andreasviklund.com

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?

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?

While I like to build simple designs, I still try to add a good-looking header image that can add an artistic touch to the design. In most cases, I take a couple of photos from my own photo collection and edit them into something that gives some pretty colors to the look. The edited images have become widely used, even though they are supposed to be sample images rather than default ones. They are added to give users an idea of what a header image can look like - but I usually recommend people to replace the sample images with something of their own. It is a simple way to make the design a bit more unique and personal.

Recently I have got several questions about these images. A few template users were curious about how I create them, and I have promised to document each step when I make the next header. But before I do that, I want to give you an idea of how the original images can look. Can you connect the images with their respective templates?

As I have written earlier, each photo has a special meaning to me. It is not just random photos, there is an idea behind each picture. But what those ideas are will remain my own little secret…

The last couple of weeks have been chaotic, especially this week which has been a complete nightmare. I have disappointed both colleagues and clients because I have not been able to deliver all projects according to the schedule - and people have not been able to reach me since I've been away and my mobile phone is broken. There are of course reasons for that, and I will write more about it all in a few days. But but this post is about something much more fun, something that will hopefully make the next couple of weeks much more happy: The single most important person in my life, my father Kjell Viklund, becomes 50 years today!

A surprise party!

To celebrate this, I will spend the weekend in Porjus. I'll bring the computer, my camera and a present that I know he will love, and I'm planning to stay until tomorrow afternoon. Uncle Kent and aunt Anna-Lena (and their families) are planning for a surprise birthday party tonight. The old man himself doesn't know anything about it, but the plan is to have a good dinner, make sure old and new friends drop by to share a few drinks and hopefully have a great time.

I have asked a number of friends to come to the party as well, but I don't know how many that will actually show up. I hope that it will be a lot of people, because he deserves something really special for this day! I have also prepared a few extra surprises for him, including the birthday card that you see to the right. The image is a few years old, but it is the only photo I have where he actually poses for the camera. The photo probably reveals that he enjoys weightlifting as well…

Plans for the next couple of weeks

But the celebrations will go on for several weeks. The local basketball team, defending champions Plannja Basket, will probably reach the finals in the top league in Sweden, and if we manage to get tickets we will probably spend a day in Luleå and see one of the finals. And at the end of this month, my grandmother is sending both dad and me to Pite Havsbad in Piteå to enjoy a relaxing hotel weekend with spa treatments and other adventures.

I am also going to convince dad to get an e-mail address of his own - and maybe a blog as well. Everyone who has met my father knows that he is a man with many amazing stories to tell. We have been talking about recording those stories and turn them into a book, and a blog could be a good way to speed up the writing and give both inspiration and feedback. We have actually come pretty far with the idea and got positive comments from people who have read the first few texts. One of my favorite writers, Mikael Niemi from Pajala, read the first storiy and said that we should definitely write the book - and his comment was a great encouragement. We'll see what happens with that as well…

Time to pack the bags!

This will be short, as i write this live from the party. lots of people here, lots of noise. And lots of familiar faces… once it calms down, i will introduce myself. fun evening!

Once again, a few hours later…

What I tried to write was that I made the above post using my phone, live from the party at Weekdays. I may have been the only person who posted a blog entry from there tonight, but I may of course be wrong! Things settled down on the second party, at Ljunggrens a few hours later. There were lots of familiar names and great bloggers all over the place, but knowing that I have an important meeting tomorrow morning made me keep an extremely low profile on the parties. I spent most of the time watching others, just enjoying the communications and great meetings. I never did introduce myself other than to people who asked who I was, as this was really the night for Damon and Gloria and their lovely book (I've read it already)…

Anyway, here is a photo of me from only a few hours ago, See this guy around town during the next days and want to have a chat about webdesign or any other related topic? Feel free to catch me. Thanks to Damon and Gloria for a great site, a great book and for hosting this party! It will be really fun to be a part of what you have created. Special thanks to Gloria for the sweet greeting she wrote in my copy of the book, I appreciate it!

Now I need to get some sleep. After only 2 hours of sleep in the last 2,5 days I am so tired that it hurts. More photos will be uploaded tomorrow.