Introduction

It has taken me some five years of hesitation before I started my own blog, or "web log", as they were called then. Blogs are a form of narcissism, I've often thought. So, therefore this blog won't be a teen diary of turbulent hormonally induced feelings, nor will it be a captains's log promptly recording every irrelevant action I take in my life, nor will I re-blog all even remotely interesting links I find when surfing the net or in other blogs. In fact very little of my private or professional life will be recorded here.

So, what do I plan to blog? Primarily reviews of books and software, and essays, or even shorter essaylettes, of paradoxes, my opinions, observations or ideas I don't have time to pursue further myself. And probably I will blog relatively infrequently and in bursts.

And, who am I? A gradually middle-aging hacker, a software engineer currently working on my PhD in computer science at the Helsinki University of Technology, married, a happy father of a two year old daughter who's probably bound to outsmart me in everything except some arcane programming languages, a modest/low-carber, member of IKI and Skepsis, and someone who likes good discussions, elegant algorithms, terse software designs, puzzles with an element of surprize, cycling, cooking, and - given a relaxed schedule - building or renovating woodwork.