Lofoten is an incredibly photogenic place that has exposed how average I am at photography.

While I like some of the photos I've taken so far, I feel like I have failed to capture some of the dramatic scenery. Especially when driving around, where every mountain looms and the water shimmers when the sun is out. The photos look flat. And sometimes the photos are taken just by stopping on the road and sticking the camera out the window. So they're the same angle. (This typically happens on the back roads, which are one way to find the secret places, but like the first of many layers of secret tracks). For example, one of my favourite photos here was only taken because I saw some locals taking photos a few metres off the road right before a tunnel. When we returned that way and got out of the car and went through a gate it revealed this amazing view.

A lot of the hiking is also challenging, even without the rain that rolls in, and the problems finding a place to park.

The one trick I have learned to far is to get in the car and drive when it's raining, in order to get to walk in the sunshine. The rain does come in waves, so unless the walk is right next to your shelter, getting to the start point with the wipers on has had good results.

The colours here are fantastic. And the sun is always somewhere, behind you, in front of you, to the side. You can never run out of light.

A morning walk in Eggum to reach a nice old hydro plan where I ate another apple and nuts.

Before I finished packing for Norway (i.e the night we left) I had a list of journal entry titles which I thought I would hit along the way. A lot of them were puns. One title was this one.

In January, days after purchasing flights for an outdoor adventuring trip on the other side of the globe, my left ankle pain flared up so badly I could barely walk. I had been having occasional bouts of ankle pain for some reason, but despite making it painful to walk and squat they'd never persisted more than a day. Now, as the days passed and the pain didn't, I was faced with another chronic inflammation issue to go with the back pain, the wrist pain, the shoulder issues, the hamstring origin tendinopathy, and the ITB impingement all of which have marred my adult life.

The flights were not refundable, so back then I knew I was going to write this entry with one of two subjects. 1) How my stupid body ruined a great holiday. Or, 2) How I told my body to go fuck itself to overcome the pain and walk around the fjords and mountains and cities and archipelagos of one of the most scenic countries that glaciers have ever given us.

So, as with every other injury, I started rehab, and physiotherapy, and lifestyle changes. And every day, often multiple times a day, I did the stretching and the strengthening and the mobility exercises. And I pushed my joint and backed off and pushed and backed off again. I paid for MRIs and strain-counterstrain physiotherapy and I took drugs and I lay down when the pain was too much and I got back up again after I was ready.

By the time I landed in Oslo, my mobility in the joint was good, the pain was manageable, I knew which shoes to wear. We walked 30,000 steps on the first day. It didn't feel perfect, but my ankle didn't stop me. We drove to Aurland and we walked around Flåm and then in Kinsarvik we hiked up a rocky, slippery path that followed a waterfall. Every stroll or hike I was waiting for the pain to return, for the flare up. There were occasional twinges, but the swelling and instability of that day back in January never came back to me. I traversed over rocky terrain, up Sherpa steps and along trails carpeted with criss-crossing tree roots and soft with mud. I climbed mountains, and descended them.

Back in Adelaide, the weekend before we flew out, I was still having issues. We did Lofty and I remember spending the first stretch of that walk dictating in my head the discomfort I was experiencing and how I would soon describe it to my physio. And I remember thinking that I might spend the whole time in Norway doing the same thing, so I decided not to any more and just breathe. It still hurt, but it helped.

In our final week in Norway we spent five nights in Lofoten which included walks on sandy beaches, rocky hills and sodden tracks. It was a majestic place with amazing sights and walks. My ankle was behaving very well.

The weather forecast for our last night was for clear skies and sunshine from the afternoon into the next morning. There was a final walk - Reinebringen - that I knew I couldn't leave without attempting. A mountain which loomed over the town of Reine and the little islands and peninsulas which made up this extraordinary village of Norwegian architecture and stunning nature. The midnight sun. Over 2000 rough, uneven steps that rose up 450 metres in less than 1.2km of walking. I wanted to do this walk and prove that I was capable of overcoming yet another injury. Or I was going to die trying.

I drove to Reine under nice sunshine and arrived around 10pm. The village was picturesque and the light was perfect.

Vareid

Stop at Skreda

Vikten beach

Reine

More Reine.

I found the start of the walk and immediately started climbing. Almost immediately my ankle started to send signals of displeasure. Nothing different to other walks, but a bit more persistent. I carried on. When you're trying to get up 2,000 steps as quickly as possible it doesn't leave much energy to think with. I activated my glutes. I pushed through my foot. I tried to keep my hips working evenly. Ironically, it was actually my right ankle that was giving me the most pain. Something about the combination of my hiking boots and the pedals in a BZ4X seem to have given me an RSI that I'm hoping goes away once I'm back in a right hand drive car and country.

The moment on the ascent that I started getting concerned about the fog.

