Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

Got a new bike!

Friday, January 25th, 2008

I was up early today as I had to do something for my youngest sister and hat to meet her at 8 AM. So I decided to, while I’m out, also use the long day in front of me to pay the bills and also go bike shopping, something I’ve been contemplating for a while. Ideally I wanted to find one that is really cheap yet of fairly good quality. After roaming around the city and various centres I eventually decided to get one which is apparently, at least in the words of the salesman, “a good bike at a low price”. This sounds pretty plausible for me since I know that in many areas there usually are products which fill that sweet spot between “cheap and bad” and “too expensive yet great quality” in that it is fairly good quality yet close to cheap. My Logitech X230 speakers are an excellent example – cheap and incredibly good sounding. I still just love them!

So I got it. I paid more than I originally intended but it seemed reasonable. Better to go one level up from “the cheapest” and enjoy better quality and easier maintenance than pay dirt cheap and keep being on my toes about it. The bike is awesome, the ride is smooth, totally quiet – feels like driving a brand new car – there’s no clamping or weird noises whatsoever. Changing gears is also very smooth and easy. Overall I feel quite satisfied with it and am looking forward to at some point further equip it with lights, bells etc., especially if I end up driving it often.

Why the bike? Well as part of the self improvement initiative I’ve been pushing lately I started paying more attention to the physical aspect. In addition to trying to make exercise every day a habit, at least in a basic sense, bike is an excellent way to do exercise in a fun and enjoyable way – plus I actually get out more and I also get to skip the buses and trams and traffic jams. As spring and then summer comes, it ought to be a great ride – I can only see advantages. And as Brian Kim says (not being the only one), better physical health means better mental health, which is what I need to keep working enthusiastically on my main goals and with my main occupation here on the internet. :)

There is one negative which I currently perceive though, and in full honestly feel a little bit intimidated. Apparently the statistics show that cyclists are the most endangered in traffic and that many people end up quite fatally in various accidents. Reading BicycleSafe.com there appear to be so many various ways you could get in trouble on a bicycle, some of which seem barely predictable. So it does seem like cycling means assuming a bit higher level of risk comparing to just staying relatively safe walking and taking buses/trams.

On the other hand the popularity of cycling seems to be increasing and the special cycling tracks seem to be a new standard in building new or modernizing existing roads – where cyclists now get to have their own space. And the benefits of cycling as too good to be turned down. I suppose I’ll just have to learn to stay safe. Good thing about bicycles is that you can ride them down alternative routes, through less crowded and trafficked places allowing to generally stay out of harms way – avoiding even the very situation of there being a potential of accident caused by a moment of carelessness..

And to add a more significant point to this diatribe I think cycling should really be widely promoted all over as an alternative to car driving. People should ask themselves whether the costs of driving and maintaining a car is really worth it? Some have two cars in the family? Is it really necessary? Bikes are so much less of a burden on both your financials and the environment, and are healthy too.

Final point. The more bicycles on the road – the safer they will have to become for cyclists and the more environment friendly too. Less cars, more bikes, everyone wins. :)

Cheers

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Become un-manipulable by discovering yourself!

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

I tend to be sensitive to stories which describe the few manipulating the many, from a nation to the world at large, for their own agenda. You may otherwise know them as “conspiracy theories”, but I tend to avoid contributing to the proliferation of that term because it is nowadays used merely as a means of discrediting whatever one has to say – truth or not, logical or not.

Ultimately I think I learned, by now, to be more vary of such theories and to be more critical initially, not just after further evaluation – so I don’t fall for it before I’ve actually given it a full analysis and thought. Or perhaps I just grew tired of it as I start believing more in my own personal power and the power of other individuals, to change the world – to spoil whatever plans whichever elite may have for it.

I am beginning to realize that what the masses should be most excited about is not so much the big New World Order scenarios or big political plots as much as their own personal self improvement and empowerment. It is interesting how many times I’ve seen a relation between theories of mass manipulation and simple personal disjointedness of a common western human today: disjointedness from their own very humanity. Since the majority of people apparently fail to find themselves they resort to playing one of the roles made for them by the society they are living in. This is conformism. They conform to the path set for them by the society because they do not know their own way!

I couldn’t hope to explain this as well as Brian Kim can, especially in his article titled “Why So Many People Are In Jobs They Hate”. Because they don’t yet even know what would be a job they love, let alone have the boldness to pursue it! Then they ultimately start to blame the system, the society, because indeed it is the paths society has made for them that they followed and became so unhappy. Intriguing question comes to my mind: Is it any wonder theories of conspiracies are so popular?

