Starting on my own
After years at Unfold, I'm going solo. I'm freelancing and building my own product, empowered by AI to do alone what used to require a team.
Archive
2026
2025
2021
2020
2018
Tracking the Swedish Election: val.digital - JavaZone
My talk at JavaZone this year on how to make your own hobby projects succesful and how to stay succesful. It was well received at the conference, and hope it...
Putting content outside the <body> element using CSS (pull to refresh-style)
On mobile a common UI element is to a have "Pull to refresh" control above a scrollable list. This area then contains last updated information or similar.
A simple snake game in pure HTML and JavaScript, part 3
**You should first read part 1 and part 2 of the tutorial.**
WWDC - Designing fluid interfaces
Very interesting insight into how Apple is trying to make their devices more like physical objects and how that makes them feel more "magical". It is impress...
A simple snake game in pure HTML and JavaScript, part 2
You should first read part 1 of the tutorial.
Progressive Web Apps on iOS are here
The fundamentals for making a PWA is finally supported on iOS. Maximiliano Firtman has wrote up the basic sets of technologies now supported (and a long list...
Creating a CloudSQL server instance from a database dump
For a project based on the Google Cloud Platform recently, one of the very first things that came up was how to easily set up a new database from scratch on ...
A simple snake game in pure HTML and JavaScript, part 1
Many people who are starting out with a new project get caught up in deciding on technologies, what frameworks to use and what database to pick. When often &...
The Nightmare Letter: A Subject Access Request under GDPR
The demands placed in this letter, does in no way seem unreasonable or demanding. A user should have the right to his or her data, as well as be informed abo...
Soulless
The homepod was announced as shipping in two weeks yesterday. The product looks great, and allegedly delivers some amazing sound for it's slim size. But I ca...
2017
Write tests, not too many and mostly integration
This reflects my own view of testing. Namely, that the most important thing with a test is to detect and prevent mistakes.
The A11Y Project
Excellent accessible HTML resource with howtos, checklists and thorough explanations. This should be a bookmark for every web developer.
Improvements to country flags SVGs
I've updated the country flags project with a scripts that allows you to scale the image to an arbitrary size easily, and also published it to NPM.
Are pop lyrics getting more repetitive
Interesting subject and amazing presentation of it. Heavily recommended to read on a mobile phone, this article truly is mobile first!
All the world's public transport on one map
This page show's a live view of most public transport vehicles in the world. It shows everything from buses, trams to ferries and airplanes on a single map. ...
Moneyball teams
Once upon a time the ambitions of your company were exceeding the throughput capacity of your development teams, and you needed to hire. The ultimate goal of...
What questions to include in a call for papers for a technical conference
Being involved as an organizer for the Mobile Era conference. I was selected as the program manager, and with it the task of sorting out how to do a call for...
Unique HTML IDs in React - now as a module
I have now made an NPM module that solves the problem of getting unique IDs for HTML DOM elements. The module is still lacking proper server-side rendering s...
2016
What USB-C cable do I need?
Having recently acquired a new MacBook Pro, I've been looking for the proper cables to complement it. Mainly, I want a cable that I can charge both the Mac a...
How to add spaces in the OSX Dock
Most common question I get after presentations, is: "How do you add those spaces in the Dock?". So to appease the crowd, run this in your terminal:
A generic handleChange function for React forms
A short trick while coding forms in react, where several variables are bound in to the state of the current component. The naive way of implementing it is ha...
Benedict Slaney on the new Mackbook Pros
A theory on why the new Macbook Pro is the way it is:
Doing split modules in webpack
I have several directories of JavaScript code, each representing a seperate module. I would like each directory to compile to a JS bundle. While the common ...
Taking PHP seriously
I agree with almost everything in this post. While PHP has it's warts, it's a highly productive language thanks to it's short development cycle (no need to r...
In the future, Chrome will flag HTTP sites as insecure
There has been a proposal for a long time in Chrome to flag HTTP as insecure. The motivation for this is: all sites over HTTP are entirely lacking encryption...
