I’ve also tried to work on my thesis, but it’s been difficult to create enough free space in my calendar to actually make progress. However, I’m now in a position where I should be able to focus more on the thesis and I really look forward to it. I have a draft version of 8 chapters and will work on the last three chapters in Oct-Nov. Wish me luck!

I’ve just spent three hours upgrading my WordPress installation from version 2.0 to version 2.5. It was tricky but it looks as if I am finally done. However, my old theme doesn’t work anymore so I had to find another one, and I’m not really satisfied yet…

	Sherry Turkle, (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
	Marc Smith and Peter Kollock (editors), (1999), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge, 1999.
	Michael Heim (1993), The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
	Ray Oldenburg (1991), The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, New York: Paragon House, 1991.
	Christine Hine, (2000), Virtual Ethnography, London: SAGE.

The books above are displayed in the actual order of my readings. When I read the books by Turkle (1995) and Smith & Kollock (1999) I had just finished my undergraduate education and I was not familiar with Internet research at all. These books opened my eyes to the complex social dimensions of Internet and I found it fascinating. I still do btw.

Heim (1993) was also fascinating, but in a different way. I remember sometimes feeling completely dizzy when reading about Heim’s philosophical thoughts on the essence of cyberspace. I didn’t understand all of it – but I still loved it because it kind of made sense, somehow. I haven’t really used Heim that much in my work but when I look back I think the writings by Heim boosted my curiosity about technology and its “true” character.

My interest in online communities gradually evolved in the years that followed and when reading The Great Good Place by Oldenburg (1991) I felt that I was on to something, both professionally and personally. Until this day, the image of a thriving third place has been almost like an inner vision to me and helped me to value the everyday places where I live my life. Life should perhaps not be so much about chasing extreme experiences but about finding the beauty in the mundane and enjoying everyday life. In my studies of online communities, the notion of third places online has also been a great help when trying to understand how people find their stay online meaningful and worthwhile.

Finally, Hine (2000) has been really important for my PhD project and helped me to develop a methodological approach that makes sense to me. For a while I felt kind of lost and didn’t know how to capture the things I wanted to study using conventional qualitative methods. Then I read about virtual ethnography and was presented a methodological approach that I could build my work on.

Of course there are other books that also have been important to my work. But these five are among the most important and they probably still influence me more than I am aware of.

I remember being very passionate about Hattrick a couple of years ago. Logging on to Hattrick was a part of my daily routine and when my team was playing I quite often sat in front of the computer to watch the live updates. But I guess everything must come to an end and lately I have been a sloppy manager. I am now seriously considering to let go of Hattrick. When I signed up, a couple of my friends also had teams and it was fun to compete against each other. Now, almost everyone has left and I have never been an active community member at Hattrick.org – I just liked the game part of it. This is probably the main reason to why I don’t bother anymore. Hattrick has become quite complex which means that you can not cheat if you want to have success. You have to be committed and spend lots of time – I have decided that I can’t do that anymore.

But it is hard to let go because I’ve been there for so long. Even though I almost never log on anymore I will miss the opportunity of being able to. Goodbye Hattrick – I will remember the good times we had.