In the last 6 months, a lot has changed in my life. Not in a bad way, quite the opposite, but I am struggling a bit when it comes to this site as it has become a bit too big for me. So, as I wrote in my last blog post back in September, I am splitting things up when it comes to content. I am also rebuilding this site to be more personal focused.
I have already disabled several sections and will update the navigation to better fit the new focus here. All things related to Atlassian I have moved over to Atlasstic.com, or are rebuilding there. I will keep the articles because I think they add a bit of value, but the other databases will be removed until I see a use for them again.
The sections will all go away, and I will pretty much focus on the About Me section instead. I will also move a lot of things towards the Atlassian products. This means that I am building a combined Atlassian setup with the Atlasstic.com website for support and documentation.  With the new Gallery upgrade, I will rework that area to be more used as well.
I will remove most of the users as I am getting some spammers in here now. Instead, I will manually curate anyone who want access to make sure I know who is here and why. I will probably use Jira Service Management for that purpose, because JSM is pretty awesome.
I am also considering moving my Book to Confluence since I constantly feel that I am getting stuck because of the tool and Confluence is easier to use I think. We'll see how that turns out when I have everything setup when it comes to the Atlassian Tools.
Overall I am in a good place and working on this change for this website feels right. I just need some time to get it done properly, so expect things to be a bit messy here for a while.
It feels good to be creative again.

At the moment, I am considering a split of content for this website. The reason for that is that the site is getting very heavy and a bit difficult to navigate. It also feels a bit unfocused and I feel that maybe it is time to change that as I am moving into year 4 of this incarnation of the site. It is not something that comes without a cost however...
As you might have noticed, I have not been very active here for a while. That is because I have not felt inspired and because I have been a bit low on energy for a while. The idea of splitting content is of course nothing new, as it is always on my mind. A split of content however comes with a cost and I am not sure if it is a cost that I am willing to pay, or if it will be a good thing long term.
Every time you divide your attention, it comes with a mental cost, as split your attention in multiple areas and content switching occur. Time is also a factor and with my work time is not something that I have a ton of. At the same time, this also provides an opportunity to focus on specific topics, which might improve the quality of the content you produce.
 
So I am a bit torn on what to do next.
 
Where I am right now in my thoughts is to split out the methodology sections to a separate site and then make a third site just for Atlassian content. This would make the content a lot more focused, but it would also split my attention and it would cost a lot more, of course.
I am looking into the possibility to set up a second site at the moment and I am playing around a bit with a new design for it. This would be the site for methodologies, where I would post about the different disciplines and my thoughts on work processes and ways of working. The idea of adding a dedicated site for Atlassian has been around for a while as well, but up until recently I have not seen the need for it. As I am getting ready to focus more on video content, however, that is also something I am considering.
If I decide to move forward with this, I will need to consider the implications that will have on my YouTube channel, for example, but also how I use social media in general. I might split YouTube into two channels, one private and one for Methodology and Atlassian. I think that should work, but I might also split into three if I think that will make sense.
Besides the higher focus, I also feel that this could be a good split from a creative perspective. One of the reasons that I am feeling a bit low on energy is that I lack a creative outlet. Creating two new websites would absolutely take care of that problem. Another reason is also that I have the need to clean things up and simplify things, and again this would certainly happen if I split things up into multiple sites. The last reason is that I am interested in if I can build a community again and perhaps monetize on YouTube.
Financially, I am looking at investing into not just more domain names, but also licenses and server space. While this is not a lot of money all things considering, it is something that I think I should try to compensate for in the long run. This is where I think that I can add a small income for in the form of sponsorship and of course monetizing on YouTube.
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So, there are some planning to do and I feel excited just planning things right now. We'll see how things go from there, but don't be surprised if there will be a new website or two coming your way in a near future 😉
 

