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Thoughts on The Tawny Man trilogy

2026-01-23T00:00:09+00:00

Say one thing for Robin Hobb, say she knows how to write a trilogy.

The Tawny Man trilogy is the third three-book collection set in the "Realm of the Elderlings". After Liveship Traders took us south to the Satrap's lands of Bingtown, the Rain Wilds and Jamaillia, Tawny Man takes us back North to the Six Duchies. It was here the story kicked off with the Farseer Trilogy.

Tawny Man is a reunion. It centres around the same main cast of characters as the original trilogy, but not without adding new ones to the mix.

As with both previous trilogies, I found myself unconvinced at the outset. Hobb takes her time to set the scene. But, also as with both previous trilogies, this one grew. And grew. By the middle of the second book, I had a good idea of where the story was going. I was hooked. I didn't get many pages (or locs, to be more precise) into Fool's Fate before I was struggling to put the book down.

This is not unusual with Robin Hobb. All of the three trilogies I've read so far all have the feel of one big book split into three, rather than three distinct stories. The middle books in particular don't even pretend to be stand-alone stories. Instead, they build on the foundation of the first book and creates momentum in the story towards the eventual climax in the final third.

I think it's great.

Although Tawny Man doesn't reach the heights of Liveship Traders, it was a very enjoyable read. In terms of where it falls short, I think there's something about the first person storytelling that is limiting. You don't really get enough perspectives to make all the characters (bar one) feel as real and fully fleshed out. That said, I enjoyed getting closer to what is the most interesting character of all of them throughout these stories.

All in all, this felt like a worthy send off for both Fitz and the Fool. But I still wonder if we aren't going to get to hear more about the former's maternal origin. There's a story yet to be told there, I think, and there are some hints that we will learn more about "Keppet" in time.

I'll close with some of my highlighted quotes and passages from the books:

It could not compare to that moment of completion when minds joined and one sensed the wholeness of the world as a great entity in which one's own body was no more than a mote of dust.

Fool's Errand

Hobb has a way with framing that sense of belonging to something greater than just yourself that one can sometimes experience.

Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind.

Fool's Errand

It is a magical place.

It was a boy's thing to do, this immediate offering to share a prized possession, and my heart answered it, knowing that no matter how long or how far apart we had been, nothing important had changed between us.

Fool's Errand

That's true friendship.

His air of petulant command mimed perfectly that of a foppish dandy of the noble class.

Fool's Errand

I just loved that sentence. Poetic.

… (I) knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

The Golden Fool

The more history I read, the more I come to agree with this world view.

How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world?

Fool's Fate

More on the futility of capturing the moment, of defining it, and the truth. Doesn't mean we should stop trying. Just that we can never fully succeed.

Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world.

Fool's Fate

It is. And it can.

Give him to me, she said with a woman's weariness at a man's incompetence.

Fool's Fate

Close to home!

No man, in the fullness of his years, should have to experience afresh all the passion that a youngster is capable of embracing. Our hearts grow brittle as we age.

Fool's Fate

I've been pondering this. Is it true? Is it self defence that our emotions dwindle as we age?

Home is people. Not a place. If you back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.

Fool's Fate

Home is people.

My home server? My laptop

2026-01-27T00:00:08+00:00

A couple of years back, I began experimenting with self-hosting. I dug out an old laptop and set it up as an always on home server. It did many jobs. Stuff like acting as a file server with access to external storage and backups, automating tasks with scripts, music server, running a torrent client for my legally acquired content and more.

It worked fine. But, the added complexity of another machine bugged me slightly. Most of the tasks could be solved on my daily driver laptop. There was also the fact that it didn't run the latest software from Apple. This caused a lot of friction. I couldn't run Homebrew. It caused a lot of issues when trying to install or update packages. Most current programs would not run on my ancient version of MacOS.

These issues made me want to shut down this "server" and simplify my setup. To do so, I had to solve two problems:

Storage space: My original motivation for setting up the home server was convenient access to more storage space. My laptop only has a 256GB drive. A 1TB external SSD solved the issue, but I move around the house a bit with my laptop, so it was rarely connected. Which meant the data on the external drive was rarely available.
Remote access: After moving away from Spotify, being able to access my music collection from my phone on the go was convenient. My home server also ran my static site generator, meaning I could update this website on the go with my phone, if I wanted. (Happened like two times, one of which was me testing that it worked. Still, just in case, you know.)

I've solved both problems and decommissioned my old home server. The light bulb moment? Realising that my "home server" doesn't need to be a separate machine. My regular, daily driver laptop can do the job! A server is, after all, just a computer that's always on. My regular laptop can do that, too.

Let's dive into each of the specific problems mentioned above.

Storage space

As mentioned, my laptop doesn't have enough space for all my data. Using cloud storage and an external drive for local backups, I've been able to work around this limitation.

The past year I've been using a remote installation of Nextcloud for cloud storage, and much more. With the aim of simplifying my setup, I wanted a solution that required less maintenance. After considering multiple solutions, I landed on going back to Apple's iCloud.

