Every year, as the summer holiday comes closer, the kids ask whether there will be a Great Summer Game again. For several years now the answer has been yes. The game gets more elaborate each summer, but the base stays the same: the kids do tasks through the holiday, make progress, and collect points or prizes.
In the summer of 2026 the whole family went away on a long trip and we couldn't play the Great Summer Game. The kids wanted a game anyway, so I decided to build one that fits travelling.
Lately there has been a lot of talk at work about work-life balance. They don't want us putting in fifteen-hour days the way they used to. They have worked out that there are people, people like me, for whom work is not the most important thing in life — for me it is mainly a living, and my real life is what happens after work. It matters far more to me that my son does well on tomorrow's English spelling test than whether the company makes one more million or one less. I have no trouble saying I'd take the company earning a million less this month if he came home with 100 instead of 90. A sense of proportion never hurt anyone.
I want to tell you a story. It's a story about me, and about how I managed to give every one of my close friends the best present in the world: more time. I have quite a few friends — friends from school, from the army, from university and from work, and of course friends I've stayed in touch with from my previous job, and friends of friends we met and took to. I have quite a few friends, and I'm rather good at keeping in touch.
I've been working with Midjourney since 2023, and along the way I've made a few things I think are pretty enough to share. So if AI-generated digital art is your sort of thing, come have a look…
For my grandmother's 100th birthday I decided to make her a special gift, and it became one of the gifts I'm proudest of. Together with the whole family I put together a cookbook that is also a book of memories, and, surprisingly, it holds quite a few genuinely useful recipes. So why keep it in the family?
You're welcome to download it, and I hope you find a good recipe in there to make.
