Accepted for Google Summer of Code!

I have been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2009! The title of my project is “Extend EclipseFP functionality for Haskell.” I have just set up a blog where I can keep all posts together that are related to this project. (This blog will also allow me to test-drive Wordpress, because as we all know Blogger sucks.) You can find more information at my new blog: EclipseFP GSoC '09.

Add three inches in a week!

For over a year, I've been the happy owner of a Dell 2407WFP 24" widescreen monitor:

But as of late, there has been a little problem with it:

It's as if there is a strip loose between the backlight and the LCD. Not a big problem, but slightly annoying.

So last Monday I mailed Dell customer support. I got a prompt response, recommending me to try resetting the monitor by holding down the power button for 20 seconds. Tried that; didn't help; mailed back. Tuesday, I got the reply: they were sending a replacement through UPS, to be arriving the next day. Wednesday morning: phone call from UPS. From Lithuania, of all places. Telling me in fairly decent English that the replacement was not in stock, and that I should contact Dell for an alternative, so I mailed them again. On Thursday I got a call from Germany. Broken English, not entirely clear on the purpose of the call, but apparently verifying my address. Oh well.

Now this Friday morning, I woke up to the sound of the doorbell. A man from UPS with a replacement monitor. I was surprised, since I hadn't heard anything from Dell in the meantime. Being careful, I wanted to see the replacement in action before the UPS guy left with my old one. Unpacked the monitor.

First thing I noticed: brushed metal, not black like my old one. Checked the model number on the back: 2707WFP. — Wait… 27?! And indeed, holding my old panel up against it, the new one was three inches larger. It worked right out of the box and had no dead pixels or other artifacts, so I let the UPS guy take my old screen away (sniff). He didn't even want the booklets or cables or cd-rom, which was lucky for me since I'd have a hell of a time finding all that stuff again.

Thinking that this replacement was too good to be true, I e-mailed Dell once more to verify that it was indeed correct and intended to be permanent. Got a confirmation within the hour.

Now that is what I call Customer Care.

My goal in life

The standard impossible-to-answer philosophical question, which has become very much a cliché, is “What is the meaning of life?” I've answered this for myself ages ago: life has no meaning by itself. Everybody can create as much or as little meaning for his or her own life as they please.

It helps to have an ultimate goal in life. For every decision you need to make, you can check whether it aligns with your life goal. Having a goal also gives your life purpose and motivate you to keep going.

When I read a post by Steve Pavlina a couple of months back, I was reminded of this. What was my goal in life? Steve suggests to write down potential goals until one makes you cry — that is the goal you're looking for. I discovered I didn't need this: the answer popped right into my head, and had probably been there for a long time.

All that remains is to write it down. My goal in life is to continuously keep improving myself, and thereby the world around me.

I'm a pretty altruistic person. Yes, I want to improve the world. But I also have a selfish part. I want to grow, to learn, to become a better person in every sense. These goals don't have to be in conflict. A “good” me also cares about his surroundings, helps other people, tries to make a difference for the better. That's the person I want to be.

The importance of teeth brushing

I am not a dentist. I'm not going to tell you how brushing your teeth is good for you because it removes plaque and is healthy for your gums. For me, teeth brushing has another, entirely different use.

My morning ritual looks more or less like this: get up, go to the bathroom, have a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth. After that, I usually went away to university. Currently I'm mostly working and studying from home. In between the getting dressed is often a lot of e-mail reading, blog reading, forum reading etcetera. Because you're a blog reader yourself you know how time-consuming these things can be if you don't put a stop to them. Sometimes half of the morning has already passed before I close the web browser and start working.

It turns out that these are also the times that I neglect to brush my teeth. Teethbrushing signifies the end of my morning ritual, and thereby, the start of work time. The fresh taste in my mouth is the physical reminder of that. When I notice that I'm wasting time on reading blogs, I just have to get up and brush my teeth, and the sense of urgency to start working increases significantly, often up to the point that I start right away.

This conditioning may have been with me from the time I started to go to school. Even back then, brushing my teeth was one of the last things I did before I left. No wonder that the association is ingrained so deeply. A hack though it may be, it's very useful and I must take care to keep it.

Brushing my teeth is also the last thing I do before I go to sleep. It would be interesting to see whether it also makes me sleep better. Perhaps I can combine this experiment with some future power napping experiments.

Why I started blogging

After toying with the idea for a while, wondering whether I had time for it, whether I'd have anything I'd like to write, whether I'd have anything people would like to read, whether I'd be disciplined enough to keep it up, whether people I know would think better or worse of me for it, I finally decided to start a blog.

There are a couple of reasons why I started blogging. In order of decreasing importance:

1. Writing means thinking. If there's something I need to think about, I find it a great help to write about it. It forces me to turn my thoughts from a messy pile of stuff into a coherent, logical whole. But even though I know this, it feels odd to write things that nobody will ever read, so a blog should help me out.
2. I like to write. Writing comes naturally to me. I just take a thought and put it on the screen, creating a coherent story out of it (or so I think) without much effort. Often when I work together with someone on a report, and we decide to split it up and each write half of it, I finish my part when the other person has just finished the second paragraph. Before I decided I wanted to become an astronaut (around the age of 10) I always wanted to be a writer. I still wouldn't mind. (But I'd also like to visit the moon some day!)
3. I want to practice writing. Even though I don't think I'm a bad writer, my writing can definitely be improved. Great bloggers have a very convincing style of writing, possessing the almost magical ability to implant their opinions into your head as if you'd never thought otherwise. This is a very useful skill, that I want to develop. The ability to get your point across clearly and convincingly is very handy in real-life conversations, too.
4. I want to share things with the world. You may have noticed that the first three reasons are all selfish ones. A desire to share things is not the main reason for me to blog. I write mostly for myself, and it doesn't really matter to me how many people read it or agree with me. But sometimes I think “hey, that's an interesting thought!” – you know, these kind of random things that suddenly hit you – and I don't want that thought to get lost. Or sometimes the thoughts are less random, and I really have an insight that I feel could be useful to someone else.

The title of this blog, “The Typethinker”, reflects the first reason above: typing as a way of thinking. I like the alliteration in “The Typethinker”, especially because T is the first letter of my name. I meant to call it “Writethink”, in proper Newspeak, but too many other things with that name or similar names exist. Also, “Writethink” or “The Writethinker” is a bit more awkward to pronounce, especially for non-native speakers like me. I like the Newspeak connotation though, because Newspeak was designed to do just the opposite of me: using language to prevent thought instead of facilitating it. With a Newspeak title, my blog would be rebellious! “The Typethinker” could still be Newspeak, but less obviously so.

I don't know where this blog is headed. Most successful blogs have a central theme. Most unsuccessful blogs also have a central theme, but it is something that nobody except a handful of people cares about: the blog's author him-/herself. The same is true for me at the moment, but as implied before, I don't care about becoming successful. For now I'll just type out whatever occurs to me. If I discover that there is some consistent recurring theme that I can keep writing about, I might focus my blogging on that. Only the future can tell.