Both my laptop and phone are Apple devices. iCloud services are neatly integrated. And, having migrated away from iCloud recently, I feel like I have a solid grasp of what my setup should look like to minimise dependency and vendor lock-in.¹ After shopping around, I also realise that the 2TB storage tier is actually reasonably priced. Lastly, it let me go back to using iCloud Photos to browse my photos and videos. It works well and I like it.

I don't want to rely solely on a third party and "the cloud" to preserve all of my data. Especially precious photos and videos. To solve this, I've landed on the following routine:

At the beginning of each month, I export all of my photos and videos from the previous month from Photos to my external drive.² I then export every other file and document stored on my cloud drive to the drive.

Is it bullet proof? No. I'm susceptible to losing as much as a month's worth of data with this approach. In contrast to a total wipe out, something I can live with.³

Remote access

Above I mentioned two specific cases of remote access that I had come to rely on:

Music collection.
Updating my website.

By setting up my laptop as a de facto server, I've solved both.

Accessing my music collection on the go

I iterated through several approaches for making my music collection available remotely. I first tried Doppler and their sync to iOS feature. While I think Doppler is hands down the best app for playing music on both Mac and iPhone,⁴ I found the sync cumbersome.

Next, I thought of using iCloud Drive as a "music server". Surely some app could watch a folder in my iCloud Drive and automatically add new files to my music library? Well, you'd think so. But no. I couldn't find any decent app(s) that solved this to my expectations. Plus, my phone doesn't really have enough storage to save my full music library locally. Which really only left me with one option: Setting a full-fledged music server.

This was the solution I had been using for the last few months, running Nextcloud Music on my Nextcloud instance. I resigned myself to the fact that I needed a remote virtual server to solve this. As I'd been wanting to test out Pikapods, I decided to try out Airsonic Advanced. It was too advanced (I have no right to be surprised) and I couldn't get it set up exactly to my liking. Instead, I switched to Navidrome and I found it an absolute delight. I couldn't believe how fast and lightweight it was!

It worked well and, as a bonus, I could continue using Amperfy which I had become comfortable with these last few months. One thing was still bothering me: Streaming and caching my music collection from a remote server, when it was already stored in full on my Mac, was incredibly wasteful. Realising I was (again) on the lookout for a music player to play music on my Mac left me feeling like I was back to square one. Eventually, though, the penny finally dropped:

"Navidrome is so lightweight, I could probably run it on my laptop without any issues!"

Using Homebrew, setting up Navidrome on my laptop was a five minute job. Configuring my laptop to automatically launch Navidrome on startup took me another five minutes. Now we're (rocking and) rolling! The native Navidrome web interface is perfect for playing music on my laptop. And all I had to do to access my music collection from Amperfy on my phone was change the server URL and authentication details.

I didn't really mind only being able to access my full library while on my home network. Amperfy has great caching and downloading the albums I want is no hassle. The only inconvenience was keeping my laptop open and awake to access my music.

Luckily, the other penny dropped at this point. This is a solved problem! I already set up a Macbook as a "home server" and there's no reason I can't do it with this particular Macbook. So, I ran the terminal command⁵ and I was off to the races. Despite decommissioning my home server, I once more had a "server" running at home. Just one that doubles as my daily driver laptop.

Remotely updating my website

With my laptop running as a server, this problem was solved as well. It was simply a matter of updating my old workflows to rely on iCloud Drive instead of my old Nextcloud instance.

Because I'm not the smartest guy around, my site generator is quite simple: A script monitors a "content" directory. When a new file appears, the site generator runs to process this file and upload all the new and modified files to the server that hosts my website. This lets me update my website from anywhere without having to worry about remote access to my home server. All I have to do is save a text file to the content directory. Whichever cloud service I'm using then does the sync magic, and my home server a.k.a. my laptop, updates my website.

Even images exist only as a file in my content directory. If I reference them in a text document, the site generator picks them up and uploads the file(s).

And that's it. I can now create posts and notes from my phone while I'm on the go. I don't know that I ever will, but at least I can rest comfortably knowing that I can. And that's the most important thing.

TL;DR

I tweaked a setting on my laptop to make sure it doesn't go to sleep when power is connected. I connect to it with my phone to listen to my music and update my website when I'm on the go.

Postscript

You didn't think I'd actually settle on not being able to access my full music collection while on the go, did you? About five minutes after thinking I could live with that, I remembered Tailscale. With my "server" running a current version of MacOS, I could actually install it and rely on it for proper remote access.

That topic probably deserves its own post. The short version is: Make sure that you control your own data, and that it is stored in open file formats. Picking up your files and going elsewhere is always easier than trying to export data from a proprietary storage solution. ↩
Photos and videos is a great example of where you should make sure that you have your data stored as actual files on a disk. ↩
I always imagine that somehow a "delete all" command will hit my cloud data. Because of syncing, it also wipes out my local copies. That's why I want complete separation for my backups. In that sense, a disconnected external drive makes perfect sense. ↩
Doppler's refund policy also deserves a shoutout. I bought the Mac version and tried it for a couple of days. When I found it wasn't for me, I sent them an email and requested a refund. My money was promptly refunded, no questions asked. This experience made me want to purchase more software from Brushed Type. ↩
sudo pmset -b sleep 0; sudo pmset -b disablesleep 1 disables sleep on a Macbook while connected to power, even when you close the lid. ↩

What we make

2026-01-30T00:00:07+00:00

Every year I make a family highlights movie. Throughout the calendar year, I try to whip out my camera or, if it is all I have at hand, my phone, to capture a glimpse of something that might be worthy of including.

