Today Steve Irwin was fatally wounded by a stingray barb today, and passed away. He was known to most people as the Crocodile Hunter and has influenced an entire world with his work with animals.

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Today it’s my birthday! Yay for me! How old I am? I have now reached the age of 32, but still feel very young (most of the time).

If you’re one of those kind souls that now feel an urge to congratulate me, I’d be more than happy to accept your comment! Please write Happy Birthday in your own language so we can all learn something from this… 🙂

So, blow my candle! (English isn’t my first language, so please excuse me if there’s anything wrong in that sentence… :-P)

There’s something I haven’t told you; I’ve even kept a secret, if you will. As you might know, a number of web developer bloggers also create secondary blogs that deal with their other interests; topics such as coffee, wine, food etc seem to be very popular. So, now it’s time for me to reveal my new blog, and it will, hopefully, be nothing like you’ve ever seen!

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When I first heard about Flickr I liked the idea, but being the rebel I am, I was a bit reluctant to use it since everyone was hyping it so much. However, for those of you that haven’t noticed the little Flickr icon and link I’ve added to this web site: I now have a Flickr Pro account.

During this summer I decided to finally take the plunge, and this post is about what I think is good respectively not-so-good with Flickr.

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Yes! I’m back! And let me tell you that I’ve missed you, and I’ve missed writing. There’s something extraordinary about writing blog posts and then get in touch with and make friends with people from all over the world. To have discussions with like-minded people about topics which we share an interest in.

This post will be filled to the brim with various information; from a new feed URL and other changes to what I’ve been doing this summer, so please read on.

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This is my goodbye. For now. Starting today I will be on a four-month parental leave, from work and any other responsibilities, to spend time with my daughter Emilia. I truly couldn’t think of anything better to do with my life.

During this time I might write some post, but then again I don’t find it likely. My idea right now is to start writing here in September again, if I feel like I want to and that I can contribute in any way, but please don’t take that as a promise.

I would just redirect a big thank you to the numerous people reading, commenting and helping me out in any way. Also, you have all made me become a better web developer, writer and person.

Thank you, all. Take care of yourselves, and of others.

My whole life, as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of dying. The fear seems to hit me in waves, but it’s always there, constantly reminding me of my mortality.

As we grow up, most of us reach a time when we start to think about life, death, universe, why we’re here. Some think about it while lying in their beds at night staring out into the darkness, some share it with friends when drunk and some just try to suppress these thoughts as soon as they surface. What almost every person seems to have in common with each other, though, is that we desperately try to find a reason for living, a meaning with our existence.

One person might find cause through religion, while others find comfort in trying to understand as much as possible of the science we use to try to explain this phenomenon we refer to as life. But almost everyone seems to strive for an answer, a reason, a motivation to keep going.

Why am I afraid? I can’t even begin to fathom that my life will end, that my body will stop functioning and that all the thoughts, love and sorrows I bear with me will vanish. That I will cease to exist, and that I will be just gone.

I’ve heard that the older one gets, the more one comes to term with the fact that life isn’t endless. That we have been given a certain amount of time to live, and all we can do is try to make the best out of it.

You might look upon these thoughts as the ones of an unhappy man; on the contrary! My life is beyond my wildest expectations! I have a wonderful girlfriend, and a daughter that I love so much that no words of man are worthy of describing such strong feelings. I have seen so many things, been to numerous places and have met so many interesting people in my life. In my line of work I have reached a moderate success and respect, and I constantly want to become better at what I do. I also sincerely hope to constantly keep evolving into a better and less selfish human being.

But all that just makes the fear even worse to handle. To one day lose everything I’ve fought so hard for; to not be around to help and aid my family, in sorrow and in joy. At times, I can just neglect the various thoughts, and then at other times I desperately stare out into the vast emptiness hoping to find some way to be strong enough to withstand the psychological terror a fear of death brings to you.

Ever had a dream that felt more real than life itself? I’m sure you have, one time or another. Some of mine have been dreams of actually dying, waking up in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat and literary screaming my anxiety out into the room; my mind boggling and my body shaking with reluctance against the implication of death.

Maybe we do have souls, perhaps they do live on forever; maybe we’re all incarnated from who knows how long back in time. There is the slightest chance that we might remember and carry with us who we are, and that’s the fraction of hope I cling on to. Nevertheless, my fear is still there.

To be hit by a meme is usually quite entertaining, and I like the nostalgic feel of the latest one. First Faruk got me and then Jonathan Snook took a stab so I have nothing else to do but abide and share some parts of my history.

One year ago

Just a little over a year ago I wasn’t entirely pleased with my employer, so out of boredom/curiosity I started this blog. It was then on Blogger and in Swedish. When I signed up I had to choose a name for it, and in a panicky fashion I choose the corny name “Roberts prat” (which loosely translates to Robert’s talk), and it just stuck around. After a few weeks I realized that I knew a number of English-speaking people who would be interested in reading too, plus the fact that it would make it easier to reach out, so I translated the posts I had written so far into English.

April 11th last year, I launched this domain and presented the blog now migrated to WordPress, a move that I don’t regret.

My wonderful daughter Emilia was about 8 months old then.

Five years ago

I had fairly recently gotten back from my New York stint and been working for some months for a company called iBizkit. Very valuable lessons were learned and I left the company to travel around the world in 2002.

I was also (finally) living within Stockholm city, in the great Södermalm part, together with Fredrika. I was also working out a lot of the time.

Ten years ago

Ten years ago it was still seven months till I would purchase my first computer. I had moved away from home to my own apartment located in the area of Mariehäll in Bromma, 43 square meters/51.4 square yards consisting of one room and a kitchen.

I was working for UPS and had just been internally promoted to dealing with their key accounts in the terms of billing and any accounting queries they might have. I left this job at the end of 1997 to travel around in Australia for a couple of months.

Who’s next?

I had to do some serious pondering when it came to this. I wanted to choose persons that don’t normally get memes, to give them a chance. So, therefore, I proudly pass it on to Carl Camera, Stuart Colville and Shane Shepherd.

Some days the world seems to be genuinely evil. It’s not that it necessarily happen more bad things those specific days, but just that they, some way or another, get your attention then.

To read and hear about children starving, being mistreated, raped and tortured to death, my heart bleeds. These small innocent creatures whose only point of comfort should be grown-ups, and in particular their parents. How a person deliberately can hurt kids that don’t even understand what’s going on, people bringing pain to babies who have just been born, is beyond me.

What drives a person to commit such things? Fathers raping their daughters in their own beds, the true safe place they should have. And it’s not just about the physical act; it’s about the shame, the guilt and the thoughts of what they could possibly have done wrong to make their father treat them, to punish them, like that.

Pedophiles using children just to reach a sick climax. There’s truly something wrong with the world if there’s even a need for a word to describe such a terrible occurrence. Being a guy, I definitely know that there are weird things that can turn us on, but there has to be some mental barrier, something that separates a sick fantasy from an actual action. And if you can’t, get help! Now! How can you sodomize a small child just to get off?

What the hell is wrong with you?! What. The Hell. Is. Wrong. With. You?!

So many things that I hear about, I sometimes truly think man is evil.

Let me just finish by saying that if you see something weird, suspect some foul play: intervene. Naturally, a majority of families are normal and handle their children just fine, but in my book it’s better to ask than to just look the other way.

Take care of each other now. Please.

Now the Olympic Winter Games in Torino is over and we all go back to leading our normal lives. I have always liked the Olympic Games, the spirit and all the attention that surround them; from the opening ceremony through all the events till the very end. I think it breeds hope for a lot of people and unites them.