It has been a while since I wrote here, and it is because I have had this inner stress. A lot of things are going on in life right now, and it has affected me a bit more than I realized. This has caused me to end up in a state of frustration and sort of state of urgency because there are so many things all jumbled up in my head. With this in mind, I decided to take a first step towards making this better, and that is to get new glasses and slow things down a bit.
Anyone who have followed my blogging over the years, or know me, also know that the first quarter of a new year is usually a more quiet period for me. Not only do my mind run all over the place with all the new things I want to do for the new year, but I also have a low period, since I have many memories related to this period. Finally, I tend to reflect a lot this period as it is the darkest time of the year, and it is a natural breakpoint for many things.
I don't get depressed, though, just low on energy and focus inwards more. It is quite common for me to feel restless, like I do now, where I have a hard time focusing on one thing as my mind want to do many things at once. It may sound annoying to be fractured in your mind, and it can be. Furthermore, it also a time when I kind of collect energy for the burst of creativity that always seem to happen around this time, when the light returns.
What I often do to transition from this inwards and chaotic period to the more focused and creative one is that I try to find one change to make as the catalyst. This year, that catalyst is to get new glasses. It is something that I have needed for a long time, but I have put that off because it is a very expensive experience and while I make good money, I have pushed that in front of me since I know the cost it will entail.
This time around I went to Synsam in Vallentuna, which was my first visit there. As expected, I need multiple glasses, but what I did not expect was how good the experience was. Don't get me wrong, I have never had a bad experience getting glasses, or lenses, but this was by far the best experience I have ever had. Not only do I feel that testing my eyesight was better than ever, resulting in crystal clear reading, but the whole staff was above and beyond in their service mindedness. It felt great to be honest, and having my wife there to help select the frames was even greater.
In a few weeks, I will have three pairs instead of one, which will be interesting. My current glasses are progressive, and they have served me well, but they are old and no longer fit me eyes properly. They are also broken and scratched, which makes for a less than enjoyable experience. So I really look forward to getting new glasses that are optimized for different things. I will get a pair of progressive glasses that are photochromic as my out and about glasses, one pair for working in front of the screen and one for reading.
I am looking forward to these new experiences.
Pun intended 😉
 

This week has been a bit up and down, but as always there has been progress. I feel that the need to define things are getting more and more important, so I have started working on the Flexible Atlassian Setup, with various degree of success. I also just added a new category in the Roles playbook for affixes and prefixes, which I also will add into the roles themselves. I have also updated the Fontawesome I use here and done a ton of bug fixes. I also have played a bit of Path of Exile, which has been frustrating and rewarding.
The Flexible Atlassian Setup
This has been a focus for me this week, and I have started to add some content to the playbook. I also recorded the introduction, which is based on a presentation that I made a new PowerPoint template for last weekend. As it has been a while since I recorded anything, I was pretty happy with the 30+ minute video, until I realized I had no sound in the video...
So I will make a new attempt later for this. With sound checks.
When it comes to the documentation, I am slowly adding that to the playbook. I have started adding the design principles, the issue types and the workflows, since those will be in the first videos. I am working on an update of the workflow design for Build that  have designed in Figma, and I will add details on the work processes soon. These descriptions will have references to Roles, so I also want to make sure I have a start on that database as well.
The Roles database get affixes and prefixes
The roles database is still in progress, but the base is there, and I just need to finish up the templating. This morning I added a new category that I want to focus on first, before adding more roles. This new category is for affixes and prefixes, which refer to where a role belong and what responsibility is expected. By defining for example what a leader or architect means, then we can better understand the roles that are constructed in a conflicting way. Like a Scrum Manager, for example, which is an oxymoron and an artificial construct that does not exist as a role in Scrum.
Speaking of Scrum, I have a playbook planned for methodologies, but I have not yet decided on the format...
Font Awesome 6.0 and bug fixes
As you might have noticed, some icons have changed on the site, and that is because I have updated my kit to the 6.0 version that was released recently. I have also, slowly, been fixing bugs in the new templates, but also updated some things in the theme itself. This will continue for quite some time, as I have a pretty long backlog of bugs and theme changes that I need to do, mostly to the basic relationship templates.
Skills database is in the works...
I have started mapping out an embryo for this database, which I will need in multiple places, like My Projects and the upcoming People database. There will be a lot of categories for this, as I will try to keep the structure short and deep rather than long and flat. So I am starting out with four main sections: Tools, Methodologies, Areas of expertise and Social.
Since Invision Community Pages does not have cascading custom fields, it means that each skill will need to have multiple items, one for each level of skill. I intend to start with three levels: Beginner, Experienced and Expert. I know there are other standards, but I feel these three levels fit well within IT where we also have three levels of experience for roles with Junior, Senior and Expert.
Adding all of these will take quite a lot of time, but as I don't need to write a lot in terms of description for each skill initially, I think I just need to start mapping out the most common tools and methodologies and work from there. The format will be skill name and then level, I think, so something like this: "Adobe Photoshop - Experienced". I might play around with symbols as well, we'll see.
 
