Hampus Liljekvist

This is my personal blog, where I will be posting about various topics I want to touch upon.

[hlilje]

2022 Year in Review

2021 Year in Review

It's that time again.

Last year I wrote:

To wrap things up, this will be the year of Embark for me, as my main focus will be to integrate into my new workplace, learn as much as possible, and bring improvements where I can. The rest will more-or-less continue as usual, with some extra focus on making better use of my time. That means spending less time procrastinating and more time making music, reading and working out (though I feel like I’ve written this exact thing before). Here’s to a hopefully less pandemic-ridden 2022!

As prophesied, much of my focus was put on my new job as a game programmer at Embark. I'm now in my third team constellation since starting, going from working on metagame features at ARC Raiders, to working with shared online tech in general, to now being part of the UI and retention team of THE FINALS. Overall I feel quite comfortable in my role at the company (perhaps a bit too comfortable), and I don't see myself leaving anytime soon. This year is going to be an exciting one for Embark as well, so I'm looking forward to that.

I said I wanted to make better use of my time in 2022, and while I might have made some minor improvements, I don't feel like I succeeded in that regard. Therefore I'm going into 2023 with an even bigger focus on how I'm spending my time when it comes to both productivity and my sleep schedule.

During the year I again only released two tracks, but this at least puts me one track away from completing my next EP, which I'm planning to release in 2023. Continuing the tradition of picking up new instruments, I also purchased an acoustic guitar and have been making some decent progress learning fingerstyle on it.

I read 8 books last year, which is similar to the year before. Since I've prioritised sleeping over reading at night, I've mostly been reading during my weekday commutes, but I haven't decided whether that was a good trade-off or not.

My workout routine did improve in 2022 as I got back to the gym, and I've started to take training a bit more seriously outside just working out. I feel like I'm on a good track at the moment and will carry that into 2023.

I really got back into concerts during 2022, but towards the end of the year I was pretty burnt out on the whole concert experience, resulting in months of abstinence. In 2023 I will be more mindful about what artists I go to see live, and I already have some tickets for upcoming shows that I look forward to.

Some years ago I made the financially unsound decision to start paying off my student loan faster than required, and at the end of 2022 I was finally debt free. I've previously mentioned that I want to buy a flat at some point in the future, so in order to acquire some new debt, I'm intending to do just that in 2023.

I also went to Amsterdam right in the middle of the heatwave. It was hot.

Finally, this might be my last public year review, as I don't see the same benefit in publishing them online anymore. Rest assured that I will keep making them privately for the foreseeable future.

[hlilje]

2021 Year in Review

2020 Year in Review

What is time even?

Last year I wrote:

I’m not going to make any grand promises for 2021. I don’t think we’ll return to normal anytime soon, so for now I will focus on the things that I can do by myself, that is getting back into music production, playing video games, reading books, excelling at work and working out. Maybe even sleep some more.

We're still not back to normal, and we're not exactly off to a great start for 2022 either, but let's not dwell on that now. Instead, the by far biggest change for me in 2021 was that I started a new job as a Gameplay Programmer over at Embark Studios on the video game ARC Raiders in August. After five years at Paradox Development Studio, I felt it was time for a change, and so far things have been going well. This has resulted in many firsts for me, the first time working on a AAA game, working on a free-to-play cooperative third-person shooter, working with a third-party game engine (Unreal), etc. All-in-all I'm very happy with my decision to move over to Embark, and I intend to stick around.

I did say that I would be getting back into music production, and I did, but I only managed to produce two songs during the entire year. Suffice it to say that ain't a great output, which was partly caused by a shift in focus from quantity to quality, but also due to the fact that I bought a bass guitar which I spent a significant amount of time with. As such, I can now to a limited extent play piano, guitar and bass, meaning I only lack drums to complete my one-man band lineup (everyone can sing, right?).

I did manage to step up my reading game somewhat this year, where I read nine books in total. I suppose book count ain't a great metric by itself, but at least that's some progress over last year's five books. Will I make it to 12 books this year? Only time will tell.

The two video games that stood out to me this year among the ones I played were Control and Valheim. I really enjoyed the gameplay, story and art direction of Control, and I will definitely be playing more Remedy games in the future. I also spent more than 100 hours on my Valheim solo run, and I will likely revisit it in the future when there is more content to explore. There's just something about that beautiful procedurally generated world combined with just the right amount of survival and crafting mechanics that kept me going.

On the music side I went to see Black Midi live in December, which is the first concert I've been to since I saw Black Marble in February 2020. I have a bunch of upcoming concerts in 2022, but I try to not get my hopes up for those. I also continued my efforts of exploring "must-hear" artists like Bowie and Beatles, and you can check out my Last.fm listening report for the year if you're interested in how that went.

My workout routine was so-so, I did keep my weekly running up fairly well, but I really miss the gym now, and I must admit I still haven't fully fixed my sleep schedule. Unrelated to that, 2021 was the year I decided that I want to buy an apartment in Stockholm, as opposed to potentially moving abroad. I'm still undecided on when to pull the trigger on one, but as things are looking right now I might be seriously looking for one in a year or so.

Finally, 2021 was unfortunately a year of procrastination for me, and I've been spending way too much time on both YouTube and reddit. I'm planning to fix that by cutting down on which content I follow, and by coming to terms with the fact that sometimes you have to be bored to progress in life.

To wrap things up, this will be the year of Embark for me, as my main focus will be to integrate into my new workplace, learn as much as possible, and bring improvements where I can. The rest will more-or-less continue as usual, with some extra focus on making better use of my time. That means spending less time procrastinating and more time making music, reading and working out (though I feel like I've written this exact thing before). Here's to a hopefully less pandemic-ridden 2022!

[hlilje]

2020 Year in Review

2019 Year in Review

Welp, where do you begin? Perhaps with the tweet I posted during the final hours of 2019. I made sure to follow it up with another tweet at the end of 2020, which should hopefully unjinx things.

On a more serious note, last year I wrote:

Next year will largely be a continuation of the goals I had for 2019. I want to further develop my graphics programming skills at work, produce (and learn!) music, read many books, sleep, and finally, get ~ripped~ at the gym. My gut tells me that 2020 will be a good year, let’s see if that feeling holds up.