For Sweden, this was the most successful Winter Olympics ever with 7 gold medals, two silver medals and 5 bronze medals, ending up as the sixth best nation in total in Turin. This was way over any Swede’s expectation and in the little betting pool we had at work, no one was even close when it came to the number of gold medals.

The thing that most of us Swedes hoped for and which also came true is the gold in Ice Hockey. The team arrived home in Sweden yesterday afternoon and after going on a tour through Stockholm they arrived at a big square called Medborgarplatsen (translated: Citizen’s Square), where they were celebrated by around 30 000 people! I left work a little earlier to participate in the celebrations and when I and a colleague arrived there it was such a crowd that it was almost impossible to get anywhere.

Frustrated with not seeing anything I decided to climb up a tree to getter a better view. Problem was, the lowest branches were fairly high up so I had to climb the first part of the tree by hugging the trunk and jerking myself upward. Once up, for the first time I realized how many people that had actually shown up; wherever I looked there were heads bobbing back and forth trying to get a view.

Naturally, on the way up, I scraped my hands and legs from the trunk hugging so there were a number of places where small drops of blood surfaced. But hey, if they could win the gold, I sure could stand some pain climbing some sissy tree to get a better view.

It was about -5 Celsius (that’s about 23 Fahrenheit) and the air density was rough and merciless. After changing position every five minutes, with the fear of falling down on all the people below, and occasionally getting my more delicate parts crushed against a certain rigid branch, the Ice Hockey team finally arrived thirty minutes later.

There were singing, dancing, interviews and a lot of happy people everywhere! The happenings on the scene lasted for about thirty minutes or so, and then the festivities continued in a lot of other places in the city. If you’re interested, you can watch videos from different events during the Olympic Games and the celebration in Stockholm in the Olympics section of the Swedish Television web site

All we can do know is to wait for the World Cup in football this summer and the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008… 🙂

My brother is currently living in London, for a study period between January and May. If you’re interested in reading about his impressions and the things he goes through, make sure to visit his blog ; I find it very entertaining! 🙂

If you’re in London yourself, please read this: He listens to the name of Martin. He’s a very nice guy and can talk for hours about topics that interest him. He’s a slow eater (just like me). He misses his girlfriend, his friends and his family. He’s extremely loyal.

Apparently the other day some kids shoot a paintball (paintball bullet?) and hit the window to his room. That shall not happen again! Therefore, I strongly encourage you to download this button image below, print it and put in your jacket.

Some events recently has made me wonder how people see me and my opinions, how I’m perceived. I sometimes doubt I make good with what I write and what opinions I express.

I can sometimes be very direct with what I say about things I see and read; people can occasionally see it as outright blunt. This is also accompanied by a sarcastic and ironic sense of humor, which probably doesn’t make things better. But let me assure, I am really not evil. Perfection is definitely a subjective and relative word, although I always strive to make things as good as they can possibly be. And when I see people not doing their outmost to achieve that, people that just deliver something half-ass, it upsets me.

I’m not saying that everyone has to be addicted to what they do, but in my mind, why spend at least 40 hours a week on something that people know, or at least should know, is barely mediocre? Sure, many do it just to get paid and to live life fully outside their job. And I respect that, I really do. But one thing doesn’t have to exclude the other; being focused on doing a good job shouldn’t automatically mean a poor private life on the side.

We have a short time living and we ourselves are the only ones that can decide what to do with that time, that can affect our everyday situation. Do we want to spend the majority of it to actually accomplishing something, maybe even exceeding our expectations, or do we just want to use that time to fund the rest of it?

My parents have always been fighters and I think it’s the way I was raised; if I want something real bad, I have to fight for it. It sounds like such a cliché, but no pain, no gain. It takes hard work to be good at something, no matter what field we are talking about. And it saddens me that so few seem to even make any feeble attempt to try to make attain something worthwhile.

Henry Rollins made the observation that if you’re 20 and express your feelings in an intense and worked-up way, it’s normal. If you’re forty and do the same, people see you as bitter. He might be spot-on with what he follows up with (Henry, sorry for the, most likely, misquote):

The day I stop caring is the day I die

I sometimes wonder why I get so upset when I see poor code, when I read articles or blog posts from people that in my eyes haven’t done their best when producing it. Perhaps it’s just something that has to do with me. Maybe I waste time, strength and effort for nothing; maybe I get too involved in things that aren’t worth it, and judge people much too hard.

Perchance I should listen and act more according to the wonderful phrase Johnny Depp utters as the Willie Wonka character in Charlie’s Chocolate factory, when a young spoiled girl tries to get his attention:

I can’t imagine why I would care…

There’s is a likeliness that I hurt people with acting so frank, and the possibility that people don’t see me as constructive at all, but just as judgmental, uptight and acting like Mr. Know-it-all. That I never encourage people but only highlight their tiny and highly insignificant flaws.

If I have hurt someone by the things I communicate, I sincerely apologize. It is not meant to be personal; I honestly do aim to be constructive while I at the same time can be tough. If it’s any comfort at all, let me reveal that the one that I put the highest pressure on is me.

Please don’t hesitate to let me know, I strongly urge you to be utterly honest: What do you think? Should I just chill, or am I on a good path? Am I being negative?

Last weekend was yet another wonderful one, spent together with my family and taking long walks in the snowy landscape. Yesterday morning, Emilia and I went on a walk before Fredrika woke up, and, since it was getting warmer, the initiative to build a snowman came up before the opportunity would pass.

While constructing it, I was seriously doubting if I have ever built a snowman before in my entire life. I must have, right? I’m not particularly gifted with working with my hands (except for playing the guitar and some other things…), I’m more the type of man that just lifts or moves heavy stuff and puts it down again, but still, the work with the snowman didn’t go as smooth as I had hoped.

Emilia didn’t seem all that interested in it either, she helped me patting the snowman now and then to make it smooth, but otherwise she went on her own adventures. I worked on it for a while and then Fredrika came out and provided me with the necessary pieces to be able to give him a face. Maybe this just looks like a scary-ass snowman to you, but I still you hope enjoy seeing it:

Love is in the air. Or rather, it wasn’t in the air yesterday, until 20:00 last night. But let me start from the top:

Knowing that I would not get away from work yesterday, Valentine’s Day of all days, before all flower shops were closed, I decided to order flowers online instead and have them sent to Fredrika. Big mistake. Just after 08:00 I arrived at work to peacefully get online and order them before everyone else got to work. Problem 1: the customer I was working at yesterday have a web filter in which my desired flower web site was banned (trust me, I will really get back on this topic another day), but after some trickery that would involve my surfing being logged by them, I got in.

I chose a nice bouquet of red roses and clicked to get to the confirmation page, the one after you entered all the tedious details and to basically just get an overview to see if everything is correct, and then just click confirm to have them sent. Problem 2: while the page looked fine, no confirm button was to be found. My guess was, since I was using Firefox, that the web site had some inaccessible script approach that would only work in IE on a PC (I mean, we’ve all seen that one before…). So I switched to IE. Went through the same steps, got to the confirmation page, but still the same problem. No fucking confirm button!

Getting a little stressed, and at the same time being a web developer geek, I decided to look at the source code of the page to see if I could find the error and get around it somehow. Bad move. I was wading through terrible code; some of it is shared below:

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
if (navigator.appName == 'Netscape') {
	document.write('<input type="text" name="LevTextKort" SIZE="33" MAXLENGTH="103" tabindex="25" value="">');
}
else {
	document.write('<input type="text" name="LevTextKort" SIZE="48" MAXLENGTH="103" tabindex="25" value="">');
}
// -->
</script>

and:

isIE4 = ((document.all) ? true : false);
isNS4 = ((document.layers) ? true : false); etc...

