I gave up hope that I'll be updating the blog before the end of summer and/or before I move to Luxembourg. I'm posting interesting links every once in a while on twitter, so if you want you can follow me there.

For those addicted to visiting the site, here's my twitter feed.

It's been a hell of a long time since I posted some quotes but I've got two that are just pure class. Probably no one apart from close friends will understand either, but they need to be stored for reference.

This happened while playing 20 questions with the theme being - Person
M: What's the nationality?
J: Dottian
M: Sex?
J: Female
M: Profession?
J: She was a teacher ...
M: I don't want to know what she was, I want to know what she does now!
J: Nothing .....

"Ok. I don't wonder that. You are quite special after all. That meeting remains in my heart for times to come. I appreciate your choise and I don't want you any harm " (picture of a rose) You have a strong attitude, a cat like presence and the classy feeling that you radiate".

Maxwell should be made Sir! He's definitely my favourite comedian at the moment.

Check this one out too

This deserves a quick break from my writing!

Via DavidThompson

I'm writing this in an airport bar in La Guardia airport waiting to fly to Denver. There's no free evil internet so I can sit around reading or writing instead of browsing, updating status or twittering. I know I can be writing sections of the thesis, but this is a perfect way for creative procrastination.

The beginning of the year was characterised by a long wait to go to the US for a business trip which is only materializing itself now, in the beginning of March. In the mean time, I struggled with the increased work load at work after two colleagues left. I was also battling the problem of entity resolution on my research project, which took much more time than it should have.

My aerial carbon footprint has worsened, especially now that the new boss threw me the title of 'senior technical project manager', which basically just means that now I'm doing all presentations, travel and follow ups. I also attended a conference on customer loyalty (Loyalty09) in Vienna. It was very interesting and potentially helpful to my final thesis.

In January I visited the Miss and discovered her proneness to gaming addiction. This amused me and excited me far beyond her expectations. The underlying reason was my current addiction to backgammon. I got totally obsessed with the game, and I'm now trying to take it to new levels and participate in competitions. I'm fully conscious that in a busy time this is not ideal, but a man has to enjoy himself without work too.

February flew like a humming bird in the early morning, loads of wing beats with little distance covered. I know I was working and I had a fantastic weekend in mid February (not to mention the V word), but that's about it. Work, study, travel and backgammon. There was also a funeral of my mums aunty, which had my flying to Malta in what was probably the busiest week this year. Ah, yesterday I saw Anathema live in Dublin! Kicked ASS!

This blog started out as a personal public diary to motivate me to record potentially significant moments of my life. I was always a fan of diaries, yet I suffered the typical lack of consistency in updating them after the initial furore of buying a new diary. Keeping a blog on the web was meant to keep me motivated to write more, as friend read and indirectly pushed me to write.

The motivation worked for a couple of years, especially after moving to Dublin, when I used the blog as an excuse not to call home and force its readership. I also tried to create a professional spin-off the blog in the tech section, and a special interests section in the travel section. Readership of these sections was quite poor and all attempts at resurrecting these section with new content and layouts were squashed to bits. Granted the attempts here were half baked but they still don't warrant having 0 subscribes to the RSS feed for months.

Now, after a couple of years updating this blog, motivation is withering. There are a couple of reasons for it. Primarily it's the obvious reason of being busy and distracted with other things, but there's more than this. If you're motivated in doing something then you'll find time to do it no matter how busy. The problem with the blog is that this motivation is getting lost.

I think the main reason for this is the lack of success of the blog. This is reflected in the lack of comments and the low number of RSS subscribers. Personally, comments are the most important indication of readership because they turn passive readership into interactive discussion. In this blog comments are practically non existent.

This is where facebook comes in. On facebook you interact with your friends. It's all about interaction. Also on facebook the audience, or at least the audience that matters, is much bigger. The battle between the 'personal' blog and facebook presence is a head to head battle. The two things serve for the exact same purpose. Why spend an hour writing a post on the blog which no one reads, when you can spend 2 minutes updating your status for everyone to read and get comments on. It's easier, faster and has a better outcome.

The same thing applies to twitter. Twitter takes on the blog when it comes to posting links of interest, main trains of thought, and replying to people. Publishing and consuming little snippets of information in this hyper fast environment seems to be the way forward. I was a religious blog reader till a few months ago, but now my twitter feed is enough and probably more than enough. If I want to keep in touch with friends I can check them out on facebook as they all have pages there, unlike blogs which weren't all that popular with the word-unfriendly people.

So what's happening to the blog? Frankly I don't know, but the motivation to write is vanishing like money in my pocket. If you're interested in my personal pursuits then my facebook profile is the way to go. If you like the links then join my twitter feed. Otherwise the blog will still be here but probably updates will be sparse.

Don't scramble my balls

Non strapazzare le palle

Probably not, but it's cool.

Read TechCrunch Story here

Even in the beginning of January this might be one of the funniest things we'll see this year.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

January: Seems to have been quite a quiet time. M came over for the sales but couldn't find evidence of much going on in January.
February: Went to Lux for Valentines day. Again no evidence of major activity apart from work and study.
March: Had a wicked St. Patricks day / Tried to track down a stalker / Elections / M Father's death / Mum was unwell / A little chick started hatching in my head.
April: Moved to a new house. Went for wedding in Poland.
May: Went to Westport with the miss. Got engaged!
June: Worked a lot on the VAST competition. Tuska Festival. Spain won Euro 2008.
July: Started planning the Japan trip.
August: Japan trip planning. Had a rather disappointing b'day.
September: Japan trip, The unholy trinity concert, Wedding in Slovakia.
October: Another Lux trip. InfoVis conference in the US.
November: Animation Experiment. Obama elected president of the US.
December: Experiment going on. End to end business trips. Roberta got married. Christmas and New Year.

Best book I read this year: Master and Margarita
Best film: The Dark Knight
Project of the year: VAST Competition
Best Holiday: Japan
Best Concert: The unholy trinity
Best Game(s): Mahjong on MahjongTime / NHL 2009
Most Useful Software: Tableau and Processing
New thing tried in 2008: Proposing
Band discovery of the year: Amon Amarth / Nile
Favourite Pub: 12th Lock
Total Number of Trips: [Lost count in the end]

Back from the Christmas holidays and back to work routine, after a week of running-in. Not quite still under holiday blues, but the work engines are still very cold.

This year will be a year of some major changes. The anticipated projects in the pipeline are writing the masters thesis and moving to Luxembourg.

As now has become the custom, I ignored the blog completely during the holidays. Happy New Year to everyone. Hope this year will be better than your last ;)

I think this is the longest stretch of time that I have spent away from the blog. As anticipated October and November were absolutely mental with work, most of which was self inflicted. Apart from sitting for hours at a time writing code, writing words and preparing presentations, I had a fair share of travel. I lost track of all the flights I had, but they included several trips to London, trip to Denver, and trips to the dot and the semi-colon.

He's young, handsome and tanned (Berlusconi about Obama)

What have you got in your head? stones?

You are an unsharpened diamond

...there were a lot of Indians, it was a very brown town.

The sandwich I get from uni almost makes the 2 hour trip to get there worth it.

A fresh crusty ciabatta with a tiny bit of butter, smoked salmon, 2 slices of bree cheese, a few finely sliced cucumbers, all topped up with some creme fraiche. Can't beat that!