While I think it's fair to say that my gut feeling was a bit off, I did follow my goals reasonably well, all things considered. At work I've been mainly dealing with graphics like I wanted, and I've learnt a lot, even progressed to the point where I'm now mentoring other people in it. I also finally got promoted to Experienced Programmer, and I have my sights set on the Senior level for 2021, ambitious as it may be.

I finally released my new EP Pearly Whites and Marble Stairs which I've worked on for a year or so, and I'm quite happy with how it ended up. Completely unrelated to the pandemic I also picked up the electric guitar for the first time at the start of the year, after being graciously given one. So after releasing the EP in July I decided I was going to put my music making on hold while I was fully devoted to this new guitar endeavour. Now I can gladly say that I can play not one, but two instruments poorly (the other one being piano).

Unfortunately I couldn't keep following my posture training program since it required me attending the gym, but instead I made some nice progress at the nearby outdoors gym. This new type of exercise actually went so well that I decided to change my "default" gym program to be more focused on body weight training as opposed to weight lifting. I'm definitely more ~ripped~ now than I've ever been.

The year in books was franky terrible, and this time I really have no excuse. I only read five books during the entire year, so I badly need to step things up in 2021. This seems to be a recurring theme now. Something that's similarly recurring is my inability to get proper amounts of sleep, although working from home meant I had more leeway for squeezing out some extra shut-eye in the morning.

Obviously I didn't attend many concerts in 2020, as they got postponed and cancelled one after the other. I saw ShitKid in January and Black Marble in February, but after that a complete live music drought began (and is still ongoing). I think this is what I've been missing the most throughout the year apart from being able to work at the office.

Likewise I didn't really end up attending any events in 2020. I was slated for SIGGRAPH in Washington D.C. during the summer, but that was cancelled just like everything else. I did however irresponsibly sneak in a trip to my hometown during the summer vacations where I revisited some places from my childhood, which was nice.

Oh, and I finally got my eyes lasered, so no more glasses for me.

I'm not going to make any grand promises for 2021. I don't think we'll return to normal anytime soon, so for now I will focus on the things that I can do by myself, that is getting back into music production, playing video games, reading books, excelling at work and working out. Maybe even sleep some more.

[hlilje]

Faux Zombie Gang Wars

I ride in a large skate ramp outside a small city, and I manage to land a high vert impressing some of the people around. I try to replicate it without much success. Shortly thereafter a gang with biker attire shows up, clearly with the intention of taking over the city. They start filling the place up with large banks of sand as alarms go off, and people start to disperse in panic. The panic is justified, as the gang is about to launch a nuclear or possibly biological weapon on the city.

I quickly gather my friends and try to escape via a small forest nearby. Eventually we reach the large wall that surrounds the city, and we are stuck. As time ticks down I notice a tombstone next to it and get an idea. I quickly start digging straight down forming a small shaft fit for one person, eventually reaching the tomb beneath it.

The damp walls are made out of bricks and in the darkness I can barely make out some urns and a mummified corpse in the small room. My friends also make their way down the shaft just in time for the presumed biological weapon to go off. The sky turns orange and we cut to black.

When we make our way out of the tomb we are greeted by an eerie silence. As the dust settles we start moving towards the city.

In the now heavily damaged city we notice people moving about in groups, their movements and sounds reminiscent of that of zombies. We try to move through the crowd but get harassed by a few individuals, and while it is unclear what mental state the "zombies" are in, they are clearly not "undead". Who knows what effect the biological weapon had on them.

We set up base in a large luxury villa with big glass doors and windows. Together we now form the guerilla movement determined to take back control of the city from the evil gang that once "zombified" its inhabitants. In order to blend in among the faux zombies we ensure that we are constantly drunk on liquor, making it far easier to mimic their dreary demeanor.

Time passes, we attend varying planning meetings and maybe even a few parties, always wearing formal attire and suits mob style. One of them taking place in a long room with a table running down the middle, curiously similar to one of my old meeting rooms at work.

Walking down the street of the ravaged city, which now appears to be a version of my hometown, we meet a slavic guy in a tracksuit who seemingly also avoided the fallout. We sit down on a park bench together with my friend and the guy hands me a large shot of vodka which I end up mostly spilling. We talk for a bit and my knee starts hurting, probably from an old running injury.

He laughs, and I wake up.

[hlilje]

2019 Year in Review

2018 Year in Review

Another year past, another year in review.

Last year I wrote:

2019 will be a year of reprioritisation with a sharpened focus on the things I truly care about. I’ve come to realise how little free time you actually have outside work, and I aim to make the most of it. Going into 2019, I will go through my current and future projects and cut out the crap. From now on I will primarily focus on developing at my job, making music, working out, going to events, and reading.

I started the year by pruning my list of projects as stated, and while it now is leaner, it still contains more than I can chew. I'm not terribly worried about that since most projects are long-term investments that don't require me to work on them actively, provided I continuously remind myself of them.

Like always, my main priority has been my work. I was offered a position at the Engine/Tech team which I gladly accepted after some deliberation, and I'm happy to say it has worked out great so far. I've more or less exclusively worked with graphics which was exactly the main area I wanted to improve in, and I don't see that changing in 2020. Unfortunately I wasn't promoted this time around, but I'm expecting that to change this year.

I released my first EP in three years after switching to a new DAW, A008404, which consists of noisy music made over that period. I'm quite proud of it, and the skills I've learned along the way. I also released three other songs this year, totalling five new songs in 2019. All things considered, I think that's a decent output, and hopefully I will be even more productive in 2020. My piano playing also improved quite a bit in the year, partially due to investing in a proper keyboard, and I will continue to hone that skill in 2020.

My workout routine has been so-so, I've improved at the gym but due to multiple minor injuries my running has been quite limited, and towards the end of the year I decided to focus on weight lifting alone. Suffice to say I did not run a marathon in 2019 like I wanted to. My workout goal for 2020 is to fix my terrible posture, since sitting down by a computer for most of your life is bad in that regard, it turns out.

As demonstrated by my year in books, I only managed to read 11, out of which many came from a book club at work I joined in the year. I really have no excuse for not reading more, it's simply an effect of me consistently failing to keep my sleep routine. Surely 2020 will be the year I stop messing this up.