Playing Path of Exile
I have returned to POE again as this league looked fun and I don't really have anything else I feel like playing at the moment.  POE and I are always in conflict because I have this hate/love relation to the game. On one hand, I love the customization and the loot, but on the other hand, I can get really frustrated over the passive skill tree and the sheer complexity of the game.
Last league I tried a toxic rain build and I liked it since it is more of a passive build, but this league I went for a Spark character as starter. While it is not bad, it is just spamming ark and overall it felt a bit lackluster. So I did a second character and went for a blade vortex build, which felt much better.
I am just starting mapping and both characters had that same feeling when you kind of hit a wall with your build, and you just get frustrated.  Usually this happens in act 6 when your resistances drop like a rock, but I also felt it going into maps. This is because both these builds require a bit of investments to get their defenses up, and even with that they are not very tanky.
With my blade vortex Occultist I had to re-gear pretty extensively to get battle ready as I had almost no defensive layers with less than 100 in armor, low evasion and maybe a hundred or so on Energy Shields. I also had I think 18% or so in fire resistance and did not cap out cold and lightning. I could still kill pretty much anything almost instantly, but I would also instantly die if I got caught with something.
Now I have full 75% resistances and a decent chunk of armor, evasion and energy shield to take the edge off things. I will do some ascension paths today and level up a bit, so I can switch to the correct weapons I already have in store. I will also need to invest in the passive tree more to get the full effect of the setup.
It is interesting though how life is often like POE...
Life often feels like this as well, I think. You hit a plateau and life just become frustrating, then you make a few adjustments, and it is smooth sailing again.

As the number of databases grow here, it becomes annoying to add the fields for reviews in each of them. So, to fix that, I am going to build a new database for reviews that I can then connect to different articles or products as I see fit. This will give a central place for reviews that is flexible and easy to extend.
So what are we going to build?

This is a basic design that we will start with, as I already have this design built. It comes with a headline, a summary,  a total review box, three headlines with ratings and a summary of how other people voted on the review. When writing the review, you will also have a long review text. This will not be a part of the review summary, however, but we will add a "See the full review" link to this design.
For this to work, we will first set up the database and add the custom fields that we need. In total, we will have ten custom fields for the layout itself:
Review Theme (so we can set the color theme) Review Headline Review summary Review Summary Rating Review Category 1 Review Category 2 Review Category 3 Review Category Rating 1 Review Category Rating 2 Review Category Rating 3 We will also need to connect the review to something, so there will be several custom fields for that. In my setup, I will attach the reviews to Articles, My Personal Blog, Products, Companies, Hosting, a generic one for the site and me and then I have two connections that I will need to build the databases for.
In order for this to pass through properly, we will need to add a basic relationship template in my theme. I have written an article about that here, and I am working on another one in the Invision community Playbook.
In each database item, we will be able to define the placement if we want to change it from the default, which will be at the bottom and we can also override the Review Theme if we want. This is so we can control the database items themselves.
Things I have not tried yet....
In the form, I want to try to limit the form so you only get one database relation instead of all options. Not only will it be a bit confusing to have multiple options, but it also opens up for other problems that I hope to avoid. The way I want to try to do that is to add conditions based on the selected category. This is since I plan to have the reviews database setup with one category for each database (so Product Reviews, Company Reviews and so on).
I know I could do this with JavaScript, but I prefer to have this server side to prevent DOM manipulation from bad people 🙂
 
If things go as planned...
This should not be a very difficult setup, and I will use the same basic setup I already have with the Playbook templates. It will take some time as I am still down with what I suspect is Covid, so my brain is very slow and my energy levels almost nonexistent.
But we will get there soon enough as long as we move forward 🙂
 

As the new templates start to get into place, I have started to look at the new structure of information here on the site. There are some areas that are underused and others that make more sense elsewhere. I also have a lot of new databases to add to get the infrastructure I want. It may seem daunting, but it's just invigorating to me, so it is all good!
The new structure

This new structure has been a work in progress and I will spend some more time with it as I add more databases and pages. As you might see here I have removed Writings as a main node as I have moved what used to be there to other nodes. I have also moved out Security as a primary section, and it is now a subsection under Operations. That is because I don't have enough knowledge or focus that motivates it being a primary node. Instead, I am adding Invision Community as a main node, since I am pretty much always working with it.
 
