I've been aiming to slim my bike pack size to get rid of the rear rack and panniers. In this vein, I just got myself a sleeping mat the size of a soda can, the Therm-a-Rest UberLite, and a light summer quilt, the Cumulus Quilt 150. These fit snugly in my front fork bag (the Ortlieb Fork-Pack 5.8L), which is insane!

It's going to be really interesting to test these out once the weather warms up. The Uberlite has a shoddy track record with leaks and punctures, so I'm hoping this one holds up. The Cumulus Quilt is high quality down, but I'm a bit unsure if it ends up being too cold after all. On paper, it is as warm as my old sleeping bag (comfort +9C), but due to its much smaller pack size, it is considerably thinner.

One of the few perks of living in Kiruna are the various natural phenomena in the sky above.

I thought it would be interesting to write up a "favorite board games" post once per year to see how my preferences evolve.

After a few months of darkness, the Sun is decidedly above the horizon again here in Kiruna. We've had some beautiful winter days these last couple of weeks.

This is taken from Gruvstadsparken, a once urban area now reshaped into a park due to it no longer being safe for permanent housing.

As a member of the student satellite project APTAS, I got to present our yearly update at the Finnish Winter Satellite Workshop 2024.

Exciting to meet other people working and studying in the space sector, including former SpaceMaster students!

Follow @project_aptas on Instagram for updates.

This August I started studying space technology in the joint European SpaceMaster master's program. This is a two-year program where students spend the first year in Kiruna in Swedish Lapland and the second year in another European university of their choice.

Here are some pictures from my first semester here.

Me and my friend Oskar spent two months last spring cycling in South Korea and Japan.

☝️ Here's us at the starting point in Incheon near Seoul

I've made an archived version of my old website available at old.aapo.kii.so.

I'm changing the website to a more modern tech stack with easier content management tools (static Nuxt 3 with a built-in Markdown CMS module).

It'll take a while to get everything set up and to migrate old content, but due to a deadline with my previous hosting provider, I wanted to get the site up and running already this weekend.

Hopefully, I'll post more in the future now that I have better tools at my disposal!