Very popular code approach. If this had been 1999!!!

Anyway, the reason the confirmation page wasn’t working properly was because of the fact that some non well-formed code was written to the page (actually, pretty much in line with the rest of the code, to be honest), that, in some weird way, prevented me from actually confirming my order and making it all happen. So I decided to call their customer service: the line was busy! How the hell can you have a customer service number that’s busy?! Have some kind of queue or at the very least an answering machine service explaining that there are too many calls at the moment.

Instead I called their switchboard, basically just telling them that I couldn’t confirm my purchase at their web site. After saying that, I was immediately dispatched to some person in customer service… The conversation went something like this:

– I can’t buy flowers on your web site, it’s impossible to confirm my order.
– Yes, we know, being Valentine’s Day and all, we have a lot of traffic.
Thinking: So?
-Well, ok, but the reason maybe isn’t just the traffic but that actual parts of the code is missing.
– Yes, we know, being Valentine’s Day and all, we have a lot of traffic. Also slightly insinuating that I should try later…
Ok, come on! Losing it now…
– Ok, but what should I do then? What do I do if I want to order flowers right now?!
– Are you paying by credit card?
– Yes!
– I guess I can take your order then over the phone…Sounding very uncomfortable
I exclaimed a sarcastic “Yay!” in my head

We then went through the order, which took some time, and all the time she insisted on humming. It might be soothing for some people, but it definitely wasn’t for me. I was just pacing back and forth with the phone, you know that kind of pacing that you do to get some aggression out of your system, just to make sure my tone of voice wouldn’t reveal my actual feelings.

When we were done, I finally thought things were ok and went back to work. Later, when I got home around 18:30, no flowers had been delivered. I tried to keep my calm but was probably visibly upset. I explained to Fredrika that I had ordered flowers, that I really do love her. She just shrugged and said that she hadn’t really expected anything, that it was all cool. It made me feel a little better, but mentally, while sipping the white wine and having dinner, I was already preparing for the scolding the flower company would get the day after.

The evening passed by quietly, and after Emilia had fallen asleep we were sitting on the couch, carelessly watching TV. At 20:00, I heard a car door being slammed shut just outside and just as I got up, the door bell rang. As probably all of you who have children know, a ringing door bell just after your child has fallen asleep isn’t that popular. Nevertheless, luckily Emilia seemed to keep on sleeping and I ran to the door to see who it was. And lo and behold: the flower delivery man!

He was reeking of cigarette smoke and so was the paper that surrounded the flowers, but I couldn’t really care less. The flowers had arrived! And in the poor delivery man’s defense: if I had to drive around during the evening of Valentine’s Day delivering flowers to all kinds of weird addresses, I would probably also need some kind of drug to motivate me…

So, all’s well that end well!

You want a moral to this story? Life is actually good! And, oh, don’t do e-commerce if you can’t handle it. 😉

The year of the Rooster is soon up and we’re going into the year of the Dog (is that a good sign?). I just wanted to collect my impressions from 2005 and also tell you about the future of this web site.

Still reading? Good! I was hoping the future-thing would catch your attention; I’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. This will not be a list of the posts on the Internet I found to be the best nor about how people have mentioned me in various contexts and linked to me. A post such as that would be so boring. So, gone is the list of praise and the one of narcissism.

The thanks

I do, however, have a list of people that have meant a lot for me during my web life of 2005. Sure, there will be names you will recognize there, but they’re not there for being well-known but for the fact that they’re great persons. The people listed here are, to me at least, extraordinary and their kindness and humble attitude have meant the world to me.

Without a doubt, there are a lot of persons I’d like to list, so if you’re not in this particular list please accept my apologies for leaving you out. I decided to only pick persons who have been there throughout the whole time since I started to write here in March of 2005. Some of them I still haven’t met in real life, but I do sincerely hope that will change soon.

So, without further ado:

Fredrika & Emilia

You are my everything and your support and you putting up with me are things beyond what I can grasp.

Henrik Box

Henrik, I don’t always treat you fair or nice, and we can usually be pretty harsh to each other, but in the end you are my closest friend and I’m extremely glad that we have gotten to be friends! I love you, man.

Jeroen Mulder

I got to know Jeroen around the beginning of April, and I just love his laid back look on life, his wits and him always being happy. He has also been very supportive of my writings; be it here, articles or from a code-point of view. And am I the only one hearing the X-Files theme from a faint distance when I read his last name out aloud? 🙂

Roger Johansson

Roger (or R-man, as everyone here in Sweden calls him ;-)) was one of the first to support my writings, and him giving me attention and support has been invaluable for me. I truly think that a lot of you reading this wouldn’t if there hadn’t been for Roger.

Faruk Ates

One of my first posts was about XHTML, Faruk’s favorite topic, at least back then, and after commenting on my post he got in touch with me over IM and we’ve been friends ever since and speak fairly often. Don’t let his web site fool you that he’s got a big ego (nudge ;-)), he’s got a heart of gold and is more down-to-earth than most people.

Tommy Olsson

I got to know Tommy during April, and his style and tone in a post on his now resting web site and his humble approach in a reply to an e-mail I sent to him, immediately gave me the impression that this is really a genuine and honest guy. I miss Tommy’s writings, but I hope we can maybe come up with something else together.

I would also like to direct a big thank you to everyone reading and commenting, you are my muses and motivation to write every single post I publish!

The future

Ok… (deep inhale).
I’ve decided something about the future of this web site that might or might not become a major change. This is actually my 202nd post since March (not bad, eh?) and lately, I’ve felt that I’m not going anywhere with what I write and read; I’m not evolving. I love writing, so don’t worry, I won’t stop writing here. What will change, though, are the topics. I will continue to write about web developing but probably not to such an extent as before.

I want to write about things that motivate and interest me, not because I have to choose a certain topic for the sole reason to increase my rating at Technorati, get me more linking in general or that I have to do it because people thinks it’s my obligation (Bryan Veloso touches on this phenomenon in Being Liked is an Obligation?).

This will probably result in that 50% of the posts will still be about web developing in some sorts, 25% about other internet- and/or tech-related things and the rest will be about my personal life, musings, linking to interesting stuff or whatever. My life is about so much more than web developing and I want that to be reflected in my writings. My sincere hope is that this is something that you will appreciate, that you will come here for my personality and style of writing instead of just high-profile web development topics.

Oh my God, who does he think he is? Just because he’s gotten some attention, he thinks we will read any crap that he puts out?

Well, yeah, maybe. That’s my wish, at least. Some people have told me that they don’t read my posts when they aren’t about web developing, and I totally respect that. I can’t demand that you like everything I write, it’s just what I’m striving for. However, I do think this web page will be more multi-faceted, that you will always be able to read about something interesting no matter in what area it is about, instead of me only telling you about HTML/XHTML, CSS or JavaScript.

I will also start to read posts and news from web sites and people I haven’t before, so that will also most likely affect and color my writings. I just need to break out of the bad circle I feel I’ve gotten into, I need to explore new grounds. This might just end up in a big fiasco, but I definitely hope it will be the opposite. Are you ready to try and follow me on my new path?

Happy New Year and my wishes that your 2006 will be great!

I hope all of you have had a nice Christmas and that the season is indeed jolly for you! I hadn’t planned on writing this post, but just felt an urge to share this little anecdote.

