewhere on an ancient USB plug, they’ll be able to move inside my head and find out what I was interested in at the time. In the comments section they’ll be able to see how I communicated with people and whether I was a mellow man (which I certainly am, dear descendants) or some aggressive macho-guy.

(abrupt ending) I’m falling asleep, need to go to bed - but still, it’s enough for one entry, right?… I’m posting!

For those of you following my projects, I’m still getting up at 5 o’clock every morning, 7 days a week :)))

It’s difficult to find a good balance for your information stream these days. I try to keep the process as simple and automated as possible, but it’s really hard. There are RSS feeds and there’s real life, and sometimes it’s just plain impossible to combine the two.

I have installed an RSS reader on my PC solely tracing comments on my favorite blogs. I use Google Reader and Netvibes (Google Reader is taking over, though) and in my bookmarks I keep a “Daily” folder in addition to a whole bunch of theme folders that I scroll through quite frequently.

But there are just so many minutes to get through it all every day. I get up at 5 in the morning, and spend 45 minutes reading general news and some tech stuff before I go to work. I rarely find the time to read RSS feeds at work, and when I get home in the afternoon there’s my wife and two kids.

They’re very lovely and they’re the center of my life, but they’re also, let’s face it, very time-consuming. So when I get home from work, we’re cooking, eating and cleaning up after dinner, playing with the kids, doing some laundry, cleaning a bit and putting the kids to bed at 7.

Then me and my wife spend some time together, updating each other on today’s events, discussing and planning the next few days, unless one of us must go out to do the shopping - which is about every other day.

And finally, at 8-8.30, I can sit down by my computer while my wife turns on the tv. I spend an hour or two scrolling through my feeds, maybe posting another blog entry, recording some music or reading a book.

It’s a busy life.

Is it a good life? Sure it is. I love my wife and kids, and I love every minute I spend with them. It’s also quite exhausting, and I would really like to slow down a bit and work a little less, while maintaining our income level. Any clues?

I sat down to write a few notes for a blog post on a sheet of paper today. That turned out to be an impossible exercise. I’m so used to my PC keyboard now - not least my delete and arrow keys - that I’m almost unable to write down notes in longhand.

In meetings I can still do it. I write what I hear, and I don’t have a problem with it. The problem occurs when I sit down to express my thoughts, or to analyze something. Then I’m more or less completely stuck.

I used to be able to write entire essays in longhand, without a single strike-through. I went to college in the late-80s, and when I look at some of the analytic texts I wrote back then, it’s almost incomprehensible to me that I was able to write such coherent sentences and paragraphs at first try.

Anyways, I tried to write a blog draft but ended up with some kind of chaotic thought map with arrows and bubbles pointing and spreading in all directions. When I finally got access to my computer again and tried to convert my analog notes into a digital text I had to give it up. The notes were completely useless, and I had to do a complete rewrite of the whole thing.

It was a little frightening to see how helpless I’d become without the aid of a computer. Am I totally dependent on my PC to be able to express my thoughts now? Am I reduced to a stuttering idiot whenever I’m left to pen and paper?

I’m beginning to wonder…

5.00 a.m. is the new focal point of my life. I’m usually not very susceptible to personal development advice on the web, but I’ve been quite taken by a few of Steve Pavlina’s entries. He’s a very positive writer, and he has a way of actually making you believe in what he says. It makes a lot of sense to me, anyway.

I was especially inspired by one of his posts I read a couple of days ago, on how to become an early riser. I’ve had a bad rhythm for some time, going to bed late and not getting up in the morning. It was high time to do something about it, and mr. Pavlina came along with his sound advice just at the right moment: Get up at 5.00 a.m. every morning, no matter what.

His point is that you may go to bed late if you feel like it, if you’re not tired. The important thing is to get up at exactly the same time every day seven days a week, and to go to bed at night only when you feel tired, whenever that may be. If you follow this advice in the long run, he reckons, you’ll get the optimal amount of sleep, as your sleep need varies from day to day.

I think this is excellent advice. I’m far more productive in the morning, and if I’m able to follow this plan, I’m sure I’ll get far more done in the course of a day. I started the project this morning, and even though I didn’t fall asleep until about 01.00 a.m. last night, I still had a pretty effective day at work.

It was a wonderfully relaxing morning. I’m usually late for work, no time to eat breakfast, chasing the morning train. This morning I had a cup of coffee, made a nice breakfast, read the morning news on the web and wandered in a casual and relaxed manner down to the station in good time.

I left the office a little earlier than usual, still gaining a few plus hours. That was a good feeling.

It’s a good exercise and I hope I can keep it up. If I can make this my daily routine, I think it will actually make my life a little better. Thanks, Steve Pavlina.

As I’m writing this at 9.00 p.m. I’m nearly falling asleep, though - so it’ll probably be an early night.

Btw, read his original post. You know, he’s a better a writer than I am.

This is so cool. I went for a long walk today, and not too far from where I live, there’s a prehistoric site with remnants of a settlement dating back to 300-500 a.d. I had never actually been to that particular spot before, even though I’d walked past it a lot of times, but today I finally got up there.