None of it is anything special. And that is kind of the point. I can't dictate the memories my children retain from the childhood. But, my goal with these videos is to shape them. To reinforce the happy moments we shared as a family. Remind them of how their grandparents — even though they might not see them too often in their day to day lives — were there for every special occasion. Show them that they were happy and active and healthy and loved.

Not rarely I need that reminder myself. In the hubbub of daily life it easy to feel doubt that you're doing enough. Going through a plethora of recorded evidence to the contrary reminds me otherwise.

Making these annual movies is quite an endeavour. Capturing the source material is one thing. Sorting it, deciding what to keep and what to discard as I try to weave a story of the year that passed, is no small task. I am no videographer, no movie director, much as I think myself Wes Anderson's slightly less talented, albeit unappreciated cousin as I'm battling iMovie for the seventh year in a row, trying to remember the key combination for cutting a clip before eventually giving in and looking up the answer. When I'm finally done, I feel relieved.

In this day and age, there are tools out there that could do the job for me. I could just dump the raw footage in a chat and something akin to my yearly movie would pop out after a short while. In all likelihood, the movie it produced would be objectively better than anything I can finagle out of iMovie. Smoother, more polished, with a tailor made soundtrack and so on. Far more impressive.

Sometimes I'm tempted to give it a go. Then I take a step back and ask myself "what would be the point?" and I go back to wrestling with iMovie.

Because I know that the end product, the movie itself, is not the point. Making it is. The magic is in hand-picking the moments that make up our family's highlight reel of the year that came and went. My idiosyncratic use of transitions. The way I abuse iMovie's various title effects to superimpose dry-wit commentary atop most clips. An eclectic soundtrack from my own music library to give my kids little hints of who their father was and what he enjoyed listening to.

All these little things inject a little bit of my humanity into the end product. And that is the point. Not just of these movies, but of anything that you and I and everyone else make. To inject as much humanity as possible into the things we make.

Don't fall for the temptation of using technology to produce something polished, soulless and void of humanity when all that matters is to imprint as much humanity as possible.

It's disappointing every time

2026-02-05T00:00:06+00:00

Today I came across a post in my feed reader. From a blog that I've enjoyed reading for a long time. It's been raw, personal and distinctly human.

Imagine my surprise then, this afternoon when I opened the new post only to be greeted by the classic "Here's why XYZ makes sense" followed by a generic boilerplate list of bullet point that doesn't really say anything at all.

When a real human being I've connected to on some level resorts to using AI to generate posts for their website, I feel conned. A dupe that's fallen for a classic bait and switch. And, look, I get why some people might want to use AI to assist in creating content. But when I follow a personal blog, I want to read things actually written by that person. I want a glimpse into the mind and existence of another human being. My quota of AI generated marketing slop gets filled elsewhere.

After I wrote What we make, I came across a new post on Brandon Sanderson's blog.¹ It's a transcript (it would be a great plot twist if the transcript was AI generated) from a talk Sanderson gave called "The Hidden Cost of AI Art". He tackles the subject far better than I ever could, and the talk is worth watching or reading.

I've only read the transcript.

The following part captures the essence of why using AI for creating quote-unquote art is entirely pointless (emphasis mine):

…the books aren’t the product. They aren’t the art--not completely. And this is the point. The most important thing to understand is that the process of creating art makes art of you.

My friends, let me repeat that. The book, the painting, the film script is not the only art. It’s important, but in a way it’s a receipt. It’s a diploma. The book you write, the painting you create, the music you compose is important and artistic, but it’s also a mark of proof that you have done the work to learn.

Because in the end of it all, you are the art.

The most important change made by an artistic endeavor is the change it makes in you. The most important emotions are the ones you feel when writing that story and holding the completed work. I don’t care if the AI can create something that is better than what we can create, because it cannot be changed by that creation.

Many thanks to Brandon for penning these words. Now I have something to refer to when I want to express my view on why AI created blog posts are pointless.

Around the same time, Alberto Galaco published the post What happens when everything is perfect? pontificating some of the same issues. Alberto writes:

That friction between wanting to make something and actually making it used to matter. It was part of learning. Part of ownership. You struggled, failed, tried again, and through that process the idea became yours. When creation becomes instant and disposable, what remains of that bond? What does it even mean to make something anymore?

You should read the full post. I agree with every point Alberto's making. It is clear that this is something that occupies the mind of many smart and competent people, myself notwithstanding. Whatever the eventual outcome of this struggle between man and machine, I hope to see more human written posts in my feed reader in the future.