New databases
I am adding a lot of new databases based on this new setup that I have. It started with the Playbooks, that are already up and have some initial content to test things out. As I build these playbooks, I sometimes come across features that are best used as a separate database, as they will be used in multiple databases. It started with Countries that I use in the Companies database and that I will use in the upcoming People database.
My next project will be to make a new database for the Reviews that I currently have built in as a ton of custom fields in some databases. Having this as a separate database makes more sense and since I can connect reviews between databases this will make things a lot easier. As all display templates now use the same template it is easy to decide what databases should be connected to reviews, by simply adding a custom field for database relation to the reviews database.
Slow rollout
The rollout of the databases will probably be a bit slow as I focus on some of them. This month, for example, I am focusing on the Playbooks and the video section. I am also putting focus on building the Atlassian section site so I have a starting point to work from. This page will be made up of multiple blocks, so I have some cleaning to do in my admin section to set a proper block structure and a proper pages structure.
I also need to reorganize my Figma setup so I can design things faster in the future. As I have added more colors to the setup and now removed Security as prime section, I need to make some updates there as well. As you can imagine, this also ties into the CSS structure that I am planning out as well.
So it will take some time, but I will get there 🙂

The work with Playbooks are progressing well. I am iterating the display template a bit because I realize that it is probably going to be a new standard that I will use for many databases and not just Playbooks. This solves quite a few things that has had me stuck actually and it feels really great!
I have set up several new databases to test my thoughts, and the reason for that is that I realized that the setup can be used for many scenarios. If setup correctly, it can also replace many of the templates I currently have, but it requires careful planning when it comes to what content should be coded in.
Due to this new template being a bitt different in that it can, and will, be used in many databases, I am adjusting it accordingly. I am going to add a number of conditional fields so I can select them as I see fit for each database. For example, I am adding a parallax effect if the database have a top image and if not, then it will just show a colored background. Every top tab will also show or hide depending on if there are any entries or if the field exist.
It is very fun, but also a bit challenging since I am pretty much hacking the design by breaking out of the container and it has certain...consequences 🙂
Overall, though, I have not felt this excited in a while and I like it!

For a while now, I have been trying to iron out how to create groups of focused articles, or instructions. In many ways, these would be like small books of how to's, much like I have started for My Book and IPS Customization. After considering this for a while, I have decided to go for a different approach. I call them Playbooks.
As part of the 2022 focus I will look closer at the Atlassian and Development sections, and in those I have 6 planned playbooks defined at the moment: Jira Cloud Playbook, Confluence Cloud Playbook, Invision Community Playbook, HTML Reference Playbook, CSS Reference Playbook and JavaScript Reference Playbook.
As always, I will start slow and expand later. So I plan to take a look at the design I already have for Products and Companies and rebuild that for the display view. The databases already have a list of activities based on bugs and fixes I wanted to make, so it is not really a big change besides what I already had planned.  I will need to dive into some other database templates also however, or rather the database relationship templates.
I was considering having one big database for playbooks, but decided to go for individual ones. One reason is that Pages only have two levels in the navigation widget that does not change as you go deeper in the tree. Another reason is that it is more difficult to make changes to the individual playbooks. This means that there will be a lot of databases over time, but I can live with that.
I am planning this up using Clickup, which I recently started looking at. It is a very nice tool and I will write more about it in the future when I have had some time to play around with it some more.

