The thoughts and musings of Kai Gulliksen
Here’s a simple rule I’ve set for myself lately that has improved my life at least a little bit: If all you ever have to offer is a snarky comment I’m going to go ahead and hit that unfollow button. I’m unsubscribing to your podcast and I’m no longer watching your YouTube videos. Simple. It feels like there’s been a resurgence of people who’s suddenly made their whole personality that they’re the…
Ever since I moved out from my parents house I’ve been living on my own. I never had room mates, or shared a space with anyone in any sort of capacity. That is until I moved in with the missus and her son a little over a year and a half ago in the apartment they were living in then, which we eventually upgraded to our current house. After having spent quite a few years (15 or so, I’m not going to…
So, I purchased a new pen again. This is becoming a thing now it seems. I’d been eyeing the Neon Yellow Lamy Safari so I went ahead and bought it. I just arrived in the mail this morning, but I’m super happy with it so far. It writes well and the color looks absolutely fantastic in person. Happy to have it added to my (small for now) collection of pens. I have yet to dive into the world of…
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail If this doesn’t scratch your nerd-itch then I don’t know what to do with you. Tokenomics are Coming I, like so many of you, am tired of the constant barrage of AI news and discourse but this is still worth a read. AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making Same as above, but anything Ludicity writes is so fun to read I don’t care what the topic…
There may not have been any new art from me in the month of July , but at least I’m starting off strong in August. This one really should have been wrapped up a little bit earlier, but between enjoying my vacation and really struggling to wrap up the last 10% it took a few days extra to get it done. In the end there are still some part here and there that could have used a bit more polish, but I…
📋Life It’s been a bit of a quiet week. The missus hasn’t been feeling well so we’ve mostly been staying at home. We have been wanting to re-paint our living room/dining room a different color since we’ve not been happy with the one we chose when we moved in here so we started working on that this week. Dining room is finished and it looks so much better! This has been the final week of my summer…
I was looking browsing my RSS reader today and this post from Andreas popped up reminding me that not only is it somehow August already (seriously, how?), but also that it’s the start of the blogging challenge Blaugust . I’ve known about this particular challenge for some time but I’ve never really considered joining. But lately I feel like I’m in a bit of a groove as far as posting to my blog…
It’s the last day of July and it’ll be the first month this year where I won’t be posting any new artwork, because I haven’t been able to finish anything. And that’s… fine? I try my best to finish at least one new piece every month. Emphasis on try . And for the most part that’s something I’m able to accomplish. But with a full-time job, a family, a house to take care of and other hobbies that I…
📋Life Second week of my summer vacation. Properly disconnecting from work is feeling great. Started working on the garage gym/workshop project. Almost finished constructing the new floor. We’ve also been planning to paint the first floor living room this summer, so we started prepping that this morning, making sure we have everything we need. 🎨Art Still working on the piece I started last week.…
From Seth Rutledg e on Mastodon: Here is your periodic reminder that the ONLY thing you need to do to be a musician is to make music. The ONLY thing you need to do to be an artist is to make art. The ONLY thing you need to do to be an athlete is to play sports. There is no gate to keep. There is no bar to entry. Do it. You don’t have to turn everything you do into a side hustle, and you don’t have…
Done By Humans Quoting from their website: We envision a future where human-made work is clearly recognizable, universally understood, and meaningfully valued. As AI-generated content becomes increasingly widespread and indistinguishable from human creation, society will need trusted standards that bring transparency to authorship and production. Done By Humans aims to become a globally recognized…
At this point it’s been a little over a year since we officially moved into our new house , and we’ve gotten settled quite nicely. All of the big things we needed to get done have been dealt with so now it’s time to starting working on all the fun stuff that we want to get done. Starting with the one big project for this summer which is upgrading our garage which right now looks something like…
Quite a few of the blogs I’m subscribed to do these weekly recap posts and I always enjoy reading them. So I thought I might as well throw another thing on to the pile of experiments I’m trying this vacation and give it a shot. I’m making no commitments with this experiment but, assuming I enjoy the process, I’ll do my best to keep this going. As of right now I have no clear ideas on the layout or…
Vacation time is a good time for experiments and trying out new things. So over the past week I’ve been forcing myself to sit down and write something new for my blog every day. I guess this is sort of an exercise in practicing in public. I want to become a better writer and I want to write more, and the only way to do that is to try and build the habit of writing regularly. So far it has been a…
One thing I’ve noticed over the last few months is how my OmniFocus has become a bit of a black hole. Over the course of a week I’ll input a bunch of tasks, but beyond moving them out of the inbox and into their relevant projects not much happens. Either I’ll completely forget to do the thing or I’ll come across the task days or weeks later, after it’s already done and I’ll check it off then. This…
