mindspill

2010 Update

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:36:34 GMT

The blog called for attention a few weeks ago when Seth reminded me that I had to pay the yearly maintenance fee. To feel that I’m not wasting money (I really am but I don’t feel like killing it yet) I decided to write an update post while stuck in a long traffic jam on the 1200km journey back home from Slovakia.

Well, the most important thing that's going on at the moment is the wedding planning. Back in the time when I used to scout for new and interesting blogs, the first mention of the word wedding (or kids) used to be enough to skip the blog. Blogs of this kind usually meant either a post for each invite sent and each flower chosen, or detailed accounts of each nappy change for the kid. In turn I promised myself to keep my wedding prelude as quite as possible. I'm allowing myself one tiny outlet for the record, just to prove that I this thing actually happened.

In a simple sentence I can sum up my wedding planning experience like this:- it's not half as complicated or troublesome as most people make it out to be. Perhaps I'm saying this because I'm lucky enough to be with a sane and most practical woman, or perhaps it’s also because I'm not having the wedding in a wedding crazy country where the wedding has to be planned more than 2 years in advance. Another thing that definitely helps is treating the whole thing as a project for two, biting into it a bit by bit, together. Cooperation from parents on both sides, with the right level of interest and without being too intrusive doesn’t hurt either.

In effect, planning a wedding is like throwing a big party. All you have to do is find a place, get some food and drink (sampling both before and playing God with dish decisions - perhaps one of the most satisfying parts of the planning), get some cool clothes (= shopping for the ladies), get some music and outsource your pictures while throwing in a couple of decorations and an exclusive afterparty - a cracking honeymoon. I’m happy to say that I helped in almost everything from the wedding hall to choosing the bride dress (and yes I saw the dress cause we’re practical). We planned and organized this in 3 intensive weeks over a period of six months, with remote administration in between. With one month to go I think we've covered most of the ground that we needed. I still need to get a pair of shoes, decide on the suit and send off the last couple of invites (to those lazy buggers who haven't sent their home addresses yet) but everything is under control.

It's not all wedding bouquets and wedding cakes though. Last week I was in Beijing for a business trip. Luckily I had some free time to see a couple of main sights and buy half of the tea in china. The most impressive was the forbidden city. To think that the emperor build this magnificent playground (with 9999 rooms and 100,000 eunuchs) for his wives is mind blowing in itself. Even more mind blowing is the mind behind the great wall, another must see which I managed to slot in between meetings. I was surprised at the cleanliness of the place, or rather the lack of dirtiness, although smog was a real killer on some days. The traffic is crazy both in the amount of cars and the rackless driving (people in Beijing seem to drive with their hands fixed on the horn). Anyone who cycles in Beijing must be a stuntman. One surprising thing were the body temperature machines, that scan your body temperature as you pass by (I think this was introduced after SARS).

Surely someone is going to want to know about food. Yes, the food is different from "European" Chinese food, although it’s mainly because of the ingredients more than the style. The style and idea is similar but the diversity of ingredients is considerable. From my limited experience the Beijing cuisine was quite dry i.e. not soaked in soup like sauces like some takeaways. Also, I never found typical Chinese takeout dishes like sweet and sour pork or lemon chicken. Peking Duck (a must in Peking) is served identically to restaurants here and the taste is also very close. My culinary regret was that I didn’t try the sea cucumber (expensive). I found a few turtle dishes but due to moral reasons I didn’t order any. I had no problem having shark fin and shark lip soup, and intestines with chilli, but I didn’t find any dogs that I could eat (no moral objection as long as it’s not a pug). The Chinese beer that we tasted was quite watery, but the green tea is wayyyyyy better than the tea-bagged green tea you can get here. The difference is huge.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:12:28 GMT

1. Candlemass - Death Magic Doom
2. Spiritus Mortis - The God Behind the God
3. Hypocrisy - A Taste of Extreme Divinity
4. Forsaken - After the Fall
5. Ajattara - Noitumaa
6. Swallow the sun - New Moon
7. My Dying Bride - The Lies I Sire
8. Behemoth - Evangelion
9. Katatonia - Night is the new day
10. Nile - Those Whom the Gods Detest

Year 2009 In Review

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:00:38 GMT

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

Winter TV season is starting

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:51:38 GMT

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:-

Family Guy
How I met your mother
Big bang theory
It's always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Office
Desperate Housewives (compromise with the Miss)
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!

Update

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:06:09 GMT

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.

Twitter is taking over (at least till the end of summer)

Sat, 09 May 2009 19:10:59 GMT

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.

Inbox - Quotes are back

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:25:34 GMT

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".

Andrew Maxwell on SUVs

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:25:11 GMT

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

Check this one out too

Balls on fire

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:51:47 GMT

This deserves a quick break from my writing!

Via DavidThompson

So what's happening with me anyway?

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:11:47 GMT

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!

Facebook stole my blog

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:47:05 GMT

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.