Last week I went on a trip to Moscow to lead some workshops for my current assignment. This was my first trip to Moscow and to Russia in general. Not only did I enjoy my time in Moscow, I find myself considering going back again as a tourist.

My trip began a few of weeks before traveling as you need a visa to travel to Moscow. This required some documents and a trip to the Russian visa central. Since we got all the documents in advance this was quick and easy. A waiting period for about 10 days and then we could pick up our visa and travel to Moscow.

At Arlanda Airport we traveled with Aeroflot from terminal 2, which is a pretty small terminal compared to the ones I usually travel from. Me and Christan must have been a bit tired, because we missed that we were at the wrong gate and that the restaurants where all upstairs. It all worked out well of course, but we laughed a bit at it afterwards.

I am not a frequent flyer by any means, but I have taken a few flights in my days and passing through customs in Moscow was a new experience. Not many speak English (or at all) at the airport and you have to go through several checkpoints which takes forever. It's not annoying or stressful, it just takes extra long due to the many checkpoints. Some checkpoints are even just a few feet apart, which feels a bit redundant.

Once cleared we had a taxi waiting for us. The trip took about 90 minutes and cost almost nothing compared to the cost here in Sweden. The hotel had a pretty small lobby and we arrived just as a bus was checking in. I know well how stressful this is from my time working in hotel, but the receptionist checked us in with grace and great attitude. Top score right there.

We had a burger king just outside the hotel so we just grabbed a burger and Pepsi cherry by mistake and then went to bed. It was a long day, but overall a smooth trip.

The next day we had workshop with the client and afterwards we had a dinner together. We went to a Nordic restaurant called Björn and had some good food. After the meal we got a nice tour of the red square and of course the subway by our hosts Mikhail and Roman. Me and Christian decided that even though we got a nice tour of the red square, we wanted to see it in daylight as well.

Day 2 was workshops again and after we wrapped that up we started a walk that would last for almost 5 hours. We aimed for Gorky park and headed out. Going a little bit west we continued to be amazed over how clean Moscow is and how amazing the architecture is. The buildings are impressive and everywhere we stood in awe over the structural pieces of art.

Passing through a busy Gorky park we moved towards the river and headed towards the red square. We passed the enormous statue of Peter the Great and then took the bridge over to the Kreml and the red square. Just on the right after the bridge there are some spectacular structures that give an amazing view over Moscow and the Moscow river.

After a long walk around the surrounding areas around Kreml to see Bolshoi Theater and Lubyanka prison we ended up watching a bunch of Scotsmen playing just outside the Kreml. This of course was because at the time of our visit there was a competition for military music groups from all over the world.

On our way home we decided to walk and we got to see a little about Moscow's nightlife. As expected it was pretty calm and cosy with some musicians playing in the parks and soft music playing in the pubs. I am sure this is a bit different in the weekends, but it was just the right amount of people out for my taste on the weekdays.

Going back home took a while. We started at 5 in the morning and took a cab to the airport before 6, just to be sure that we would not have any issues before our flight was leaving at 10.40. The cab drive took a little over an hour and at the airport we had to stand in line for 40 minutes just to check in. After that it was the long process of getting through to our flight through all the checkpoints.

It took another hour and I actually got stuck in a very strange situation where the woman before me was having a heated argument with the woman forcing her to step back and take off her shoes before passing the security checkpoint with the scanner. it was awkward because the woman working in the checkpoint waved me to pass through, but the woman without shoes would not let me pass.

Eventually we got through and had a smooth flight back to Sweden. I got stuck on the last row and I had company by a nervous guy from India going to Uppsala to study and a restaurant chef returning from a 3 month visit with family in Mongolia. We had an interesting chat on our way back to say the least.

Once back home in Sweden we had a very long queue to get past the visa check, but as a swede I could pass right trough. Thank you for that Arlanda! 

Once home I was super tired and fell aslep in the afternoon. My head desperately trying to process the workshops and of course the amazing city of Moscow.

It was an amazing trip.

If you are anything like me, then you track all kind of things about your life. Whether it is your heart rate, physical exercises or the calories you digest, we track them on a daily basis in our smart devices. Mental health and your mood is not as common to track however. For me who also like to scribble down short reminders here and there I found Daylio to be quite interesting for track your mood and mental health.

Daylio is not a medical tool in any way. It is a micro diary. It is very customizable and you can edit the activities and your moods easily to fit the tracking you want to do. For me that are my state of mind, but also how often I get sick. This is so I can get a grasp on the extent I get affected by my SHR and what might trigger it. I also track things like how often I take medicine and nutrients and so on.

The written part is designed to be very short. I write down very basic things about my day just as a reminder on what I did during that day. It kind of remind me of the school calendars you had when you where young where you were limited to a few words at most.

Once you start adding daily entries you can see activities and mood in a calendar view as well as statistics view where you get a number of useful diagrams and statistics.

Now this can be used in any way you like, whether it is to track your training habits, quit smoking or your state of mind. I like this app a lot because it is extremely easy to use and it can be customized to be useful in many situations. The micro diary part is just icing on the cake and super fun to look back on.

This site is still very much in it's infancy and I have some plans for it that. Some are short term, some medium term and some are long term. What you can expect regardless, is a lot of content and resources. Hopefully also some interaction, even if that is not the immediate goal.

