Advogato blog for TordJ

14 Dec 2005

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:52:20 GMT

Not an update for more than 4 years, that's got to be some kind of a record. ;) Lot's of things have happened, I've moved, gotten married and started a new company.

Anyway, for a year now I've been busy writing some new cool software through our new development company named Cellar Door Games.

Our first real product is a 3D Poker Room and Casino software (client and server) which I'm totally thrilled about, absolutely some of the best stuff I've made so far! If you're the least into online poker you should give Vegas007 a visit and try it out. They are the first company using our software and they provide both playmoney-games and real money gambling. So far you can play Poker and Black Jack and the way you can customize your identity is second to no other game, including Sims 2. :)

As you've already guessed, I'm bloody proud and excited over my little baby so I better stop writing now or I'll just keep going on babling about how fantastic it is. ;)

24 Oct 2001

Wed, 24 Oct 2001 15:15:48 GMT

Ooops! Haven't written anything here for almost a year now, shame on me.

Things didn't really turn out as I had planned with my company since the downturn in the software sector made it impossible for me to get the financing I needed. I spent about half-a-year just trying to get investors and in the end I had to give up and take a job. I found an interesting and stimulating job at Scalado, a quite new software company doing some interesting things that I unfortunately can't speak so much about. ;) Anyway, I still have my company (Moonbridge Software) and I might still be interested in doing some extra work in the evenings and weekends so please contact me if you are interested.

I've hardly had any time to do any work on BladeEnc or other free software projects, but I hope to have some spare time from now on so we'll see what happens.

4 Nov 2000

Sat, 4 Nov 2000 18:57:13 GMT

Haven't written anything here for a long time so I thought it was about time.

Everything is rolling on nicely.

I'm coding mostly on my new commercial (but still open source) project that I've initiated. I've decided to stay low a little bit and get some serious code working before I try to employ people or get investors. I hope to make the source available (under the GPL) for use and contributions before the end of the month, I'll write more about it then.

I haven't done so much on BladeEnc, but intend to get some serious work done quite soon. I'm fed up with the bugs in 0.93.7 so I thought I should take a few days to fix them and release a 0.93.8 that hopefully will be free from infestation and can be redubbed 0.94.0 within just a very short while.

Also, I'm interested in doing some consulting to keep my economy from taking an unpleasant dive while I'm working on my new stuff, so if you have some programming work you would like to outsource to someone with experience in mp3 & game/multimedia development in C/C++ and assembly, please get in touch.

23 Jul 2000

Sun, 23 Jul 2000 07:43:55 GMT

Finally things starts to settle down and I can finally start to do some coding again.

I have now successfully moved to Malmö (bringing all my stuff), gotten the most necessary things in order, started to find my way around in this town (still gets lost quite often though) and most importantly gotten my girlfriend Mia and all her things down here.

Getting Mia down here was quite some trouble. It took 5 days, including over 20 hours of driving, two ferry trips of one night each, packing and depacking everything and hoping that the very used car-trailer I had rented wouldn't break down and that none of her 7 birds would get into panic and kill itself during the travels. That was also preceeded by a lot of paperwork, mostly for Mia but also some for me.

We still have a lot to do since the appartment still is a big mess with boxes and furniture everywhere, but we're getting there quite quickly now and I feel that we both start to feel more relaxed.

Mia was worried that her birds would be nervous and feel bad about the place for the first few weeks, but surprisingly they felt at home right away and were singing happily after just a few hours. That's a good sign if any! :)

On the downside I lost quite a lot of e-mails about two weeks ago, including some important letters and bladeenc patches. I'll write about it on the BladeEnc page later and hope that they will be resent to me.

8 Jun 2000

Thu, 8 Jun 2000 18:59:59 GMT

Finally everything has calmed down a bit and I'll have a few weeks with a lot of time for BladeEnc! :)

The last few weeks have been VERY hectic:

First I've finished my job at UDS, where I've been working for more than 6 years. Then directly after that me and my girlfriend drove down to Malmö, a town in the south of Sweden, to look at the town and look for a new apartment, stopping by at my parents for a day on the way down so that they and Mia finally could meet. Spending two very hectic days in Malmö, looking for an appartment and actually finding one we liked and which they promised to hold for use so we could think about it a few days. Then back up to Norrköping, running around like crazy for a day, buying a new suite which I needed and filling in and faxing papers saying that we want the appartment. Then repacking my bags with new clean clothes, getting up early next morning (5 am) to get to the boat taking us to Finland that same evening and finally spending more than three hours on a bus taking us to Mia's hometown Lahti. Staying in Lahti for a few days, attending Mia's brother's graduation and meeting most of her relatives before finally going back to Norrköping, completely exhausted by all the travelling and stress.

Now I've spent a few days reading up on news and e-mails, cleaning the appartment, washing my clothes and generally getting life back to normal.

The really good thing is that I got that appartment and I'll be moving in about 1 month, but until then I'll have a lot of sparetime and that will do some good for BladeEnc! :)

Noticed that Slashdot had posted a story about BladeEnc's legal troubles only 1 day after I left Norrköping. Damn! I would have liked to be online by then so I could answer some of the questions popping up in the discussion... :(

18 May 2000

Thu, 18 May 2000 14:52:07 GMT

Yippie!

Had a talk with my patent ombudsman earlier today. I had presented him a possible sollution to get BladeEnc binaries back online again in a way that I found to be both practical, legal and fair in every aspect. He had examined my suggestion, spoken with various legal experts and come to the same conclusion.