I have a dedicated category in my feed reader for authors I've read that have a personal website/blog with an RSS feed. Not nearly enough of them do, meaning it's hard for me to keep up with their work. Sad! ↩

How to use quote marks

2026-02-15T00:00:05+00:00

As I came by Pete's pet peeve that media don't know how to use quotes, I realised that I also don't know.

The first pain point is that I simply don't know how to write the correct symbols on my keyboard. In search of a quick answer, I turned to our Large Language Model overlords. Unfortunately, both ChatGPT and Claude proved entirely unable to provide assistance. They were completely confident in their entirely wrong answers, however. I guess that's something.

For the two languages in which I write, Norwegian and English, there are six relevant symbols. I use a Macbook with a Norwegian bokmål (ISO 639-1 code nb) keyboard layout. The six symbols can be written as follows with this keyboard setup:

« = ⌥ (option) + shift + V
» = ⌥ (option) + shift + B
‘ = ⌥ (option) + n
’ = ⌥ (option) + m
“ = ⌥ (option) + shift + n
” = ⌥ (option) + shift + m

Not exactly easily accessible, hence my writing them down here for future reference. The intricate key combinations also explain why many simply default to the straight quotes ". On my keyboard, I write them by pressing shift + 2.

Next up is knowing when to use which symbols. That varies from language to language. And, as we'll see, from region to region within the same language.

In Norwegian, we use « and » for first level quotes, while second level quotes (a quote in a quote) is indicated by ‘ and ’.¹

In American English, they use “ and ” for first level quotes, and ‘ and ’ for second level quotes.²

In British English, they use ‘ and ’ for first level quotes, while “ and ” denote a second level quote.³

No wonder I'm confused and find myself turning to " and ' for simplicity. But, as Pete pointed out, that is just plain wrong. As I aim to be as correct as I can with details like these when writing, I need to get my act together.

These days, I don't publish much in the way of Norwegian text on this blog. Or elsewhere, for that matter. But if I do, I will make a point to use the correct symbols for quotes. I do more than a bit of writing in my day job, and — although some text editors will replace " with « and » when your language is set to Norwegian — knowing this will make me a better and more consistent writer at work. That's a good thing.

As far as this blog goes, I generally try to adhere to British English spelling and grammar. Which means I will aim to be consistent in using single quotes (‘ and ’) for first level quotes from here on and out. Send me an email and let me know when I inevitably mess that up.

In practice, there appears to be many variations in various style guides around the country. But typographer and librarian Torbjørn Eng recommends this practice. Based on his arguments, I am inclined to agree that this is the sensible approach. ↩
Or, at the very least, that is the correct way to do it according to the Chicago Manual of Style. ↩
As recommended by the Oxford Style Guide. ↩

The Strength of the Few by James Islington

2026-03-11T00:00:04+00:00

After resurrecting this blog back in 2023, the first book I wrote about was James Islington's The Will of the Many. I gave it a solid 3 out of 5 and concluded:

…there’s much to explore still, and I’m excited to see how Islington will build on this solid foundation in the books that follow.

The Strength of the Few is the second of four planned books in Islington's Hierarchy series. It came out late last year. As Islington, to my knowledge, does not maintain a website or blog with an RSS feed, I'm not able to keep up with his writing progress.¹ Instead, I only discovered the new book when visiting a local book store with my kids. The Strength of the Few was given ample premium shelf space in the middle of the store. That was the first time I realised just how popular The Will of the Many must have been.

Later that same day I tried to purchase the e-book to add it to my library. I was sad to discover that there were no DRM free options. In fact, for someone located in Norway, Amazon was the only legal option for acquiring the e-book. As I try to avoid spending my hard earned money adding to Jeff Bezos' vast fortune, I gave up and instead bought a second hand copy of the paperback.² It arrived in my within a couple of days, and I was off to the races.

Quite literally, as the book features an actual race scene quite early on. It sets the scene for much of what's to come in this particular branch of the story. And, yeah, that's where things get a little complicated. Without wanting to spoil too much for someone who's not read the book, it consists of three stories that evolve in synchronous fashion.

Although each storyline is designated with a particular icon, it took me more than half the book to remember which was which. Instead, I relied on the actual content of the chapters to orient myself. It wasn't too challenging, but at the offset I felt like I was floundering a bit while trying to keep up with what was going on where. A key reason is that it's been a couple of years since I read the predecessor. Strength picks up where Will left off, and it is a direct continuation. The references to the events of the previous book are numerous and mostly presented without any further explanation. As I had forgotten far more than I remembered about The Will of the Many, this doubtlessly made it harder for me to properly enjoy The Strength of the Few from the get go.³

About a quarter of the way through, however, I began feeling like I had enough context to follow the story properly. And the book became much more enjoyable.

The three different stories are distinct and compelling in their unique ways. Where one is dystopian and strange, another feels intimately humane and recognisable. And both spring from a central story set in what's probably closest to the world we live in today. Islington's approach felt like a fresh take on telling an overarching story that I hadn't encountered before.