On Christmas Day I was sitting on the floor playing around with Emilia. Her current object of interest was this thing with four small hatches and each of them has a corresponding button. When the button is pressed, the hatch flies open and displays an animal. I was holding the toy in one hand, and when she succeeded to get all of the animals up I wanted to encourage her by applauding, but since one hand was unavailable I instead gently clapped my cheek with the other hand.

She then closed all hatches, pressed the buttons so they came up and then consequently bitch-slapped me. Hard! So, lesson learned I guess. Whatever you do, your kids will take after you… 🙂

Below are two images from Christmas in our house:

Now it’s the Christmas time of year again! No matter what situation you’re in and what’s going on in your life, just take some most likely well-deserved time off now and just relax and embrace the holiday spirit!

I have always loved Christmas and winter, and I hope my daughter will feel the same. I also hope that I and Fredrika manage to convey the nice warm fuzzy feeling of Christmas and love to Emilia too, and that she will regard this holiday as the highlight of the year. Luckily she isn’t old enough for me to reach the point in life every parent does, when we get to pass on our words of winter wisdom:

Don’t eat yellow snow…

This is Emilia’s second Christmas and this year our Christmas tree is even bigger than last year’s. The thing is, our living room has a very high ceiling so even before we moved in, my plans were to always have a gargantuan tree and this year it’s reaches 4 meters! 😀

Now I’m going to have time off until January 9th unless something goes fundamentally wrong. I really look forward to just spending time with the family, relaxing and taking control over my life again. No computers, just quality time.

A very Merry Christmas to all of you and Happy New Year!

PS. I will write one more post this year, probably around the day before New Year’s Eve, summing up 2005 and what it meant to me. DS.

PS 2. Make me real happy and write how to say Merry Christmas in your language (and what language it is :-))! DS.

First, let me apologize if you have found the content and the quality of it here a bit sub-par lately; however, I hope I’ve gotten back on track with my posts this week. This post is about things that have gone too far…

As of Friday December 15th I had 63 hours of overtime, in December alone. Simply put, the reason for this is that I have been involved in a crazy project as a consultant for a client where the release date and budget was set without consulting any web developer at all what time it would actually take to achieve everything they wished for. I won’t, and can’t, share any of the details with you here, but suffice to say, I’ve had enough.

Last Thursday I had a short meeting with their manager that’s responsible for my assignment, and I told him that I wish to discontinue it. I’m probably burning bridges with my decision, but at least he seemed to understand and respect my stance. On the other hand, I probably burned them already when I refused to launch a web site where the text of every link was “Read more”…

If I had been younger and single, maybe I could’ve dealt with it, but now I have a family. I don’t want to be away from home 15+ hours per day, never seeing my girlfriend or daughter except for when they’re asleep. My top priority isn’t work anymore. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I love working with the web, but that lust has slowly been drained ounce by ounce lately… And I don’t want to lose that, it’s given me a lot of joy and interesting opportunities. Therefore, I decided I had to move on.

Another thing I’ve decided to stop wasting my time on is narrow-minded people who aren’t willing to learn. If they just want to keep on developing web sites the way it was done many many years ago, no desire to evolve whatsoever, that’s fine with me. On the other hand, people who don’t know how to do it, but are open to discussing web standards, CSS, unobtrusive JavaScript, accessibility etc are more than welcome to come and talk with me! It’s all about attitude and ambition.

I just hope one day that the ones that don’t care about those things mentioned above will realize that they have to evolve to be able to survive in this line of business…

Lastly, I will stop wasting my time trying to get recognized by the famous names in the Internet business. I’m not sure if it actually is like that, but sometimes I get the feeling that all I see is the same names, promoting each other all over, and there’s a hard struggle to get into that group. Or maybe it’s just me. Whichever, I have decided to solely focus on what I’m writing here, not lobbying to get mentioned elsewhere. If people like what I write and want to mention it, I couldn’t be happier. But it won’t be talked about just because I beg of them to do that.

Now I will try to focus more on writing helpful articles and hopefully funny and interesting anecdotes, and if I decide to criticize anything, to then do it in a respectful and constructive manner (something I think I did with my post JavaScript animations). Time to let content and quality be king. Enough of wasting my life on the wrong things.

No, this is not a mushy story about how I met my girlfriend; this is about when I actually did meet Miss Universe. This story takes place when I was about fourteen years old.

Me and my little brother were playing land hockey outside our house, you know with sticks and a tennis ball, when a car drove into our parking lot. We didn’t pay much attention to it, when you’re a kid you don’t care that much about grown-ups coming and going. Especially since my parents have had a dog kennel with an extremely good reputation for way longer than I’ve lived, breeding German Shepherds, we got pretty used to meeting a lot of different people.

So, we just kept on playing, and as I remember it, they were nice and said hi to us, and we probably reacted like most kids do: with silence. I was standing there in jogging pants, a dirty t-shirt, sweaty and with snot running from my nose, being all worked up. As they passed me towards the door to the house, I realized how extremely good looking she was, and how hot her ass was. I mean, come on, I had just become a teen with all the accompanying hormones to go with it.

Their visit piqued my curiosity, and soon after that we stopped playing and went into the house. Mom and Dad sat talking to her and her husband, and seemed to have a really good time, while I and Martin were just gladly watching. They were, naturally, there to get a dog but the conversation seemed to cover a lot of other topics as well (bear in mind, my memory might be a little vague on the details here… :-)).

When they had left, I found out that she was Yvonne Ryding, the Miss universe of 1984 and her then husband was famous Swedish actor Kjell Bergqvist. Interesting experience, to say the least. I just love to take walks down memory lane now and then… 🙂

This is probably something you don’t want to read about, so please feel free to wait for the next post, one that will probably be (more) normal. Maybe blogs aren’t supposed to contain posts this kind…

Thursday and Friday this week, I’ve been working at home, and on Thursday I went to this singing group with Emilia where she and a lot of other very young kids play around accompanied by some music and singing of children’s tunes. Great time!

Thursday night, or rather Friday morning, she was waking up every half hour or so, crying and being generally restless. Pretty common, though, it might be bad dreams, separation anxiety etc, so I didn’t think too much about it. At about 02.30, I went into her room to get her and when I started to pick her up I noticed that she and all of he things in her bed were wet, and it was smelling rather bad. I switched on the light and it turned out that she had thrown up all over.

Fredrika took care of her bed while I changed her pyjamas and washed her clean. We took her into our room to sleep between us, for comfort and for being near. Five minutes later she threw up again. Same routine again with washing her, changing the pyjamas etc. Back to bed again. This time maybe 20 minutes passed before she again threw up. The “Pyjamas routine” started again…

After that she seemed calm and slept through the rest of the night, and feeling just fine the day after.

We have something here in Sweden (and probably at least in the rest of Europe as well) called the Winter Vomiting Disease, which is a kind of virus that makes you violently ill for about 24-48 hours, throwing up, shitting all; basically pure terror. We guessed that Emilia’s sickness was just due to something she had eaten. That is, until Fredrika got really sick today. I won’t go into graphical details, but let me tell you, it’s really bad.

So, I’ve been playing around with Emilia, taking her for a walk and such, and thinking that I had been spared; I mean, I’ve never had the virus before (come to think of it, neither has Fredrika). When I fed Emilia about 18.00 I had had an oncoming feeling of nausea for about an hour, so I went into the bathroom. Two visits later and a lot of nasty no. 2 I knew I had to change her diaper, because it was smelling bad (is there something like sympathy shitting?). While I was changing it, I felt something just bubbling up inside of me. Leaving her om the nursery table, I turned around and darted for the toilet. On the way there I threw up through my hands, feebly trying to hold the worst of it back. I spewed on Emilia’s favorite book, a water proof one she always read when we’re taking baths, and all over the floor.

