I will be visiting Boston next week for ten days. So, if you're in the region and would like to meet up for a beer or two drop me an email or ping me via Skype (ID: lispmeister).

Things I look forward to: Bookstores, though my credit card is now labeled "Not valid in bookstores unless holder is accompanied by a responsible person", visiting the Computer Museum, specifically the CADR shrine and picking up the three OLPC X0 laptops I ordered in December.

So, I've been thinking (did you ever notice, that geeks start their sentences with "So,..." (actually I stole that from the amazing book "The New New Thing")), why is it, that things suddenly start happening?

Like, I've been divorced for over a year now (yes, a prenuptial agreement is a good idea), tried hard to find investors for my new startup (without any success), almost went broke, met a wickedly smart girl who new about Gödel, Frege and Peirce, found out she had a beautiful mind, got a day job with a company that runs a foreign exchange trading platform (yes it pays well, as it should, if you're maintaining the build of a 800 kloc Java monster), got really depressed, drank and smoked way too much.

Suddenly – things start to sync again.

There's this publishing empire, interested in acquiring my startup, my great-uncle, who I last met at the age of eleven, dies and I inherit a portfolio of patents, I meet this amazing women, beautiful and wickedly smart (wasn't it Timothy Leary who said "Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac"?) and hey, life couldn't be better.

Finally today, after a long day at work, I met a friend at the bar and his blond flight attendant date tried to talk me out of my Lisp t-shirt. – I confess, I was tempted for a split second.

I'm just wondering, what the fuck is going on? Or like Robert Anton Wilson used to say: "If you think you know what's going on, you're probably full of shit!".

I gave her a leather bound lab journal and a Fisher Space Pen as an enrollment present. It's never to early to nurture a geek.

Happy school enrollment day Stella!

Here's a taste of Leykis reading the Tom Leykis 101 FAQ. Or read what Wikipedia has to say about Tom.

Last weekend I visited my friend Vadim (composer, translator, programmer). We went hiking in the Soiern mountain range. During our hike we brainstormed about Lisp, composing, philosophy and many other aspects of a life as a hacker.

I enjoyed discussing math in general and math education with Vadim's wife Katja, who's a mathematician. I was excited to learn that she plans to publish a math magazine for young people. She showed me some Russian magazines from her collection. Amazing!

I bought the Meisterstueck No 149 at age 20, and it served me well during all my travels throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, America and the Pacific Islands. It's a remarkable and beautiful piece of engineering. During the same timespan I worked through more than 30 keyboards. People keep asking me: "Why do you keep a journal in longhand using a fountain pen, isn't that a bit archaic?"

People have been asking me the same kind of questions about Lisp. The answer is:

You can't leave a legacy using ephemeral technology.

Perry Metzger suggested we should have another try at getting Open Genera open sourced. So I'm planning to do a little research while I'm in Boston. If you know anything about the current ownership situation of intellectual property of Open Genera please contact me. I'll sumarise our findings as they become available.

I'm interested in meeting with other Lisp aficionados. Just drop me a line!

• Micrographia by Robert Hooke; CD-ROM with hires scans of the original octavo edition. One of the most beautiful books ever created by the original mad hunchbacked scientist. [1]
• Longitude by Charles Sturridge (director), a DVD production adapting the book by Dava Sobel, where she tells the story of how 18th-century scientist and clockmaker William Harrison solved one of the most perplexing problems of history -- determining east-west location at sea..

Last weekend my best friend Peter finally married Natascha. Somehow I'm sure this two day event will be remembered as the mother of all weddings by all participants.

The wedding took place in Weinheim, a beautiful city with a 2800 year history. After church we followed the white Cadillac convertible to the restaurant Pfeffer und Salz (Pepper and Salt), owned by the father of the bride, where we had a spectacular party drinking fine wine and champagne, eating delicious food and dancing all night long.

We visited Lille(FR) over the weekend and saw Erwin Redl's Fade I installation. He created curtains of blue and red LEDs and mounted them in an old church. The monochromatic light tricks your eyes. The light curtains fade from red to blue to red. The installation is mesmerizing!

On the way back I recharged my Powerbook using the utilities plug in the bar of the TGV (high speed train). There was some leakage current, it sparked and my battery and power supply were dead. Luckily the Powerbook is still working.