The last year I've been close to having a split personality when it comes to the projects I've been working on. On my last count, I have 4 active CodePlex projects that I've created myself, and 4 more that I'm a member of:

Balder
Bifrost
Odin
OpenCompiler

I decided a couple of months ago that I will pick one project and focus on it only for now, instead of spreading my attention thin with working one hour here and there on different projects. The choice was kind of obvious on my part, Balder got my attention for now. My reasons for choosing that particular project as my main focus, are many. First of all, it is the most mature of the 4 mentioned above, secondly, it is truly something I love doing - graphics programming has always been close to my heart. We're now running the last leg on Balder to get to a version 1.0 release. When this release is out I will continue on one of the other projects. I haven't decided on which one yet, but my money is on OpenCompiler - creating compiler extensibility for C#.

So, for anyone holding their breath for any features or bug fixes put into anything else than Balder for the next couple of months, start breathing again. :) 

Today was the last day for me over at Objectware. It was a day I have dreaded somehow for a while. I really loved it at Objectware. Due to the fact that it is about 2 hours by bus or train away from where I live, it got to be too much of a strain on my family. I got an opportunity some months back to join a company called Bouvet and join them on establishing in my town; Sandefjord. So the choice was kind of obvious and at the same time gave me a bit of sadness. On average I've been holding jobs for some 3-4 years before changing, and everytime its been because I wanted to, for personal growth. But family has to come first, even though it was short run (some 8 months). Still, it feels kind of odd, leaving a place I got fond of with great colleagues and very fun projects.

I must take this time to thank Objectware for giving me the opportunity - I've had great personal growth and has had really fun challenges and projects. And the colleagues impresses me with their great knowledge and commitment to the job. Kudos!

15th of June, I'll be starting at Bouvet - looking forward for new challenges.

Until then, I'll be sunbathing in Spain, enjoying some time off with my kids and wife.

As you might have noticed, my blog lives on the domain “dolittle.com”. A domain that is hosted by myself on an old laptop sitting in my basement. :)  Anywho, the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked a few times about what's up with the name DoLittle and does it have a meaning of some sort. I didn't have a straight answer for anyone who asked, to be honest; I couldn't really remember. Until it all came back to me a couple of days ago.

The year was 1997, I started to look for some freelance work for moonlighting besides my daytime job. In order to freelance work I needed to register myself as a single-person company with the government. I needed a cool name, or at least a cool URL. My objective was not to do a lot of business; one could say I wanted to do little. But that was not the real reason behind the name. At that point I was really focused on creating reusable code (I'm still focused on that. :) ), I was always building code with the idea of trying to create libraries and frameworks that would enable me to do as little as possible code for the next projects. Finding the common denominators became my life work. In addition to this I was also convinced (still am), that computer software should really be focusing on helping the user achieve desired result in as little time and with as little effort for the user as possible. I even remember coming with a slogan for the company "DoLittle ..  so that you don't have to do much.. " or something to that effect.

That is the story behind the name.. :)   

About a year ago I decided to quit smoking with the motivational factor being my 2 year old daughter. I figured my health was in such a bad shape that I wasn't able to keep up with her. As a gift to her 2 year birthday I quit smoking with the help of a drug called Champix (Chantix in the U.S.). I was lucky enough to not get any sideeffects, other than actually being able to quit smoking. The coming week I'll celebrating 1 year of being a non-smoker, as well as the third birthday of my daughter.

Now it's on to maintaining my position in the world as a non-smoker. I'm very motivated to do it, so let's keep our fingers crossed. My next project is to loose enough weight to get down to my 1997 level. This means I have to loose some 20 kilos (appr. 40 U.S. pounds or so) from my starting point which was early january. So far I've managed 3 kilos, which is actually not that bad considering I haven't started doing anything physical yet. Only thing I've done is get rid of bread and introduced WASA Whole Grain Crispbread. This works out great for my diabetes too.

... in Sandefjord, Norway that's looking for a new owner. :)

After living in the same house for 6 years, we're now selling it and moving to the other side of town. Besides working heavily on my computer over the last years, the house has also gone from a early 1980s combined with early 1950s standard to 200x standard. I've done most of the work myself. Finally we finished it and then we're moving, sounds familiar ?? 

Anywho..  If you know anyone who wants a nice house here in Norway, our house might be the thing they're looking for.  :)

Have a look :

http://webhotell.tinde.no/dnbnor/index.asp?pId=274824&offset=0

I've come to a point in my life were I think I've figured out what I'm going to be when I grow up; a developer.
Recently I've been jumping between jobs and found myself wanting to downgrade from being a Chieft of something something to being more of a hardcore developer.

I walked away from a position at a place called Notus a couple of months ago as the Manager of Application Development. I quit this job in june and started working for a startup company called Fjord Media. Being a startup company things weren't that organized that I've grown fond of, and found myself getting very stressed from the lack of structure and processes. I decided to quit and did so and walked out the building the same day without having a job to go to. During that day I started what I normally do when I'm looking for work; send out emails to friends and past colleagues to see if there would be any leads out there. Sure enough, the market is great these days so a couple of leads came my way the same day. I spent the next couple of days walking in and out of interviews and talking to people on the phone and writing emails. During this time I also found the time to start spinning thoughts around in my head about what kind of job would make be a happier person.

6 days after I quit my job at Fjord Media I had a meeting with my former employer, they contacted me the same day I quit and wanted to hear if I was interested in coming back. Not to the same position I held but a developer or team lead for one of the teams. After having the meeting with them I had this good vibe inside me; I was going to write code on a regular basis again. I got an offer later that day that was a very good offer;  I got to be a team lead/lead developer for the platform and architecture team. I was walking around the city when they called me with the offer, so I told them I had to call them back some 15-20 minutes later. It was then it really hit me with a good warm feeling inside of me; I am a developer, I will always be a developer, this is the profession I chose for myself ages ago. I couldn't wait to get home and pick up the phone and accept the offer. It couldn't get any better than this; I got to write code at a place where I knew (and love!) all the people, I knew the code (heck, I've worked there for 5.5 years..) and I got to do pretty cool stuff; work with the latest of .net related technologies (.net 3.0 and later 3.5, BT2006, SQL2005, VS2008, Silverlight..) .

The conclusion is I am a developer and I'm proud of it!

Now, on to writing some cool code..    I've got a couple of Silverlight thingies up my sleeve. :)

During the pregnancy we've been presented with a lot of different dates, ranging from late april till late may. Finally today we got the extension to the family we've been waiting for. His name is Herman and weighed in at a remarkable 4395 grams and had a length of 51 cm. Based upon the last dates presented by the doctor, he arrived exactly one week too late. His mother struggled for some 8 hours to bring him into this world and did a remarkable job (even though I was thrown one or two interesting sentences.:) )

Life is beatiful!

Based upon previous experience with getting kids, it will now take me two years or so before I write my next blog..   NOT...  :)    I'm too excited about Silverlight these days to not end up writing a post now and then.. 

Where did time go??

It's been close to 2 years since my last post..   What happened?    I'll tell you what happened..   5th of March 2005 I became a dad to a beautiful little girl called Mia. We're now expecting another baby in May, so I have to hurry up with blogging till then, seeing that I tend to be totally thrown off for a couple of years when having a baby.. :)