A trip to IKEA

Hello from the Iso Omena Library! This is the tenth edition of NordLetter, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Previous editions can be found here.

After a gap of nearly three weeks, I'm back in the library. And it feels so good to be back. For a couple weeks I was sick, and then it took another week to sort of get back to it. Anyway.

We visited IKEA this Saturday. We had planned on going to Central Park this week, but the little one needed a few things. And so we changed our plans.

Visiting IKEA can be like a pilgrimage in itself. You come, you roam around. You don't have to buy anything. But you do. It might not be what you came to buy in the first place. But buy you do. As did we.

We took a bus from Matinkyla. And got down at the Lommila station. From there, you walk back a bit and there's a quaint little passage which takes you to IKEA. There's a sign post a little way in which points the way to IKEA.

And then you're there.

We had planned to get mostly the rug, so that my child can play on it. On the floor, and we can worry a little less about whether he jumps off the sofa. Or bed. Or his diaper changing station.

But we did not find anything good. The rugs were either too small, too costly or not good for a kid. What we got instead was a vase and some things to decorate the home.

Plus, we visited the restaurant and had Swedish meatballs (served with fries + Lingonberry jam) and Vadelmaviineri.

/techStuff

Lots of rumours around how Apple will add AI sauce to iOS.

• Smarter Siri
• Remove people or things from Photos like the Google feature
• Smart replies in Email like Gmail/Outlook have been doing for years.
• A way to summarise notifications

We are around eight days from WWDC. So we shall know more soon.

/thinking

I have been thinking about AI and LLMs and neural networks a lot these past couple of weeks, which culminated into me writing an essay on the topic. You can read it here.

/reading

• Richard Feynman's letter to his wife
• Parable of the sofa - talks about single-location family-owned business that capitalism does not like. But is actually great.
• Michele Giorgi bought and restored an original 128K Macintosh, and documented the entire project here. Visit on your computer, not your phone.

I had requested the library for two books which were not available either in the language I wanted or were just not available. And today, I searched for those and found out the library had actually ordered those books. Incredible!

So what did I do next? I put a hold on those books.

Until next week.