Notes

Moved here from my old domain — renewal costs had crept up to the point where it stopped making sense for something I use this infrequently. Everything below is carried over. Nothing lost.

Took the train from Stockholm Central on Friday evening, arrived just after ten. Oslo always feels a little quieter than I expect — or maybe I'm just comparing it to summer Stockholm, which barely sleeps.

Walked most of Grünerløkka on Saturday morning. Had coffee at a small place near the river, the name of which I've already forgotten. The kind of café that doesn't need a strong identity because the coffee is good enough. Spent the afternoon at the National Museum, which still impresses me every time. The new building is big but somehow manages not to be cold. Back on the train Sunday afternoon. I should do this more often.

Not a ranked list, just books I've reread at least twice and still find useful or interesting.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is the obvious one — I think I've bought four copies because I keep giving mine away. How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand is technically about architecture but I find it more relevant to digital work than most design books. A Pattern Language is dense and occasionally strange, but there's something on almost every page that makes you stop. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows changed how I see most things, not just interfaces. And The Information by James Gleick, which isn't a design book at all but which I find myself recommending more than anything else.

I'm a bit tired of the word. Minimalism in design has become a kind of aesthetic shorthand that often means "we removed things until it looked expensive" rather than "we removed things until it worked better." Those are different projects.

The constraint I find more useful is: does every element here earn its place? Not "is it minimal" but "is it necessary." Sometimes necessary means a bit more, not less. A long label instead of an icon. A full sentence instead of a tooltip. The goal is clarity, not sparseness.

I've been going to the Johan & Nyström on Swedenborgsgatan for years. It's not a secret place — it's always busy, there's always a queue on weekday mornings. But it's one of the few spots in the city where I can sit for two hours and actually think.

Something about the noise level. It's not quiet, but it's not loud enough to be distracting. The tables are small enough that you don't feel guilty occupying one with just a laptop. On warmer days they put chairs outside — I've sat there in October with an espresso going cold faster than I could drink it, and it was still the right call.

There's a week or two in October where Stockholm is genuinely beautiful in a melancholy sort of way. The light is low and orange even at noon. The leaves on Djurgården are doing the thing they do. Everyone is slightly more inward-facing, which in Stockholm — where people are already fairly inward-facing — produces an interesting quiet.

I took a long walk along the water yesterday. Felt like the right thing to do. It's the kind of afternoon that reminds you why you live where you live.