2022 is well on the way and as always there are some thoughts in my head on what I would like to do in 2022. This is a little scribble of what is floating around in my head about what I would like to do in 2022. It includes both things I want to do on the site, but also some thoughts on things outside the site, such as the YouTube channel and my writings on Medium and LinkedIn.
The first thing is probably to determine why I do what I do and how it affects different parts of my life. This site for example is something I have created to write and to explore different things, like frontend development and design. It is a pretty selfish site where I just do whatever I find interesting and fun to be honest, and I like it because I am almost always building on it and there is no pressure of any kind.
YouTube feels a bit different, but maybe that is just me making a bit more of it than I should. I started out with the intent of creating more educational content, but got a bit stuck in my own mind, I think. I started to buy into the marketing of things rather than just make things, which is exactly what I sometimes get caught up in here on the site. YouTube is no different from any other content, and the only thing that matters is that you move forward. Things will not be perfect, but that is ok.
I have been drawn to the Social Justice debates lately, and I feel I want to write about it. Possibly even making content about it on YouTube. I know it will get me into a ton of trouble, but I am itching to make sense of things because there is so much chaos and madness out there about these topics. I do not intend to make a lot of articles on this topic, but there are a few that are rumbling around in my mind. I am just not sure what to do about them or where to put them... I guess that is a topic for 2022 to figure out.
With this in mind, I have some things I do plan to do in 2022.
Sections need to be built.
I have been putting this off for a long time because I keep getting sidetracked and caught in this loop of having a perfect setup for all sections. It will not be perfect, it just needs to be created! So I will start out with Development and Atlassian, since those are the two I work most with at the moment.
Development
For development, I will start by split the site into two sections: Frontend and Backend. My focus will be on the frontend first, where I will make a new database for code references. In setup, it will be similar to w3Schools, but I will tie in Videos and other things from other databases to make it a little more "meaty". I will start picking out a handful JS libraries and frameworks that I want to cover and explore as well to make the section a good starting point for learning more.
I consider having a section for IPS and WordPress development here as well, which will be things like tutorials and build guides mostly.
Atlassian
Atlassian is made up of multiple products, but also a ton of apps. So the idea here is to split into official products and apps. For the official products, I have this idea to create a database for how to use and how to configure things. This is what I do most days anyway, so I figure I could just as well  build a setup for it, so I can share it online.  I do plan a series of custom setup for Jira & Confluence on YouTube as well as in article form, and I probably will have a database for that setup specifically.
An apps database has been on my mind for a while as well. The reason for that is that I want to explore the apps, but I also want to tie in other databases to it. Like articles and videos, but also roles and people. This is going to be sort of an extension of the Companies database, which I am rebuilding at the moment.
 
Spring Cleaning
One downside of always building without any real time to focus and plan is that you accumulate a bit of technical debt. This is something I will need to address in 2022 as there are some broken areas and some blocks that should be rebuilt. I need a new setup for CSS for sure as it is a bit all over the place, so I need to set a standard and then restructure things accordingly. I have not yet decided on the said structure, but I need to set a global set and a local set that should work together.
Besides code, I also will go over the databases and look over the templates as they don't work properly. I will most likely rebuild them using CSS grid instead of flex, which may sound like a ton of work, but it is just a few templates.
Wither the new database Template I have built in the last week or so, I do feel that I have a very good starting point for this work. That is because I have pretty much moved all the current databases into this new display template and I am very happy with this setup. I am still exploring the possibilities for this new setup, but so far things feel good. The current state is that I am building the display template and then I will
 
YouTube
As I wrote earlier, I have been a bit reluctant and hesitant about making YouTube content. It is a bit silly, but not unexpected, since it takes a bit of getting used to. I am currently working a number of videos for work, and it works just fine. The plan is to make a lot of videos in 2022, but not focusing so much on the quality but more on the content itself. Just like with building a website, it takes a while to find the tonality, so I will do my best to not forcing things.
Atlassian instructions
Probably the area I want to dive in most at the moment is the Atlassian Instructions. It will go well with the Atlassian Guide Database mentioned above. I also have a set of articles on how to design a proper setup of Jira and Confluence that I plan to make in Video form as well.
 
Feedly & Zapier
Automatic content creation has always been something I want to build, and with the databases I have right now I see a potential for that using Zapier and Feedly. Feedly has been my news feeder of choice for a while now and as Invision Community have Zapier support now, I figure I will give it a go.
The setup is fairly simple.
I create a board in Feedly, then I create a Zapier account and add a zap that connect that Feedly board to a database in Invision Community. As I can easily add the content in the feed to my custom fields, this makes adding content dynamically very easy.
 
Stories
For stories I need to fix the voting bugs that currently prevent voting. It's nothing major, but I need some time to sit down and figure it out.