I did a fair bit of travelling in the year (sorry Greta), first going on a spontaneous trip to Dublin with some friends and colleagues, then going on a planned trip to Prague with my brother, and finally going on a conference trip to Berlin with work culminating in PDXCON. I'm expecting to attend another conference in the US in 2020, and while I haven't decided where I'm going for my vacation yet, I definitely want to go there by myself for the first time.

I've attended a reasonable number of "events" in 2019, but probably fewer than I wanted to. Also being somewhat exhausted from attending so many concerts, I decided to cut down on the number of shows I went to in 2019. Due to my unplanned vacation trip, I couldn't justify going to Way Out West, but I still ended up attending around 20 concerts or so. Rammstein, Robyn and Chromatics stand out as the most memorable.

In summary, I failed many of the goals I set up for the year, but I'm somehow fairly pleased with how it turned out anyway.

Next year will largely be a continuation of the goals I had for 2019. I want to further develop my graphics programming skills at work, produce (and learn!) music, read many books, sleep, and finally, get ~ripped~ at the gym. My gut tells me that 2020 will be a good year, let's see if that feeling holds up.

[hlilje]

2018 Year in Review

2017 Year in Review

This is the time of year I force myself to reflect back on the year that passed, jotting it down here for me and myself to enjoy.

Last year I wrote:

Going forward, my top priority will be to grow as a graphics programmer at work on my new project, once the switch happens. I don’t expect any breakthroughs in my music production as I direct my attention to piano practice. My goal is to be able to call myself a “piano player”, and by extension “musician”, by the end of 2018. It’s unclear how my personal programming projects will be affected by this goal, but my gut feeling is that I will be able to squeeze in a bit of programming too. I will read more and try to allocate more time for going to the gym in the midst of everything. Finally I hope to make at least a couple of trips abroad.

While I got a lot done on my new project, I was also temporarily moved to other internal projects within the company, and I still haven't gotten back to my regular tasks. Since this is somewhat out of my control I don't consider it a failure, and I have as a result developed in some other areas instead.

2018 was the year I decided to commit to music production, and as a result, my piano practice didn't quite pan out as intended. Therefore I'm not a "piano player" yet, but I'm very slowly working towards it. Having bought an audio interface, studio monitors, a synthesizer and a new DAW, I have little reason not to continue focusing on music in 2019. Unfortunately, my music output was abysmal, with only one track released. Though I did upload an old EP to Spotify for the heck of it.

The gut feeling I had was off, as I didn't get anything done on my personal programming projects. My free time hasn't been sufficient for both programming and music production with the amount of exercise I do nowadays. Speaking of that, I've developed a lot in the gym and found a routine I aim to stick to for the foreseeable future. I've also done a fair bit of running during the year, and I'll try to complete a full marathon at some point during 2019, provided I can get used to my new running setup.

I only read a measly four books during the year, mostly because of a 1000-page book on graphics programming taking up a majority of the time. But to be fair, I also haven't been spending near enough time reading. This I aim to change in 2019 (ignoring the fact that I wrote the exact same thing last year).

The goal of making at least a couple of trips abroad was met and exceeded, as I first visited Berlin for a second time, then shortly thereafter San Francisco for GDC, and finally Saint Petersburg during my summer vacation. Attending GDC has been on my bucket list since I got into game development, so I'm naturally very happy about that. The obvious follow-up would be to hold a talk there, but that won't happen in 2019.

I managed to get promoted at work again, and I will be doing my best to turn that into a three-year streak, unfeasible as it may be. I still love the work I do, in spite of the bittersweet end to the year. I will continue to focus on growing as a graphics programmer in 2019, while I'm working towards the requirements for the next seniority level.

The year in live music was great, and I attended at least 22 concerts or festivals, probably around twice as many as last year. I see no reason for that changing in 2019. The biggest disappointment was of course John Maus cancelling his show at Way Out West, but it was for good reason.

Finally, I have a nagging feeling that I'm getting worse at challenging myself in life. I wouldn't say that I'm flat-out getting complacent, but I tend to procrastinate more than before while I'm running out of free time in between working and working out. Thus,

2019 will be a year of reprioritisation with a sharpened focus on the things I truly care about. I've come to realise how little free time you actually have outside work, and I aim to make the most of it. Going into 2019, I will go through my current and future projects and cut out the crap. From now on I will primarily focus on developing at my job, making music, working out, going to events, and reading.

[hlilje]

2017 Year in Review

2016 Year in Review

I must be getting older, because last ended before it started. Now it's time for my annual Year in Review where I take a look back at what I accomplished in the previous year, and what I'm going to focus on in 2018.

Last year I wrote:

My two major focus points of 2017 will be to graduate from KTH and find an apartment. Once those are sorted, I will start to focus on programming again, and I will get a gym card. Otherwise it will be Business as Usual™, though my new foremost focus will be my work at Paradox.

I can happily say that after almost six years of hard work I finally graduated from KTH. I won't go into further detail here since I made a full blog post about it. I chose not to attend the voluntary graduation ceremony last time, but I might do so this year instead.

My second major focus point for 2017 was also sorted out when I got hold of my new apartment contract. The situation was slightly messy as I needed to find another apartment in-between contracts, but it all worked out well in the end.

Unfortunately I didn't do as much programming as I'd hoped. I started working on a Haskell interpreter for a made-up programming language, but development was slow as I prioritised other things instead.

I did however get a gym card, and while I didn't have time to use it as often as I wanted to, it was still a good start and something I will focus more on this year. I also discovered running. Granted, I have been running on-and-off for several years by now, but last year was the first time I genuinely enjoyed it. As it turns out, running for longer distances and in new places is actually quite enjoyable, especially if you pinpoint landmarks to visit beforehand. I started joining the regular after work runs which motivated me to improve my running speed and endurance, and I have made significant progress in both areas.

My foremost focus was indeed on my work, and I really grew into my role during the year. I even managed to get promoted to the next seniority level even though I hadn't worked there for a full year, which was a success. This year I will move on to a new project within Paradox, which will present some unique challenges and development opportunities I'm eagerly looking forward to facing. Though it will be with a bittersweet feeling as I leave the team and game I have been working on since I began my journey with Paradox.

I did improve my piano playing in 2017, and while I'm a long way from considering myself a "piano player", I made some good progress. When it comes to my own musical output, I only released two songs during year, and 2018 doesn't look much brighter in that department as I will be focusing on learning piano over producing new music. But I do have some ideas and early sketches I would like to build upon at some point.