Speaking of, the connective storyline is interesting and kept me guessing and speculating along the way. While there is still much to be revealed — Strength feels like a classic middle book in that it begins and ends in the middle of the story — fantasy fans will see further homage to Brandon Sanderson in "the big reveal" we're treated to towards the end of The Strength of the Few.

I thought this book was a step up from its predecessor. The story feels more compelling, the way it is told more unique, all the while building on that which made The Will of the Many such a success. Anyone who picks up The Strength of the Few will, however, be well served by watching or listening to a recap of the first book before beginning. Or, better yet, treat themselves to a reread.

Either way, I'm really excited to see where James Islington takes the story with the next book in the series.

Contrary to some of my other favourite fantasy writers, like Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie. ↩
I generally prefer reading e-books. Though some nicer books can feel great to hold and smell, I find the advantages of e-books to outweigh that aspect. Doubly so when it comes to big, unwieldy paperbacks. ↩
This is a significant drawback of reading books in a unfinished series in my opinion. I much prefer reading through a full series where every book has been released. ↩

Two 1000 metre track races a year apart

2026-03-24T00:00:03+00:00

It's that time of the year again. Spring is in the air, and runners are gearing up for Norway's biggest running event and, according to themselves, the biggest relay event in the world: Holmenkollstafetten. This road running relay race goes through the heart of Oslo and has taken place almost every year since 1923!

75.000 runners representing more than 4.500 teams line up to run the relay, and Oslo is absolutely packed to the brim with people sharing the joys of physical activity. Though some might say that the festivities that typically follow the race is the highlight of the day. I might be inclined to agree.

Teams comprise all sorts of groups of people: Friends, running clubs, businesses, charities and whatever else that bind people together. Many businesses use this as an excuse to get their employees to enjoy physical activity followed by social bonding afterwards. That is true for my employer. They pay the entry fees and book a great location in the heart of Oslo. It is the base before runners venture out to their starting points across the city. And after the race there is a banquet with great food, entertainment and all around good vibes.

Inspired by other businesses, our running group last year took the initiative to establish an "Elite Team" where the aim is to run the relay as quickly as possible.¹ The selection process is simple. A tryout race consisting of a 1000 metre time trial to compete for ten long stage spots and a 400 metre time trial to compete for five short stage spots.

As I ran the tryouts last year as well as this year, I thought it would be fun to analyse and compare the stats from each years time trial.² Given that I'm a slow twitch runner, and a marathoner by heart, even a 1000 metre race is a full on sprint for me. Safe to say that a short stage is off the table for me. My one and only shot of a spot on the team was running the 1000 metre race.

I run with a Stryd footpod/power meter (an old version referred to as "Stryd Wind"). The power and pace charts below are both from the web version of their running tracker log data analysis software thing called Powercenter. The heart rate chart comes from the magnificent Intervals.icu, which is my go-to platform for advanced workout data analysis. I've, of course, also linked to the individual entries in my personal workout log.

2025 race

Last year's race took place on 25 March. It was a cold and crisp day, with the sun peeking out and next to no wind.

Last year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 1 second. For the imperialists out there, that is roughly 4:51 per mile pace.

Power average for the race was 542 Watts, while peak power was 622 Watts.

Heart rate average was 181 beats per minute and I maxed out at 191! This is only four beats off my estimated max of 195 bpm.

2026 race

This year's race was delayed due to the conditions and took place on 24 March. Almost to the day a year after last year's tryouts. The weather wasn't nearly as nice, with a grey and overcast sky and a little bit of wind.

This year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 2 seconds. It is around 4:53 per mile pace.

Power average for the race was 543 Watts, while I peaked at 650 Watts.

Heart rate average was 177 beats per minute, and I maxed out at 188. Seven beats off my estimated max, and three beats lower than last year.

Reflections on the race

As I'd been ill for almost a week not two weeks back, I doubted my fitness. Because of this, I ran a much more conservative race. Whereas I reached peak power (622W) on the first bend last year, I ran more even this year before steadily increasing the power on the final straight hitting a significantly higher peak (650W) right on the finish line.

Today's time was a second slower. Looking at the data, I should've run faster. The heart rate charts hammer this point home. Last year I spent two full minutes in "the purple zone" (185+ bpm), while this year I only managed just shy of a minute in that same zone.

That tracks with how I felt throughout the race as well. Last year I felt like I was working at my max from the get go. That I couldn't increase the pace/power much the final 200 metres illustrates that I didn't have anything left in the tank. Conversely, today I felt like I was quite in control all the way up until I turned it on towards the end of the final bend, and was able to keep increasing the pace/power right up to the finish line. Even though I felt like I mechanically couldn't increase the pace further, I felt like I could've kept it up for a while yet.

My conclusion is that I'm significantly fitter today than I was last year, despite running slower. I should've run a little faster, and at least broken three minutes. I think I executed this year's race better, but I simply left it too late before turning it on. This is extra annoying because I almost caught a guy right before the finish line, but he held me off to beat me with two tenths of a second in the end!

