vesterberg.se

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Global warming and its effects have received much attention lately. Our future, or should I say possible future, is painted before our eyes in media and it is a terrifying scenario. Especially young people, who will inherit the earth, are rightfully scared. Scientists all agree that we have altered the balance of the earth. We have disrupted the earth’s eco-systems. It is a complex issue, because it involves economy, world trade and relationships between countries as well.

We can hide our head in the sand like an ostrich. We can accept facts and be paralyzed or apathetic. The world could end up in chaos as countries begin to fight another for oil or fresh water. Perhaps we will be forced by governments to change our lifestyle dramatically. But another possibility is to work together real hard, all of us, on all levels, to change our future while we still have time.

A real interesting effort in this direction has been made at Tällberg in Sweden. For a number of years there have been a conference in June called Tällberg Forum, where some 400 leaders, politicians, businessmen and scientists have met informally and discussed global questions, ecological systems and economy. Some of the meetings are open for all visitors.

The conference is arranged by Tällberg Foundation, a non-profit organization started in 1981. Its mission is to deepen the understanding of issues related to leadership and change in society and business. The Foundation’s main focus of activity is to gather leaders from around the world and from a variety of backgrounds for discussions and reflection. Some speakers who have visited the conferences and seminars are Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General and Mohammed Yunus, who founded the microfinance bank in Bangladesh.

I have not been there, but have read articles and books published by Tällberg Foundation. I would very much like to go there next summer. The future concerns us all. How can we live together? How can each one of us contribute? We need all the encouragement and practical insights we can get.

Not only individuals have to reflect over there questions, but companies also . Better to adapt to the system change in time and even see business opportunities ahead of time. I will come back to the business perspective later.

Me and my dog Viggo, a four year old Golden Retriever, were out together the other day, walking in the morning sun in a forest nearby. In August we have much morning dew here in northern Sweden and when the sun rises, nature shows its best side. We can easily miss the small things around us, the colors, the smells and the sound of the wind in the leaves. It is wise to catch the moments of beauty and store them in our hearts.

I remember when my children were small. We used to lie down on the ground and be fascinated by the ants or look at the trees and let them speak to us. Having a dog has reminded me of this lifestyle. Yes, it is a lifestyle; Walk slowly, look around, listen, take a deep breath and see the beauty in the small things around.

The last months I have been walking in a bit of personal revelation about who I am and what I really want to do. Life goes through ups and downs; we walk through light and darkness. Sometimes you have the opportunity to look around when passing over a hill (figuratively speaking) and you see experiences, motives and decisions in a new light.

When I had my own (small) company I got the habit of writing down business plans and goals every once in a while. Pretty soon I discovered that I could reason with myself through the process of writing and formulating my plans. The writing process did drag things out from me.

I started to do that for my personal life also and for my main interests. I tried to formulate my thoughts every month or when I felt like it. I jotted down something first and rewrote it a couple of times until I was satisfied. It may sound boring, but it was actually very exciting. My headings were something like “What has happened with that I thought and decided last time”, “What I am thinking now” and “Decisions now”. I started to monitor my reactions and evaluate the results of my decisions. Honesty is very important. I noticed that I began to understand myself and my likings better through this process. Reflection became more and more natural.

I was in a situation where I was unsure of what I really wanted to do. Instead of choosing the simplest path or what looked most attractive at first sight, I tried to walk a few steps on each of the different paths and observed the reaction of myself and others. I wanted to have feedback. I found out that I didn’t know everything about myself. You may have plans and dreams, but there are deeper levels in your being. You are more than the sum of your thoughts and plans that you know of.

So what are the main ingredients if I express it in a theoretical way; observation, feedback, evaluation and adaptation as a result.

I put all data that needs backup on my laptop in a few chosen ‘data directories’ and subdirectories. I try to avoid the suggested directories for data when installing programs, like for example ‘Documents and Settings’. I also try as much as possible to put configuration files in the data directories. If possible, I put all of the project parts of development environments (like Eclipse workspace and Visual Studio solutions) in the data directory.