Despite the importance of reading, I only read about 8 books during the year, an abysmal result I intend to amend this year. On the other side of the spectrum, the year of live music was the best one I've ever had. I went to some thirteen concerts and two festivals which is a personal record by a good margin. For 2018 I already have six-or-so concerts planned, and I don't see a reason for any decline after that.

While I didn't make huge advancements in my German vocabulary or grammar during most of 2017, I did notably improve my pronunciation. I hope to develop more in 2018 by exercising German more efficiently.

2017 was also the year I gave up meat entirely and built a new computer (RIP 2012--2017).

Going forward, my top priority will be to grow as a graphics programmer at work on my new project, once the switch happens. I don't expect any breakthroughs in my music production as I direct my attention to piano practice. My goal is to be able to call myself a "piano player", and by extension "musician", by the end of 2018. It's unclear how my personal programming projects will be affected by this goal, but my gut feeling is that I will be able to squeeze in a bit of programming too. I will read more and try to allocate more time for going to the gym in the midst of everything. Finally I hope to make at least a couple of trips abroad.

Oh, and I need to sleep more, I really do.

[hlilje]

5+ Years of Hard Work

Now that I have finally graduated from KTH, the time has come to take a short look back at my years there.

When I decided on my higher education, it came down to a choice between studying Computer Science and Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm or Chalmers in Gothenburg. I chose KTH because I wanted to live and work in Stockholm, and it is generally considered to be the most prestigious technical university in Sweden.

Once I knew I wanted to work with game development, the choice of computer science felt natural. I saw university studies as a foundation to build upon, learning how to learn, as it were. A game development program would not be as focused on fundamental computer science principles, meaning it would be harder to obtain deeper knowledge later. I still believe this to be true, and I would make the same choice today, possibly with the addition of a German international profile.

I was prepared for a significant step-up in difficulty versus high school studies, and my premonition was correct. The maths and master courses were particularly challenging. Thankfully, I was already ambitious in high school, so getting used to the higher difficulty and tempo did not take long.

My selection of courses was grounded in what I deemed rewarding to learn. Subjects such as compiler construction, AI, and graphics programming gave me an introduction to different important faces of computer science, while I went deep into theoretical computer science with maths heavy courses such as complexity theory, program semantics and cryptography. The focus on problem solving, logical systems and abstract concepts yielded an understanding of why as opposed to how.

Naturally, my biggest undertaking was my master's thesis which I did at Paradox Development Studio. The outcome was a 60 page scientific report on how to detect synchronisation problems in networked lockstep games, and a practical evaluation on the game Europa Universalis IV. While the result may not have been very convincing for the method's viability, it was still a rewarding experience.

Many people work while studying, I decided not no. The amount of time I spent on school work prohibited me from doing much else, though I made sure to dedicate my full summer holidays to professional work. Something I cannot as easily motivate with my lack of free time is how I utterly ignored the networking part of university studies. While I did attend parties or events once in a while, I had very little involvement in related outside activities. Had I prioritised differently, my social network would be stronger today.

In the end I am content with my formal education, even though I managed to delay my graduation by almost a full year. I started out knowing little to no programming and worked myself into a software developer with a strong understanding of intrinsic computer science, which was exactly my goal entering academia.

For now, I will continue learning as a game developer at Paradox Development Studio.

[hlilje]

2016 Year in Review

2015 Year in Review

2016 has been a year of successes and failures. Starting on a high note, I got hired at Paradox Development Studio, which has been a personal goal for years now. This is also why I did my thesis at Paradox, another achievement of 2016.

My biggest failure of the year was my inability to graduate in June due to one remaining exam. After having failed said exam four times now, my plan is to take a substitute course which ends in March. Once I am done with my education, I will write a reflection on my time at KTH.

The second biggest failure is that I did not find an apartment, meaning I now only have some months before my contract ends and I need to move out. I am currently relying on my luck to find a new place to live.

Due to my schedule being tight throughout most of the year, I have not done that much spare time programming apart from reviving my old game project and working on my website. The same goes for music production, I only released a couple of new tracks during the year.

I read around ten books in the year, which is not completely terrible, but ideally it would have been that doubled. My blog output has been atrocious, which is evident in the fact that my last blog post was the 2015 year in review. Though, honestly, blogging is the first thing I deprioritise when being pressed for time.

I managed to squeeze in some piano practice and learned some songs, which I will continue to keep doing here and there. In terms of physical training, I did not do particularly well the last year, simply because I did not have time for it. I continued to practise German using Memrise (355 day streak!) and reading German news, but I would still not consider myself conversational.

Through buying and researching funds, I continued to learn more about economics. I also bought some shares in Paradox, which got listed on the stock exchange in May.

Thanks to Spotify, I discovered lots of new music in 2016. Check out this nice graphic. I played many great games such as Transistor, Firewatch, Life Is Strange and INSIDE.

Like before, I avoided red meat, but I still did not become a vegetarian. I try to consider my environmental impact but I need to lessen it significantly. This relates to my focus on minimalism, which I have cultivated during 2016.

Despite the tone of this year in review, 2016 was not a bad year for me personally. My two major focus points of 2017 will be to graduate from KTH and find an apartment. Once those are sorted, I will start to focus on programming again, and I will get a gym card. Otherwise it will be Business as Usual™, though my new foremost focus will be my work at Paradox.

That's a wrap.

[hlilje]

2015 Year in Review

2014 Year in Review

As always, I put my primary focus on education, and 2015 was no exception. I enrolled in some interesting courses such as cryptography, complexity theory, program semantics, game theory and programming under pressure. The first year of my Master's studies is now finished, and it was as challenging as expected. The last study period has arguably been the most demanding yet, due to the somewhat ridiculous workload and complexity of the material. Naturally, I have gained copious amounts of new knowledge.

In work, the year started off with the regular hassle of finding a summer job. Being in the later stages of my education, I found it easier than ever to come in contact with companies. It still took some time before I finally ended up working at 5 Monkeys. It is weird to think that this is my last ever "summer job" in the traditional sense, but I am happy that I got to spend it where I did.