Points to note

Weight

At 69.5 kilograms today versus 68.2 kilograms on race day last year, I am 1.3 kilograms (1.9%) heavier this year. Knowing this going in, together with the recent illness and no race specific sessions to prepare this year, it played a part in making me think I wouldn't be able to defend last year's time. I should've trusted that my base fitness is significantly better this year.

Training load

Your fitness is determined by the work you've done over a longer time period, not just the last couple of weeks. And as my workout log shows, I put in much more work the first couple of months of 2026 than I did in 2025. And my total workload for 2025 was again much higher than what I managed in 2024. Even at 40 and at a higher weight, that translates to better fitness!

Footpod accuracy

It's also interesting to note that now that my weight has gone up a little, the Stryd footpod appears to be more accurate. The estimated distance this year is spot on. Last year, it was 20 metres short. I ran both races in the same pair of shoes (only used once in-between) and on the same track. As the Stryd only utilises the user defined weight value to determine an air resistance coefficient and multiply the natively calculated Watts/kg to present an absolute power value, it makes sense that a weight change potentially estimates the calculations.

My weight setting for both races was 100 kg. It's impressive (and a little bit confounding, given the changes in estimated distance and pace) seeing that the average absolute watt levels are nearly identical (542W last year versus 543W this year) despite the weight change. It means that the pod's native watt/kg calculation picks up the weight change very well.

Caffeine is one hell of a drug

Last year I was a regular coffee drinker at the time of the race. I did my regular race day routine of supplementing my normal dosage (around 80 milligram) with an energy drink containing about 100 milligrams of caffeine 30-45 minutes before the race. If you'll recall, my adventures in quitting caffeine commenced shortly after.

An adventure it has been, and I should write about it some time. The long and the short of it though, is that going into today's race, I've been more or less caffeine free for the past four months. I was excited to discover how this would play out when trying to take advantage of caffeine as a performance enhancer. And make a difference it did!

Although it's clearly impossible to measure the performance effects, I can only say that I've never before in my adult life noticed anything like the effects that I got from ingesting caffeine today. I've used caffeine in similar dosages before every race I've run over the past decade. Today hit different. I was wired and alert and felt almost supercharged. In fact, five hours later, I still do. Which is why I'm just finishing up this post long past my bedtime. I'm convinced, perhaps even more so than the race execution, the caffeine high contributed to the fact that I never really felt tired throughout the race.

Caffeine is clearly a performance enhancing drug. There are studies that confirm this. But I'm now convinced that someone who doesn't consume it regularly will experience greatly increased effects compared to someone who's adapted to its effect through daily consumption. The obvious caveat being that there appears to be a genetically determined difference in how people respond to caffeine, so your mileage may vary.³

I'll continue to stay off caffeine in my daily life, and only turn to it when I'm in dire need of its effects. To ensure that I get max potency when needed, but also because regular consumption is not without downsides to me.

Did I make the team?

Last year, I did!

For this year, the final results aren't in yet. But I'll be sure to update this post when they are.

Update: The final results are in, and I made it Out of everyone that tried out for the men's team, my time had me in sixth place. A whopping three seconds clear of the cut off time!

The overall approach for most teams in the race is participation, and that's what makes it such a great occasion. It would be very boring in comparison if it was mainly a performance oriented race, and the city wasn't positively brimming with people. ↩
No, really, that is my idea of fun! ↩
This recently became very clear to me when I saw my wife quit caffeine cold turkey with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms. Whereas I'm completely debilitated for days when cutting similar dosages. ↩

Fra duggens verden by Arne Dørumsgaard

2026-03-29T00:00:02+00:00

A while ago, I came across a haiku by Basho by way of a two decades old post by Jason Kottke. The poem in question was ‘the whole family’ and goes like this:

the whole family
all with white hair and canes
visiting graves

It resonated deeply and sent me down a rabbit hole. I began my making a note of it. This to ensure I didn't forget the poem. The lines made me want to read more by Basho. Upon discovering that he was Japanese, I was reminded of the quote by the tourist towards the end of the movie Paterson:

Poetry in translations is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

That got me thinking. Ideally I should learn Japanese to truly get a feel for Basho's work. But that was not a journey I was willing to begin at the moment. Nevertheless, I thought that instead of reading English translations, it would probably be one step up if I could instead find Norwegian translations. Poetry never came easy to me. Reading in my native tongue would probably be my best chance of ‘getting it’.

I then began searching for first hand translation. Translated poetry is bad enough. I certainly didn't want to spend my time reading AI-generated Norwegian translations based on English translation. Eventually I ended up discovering Fra duggens verden at the National Library of Norway's website.

The full title of the book is ‘Fra duggens verden: Basho i norsk gjendiktning (1644-1694)’. It translates to something like ‘From the dew's world: Basho re-created in Norwegian’ and the title made me confident that the author — of whom I knew nothing — had translated the works based on the originals. That it was released in 1985 made me reasonably certain they weren't AI-generated.

