andreasviklund.com

After a day with several travel hours and a long and incredibly interesting meeting, I am now taking a short break to post this blog entry and write a couple of e-mails. I didn't write very much about the meeting that I was going to attend, but I will write more about it later for sure. This is just a short status report, I'll post photos and reflections later.

As mentioned in the previous post, I was invited to a national blogger meeting about with a small number of selected bloggers from different parts of Sweden. The meeting was hosted by Telia who are the main sponsors of the Swedish national qualifying contests for the Eurovision Song Contest. The national contest is a major event, one of the most viewed TV-shows in Sweden. It gets massive attention in national media, but it is also a hot topic in the blogosphere. The meeting took place in the TeliaSonera headquarter in Stockholm, located at Stureplan. It was really interesting in many ways, and it also gave us a chance to meet some of the contestants from the different qualifying contests. It was really fun to meet these young artists, full of dreams and expecations, heading into this major frenzy with all their heart. I still haven't heard their songs, but after meeting the artists I am looking forward to the contest in a way that I haven't done before.

Here is a view over Stureplan, Stockholm, taken from the meeting room:

To be continued…

She turns 23 years old today, so today will be a day of birthday celebrations and of course… Cake for friends and family who comes by!

Here is a recent photo of her with all our Papillon dogs: Elven, River and Theo:

Like many others, I have have signed up on Facebook some time ago and discovered that it is a great place to keep in touch with friends and colleagues. My Facebook profile is completely public, all Facebook members can see everything that I have posted. At the moment, you will find some photos that are not available on this site, including a public Lagoona photo album and a few pictures from my personal collection.

But Facebook is not in any way supposed to take away any focus from my own website or from my work. I'm hoping to use it as a communication platform rather than as anything else. I do not want Facebook to end up being all about work, but at the same time I am of course open for all ideas and suggestions that others may have. The first suggestion I got was really good: In order to keep my work separated from my personal life, I was asked to set up a Facebook group called "Andreas' website templates" and direct template users and designer colleagues there. And so I did!

I don't know if anyone will actually want to join it, but if you happen to be a Facebook member and want to discuss the designs, exchange ideas, get comments on your site, get help or ask me about anything, then you are very welcome to join the group! As always, I can not help everyone who may need help. I will still spend more time on answering e-mails than hanging out on Facebook. But if the group gets a number of members, perhaps designers could help each other as well…

I'll give this some time to see how it works, and I will write more about the response and how it all turns out in a few weeks or so.

Tjuvlyssnat is there too!

Tjuvlyssnat.se is also launching a Facebook group of its own. The group was created earlier today, but it has already got more than 750 members - including the entire site crew (Damon, Jennie, Marie, Petter and me).

And finally…

With that said, I have a request. I really appreciate all the friend requests that have been sent to me from template users all over the world during the last couple of days. But unless we actually know each other since before, please join the group rather than adding me as a friend. Or at least write a message and let me know who you are… Thanks!

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!

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 för 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?