January 2020 – Observations from Uppsala

The Benefit of Live Teachers (Applied to Myself)

I have been spending quite a bit of time in recent years developing training materials and doing trainings for Simics. There is always a discussion on how best to do training, in particular between live sessions with actual trainers and offline video and other self-study resources. I am a firm believer in the value of live training, and during our recent winter vacation up in the Swedish mountains I made myself provide a perfect example of the value of a teacher. I took a skiing lesson.

I Finally Gave up and Tried Spotify

I am probably among the last people to have tried Spotify. When the service first arrived ten years ago I looked at it and concluded it seemed a poor match for my needs. To me, music is something you buy and own permanently in the style of old-fashioned CDs. The whole idea of a streaming service where an artist, album, or song could go missing all of sudden due to factors beyond your control just seemed (and still seems) suspicious. Everybody else seemed to love it, but that does not necessarily mean it is good… However, I finally did jump in and try Spotify, and here is what I found.