My next order of business was getting a hold of the book. Yes, I could technically read the book scans, in my browser, through the National Library's website. But that's no way to read a book! Of this particular book, I wanted a physical copy. That was easier said than done. My search eventually led me to the website of a local art gallery and antiquarian bookshop which claimed to have for sale. I emailed the owner that I wanted to buy the book, and a short while later it arrived in the mailbox outside my house.

At this point I still had no idea about what kind of book this was. My idea was that it contained translated haiku poems. To my surprise, the first half or so turned out to be a biography of Basho and his struggles to become founder of what's today know as haiku poetry.

Great stuff! I love getting more than I'd bargained for.

Basho's story was a fascinating one. His frequent pilgrimages throughout Japan to get away from ‘modern society’ of Japan in sixteen hundreds and live a more modest life to connect with nature rang familiar. Dørumsgaard doesn't hide his disdain for the contemporary society of the 1980s. He wonders what Basho would think of the lives we lead today. Which in turn made me wonder what both Basho and Dørumsgaard and would make of the world as it is in 2026. As I read this book in parallel with Letters from a Stoic, it struck me that perhaps this struggle to get back to natural world must be a universal human experience.

Despite Basho's poems and Dørumsgaard formal, almost to the point of heavy, and opinionated recounting of his live, the best part of this book to me was something else entirely: The smell. There is a certain, characteristic smell of old books and this book has it in spades. The smell brings me back to my life as a boy, sitting in the attic of my grandparents' house trying to find something interesting to read after ploughing through the Donald Duck comics I'd brought for entertainment. The sensation is so visceral that, for a tiny sliver of a moment, I feel as if I've been transported through time and space. Despite having finished the book, I still keep it on the side table next to my chair, only to pick it up towards my nose and flicker through the pages.

Sometimes you get way more than you bargained for.

As for Basho's poetry and Dørumsgaard's re-creations, well, they certainly are first hand translations. Dørumsgaard has included a sizeable sections of notes on his reasoning for the translations. And while I've gained newfound appreciation for both poetry as an art form, and haiku in particular, not a single other of the poems included in this book hit me as much as that first one I came across which pushed me down this rabbit hole. Dørumsgaard's Norwegian re-creation goes as follows:

Slektens siste

Alle med stokker
og hvite i håret
rusler de stille omkring mellem graver.

I guess that's poetry for you. It resonates when the most when you expect it the least. For instance when clicking a link to a twenty two year old blog post lamenting that the work of sorting and categorising has overshadowed the work itself. Nevertheless, here are some of my other favourites. I challenge you to find them recreated in whichever language you're the most comfortable reading poetry.

Tid og evighet

Hvor vis den mann som ikke tenker
«flyktig er livet»
ved synet av lyn.

Silhuet

En kråke
På en vissen gren
i høstens skumring…

Cikaden

Den sang sig
ut av livet –
tomt ligger skallet igjen.

Lede

Ofte føler jeg at de dødes rike
må være lik en ensom kveld
ved høst.

«L'etang mort»

En gammel dam –
en frosk som sprang:
et skvulp.

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

2026-04-04T00:00:01+00:00

If you've peeked at my reading log the last year or so, you'd be excused for thinking I'd abandoned Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. It has featured under my reading section for more than a year!

Finishing a book has never taken me this long before. But finish it I did, and I did it just the other day.

Stoic philosophy has interested me for many years. Even before it was co-opted by the ‘manosphere’ and quotes from Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and their fellow stoics became endemic to various platforms. I just never really got around to following up on my curiosity. Not until I began listening to the History of Rome podcast a couple of years back. It renewed my interest in the philosophical teachings of the age, and — having both Seneca's Letters and Aurelius' Meditations on my shelf — I decided that I needed to read these two cornerstones of stoicism.

Seneca's letters are written as musings and advice for his friend Lucilius. The 65 letters have become somewhat of a bible or, the original teachings, for stoics. They cover a wide array of subjects. Everything from the folly of the crowds to how to meet death to the point of philosophy.

Part of the reason finishing the book took me so long is because I decided to read at most one letter per day. Given the subject matter, plowing through felt insufficient. Better to let each letter sink in and process it properly before moving on to the next. I also took a fair bit of notes.

Much of what Seneca teaches resonates with me. The stoic views on death, in particular, align with my personal beliefs. Seneca closes his 65th and final letter to Lucilius:

And what is death? It is either the end, or a process of change. I have no fear of ceasing to exist; it is the same as not having begun. Nor do I shrink from changing into another state, because I shall, under no conditions, be as cramped as I am now. Farewell.

Mic drop!

Death is a recurring subject throughout the letters. The view is consistent in that death is nothing to be feared. All of our lives we are dying. (‘For death itself is always the same distance from us.’) Not a single one of us has any guarantees for when that final moment will come. We should lead our lives as if death is constantly around the corner. ‘Let us postpone nothing’, he writes.

His first letter deals with just that. Seneca opens it thus:

Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.

Seneca preaches that ‘life is long, if only you know how to use it’. Most of us, unfortunately, do not. We are not set free. We do not gather and save our time. Instead, our precious time is squandered to ‘the most disgraceful kind of loss’ which ‘is due to carelessness’.