Over the years I’ve heard much talk about the benefits and usefulness of keeping a regular journaling practice. I’ve tried many times myself to start journaling but I’ve never gotten in to really stick as a regular habit. But for a long time I’ve been annoyed at how much thoughts about work stick around in my head long after I’ve left the building and gone home for the day. This is something I’ve…
I try my best to do something creative every day. Some days I get to spend hours in front of the computer working on art, other times I only have a few minutes to scribble a few sentences or to tweak a few vertices. Usually when I sit down I can get at least something done in what ever time I have available to me that day. But there are those days where nothing happens. I stare at the screen…
Temperatures are approaching ridiculous levels here in the greater Oslo area these days. We’re having multiple days in a row with a high above 30°C. When it gets like this my brain starts to lose certain critical functions which means doing any sort of creative work, or anything that requires thinking, is a no-go for most of the day. Thankfully I’m still able to function up until just after noon,…
It’s been a little over two months since I wrote about wanting to go a little more analogue with parts of my workflow. I bought pens. I bought a notebook. Now what? Have they been collecting dust in a drawer somewhere or have I actually been using them? My current notebook is definitely not dusty, but I also haven’t been using it as much as I would like. So far its been a bit of a on and off…
My summer vacation has officially started and what better way to get things rolling than to spend my first day adding some features back to my website? Ever since moving my website from Wordpress to 11ty I’ve been missing my /notes page for posting shorter posts. But migrating everything over took quite a bit of time and work so I had to take a little bit of a break to avoid burning out entirely.…
It’s a new month ( yikes ) so it’s time for another fresh batch of links. A varied mix of fun stuff this time around. Now that your newsletter is AI-generated, I’ve Unsubscribed The title kind of says it all for this one. Datatype — variable font that turns text into charts A really cool font that, as the title says, turns text into charts. Need to see if I can find a cool use for this one some…
I consider myself fairly well versed in the English language. School wasn’t really my thing growing up, but I did fucking great in my English classes. Benefits of growing up as a nerd in the 90’s, I suppose. I most definitely have an accent when I speak so you can tell I’m not a native speaker. But unless we’re having a conversation that contains certain highly specialized, technical words, I’m…
I’ve always enjoyed reading a good book but I’ve never been what you call a big reader. At most I’d read maybe 4-5 books a year. Some years I’d not read anything at all. Now, as someone who actually does enjoy reading, those are some pretty terrible numbers. And for years I’ve been wanting to read more but that would require changing some habits, and we all know that can be… tricky. Well, so far…
Get the full resolution artwork from my Ko-Fi page!
I was quite excited about Raycast for Windows when I got invited to the beta back in July last year. And for a while the experience of using is was really good. But over the last few months it has slowly become incredibly slow and unresponsive. Having to wait multiple seconds for it to respond every time I pressed the shortcut to launch Raycast is not exactly the best user experience for a quick…
Yesterday was not what I’d call a good day. It certainly could have been much worse, but at the end of the day I was left completely drained and, as my missus will surely confirm, not exactly in a great mood. So when I woke up this morning I was not what one would describe as full of optimism and ready to head out and seize the day. But, much to my delight, I arrived at work without being…
I don’t make a lot of time for playing games these days. I have other hobbies that I enjoy, going to the gym, dealing with stuff around the house and in the garden, spending time with the people I share a house with. These are all things I’d much rather do these days than play games. But every once in a while I get the urge, and this weekend I dusted off my old Nintendo Switch and loaded up Breath…
The last few weeks have been absolutely brutal. This is usually the time of year when work starts to wind down for the summer leaving me with lots of time and energy for other things that I’d much rather be doing. But this year is a bit different. We’re in the middle of a big project at work which means long days and not a lot of energy left for when I get home. All of this makes me appreciate…
So, pretty much the day after my last blog post where I wrote about wanting to possibly move away from WordPress I started working on rebuilding my website with 11ty . And, after spending an ungodly amount of hours over the last week or so, here we are. Even though getting everything set up the way I wanted took quite a bit of time, a few too many late evenings, and some amount of household chores…
I’m once again contemplating a move away from WordPress. I’ve been here before, more than once, and I’ve always decided against it. I don’t know if this time around will be any different but here I am, thinking about it once again. It’s a thought that’s been stuck in my brain all evening and I can’t see to let it go. There is a long list of reasons why I shouldn’t spend my time on a project like…
May was a busy month, and I spend a week getting through a serious case of food poisoning, so I didn’t get to spend much time collecting interesting links. But I do have four pretty good ones for you! Digital wandering As someone who frequently starts questioning my choice of tools and software, this post really resonated with me. taken. — Since You Arrived Vol. IV This one made the rounds on…
