It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I’ve made my resolutions for 2009. Among other things I pledged to become more serious about learning Spanish, keep on training sanjuro, travel to see another (probably awesome) country and impress myself with new kiteboarding tricks yet to be learned. So if you see me skipping my Spanish or sanjuro class please do apply some good old peer pressure. This is what friends are for.
There are a few other more personal resolutions that I didn’t want to make public, relating to (storm-ridden) finances or private life. I guess I just don’t need the extra kick of motivation for these ones.
Wasn’t 2008 awesome!
So much to look back at and smile. And there are quite a few resolutions I managed to keep : Pledgehammer is up and running, I managed to attend as many sanjuro trainings as I intended and I travelled enough for my liking. Then there’s the slightly weird resolution about my private life where I either wanted one thing or the other but I sort of achieved both. But I did fail several resolutions, some for good and some to be reached in years to come.
As you may have already guessed by now I like to set goals for myself, and not just on New Year’s Eve. If you don’t know where you’re going you may not get there, as the old saying goes. If you haven’t done so yet, I warmly recommend sit down and ask yourself what you do want to get from 2009? And what do you want to give to 2009, or the people you care about. I of course recommend to write it down on this great site for making resolutions (sorry, just had to link one more time) but you can also share it in your mood message, blog or a bumper sticker on your car for that matter.
Talking of which, it’s great that Pledgehammer has gotten some nice coverage and that there are now more other people’s resolutions on the site than mine. If it becomes useful to a few people and helps a few charities get more donations, that’s another one of my resolutions for 2009 done right there.
So bring on 2009 and a happy new year to you all!

It gives me ridiculous amounts of joy to present a new nifty tool for making (and keeping) pledges. Welcome to this web two-dot-oh filled world, Pledgehammer.
According to any dictionary a pledge is a solemn binding promise to do, give, or refrain from doing something. It is also something given or held as security to guarantee payment of a debt or fulfillment of an obligation. We just put the two together. The idea is very simple. First you make a pledge with a firm deadline and a financial incentive for keeping your resolution. For example, I will not smoke until May 1st 2009 if you want to make one of the most popular new year’s resolutions or I will not invade any Middle Eastern countries until February 2010 if you happen to be the president of a powerful Western country. Pledgehammer then makes your pledge public and asks you how you did upon the deadline.
If you kept your pledge, well done. We’ll be proud of you and probably so will you. But if you didn’t you have to pay up (you had to pick a financial incentive, remember?). However, the money doesn’t go to greedy people behind Pledgehammer. It goes to a charity you pick yourself. So either way the world will be a little bit better. Or a lot better, because who needs people that can’t quit smoking, invade other countries or don’t donate money to charity anyway.
So please make a pledge. And if you spot anything that shouldn’t be there or should be better please let me know. We want to get everything just right for the time when people rush in to make their new year’s resolutions.
Thanks go out to Priidu for his design geniuseness, Malthe for his common sense and advice plus a good many other people without whom Pledgehammer would be just an idea left undone. Merry pledging to you all!

Update 2010: project closed down.

Call me a tourist, but I had completely forgotten how dark it gets in Estonia in December. Bring on the snow!

If you think it’s right to lie, you’ve got to deal with the hard work of ass-covering, so the best thing is to tell the truth. If it’s a legal situation, don’t do it before you talk to your lawyer. But there’s nothing in lying. It’s always a manifestation of being frightened of something.
The interview with Jack Nicholson in the December issue of GQ UK is pure gold. Platinum, even. Or whatever the most precious metal is. If you don’t read that magazine too often, as is the case with yours truly, that’s the issue to read.
Started posting good quotes on Tumblr.

PS. Any tips on how to aggregate my different RSS feeds into one? I can’t figure out whether Feedburned can handle random feeds eg. those coming from Tumblr or Edicy.

I love Audible ever since I signed up a few months back. (Btw this is a very special link; if you click it and sign up I will earn Audible credits. So if you don’t click and sign up there will be no audiobooks for me to eat or warm my house in the winter.)
But I would write about Audible even if I didn’t earn any goodies. I’d probably write even longer as now this may appear as shameless paid advertisement which it is not.
Audible is an awesome service, you see. If there was no Audible I wouldn’t know the age of the Earth. Not that I care too much about the age of the Earth but I’m a curious person and like to know how things have come to be and how they work. But as much as I would have loved to read a book such as Short History of Nearly Everything I know that I would not have done that in a sensible time. It’s kind of too heavy material for holidays or bed time reading. And at times when my brain is alert for facts and concepts of different sorts I’m either working, writing or reading online which would have left very little time for reading that book. So I never bought it.
Enter Audible. (Same affiliate link, again in case you didn’t click before.) Since signing up a few months ago I’ve listened through most of the Short History, started a book about pre-Enlightenment philosophy and gotten a third-way through one of Seth Godin’s books. I’ve had the latter for a year already but due to my no-time-for-serious-reading syndrome had only read the first 30 pages or so.
To my great surprise it is much easier to read that kind of stuff with my ears. Or in other words, listen to it. I hope this recommendation will not land on deaf ears, quite literally.