www.vegard.net

About

The site

I started to maintain my first personal web site way back in 1997 – or maybe it was 1996. It is a long time ago. That site was converted into a site dedicated to the Korean lingerie/nude model Sung Hi Lee, which made it to the top three on the list of most popular web sites hosted by Norway’s largest Internet Service Provider (ISP), mostly thanks to some search engine manipulation – and the occasional nudity. Shortly after it made it to the list, the site was was removed by the ISP’s administrators because of its content. Shock.

I was hungry for more success and started a gaming site dedicated to strategy games. The Strategy Shrine became quite popular with over three thousand unique visitors per day and got hosted by GameReactor on its own domain. After about a year of hard work, I got tired of the project and shut down the site.

Once again, I set up my own personal site and bought my first domain, SnuffCity.com. After that I’ve been running personal sites on a variety of domains and servers, and my current project is this site, www.vegard.net, a domain you have to tear from my cold, dead hands if you want it.

The one-liners on each page were collected from various sites on the net. Each time a page is loaded, a random one-liner is extracted from the database. You can either reload a page a couple of million times to view them all – or view a complete listing from the database. As the highly effective guy I am, I recommend the last approach.

Design

The current design is a merged version of two themes by Theme Lab; Keep it Simple and Fresh Pick. The Twitter birdie used on the sidebar is by Shia Design.

Technical details

Normal people: You can safely skip this. Nerds: Read on, brothers and sisters!

This site is powered by WordPress. It runs on an Apache server with PHP and MySQL and is hosted on my own server, vbox-host. You can read more about the server here. In May 2006 I replaced my old Dell Inspiron 4150 with an Apple MacBook Pro 17″ to show my creative side to the world. That way I don’t have to run around nude to satisfy the exhibitionist in me. If you have an Apple laptop, too, you should regularly check you battery. It’s likely that my next laptop, if I ever buy one, will not be an Apple.

The author

I’m not very good at describing myself, and, like many people, I often emphasize my bad sides when I do it. Come to think of it, I’ve never been asked that particular question. But when working on my personal sites, I’ve been trying to maintain a fairly updated section about myself, just to give my stalkers something to chew on.

The short story goes something like this: I’m born on the 3rd of April 1978 at a hospital in Porsgrunn, Norway. That makes me 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 years old at the moment. For about 18 years I lived in a dump called Notodden, before I moved to Skjold where I had my year of mandatory military service. After that I went to Grimstad where I attended Agder College and got my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. During the Winter of 2002, I spent three months in lovely Brazil, where I read philosophy and ethics. From the fall of 2001 to the summer of 2003 I resided in a city in the North of Norway called Trondheim where I got a Master’s degree in Computer Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, with a specialization in the field of Information Systems. Trondheim was a surprisingly nice city to live in at times. But expect some rapidly changing weather. In June 2003, I moved to Oslo where I started working for Norway’s largest media company, the NRK. I left the NRK a year later to work in a firm I founded with two other NRK employees, Rubberduck Media Lab. In July 2005 the company was acquired by Mobile Media Company. In May 2006, after three failed attempts by The Mobile Media company to actually pay for our company, we decided that having them as a majority owner was not the way for us to go and Rubberduck Media Lab once again became an independent and prospering company. In late September 2006, the company was once again acquired, this time by Aspiro. I left Rubberduck Media Lab January 1, 2009. I had three months off where I did nothing in particular, then I went back to Rubberduck Media Lab as a part time consultant. Then, in August 2009, I found myself back at the NRK, developing their web publishing application.

This page used to feature a rather long part about me as a person, but an early Saturday in October 2003, I decided to remove it. The archives are now packed with stuff written by yours truly, and you’ll probably learn a lot more about me by browsing some of the entries you find there than you would’ve learned by reading whatever I’d written explicitly about on me here. You’ll also noticed that I’ve changed a bit from when I first opened this site. At least I realized that.

I love music. I need music. I don’t listen to music while I’m sleeping, but that’s pretty much the only time I don’t – be it alternative rock or Lo-Fi ambient – I listen to it. But, of course, I’ve got my favorites, too. Swedish Kent seriously rocks my ear drums, together with Matthew Good and Matthew Good Band, when that was around. I’ve also got all the Live albums, but they’ve kind of lost it lately. All the albums up to and including ‘Throwing Copper’ are classics, ‘The Distance to Here’ was all right, while ‘V’ sucks bad. Pete Yorn is another great artist that almost always gets me in a better mood. Oh, and let’s not forget about Coldplay. Other favorites include John Mayer, Switchfoot, Rise Against, Biffy Clyro and a lot of other great bands and artists I discover using Spotify. If you also use Spotify, you can click here to check out what I’m listening to at the moment.

I plan to die happy.

Contact information

E-mail: vegard at the domain vegard.net

ICQ: 11872166
Windows Live (MSN): vskjefst@hotmail.com
AIM: vegardskjefstad
Twitter: vegardskjefstad

I’m also on Facebook in case you feel you know me enough to be my digital friend.

When I’m on Windows I’m using the Miranda IM Client. It’s free and supports a wide range of protocols and services, including, but not limited to, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, NetSend and Jabber. My OS X instant messaging needs are covered by Adium, another great piece of free software that supports all the protocols you’ll ever need and then some. I also work a lot in Linux using the Ubuntu distribution and Pidgin is my IM application of choice on that platform.