I heard her crying desperately, having been thoroughly scared, but there was jus nothing I could do. Between my gushes of my latest lunch, I cried out to Fredrika that she just had to come. Luckily she was in between her “God, I just want to die”-sessions, so she ran down the stairs and took care of Emilia. When I was done and had cleaned the vomitly raped bathroom, I got out to show her that I was ok, that it was just a lapse of something temporarily bad.

However, I knew there was little chance that we could take care of her in the state we were in, so I called my mom, who just lives ten minutes away from were by car. A little moment later, my brother and his girlfriend came to pick Emilia up and drive here there (Mom was throwing a dinner party, one that we were supposed to attend, so she had taken a drink and couldn’t drive herself). Here’s where this story turns emotionally bad.

First, Emilia has never spent a night without both of us, Second, the first snow has just fallen here. Instead of me going outside with Emilia to see her astonishment and to hear her lovely:

Titta!

(which means “Look!” in English) we just gave her away, with the recent uncomfortable experience of seeing/hearing me throwing up violently. Maybe I’m just overly sentimental right now, but I saw them drive away with tears in my eyes, cursing this virus to hell. I will get better as soon as possible, so I can take her home again.

Live blogging about vomiting and shitting while in the midst of it… There must be something really wrong with me. I just felt sad and wanted to share, I hope you understand. I feel my stomach cramping again now, so it’s probably a good time to stop. Take care, all, and also, you probably shouldn’t expect any new post in the next couple of days.

I’m sorry, what’s that, honey? When I need to get up? Well, now I guess. Thanks for reminding me, sunshine!

is how it sounded in my head. But what came out was:

Uuuuggghh… My head.. God, I’m tired… Yeah, yeah, I know I have to get up and go to work… Ooooffff… Slowly, slowly…

The background to this is that we had a Halloween party at my work last night. Since I’ve been working at a customer’s for a number of months now, it was great seeing some old friends in the office, although I didn’t have the time to talk to all I wanted to. I also had an intriguing discussion with a woman I’ve never met before about lesbians, and she told me a fascinating story about one of her female friends. Oh well, this is not the time nor the place to go on about that (maybe girlspoke is rather the place to go for hot stories)…

Naturally, it got a lot later than it should have, and I got home around 1.30. Maybe not too late for some of you, but for me it is. Especially if I have to go to work the day after. So, anyway, I eventually managed to get out of bed and haul my body down to the breakfast table. Once there, my self-pity wasn’t well-met. For some reasons, my girlfriend and my daughter, both having terrible colds, seemed to think that their lack of sleep and being in bad states, was worse than my self inflicted pain.

Just to point this out more clearly, my daughter mustered the little strength she’s got in her body right now (poor thing), to bang things together and throw them really hard on the floor. I guess I deserved it…

Took a quick shower and got on my bike down to the train station. I knew time was sparse when it came to making in time to the train, but it turned out to be worse than that. As I got to the station, the train had just arrived and most people had already gotten on it. Since it was later in the morning than usual and the fact that I’m living in a suburb, means that if I miss a train I have to wait twenty minutes for the next one. Not acceptable.

So I locked my bike, and darted across two lanes of traffic without throwing a single glance in any direction but the train’s. I heard the hissing sound of the doors starting to close, and jumped. I was literally in mid-air when the doors closed behind me. I landed in the train, bounced a little on my shaky feet, and hit a metallic trash can. It gave out a loud ring and everyone in the train turned to look at me. Well, I made the fucking train, didn’t I? 😀

Once I got to Stockholm, I picked up one of the free morning newspapers that are offered. Its first page headline read:

Every third Swede is home from work today

God, I really should’ve been one of those (it was an article about people that are unemployed). Also, this newspaper has a spot for guest comic strips. The one today, a brand new one, was called Robert’s store. It was about a guy having a record store with all kinds of hard to find records, but apparently, the income from selling them wasn’t sufficient to make ends meet, so he sold second hand porn magazines in the back. Felt like a worthy line of work for someone with my name…

Oh well, I’m glad it’s Friday at least. Have a nice weekend! 🙂

I’m really in a good mood, and it feels great! Have been for a couple of days. It might be because things are going pretty well at work, although stressed as hell, and it might be because it has been days of JavaScripting instead of fucking around with inconsistency CSS bugs in various web browsers.

Normally, I’m very ironic and sarcastic, so yesterday when I was exclaiming things like:

This looks great!

Man, this is really fast!

Wow, I love the design of this!

Nobody around me thought I was being sincere. Maybe I need to try and say what I mean more often. 🙂

Someone who’s feeling a little blue is Molly. So go there and cheer her up, if for no other reason that her work in influencing Microsoft to adhere to web standards will make your life so much better.

Cheerio! 😀

This is going to be the most or the least interesting thing I’ve ever written. When I start writing this, the time is about 23.30, and I’ve just been out to a company/customer thing, and maybe having some beer and wine has gotten me emotional. This is a post that I’ll probably regret in the morning…

When I was a kid, I was harassed on and off, mostly around the age of 10. I had fairly big front teeth and I had glasses; perhaps I was also a bit soft emotionally compared to the butch ice hockey guys (I did play ice hockey for many years, as well as doing other sports; I just didn’t seem to share the men’s dressing room mentality with the other guys). To be told that you’re ugly; that you don’t fit in; to be looked down upon are terrible things. It wasn’t that bad for me as it has been for many other people, I never felt suicidal. It wasn’t really a walk in the park either, though.

Anyway, I got older and grew into my body and became hot (or something). But that luck only lasted for a while; when I was 24 I started balding. That has been one of the cruelest things life has done to me, especially since my father had a lot of thick and beautiful hair. Such mockery. For those who don’t know, it’s a very hard blow to one’s self esteem. I remember when I was a kid; my family went on a vacation to France together with one of my uncles and his wife. He was bald, and seeing him on the beach rubbing his scalp with sun tan oil, led to me thinking:

God, he looks pathetic.

I’m now 31, and I’ve pretty much come to terms with my baldness. I think I’ve spent (and sometimes still do spend) a lot more time thinking about it and letting it affect me, than other people around me do.

Back in 1998, a former girlfriend and I quit our jobs and went traveling in Australia for a while. About a month after we got home, she broke up with me. She moved out of our apartment and went on with her life. There I was, dumped, unemployed and just started balding to top it off; generally feeling pretty worthless. I started to write very short paragraphs about how hurt I felt, what it was like having been to Australia and seen and done wonderful things and having no one to share those and lots of other nice memories with. I published these writings on my web page and sent her an e-mail, hoping that she’d read it and that she would grasp my feelings of loneliness.

What happened was, she printed these pages and sent them in a letter to my parents together with a note basically saying in how a bad state I was in. Let me tell you, a letter like that isn’t received in the best way by parents. Naturally, they got very worried about me and it was followed by some time of them feeling insecure. Eventually, I got them to understand that the writings were just a way for me to channel my feelings, to get it out of my system.

A little more than two years ago, I saw my father die. In his own bed, in the house he built with his own hands. Cancer got him. He was 64 years old, and he fought it bravely for four years. Sometimes that moment comes back to me, and remembering his last words just tears me apart. The feelings of hurt are indescribable. I don’t think a person ever fully recovers from a thing like that, and seeing how it broke down my mother was heartbreaking. They had dreamt about spending their retirement days, the remainder of their life, together and just enjoying living. But fate had another cruel plan.