We are often diligent to take backups of the source code in projects, but neglect the configuration files, test data and logs on our development computers, especially if we are consultants on the move. As an excuse we say that the environment or really the environments could be recreated. Yes, but it takes time (days if you are an involved person!) and time is money.

I believe that all artifacts that are created during a project, like short examples, tests, personal logs, scratch editions of code are valuable and should be kept. Add a few descriptive sentences that will help you remember later on. We have invested time in creating them and they will help us to remember and get up to speed when we dive into the project again. If you are involved in several projects at the same time, you have to have a well organized structure of your development environments, so that you can switch between them without having to hassle with all of those xml configuration files.

For each project I have an informal and personal log with design decisions, lessons learned, bugs and their solutions, fragments of code, resource links etc. Solutions found should be treated like treasure. Our skill as experienced consultants depends on remembering or associating to the right thing at the right time. If we are smart, we try to maximize this.

Of course you have to take backup of your laptop. If you organize the environments you don’t have to do a complete backup of the whole disc. I have found it useful to do backup to a separate USB external disc or RW DVD’s, if I don’t have a server handy. The software I use is NTI Backup Now. I use a couple of different DVD sets and rotate them as you usually do.

Do backup of your laptop often. Start an incremental backup when you get back home. If it is arranged properly it will not take long to start. When disaster is there, you can be up and running in a short time.

We need to find and practice habits that with a minimum of time and energy, give the most in return.

A week ago I spent a week camping with my two boys and my dog in the swedish mountains “Marsfjället”. We had a wonderful time out in the nature, sleeping in a tent at night and we experienced all kinds of weather. As you can see the snow is still there in July. We walked up to a small mountain lake called “Bleriken” and did some fishing there.

When I was looking for a fretless bass a year ago, I ultimately chose one with fretlines because I wanted to have a quick start. I got advice both that is is good and that it is bad to have fretlines on your first fretless bass. Good, because you can begin to play at once. Bad, because you will get used to staring at the fretboard. Some weeks ago I decided that it was time for me to stop looking at my left hand and train myself to play in tune by ear. I discovered that I did not dare to look away or close my eyes from fear to play out of tune.

It is very obvious that if you have fretlines and if you look at your left hand, you are going to trust your eyes more than your ears. At least for me, the visual feedback was stronger than the aural feedback and it blocked my musical growth. I really want to have an automatic connection between my finger and my ears.

What is my strategy then? There is a some good advice on the internet, like using open strings often, playing scales again and again, playing against a chord played on another instrument. I have done like this: I play the songs of my band with my eyes closed. I have chosen songs with a low tempo or lowered the tempo of other songs, in order to hear every note I play and have time to correct it if I am out of tune. It is good to start out slowly. I had to allow myself to play out of tune in the beginning.

You have to hear yourself relative to the song. For the sake of feedback your tone has to be clear and strong.

I discovered a new level of attention as I listened closely to my playing. Now I have to concentrate on every note I play. As a side effect I have became more aware of how the note sounds and how I can affect and shape it with my fingers making slides, vibrato and mwah for example.

At first I felt lost when hitting the wrong note, but gradually my “fingers” learned how to automatically slide in to the correct tone. I had to force myself not to look, but only trust my ears as the source of feedback. I believe that as we use our ears as reference, they become more and more sensitive and accurate. When I say “development of ears” I really mean the development of the sense called hearing as a channel into our mind.

Now I am playing the same songs over and over again, trying to relax and put my trust in my ears. Things change slowly. It is evident that you have to be persistent. But it is really fascinating how you can develop your abilities. Are you struggling with the same thing? Why not share with a comment?

I have felt the need to have a smaller bass amplifier for a while to use at home or at small places. A combo would have been nice, but since I already had a pair of EBS NEO112 cabs, I was also looking at compact heads. My ordinary rig is an EBS HD350 and Ampeg 410HLF.

I looked around and tried a few amps and I finally decided for that Gallien-Krueger MB 150S-III. It is rated to 150W at 4 ohm and it is louder than I expected. Since I am mostly playing fretless at these days I wanted an amp that is voiced toward midrange. The MB 150E has a few more features, chorus for example, but is also more expensive. I chose MB 150S, since I can play through my Bass Pod XT Live and get chorus that way if I like.