Yesterday, I ripped down my old desk setup and rebuilt it with my new desk. It took a while and there was some cursing due to some cable management not working as anticipated. Overall, though, things turned out pretty good and while I have some final touches to do, I love the new setup.
To say that it takes a while to rip down a desk when you have a 48-inch TV as monitor with a 27-inch side screen and a video setup with camera and lights is an understatement. Still, it is satisfying to take everything down and make a full reset. Even if it gets a bit messy at first...

The new desk is a lot sturdier than the first one, and it is 20 cm wider. I also get a nice walnut color, which is really nice. Cables are still all over the place, but I will fix that next week when I get the shipment from Amazon. I also have some felt coasters, an iPad stand and some plants coming, so then this will come together even more.
With this upgrade I now feel much better about making videos and hold education since I now have a decent camera, a good microphone and a setup that allow me to engage a bit more than sitting with the side to the people watching. I will play around with this during the weekend to make sure everything is ready for the education I will hold on Monday.

I will get a new mouse pad since the one I have is a bit dirty, and it is nice to switch things up a bit. I will probably try an LTT Northern Lights desk pad since it fit my theme pretty well. I also have an Ikea lamp on my wishlist. I am looking at Hektar to stand to the left of the desk, this would not only add a bit of extra light in three directions, but I can also use it as a rim light when facing forward and as a side, or key light, when shooting from the side.
Eventually I might invest in a camlink for the camera, but I think it's best if I learn how to use the camera first. I also consider getting a new chair. I am looking at a Titan Evo 2022 from Secretlabs, but I am still doing some research. Probably going to pick up some new headsets as well, since mine are broken and probably will fall apart sooner rather than later.
For now tough, I am very happy with my setup of my homeoffice!

In the past weeks, I have gone from having a webcam setup for presenting my education sessions to complete madness. It has snowballed and I am now waiting for another shipment of things to set up for a full-fledged studio setup. I have even set up my old YouTube channel finally and have a pretty big list of topics to place there. In short, I am going full YouTube, and it is something I have been considering for a very long time. I guess it felt right now for some reason.
Besides ordering everything from microphone to camera to lightning, I also have made some small investments into assets for Adobe Premier pro. While they are probably not necessary, I feel like trying some things out with proper gear rather than going in half-baked. Well, at least as far as equipment goes. I still need to learn how to do videos properly, since it is a lot different from holding education sessions. I also need to learn the tools, and it will take a while to learn how to use Adobe Premier pro and OBS to its full potential.
Furthermore, I threw out a test shot using nothing but webcam and no real settings for microphone at all. It is bad, but not terribly so. I still feel awkward talking to myself, but it gets easier, I feel. I also had the beginnings of a bad cold, which you probably can pick up in the video. Right now, I can barely speak...
Later this week I will do a full rebuild of my desk to set things up, and I have not yet decided if I should invest in a new desk at the same time. There is nothing wrong with my desk, but it is a bit short and I would like to have that walnut desk top. I am also considering getting a desktop that is arched with a short extra right side. Not sure if that would work in my very limited space, but I am considering it.

I am also contemplating getting a new chair since this one is a bit stiff and I do have lower back issues to consider. Not sure what to get, though, so I'll hold off for now. I might get something like the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022, but I have not decided yet. For now, I'll keep my existing one and focus on other things, like how to fit a good camera angle with a 48-inch TV as monitor...
That is probably my biggest issue right now, since my lighting setup will be very dependent on how I set up my camera. With a 48-inch TV, standing on a small shelf as well, I tend to look up towards the top of the screen quite a lot. My face is in a pretty good spot facing the center, or slightly above the center of the screen, but to get to the top of the screen I have to tilt my head up a fair bit.
Having a camera at that height might look weird. Like me looking up towards the people watching the video or stream. I do have a second camera for screen sharing, so maybe that will be less of an issue than I imagine it. Once I get the new camera and have it setup, I might make some changes due to this. Things do get a bit tricky when you have limited space, sitting in a little cave where your closet used to be in your bedroom.
Anyway, first I need to get this sore throat taken care of, then I'll just focus on making content and let things evolve from there. I do not expect to become a huge YouTube star anyway, just to publish some instructional videos here and there.
So, off we go 🙂