I just need to check and organize a few details first. If everything turns out ok we could have BladeEnc binaries back online in just a few weeks, if some details are wrong we might be stalled for a bit longer, but it will still work in the end. :)

Btw, the tax authorities screwed up again, this time they did send the papers to the right address, but it was the wrong papers... :(

17 May 2000

Wed, 17 May 2000 16:29:42 GMT

The Swedish tax authorities must be one of the worst bureaucracies in the world. Listen to this:

I was supposed to have filled out my taxform weeks ago but I still haven't received all the papers I need from them. The problem is that they have the wrong address in their registers. I moved about one and a half year ago and then I filled out all the necessary forms and payed the cost. However, something got wrong so the tax authorities (who keeps the central address register for all government subsidaries) did not get my new address. I didn't really notice and everything was ok for about a year since that's how long they kept on redirecting my mail and after that most companies and people I get letters from had my new address so I though everything was ok. Apparently not.

You are supposed to get your taxform a few months ahead of the date that you are required to have it sent in, but I didn't. About a week before that date I called the tax authorities, got it verified that they indead had my wrong address, but since it involves certain costs and some work to get it straight I decided to not correct it since I'm going to move again in a month or two (and who knows what kind of trouble it could get me if I send in two changes within a short time?). Besides, I needed that form NOW, not after the changes had taken effect so I asked them to send my taxform to my new address instead, "no problem they replied, we'll send it right away".

10 days later I had still not received it. I suspected that they had sent it to the old address so I called them up again, explained the problem and asked them to send a new copy and really make sure that it was sent to my new address. I also asked if I still had to pay the extra premium for sending it in late although it was their fault and got the answer "I'm affraid so, sorry!". :(

That taxform arrived just a day later and when I sat down that evening to fill it in, I discovered that I needed form K1 as well (not enclosed) since I had made some "reavinst" (realisation profit) from the sale of some stock options. A few days later (was quite busy) I called in and asked them to send it to my new address. It didn't arrive. I called them up again, asked them to send it again but PLEASE MAKE SURE IT GOES TO MY NEW ADDRESS!

I received it yesterday, only to discover that I also need form K4 and K10 since I sold "unlisted stock or stockoptions" (which my taxform didn't say anything about). Arrrggghhh!!!!!

Called them and ordered those two forms today, tried to explain in a gentle way that they need to make sure that they get to my new address, hope they got it...

Besidesthat and my allergy which still is bad, things are very good. Mia, my girfriend, is coming over tomorrow and will stay for about two weeks during which time I will quit my work here at UDS and we will go down to Malmö to start searching for an appartment. Then we will go back to Lahti (the town in Finland where Mia and her relatives live) in a hurry to attend her brothers graduation. In other words, these two weeks will probably be very nice, but hectic.

As you probably allready understand, this means that I will just have very little of time for BladeEnc during the next two and a half weeks, but after that I'll probably have at least a week with nothing planned. Until then I will probably just be answering e-mails and maybe release a new unstable since I received new code changes from Andre that will need some testing...

11 May 2000

Thu, 11 May 2000 16:34:14 GMT

Ah, feel much better now! It was an allergic reaction too much... eh... [whatever it's called in english] in the air this spring and now I'm taking pills against it which helps me tremendously!

Just hope those bloody things will rain away soon, hasn't rained for many weeks now...

Things have been quite calm at work this week. Two of the people in my room are at the E3 game fair so I haven't been able to work as much as I had hoped for. Still in a good position to get things done before I leave though...

When it comes to BladeEnc I'm more or less waiting for 3 important e-mails regarding legal status, new homepage design and code modifications (sent my mails last weekend but haven't had any replies yet). Have received some really interesting patches though. Quite odd, haven't received any patches to speak of for many weeks and now suddenly quite some interesting stuff starts to come in from people who haven't been involved before...

I'll see what I can do to get a new version out the door asap, but if I don't get anything out before the 26th of May we will have to wait until at least the 6th of June since I'm going away there inbetween...

6 May 2000

Sat, 6 May 2000 10:43:17 GMT

Damn! My nose has been running and my eyes have been dry for almost two weeks now. First I just thought it was a bit of a cold, but now I seriously start to suspect that I have some kind of allergy. Better go and see a doctor if it doesn't stop next week :(

Despite this I had a wonderful weekend with my girlfriend a week ago and a very productive week at work. Things are getting fixed quite quickly now, looks like I'll be finished with all my stuff in a week or two, well ahead of me leaving UDS in three weeks. :)

Was at the local zoo (kolmården) yesterday with the rest of the people at UDS (last friday every month we always do something special). Weather was great so I was really enjoying a day out, despite most of my colleagues getting bored about two hours before the bus came to pick us up since we allready had seen everything...

This weekend I have nothing special planned so I'll probably be working on BladeEnc. However, don't expect any new release for at least a week to come.

26 Apr 2000

Wed, 26 Apr 2000 16:49:27 GMT

Got some things taken care of during the easter holliday, including some BladeEnc work, but as always not as much as I had hoped but still added a quite interesting feature, just want to test it a bit more to be sure that I got it right before I start talking about it... ;)

Also, today we decided what would be my last day of work here at UDS: May 26, exactly 30 days from now, guess it's time to start planning the move to Malmö...

Going to Finland this weekend to meet my girlfriend.