A few layers of clothing later, I reached the end of the stairs and the start of a muddy track that continued up to the summit. I wasn't actually sure I had reached the top because at the same time a thick fog had enveloped the mountain. I had reached my fucking goal and the reward of the view was hidden from me. It was 11:30pm.

A small crowd was with me at the top of the mountain, and no one seemed keen to immediately return down the stairs if there was a chance the fog would lift. So I waited in the crook of a rock to see what would happen. Occasionally the fog would lighten, then darken again. You could see the tendrils of it skimming the surface of the peak. I started a round of Balatro on my phone, which was good because not only is that game good for pissing away time with a fire-hose, but it can be played with heated gloves on.

After a while I heard excited gasps from nearby strangers. Looking down, far below, the line of the road could be made out through the fog. It was shit, but it brought hope. We all persisted. And then, the fog began to lift. Not like a curtain, but like a dance. A swirl here, a window there. The horizon of jagged peaks visible, but not the town. Slices of ocean and buildings, then the veil would lift up again. It teased us all over and over giving glimpses of everything but never the entirety. What we could see was beautiful. The still water, the tiny buildings, the mountains. The colours, so amazing. I took a lot of photos. My fingers were so cold I thought my camera had broken because I couldn't press the shutter down fast enough.

I did not actually get a clear photo from the top, but the experience was ethereal.

Eventually I had to descend. My ankle had survived the up, but there was still 2000 steps down to go and that was after an hour of cooling down to the extreme definition of literally. In fact my whole body was shaking and it took a lot of steps until I warmed up again.

I made it to the bottom. I'd made it through. It was about half past midnight. The sun was up, somewhere behind the mountains over Reine. The colours were vivid. The air was cool and crisp. My heartrate was pretty high. I'd had an anticlimax and I'd powered through. If I had to describe how I felt in one word, I couldn't. I felt like "Take that, you stupid fucking body. Whatever you give me I will fight. I won't win everytime. I still can't sit on most couches. But I will not give up. Not when there is experiences in the world like light spectrums from nearby stars to glow on intricate geography and calm waters. Fuck you, me. Fuck you and your stupid fucking body. I am a brain. I am bradism. One day you will finally get me, but you will not get me easily."

Reine on the way back to the car.

I drove back to Eggum from Reine between 1 and 2:45 AM. At sea level, there was no fog. The colours on the mountains and in the sky were unreal. I never want to forget that drive home. Windows down, tunes, every twist and turn bringing new sights. The hues in the valley. The silhouettes across the waters. The texture of a mountain that loomed up and up over the road. The mist lifting off the lakes and mulch piles as the temperature dropped to 5°. Occasionally, being blinded by the sun. I did not feel tired. I felt victorious. I had told my body to go fuck itself.

Kåkernbrua

View of Ramberg just after Flakstadbruene.

On the Eggumsveien towards Eggum.

Eggum Beach, 3:15 AM.

Edit: The next day my ankle was pretty sore.

Technically 10:19pm Sun

I wasn't exactly sure how my body would react to 24 hour daylight. Having now experienced it, I would say that in the evening after dinner it is amazing for outdoor activities and photographic light. And at sleeping time, it is completely irrelevant. On road trips, in Norway, sometimes you can feel the melatonin kick in when you're driving through a long tunnel...

In Adelaide, I am awake during the light part of the day (save occasional nap and sleep in) and I sleep during a portion of the dark part. In the morning in summer I sleep for a portion of the light part.

Technically 2:45am sun.

In the Arctic Circle, the slightly less light part is called nighttime and so you can associate that with sleep.

One guy I drove past at 10:30pm associated it with a great time to mow the lawn.

I will say that if you do want an argument for 24 hour daylight being unnatural, that I have now seen sheep and cows eating grass and walking around at 2 in the morning so it does feel like some level of human self control is required to regulate your behaviour and not do too much eating or photography when the light is low.

Or maybe they were just lawn mowing too...

A sensation occurs to me occasionally on this holiday. I power off the hire car in the parkering I scouted out earlier, walk into a building to collect a key and instantly I'm in the right place in a new town or fjord on the right date of the universe's chronology. This often happens after driving hundreds of kilometres. Over 26 days, fifteen locations, five flights, a dozen ferries, two dozen car charges, three dozen Circle K coffees, not once did I get the dates incorrect on my booking, or the location wrong on the drive… One time I got caught out by Circle K Automat - which didn't have coffee - but only once.

I'm not egotistical enough to deny that six months ago I barely knew what a fjord was, let alone which ones were worth visiting and the best way to move between them. And yet somehow I planned a month-long roadtrip using the internet down to the required level of detail to start the holiday. And once the holiday was operational, I ensured we would have the capabilities needed to meet the functional and non-functional requirements of having a nice time in Norway.

There are not many labels I feel a particular affinity too, but architect is one. I feel like it is my cognitive sweet spot to plan for the future and oversee execution. What are the functional requirements for a holiday to Norway? Climb this mountain, walk up to that waterfall, see this view, cruise that fjord. Take some nice photos. Non-functionals include transportation, shelter, food, communication, toilet stops, caffeine.

