Welcome to my corner of the internet

My name is Jacob Buchreitz Harbo. Here you will find everything about me - or well, at least the part that I feel confident enough to publicize.

Who am I? I am a human. In a world of 8 billion people, I am but one face amongst many.

But I am privileged enough to have the education, the time, the drive, and the curiosity to explore all that I can in this wonderfully complex world of ours.

And here I hope to share it with you.

Throughout my life, I have been and done many things.

But most of all:

I have never stopped trying to imagine the world as a better place.

But I’m no great mover, no great shaker. So in the place of being able to change the world for the better, I try to bring smiles to the faces of others instead.

On this page, you’ll find a number of my attempts at doing just that.

“Viridia” is my book I wrote in an attempt to answer the question:

“What does it mean to be human 500 years from now?”

Five years, one Masterclass course, dozens of revisions, two spellcheckers, an artist, and a publisher later, it is now finally ready for publication.

It is a science-fiction novel of 426 pages, set to explore the concepts of humanity as humanity itself sets out to explore the titular world as part of the interstellar colonisation effort.

It takes the PoV of Alandra, a clone of a human who lived during our time, and thus they naturally serve as an audience surrogate - experiencing all the weirdness that a human from our time would have if placed in the situation she is in.

It is a book exploring adult questions of cognisance, scientific progress, what humanity means, and how we might deal with events that we have never dealt with before.

Oh, and there’s explicit sex in it. If the other topics didn’t sound adult enough to you, maybe that will.

But more than a book, I hope Viridia serves as an inspiration

I hope it is an inspiration to everyone who:

  • thinks their fictional world is dead on arrival:

    • It is not. I got Viridia published, and I am by no means a professional author.

    • Hell, the 50 shades of Grey series got published. If that’s not proof that anything can get published, I don’t know what is.

  • feels the world of today does not have a place for them

    • It does. And while I cannot change whatever troubles you, I made Viridia to be as inclusive as I could. Whatever you identify as, Viridia welcomes you.

  • have doubts whether humanity will survive the coming century

    • Viridia takes place so far into the future that our present concerns are far in the distant past. Earth, and all our present problems, do not matter. Our struggles are the struggles of the past. Climate change is solved, the robot uprising has come and gone. But we are still here.

Drone photography

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,
for there you have been, and there you will always long to return”

The above is a quote of unknown origin. It is frequently attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, but no solid link has been found to connect it to him

It doesn’t matter who said it first though - they were right.

I’ve been looking up at the skies for as long as I can remember, always wondering what it was like to soar with the birds - and while I cannot yet fly with the grace and speed that they do, I can join them in the sky with my drone.

With full 3-dimensional maneuverability, a 12 Megapixel camera with up to 7 times zoom, a max speed of about 70 km/h, and VLOS reach thanks to my A2 certificate, I can fly just about anywhere that is not:

  • Within 3 km of an aerodrome

  • In a no-fly zone

  • In a nature preserve.

  • On fenced-off private property.

As you might expect, this gives me an incredible amount of freedom when flying. On top of this, I can take pictures from perspectives that would otherwise be impossible, and the amount of smiles I have provided thanks to this is beyond my counting.

Giving everyone just a little hint of what the skies can offer us.

Games

It is said that people who cannot find time for recreation sooner or later will have to find time for illness. Luckily, I have never lacked for recreation thanks to my love of games.

Depending on the game, it’s a mixture of expanding your creativity, seizing opportunities, making connections, or honing a skill. You can get good at some games, but that’s almost secondary to the act of merely playing and understanding the rules.

Because by imposing rules upon your interactions, it allows an even playing field. You know that it doesn’t matter who or what you play with, all that matters if how you play.

Whether it is something like Dungeons & Dragons, Starcraft, chess, 500, or otherwise, games - by imposing rules - serve as a perfect ice breaker, and through them I have found many great friends - both the kind that I meet up with on the regular, and the kind that I play games with online.

No, really. Hear me out.

Pokemon, to me, is not just a franchise of adorable critters and world shattering threats, it’s a solarpunk masterpiece. Humans live in harmony with nature without sacrificing scientific progress, with lifelong partners that grow and evolve alongside them.

It is a setting where prepubescent children are let loose in a world of wonder and opportunity, exploring a world of wonder, full of mysteries to explore, while fostering companionship with the creatures they meet and help along the way.

And yet, while obviously meant as a game and setting for children, there’s just enough edge hidden beneath the surface that if you let yourself be inspired, you can create a narrative that can capture even adult audiences.

If you’re the kind to enjoy gritty realism, you obviously won’t find it here, but if you want to envision living in a world full of fantastical creatures and exploring that world alongside those creatures, you won’t find better than Pokemon.

It is distilled childlike wonder, and it is no coincidence that so many of my contemporaries are wondering: "I wonder what I would be like in the pokemon world, what kind of Pokemon I would have befriended during my life.”

I’m no exception. Pokemon was one of the first settings I ever created a character for.