The site is located just beneath a mountain on a hillside. They used to have defensive structures (stone walls, palisades) built around the mountain - it’s believed that there was much turbulence and warfare at that time. Parts of these structures can still be seen today. There used to be at least five houses there, and the people lived off farming and livestock.

There’s a spectacular view from the top of the mountain. If you look towards the ocean, to the west, you spot a modern landscape, with towns, suburbs and some industry (I live in a place with about 200,000 inhabitants).

But if you turn around 180 degrees, there’s nothing but nature as far as the eye can see: forest, mountains and hills, and a couple of farms. The view is pretty much like the one the guys who lived here over 1,500 years ago had, I imagine. Very serene. And it’s so quiet, all you can hear are the wind and the birds.

It’s such a great place to sit back and think. I was there for about an hour - at first imagining what it must have been like living there 1,500 years ago - and then just loosely organizing my schedule for the next couple of days, planning a few activities with my wife and kids and reflecting upon some issues at work.

A man should allow himself to spend a little time on his own like this every once in a while. It’s so refreshing, so worthwhile - so good for moral. I haven’t really done stuff like this for years: hiking, just spending some time in nature, reflecting. I’ve rediscovered these joys recently, though. It’s highly recommended.

The sad thing about it is that they’re planning a rather huge expansion of the town towards the east. And although parts of this landscape will be saved, the illusion of history, the solitude and serenity of the place will forever be lost when they start building houses. It’s tragic, really.

And there seems to be such little concern for nature and the landscape surrounding the buildings in modern architecture today. They’re more concerned with maximizing the profits, and so houses are built practically on top of each other and almost invariably one or two floors too high - almost as if the architects and builders are trying to defy nature (which is kind of what they are doing, I guess.)

Oh well, what can you do? All the more reason to enjoy it while it’s still there. And then one day I’ll take my grandchildren up there and tell them all about how beautiful the place used to be.

Fortunately, this country has laws that protect the actual site of the prehistoric buildings. But the landscape and the wonderful view will be gone in a few years.

I will probably snap some photos the next time I go up there. I’ll share some of them with you then.

Holy crap!

Wired News just nicked my idea and put up their own “Best Add-Ons for Firefox” entry, only hours after I put up mine. They’ll probably get all the traffic, too.

Typical. Juust typical.

Man, it’s hard to find guitar solos as silly as “Say You’ll be Mine”. I’m struggling find a worthy follow-up. It’s also kind of frustrating listening to music for hours to end with the sole purpose of discovering bad solos - I’m getting a headache. Most solos are just awfully indifferent, I find. But I’ll continue my quest, I promise, it may just take a little while to come up with something good -er - silly, I mean.

I’ve been composing and playing music for as long as I can remember. I started using computer software and synths around 1994, and over the years I’ve assembled endless snippets of 30-second music themes that I never followed up on.

Recently I listened to some of the very first themes that I wrote on my computer in 1994. In the beginning I didn’t have a MIDI keyboard, so I was forced to put down every last note on sheet music, in a very simple sequencer program called Session, and I played it out on a laughable FM synthesis soundcard. It was an impossibly time-consuming way to make music.

I remember I had Windows 3.0 installed on my brand new computer. When I bought it it came with early editions of Encarta and Cinemania. My friends and I were amazed to see those 20-second 240×180 movie showcases that was included on Cinemania - not to speak of the 8-bit sound clips from literally dozens of movies. The notion of real sound and video on a personal computer! Unbelievable! The internet was still to reach our shores. The world was young.

Anyway, I was listening to these themes. At that time I was utterly heartbroken. I was going through my first major break-up, and I was completely devastated for a very long time. Reading my diary entries is scary - I was going through some heavy shit, and the stuff I wrote was pretty depressing.

Among the music I created, I discovered a theme that’s very sorrowful and melancholy - and I think it’s actually very pretty. Inspired by Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso, I’m guessing, it’s almost certainly related to my lost love. I don’t know why I left it unfinished, exactly, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. I start on a song, write a few bars, then it doesn’t really head anywhere and I leave it behind when another idea springs to mind. Anyway.

I don’t know if this is a good or bad idea but here’s what I had in mind:

I’ll present you to this “lost” theme today, and in the following weeks or months, I’ll try to develop it into a suite of some kind; a quasi-classical suite for flute or piano or something, not sure yet.

And as the work progresses I will update you with new musical samples so that you can follow the process and listen to where the piece is heading - and then maybe leave some of your own views and/or advice in the comments section. It will be an interactive composition exercise. If it’s successful, it could be an interesting experiment for me - I’ve never written music by popular demand before… I’m not a musical genius or anything, far from it, and I have no degree or diploma in composition. This is just for fun. And, if you’re intrigued by the idea, follow me along the way, why don’t you?

Here’s the theme in a simple orchestral arrangement:
Flute theme (mp3-file, c. 0:40)

Disclaimer: If, on the other hand, popular demand should prove to be more or less absent, which may very well be the case, this project could also die a silent death in the course of the next few weeks - and that would be fine, too. I’m kind of hoping for that, actually…

It’s a beautiful winter morning view from my home office. I’m enjoying my morning coffee listening to some Bill Evans - I must say, life is good.