All of these requirements were met, and NFRs also met within my personal SLAs. I climbed cool mountains, experienced great waterfalls, beaches and other natural wonders. I witnessed impressive vistas and ferried us across many fjords. I hope I got a few good pictures… I drove 3449 kilometres in an EV, which doesn't include the ferry crossing although it does include the occasional circling of town trying to find a working charger. We never ran out of electricity, food, coffee or clean underwear. We had a bed every night although not always the ideal amount of pillows.

The downside to being so organised is that a times I did feel like I was executing rather than experiencing the moments on my overseas holiday. There were times while driving that what should have been novel felt eerily familiar because I'd already seen the same roads and sites on Street View.

As the final implementation steps are executed, and my plane comes in to land, I now conduct an internal retrospective on if this was a well architected holiday. What went well, what could be improved, and what should be done differently next time?

I wouldn't necessarily classify my Norway holiday planning as the waterfall approach, but the detailed design was complete before leaving. I do think there was a strong element of agile methodology to the actual days. Typically each location had a number of attractions or stories and then it was up to us to prioritise and deliver on these when we actually arrived there. For example, doing a walk when the weather was good, or after a cruise ship left.

Forward planning also helped meet the commercials; the budget would have needed to be much higher if we were booking accommodation the days before we arrived, and options would also have been more limited. Some of our stops were in particularly picturesque positions with panoramic views and good kitchens. A more flexible approach would have had merits too. If we didn't like a place, or if we wanted to linger or go further based on vibes, we could have done that.

One NFR is that we need to make 99.9999% of our connections. At work I'd call this availability, and, just like with infrastructure, there are definitely additional costs for such comprehensive reliability. It means I built full day buffers into each leg of the return trip in case of an outage or misfortune. Because everything went smoothly, this meant many hours waiting for the next plane or ferry in locations nowhere near as good as where we could have been, along with extra nights in hotels, extra transportation and more upheaval. One alternative approach would be to live with the stress of tighter connections, and let travel insurance handle any circumstances beyond our control. Riskier but more rewarding. The other approach is to ensure the holiday naturally begins and ends in a location with a major airport, so that the return home can begin from a good place.

One thing is certain, I am clearly ready for my return to work.

It was not a good idea to watch the first episode of True Detective Season 4 on a dark, windy night right before bedtime. Not because the horror themes make me feel scared. Because the Alaska themes make me feel cold.

The reason that most of the photos and entries from Norway aren't posted yet is because it takes a long time to edit photos when you have a lot of other stuff going on in life. And when I started chipping away at it in the hours before bed, I realised I was running out of disk space on bradism.com which was stopping me from uploading images and even logging in. I had to keep deleting log files that would then grow again over the next day and block me again.

I knew I needed a long term solution as I have plans to upload many more photos and no plans to upgrade my web hosting before 2027 when my extremely cheap, grandfathered deal finally runs out.

A cursory glance at my server’s file manager confirmed that the webroot directory where all the static content is hosted was consuming nearly all of my disk. All my images are currently hosted in JPG format, with an optimised JPG version as well, plus a card and thumbnail version. There are new formats, like AVIF and WEBP, that are much smaller without compromising on quality like I had been doing by exporting JPGs at low quality which made them look terrible.

I had the idea to use Cursor to enhance Bradism to handle new image uploads and convert them to AVIF. And to also add a button in the admin side so that I can convert known old images of large size to AVIF as well. This sounded like a good idea, and with AI it shouldn't take too long. Right?

Unfortunately, I had not set up the Bradism dev environment on the computer I upgraded to last year, so I had to do that, which entailed doing a lot of setup work on a new Virtual Box. And then I inevitably had to upgrade versions of things including PHP which led to deprecation warnings that I (AI) had to fix. Oh and in my new house I use the WiFi instead of ethernet which means the performance of my mounted disk in the virtual box is very bad. So yes, the AI did enhance the image upload process, add the button, add multi-image upload, come up with a new colour scheme, and fix a bunch of depreciations. It only took a week, most of which was spent not coding but setting up the environment.

Coding Bradism features was not how I planned to spend my Friday evening. I actually planned to spend it in the emergency department because I have a partially collapsed lung. But that’s a different story that hopefully one day someone will fill me in on. Instead of being in hospital I added the features and then logged on to the production server so that I could deploy them. As a quality minded individual I checked the remote server’s readiness to accept the deployment and make sure there were no modified files that would get overwritten by a deployment. And when I checked that, I noticed an Apache generated error_log in my webroot directory. And on closer inspection I noticed that this, adjacent to my JPG images, was 1.74GB gigs. Of the same deprecation warning that was for some reason being logged, fourteen times, every time someone (AI) visited my site.

So all that development effort did lead to the freeing up a lot of disk space. But it could have happened a lot quicker.