And the last bit of latest personal news for the day: from 12th until 19th of Feb I'm going to Slovakia to ski (or, actually snowboard). The organizers are the same as last year: Koondis Tempo - a couple of students from Tartu organizing the trip for friends and friends-of-friends.
A really enjoyable gang of people and hopefully a lot of snow! :-)
Feel free to join! - there are still seats available.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
also in the news - the magical return of Mr. Pauts!
Yes, it's true! The Man himself is coming back from Indonesia! :-)
Things should become much more interesting in this part of the world when he gets back! ;-)
When-when, tell me WHEN?
According to the conversation held over the good old MSN Messenger, he is planning to quit from Lux sometime in Feb-Mar, chill on Bali Islands for a few months and then return to this part of the world in May-Jun.
Meanwhile I'm trying to find a way how to visit him there before he comes back... think-think, man!
Things should become much more interesting in this part of the world when he gets back! ;-)
When-when, tell me WHEN?
According to the conversation held over the good old MSN Messenger, he is planning to quit from Lux sometime in Feb-Mar, chill on Bali Islands for a few months and then return to this part of the world in May-Jun.
Meanwhile I'm trying to find a way how to visit him there before he comes back... think-think, man!
london - here we come!
I'm having a vacation from 27th of Jan until 2nd of Feb - going to London with Elina to visit Kati and Liam there. They are moving away RSN* and this is probably the last time we will see them there, for quite some time.
* (real soon now)
* (real soon now)
skipping the physics exam
I have a physics exam tomorrow (I'm enrolled in Estonian IT College, in case you didn't know). And I have been really lazy during the semester. Even worse, I was really lazy until "the last moment" (I started to check things on Monday). Today I went to redo some mid-term tests and I realized that I was hopelessly behind the schedule to get everything ready for tomorrow.
Uh-oh, my bad. Probably will have to take this exam again at some other time. At least I will have enough "academic points" to keep me in the school.
Uh-oh, my bad. Probably will have to take this exam again at some other time. At least I will have enough "academic points" to keep me in the school.
metablogging
this time I'll do some "metablogging" - blog about blogging. More specifically: what I consider to be suitable topics/material for blogging and what not.
Me and Elina had an argument about this and it got me thinking. Some key points below.
What audience people write to?
Elina argued that people (should) write only for themselves. I opposed to that: if people write only to themselves then they can just as well keep a private diary and to keep things really private - later on burn it as well. But then why keep it at all? But I don't want to go into those (private diary) reasons. So I'll leave this topic for some other time.
My point is that if you are posting the writing on the Internet then you are hoping that there will be an audience for that (even if you do not admit it). So it brings back the question: what is that audience?
And the tricky issue with a public blog is that it is public - even if you manage to define the target audience for yourself, you never know who might actually end up reading it. So you better have a thick skin or you should be careful with your comments.
I plan to have a thick skin. :-)
What are you trying to achieve with your blog? What is the point of it all?
Elina says that I'm a practical person (as opposed to her, I suppose :-P) and when I think of it, I tend to agree. So I need a point, even when blogging. :-) But then again, should there always be a point? For me, enjoyable blogs seem to fall in two categories: specialized and general. Specialized blogs write about some some specific topic (like my other blog devilop) and general blogs tend to be... um... more general; and to discuss a little bit about everything :-)
This blog is intended to be more general with the main purpose being: disseminate information (more on that below).
But these questions can be asked about any written work, blogging is not unique at all. If you know your audience and you know what you are trying to achieve then the choice of topics should be pretty clear. And also (hopefully) more interesting for your audience to read.
This blog.
The main reason why I started this are my friends abroad. Some of them have blogs (Märt, Kaido & Katu). And it is fun to read what is happening there. So I figured that most probably it would be fun for them to read what is happening back "home", in case they are interested. Answering the audience question above: I consider the main audience to be my friends abroad. And this is also the main reason why I will write in English, most of the time. So my non-Estonian friends would also understand! ;-)
One of the best things about blogs is the non-obtrusiveness: you can choose to read them and you can choose to ignore them. You can choose to use RSS to configure your ThunderBird to download them automagically or you can choose to add a "live" bookmark to your FireFox. No need to mess around with some mailing lists or similar stuff for distributing information...
Although spreading the information was the final push in setting up my blog, I will also write about other stuff - ideas about anything. And I have made a promise to myself that I will not care "too much" about the opinions that other people might develop as a result. :-)
Ok, this has turned out to be quite a long post so I'll stop here.
Me and Elina had an argument about this and it got me thinking. Some key points below.
What audience people write to?
Elina argued that people (should) write only for themselves. I opposed to that: if people write only to themselves then they can just as well keep a private diary and to keep things really private - later on burn it as well. But then why keep it at all? But I don't want to go into those (private diary) reasons. So I'll leave this topic for some other time.
My point is that if you are posting the writing on the Internet then you are hoping that there will be an audience for that (even if you do not admit it). So it brings back the question: what is that audience?
And the tricky issue with a public blog is that it is public - even if you manage to define the target audience for yourself, you never know who might actually end up reading it. So you better have a thick skin or you should be careful with your comments.
I plan to have a thick skin. :-)
What are you trying to achieve with your blog? What is the point of it all?
Elina says that I'm a practical person (as opposed to her, I suppose :-P) and when I think of it, I tend to agree. So I need a point, even when blogging. :-) But then again, should there always be a point? For me, enjoyable blogs seem to fall in two categories: specialized and general. Specialized blogs write about some some specific topic (like my other blog devilop) and general blogs tend to be... um... more general; and to discuss a little bit about everything :-)
This blog is intended to be more general with the main purpose being: disseminate information (more on that below).
But these questions can be asked about any written work, blogging is not unique at all. If you know your audience and you know what you are trying to achieve then the choice of topics should be pretty clear. And also (hopefully) more interesting for your audience to read.
This blog.
The main reason why I started this are my friends abroad. Some of them have blogs (Märt, Kaido & Katu). And it is fun to read what is happening there. So I figured that most probably it would be fun for them to read what is happening back "home", in case they are interested. Answering the audience question above: I consider the main audience to be my friends abroad. And this is also the main reason why I will write in English, most of the time. So my non-Estonian friends would also understand! ;-)
One of the best things about blogs is the non-obtrusiveness: you can choose to read them and you can choose to ignore them. You can choose to use RSS to configure your ThunderBird to download them automagically or you can choose to add a "live" bookmark to your FireFox. No need to mess around with some mailing lists or similar stuff for distributing information...
Although spreading the information was the final push in setting up my blog, I will also write about other stuff - ideas about anything. And I have made a promise to myself that I will not care "too much" about the opinions that other people might develop as a result. :-)
Ok, this has turned out to be quite a long post so I'll stop here.
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