Recently in In English Category

Andrus blogged about interesting travel reporting utility DOPPLR. It allows you to easily track your travels and your friends around the globe to meet you when you two should bounce together somewhere.

I have attached my travel profile also to about me page.

Let's see how much I will travel over the time.

There is currently again ongoing a big gas dispute between EU, Ukraine and Russia.

There is no side which is right in this dispute. Maybe only countries which should get the gas are current on demanding the supplies according to their agreements, altough they should expect that they might not get the best service while they are dependant on one supplier.

The current issues have not been caused by the Ukrainian friends, but they surely could do some things better.. They are not the ones to blame for no supplies. It's just Russian energy manipulative policy to get go ahead for the Nord-Stream gas pipeline through Baltic sea. I think that the Nord Stream pipeline should never be allowed to be completed on it's current plans. If they want to complete it then it should be done through land over Baltic States and Poland with connections to Finland and Sweden.

Other more important than anything related to Nord-Stream having a wide variety of energy supplier so that when you ran intro trouble with one you would not be knocked to you knees instantly. I believe that all European coutnries should invest into making the Nabucco gas pipeline to became the reality as fast as possible. It would enable to bring directly top Europe LNG from Central-Asia without crossing Russian territories.

In addition to having more gas supply routes and suppliers we should working more and more of alternative fuel sources. We should be thinking on expanding the use of Nuclear energy, because nowadays technology is safe enough for usage and it would be a CO2 free energy resource.

I'm amuzed that Europe hasn't learned anything from the previous gas disputes. Every thinking person would make moves with this time to improve it's position. Read more about current and previous disputes over Wikipedia.

I hope it's not yet too late and I'll write a bit about my life during the last year. Just like I did on last year (In Estonian).

So one of the changes is that now this year I'm writing in English, instead of my mother tongue. I thought that it's best to keep one blogline and mix English and Estonian posts there. I try to write all personal, Skype related or topics which could have broader interest in English and keep everything else in Estonian.

Life

Happily living in my rented appartment, with extremely pleasant owner and without having any thoughts of moving in short therm. When to move then we would like to move to our own home.

I'm extremely happy about my relationships and that what was a extremely small light year ago between I and Angela has now grown to be lovely relationship.

School

Getting my BA degree is not moving at all on the road as I planned year ago, altough there have been some moves to be nearer to graduation.

Now between me and graduation there are only 4 courses, one of which I hope to finish in this semester and the thesis.

Politics

Doing lot less in this field than on 2007. I participated in very interesting DEMYC event in Belarus. Otherwise it has been a silent year of working in some fields which I'm interested in.

I was elected to be a board member in IRL Youth Tallinn organiazation.

Work

In my work life. I'm still happily with Skype doing similar things like year before. Now I'd say that I'm covering few more areas in comparision with 2007.

Travel

During the year I spent about 2 months abroad. The year started with extremely interesting visit to Belarus, about which you can read also from here or just view the pictures.

I visited for first time USA, where I was attending one work related conference. I hope to go there back someday to see more than the usual business trip areas - airports, offices, conference halls, hotels, bars and restaurants.

In addition to Belarus and USA, I was also first time on a "warm" country. I was 2 times working in Greece, where for one week we managed to have a lovely vacation on Santorini island.

Summary

Altough with some not so good progress in school I'd say it was deinately the best year in my life so far. I hope that 2009 will be better.

I'll write in few days about what I'd like to experience during 2009.

I saw few questions about instant messaging layout in Skype 4.0 beta 3, then I decided to put up a few sreenshots about possibilities.

Changing instant messaging area size width:

To change it drag chat area from the edges.

Turn chat area into compact view:

Change the instant messaging window in compact mode to smaller size.

Today we could see some elves moving around the office and leaving some present around.

What a good start for Christmas period.

There's a nice video out there how Obama campaign used Skype to make considerable amount of phone calls with Skype's nearly unlimited calling subscriptions.

Skype is really beginning to be a mainstream calling application for many. It's so good and positive to see how those campaign makers are always taking up new technologies and innovative ideas to give them the needed extra step to win.




Congrats to Obama for a win. Yes you can ;).

There is interesting video about facts and how things are progressing and happening in today's world.

See it from here. The video requires Windows Media Player capable client to play it.

Few days ago ended my and Halina organized a conference in Athens for IT enthusiasts and companies.

 

It was my third such event to organize. You can only imagine what relief I had after the event was driven to end successfully.

 

It was such a pleasure to hear in the end lot of good comments and see joyful people.