People sometimes tell me that they appreciate my bitter and cynical sense of humor, but also that they hope it just an act, that I’m not really as bitter as I convey. Let me be honest about this: sometimes I really am that bitter. Sometimes I really do wonder why life has to be about getting hurt in such terrible ways as there are. Seeing my little daughter and knowing about all the bad things a life offers that she has to go through breaks my heart. Of course there are good things to, “life’s up n’ down” (which is exactly what a plaque read that mom gave me for one of my birthdays, depicting Goofy turned upside down on his head), but I can’t stand thinking about how mean and evil life and people can sometimes be.

I’ve hurt people too in life, which I am truly sorry for, and I do hope for forgiveness from those persons; deep down I’m not really a bad person (or at least I strive not be).

All in all, though, I am happy. I’ve had a wonderful upbringing by my loving parents, and my mother taught me to always be honest. That has really helped me in life, and also to being able to life with myself and some of my actions. And now, finally, I’ve found my place in life. I have a lovely girlfriend with whom I have a wonderful daughter who really makes life worth living. Amongst other things, what happened in 1998 was a turnaround for me and I decided to face the tough situations life deals you, and to stand up to them. Learning the hard way to be strong, and to handle whatever happens.

I’m not really looking for sympathy here, just understanding. If you ever meet me in real life, please give me a hug. We all need love, and we need it a lot more than we think. This also comes down to my writings at this web site; all you people coming here really mean a lot to me, and I’m extraordinary grateful for you coming back here again and again.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for being there.

When terrible things happen in the world, it seems like people have a hard time relating to it. In my opinion, every news broadcast, newspaper and other sorts of media is littered with really sad things happening all the time; it’s too much too grasp. Just browsing through paragraph after paragraph with gory details leads to people becoming jaded.

In the last four years, this been some major things happening that I could relate more to than others:

Terrorist attack, September 11th

During the summer of 2000 I lived in Greenwich Village and worked in NYC. From the living room in the apartment I stayed, I had a good view of the towers every day, and we usually hang out on the roof during the evenings/nights, just looking around at this marvelous city. When my brother visited, we went up on top of the roof for one of the towers, and the feeling was literally like standing on top of the world. To add to that, I don’t like flying that much, either. I’m not afraid of flying; I’m afraid of dying, ok? After my stay there, I also knew some people still in NYC but luckily they survived. So I could connect to the terrorist attack on many levels…

The tsunami

A little more than three years ago, my girlfriend Fredrika and I traveled around the world. When the tsunami hit, there were a couple of places in Thailand, especially the Koh Phi Phi islands, were we’ve been and it was ghastly to see the state they were in after the waves/flooding.

Hurricane Wilma hit Cancún

On the same trip mentioned above, we started out with a week in Cancún, and the hotel area’s a very original piece of land; and now, it’s all flooded and badly ravaged by the hurricane.

One of the major reasons I think I relate more to these events is because I’ve actually been there; I can feel the smell of the area, hear the noises and start pondering about how the surroundings. I’m not saying that one’s has to have been there to be able to feel compassion or empathy, I’m just going for the fact that there’s no medium that can convey the realness of actually experienced a location.

We have some friends, Lotta and Johan, and they have a daughter who’s just one month younger than our daughter. A couple of months ago, Lotta got pregnant again, and I had a dream that they were going to have twins. I also just saw general signs in my everyday life pointing to twins, and even though they have no history of twins in their families, I suggested to them that they were going to get it nevertheless.

Two days ago they went to their ultrasound, and lo and behold: twins! Maybe I really do have some kind of ESP. 🙂

I don’t get what’s wrong with people. Here in Sweden, there’s this medical recommendation that it’s really not a good idea to drink alchohol when being pregnant or breast feeding (wonder why, it seems to be really good for us otherwise…). Apparently, yesterday there was this program on Swedish television, trying to expose that it’s not as bad as people think to have a couple of glasses of wine when breast feeding, not overly much alcohol will get into the baby. So what?

Are people so fucking egoistic that they just have to drink, even if it means risking their child’s health? If you can’t stay away from alcohol for 1-1½ years, don’t have a baby. Just go on living your destructive life.

Another thing that’s really annoying is that all expertice agree that, for those who can do it, breast feeding is extremely good for your baby and it keeps him/her healthy. But in many cultures, and we’re talking western societys here, it’s looked down upon as something filthy and bad. What the fuck! Stop being so damn egocentric and focus on what’s best for your baby’s development. What’s most important to you: your image and if people will frown their foreheads, or what’s best for what should be the most precious and important thing in your life?

Friday night, we had a power outage in the area where I live. Pretty cozy when everything goes dark, and looking out over the neighborhood, I realized how much everyone’s overusing lights and electricity. Anyway, Fredrika and I lit a lot of candles, crawled up in our couch and…

No! What did you think there? 🙂

We watched a TV programme on the laptop, since it was the only thing working in the house. Pathetic or nice?

As I told you a couple of days ago, my friend Veljko from Serbia has been visiting and last night was his last night before his trip home. Needless to say, we were a group of people going out, having dinner and drinking to wish him well and say goodbye. Of course, it got late and as I live about 30 kilometers from Stockholm, I depend on night buses; you know the ones that take you for a guided tour of your whole county.

I took the subway to the place where the bus departs from, and I just caught a glance of it leaving when I got up the stairs. Next bus was supposed to come an hour later…

I really don’t like taking a cab, I believe it to be such a waste of money, but in this case I felt I just had to. So, a cab ride followed by me riding my bike the last kilometers took me home (since I didn’t want to leave the bike at the train station). At least I got to my suburb before the bus did…

Got home, slept for about four hours, and then got up again to go to work. When my train arrived in Stockholm, I saw a woman with a baby in a stroller trying to get off. I walked up there, willing to offer my help, but all that came out was some kind of hiss, and she threw me a nervous smile and said that she could manage on her own.

Anyway, the reason I’m even is awake right now is that I gotta serve somebody. So, what better way than to round off this week, in an Andy Clarke-fashion post, with some Bob Dylan lyrics.

Without further ado:

You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of
pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well,
it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But
you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You might be a rock ‘n’ roll addict prancing on
the stage, You might have drugs at your command,
women in a cage, You may be a business man or
some high degree thief, They may call you Doctor
or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well,
it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But
you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young
Turk, You may be the head of some big TV network,
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or
lame, You may be living in another country under
another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well,
it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But
you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a construction worker working on a
home, You may be living in a mansion or you might
live in a dome, You might own guns and you might
even own tanks, You might be somebody’s landlord,
you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well,
it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But
you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the
side, You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may
know how to cut hair, You may be somebody’s
mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well,
it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But
you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear
silk, Might like to drink whiskey, might like to
drink milk, You might like to eat caviar, you
might like to eat bread, You may be sleeping on
the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well,
it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But
you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy, You
may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy, You may
call me R.J., you may call me Ray, You may call
me anything but no matter what you say

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may
be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re
gonna have to serve somebody.

This morning I was sitting on the local train going to work, minding my own business and reading my morning paper. Next to me were a young girl and a young boy, maybe around sixteen years old. She was wearing a lot of dark make-up around her eyes and the guy looked pretty ordinary. What got my attention was when I started overhearing a part of their conversation (starting with her):

– My knife got all messy after that.
– You got to stop doing that crap!
– Why should I?
– Since it’s wrong! It’s bad for you!
– But I like it, and the pain is excillerating… smiling, pulling up one of her shirt’s arms and caressing a spot on it.
However, it took longer to heal than what I had expected.
Then both were quiet for a while.

