Applelane

There are several reasons why I blog.

1) I want to practice my English writing skills.
2) I want to breathe life into the Elma blog culture. skint0r has started it, sort of. Hopefully more people will launch their own ones and I could add your link to my right column.
3) In my opinion people are entitled to know where we are on the Moposite project.
4) Own blog is cool.
5) It’s good way to structure my thoughts.
6) After five years it will an awesome feeling to read old posts (historical aspect).
7) I can write Elma stuff in a subjective way here (compared to Moposite news for example).

Yet, you can always comment my posts or request a subject I could write about. Anonymously or by your name. I’m reloading the page plenty of times everyday just to see if there are any new comments so I’m very happy to get them.

I don’t remember the exact day when I started to play the game. The year was 1998 when I tested it but the serious total time playing began in 1999, I think. When I got my own computer (1999 Dec) the never-ending (lunatic?) friendship had started. If you exclude the army period (14 July 2003 - 9 July 2004) the longest time without Elma has been one week. It was in 1999 when my class went for class trip to Rhodes.

Most days I play Elma - at least for some minutes. Approximately it’s about 30-60 minutes per day. Nowadays I play mainly only Headbanger. Just cruising the lovely level. My best time is 46,23 but that’s not important. I love to be able to do the pipe so often. I still remember the summer 1999 when we (me and my friends who also played Elma back then) saw some picture on PRA page which showed us the sick style. After some time we found a replay of the style (time was 56 seconds) and then Ultra hoyled one night and tried to learn the trick. His best attempt was about half screen down to pipe and we all were impressed and excited “how can one of us do that?!”. I was so sure that I will never make it myself. And here we are. Give me 100 tries and I go through it 10-20 times.

But it’s not only the playing. I irc at four different Elma channels: #across, #elma.fi, #flowermen and #fem05. I also read my abu@moposite.com email address, Mopolauta and sometimes I even bother to update something on the Moposite. And don’t forget Elma meetings.

But it’s not only that. I think and dream about Elma. I tell about it to my friends. There is no issue that I wouldn’t find a relation to Elma. At the same time it’s pretty nice but also annoying. I have bored my friends so many times with my Elma stories. I don’t realize it myself immediately but just keep going the talk. Normally after 30 minutes I realize the situation, apologize and shut up for good. I know many different people around the game which is the best thing I’ve gotten from Elma. It always goes like this: my friend tells something: “I saw one guy in the university walking and ircing with his cell phone!” and then I - of course - reply: “yea, one Elma guy, Karlis, does that all the time in the work … and he’s a UPS deliverer, driving car baah baah and then booh booh” etc. Actually I don’t have to include that “Elma guy” because they all know who is Karlis. Elma guys who are more than others in my stories: Karlis, mr, Luther, ramone, px (not really an Elma guy for me), psy, emps, kimitys, skint0r, milagros, Hibernatus (in the order they came to my mind). They have affected to me because of their ways of living, habits and attitudes.

I’m not sure if I should say this aloud but I think there is no Elma guy in the community who would live more Elma than me. I’m not bragging, neither complaing.

To understand me and get into my (Elma) life I have to tell you who I am and what I have done. So I tell.

I live in Finland, Oulu. I have also been living in Suomussalmi, Haukipudas and Järvenpää in the past. I was born in 1983 and I’m the only child of my mother. My mother brought up me. I had very free childhood; not many rules and most things were up to me myself. I liked that method as most of you would have done too. Luckily I didn’t end up to a criminal junkie.

I wasn’t always happy. My parents got divorced and after that I found out that actually my dad wasn’t really my dad and after all he wasn’t the first candidate back then. In fact I have never seen my biological dad, nor I have an idea if he lives at all anymore. All this have affected to me and I’m still a little bit confused of everything. What and who can I trust? I have never been in love, neither been dating. All that is very strange to me, which I have never really understood. Maybe it’s because of my confusing childhood.

I was an average kid in the junior school (ala-aste). Grades variated from 7-10 in scale of 4-10 where 10 being the best. I did quite a lof of sport: skiing, skating, football, tennis and many more. In 7th level I changed my friends. Earlier friends were two years older than me and they started to drink and hang out in the city. I decided not to start that hobby and had to find new friends (just only one friend from that time is still my good buddy; he is Chinese and just yesterday I played Uno card game with him). Thus I got quite many new friends: Tuska, Carju, Ultra, papu, Ari (each of them has been presented in the Elma scene). I was quite lucky because we all were studing orientated and I improved my grades. The best grade average was 9.3, which is extremely good, at least in my opinion. The first 1½ years of the upper secondary school (lukio, ett gymnasium) I kept on my grades but then I bought my first computer, in December 1999. My mother has never been rich so we didn’t always have the newest machines. For example I have never had VHS player or any console (it’s not like I didn’t have bed and bread; that’s not my point, don’t get mad). Things which I wanted I had to buy myself (well, at least to pay one part of it) except clothes. I learned to value material that I got.

Computer. I wasn’t totally newbie with computers when I got my own because I had used them at friends’ homes and school. I had been hoping for own computer for years and one day I had saved enough money for it; damn I was happy. I didn’t do anything else except sat in front of my new computer. I had promised to design the best Across/Elma site that is ever seen and that’s still my main goal in my computer world. School grades dropped to 8 but that was anything dramatic because later I still got free entrance to the Oulu university. The another bad thing: I stopped sport. The good things: I have got many many new friends and lots of fun. I also study information engineering in the university so I’m kind of ‘forced’ to use computer. On computer I play Elma, irc, design web sites and develope Moposite. Sometimes I might watch a movie. I don’t play any other games.

Today I’m 21 years and 11 months old guy. I’m rather busy with all kind of things and that’s the reason why we don’t see things happening in the Moposite. I love to develope, code and design Moposite but the truth is that I priorite university, real life friends and nowadays also sport higher. I also work a little bit. One big reason why I created this blog is that some people would understand why it’s not easy to maintain such a big site.

University takes about 30h in a week. Friends maybe another 30h. Sport is back to my life since New year eve 2005. We launched a competition who gets most “sport points” during the year 2005. Both me and px are in the competition. This is a great thing because I get better shape (you know, I’m today 97kg and I was about 82kg when I got my computer, and I’m just 180cm tall). It’s not just physical shape but also my mind is refreshed and I feel much better and more energic. Sport is about 15h in a week. So these three things take about 75h of the week when the whole week is 168h. I also sleep every night 7-8h so after some calculations we see I got about 40 hours in a week for the rest. I’m also addicted to IRC… you know.

But it’s not this sad. I have a todo list (which I might publish one day) and there are not many lines left before Moposite. I’m soon back with new ideas and pages.

Hi. I’m Abula. I am the main webmaster of the www.moposite.com. It’s a page for a game called Elasto Mania. Quite a big part of my life is living around the game and the community. I have lots of ideas and thoughts which I want to share with other people.

I have no idea how much I will write here but even one post is better than nothing. I will write about the Elma phenomenon, things happening in the community and game and of course about my (our) site. I will also write about my normal life because that affects to my Elma life as well.

Hopefully you will have fun when reading my future posts.