Category: English

  • New Year’s Resolution

    No–I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I don’t believe in them. I believe that you can start a habit any god damn time you want, and not at a magic date that occur once a year.

    Having said that; I do have a few things I think would be nice to start around now, at the beginning of the year. But that is purely coincidental.

    Say “no” more often

    This blog post is already off to a good start. The first word, after the title, was “no.” So far, so good.

    In the film “Yes Man” from 2008, Jim Carrey’s character start saying “yes” to everything, and good things start to happen. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember this movie very well. It probably goes well for a while, and then bad again.

    But saying “no” has nothing to do with missing out. It is more about conserving energy for what really matters. Could I elaborate? Sure. Will I do so? Fuck no. See. It’s easy.

    Cultivate good habits

    What is a good habit? Who knows. But I know that starting a day with a fresh cup of coffe and a book, while at the same time watch the sun rise, is pretty darn relaxing. It is so good that I top it of with two or three more cups of coffe. Fucking A.

    Then there are more mundane things, like; taking a walk after work and get some fresh air, be more mindful, do meditation, do the dishes.

    These were just examples of habits. They are not necessarily on my list. I just say I will try to cultivate more of them.

    Concrete goals

    Last year I decided to sleep more outdoors. But when I finally “found the time”, and the weather was on my side, I was not prepared. I did not have any clear plan ready. Needless to say; I did not sleep as much as I wanted outdoors last year.

    So, I need a better plan with more concrete goals. Otherwise it is just a wish list. Just like “eating healthy” won’t get you anywhere near healthy. But a meal prep plan might.

    More mountains. More kayaking. More everything! Now I just need to make a list of where, when and what (do I need to prepare in advance.)

  • It is still shit

    Charlie Munger once said: “If you mix raisins with turds, they’re still turds.” Meaning, you can’t make a bad investment better by mixing it with a better one.

    Now days, when everything seems to be about artificial intelligence (AI), I think this statement might make sense:

    “If you mix AI with shit, it is still shit.”

    Ok, so it is not the same. AI is not the raisins, it might actually be just more shit. Shit mixed into shit. Point is: AI won’t fix everything it touches, regardless of how much Microsoft tries to push Copilot into everything from Excel to Notepad.

    If your product sucks, fix it. Don’t think AI will magically make it better.

  • Time Management

    There is this book I have read every year for 3 years now. Actually, I read it every day1. It’s The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I read one page per day, and each page has its own date on top.

    There are quite a few pages that has piqued my interest and which I have marked and underliened. October 30th was one of those. It is about self-improvement and prioritization .

    The average person somehow manages to squeeze in twenty-eight hours of television per week—but ask them if they had time to study philosophy, and they will probably tell you they’re too busy.

    And this applies to a lot more than philosophy. A lot of people—myself included—use the “I’m busy” card often, but what then do we spend our time on?

    I have set a limit for 10 minutes per day on Instagram, and it has shown me how fast those 10 minutes goes. In those same 10 minutes I could have emptied the dishwasher and taken out the trash.

    I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Instagram or watch TV. Just be mindful of what you have spent your time on the next time you are tempted to say “I haven’t had time” or “I’ve been too busy”.

    1. If I miss a day, I’ll just catch up when I’m back home. ↩︎

  • Understanding your business

    There are many interesting new technologies out there. And as a manager, you may want to attract and hire developers with these skills.

    But while doing this, you may have forgotten what actually keeps the light on; a codebase written in C that only one person knows.

    No amount of front end developers will help once this person is gone.

    By always prioritizing — and internally praising — new initatives, you are communicating that the core business is not imporant.

    So, as a manager, make sure you understand the business you are in. Whether you know it or not, you are responsible that the legacy codebase gets the love and care it needs.

    It doesn’t help if your product can integrate with a thousand other platforms if your backend isn’t running.

  • My Experience with Icom IC-M94D

    So, after my Zodiac failed me — and I discovered that it has more than one name — I bought an Icom IC-M94D. Icom is supposed to be one of the top brands, and Icom IC-M94D is the first hand held VHF with built in AIS receiver.

    Sadly, IC-M94D had two major annoyances which made me return it. I may have been unlucky, but if that is the case, I was unlucky twice; because I tested two different units.

    Annoyance 1 — Dual watch stuttering

    Compared to my old Zodiac Seacom 150, the IC-M94D stuttered more when using dual watch. I usually listen to a selected channel for traffic information, and have channel 16 on dual watch.

    I did a test with my watch and found out that when there is talk on the selected channel, it switches quickly to channel 16 to listen if there is traffic there every 1.5 second. This is quick enough to make it hard to understand what is being said. On the Zodiac, this switch happened every 3 seconds, which is much easier to listen to.

    Annoyance 2 — Static noise

    On top of the first annoyance, if I listen to a selected channel without dual watch, there is a lot of static noise each time someone press or releases PPT (push-to-talk).

    So if a VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) and a ship is talking with each other, each time one of them press or release the PPT button, there is a half a second long static noise. And it is loud, and it is not possible to remove with the built in noise canceling.

    Static noise in combination with the dual watch stutter made this VHF useless for me.

    Conclusion

    I returned the Icom IC-M94D, but had to pay a fee to have it checked and reset the MMSI number, which was a bit annoying itself, since I think none of the two units I tested worked as one would expect.

    On the bright side, I managed to fix my old Zodiac Seacom 150 afterwards.