I would say that if there is a conspiracy going on, if we are being manipulated, the best way to oppose it might not be to go on the tedious process of ghost chasing, trying to find the truth in a pile of truths – all the movies and articles all claiming to know the truth about the world and its future. The best way to make sure that we are not being manipulated and led like sheep into the world of dystopia is to realize that there is more than a sheep within ourselves, to discover a human being in us and who exactly it is! Once we do we will be naturally able to rearrange our life as if we were born again, as if we were turned from one kind of being into another, much more powerful, one which can actually live to its full potential, one which can change the world, one which will not be manipulated, one which has its own path and will not conform.

Imagine if all people in the world found the real full blooded human in themselves! Oh I certainly believe whoever is plotting a conspiracy to make us slaves to their agenda will have their plans severely disturbed. When the majority of people are barely aware of who they are and hence naturally conformist, they are easy to manipulate. But when you have a nation, a world nation of people who are full blooded ambitious humans in touch with their self and on their fast tracks towards the goals they set out to achieve, many of which due to the ambitious evolutionary nature of a true human include changing the world at large good luck with manipulating them!

This is an incredible realization. There are so many various theories out there, so many wrongs in the world. And the knee jerk reaction to them tends to be emotional – anger, numbness, cynism, an undirected drive of an activist – and in most cases all of this is in vain. You can’t do much to change the reality of the world if you don’t yet know the reality of who you are. How can you use yourself to bring about change if you still didn’t learn who and what yourself is? It’s like trying to go into a car race without knowing how to use the gear changer, or like trying to fly a space ship without knowing how to turn the propulsion on. Sooner or later the space ship you are trying to fly will be caught by the gravity of something bigger – leading you down its own paths and you’ll barely even be aware of it until you hit an asteroid or something. :P

So the prospects of the world are frustrating. Heck, your own life is frustrating! How about changing it all? There is a solution. It is you! You just didn’t find YOU yet. I suggest you take a look at what Brian Kim has to say (check his articles on the left sidebar). It’s really helping me so I figure it might help you too! :)

I’m on my way. :)

Cheers

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Improve your life and then the world

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Wanna change the world? A good way to start would be to change yourself to the better first. There are a couple of great links on Digg.com right now that make a very nice pair to what I linked to before on this blog. To get to the point, here are the excellent general steps to making yourself and your life better and then as such helping make the world a better place – something a lot of people may, without perhaps realizing so yet, be aspiring to.

When faced with many wrongs in the world people sometimes say “what can I do” assuming the answer to be close to “nothing”. It may be liberating to learn that by just striving to improve yourself and your own life in a real way (not just things like “having more money”) you’re refitting yourself into a potential world-changer. Once your life is in order and you are happy with it, helping change a world is just a matter of deciding to do so – execution wont be too hard.

That said, who am I to give advice? Well I’m not.. I’m just picking up what others have said and connected the dots.. which are quite easy to connect. I convert it into a suggestion because it makes a lot of sense to me and I believe it may help others too. As you may have seen I am impulsive and sometimes probably too emotional, making some of my blog posts and attitudes often, although temporarily, negative. But.. I’m in a process. Nothing is fluid. All this can change to the better.

All things can be better, no matter how bad they may seem or be today.

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Restarting on a positive note

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

I don’t want my last post (about what I see as a negative state of the OpenBSD community culture) to stand at the forefront of my blog too long, not so much because I regret writing it, since it was an expression of my current thoughts and emotions on that subject, but because these are after all the first days of the new year and I feel I shouldn’t squander them in negativity, no matter where it originated, but rather try and focus on seeing what was positive about 2007 and what good can be done in 2008.

It is not hard to often see a given community or humanity in general as screwing itself up in many major ways, but then again if I am to bask in all of that negativity myself I’ll probably one way or another end up being part of the problem – among the screwed or among the ones screwing up.

If nothing then it is because of my own sanity and happiness that I should keep searching for positives and no matter how down I sometimes feel I can’t deny the fact that I discovered and perhaps even helped create a lot of positive things so far, and have the potential to do more. The future is waiting on us to build it.

It is all part of the process of growing. My last post shown how sensitive I can be towards what some other people may see as a normal phenomenon in a diverse ecosystem of free people (flamewars). I have a hard time accepting such ugly wars as a normal constant and the fact that they bruise some of the people I admire while not validly reducing their credibility doesn’t help.  If they were to at least provide me with enough chewable evidence to change my admirations perhaps I would feel a bit differently, but that is always very hard to come by when most of what you’re seeing is an emotional rampage rather than a civil diplomatic discussion.