My take of this was that she’s cutting herself for the kicks of it; it didn’t seem like they were joking around. I sat there dumbfounded for a while, thinking “what the hell should I do? Should I say something?”. Before I came to any conclusion they got off at the next station.

I have no idea how to handle such a situation. However, part of me stil feels quilty and worried for not acting. I mean, most of us complain that people in our society never care when something happens, and I feel just like one of those “don’t give a damn”-persons…

I thought I’d write some short comments about some recent Swedish news, just to express my view on them.

Deputy Prime Minister Bo Ringholm thinks the Swedish police is lazy

Apparently he did an interview over the phone, and didn’t hang up properly. The journalist stayed on the line and taped a two minute conversation between Bo Ringholm and another guy, saying things that should only be said behind closed doors (especially if you’re the Deputy Prime Minister).
But I guess this goes to show what happens if managers don’t learn the technical aspects properly… 😉

Man evicted for standing up when peeing

An old guy living in the town of Sundsvall in an apartment building was evicted by his landlord for the reason that when we went up to pee at night, it evidently made such ringing sound throughout the whole building so everyone got disturbed. The man, of course, fights this and says that it’s definitely his right to pee whichever way he wants to in his own apartment. I couldn’t agree more. Get some isolation in the skanky house instead.

Column about the ruckus in Ronna

This is quite a long story, so I won’t try to cover it here. I just wanted to say that Nima Daryamadj has written a great column expressing his view (a view I share a 100%).

Today it’s the day: the five-year mark in Fredrika’s and my relationship. Five years… Man, we’ve been through a lot of things during that time; doing lots of traveling, amongst that round-the-world for five months , having a wonderful daughter, Emilia, who’s now one year old, and many more things.

Some things that I remember from these years:

The pillow

One time, when Fredrika was very tired, we were staying overnight at her parents. When we went to bed, I for some reason decided I’d had enough of her having three pillows and I only one. So I snatched one. She got all upset and started crying about it. Guess who got the pillow back…

The threat

We were out walking and playfully teasing each other with mock threats. Then, out of the blue, she turns to me and says: -I’m gonna hit you so hard, you’re going to pee blood. Nice…

The birthday candle

During my most recent birthday, the cake was on the table and Emilia was whining and wanted a taste of it. So I asked Fredrika to please give her a piece so things would be quiet. She did, but whilst doing it she blew out the candle on my birthday cake…

Anyway, these are just small little things put here just for the fun of ot, and pretty much taken out of context. We’ve had five wonderful years together, and I hope there’s many more to come. 🙂

It’s her I love.

Saturday night we went to a party at some friend’s house, partly to celebrate that they’ve moved to a new house, partly that he’s turning 30 in a couple of days. There were lots of people there and we sat outside at long table having a great dinner, playing freaky games (at one time I had a plastic bag over my head, paper teeth and plastic glass eyes…) and generally having a good time.

For all of you that don’t live in Sweden: it gets cold at night. I kid you not, smoke was coimg out of my mouth when I was talking, and conversations were like:

-Where did all the mosquitoes go?
-The frost took 'em...

In the middle of the night I ventured inside, into the kitchen, to where some others had also fled to escape the cold. Three guys were standing together, seeming to talk about something with great engagement, so I gathered it was really interesting and went up to them. Their topic was how different kinds of salt could enhance the taste of different meals, and one of them was proudly showing two salt cans and lecturing about them. Man, was I disappointed!

I gave them a scolding for being such sissies, told them that they should be ashamed of theirselves. Drunk men should talk about boobs and asses. That’s the way it’s always been, and the way it should stay (doesn’t matter if it’s about womens’ or mens’, as long as it’s a sexual conversation).

I eagerly moved on to the next group of people, this one consisting of only women. God, does women change when they get drunk, or what? Their conversation used many words I couldn’t even write here, but it’s suffice to say that it was about sex and it was way too revealing. Drunk men are just the same, just thinking and talking a little bit slower than usual. But women, man, they know how to party, how to let it all loose!

Also, sadly enough, later on I got to know things I really shouldn’t know, terrible stories that really left me dumbfounded. Sometimes I think I know too much… I just feel like I’m gonna burst. But don’t worry, trust me, your secrets are safe with me.

The morning after, I got out of bed to go change diapers on my daughter, Emilia. When that that was done and I exited the bathroom, I heard a loud knock from our front door, just next to me. We have a little round window in the front door, so visiting guests can peer in. Unfortunately, it was my mother-in-law doing the knocking and peering, and even worse, I was standing there butt naked with Emilia in my arms. Just the way I wanted the Sunday to start…

PS. If you like life reflections like this, I’m full of them. Preferably I should tell them in person, so you get the chance to see me gesticulating with an elated look on my face. 🙂 DS.

Has it come to that? Should marriage be discarded? When I read my morning paper, I saw that one of our brand new political parties, FI (Feministic Initiative) have a demand (note: not a suggestion) that marriage should indeed be discarded.

Has it maybe occurred to them that problems in marriages depend on the people involved, and not the marriage as an institution? My generation isn’t usually to worked up about marriage, but I definitely think marriage should stay as they are, for both hetero- as well as homosexual people.

Like with the environmental cause party here in Sweden, FI is a joke (interestingly enough, FI is how the Swedish military label the enemy). Although, it’s good that they exist because it makes the bigger, more serious, parties to address these issues more openly in their agendas.

Regarding feminism: I’m all for equality, I believe that women should get the same pay, benefits and other things that they haven’t gotten before. But what I don’t like are those feminists whose cause isn’t about getting equal at all; it’s about getting back! Listen, most, if not all, men like you and want you to have equal rights. You can’t start punishing us for how men treated women in previous generations.

Try respect instead of revenge or hatred as a driving force (and the same goes for racism, homosexualism etc etc).

Time keeps on turning; today it’s my birthday, and I turn 31.

My birthday wishes? Since eternal life for me and all my loved ones, being invulnerable and economical freedom to do anything I want seems hard, if not impossible to accomplish, I then wish for health, happiness and more time together with my wonderful family and friends.

My web-related wishes are:

More skills

I want to get better at what I do, especially when it comes to the accessibility area.

Meeting people

Since I started blogging, I’ve gotten in touch with a lot of interesting people, famous internet personalities as well as unknown cool persons, that are way too many to mention here. I really wish for a chance to meet all of them in real life one day!

Getting a reply

I hope Derek Featherstone will send me a reply to some questions I e-mailed him a while ago (Sorry Derek, this is such an internal one :-))

Have a nice day, everyone! 🙂

PS. Tommy linked to me yesterday, calling me a “A voice of reason”. I just love being labeled as that! 😀 DS.

PS2. Since I feel extra Santa Clausy today, I offer a GMail invititation to anyone that writes a comment. I use it personally and think it’s the best webmail on the market. Having a 2.5 GB mailbox with POP 3-access really does it for me. 🙂 DS.

Last week was a lot of hard work for me. We had a deadline and it was, to say the least, a little bit chaotic (I think my contract forbids me to disclose any further details, which is probably for the best). Pretty long days, not too long, but every minute was very intense. But Friday night I came home and was met by beautiful smiling daughter, being happy to see me and just laughing along.

At that moment, I thought:

Fuck web standards; to hell with accessibility; who cares about semantics anyway.
Let’s focus on life!

