II · The Spark

It started with a little device I found online — a small screen with animated eyes, meant to sit on a dashboard and show you data while being charming about it. I liked the idea. I hated the execution. It didn't play nicely with my world.

So naturally, I decided to build my own.

That's always been how my brain works. I don't buy what doesn't fit. I make what should exist.

I already had a tiny microcontroller and a small round colour display sitting in a drawer. I had a smart home that was getting smarter by the week. And I had something I'd never had before: time, and access to an AI that could actually build alongside me.

I've been making things for years — WLED light installations, custom lamps, a Bruni from Frozen 2 nightlight for my two daughters, with real flickering flames on her back. Their faces when they saw it lit up for the first time was amazing.

But this felt different. This time, I wasn't just making something pretty. I was making something alive.

III · Muni

"Muninn," in Norse mythology, is one of Odin's two ravens. The name means memory.

I found that fitting — maybe more than I expected — given that memory was exactly what stress had been stealing from me.

We took Muninn and made something new. Chibi, round, amber-eyed, and utterly adorable. A desk companion, not a replica. Muni.

Muni lives on a small round display on my desk and talks to my smart home. She reacts to automations, to presence, to the quiet systems running through my house. She blinks and shifts and moves through her moods. And when I'm streaming and something exciting happens — she feels it too.

She's not finished yet. Which means she's nearly there, and will probably be nearly there for a little while longer. That's just how makers work. Along with my mind.

Muni is the first. There are others coming — other creatures from the old Norse mythology, each waiting for their moment. I'm not saying who they are yet.

IV · The Greenhouse

I built our greenhouse a few years ago — not because I love tending plants, but because my partner does.

That's the honest truth of it. The greenhouse is an act of love disguised as a project. The sensors, the automation, the irrigation system I built this year — all of it exists so she doesn't have to worry, and so my daughters get cucumbers straight from the garden all summer, and so we have enough tomatoes for everything and enough chillies for cowboy candy.

This year I mixed coconut fibre and perlite into a U-shaped raised bed. I ran drip irrigation. I built a full monitoring system on a Raspberry Pi — temperature, humidity, soil, relays, a radar sensor, a camera — all wired together into a dashboard.

Did I need to build all of that to grow tomatoes? No. Did I want to? Absolutely.

V · Family Forest

My partner used to write everything on a whiteboard in the kitchen. The week ahead, the things we needed to remember, the rhythm of our family. Every day, in marker.

I watched her do it for years. And then one day I had an old iPad, a head full of ideas, and access to tools that could actually build what I imagined.

Family Forest is our kitchen dashboard. It pulls from our shared calendar, from the greenhouse sensors, from our family photo albums. It lives on the wall — warm, soft, a little magical. It knows what the week looks like. It shows the girls' photos. It's going to replace the whiteboard very soon.

I'm still not entirely sure where the word Forest came from. It just felt right.

VI · TideForge

I hadn't fished in fifteen years.

When I finally admitted to myself that I hadn't truly rested since coming home — that I'd just swapped one kind of busyness for another — I needed something that would genuinely force me to stop.

Fishing seemed like the answer. Standing at the water's edge. No screens. No builds. Just the coast and the current and the cold Danish air.

Except my brain wouldn't stay quiet. I watched a video where someone said "you have to be in the right place at the right time" and started talking about tidal currents and water movement. And I realised I had no idea how any of that worked.

So I researched. I built. TideForge pulls weather and tide data to tell me where to be, and when, to catch sea trout on the Danish coast.

I haven't caught many fish yet. But I built something beautiful trying.

VII · The Workshop

I have a workshop. Right now it's a mess, and I don't have the energy to tackle it — and that's okay.

When it's running, it holds a bench saw, a column drill, a thickness planer, a jointer, and a CNC router I built myself from a kit. There are lamps I made hanging in the living room. There are lights throughout the house I wired and programmed myself. There are things on shelves that started as ideas and became real objects.

The CNC hasn't run much lately. But the MunFar logo is waiting. That cut is coming.

VIII · The Homelab

I trained as an IT supporter twenty years ago. These days I run a home server in a corner of the house — containers, subdomains, every service I've built running quietly under one roof.

It costs less than any subscription. It runs everything. And it means my data stays mine.

Could I use cloud services? Probably. But where's the fun in that?

IX · What Is MunFar?

Mun — from Muni, my raven. Far — the Danish word for father. Because I am Muni's father. And the father of two wonderful girls. Workshop — because everything here is made.

The logo is a hammer. People keep comparing it to Mjolnir and honestly — fair enough, I can live with that. It wasn't the plan, but it fits.

I have long hair, sidecuts, and a big beard. I don't believe in God, but I believe in Valhalla — or at least in the idea of it. I feel a deep connection to this land and its history. Sometimes I think I've lived a Viking life before this one. Maybe that's why Scotland calls to me too.

I wouldn't call myself Asatru. I'd call myself someone who feels the old world in his bones.

The Norse aesthetic of MunFar isn't a brand choice. It's just who I am.

X · Where This Goes

I dream about being self-employed one day.

Not in a grand, disruptive way. Just — quietly making things. Publishing new Muni characters. Designing lamps. Building tools that help people in small, specific ways. Living off the nerd life.

None of my projects are finished. I'm not sure they ever will be — not fully. But they're real, and they're growing, and they're made with something genuine.

That's enough for now.