Kevin, a friend on a #libervis IRC channel further helped me realize that I can’t always rely on this vision of people agreeing or at least being civil and diplomatic all the time, that sometimes wars of words and emotion in this world are inevitable.. And it rather nicely tied in to a similar theme I’ve been learning as the 2007 was expiring, through the process of organizing and running Freedomware Gamefest 2007 for instance.

As always, I set it out as a loose thing where everyone can contribute and everyone’s opinion would be considered. The ideal is to come up with the organization and the rules that everyone would agree with, if not fully then at least enough to be satisfactory. Strictness is something I rarely employ, and I am realizing now that this is not always a good policy. I almost feel like a darn child coming out into the harsh world realizing that sometimes you just have to be tough, harsh and strict to accomplish something. This is one of the realizations I already set out to employ in some of my future projects, including the potential new Freedomware Gamefest later in the year.

But what was I thinking anyway? I know everything sooner or later comes down to a balance. Nothing extreme is good. Not extreme freedom and therefore sure not extreme diplomacy, if that would be the right way to characterize it. Restrictions have to be balanced with freedom. Loose has to be balanced with strict. Friendly has to be balanced with some unfriendliness. (But no I still don’t think this lets OBSD people off the hook, as I think they disrupt that balance). Just as all fundamentals end up closing a full circle into a paradox so do all opposites rightly meet at the balancing point. Perhaps the two are even the same thing. And it would appear that living in accordance to the picture portrayed by these paradoxes and these balancing points may in fact be the best and wisest way to live.

But it’s all easy to say. Application is the key, and that may be the thing we require most growing time to master.

So, I think these kinds of realizations, among others sprinkled around my blog is what largely sums up what I learned and developed throughout 2007 and which I will try to apply in 2008.

That said, just to be a bit more practical, there have been many incredible things happening in 2007 when I look back. And of course many of these experiences one way or another helped form the realizations and opinions I am expressing today. Libervis Network achieved financial sustainability. I was on my first Free Software/Free Culture conference, the iCommons Summit 2007 in Dubrovnik. At the same occasion I for the first time met a Libervisian in Real Life, my friend Taco Buitenhuis. Near the year end we even met again, second time in a year, right here in Zagreb! I moved to an apartment now living on my own. Consequently I finally have proper high speed internet connection, enabling me to discover the world of internet video, real time multiplayer gaming and anything else always-on connectivity is able to offer. This inspired me to revive the idea which led to the Freedomware Gamefest 2007.

Libervis.com seen a significant amount of incredible discussions. Nuxified.org seen its most profound re-design ever. I started a separate blog under my own domain name which I just love! I joined GNU/Linux Matters foundation. Libernod, my VPS server, finally got to be used and there are still at least a couple of domain names ready and waiting for corresponding projects to be started on them.

It seems as if the list could go on and on.. I might not be wrong to say that 2007 was, oddly enough, the most profound year for both me and Libervis Network as my main undertaking in a long time. One has to wonder, with these foundations, what wonders could we accomplish in 2008!

Well, here are some hints… I’ve received an email from a rather well known person in the FOSS world about a project that could make the news all over the software industry. I don’t want to reveal anything just yet. Nuxified.org will see more collaborations and alliances. Libervis.com will see the most significant revamp it has ever had! Libervis Network will see at least two new projects being launched (perhaps not as big as Nuxified.org or Libervis.com, but you never know – plenty of stuff breading in our incubators). I may start differentiating my occupation more and more.

Oh and besides this whole storm of exciting stuff I might as well end up fixing my social life and find someone special. :)

Well, that’s it for my “coming back on a positive track towards the future 362 days” post. :)

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Finding what you love to do

Monday, December 24th, 2007

It’s interesting how significant the right search term on a search engine can be. I searched for “what do you love” and on the first page I found a number of simply excellent articles on this topic that really help me find what I am looking for. And I am looking for more enthusiasm about what I do.. so that I can do it better, because “to do something well you have to like it”. This is such a crucial thing to grasp and research on a way towards success in life and happiness in general.

And I am glad to share the links to articles I’ve found and read here:

An interesting thing about this is when I observe the state in which I currently am with how these writers tend to characterize the state in which most people commonly are. It appears that I am lucky enough to already be a step or two ahead than many people, but I don’t want to claim this as a statement of superiority or anything like that, but rather something I should probably be grateful about (mostly to my parents, their friends and also in some significant part to the Libervis Network community).

