Seasons come and seasons go; life turns in a constantly changing manner. But, as after every summer, I’m back and I long to write for you! 🙂

My summer

I’ve been having a great time this summer, playing lots and lots with my wonderful children! It’s funny that there’s no end to how many times you can go swimming/playing in water and do excursions within Sweden to amusement parks, fictional character theme parks and such. 🙂

No digital things

As you might know, every summer I try to take a few weeks completely away from computers, iPhone (and now iPad) and other things to just back to a core existence. This year, though, things were a bit different. Our society, and lots of things in it, makes it oh-so-much easier to get things done if you access it in a digital manner (this is also something Roger touched on in Frustrated by the Web).

So this summer, I had a couple of weeks away from the computer and (almost) only using the iPhone to make phone calls. However, I had a much longer time, maybe 7-8 weeks away from reading e-mail, tweets and Facebook, and this was great in terms of stress relief and focusing on more important things in my life. Maybe, just maybe, this means that there’s hope of me having a sane and long-lasting relationship with Internet and technical things. Here’s for hoping! 🙂

What happened during summer?

I know you read for various reasons, where some of you are are only interested in the Internet-related things I write about, some in the personal things, and some in all. So I have divided things I noticed and experienced into two categories below:

On the web

iPhone 4

The iPhone 4 was released, and while sporting some nice features, all the noise came to be about reception issues, and if you held it a certain way, it would lose a lot of the reception. Apple first claimed it was a software flaw where it missed to register a drop before, which was, of course, bullshit. I’ve tried to hold one myself, and it’s scarily easy to make it drop at least three bars in reception in a very short time.

Then Apple sort of came around and said every smart phone has that issue, and basically that was that. They also offer bumpers, a sort of protection (for those who want a condom on your phone) to try and prevent these reception drops. There are, as always, varying opinions about how Apple handled this; some think it was great, strong and proud, while others, like me, just felt offended by their lack of humble stance and think they could be more open and honest about it all from the get-go.

iOS4 on iPhone 3G

While on that topic, Apple released iOS4 which also had some nice things. However, and I’m not sure why it is like this, once installed on an iPhone 3G, it got dog slow and on the verge of unusable. To me it got to the point that I downgraded my iPhone 3G from iOS4 to iOS 3.1.3, and I’ve never been happier.

I’m sure iOS4 is great on later models, but was saddened to see just how bad it was on an iPhone 3G.

Introducing HTML5 book

The Introducing HTML5 book was released, written by Remy Sharp and Bruce Lawson, and I was proud to be asked to be a technical editor for it. I was editing/giving feedback on Remy’s chapter, and it spurred some interesting discussions and takes.

I do think it’s a great book that covers a lot of ground and I’m happy that I got the chance to read it before it was released. 🙂

IE9

Far from what most people expected, Microsoft are working really hard on IE9, and it just keeps on adding features, support and performance (explained in detail in Third IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers and Fourth IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers).

Impressive things, and I honestly hope it all pans out well. Hell, they even caved and implemented canvas, right? 🙂

Video of my SWDC 2010 presentation

At the beginning of June, I was giving a talk about HTML5 at the SWDC 2010 conference, and now there’s a video of my HTML5 talk. As always, it’s on pubslishingterrible to watch oneself, but maybe one or two of you might find it rewarding in any way.

H.264 and about being free

MPEG-LA recently announced that H.264 will be free, which isn’t really the case. Read more in Hold The Celebrations; H.264 Is Not The Sort Of Free That Matters. In my opinion, for something to work out for the web and the world, it has to be completely free. Period.

Prince and the Internet

Prince, the guy to really listen to about the Internet (…) claimed that “The internet’s completely over” and that it’s not the future for music sharing. More to read in the Prince interview.

Woot against AP

In a quite entertaining move, Woot called out AP on publishing rights and reimbursment. 🙂

Meme about Google Chrome

In the war about which web browser is the fastest, a funny move was the Opera/Chrome Rivalry Gets The Hitler Video Treatment. 🙂

Firefox 4 beta

During the summer, Mozilla started releasing betas of Firefox 4, which looks quite promising. The initial news are described in Firefox 4 Beta 1 and Firefox 4 beta 1 is here – what’s in it for web developers?.

Since then, a few more betas have been released as well, so try it out and let them know what you think!

Google Wave cancelled

At the beginning of August, Google Wave got cancelled. Perhaps not that shocking, but still, I didn’t believe it to happen so soon. Only the future can tell what the experiences and code will really turn into.

Lars Gunther rant

Lars Gunter wrote two very interesting and read-worthy pieces in No browser supports HTML5 yet. Part 1. and No browser supports HTML5 yet. Part 2.

If you haven’t yet, I recommend reading them!

Ben and Dion stepping down with Ajaxian

After lots of work and efforts, Ben and Dion were stepping down with Ajaxian. I just want to say thanks for all the work, and good luck with your future endeavours!

In life in general

World Cup

As you all know, Football World Cup took place, which was quite an interesting happening this summer. It also, unfortunately, proved that sportsmanship isn’t really that good, some of them weren’t really good role models and that there are definitely some shortcomings in rules and decision-making. One day, I might write a more detailed rant about it…

The Dice Man

During summer I finally took the time to read The Dice Man, which, in my opinion, is a fantastic book – it’s both funny and thoroughly entertaining, but also very thought-worthy and touching on some serious things in our society.

While reading it, for a number of reasons, I was completely ready to just grab the dice and see where they would take me!

Kolmården

I was visiting the Kolmården animal park with my family, which is basically packed with children and their parents, and everyone is looking nice and friendly. However, one guy there got my attention: he was a large bloke, tattoos everywhere, including the face, and for the day he had chosen his (I presume favorite) t-shirt with the text reading “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!”. Classy…

Boat builder?

During summer, I had quite a large beard, and at one time when I ran into someone I have only met once before and greeted him, he had a hard time placing me (fair enough). After some thought, he has convinced he had it, and asked if I was a boat builder on an island in the outer Stockholm archipelago. How looks can deceive… 🙂

Riding the bull

During a visit to a western park called High Chaparral I tried riding a mechanical bull for the first time in my life (being sober and far away from anyone knowing me felt like a good idea 🙂 ). It went, well, so-so…

The most amusing thing, though, was one guy who couldn’t even get on the bull to begin with! 🙂

Protein shakes and health risks

For those of you working out and drinking protein shakes regularly, some disturbing news came out in a report from Consumer Reports, stating that there are Dangerous Chemicals in Protein Shakes, such as Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, and Mercury. Make sure that you are not drinking one of them!

Being back

So, that was that I wanted to get off my chest (and probably tons of things that I missed). I sincerely hope you had a great summer, and I look forward to writing for you again, and I hope to get the chance to meet as many as possible of you in real life as well.

Take care, and onwards!