We are about to head out to dinner and I am sure that my well-intentioned wife will ask me about my New Year’s Resolutions before too long. Without subtlety she will imply that I need to lose some weight, exercise more, and so forth.

I am not going to make any resolutions. Instead, I am going to make plans, things that I can check myself against from time to time. Here’s what I am thinking:

• Eat Healthier – I’m going to try to eat better quality food and food that is better for me, and I am going to try to savor every mouthful.
• Exercise More – I am going to continue my weekly walks and bike rides and step up the pace a bit on both.
• Narrow My Focus – I am going to revisit every information source (feeds, mailing lists, periodicals) and prune back by 20 or 30%.
• Play More – Spend more time doing fun things with my wife and with my children.
• Go Virtual – I am going to do more of my job on a virtual basis, traveling less if possible.
• Blog More – Write one reasonably interesting blog post every week in addition to my daily link posts.
• Be Financially Sound – Pay off a few small credit card bills, save more money, and spend a bit less.
• Be a Good Host – We are going to do our best to have dinner guests at our house on a very regular basis in 2008.
• Reinvent Myself – I plan to twist my job into something new in a way that I’ve yet to figure out.
• Learn Something New – Learn a new programming language or system. Maybe take a college course in some interesting area.
• Do something with or to Syndic8 – Figure out what Syndic8 should be next, and take it there or sell it to someone who has a better idea.

I think that should do it, 2008 is a short year!

• Open Source Living – “Welcome to Open Source Living, an archive of the Web’s best Open Source software, applications and references for a zero-cost / top quality digital experience.“

• Todd Harrison: Things I’ve Learned – “Take the high road. It’s less crowded and boasts a much better view.“
• USA Spending: API Documentation – “USAspending.gov is pleased to announce the availability of its data in an Application Programming Interface (API).“
• Kirkland Weblog: Kirkland, Take “The Plunge” With Me! – “Everyone hangs around huddling for warmth by the fire and laughing about how crazy they are and who double-dog dared them to be attempting this in the first place. When the countdown is approaching, you peel down to your bathing suit and wait for the ‘go’ signal. “
• Alan Taylor: All Known Bodies in Our Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter – “It’s just one of those things I’ve been itching to make for a long while, frankly because I wanted to see it – a visual listing of objects in the Solar System, ordered by size. A couple weeks ago, I started tinkering with it, today, I have something to show finally: A (large) image showing the 88 known objects in our Solar System that are larger than 200 miles in diameter.“

Ever noticed that washing a car is like a modern-day rain dance? Wash the car and rain is sure to follow, at least in Seattle. Well, I’ve found the equivalent for houses — paint the ceilings and the roof is sure to spring a leak!

We spent the last 6 months or so doing a cosmetic upgrade to our home. We repainted all of the walls per an updated color scheme, installed some new wood floors, and generally did our best to push back the wear and tear inflicted by our 5 kids, their friends, and our dog.

Things are looking great and we are about 90% done. 1 room remains to be painted, and 2 of the kids are planning to hire a professional grafitti artist to add the finishing touch to their rooms. I am in the process of moving my home office from the upstairs (where I shared it with my wife and the kids) to a room of my own on the first floor, where I will have a window of my own for the very first time.

We’ve had some fairly heavy winter rains in Seattle. Early last week I happened to be sitting in our upstairs office and glanced up at the ceiling. I saw a dark line about 5 or 6 feet long and immediately knew that we had a problem! Our house is about 14 years old, with a cedar shake roof. Based on what I’ve learned so far, roofs of the same vintage of ours typically last 12 to 15 years, so we are just about due.

It turns out that there was an early warning (one which I should have heeded, of course). A few weeks ago my son Stephen was in the attic taking down our Christmas goodies. As he did this, he noted that some of the items were a little bit wet. We looked straight up and actually saw daylight through the roof! There was a small hole, perhaps a half inch in diameter. We put a little bucket under it and I made a mental note to get it taken care of.

Christmas was coming up and I never did find that mental note…

However, as soon as I saw the tell-tale sign of water on the office ceiling I called Legacy Roofing and they sent a technician over within 48 hours. He covered the main leak with a tarp and when I asked him about the condition of the roof he shook his head, sighed, and told me that it was time to get it replaced.

