Hal also provides some scientific support for the thesis that some of us are born nightowls. Dave Rogers didn’t have to be told, though.

James Robertson just invited me to a nice new GMail account. His weblog is a great place to start if Smalltalk intrigues you. Thanks a lot!

I was a fan of Dare Obasanjaro even before I started using RSS Bandit. He is often very clear and outspoken about difficult subjects. But here he takes his time to speculate about the future of programming languages.

Darrel Norton is learning Python this year. It’s a good thing to do! I’ve been lucky enough to use Python in real projects… and it’s so much easier to write readable code.

Dag König is a fellow Swedish developer with a nice weblog. He is active in the Sweden .Net User Group, which I recently joined. And you did notice the new Windows Mobile Application Development Toolkit, right?

Except for some geeky stuff that suddenly feel overwhelmingly urgent: things like uploading my many RSS feeds from RSS Bandit to Bloglines so I can use them on the road. Or trying to get my Qtek 8010 smartphone (also sold as Audiovox SMT 5600) to moblog. Flickr is the main alternative so far, but maybe Danish Albino Gorilla is easier? (found via Christian Dalager). And should I start sharing the music I listen using audioscrobbler? (found via Peter Lindberg)

Before coming to grips with del.icio.us there are hundreds and hundreds of old bookmarks to sort and wade through. Maybe not tonight, though.

Hmm… I am beginning to think I have done too much serious work lately. Fortunately I no longer use a Nokia phone, otherwise the release of Python for Nokia series 60 might have caused another online/mobile hack attack.

Well, I always found it hard to sleep before going on journeys. Especially those where I plan to rest and learn things about myself. Not only do I overpack, suddenly it feels as if the only thing that matters is to stay online and write. So I stay up all night and usually feel pretty bad when it’s time to leave.

Mind hacks are fun. But I recently stopped taking caffeine when it made me irritable and stupid. And lack of sleep will disturb those feedback loops, too. Let’s call it a night then, shall we?

So, it’s now late morning and I’m off to eat vegetables and rest.

Meanwhile, Joi Ito is off to the 21st Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. He hopes they’ll play nice with his laptop even though he hasn’t gone through the entire survival guide.

It’s very early, Petra is asleep while I surf around on my Thinkpad 42p. It’s a great machine. The Chinese may own the brand these days. But way back when Justin Hall compared his Thinkpad to the fictitious Ono Sendai i said to myself: yes, that’s right! And they were always developed in Japan, anyway.

Testdriven.Net is a great tool for testdriven development. I started using it when it was known as NunitAddin and it’s even better now.

URL-forwarding can be very handy: for instance, typing www.jonasbeckman.com takes you to this site. Unfortunately, my domain registrar has put an annoying banner at the bottom of the page and wants money to remove it. Instead, I am moving to 000domains – the banner should be gone in a few days.

In the afternoon we drove around with no particular goal, playing slow, sad music as the rain slushed down over dark, almost abandoned southern suburbs. What we really wanted was a long walk but the weather was just too awful.

Petra told me about this girl from Thailand she knew, who came to marry a Swede a few years ago. The poor girl arrived on the 25th of december. Small northern town, -25 Celsius (-13 F), no sunlight whatsoever – and she had never seen snow before.

Thai girl: I thought there were 100 000 people here? Swede: Yes. Thai girl: But… but… where are they?

Tomorrow we leave town for a week at Masesgården, a Swedish health resort. Plenty of time for sauna up there. Petra will enjoy her new car when we drive up… and I will tease her about the wellknown evil of SUV:s.

Would you ride a bus in Jerusalem? Fear Itself is a long article about learning to live in the age of terrorism.
I found this in Jason Kottke’s Best links of 2004. BTW, I would ride – but I haven’t been to Jerusalem since 1989.

Martin is thinking as hard as ever about how to write and how to live.

Christmas last year I was a triple Santa. First at my ex-girlfriend’s place, then at my brother’s and finally over to Petra’s brother. Kids everywhere, and some small enough to be true believers.

Christmas this year I’m off to my parents in the morning: great aunt Karin, 100 years old, is going to read for us. Then on to my brother’s traditional extended Christmas lunch. And after that Petra will drive me to her father – where at least nine kids are waiting for Santa. Well… lots of fun, all of it!
But tonight I am by myself, tired and grumpy after a few weeks of very hard work. Looking into myself. Gathering strength. And smiling at myself… I haven’t learned a lot, really. But I’m still trying.

BookFilter discusses books, magazines, authors, publishers and ponies. It is one of several community sites built using FreeFilter.

Some articles make complex technical subjects sound easy: The Power of XmlElement Parameters in ASP.NET Web Methods.
Via Drew’s blog

A Primer on Python Metaclass Programming.
Maybe this one won’t seem easy without some prior knowledge.

Found another discussion of fiction (and online writing in particular) as honesty of a different nature.

Being too literal about truth is boring and impossible: everyone is telling stories – that’s what makes us human. But all the best stories were told because someone cared.