I check regularly 'The Business of Software' forum which is a part of 'Joel on Software'. That forum doesn't have fancy outlook but the content is really good mostly. Recently there was active conversation about working at home.

The highlights were:
- requires discipline and not suitable for everybody
- establish and keep your daily routine
- avoid TV, IM and other distractions
- have lunch outside home, meet other people
- remove games and such from your work station
- take care of your physical condition and avoid snacks
- have a separate room for working or rent a small office

Clearly it requires more from individual than working in a normal office. But I know people who are driving one hour daily just to get to work place. That makes two hours sitting in a car daily. 10 hours weekly, 40 monthly and around 450 hours yearly depending how much you have vacation and sick leave. So, that means sitting more two weeks in your car just to commute to work.

Of course there are many jobs where you are needed to be onsite but for software development it is not that necessary to sit in the office all week long. As oil price is getting higher and people value their free time this is something to keep eye on. Maybe someone should organize training how to work at home.

I was about to fell asleep when I heard strange yelling from the street. I took a look and there was some pretty wasted guy yelling some nonsense to other people. Too bad he happened to get in the same building where I stay at the moment. He managed to get on the floor above mine and got in his flat. There he continued yelling and started to bash things and kicked walls and doors.

At that point I got a little bit worried because he seemed to be totally nuts. These flat doors wont hold too much so I started to think about contacting police to take care of such before he mixes his door and mine. My neighbors seemed to have less tolerance than me and first car stopped in front of house at the same time as I found the number.

First I thought he will cool down but then he went berserk again. Well, out he goes in cuffs while screaming like ape. Ah, such a lively neighborhood.

Finnish is a strange language in many ways. It has two words meaning 'friend'. Those are 'kaveri' and 'ystävä'. The former one is usually meant to be more closer friend than first one.

Now comes the real problem. How to sort your friends in those two boxes? What if a person doesn't fit to either one properly? Shall you chop him into two?

I can only say that Finnish language is pretty absurd sometimes and friends are like coffee spillage on the desk, more or less similar but with huge amount of different kind of traits. Actually that analogy is bad because you wipe your coffee spillage away sooner or later.

Maybe 'ystävä' is your favorite coffee spillage that has dried and has all kind of strange things growing from it. Mmm, tasty...

Do you watch news from television? Several times per day? Do you follow online news services? Do you refresh your browser to see latest additions on a discussion forum?

Unless it is your job or hobby to collect useless information you don not need it. A good example could be the big explosion in North Korea which might have been a nuclear test. How much it affects your daily life? You might have a chat during lunch with your colleagues - "Did you hear about the bomb? - Yea, crazy bastards".

It might be important for an active activist to know about bad things going on in the world but what does average passive couch potato do with all that information? He gets worried and stressed. But he isn't going to do anything because he feels he doesn't have any part. He might donate couple pennies to some organization but that's all. That can be done anyways.

I think I will just check some very limited news once a day. If there is something really important and big enough then I will hear about it for sure. But I might have to find out something to fill that time I spent for acquiring way too much information about everything.

I have been following one great blog over a year. Tales of the Technobedouin is written by Juhani Väkiparta who has gathered his experience from various countries while dealing with latest technologies.

Today he wrote about emerging virtual economies. It is really interesting topic and there is a website about it. Virtual Economy Research Network

I could write lengthly about this two nice cities, generous hosts, sights and evenings. I just simply say thank you guys - Matti and Daniel.