My noble quest of self-improvement has carried on as usual. I have put two new labels on myself, minimalist and feminist. I think there are countless benefits of minimalism in life, and I will probably write a blog post about them in the future. I also made a conscious effort to learn more about feminism, as elaborated on in the blog post.

One of my goals has been to lessen my environmental impact, which apart from material minimalism has meant eating smarter. For a couple of months I even went semi-vegetarian, but decided against it for various health reasons. Now I just strictly avoid red meat, though I plan on going vegetarian sometime in the future. I have not focused as much on my health as I should, but I have been decent at exercising for most of the year. In the final months I had to sacrifice exercise for time for studies, but I have still managed to become stronger than ever. Hopefully there will be more time for exercising after my exams.

For practical reasons I have continually improved my economy management. This means saving in funds and researching methods for doing so successfully. For less practical reasons, I have actively worked on expanding my musical taste. Thanks to Spotify, I have discovered many new artists in different genres this year. On a musical note, I also went to see Purity Ring and Atari Teenage Riot play live. I plan on going to many more this year, currently Grimes and Kraftwerk are scheduled. Songkick is extremely helpful for keeping track of upcoming shows.

Apart from updating my website, I have done very little spare time coding during 2015. This is of course because I have meager free time in general (especially when looking for summer work/a master's thesis), but also because I have been dedicating time to music production, learning music theory and playing some piano. I have not released many songs, but I am currently working on analysing melodies in tracks that inspire me.

Video games! I played some of those as well. The most "significant" event for me was the release of the last expansion of StarCraft 2, namely Legacy of the Void. I do want to become good at this game, but, you know, time. The most memorable game I played was without a doubt SOMA, which you really should play if you are into psychological horror games. The most memorable film was Mad Max: Fury Road, and the most memorable albums were maybe Aphex Twin - Syro, Jamie xx - In Colour, Purity Ring - Another Eternity, CHVRCHES - Every Open Eye and Grimes - Art Angels.

On the miscellaneous sides of things, I have been learning more German reading articles and using Memrise, I have been trying to be more active in communities and social media, and I really should have blogged more.

The last and possibly most significant event of 2015 was the initiation of my Master's thesis at Paradox Development Studio. My goal is to work as a game developer at Paradox after my graduation, so I am naturally extremely excited for this. Now I need to get through my exams and hopefully get my degree project approved before starting my hopefully final semester at KTH. These are my next steps in life.

[hlilje]

How I Became a Feminist

I used to distance myself from the term feminist. It was not that I opposed the idea of gender equality, rather, I were under the impression that the meaning of the word had become corrupted. I saw so called radical feminists and felt their agenda was questionable, and thought that some of their claims were exaggerated.

Some time ago I decided that my feelings towards the term were probably unjustified and based on misconceptions. I decided to open my mind and do some minor research on feminism, mostly in the form of consuming content and following various people on Twitter.

Coincidentally, this was around the time that Gamergate had become a thing. Being a long time "gamer" myself, I was automatically somewhat invested in the whole controversy. I started following some of the prime targets for harassment on Twitter, namely Anita Sarkeesian, Zoë Quinn, Brianna Wu and Leigh Alexander. I also ended up following Randi Harper and Sarah Nyberg, who are both outspoken opponents of Gamergate. Frankly, it was revolting to read about what they were experiencing.

The natural follow-up was to take a look at the work of Sarkeesian, in order to get an idea of what could possibly be so offensive to people. Sarkeesian is famous for her successfull video series Feminist Frequency on portrayal of women in popular culture. It is not exactly a new realisation that video games are particulary terrible at portraying good female characters, but the way she exemplifies and explains it has made a lot of people mad. This has naturally resulted in a massive campaign of harassment and threats against her. I did find that her videos were well-researched and produced, and definitely worth watching.

Continuing on the trail of informative videos, I also watched the panel #1ReasonToBe hosted at GDC by game designer Brenda Romero. It is inspired by a hashtag discussion, focusing on what it means to be a woman in games. It gave me some better perspective on the topic. One of the later video essays I encountered was the Why Are You So Angry? series by Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios. It provides some interesting perspective on what could possibly be fuelling the hate present within Gamergate, and I greatly recommend it.

I am a big fan of esports, and now I have really started to notice some of the attitudes that female professional gamers and esports fans are faced with. It is common to see successful women being discredited and questioned. In games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive women often choose not to use the essential in-game voice chat due to reactions from their team mates, such as shouting "grill!" and being generally obnoxious/sexist. Not to mention the infamous integrated chat of the game streaming website Twitch which tends to be particularly awful.

Finally I would like to bring up the blog Discordia by game designer Åsa Roos. She writes some excellent posts on games, game design and other topics from a feminist perspective.

As a computer science student and software developer, I am persuing a career in a field notorious for its lack of female representatives. This blog post demonstrates how little it took for me to convince myself of the importance of feminism. If you are also hesistant to call yourself a feminist, I recommend you do some research. Your feelings are probably just based on misconceptions.

[hlilje]

Some Takeaway Points From My Summer Job at 5 Monkeys

I have been doing web development both at work and in school, and this summer was spent working as a Python/Django web developer at 5 Monkeys. I had done some minor coding in Python previously, but I had never more than touched Django. Since I got this job quite early, I could use that fact to prepare myself by reading up on the tech stack that was in use. Here are some takeaway points from my time spent at 5 Monkeys.

Good tools really help development

This is the first time I work using purely modern and open source technologies such as Python, Django, PostgreSQL, Git, Vim, Elasticsearch etc. Not only does it increase productivity and makes it more fun to develop, it results in cleaner code and more stable software. Though I must also point out that while Python is awesome, it has some clear drawbacks, most notably those tied to the inherent lack of static type checking.

A relaxed work environment is pleasant

The work culture was very relaxed, which I personally enjoyed a great deal. I have never been a fan of formalisms, and it was refreshing to be able to work as I personally saw fit without worrying for other things than my tasks.

Defined work methodologies does work, when properly moderated

Apart from a regular morning meeting, it was completely up to us to choose how we should pursue our work. I am personally very organised and serious in my work, so I enjoyed the freedom, but I can see it being problematic for less structured people. I did not notice any major problems in this particular workplace, but I believe that some sort of defined agile work methodology is generally the best approach for software development.

