Year: 2006

In one week, on July 1st 2006, signing up for Blogathon 2006 will open up. The Blogathon itself will take place on July 29th, 2006.

Blogathon is a lot of fun. Too bad, I’ll probably be off the net on July 29th, otherwise I’d participated. Blogathon is a blogging marathon, which goes on for exactly 24 hours, where every participant must update his blog every 30 minutes.

And that’s not only for fun. The whole idea of the Blogathon is to raise some money for charity. You can choose from a number of charity organizations. If you want to raise money for more than one, you’ll have to update more than one blog every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight – a task practically impossible.

Are you guys up for a challange? You can group and work in shifts to keep up with a single blog or you can have each your own.

BloggerCon is on. This time there is a whole lot of ways to participate. And the best part is – you don’t even have to be there. There are mp3 podcasts, webcast, and even an IRC channel, where you can communicate with people while listening to the conference online in real time (for free).

Getting into conference mood, I got interested about technology conferences in Europe. I’m sure that there is a lot going on, and I won’t have to fly for three days to get there. While I was given a couple of links (this one and this one), the real deal came from someone who set up the European technology conferences group at Upcoming.org. There are only 7 members at present, inluding yours truly, but there’s already enough content to choose from.

After looking through the list of upcoming stuff, I got my attention set at BlogTalk conference. It will take place at Vienna, Austria on 2nd and 3rd of October, 2006. There are a few interesting speeches about social software and blogging already confirmed, and more are coming. Also, the conference’s website is very informative, with prices (85 EUR) and links to accomodation (a selection of hotels with prices and conference discounts).

BlogTalk looks like the perfect conference for me to attend – not too far away, reasonable prices, and only a couple of days long. I’ll consider it more seriously after I come back from Russia.

I wish that I could use maps from Show me Cyprus in Google Earth and Google Maps. The coverage from Show me Cyprus is a bit less, but the quality of images for covered areas is better than what Google Earth offers.

Today I have renewed my gym membership for another 6 month (129 CYP). The first month of my dieting and exercisng is over. Here are a few highlights, for the record:

• I’ve started with 122 something kilograms. Today I clocked in 112.7 before gym and 111.9 kilograms after. I lost almost 10 kilograms in one month, which is better than was expected.
• I feel better and healthier. I love walking now, exercising a few times a week, and don’t have any hard times with my diet. Nevermind three or so exceptions during the last month.
• My physical strength is growing. I am not getting tired as fast as I used to, and I can do more exercises (longer, more weights, etc).

I’ll keep on doing what I am doing for now, as I am pleased with results.

After watching this episode of “The Daily Show“, I decided to read a bit more about the Berkeley Pit.

Surprisingly, the Wikipedia page contained almost as much information as the episode itself. Minus the comedy. Plus the links to the additional resources (mostly with pictures).

That’s one of the reasons I love “The Daily Show” – funny and informative.