Creating a book is both hard work and a lot of fun. I’m putting the final touches and adding a few last-minute tweaks to my 22nd book today.

And even after so many book projects, there still is a great deal of angst involved in my process. Just like with all the other stuff I create, there are thousands of small, medium, and large decisions that have to be made. At some point, it’s inevitable that I experience “decision fatigue”.

Of the book projects I’ve worked on for clients and our own little “publishing house”, this new book feels like it’s unusually close to heart. Finishing the Re:Surfaced project with a book feels so apt.

I have a bunch of other book projects in the works and hope to spend my time this fall creating a few more before the year’s end.

Enjoyed a nice meal at Konstrast, our local Indian restaurant, last night with Michael and Thomas, two buddies from the neighborhood. After 10-12 visits, I can say with some authority that this is by far the best Indian restaurant I’ve been to outside of Asia.

Unfortunately, I don’t eat curry frequently enough to not have a volcanic reaction the next day. Interestingly, whenever I’m in India or anywhere else in Asia, I rarely have any digestive issues after eaten spicy food.

I had a nice weekend. Shared a tasty Vietnamese meal with an American buddy, walked in a parade and worked on my fourth Amazon book, Re:Surfaced.

Woke up at 05:29 this morning and went for a 5.5k run in our nearby Castle Park. Then a swim in a surprisingly warm sea. Now I’m ready to get going on picking my favorite surfaces from 23 different cities and then placing them in the book’s InDesign template. The image above is from Los Angeles from which I have (unsurprisingly) a plethora of interesting surfaces.

This is what my 2019 Macbook Pro 16″ looks like inside its shiny aluminum chassis. A few days ago, I noticed how one of the two option keys was glitchy. I assumed that dust or a stubborn grain of sand had wedged its way between the bottom of the physical key and the membrane that performed whatever task the key was supposed to contribute to.

I’m such an old-school Mac user that I constantly use the option key to move active applications to the background in order to get the desktop quickly.

I took my MBP to our Apple Store here in Malmö and a Genius tried to fix it on the spot. He failed. Then he explained that because of the computer’s (industrial) design, to replace a single key on the keyboard, Apple would also need to replace the entire bottom chassis, including the whole friggin’ keyboard and battery.

The Genius also told me that it would cost SEK9000 to have this done. While I totally get that the design makes perfect manufacturing sense, from an environmental perspective, it’s arrogant and shouldn’t be tolerated.

Fortunately, there is an option. On the right side of the keyboard sits the other option key. It’ll surely take some time to get used to using it, but it’s certainly a cheaper option.

I don’t know, maybe the Genius was feeling sorry for me, but he offered to vacuum the inner workings of my now slightly handicapped MBP at no cost. So there’s this story’s silver lining!

Didn’t box the bag at the gym this morning but that’s not to say I didn’t fight my way through the week’s third workout. My typical warmup is a 20-minute treadmill run and then 3 x 12 repetitions on 6-8 different leg and upper body machines. Then some pushups and crunches.

If I was fatigued and murky when I walked to the gym at 05:50 am, on my way back home, an hour later, I’m usually agile and vivacious. These morning workouts keep arthritis in check and my spirits hovering way above life’s unavoidable quagmires.

This photo is from an old factory not far from us in Malmö called Kockums. I’m currently going through all of my photographs from several visits.  In 1978, I took a class called Electric Shop when I went to Bancroft Jr High in LA. and I’ve been oddly fascinated by all things electric ever since. Not so much how all the electric stuff works as much as the casings, cables, and connectors. Especially when the patina from being worn and torn makes them beautiful somehow.

This is me at three. Innocent, tender. An unwritten page at the very beginning of my life’s story. I know not where it was taken, but it could have been when my mother and I were visiting Sweden for a few months back in 1966. It’s from a series of photographs from a studio. This is the only one I have left.

A year earlier, in 1965, Edward Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg created the first “expert system” which was a form of AI programmed to replicate the thinking and decision-making abilities of human experts. Their system didn’t pass the Turing test but neither has any of today’s AI robots. In fact, so far, no AI system has been able to convincingly imitate a human when asked questions like these classic Turing test questions:

Anyway…

Almost on the dot fifty-seven years later, this morning, I asked the famous/infamous AI robot ChatGPT this question:

What is the Real Meaning of Life?

Nothing revolutionary about the robot’s answers, but it was nonetheless interesting to see what the options were/are.

ChatGPT:

• Religious or spiritual meaning: Many religious beliefs posit that the purpose of life is tied to a higher power or divine plan. Religions may teach that life’s meaning involves fulfilling certain moral or spiritual obligations, achieving enlightenment, or attaining union with the divine.

• Personal fulfillment and happiness: Some philosophical perspectives emphasize the pursuit of personal fulfillment, happiness, and self-actualization as the primary meaning of life. This viewpoint suggests that individuals should strive to identify and pursue their passions, cultivate meaningful relationships, and find joy and purpose in their experiences.

• Moral and ethical significance: This perspective holds that the meaning of life lies in the pursuit of moral and ethical values. It suggests that individuals should strive to make a positive impact on the world, promote justice and compassion, and contribute to the well-being of others.

• Existentialist perspective: Existentialist thinkers argue that life has no inherent or predetermined meaning. According to this viewpoint, individuals have the freedom and responsibility to create their own meaning in life through their choices, actions, and personal values.

Ultimately, the interpretation of life’s meaning is a deeply personal and individual journey that each person must navigate for themselves.

I would have loved to have seen it add an even simpler answer, like in the Douglas Adams novel A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: 42

Shot this earlier tonight. So far, we’ve only had about a week of really good summer weather with barely any wind and temperatures that were, well, comfortable. The spring was unusually cold and windy, even if May was fairly generous with sunshine.

For the last few days, though, it’s been unseasonably stormy. I am reminded once more of how fast July goes by. August can certainly be amazing and even September has its splendid days. But when it’s stormy like has been today, it becomes visually obvious how soon it starts getting dark again after Midsummer. So perhaps the gale winds passing through us right now is a forbearing, pre-autumn storm.

Whenever I can’t figure out what to make for dinner, there’s always the Poke Bowl. Tonight I tried a few new ingredients. I fried some chopped cabbage and carrots in olive oil with garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, a teaspoon of chipotle, and a generous squeeze of lime. To top off the smoked salmon and wasabi mayo, I added some rings of caramelized red onion. At the bottom, barely visible here was boiled rice which I add black Japanese sesame seeds, sea salt, a few tablespoons of vinegar, and fried and chopped cashew nuts.