Hello Siri
At long last, it’s time again. My freshly updated phone cheerfully informs me that the new, fantastic Siri has arrived. Apparently, there’s no limit to how much this personal assistant can help me.
I’ve been disappointed before. Siri has always been the dumbest kid in the class, while Google and Alexa have long since become much-loved members of the family.
I bought my first Alexa in the summer of 2017, when we were in Los Angeles. I was mostly overwhelmed by the fact that you could have parcels delivered the very same day you ordered them and, in that euphoria, rather more things may have been ordered than strictly necessary. We had quite a few Alexas and a couple of Google assistants in our suitcases when we flew home.
Alexa and Google have never really let us down. Siri, on the other hand… Whatever you ask, you get daft answers. Sometimes she claims she hasn’t heard you. Sometimes I can see she’s heard me perfectly, and still manages to misunderstand the question spectacularly.
So when my newly updated phone promised that the brilliant new Siri had arrived, I tried her out at once. It turned out I’d somehow missed the fact that I had a meeting this afternoon, which means I have to go into the office after all, even though I’d planned to work from home.
»When do I need to leave Vandrarstigen to be at Radiohuset by one o’clock?«
It feels like a perfectly reasonable question. I travel from this bus stop every day, and my phone usually keeps track of that. During the summer holidays it often reminds me that it’s time to head there, and that traffic is »moderate«. So the fact that I usually go to Radiohuset – yes, Siri definitely knows that.
But this, it seems, is not something the fabulous new Siri has chosen to remember. Instead, she suggests I should go to the town hall in Nyköping. This is a place I have never been. I’ve never even visited Nyköping. There are plenty of town halls considerably closer to where I live.
So yes, the new Siri is here – smarter, sleeker and more confident than ever. She still can’t get me to work on time, but if I ever develop an urgent need to attend a council meeting in a town I’ve never set foot in, at least I know exactly who to ask.
Frosen
Every year I’m equally astonished when the car suddenly appears coated in frost. It’s hardly a state secret that October will involve an ice scraper at some point.
Yet there I am, staring at the windscreen as if the laws of physics had quietly been amended overnight. One might assume I suffer from a selective memory that deletes winters entirely.
I miss Los Angeles.
I will never stop doing this
I joined the Scouts when I was a boy. My mum had been a keen Scout leader herself, so enthusiasm was, shall we say, strongly encouraged at home.
Those were some properly active years — endless camps, hikes, the Jamboree in Australia, volunteer work on Vässarö. There didn’t seem to be any upper limit to how much scouting one could fit into a life. And I was absolutely convinced of one thing: this was something I would never, ever stop doing.
Of course, I did.
Somewhere around the time I finished university, adulthood crept in — rent, work, things that required ironing — and Scouting quietly slipped off the schedule.
I’d begun writing a book about the history of the scout island Vässarö, but as my involvement dwindled, so did the writing.
If one could still identify as “a Scout” without actually doing anything about it, I probably did for a while. But that was about it.
Years later, when my own children were old enough, they joined the Scouts — reluctantly, it must be said. If I’m honest, it was probably more my hobby than theirs.
But when they joined, I did too.
I became a leader again, finished the book, and even went to the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea with my son. And just like that — I was back.
Around that time, naturally, my children began leaving the Scouts. The younger one quit entirely; the elder is still clinging on, out of habit or politeness, I’m not sure which.
But I’m still here.
The children have reached the age where I suddenly have free time again — my own free time, for the first time in eighteen years.
So I keep at it. I’m still active locally in my own troop — yesterday, in fact, I represented us at the district’s annual meeting — and I’m also part of the leadership for the Swedish contingent heading to the next Jamboree in Poland.
I even find myself glancing at that legendary Scout leader training course I never took, the one everyone swears is the best thing they’ve ever done.
Perhaps I was right all along, when I was younger.
This really is something I’ll never stop doing.
Where is my Lego?
I’m still waiting for my Lego Gameboy which I ordered directly from Lego a full month before launch.
I am, after all, squarely in the target demographic for this sort of thing: middle-aged men who buy either a) things we desperately wanted as kids but couldn’t afford, or b) brand-new creations with just the right amount of retro polish, or c) products, usually carrying heavyweight brands, that somehow represent who we are—or at least who we imagine ourselves to be.
This particular set manages to tick all three boxes for me. Unfortunately, I haven’t received it yet. While many companies selling overpriced products bend over backwards to ensure you get your shiny new toy the very same day (or even before) the launch, Lego has taken the opposite approach. My order status flipped to “packing” on launch day, and only the following day did it finally leave Belgium. According to the app, it might still be sitting there now. So I continue to wait.
Someone who apparently did not have to wait is Nataliethenerd who not only received and built her set, but also managed to re-engineer it into an actual, functioning Game Boy that plays real cartridges.
Now that is ridiculously cool. How do you even come up with something like that—and more importantly, where on earth do you start?
People like this make me slightly anxious. They seem to have far more hours in their day than the rest of us. Impressed, yes. But also faintly terrified
Lorem Ipsum
As a hobby designer, I often need a block of dummy text to drop into a layout. Every time that happens, I end up googling “Lorem ipsum” and landing on one of those sites eager to solve this textual problem for me.
I get it—of course they’re trying to squeeze a few ad cents out of each visitor. But it means I far too often have to click through the history of placeholder text, or get a quick lecture on who Cicero was, all just to maximize ad impressions before I can copy what I came for.
So I built my own Lorem-thingy. Click–n-paste. Easy peasy. Feel free.
Lorem ipsum
