Taxes done! One problem solved. 4711 to go.

I really doubt that I got it right though. Most of it it just saying "OK, that's right". But for the sales-taxes (moms) they have managed to make a form that is totally confusing. For example if you have bought things in Sweden, you should not put that amount after "Things bought in Sweden:" (Because that section is about rare tax-free stuff bought in Sweden). And then you should sometimes write the cost before taxes and sometime the tax itself. Depending. And it isn't explained well at all, and if you misread a word, you'll get everything wrong.

I corrected it about 17 times. That it was correct the 17th time seems unlikely, but I didn't think of any more way I could have misunderstood it.

On the good side, there was no interesting news today that distracted me. One would think that reporting that bin Laden is dead would take about 1 minute, but apparently it takes about 48 hours or more. And before this we had two people without significant power having a wedding and a dead pope that is now a little bit more holy. Yes, and a damn birth certificate. OK, for example Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria aren't big important countries, but what happens there and what we learn from it will affect everyone in the world in the not so long run.

Not to mention how we should stop companies to get into bed with our governments to make unjust profits and stop progress. Or how we generally should make things work a little better.

For you who know Swedish or Russian:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GE3QmvOKXg

(Or just look at cool post apocalyptic stuff.)

Plastic bottles - the new bricks:

http://inspirationgreen.org/plastic-bottle-homes.html

Swedes... Only in Sweden a pub can decide to arrange a Saint Patrick's Day on the 25th!

So happy way too early local SPD!

And the prize to the best High Fantasy Horror Storyteller goes to: Gaddafi!

He's speaking just now. Apparently he hasn't been in charge for a long time, but just being something like that queen of England. And all the thugs he have sent out on the streets are not his fault. And all the kids are drugged and where are all the wise men to control them. Well, except all the people and "wise" men who are planning to overthrow him, of course. Like most of his own military and administration.

And he blamed Al Qaida like Dick Cheney on drugs. Seriously: 99% of Al Qaida is definitely high fantasy invented by governments, military and other people who want something simple, unknown and scary to blame to get more funding or support.

Seriously, WTF!

http://gizmodo.com/#!5762030/watch-eschers-impossible-perpetual-motion-waterfall-brought-to-life

Feeling much better now. Coughing really badly sometimes and get a headache out of it, but very seldom now. I guess the sickness will be back later on, but for now, I feel fine.

I'm sick as hell and can't sleep well due to coughing. I'm trying to stay away from Elftown as I fail to read and write properly.

I'm the king!

http://www5.pown.it/flash/3428.swf

I was about to program today, but http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ (Egypt right now) is a little too exciting...

No sport or story beats reality when it comes to excitement and good stories.

Facebook is having problems today. I'm glad to see that others are having issues too while Elftown is working just fine ;P

I needed to check some stuff there though. :/

Yay! I'm elevated to become a guinea pig!

Tomorrow I'll have my heart scanned for science in an MRI-camera. I always have wanted to see that equipment and now I can get into one. Claustrophobic as hell, but I can't even imagine how to be scared of that (And I got stuck in a sand tunnel as a kid, but that was scary because it could collapse).

I got no instructions what so ever (except time and place)... I guess starting the pre-party before and risk vomiting is not recommended... It's at 15 to 17 Swedish time tomorrow (14-16 Elftown time).

I'm on my way back to Linköping. The train left 41 minutes ago, but I'm still here... My train further ahead was canceled, so I have to stay here 2 more hours. Will hopefully be home at 21 o'clock or so tonight.

The thing is that I have nothing to do for an hour now. And I'm quite sleepy.

Tonight (Have to go up at 03 AM... The horror) I'm leaving Linköping and is going to stay with my parents up in the forest during Christmas.

News feeds <= Fun stuff there!

If someone eventually post some stuff, which I just did.

Oh... A Buffy movie is on the way! Cool! Let's dust!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1444302/

StateOfFacebookCompetition
Are you interested in how Facebook is growing? I've compiled loads of interesting statistics for you:

I've been watching The Social Network. I'll not try to review it, because it can't possibly be the same thing for you as it is for me.

I relate to how it was when I was starting Elftown in 2002 with every part of the beginning of the movie.

Let's start with the stealing ideas part. Did that. Done that. Didn't get sued. I basically copied the functions from a site called Sylvester or Sylvia, but used a different layout (and totally different code). That's one reason for that the status-column is to the right as I didn't want to Elftown to be too similar.

To get a site started, you need a lot of people who are interested in working hard with it. I found absolutely no one here in Linköping, which totally sucked and still sucks. [thomas] was great to have as a benchmark sort of brother and the connection to Elfwood was absolutely necessary, but we didn't work on Elftown together, except that we helped each other out with the hardware and discussed ideas. But I did get a lot of interested people from around the world who helped out with graphics, stylesheets, ideas and feedback.

Facebook's main thing came to be that you can tag the photos other people upload. I thought that Elftown's main thing would be the forums that were more advanced than normal web forums, but not as complicated to learn as LysKOM. The forums were a big thing in the beginning. But one night at the end of September 2002, I thought that why not integrate a wiki into Elftown? It was sort of ready after a few weeks, and it then became the main thing that almost all new users were using. At most there were about 1600 new users per week (many of them people who had forgotten their old username, but most were new), and most of them never used the forums, but send messages to each other and commented in the wiki. 

One thing that sites like Facebook can't compete with is that Elftown is handing out power to normal users that help creating contests and activities so that you can meet people whom you would otherwise not start to talk to. In this way, Elftown is more like a club, than a social network. Elftown is a place where you meet, not a place you go to talk to your friends only.

Then I guess I, compared to Mark, had a lack of asshole in me. We started to have an application system that pretty much killed the growth, due to demands from people who thought that there were too many cybersex-addicts here. Now when I'm looking back, I should have ignored people's whining and put other features in play to filter out the worst crap for people, instead of totally denying these people access to Elftown. As it turned out, the worst whiners about the cybersex crowd were the same people who wanted a huge audience for their art. Another problem is that I built new sites (Baltbalt first, but I think Linkmeet was more ready first, Elfpack then CatHug) instead of diving Elftown into different parts. Facebook built on networks in different schools, but they were connected. In the same way, Elftown could be built like a network of "clubs".

I got more help from people, even with some programming ([Nita] and [True, plain and simple] mostly), but it really sucks to work with people only over the Internet, and it wasn't anything like full-time jobs. Maybe things would have been totally different if I could have met the right people or just pushed harder in the right direction.

For the future of Elftown I don't see any obvious path. Maybe I should work on connecting my different sites somehow. Not so that you get all your messages from all the sites in the same message box, but so have an overview of all the sites somehow. I've looked a little on connections to Facebook, but there was nothing I really liked there. (The API didn't allow for Elftown to upload photos to your Facebook account last time I checked, which was the main thing I wanted to do. I could just create empty photo-albums...)

There is of course a lot of small things I'll fix on Elftown though. But nothing of it is something that really will attract new users. So instead I'm dreaming about that someone(s) will run into my life and give my sites the same rocket-boost as Facebook got, and then there will be a new movie The Internet Meetingpoints...

Pust! 07:24 AM.

I've been working on the Intervallen party for 13 hours now. Me right lower leg feels like broken glass, but it became a little better after drinks and a bath.

Everything went well though. We managed to have very few queues. Maybe except for the bathrooms-queues, but that wasn't our fault.