Short Term Goals

My short term goals in the next month or two are to continue to build up the layout and content areas. Right now this site have a good core for creating content where focus will of course be this blog. The design is still not 100% and I have some cleaning up to do for the Pages section especially. As I get the basics done for my Projects section and my Education sections I will start adding the content. You can expect that to happen quite soon. 

Also in the short term goals I will work on building content for the videos section and rebuild my Swedish Blog.

Medium Term Goals

The Medium goals in the next 6 months are to add new content areas such as Profiles and Hosting databases. Profiles will be a continuation of my interview series I started almost 2 years ago. The idea is to present and promote people that I think are interesting and amazing. In some ways it can tie into helping people to get new business and job opportunities, but the main goal is just to showcase amazing people.

The hosting database is a pet project since I have been involved in the hosting business for almost 20 years now. It will be a little experiment on making a review database as well as testing to see if it is possible to make some passive income from referrals. Hopefully it can also generate sales and new clients for the hosting companies as well as make things easier for new webmasters looking for a place to host their sites.

I might add additional databases as well such as Books and Movies & TV databases, but I don't want to rush or spread myself to thin.

Long Term Goals

My website has always been about experimentation and exploring the ways the web can be utilized for different things. As I now have a very powerful foundation for building all kind of content I will explore many, many exciting things here. This platform also have a very strong community foundation and my long term goal is to make this a natural place to become a member on. I want to use this platform as a way for me to express myself and showcase my own thoughts and creations, but also as a way to share my knowledge and experiences. If I can help someone to a more successful career by sharing my network of contacts or support someone who are in need of guidance or just to listen, then that would be amazing.

I have been building this site since 2002 and I am in no rush to finish it. The journey of creation is the most satisfying one and I plan to work on this one for a very long time...

I have now had my iPad Pro for 2 days and it is starting to come together nicely. I have the basic programs up and of course I miss some features on Office 365 that is a bit annoying. I can get around most of them of course so it's not so bad. I have also tried some apps for notes and painting with varied results.

Using iPad Pro as my working tool is actually not bad at all. Mail and the entire Office 365 suite works fine, even if it is severely reduced in function. There are a few functions I miss more than others, like the arrange function, but I can make it work. File management works much better than expected even.

Notes was a big reason for getting the iPad pro and the Apple Pencil and at first I did not like it at all. Then I took a look at GoodNotes 5 and I was sold. It is so far everything I want in a notes app, but I am still trying it out. I tried OneNote as I am using it for other things, but I did not like it as much.

Drawing or painting was also a big reason for getting iPad Pro. So far I have started to play around with Procreate, but I feel it will take a while to get the hang of it. It is very different from Photoshop and Sketch that I have been using so far. Expect quite a few tutorials on Procreate and painting in general in the videos section in the future.

I also got Affinity Designer since I have it on my mac as well. I have not played around with it that much yet, but I will test it out as soon as I can. I also look forward to Photoshop later this year and I see many interesting apps like Comic Draw and Assembly I want to test out.

Typing on the iPad using the Smart Keyboard is surprisingly nice when seated. In bed when lying down I prefer the on screen keyboard however. Even though the Smart keyboard is quite small on my 11 inch iPad and I have big hands, it works very well. I don't feel that the keys are to close together, but the feeling is a bit different so it will take a bit of getting used to I think.

Using Apple Pencil feels great. I do tend to tap it a bit when working with it, which means that I switch to the eraser without wanting to from time to time. I can turn it off, but I keep it to train myself to use the pencil properly. I do feel that the glass surface is a bit slippery, so I have ordered PaperLike to test out. I could have bought something cheaper, but I figure I should test PaperLike since everyone seem to be talking about it right now.

Overall I am very happy with my iPad Pro and I look forward to take it for a testrun when I go to Moscow next week for work. I do not see any issues using the iPad Pro over my Macbook, so we'll see if that is the case once I get to really test it out for work.

This is my experience with the iPad Pro and the tools I have tested so far. What is your experience and what are the best apps for your setup?

It's time to try working with an iPad again. It has been a long time since I used an iPad and my old ones are in a drawer somewhere not being used. I decided to try an iPad pro because of the latest changes and because I see more and more people using it for design purposes. I am also curious to see how well it can replace a laptop in my daily work.

Getting a small iPad pro will be a very interesting experiment and I look forward to see what creative tools I can use with it. Things like discovering which note taking app that works best for what purpose will be fun and trying out the design tools like Procreate with the Apple Pencil is exciting.

I use Office 365 pretty much every day so it will be fun to see how that works on an iPad. I already use it on my iPhone so I know it will be a pretty solid experience. From what I have seen many of the issues I used to feel was holding me back is going away with the new iPadOS. That even includes mouse support and font management.

The thing I look forward to most is using the Apple Pencil. I have had this itch the last few months to draw again and I very much look forward to take the Apple Pencil for a test drive. I scribble a lot when I plan or think. This is usually done on paper, but I want to try the iPad pro to see if it can act as a medium for that as well. I have not purchased any screen protector yet, but I probably will get something like PaperLike, just to see how it feels.

I should get this on Wednesday if all goes as planned so I'll probably write a review for it later this week.