Hmm…
Kind of a Molly-esque post, don’t you think (with that I mean writing about something beautiful in life)?

If you’re one of those persons who are fed up with people talking about their babies, or you just want to only read about web developing, you should stop reading now. Othwerwise, please read on and let me share something from my weekend.

It goes without saying that Saturday morning, after two weeks of intensive sun here in Sweden, it was cloudy when I got up (why wouldn’t it be clody, when i finally had some time to go out). We did some things inside for a while, like putting up paintings and pictures on the wall, but then I suggested that we get out and take a short walk to get some air. Fredrika (my girlfriend) and Emilia (my eleven-months old daughter) seemed to be up for the idea, so out we went.

Emilia was put in the stroller and we walked around the hill where we live and past the nearby golf course and its driving range. I found some range balls that Emilia and I played around with, and she found it hilarious!
Then, as we turned into the steep climb up to the hill again, I turned to Fredrika and said:

Aren’t you happy now that I suggested that we go for a walk?

The moment I uttered those words, the sky literally opened. Straight away, the rain was pouring down with such intensity it actually hurt when it hit your body. I managed to get the small roof over Emilia and the umbrella to protect her from the “sun”, and then I sprinted uphill with her to get home. After me and Fredrika running through the rain for some minutes, we got to the house. We were drenched, and all the fabric in our clothes were so wet it had become see-through, no matter the original color.

After that, the rest of the day the weather switched schizophrenically between shining sun and pouring rain; as soon as I tried to go out, I could feel driplets falling on me again. I decided to spend the rest of the day inside.

So, instead I was just playing around with Emilia. It’s hard, if not impossible, to describe how amazing it is to have a child. It doesn’t matter how hard a day has been, how many narrow minded or just plain evil people I’ve met; when I come home and see her smile all my troubles are gone. She’s been walking for a couple of weeks now, and is currently trashing around, totally fearless.

She has this little book with pictures of animals, and being the pedagogic father I am (read: try to be), I point to the pictures and make the sound of that animal: Cow – Muu, etc. But then came the tricky part: what in the hell kind of sound does a hedgehog make???!!!

I quickly browsed past that page and continued with my excellent sheep and horse impressions. Emilia is the reason I want to live, she’s my everything. 🙂

Jeanette, the godmother of my daughter Emilia, gave birth to her first baby this morning! It was a little girl, now named Nellie, who weighed 3,2 kgs and was 48 cm long.

Congratulations and all the best to you!

New York, New York.

During the midst of the IT hype companies offered a recruitment bonus, if one could find other skilled (or non-skilled, that didn’t really matter…) developers that wanted to start working in your company. So did the company I worked for back then too, and their bonus would be some kind of trip. We ended up going to NYC in February 2000.

I hadn’t really had a crush on new York before this, but it was a great trip, and we did and saw many things during those days. After this, I fell in love in the city. Given the business climate back then, pretty much everything was possible, so I decided I wanted to get a job in NYC.

I got in touch with Razorfish who got very interested. We discussed back and forth and I got an offer that was, in my eyes, unbelievably good. I still haven’t earned as much before tax in Sweden, than I did in NYC after tax. Needless to say, life was gooooood.
There were going to be some problems getting me visa, though, but after a lot of hassle I flew over June 2nd 2000 (as a normal tourist visit, one was allowed to stay in the country three months without a visa) and the plan was to sort those things out while I was there, on location.

Still terribly sun-burned from a kick-off trip with Razorfish Sweden to Ukraine, of all places, I took a cab to the city and checked in into my Holiday Inn in ChinaTown. Sleeping the sleep of the jet-lagged, I woke up around 6 AM the following Saturday, and got myself to Central Park, watching some kids play baseball while having a bottle of water and an ice-cream.

Razorfish were supposed to get me a place to stay, but, how should I put it… It wasn’t the firsth thing on their list, so to say. After my initial stay in Holiday Inn I stayed a week in the company apartment in Battery Park City with two other guys, then back to Holiday Inn again.

Finally, after presenting myself in a company meeting in the main office, a girl came up to me afterwards. Her name was Lisa and she was originally from Sweden, but they had moved to the US when she was four years old (although her Swedish was still almost impeccable) and her father was a professor at Stanford University. She told me that her room-mate had just moved out and that she had a spare room, if I was interested. We talked for a while and it turned out that she was going away for business for a week, but that I could live in the apartment during that time, and if things worked out, we could prolong my stay.

I went by a couple of days before she was leaving and picked up the key. Sitting around in my Holiday Inn room, I eagerly packed my things (again) and waited for moving day. Her apartment was located in Greenwich Village in West 12th St, which was a golden location. It was on the top floor (5th), but it was actually 8 stairs and with at least 30° Celsius and about 100% humidity, it took some effort to climb them.
From the living room the view overlooked WTC, and I liked those towers even more than the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building. When my brother came to visit, we went up on the roof of one of the towers, and standing up there really felt like being on top of the world!

I moved there and the week went by and I was as happy and content as can be, when I realized that she would be coming home the next day. I scavenged the apartment for cleaning tools, but to my disappointment I only found a handheld vacuum cleaner, aptly named Dirt Devil.

I crawled around the apartment for what seemed like forever, and cleaned every inch and corner that could be found. I mean, I just had to be allowed to stay in that apartment. Luckily for me, she was really easy-going and I got to stay there for the remaining time of my visit.
Lisa’s boyfriend was a professor at MIT, working with AI. The funny thing is, one day when he was visiting her, he saw my JavaScript – The Definitive Guide book lying around. He turned to me, and said: “Wow, I’d really like to learn JavaScript one day”. And the thing is, it didn’t sound as he was mocking me, it sounded like he actually meant it! 🙂
Once during my stay, I found a picture of her father and the Swedish King, during a trip they did to Africa.

Not for bragging purposes, but just to describe what will happen during a stay in NYC:

One day when I was sitting in the office, Michael Stipe of REM just walked in. As it turns out, he was a friend of one of the Razorfish founders and had just decided to stop by…
Other things were:

• Having dinner next to Calvin Klein in a small restaurant in the meatpacking district
• Going to the David Letterman Show with Bruce Willis as the guest (Bruce was playing around with his harmonica during the commercial break).
• Seeing Little Richard playing in a small club called B B King Blues Club & Grill, being just just 5 metres from the stage!
• Going to concert after concert in Madison Square Garden.
• Getting to hear Gloria Gaynor perform ‘I Will Survive’ on July 4th, a day that also had its fair share of fireworks.

and so on…
Amazing things in an amazing city.

I also really enjoyed the American Museum of Natural History wich has such fantastic displays that I was speechless. One of my favorite things of theirs are the different fossils and remnants of dinosaurs and other unthinkable creatures.
A thing that was a really inconceivable and unbelievable event was going to the The New York Public Library, where they had the actual notes and sketches from Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe among others. I mean, their actual work! I was baffled.

Being in NYC, going to Broadway shows is also mandatory. I went and saw The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Jekyll & Hyde, where the former vocalist of Skid Row, Sebastian Bach, played the leading the character (after I went home to Sweden, we was replaced with, lo and behold, David Hasselhof!).

So many other things happened too, but there will be another time and place to tell about them.

In the end, things didn’t work out with getting a work permit and visa, so I had to go home to Sweden again. But I had three amazing months!

PS. I’ll write more on Monday, take care of yourselves and have a nice weekend! DS.
PS2. Markus, aka wobbler, is unfortunately leaving the company I work for today. Sad, but life goes on. Good luck, Markus! DS.