WTFUK - Visa Problem in the UK
A scaring story about how the VISA systems impacts people. as I'm currently part of organizing a conference it is a fitting reminder of making sure the paper...
JSConf Iceland 2016
Inspiring read about arranging how it is to arrange a conferenc. Being in the midst of making the first Mobile Era conference happen, it is inspiring reading...
Authenticated Azure CORS Requests using Active Directory and adal.js
As is evident from my last post, I am currently working with the Windowz Azure cloud as a hosting platform for a single page application based on React.js.
How to set up a static website on Azure
I struggled for way too long with figuring out how to set up a static website hosted in the Azure cloud. To save the reader a lot of time, I'll detail the ap...
The Mobile Era Conference
I have the pleasure of being one of the organizers of a new conferance in Oslo this fall — the Mobile Era conferance — the focus of which is obvi...
Prevent iTunes and Photos from launching on media buttons
On my work computer, I fight a constant struggle against the standard apps in OSX that launch at the most inopportune times. The greatest offenders are iTune...
SEO for Single Page Applications
Recently as I've been working on val.digital (in swedish), which is entirely an React app, and other single page applications. I've struggled with SEO. The m...
Spotify is ditching the hamburger menu
Finally Spotify has rejoiced and removed the dreaded hamburger from their app. I never really understood that choice, since it adds extra steps to all naviga...
Setting up Let's Encrypt on Nginx
Yesterday I setup HTTPS on this domain, and on val.digital. I was pleasently suprised by the ease of which this was acheived. Following the guide by Digital ...
React ES6 change listeners simplified
Porting several React projects to ES6, the lack of autobind is a serious annoyance. Previously you could rely on the compiler to automatically call `autoBind...
Short URLs are considered harmful for cloud services
This is a very old attack vector that seems to come again and again. If you ever find yourself using "codes" to access private content. You better make them ...
Precise control over responsive typography
Interesting article about how you can use viewport units (vw, vh et. al.) in CSS to change the font size dynamically with page width in a much smoother way t...
Life and Death in the App Store
Excellent article by Casey Newton on how the App store economy is shaping up, and the challenges facing developers trying to make their money there. The one-...
Working with Translations in React
As I've been working on several React apps lately, the question of translations has come up multiple times. Translations have been an area of focus, how to d...
HighCharts - open credits link in a new tab
In implementing val.digital's embeddable charts, I struggled slightly with making HighCharts obey my command when it came to the obligatory credit links. I w...
val digital now supports embeddable graphs
My website val.digital now support embeddable graphs as well, which can be accessed for all graphs through the menu. An example can be seen below:
Simulate a Mixin in React ES6
After switching a few of my projects over to React ES6, the issue of the lack of mixins is a recurring problem. Egor Smirnov offers a few alternatives on hi...
Half a year with the Apple Watch
I purchased the Apple Watch back in June while I was on the US for vacation, and since then I've grown accustomed to it, and decided to do a six-months in re...
Bitcoin is dying
I have always found the very limited volume of transactions bitcoint allows to be suspect. And now it seems it finally caught up to the protocol. The fundame...
All country flags as SVG images
Small page I've had for years that I improved heavily with SVG versions this past week. It is just a collection of all countries' flags in SVG and PNG. Often...
My latest project - Foreldreavtalen
The first screen of the wizard, see it live at www.foreldreavtalen.no.
Swedish Opinion Surveys online - val.digital
Today I launched a new service, which is mainly aimed at Swedish people, but I'll share it here for those it might concern. It is a service that allows you t...
Forcing a certain domain or HTTPS on Heroku
I recently worked on a project utilizing Heroku as a hosting platform. A significant concern for this application was to force the user to always use HTTPS w...
2015
How to respect Do Not Track
The Do-Not-Track HTTP header is the evil bit of the web world.
Apple is the Mobile Microsoft
It's becoming more and more clear that the future will be dominated by Apple products. Despite the preachings of popular media, the numbers speak for themsel...