His strong and adamant preaching that ‘nothing is ours, except time’ was a timely (hur-hur) reminder. I'm at a part of my life where the days seemingly fly by. Each day is filled to the brim. Reading Seneca's letter compelled me to take stock of how I'm spending my time. To make adjustments, sure. But, more importantly, to reach the conclusion that much of what I fill my days with is genuinely what I want to be doing.

What a gift.

Another gift was his thoughts on crowds. In the physical sense, in the sense of ‘everyone is doing it’ that is so easy to use as justification for our actions and in the sense that we need to strive for the approval of the many. This particular anecdote hit home:

The following was also nobly spoken by someone or other for it is doubtful who the author was; they asked him what was the object of all this study applied to an art that would reach but very few. He replied: ‘I am content with few, content with one, content with none at all.’

And, on the subject of attracting praise, Seneca wrote (emphasis mine):

Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself if you are a person whom the many can understand? Your good quality should face inwards.

These are thoughts I've sort of held or vaguely surmised, but never truly expressed. But I could not agree more. Your compass should point towards something other than praise and adulation. Your good quality should face inwards. Seneca also talks about going against the crowds in how you act:

It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting, but it shows greater self-control to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in a different way — thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor becoming one of the crowd. For one may keep holiday without extravaganza.

In opposing the crowd, it is easy to default to reclusive behaviour. As Seneca points out here, however, this is not necessarily the stoic way. Instead, to be among the crowds, and to do what they do, but in a different way, is both more challenging and more instructive.

Another cornerstone of stoic philosophy are the views on material wealth. It is not that they abhor richness. In fact, they actively encourage anyone to pursue it. It, however, being something quite different than what we normally consider wealth. Nothing illustrates this more than when Seneca quotes Epicurus in a story about Pythocles:

‘If you wish to make Pyhocles rich, but not rich in the vulgar and equivocal way, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.’

Seneca believes that it is equally true that:

If you wish to make Pythocles honourable, do not add to his honours, but subtract from his desires.

And:

If you wish Pythocles to have pleasure forever, do not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires.

Not as eloquent as his ‘Epicurean enemy’, perhaps, but it certainly gets the point across. This view that wealth and honour and true pleasure is not defined by what you own and acquire, but rather what you desire, is something I believe deeply. Seeing it written in such plain words helped me cement that belief. Every day I now try to remind myself of this. That I can become richer, more virtuous and make life more pleasurable simply be subtracting from my desires.

To that end, I will end this post with perhaps my favourite quote from all of Seneca's letters, concerning what constitutes happiness:

…teach us that the happy man is not he whom the crowd deems happy, namely, he into whose coffers mighty sums have flowed, but he whose possessions are all in his soul, who is upright and exalted, who spurns inconstancy, who sees no man with which he wishes to change places, who rates men only at their value as men, who takes Nature for his teacher, conforming to her laws and living as she commands, whom no violence can deprive of his possessions, who turns evil into good, who is unerring in judgement, unshaken, unafraid, who may be moved by force but never moved to distraction, whom Fortune when she hurls at him with all her might the deadliest missile in her armoury, may graze, though rarely, but never wound.

Front page additions

2026-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

I mentioned in a recent note that I've been tinkering with the front page setup for a while. The previous iteration of the front page had been mostly identical since I relaunched the blog in late 2023. It showed recent posts and recent notes.

Since then, I've added a couple of content sections to the website. I add books to my reading log several times per month. The workout log is updated daily. The result is that the front page wasn't really reflecting the entirety of the activities that happen on this website. As new visitors tend to drop by the home page, I think it's a good idea to use that page to give them an idea of what's happening on this website.

To that end, I've tried several times the last year to find a way to incorporate updates from the reading and workout logs into the front page. Unsuccessfully! I've created and discarded at least five different mock-ups. Common for all of them is that I've begun with the approach of trying to lift the design elements from the two logs into the front page. As I'm happy with how both sections look, that felt like the natural approach.

The drawback is that every single time I tried this approach, the overall feel of the front page was disjointed. It came off as something haphazardly thrown together. When I tried once more to tackle this challenge the other day, the outcome was the same. But at that point, a lightbulb went off.

‘I don't have to bring the design elements from the logs to the front page. I can just bring the data from the logs and present them in the same way I do the other front page elements!’

The template was essentially already in place. Posts and notes are distinct types of content, and were already presented as such. Doing the same with two more types of content shouldn't be an issue. So I gave it a go. And, to my surprise, it worked just fine. It's not revolutionary or anything out of the ordinary. But that wasn't what I was aiming for. I just wanted to preserve the look and feel of the home page, while also showing the breadth of content I share on the site. And I think I achieved just that.

To spruce it up a little, I decided to reuse the icons from the workout log on the workout log entries. With that little visual in place, it was a short order to just reuse miniature versions of the book covers from the books I'm reading to add a little bit of colour there as well.

One unexpected result is that the posts and notes entries feel a bit flat by comparison without any visuals. But, as I want to err on avoiding anything akin to Apple's icons in menus everywhere, I think I'll leave it as it is for now.