January: Usual quiet January period spiced up by getting a wii for myself. We played a classic prank on Germany with the bean smoothie.
February: Brother came to Dublin amist a lot of snow. Attended the Loyalty 09 conference in Vienna and went for the first of 3 business trips to Denver.
March: Pushing on with the Masters' thesis work - finalising entity resolution.
April: Went to Sardinia for Easter for the memorable Sardinia '09 summit.
May: Enjoyed some time in Luxembourg in the beginning of the month. M came over to Dublin for her birthday.
June: Working hard on cutover. Decided to switch Masters into a Phd. Went to Tuska.
July: System cut over. Slovakia long weekend break Dobsinka ice cave + wedding date set, U2 concert date.
August: Denver Business - Paris Oyster pleasure - Malta family 30th wedding anniversary, and the month is over.
September: Vancouver SocialCom conference and short holiday.
October: Moved to Luxembourg, Denver business, backgammon Irish open, started 2 NHL fantasy leagues and Slovakia make the world cup.
November: Prague weekend break, working on AVI Paper, started ice skating classes.
December: AVI Paper and Christmas period.

Project of the Year: F9 cut over
Forsaken Project: Blog (you can still see the 2008 list on the main page)
Best Holiday: Vancouver
Best Concert: Amon Amarth & Entombed in Dublin
Best Book: The pillars of the earth - Ken Follett
Best Film: The hangover
Best Album: Candlemass - Death, Magic, Doom
Best Music Video: Behemoth - Ov Fire and Void
Purchases: Wii, Diablik (Netbook), Bose Headphones, Switched from meteor to vodafone
New Places Visited: Denver, Paris, Vancouver, Prague, Barcelona
New Fad: NHL Fantasy league
2009 Game: Backgammon
New thing tried in 2009: Playing in a backgammon tournament, (proper) ice skating
Favourite Pub: Talbot Downs
Band discovery of the year: Spiritus mortis / Gojira

The winter TV season has just started. The TV Remote has a good reference schedule complete with Google calendars not to miss any episodes. This year I'm watching:-

1. Family Guy
2. How I met your mother
3. Big bang theory
4. It's always Sunny in Philadelphia
5. The Office
6. Desperate Housewives (compromise with the Miss)
7. Cleveland Show (still trying it out)

While mentioning Google Calendars: Google have added a great feature for sport enthusiasts called Sport Calendars. You can pick your favourite team from the major sports and major competitions and import the whole season calendar. The nifty thing is that after the game the scores get updated in your calendar automatically. Cool!

I've kept my promise and haven't updated the blog before the end of September. In the event of the life changing event of the year, I've decided to blog from the bus on the way to Luxembourg which will become my new home for the next couple of years. This is also a test and proof of the new ultra mobile, paperless, high tech lifestyle that I'm planning to adopt throughout permanence in Luxembourg.

Since the last real personal update there have been some major developments. In order of importance:-

• I'm getting married next on the 10th of July next year in Slovakia.
• I'm to luxembourg permanently
• I've come to an agreement with my current employer to continue working for the same company from home with monthly visits to Dublin.
• I've switched my masters into a Phd which means I will continue researching for at least the next two years.

I've had some serious considerations of mercy killing the blog but I haven't had the courage to do it yet. I think I'd rather let it die a slow painful death in the off chance I get an urge to broadcast my madness to the world. I was hoping to write a bit more on the academic aspect of my research but until now I haven't had enough motivation to do so. The paper writing schedule is quite relentless and it seems that writing papers dries up all my writing mana.

On my interests side, things haven't changed much and I'm glad that I kept a very consistent backgammon playing routine. The average playing time per day is quite scary but it's enjoyable especially since JD became more obsessed with the game than I am. Last Sunday we went to our first South Dublin Backgammon Tournament and got badly thrashed. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the friendly atmosphere and the welcoming members of the Dublin club. I'm planning to schedule my visits to Dublin to coincide with the club meetings apart and metal concerts. Now that I've separated form my two live backgammon partners I'll probably spend more time on FIBS (email me for username to play on FIBS) along with trying to convince the misses to take the game seriously.

My latest fad is fantasy NHL leagues. I got the NHL yearbook on my trip to Vancouver and got sucked into ice hockey once again. I've drafted two teams in the yahoo fantasy leagues and am looking forward for the season to start. This year is the Olympic games year, so following the NHL should give a good indication of things to expect at the Olympics. Slovakia's chances of getting anywhere are pretty grim at the moment though. I also got a NHL2K9 on the Wii, which I almost mastered before having to abandon the console for the lack of space in my suitcase.

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.

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.

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]