Ed Brill

There's a mention in my comments from yesterday, as well as several IM pings, that it appears the Blogsphere blogger from Mariehamn, Aland, is no more.  His friend Heikki says that Olaf died in a fishing accident.  May he rest in peace.
At the risk of offending readers, can I just say that something isn't quite right about the story of Olaf.
The blog was hosted on free.dominoserver.de -- a great place for anonymous hosting, but not exactly what I'd think would be the first choice of a Scandinavian.  Olaf's e-mail address, added only after weeks of requests and chiding, was @yahoo.com.  His few comments on other blogs originated from a UK-based IP address.  He never commented on my blog, nor on LDD, both places where I could likely track him.  Yet he clearly was reading my blog and some of the other core Lotus bloggers.  
Oh, and as for the blog itself -- Mariehamn is a city on an island of 10,000 people -- I don't know how many Lotus Notes+Sametime customers are there, but I reckon it's gonna be few to zero.  The broken English had several people raising eyebrows -- it was almost like someone had run English through babelfish and back again.  And the final obituary by Heikki has exactly the same broken English syntax -- the use of "of" occurs in the same ways as in previous Olaf blog entries.  I'm also impressed that his friend Heikki apparently knew enough about Notes to find Olaf's blog database, ID file, password, etc.
In my 2003 year in review, I mentioned this entry as one of the stranger online experiences I had had through blogging.   What mystified me the most was that a google search on "ed brill" had Olaf's blog as the fifth result.  I would sure like to know how that blog entry outweighs so many other mentions of me and my namesakes on the web.  Perhaps now that Olaf -- or the person behind him -- has given up the ghost, that google pagerank will fade to black.  Now if I'm wrong, and someone can produce an obituary or some other mention of Olaf's drowning accident, I'll make a $25 contribution to their favorite charity, and apologize publicly as well.  But like any good mystery, I think the clues add up to a different story -- one that's been interesting to try to piece together.  And if I'm right, I'll make the same $25 contribution if someone can unmask the identity behind Olaf.