I already do a lot of what I at least think is quite close to what I love to do. By being essentially self-employed on the web I can allow myself great freedom of exploration. And Libervis Network is one that has been set up in such a way to allow for great variety in what projects I can do as part of it, because whichever the more clear answer to the question of “what I love doing most” will be it probably wont contradict the fundamental values for which Libervis Network stands for.

And that is just plain awesome! :)

However, I have to admit that while I may be some steps ahead in that sense, I am some steps behind in another, that being my social life. Working on the web and therefore on the computer, this wonderful window to the world and universe at large, I pretty much “forgot” or “neglected” to live in the real world with real people more than I really have to. I am actually increasingly aware of this though and will be attempting to change this situation though. Oh yes I also realize that I failed at fullfilling one, to this related, part of my 2007 new year’s resolution: to find a girlfriend. :D I guess, there’s always next year! 2008 Ftw!

But it will be tricky. Among what motivates me to pursue the answer to this crucial question about myself is that I am finding the financial sustainability of Libervis Network (and hence myself) to still be quite shaky and unstable (all eggs in one basket sort of thing), but to just blindly go gold digging doesn’t seem to me like the best possible way. Among the best ways I am considering to differentiate my funding sources is to start new projects, and I don’t want to start projects which I will quickly lose enthusiasm about – hence the question: What do I really love to do? What will I succeed with the most?

Of course, another big motivation for this pursuit is the realization that I am, well, 23 years old and I can’t forever be just talking about how successful I will or should be in life and riding the waves I somehow created with Libervis so far (and then went struggling to keep myself motivated). I basically need a new wave, perhaps the most profound of all I managed to create so far! I need to rediscover myself again – before years pass by and I end up sitting alone in my room realizing that all this “exploration” I’ve done was actually just drifting… and that all what I’ve supposedly achieved was just luck (or momentary seizures of opportunities combined with crazy (perhaps even lazy) stubborness)..

So.. I will be taking some time soon to really complete the steps from the third article and think this stuff through. I will certainly blog about my discoveries. :)

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

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Balancing between a cause and money, without becoming a greedy bastard

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

There were two driving forces behind my first serious online venture, Libervis.com. One was to do something good, for a good cause, to become part of a movement that makes a world a better place. The second was to eventually make some money doing this, hopefully some day enough to make a living off of it. Of course, the third motivating component is implied, that it is something I actually like doing and since it was work on a computer, on the internet, creating something new, it very well did fit the description of what I liked doing.

However, from day one it was a learning experience. Relative to where I am today I would say that in July 2004, when all this was just starting up, I was quite a newbie. I couldn’t even write english well. I didn’t even know all the ins and outs of the Free Software movement the site was all about. I sure as hell didn’t know about how exactly to make money off of it. I just knew it was by paid advertising. I didn’t even have a way to receive any money.
So for all intents and purposes it was a well intentioned hobby project with hope of at some point becoming a real business.

Today, I’m not sure if I can exactly describe it as a real business, all things considered, but I do cover my costs and the network is indeed capable of slow expansion. I’ve started two major sites and I have my own VPS server used as an incubator for any new potential projects. I also have a way to receive and send money online too, quite easily at that. We could say I’ve come a long way. Heck, I’ve even been to an international conference about the topic of my sites. I could only dream about something like that 3 years ago.

However, when I really think about it, for no particularly good reason I’ve been holding back on fullfilling that second objective behind starting out on the web – making money. Every time I thought about doing something on the web it had to involve the question “so how would this help that cause, Free Software, Free Culture, digital freedom and related concepts in general” etc. This ultimately limited the options I could see and limited my potential. In other words, from day one and all the way up to this point it was more about the cause and doing what I love to do than it was about making money while doing it too. Money.. it was a mere necessity, something that must be generated to be able to keep going.

But here is the thing. I will never be able to call myself a real entrepreneur if I get stuck in that kind of thinking forever. It doesn’t lead to real progress in financial terms. It leads to perpetual strive to make ends meet, just as in a real day job. And if I merely strive to make ends meet, in the rest of time working on the cause I’ll never have enough juice to accomplish those BIG dreams and ambitions, eventually falling into periods of lost motivation and depression… because the ambitious for the cause keep running out of cash necessary for their fulfillment.