"Genuine" headhunting and attractive workplaces bring in good people

There are many vary talented people working at 5 Monkeys, and I believe there are two reasons for this. The first one is "genuine" headhunting, genuine in the sense that portfolios matter over profiles. I was personally contacted for one of my GitHub projects, and I think that approach helps bring talent to the company. The second reason is probably that smart people simply enjoy the level of freedom and atmosphere offered at workplaces like this.

Diversity is great

I was surprised by how diverse the people working at 5 Monkeys were, both in terms of background and personality. The different perspectives and skill sets resulted in higher quality code all-around. My only gripe was the lack of female developers, but this is unfortunately a general problem in software development. More work needs to be done in this area, but discussing that would require several posts on its own.

I still do not see myself working as a consultant permanently

While working as a software/IT consultant has its clear benefits such as variation, it is not something I plan on doing permanently. I find it much more rewarding to be a part of a company developing its own products and solutions, and I take great pride in the things I work on, more so if it is over a long time period.

Software development is still hard and rewarding

Working on a large software project is hard, especially if you have not been a part of it from the beginning. Once you have gotten familiar with the basic project structure you can start understanding the functionality and purpose of the various parts. When you have this general idea of the inner workings of the project, you can begin contributing to it and learning from the code, which is also where the fun really starts. I have over this summer become accustomed to the programming language Python, and learnt how you can build a large website using the MVC framework Django. I will take with me the various software solutions and patterns I have worked with for my future projects.

To wrap it up, I am happy I got to spend this summer working as a web developer at 5 Monkeys. My next step will be to find a place to do my Master thesis, which will hopefully be where I continue working after I graduate from KTH.

[hlilje]

Reflection on My Fourth Year at KTH

My fourth year at KTH has been a challenging and interesting one for sure. Here is a "short" reflection on the courses I've taken during this time.

IK2218 Protocols and Principles of the Internet

A useful course which I felt gave a good overview of the protocols of the Internet, with some focus on the hardware side of things. I think it is necessary to have some basic knowledge about how the Internet actually works as a programmer, as most programmers will probably have to use some of these protocols at some point. There are not much I would like to have changed about this course off the top of my head, it encouraged continuous learning and had useful lectures. Personally I felt I got a good overview of the area.

DD2380 Artificial Intelligence

I really enjoyed this course, AI is about as exciting as you would imagine it to be. I learned how to implement basic AI and got a better understanding for this rather abstract subject in general. It was a shame our project was somewhat time constrained due to late changes, but the labs of the course were challenging and fun. The course had somewhat strict formalia which was a bit annoying, but I always praise courses which can do without a written exam. The course was also initially intended to include a segment on ethics, I believe, which was cut out due to resource constraints.

DD2440 Advanced Algorithms

A very hard and useful course, especially considering my specialisation in theoretical computer science. The course included a variety of quite different algorithms of varying complexity, which unfortunately led to many of them being skipped over quite hastily. Maybe it would have been better to focus on fewer algorithms to give you more of an opportunity to understand them. The course structure was generally good with homeworks and projects, I especially enjoyed the travelling salesman problem project. I got a chance to expand my toolset of algorithms to use, and even if I don't know them by heart I can always look them up later when I need them. I must say, though, that the number factoring project was ridiculously hard from both an algorithmical and a time perspective, and also gave you a clear advantage if you had a better computer at hand.

DA2210 Introduction to the Philosophy of Science and Research Methodology for Computer Scientists

This is one of those non-technical courses that people typically hate. I believe that it is necessary to have some course which focuse on the art of research itself, even though you could argue that it should be implicitly included in all courses. Unfortunately the course content was rather "fluffy" at times, I would rather have seen focus on interpreting actual research papers. It's hard to say what I gained from this course. Generally I'm naturally talented when it comes to these kinds of courses, so I think I would have needed some more focus on practical methodologies. The abundance of history of philosophy of science felt generally unnecessary.

DD2447 Statistical Methods in Applied Computer Science

This was a strange course, I chose it since it was a part of my Master's track, but I can't honestly say that I learned much from it. This is a shame, since statistical methods are surprisingly useful and interesting once you get to use them in practice. I think one major reason for how little I understood of the course was that I had not studied machine learning beforehand, which felt like a prerequisite. I also believe you need to have taken perhaps one additional course in statistics in order to follow much of what was quickly talked through during the lectures. Otherwise the course structure was good with homeworks and a project, but it would definitely have helped to allow collaboration between students considering how intricate much of the content was.

DD1395 In-depth Essay in Computer Science

Not much to say about this one, I took it to pad out some remaining course credits. I wrote an essay about AI in video games, and as always I made it way too broad in scope. I did however get to read some interesting papers/books on how AI is done in video games in practise.

DD2457 Program Semantics and Analysis

This is a course which felt very in-line with my Master's track. I got a better understanding of how to reason about programs, and also got some tools for doing actual program analysis. It will be interesting to see if I will also get to use these tools in practise, or if they are better served as means of thinking about programming in general. The course structure was great and encouraged continuous learning with small homeworks each week, as well as some labs. Unfortunately I did not do very well at the exam, but as always I'm more interesting in what I actually learned from it.

ID2200 Operating Systems

In theory this would be a very useful course, but the course structure had some major flaws. First, speaking about the content, I felt that the sheer scope of the material covered in the course made it hard to gain any sort of deeper understanding of operating systems. I realise that this course needs to cover much since we have taken no other courses focused on the operating system itelf, but you'd be surprised how complex these systems are and how much things there are to cover. Secondly, I believe that the largest flaw was the lack of examination during the course. The course consisted of one large lab assignment and one exam, and that was all. The lab was very fun and I learned how to interact with the operating system using system calls in C, but I sincerely believe that you need some kind of continuous examination during the course if you are going to have a written exam. As it stood all you did apart from the lab was going to lectures and studying for the exam at the end, which gave you a very shallow understanding of the course content. I did along with an extraordinarily high number of other students fail the exam.