Convolutional Neural Nets
I recently read this article about recognizing good selfies with a neural net. An absolutely fascinating undertaking. I really recommend watching the linked ...
Experiences from Apple Watch Development
Having developed a more complex app for the Apple Watch, I've picked up a few recommendations for how to best be effective while developing, and especially t...
Slack closing large open rooms
It seems Slack has taken to close down public rooms that have grown too large ( 7000+ people it appears). Just this week, the Reactiflux Slack was informed t...
The Effect of Winning the Nobel Peace Prize
.nobel-side-by-side a { width: 47%; }
Comparison between the photo quality of all iPhones
Well-composed comparison of the photo quality of all the iPhones. The quality difference is staggering, that Apple has been able to increase the resolution w...
Unique IDs in React
If you are using ES6-based JavaScript (with the `class` keyword). You cannot use mixins. I now recommend using the react-html-id npm module to solve this...
iPhone 6s Reviews
The review embargo on the iPhone 6s has been lifted, and the reviews are poaring in.
iOS 9 has been Released!
iOS 9 has finally been released to the public. At a glance the list of improvements is unimpressive but Apple's focus has been on performance and reliability...
16 GB is a bad user experience
I can only agree with David Smith here. The fact that Apple continues to push the 16GB edition of their phone just perpetuates the bad experience it provides.
Currencer Watch App
I finished a small update to my currency exchange rate app, which shuold be live on the app store in a few days. It now includes an Apple Watch companion app...
Ethics of ad blocking
This piece actually prompted me to finally install Ghostery.
On the high charts
An app I personally contributed to - Studentbevis - is in the top of the Norwegian App Store! Even above Facebook and Instagram (Well, not Facebook Messanger...
The Internet is not Black and White
A very common thread in online discussion is the slippery slope. So many people in online communities seem confused by the difference between hateful behavio...
My favorite podcasts
These past few years I've been listening to more and more podcasts, and I'd like to share favorites of mine. I've subdivided the list into for-
Safari ad-block extensions
It seems like Safari on iOS 9 will support Content-blocking extensions (requires developer login).
Back online, now on Jekyll
After a way too long downtime, I've put up the blog again.
Photos.app preview
It appears to not be dead after all. Amazing news! From what they're promising, this will finally resolve the woes of photo management between iPhone & Mac, ...
2014
Dear Apple, why is my iPhone always full?
This documents a problem I know many people who have personally, namely, iPhone storage is too damn small. Especially on the new iPhone 6 & 6+, 16GB is laugh...
What colour are your Bits?
The pirate bay was raided (again) yesterday and went down. And as usual, people are arguing that because the host Magnet Links and not actual torrents, it's ...
Being a "salaryman" in Japan
Fascinating article on the work culture in Japan, and how salarymen sacrifice so much of their life for their company. It feels extremely alien to me, workin...
iPhone 6 pixel peeping
Interesting look into how the iPhone 6 handles rendering and downscaling on the plus scale devices. The fact that the software renders at a size different th...
Actually doing stuff is difficult
As readers may have noticed, site has been down for a month. The reason for this is because I moved it to a new server, transferred the database and scripts ...
Provisioning Woes
I was trying to update one of my apps today, and since my provisioning profile had expired I was forced to create new ones. Obviously this was not a painless...
2013
What Happens During One Second on the Internet
A cool visualization of internet activity. Makes it clear how small you are on the internet, and in the world.
Hacking a Hard Drive
This guy manages to hack a hard drive into corrupting specific reads from it. I love the dedication to figuring out how stuff works in this post, and the ing...
Sencha Touch is garbage
After using Sencha Touch for some smaller projects, I've come to realize it's garbage.
iPhone 5S specs
Calling it now: Same performance, better camera, double the battery life. This would be in line with the Macbook Air refresh focusing on battery life, and al...
Solve P=NP in constant time
Contractor request to solve the P=NP problem in constant time. Ambitious!
I now have a blog, again
I have hosted different blogs previously, however they have ended up abandoned with time (or disappeared when a platform died). This one, I host and backup m...