As I’m writing this there is only about an hour left until the calendar ticks over to June 1st. Which means another month has once again flown by in a flash. Time moves so quickly these days. I know it’s one of those inevitable side effects of getting older, but I can’t seem to get used to it. At least summer is finally here, which means work is starting to wind down bit by bit which means less…
The YouTube algorithm just graced me with the trailer for this absolutely bonkers looking South Korean monster movie. I’m definitely watching this as soon as I can! HOPE Official Trailer (2026)
I wrote a note the other day about how I’d been dealing with a stomach bug (probably food poisoning) and was starting to feel like I was getting back to normal. Well, turns out I was a little premature in my assessment, but today I am most definitely back to feeling like my usual self. I first started feeling off early in the morning on the 16th but I figured it’d be 24 hours of feeling like…
As a heavy user of the bookmarking service Linkding I was delighted when this post from Cory Dransfeldt announcing his iOS app Ribbon showed up in my RSS reader. For the longest time I’ve been using the app Linkthing for saving links on my phone and it’s been solid. No complaints. But after playing with it since it was released I’ll be switching to Cory’s app as it has a much nicer user interface…
May is finally here, one of the best months of the year. The temperature is finally rising, the sun is shining, and life starts to feel just a little bit better. New month also means new links. This collection is (almost) aaaaall about blogging and the indie web. Enjoy! Why I Still Like the Internet My thoughts on the matter align pretty much exactly with Gordon’s. There is still so much good…
I happened upon this post from David when browsing Bubbles and thought it was an interesting question, so I figured I chime in. Who knows that I blog? Of the people I know and interact with regularly in person I can think of exactly two people that know I have a blog—my missus and one of my closest friends who I share a lot of interests in common with. Beyond those two particular people I’ve never…
Introducing Retro Corner. A collection of 12 minimalistic, retro inspired wallpapers for your phone. I was looking for a simple wallpaper to go with the new home screen layout I’m experimenting with (more on that later once I figure everything out), but instead of spending hours searching for something that would fit I decided to just make my own damn wallpaper, exactly the way I wanted it. If…
From The Art Of Not Asking Why : I discovered another person to follow this week, and as I reached out via email, I realized this had become somewhat of a habit for me: writing emails to other bloggers. I’m not sure when I started doing this more, but I’ve been doing it more in the last year or so. This is one of those things I always think about doing when I discover a new blog to add to my RSS…
If you’re like me and are always on the lookout for new and interesting blogs to add to your RSS reader then you should, as the title suggests, take a look at Bubbles.town . This site popped up recently (31 days ago, in fact, as I’m writing this according to the banner on top of the website) and has been getting some attention. Assuming people actually start using it actively it seems like a solid…
One thing I find myself doing quite often is that I’ll sit down to write a blog post about something that interests me or that I’ve been thinking about, and before I even get through the first paragraph I find myself thinking: “There is no point in this. This has been written about hundreds of times before by people a lot smarter and more competent than me”. And then I’ll delete what little I’ve…
Every year, without fail, when spring rolls around I get the urge to change things around. Reorganize my physical environment. I guess it’s a symptom of finally getting away from the dark and dreary winter months and finally seeing the sun shining again. I am very much in the middle of this process right now. My home office space is a bit of a mess as I’m moving things around, trying things out…
The ultra talented artist Paul Chadeisson just released another stunning piece of work on his YouTube channel. Go watch it right now, it is absolutely worth your time!
Remember when I wrote about feeling an itch to buy some pens and a notebook? Well, I decided to give in to that voice in my head. Not knowing if I was actually going to use these things at all, or if this was just some fleeting impulse, I was able to exercise at least a little restraint when shopping. What I ended up getting was a Leuchtturm1917 A6 pocket notebook and a couple of Uniball Zento…
Terraink A neat little tool for making cool looking maps. This Is Not The Computer For You A wonderful blog post about the MacBook Neo. Letting Go “Each and every object was a promise i’ve made to myself — i’ll be a researcher, a musician, a maker, a writer. The whole collection is a record of which bets i stopped honouring without quite deciding to — i’m all and none of these people. Clearing out…
This has been shared in so many places already, but in case you’ve somehow missed it here is Commander Reid Wiseman’s photo of our planet taken from the window of Orion: It makes me so happy that humans are once again vising the Moon. Let’s do more of that, and less of everything else that is going on right now.
For the last week or I’ve slowly become obsessed with the idea of trying to add more analog tools to my life. You know, pens, notebooks, that sort of thing. Stationery. This is a particular itch that surfaces from time to time, but it has never stuck around for long enough that I’ve ever ended up doing anything about it. But this time around I’ve found myself sucked in to the world of…