SF2972 Game Theory

An interesting course for sure, and I would consider it more of a maths course you take for fun. I wanted to take one additional course in maths, and this one fit my schedule perfectly and had some interesting content I had not worked with previously. The course structure was as you would expect from a maths course, with seminars and a written exam, which you could unfortunately not gather any bonus points for. I learned some mathematical models/methods used in classic game theory such as market analysis, and also got to play around with the perhaphs less useful field of combinatorial game theory. I have never been especially talented when it comes to maths, but I have never failed a university maths exam before. Unfortunately I did fail this one badly, and the re-exam even worse, so now I really need to change my approach to learning the material. The downside with this course is the division between classical and combinatorial game theory. These two fields are completely separate from each other and could easily fill courses on their own, so in a sense you needed to learn two "half" maths courses rather than one. Maybe this is the reason that I find it so hard to grasp the content.

DD2448 Foundations of Cryptography

Possibly the most rewarding course I took this year. The course is quite wide, as cryptography is a perhaps surprisingly large field, but I think the course generally did a good job of introducing you to some of the fundamental concepts. The course included much examination, mostly large homeworks with both theoretical and practical assignments, but also a presentation and an oral exam. I worked hard alone and I achieved a good result in the course, something I'm proud of considering the relatively advanced level of the course content. I need to mention that the course was badly managed in the sense that nearly all assignments got delayed, though I'm sure there are good reasons for it. Otherwise I would like to praise the course for giving you a fair chance both if you are more oriented towards theoretical or practical aspects of cryptography, and for its focus on learning the content through its examination. I have gained a deeper understanding for cryptography and computer security, and I have learned how some of the most popular crypto systems work in practise. This knowledge is invaluable going in to the future where it will become ever more important.

DD2300 Program Integrating Course in Computer Science

This course was included as a means of KTH CSC to improve its low "score" gotten from the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ). This is basically the same course that existed during the first three years, but put in a Master's context. As before, I actually find it somewhat refreshing to get to discuss learning and education in seminars. I believe that it is healty to be forced to think a bit about the education itself, even though most people don't take this course seriously. The added study visit was a nice touch, and I will have to arrange one study visit together with others when this course continues during the next semester.

Final words:

My fourth year at KTH has been extremely challanging, and I find it very noticable that I'm now studying on an advanced level. I have gained much knowledge, though I'm quite bummed out over now having two trailing courses. I'm certain the next (hopefully) final year at KTH will be the most challanging one so far considering the courses I will take, not to mention the degree project to end it all. My goal is clearly to wrap everything up at the end of the first semester so I can dedicate fully to my degree project/Master's thesis during the second semester, though I am quite pessimistic at this point.

Now I just need to find a degree project to begin with.

[hlilje]

Spending Time and Working With Smarter People

I have been fortunate enough to associate myself with people much smarter than myself, and I would recommend everybody to do so if possible.

During my time in upper secondary school I started reflecting over this, and I sincerely believe it has contributed greatly to my personal development. This has been quite apperent in my current university studies, where I attribute much of my understanding of courses to the insights of fellow coursemates. It is very noticable how much more effort it takes for me to understand the subjects which I study alone.

Here are some of my conclusions as to why spending time and working with (smarter) people is such an effective way of learning:

You are challanged to keep up with somebody smarter than yourself.

You gain a deeper understanding of the subject when you are forced to explain and formulate your ideas to someone else.

Smarter people can help sift out the inherently bad ideas so you can focus on plausable solutions.

It is much easier to discuss something than it is to reflect over it solitarily.

It is more fun, and you are therefore more likely to be actively engaged in what you are doing.

You benefit from other peoples' enchanced perspectives on a topic or problem.

You are more likely to investigate alternative approaches.

Other people have knowledge which is not present in the course literature.

Smarter people can help you overcome your mental blocks.

Your will finish your work quicker, giving you more time to reflect on the result.

We subconsciously learn from each other just by commiting to the same problems and activities, as social human beings.

Most (if not all) of these points listed also apply to working with people in general, whether smarter than yourself or not. But as I tend to feel less intelligent than my supposed peers, I have written this from my perspective.

If you know people smarter than yourself, you should take advantage of it. It may sound selfish, and it probably is, but remember that most of these listed benefits are mutual.

[hlilje]

2014 Year in Review

Since I have decided to structure my organisatorial life partially based on the 'Getting Things Done' philosophy, doing yearly reviews of my accomplishments is now a routine for me. This will be my first year review.

2014 has been a good year with a few things being more memorable than others. I began my first year of my master in theoretical computer science, meaning I (hopefully) only have 1,5 years left of my formal education. Insane. Many good school projects have been finished, strengthening my skills and portfolio.

I also began focusing on music production again, this time more than ever. I have been studying some basic music theory and song composition, in addition to practising playing the piano. The idea is that this will make me a real musician some day. Unfortunately, this has had the effect that I have done very little programming on my limited free time. I don't think it's possible to focus on both things simultaneously, so for now my programming projects will simply have to be put on hold.

As mentioned in the preface, I have been following a variation on the Getting Things Done methodology for organising my life during 2014 (actually I think I started it in late 2013, but this whole year I have been utilising the technique). I won't go into details here, but I can safely say it has helped me a lot in realising how you can steer your life towards your intended goals. Trello has become an established part of my life now, and I consider it my second (third? fourth?) brain.

During the summer I worked at Fortum, which was a great experience. I am now looking for a summer job for 2014, and my hopes are high, especially since this will be my final summer job. I have also spent some time on strengthening my professional profile through my CV, website and LinkedIn. Speaking of my website, I have also updated that to give it a more personalised look than the default Zurb Foundation theme.

I have been reading huge amounts during 2014 compared to what I usually do, and I intend to continue doing that. Reading is just too important. Another important thing is minimalism, which have come to in parts define my life. I would recommend this to everyone. Once you realise that only keeping what is important to yourself, is so much more gratifying than filling your life and mind with clutter, you will never look back.

One focus area which I have become somewhat better at is economy management. I have been spreading my resources in more funds, and I have also learnt more about what is considered good and bad. If you are Swedish you should check out Claes Hemberg's blog, it's a golden resource for tips on how to save your money.

I have finally finished the Duolingo German course. I may not have learned much new from it, but at least I got to practise some of my forgotten German skills. I will continue to read German newspaper articles to casually become better at the language, and maybe even watch some German movies.

My health has also improved a lot during the year, and at the end I decided to exercise more than I have ever done before (per week). This shall continue during 2015.

In 2014 I began playing StarCraft again. My motivation is back to become good at it as I prepare for the release of the final expansion, Legacy of the Void. I just wish I had more time to dedicate to it. I have also been playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive with friends, which is a relaxing break from the menacing StarCraft ladder.