The reality of the world is that you need the juice, you need the money to achieve ambitions. And money for making ends meet is not going to be enough for it. Instead of going around looking for sponsors to pay for prizes for the upcoming Freedomware Gamefest we are organizing, how about having enough money to pay for prizes myself? How about making Libervis.com a place that would REALLY make impact on the way people think about the world? How about myself becoming a gold sponsor of GNU/Linux Matters organization, a patron of the FSF, a monthly donor to many other causes I genuinely care about? I’ve seriously many times found myself in situations when I wanted to give quite a bit, but I was afraid because my margins just aren’t that secure. Sure I give $10 a month to FSF and make an occasional donation, but that’s something everyone with a day-to-day job can do. What if I want to do more?

Then I need to do more!

So I’ve decided to cut myself loose here. It’s time that I take a step further. The only way I can make Libervis Network truly grow is to secure the largest possible funds for it, the largest possible margins from which to invest, just as it is the only way I can finally fix up my own nerdy life too.

It’s time to balance things out. If I don’t do this I’ll never give enough attention to the financial side of the story enough to guarantee that it all just doesn’t crash on me one day, like the recent changes in Google ranking systems implied these days.What happened there is just a well sent reminded that financials are not just something you get lucky with, just some links you put on a site and forget about them until it’s time to renew, working on the real projects and cause in the mean time. It’s just not the way it can secure the future. I need to start paying more attention to that other side of the story.

Therefore I will split up my time and efforts in two parts. First one will be dedicated to work on maintaining and growing existing sites, working on new projects like Freedomware Gamefest or the Libervis 2008 revision and also starting new sites as part of the initiative of promoting digital freedom. The second part will be dedicated to working on ways to generate substantial revenues including starting web sites about things not necessarily related to digital freedom as long as they don’t go against it. That second part is going to be about making absolutely sure that the funds keep flowing in, that not all my eggs are in one basket, that I some day become capable of becoming the big sponsor of the future in which digital freedom won over digital dystopia.

And I WILL make it happen!

People say money corrupts. Indeed, but when you don’t care so much about money as much about doing things you love and contributing to things you care about, then money is merely like energy needed for you to do these things. This obviously doesn’t mean that we should keep this energy low so that people don’t mistake us for “greedy bastards”. That’s just stupid.

I say this. Do as much as you can to make as much money as possible as long as you follow the following rules:

  1.  Do not oppress or contribute to oppression of freedom. Don’t make money on expense of somebody’s rights.
  2. Do not buy into too much luxury. Re-invest money into projects that will either generate more money without breaking any of these rules or invest into a class of projects for positive world change.
  3. Do not disrespect those who you serve, EVER! The whole way of making money is by serving somebody, not exploiting somebody. NEVER EVER fall into a trap of considering your customers, your site visitors as just an automatic money making wheel. They are sacred! Their wishes are LAW! If they keep saying you have too many ads on your site, you MUST comply and scale it down. If they say something may not be exactly ethical or that you made too much of a compromise, LISTEN and CHANGE things (or don’t even get yourself in a situation in which people would have to warn you’re doing something as bad).
  4. Seek fulfillment in larger issues, not piles of money that can buy anything. A better future (for me personally an ongoing vision is “Star Trek” future), something that will capture imagination and passion so much that you’ll never care about money anything but something you can invest into making that future happen.

And that’s a way I hope to become financially successful without becoming a greedy bastard. :)

Thank you

Danijel

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Good morning birdie!

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Yet again I’m trying to fix my sleeping schedule and make my day more fulfilling and motivating. This morning marks a second little victory in a row. In fact, as a matter of chance, I rose from bed exactly at the same minute as yesterday! :D

Anyway, unexpectedly, despite raining most of the night (I couldn’t tell really, I actually SLEPT most of the night) it is a sunny albeit cold morning. And near our sun bathed balcony there is a pigeon who has a home here for quite a while now. I thought I’ll take a picture and finally upload it. :) It’s a cute pigeon. Looks like he’s a bit cold too as his feathers are kind of puffed, maybe he’s trying to heat himself.. or herself. :D

Anyway, the new plan of life of a day is to start it with something that will motivate me. In addition to sun and a cute bird, if music doesn’t do it I plan on watching an episode of Star Trek after breakfast and then embarking on to the main missions of the day, the Libervis web related routines and other things I put in my TODO list, mostly related to the upcoming game fest. :)

So, good morning to ya’all Europeans! I hope you slept well.

Pigeon in the morning

Pigeon in the morning

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