andreasviklund.com

This weekend I've been in Porjus to enjoy "Porjusdagarna" (The Porjus days), a big annual summer event in the small town that has been a tradition for more than 20 years of my life now. It was a great weekend in a lot of ways, and in order to show you a little bit of what it looked like I have prepared an image with a few of the photos that I brought back home. I have placed numbers by each image, and the image captions can be found below the image.

1. Festplatsen, Porjus (the stage area).
The weather was bad, but the event still gathered hundreds of people over the two days.

2. Johanna and me.
Check out the newest family member, little Theo, in Johanna's jacket! Theo is the third papillon around, and he lives with my father in Porjus. Most of the time. Every now and then he'll visit us in Jokkmokk where he can go wild with our two girls Elven and River (Theo is River's brother, by the way).

3. Markus Fagervall live on stage.
Swedish Idol 2006 winner (and former WP-Andreas01 theme user) Markus was the artist of the day. I had not seen him live since Snabelfestivalen 2004, back in the days when he was still an unknown local rocker. I liked the music of his old band Liquid Scarlet back then, but the more radio-friendly style he plays today sounded great as well. And extremely professional of course. I didn't get any chance to talk to the star himself, I was busy with something else after the gig…

4. Daniel Viklund lifting the 170 kilogram atlas stone!
…which was the final part of the Laponia Strongman competition, where my older cousin Daniel Viklund managed to beat the competition (including Finlands strongest man!) to win the Laponia Strongman 2007 title! Daniels brother Emil can also be seen on the image. Daniel will compete in the Swedish championship (Sveriges Starkaste Man) in Arvidsjaur soon, aiming at a top-3 placement after finishing 4th last year.

5. Dad and Ida.
My father Kjell was of course proud of Daniels achievement, since dad has been lifting weights for more than 30 years and acted as a big source of inspiration for Daniel when he started working out many years ago. Younger cousin Ida was also around, and she drove us back to Jokkmokk on sunday afternoon when the event was over. Thanks for the ride!

6. Jingle Bass, Jingle Bass…
And finally, an image that I'm posting just for the fun of it. I spent most of Saturday night watching Live Earth on TV, but I also made a quick visit to a nearby party where I met some old friends and colleagues. But the interesting thing with this image is the lovely t-shirt that I have ordered from Perrra.se. I won't spell out the artist name that is written on it, but you can see it and listen to the music on Perrra's site! Perrra is one of my true idols, and the shirt have truly caught the attention of a lot of people this weekend. Thanks for the fun, Perrra, and keep the great work up!

I just spent three hours on writing the most personal and honest blog post I have ever written. I have written similar personal posts a couple of times before, but I have never published any of them. Instead, I save them in my private offline diary. But I was really close to posting this one, and I am actually planning to do it once I've got a chance to read (and edit) the post with a clear mind and some time for reflections.

It wouldn't be very fun to read since it doesn't show any good side of me. I am writing about my weaknesses and inabilities, and even about the situation where I was ready to just give up on it all. But at the same time it is details that people should know about me, since it explains a lot about my personality and the choices I make - and how I work from now on. It also includes apologies to clients and friends that I have disappointed over the last years, and a hint about one possible future for me and for this site - all depending on what you think.

But as I wrote in the first paragraph of the mentioned post: "A post like this should never be published on a day of worries", so it will have to wait. Besides, tomorrow is reserved for Johanna as we are celebrating 7 years together, and that means more than everything else…

By the way, here is a small and completely unrelated little surprise: Recognize this melody?

Sorry for the short length and the lousy sound quality, it was filmed with a simple digital camera with limited movie functionality…

Today I'm leaving Jokkmokk for a day in the small town of Lansjärv. I will join my father Kjell and my grandmother Kerstin for an afternoon of car bingo. Yes, really! It has become a summer tradition for me, and I think that this will be the fifth summer in a row that I visit Lansjärv for a game of bingo. Lansjärv is not a big place, even smaller than my home town Porjus. But during the bingo days, it is completely crowded with a great mix of people, both young and old, locals and tourists. I have never won any jackpot, and that doesn't really matter anyway. The best thing with it all is spending time with my grandmother, the bingo trips are always very happy days.

Here is a small panorama photo of the last Lansjärv car bingo of 2004, showing only a part of the completely full football field that serves as a parking lot. Can anyone spot my father and the grandmothers famous VW Jetta?

Inspired by the silly traditions of the Swedish midsummer celebrations, I decided to make a collage of the best photos from the mini-vacation in Umeå last week. I still haven't added any real photo album to this site, so I figured that a collage would be a nice way to show the promised photos. And besides, allowing oneself to be a bit childish and just play around with photos and graphics for the fun of it is usually a good thing - it can give a lot of inspiration and boost the creativity. I was really happy about the way the collage was turning out. I had added 14 images, of which 4 were mixed into one layered photo showing me playing bowling. It sure looked a bit silly, but the collage was still a lot of fun to create!

But I was so into the puzzling that I forgot about saving a copy of the collage file, and when I was going to export the final image my image editor crashed - and an hour of image editing resulted in… Nothing at all! Losing work in that way is of course not a good way to boost the creativity. I couldn't find any motivation to start over and do it all again, so for now I'll only post this photo, straight from my own photo album.

The picture (taken by Micke on June 14th) shows me and Johanna inside a parking house in central Umeå. I haven't posted very much personal material on this blog in the past, but on July 2nd the two of us have been a couple for 7 amazing years - and that is something I would want to share with the entire world!

I will write more about that later for sure, but now I'm leaving the computer for a while to enjoy the great summer weather for a while. Later tonight I'll start planning for the addition of a photo gallery feature. Any good suggestions on what plugin/script/service to try out?

In a few minutes, my father and I will leave Jokkmokk for the calm mini-vacation that I have written about in previous posts. For a few days, I will leave all work behind and not do anything else than having a good time. When I return on Monday, it will hopefully be with more energy and fresh inspiration…

Have a great weekend everyone!