I have become much better in engaging in social communities during the year. I tweet frequently (follow me, obviously) and comment/post on reddit from time to time.

I finally got to visit London, which was a great, though short, experience.

Oh, and I have discovered huge amounts of new music to listen to. Thanks, Spotify!

These are the things that I immediately think of when looking back at 2014. I will make no large changes for 2015, mostly just continuing with studying hard, working during the summer, learning music theory and making music, learning to play the piano, maybe do some programming if I get tired of the music stuff, doing minor projects, and play video games, of course. I will now for myself make a review of my life goals to properly decide how I should spend the year to come, and what to focus on. That will be my next step.

[hlilje]

Reasons for Learning

Do we need them?

It always rubs me the wrong way when I hear people complain over being 'forced' to learn 'unnecessary' things. I would rather recommend you to embrace learning, whether you think you will utilise your knowledge directly or not.

Learning is complex. We usually don't acquire discrete skill sets without any dependencies, it is rather a process of gaining understanding of a subject through all the related parts. If you really want to learn how to construct a table from scratch, there is no table construction course you can take that will make you magically construct great tables. You must also understand trigonometry, the properties of the materials used, and preferably have some understanding of aesthetics in order to create something to be proud of. These are things you probably wouldn't learn while purely studying table construction.

Being a university student, and having studied most of my life so far, I have experienced tonnes of complaints from my fellow class/course mates through my time in school. The argument is usually something along the lines of

Why should I learn X? I will never work as an X:er.

Take chemistry as an example. The argument would be that learning about molecule interaction and how materials/substances react is useless unless you plan to become a chemist. I believe this attitude to knowledge is wrong, You will probably never directly apply all the things learnt while studying chemistry, but by learning the fundamentals, you will be able to draw reasonable conclusions when dealing with dangerous chemicals, for instance. I consider that 'common knowledge'.

Another example directly connected to my own studies is learning about the protocols and principles of the Internet. Yes, I agree that it is incredibly boring most of the time, and unless you are planning to become a network admin, you probably won't directly be involved with all those things you learn about. But even as a 'regular' software developer, you are probably grateful you learnt about those protocols when you are deciding between UDP and TCP for you next application.

Let's imagine the nightmare scenario. Imagine a world where every human being only had knowledge in their own area of work or hobby. People would not be able to make educated guesses on anything, and if you would ever get into a situation which you are not 100 percent familiar with (which you undoubtedly will), you are screwed. I would not want to live in a society like that, and I believe neither you do.

I propose that we should instead embrace learning. Gaining new knowledge will never be 'useless', even if it might not be directly related to your interests or professional life. Learning will make your life fuller and yourself a more complete person. You will gain better understanding of the world as a whole, both on a trivial and deep level (if you want to). We are constantly learning through our entire lives, and there is no limit to how many areas you can have insight into. Once you realise that, you will both grow as a human being and have much more fun while learning. Even if it may not be directly connected to you future career path.

[hlilje]

Fortum Summer Work Reflection

Today is my final day of employment at Fortum (yes, a Sunday). This is a summary of some of the things that I've learnt during my summer work there.

I've learnt how to use Microsoft Excel as an advanced scripting tool. I had gained knowledge on using Visual Basic from my previous summer work, but I had never programmed in VBA (or even used Excel/spreadsheets for anything particularly substantial, even). This made it easy to get familiar with the slightly awkward Basic syntax, and I could quite quickly get started with actual programming/scripting. The largest area of learning was to interact with the sheets using ranges, which became quite natural in a short amount of time. After all, most things you would do in Excel are related to manipulate sets of data, contained within ranges on the spreadsheets.

I tend to hate a bit on Microsoft, but I must honestly say I'm impressed over the amount of things possible to script in Excel. I still found it quite a cumbersome tool to work with, and it's a shame the VBA IDE/editor has not really been updated or modernised compared to the rest of Excel.

I've learnt lots about the energy market, how it works from a technical, financial and regulatory perspective, and the importance of good tools for the market analysts. I've realised how hard it is to do predictions on prices, weather, capacity availability, production and consumption of power.

I've learnt to collaborate cross-border using video meetings, phone conferences and chat. Since my primary project at Fortum was collaborative, a lot of demands were put on good communication. I'm very happy with how this worked out in the end.

I've been further convinced over the necessity of user testing. This is probably the part of the project that I would want to have improved most upon. It's hard to force users into working with a tool under development, unless it's part of actual production use. If you need to dedicate time to testing outside of your regular duties, the risk is high that the amount of time you actually end up putting aside is quite small.

It took longer than I would have wanted to reach the minimum viable product stage, which was a contributing factor. For future projects I shall emphasise the importance of getting users into the process early on.

I've become an even larger proponent of agile work methodology. We worked according to some agile principles with a Kanban board (which was awesome), but I felt this could be even more integrated into the workflow. Still, I find taking agile principles too serious dangerous, as too rigid constraints might end up harming your productivity in the end. It is a matter of balance, as always.

I've realised how hard it is to develop without a clear specification from the start. Typically this is handled through agile work and responding to new demands as they arise, but maybe you need to be more strict in following agile tradition for this to work easily. I intend to further improve my skills doing this in my next projects.

I've learnt the importance of giving developers room to tweak their development environment. Limiting admin rights and software access will slow the development down, as one would imagine. Corporate policies and resources will obviously clash with this need for flexibility. I see no good solution to this problem, as data security and integrity is equally important to fast development.

I've learnt how hard ITSM and support work in general is, and that you constantly should try to alleviate the disconnect that exists between end users and developers.

I've learnt the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing. While it definitely is convenient to let other, more specialised companies handle part of your workload and maintenance, you inevitably lose some control. In the end you might be better off doing all work by yourself, though that would probably not be reasonable for large organisations. Once again it is a matter of balance, and you need to really consider your potential gains and issues.

I've learnt how dangerously easy it is to get accustomed to a regular work routine.

To summarise, I believe my summer work at Fortum has been a really rewarding experience. I have both strengthened my current knowledge and learnt new skills, and I look forward to further work in the future.

Now I will take a short vacation, after which I will begin my computer science master studies. Something I really look forward to.