Yesterday, the estimator came by and he’s going to work up a proposal for me. I showed him the hole in the attic and he told me something very interesting. It turns out that crows will detect, attack, and peck through the tar paper which is underneath the shake roof as soon as it is exposed. The tar paper is water-resistant and would (in a crow-free world) keep the house dry. The crows are apparently seeking after bugs, which are not to be found.

I joked with the estimator that they should raise crows, attach GPS devices and business cards to them, and use them as a sort of early-warning system for leaky roofs. Given that crows were once used to divine the future, this might actually work out pretty well!

• Blog Oh! Blog: Top 10 Javascripts for Image Manipulation – “Did you ever want to add a lens to your page which will let you zoom into the images. This script will let you do that and much more using two versions of your image.“
• Wall Street Journal: Wall Street Wizardry Amplified Credit Crisis – “Critics say the cross-selling reached such proportions that it artificially propped up the prices of CDOs. Rather than widely dispersing exposure to these mortgages, the practice circulated the same risk among a relatively small number of players.“
• Times Online: Villains Aplenty But Few Heroes In Sad Tale of Debt Tragedy – “In the unfolding story of our debt crisis, we have reached the dramatic apex. We are poised at the moment of tension, not quite sure if the ending will be sad or happy. We have victims aplenty, even if some of them are simultaneously the villains of their own story.“
• Nourel Roubini: The Latest Macro and Financial News Strongly Signal Recession Ahead – “The latest macro and financial news confirm that the US is headed towards a hard landing – specifically a serious recession – as a vicious circle of worsening real fundamentals is perversely interacting with severely worsening financial fundamentals and a severe liquidity and credit crunch.“
• New York Times: This Is the Sound of a Bubble Bursting – “Creative finance lubricated the developing boom, making it easy for buyers to take on more mortgage debt than they could otherwise handle, driving prices skyward. Each upward burst brought more investors — some from as far as California and Europe, real estate agents say.“

• Financial Armageddon: A Mind-Boggling Data Series – “When paper assets rapidly increase to the levels of recent years (20% or more of GDP), well, a bubble that swells… and then deflates… can wreak economic havoc. That scenario is unfolding right now in the real estate market, and among lenders who “spread around the risk” to every corner (and under every rug) in the entire financial system.“
• Pharyngula: Evolution of Vertebrate Eyes – “The message is that, once again, all the heavy lifting, the evolution of a muscled eyeball with a lens and retinal circuitry, was accomplished early, between 550 and 500 million years ago. Most of what biology has been doing since is tweaking — significant tweaking, I’m sure, but the differences between a lamprey eye and our eyes are in the details, not the overall structure.“

• History House: The South Sea Bubble – “We here at History House would like to note that while its success rate is low, stupidity is probably the most-often used strategy in humanity’s playbook.“
• New York Times: Selection Spurred Recent Evolution, Researchers Say – “It was widely assumed that once people developed culture, they protected themselves from the environment and from the forces of natural selection. But people also had to adapt to the environments that their culture created, and the new analysis shows that evolution continued even faster than before.“

• Meet At the Pig: Seattle Startup Weekend – “Participants gather on a Friday night, without any knowledge of what they’re going to create, or how it’s all going to come together. About 54 hours later (sometime late Sunday / early Monday), the product is launched and everyone celebrates.“
• Sifry’s Alerts: Beginner’s Digital SLR Buying Guide: The Sifry Starter Photo Package – “This is a complete set of gear that I would feel 100% comfortable bringing with me on a trip to a new city or on an important shoot, and still get excellent shots.“
• eWeek: IBM Gulps Its Own Web 2.0 Kool-Aid – “IBM staffers leverage IBM’s internal virtual conferencing application through Web services to have online meetings in 3D. This approach is a boon for IBM employees, who are spread out all over the world.“
• VisiBone: Chart Super Suite – “This totals 79 square feet or 2.3 nanoRhodeIslands“

• ZD Net: IBM Cooks Up Internal Virtual World for Confidentiality, Security – “Don’t be surprised if IBM takes these learnings an[d] turns them into a service for verticals like retailing and hospitality.“
• Save the Clogging Pigs – “If you don’t act this Holiday Season, No longer will his cloven hooves dance a merry jig. No longer will he clog with his porcine pals.“

• Paul Krugman: After the Money’s Gone – “Markets won’t start functioning normally until investors are reasonably sure that they know where the bodies — I mean, the bad debts — are buried. And that probably won’t happen until house prices have finished falling and financial institutions have come clean about all their losses. All of this will probably take years.“