There is never enough time for hobbies, but I really wish I could read and travel more. I plan to do both, but that in itself poses a problem.

It is hard enough to take the right books and enough of them on a month long trip, but being on the road for months if not years…Well, it might not break proverbial camel?s back, but it would probably break mine.

It would be easier if my relationship to books was more rational. I love physical books and I tend to read those I want to keep so I can reread whole or just parts of them later. No computer interface comes close to pleasure I get from browsing my library. ?Every copy I have can be lend and many are.

I also buy electronic computer related ?books, which I used to read on Nokia tablet, but have recently switched to an iPad. I buy electronic versions mainly because there is no reason to kill a tree for content that gets obsolete so quickly. Reading on iPad is not fun, but that?s all right since I am not reading those books to have it.

I can?t tell what bothers me, but I suspect it is either the glowing screen, its low pixel density or both. But highlighting passages of text, multiple bookmarks and having a ton of books with you at the same time has its benefits too. Especially if you are a student with tons of textbooks to handle (which I am not). iPad also has a great ratio between what you can do with it and its physicality ? you really appreciate small size and weight after you?ve carried your backpack for days).

I also tested Kindle and while reading on it indeed feels nicer (so maybe glow is to blame), it brings its own set of problems with it. I wanted to read a book about the ? 4 hour work week , which seemed interesting enough to read, but not something I want to own. ?Yet Amazon?s DRM infested Kindle shops are territorially segregating me, even though I could get a physical copy shipped anywhere without problems. Knowing why that is doesn?t make it tolerable.

I could live with such e-crap if buying paper and electronic copies together would not cost significantly more than just buying one. Say 3 to 5 dollars. However it does ?and imagining why ^{[ 1 ]} again draws no sympathy from me.

So….What do I want?

I?m not sure. Paper wouldn?t get us far. I would like to take less silicon with us, but two bookworms can?t be fed on one book. Maybe when we are far enough with our plans, a company like Pixel Qi will perfected their screens to the point where we can get best of iPad and Kindle in one device and Amazon will start selling accessible bundles. I also wish my whole wish list would be accessible in electronic form, not less than half of it.

However I look at it, compromises will have to be made which means gadgets will eventually get bought. Hopefully by that time I?ll actually like reading on them.

1. You could sell a copy that you got discounted and with that reduce publisher?s profit. ?I?m willing to ?bet though that ?those lost 5 dollars amount to more money than such paranoia saves.

Aleš recently wrote about importance of sabbatical . I could not agree more.

I don’t really regret much in my life, but I do regret not taking long vacations between jobs. The closest I got was taking two weeks off before coming to Zemanta .

I used to be even worse. I hardly spent any of my vacation time, probably in juvenile notion that it makes me (look) dedicated. It didn’t. However it did make me more tired, less useful and less happy.

We all have hobbies or projects we would love to do if only we could find time for them. If you don’t, you really ought to find something. I’ve never met a creative person interested in only one thing. Living for your job really sucks if it ends and someday it almost certainly will.

Sabbaticals are great because you have time to decompress from last job before throwing yourself into new one, to do at least some of that stuff you’ve been dying to do and to hopefully get a fresh perspective on where you are going.

I find traveling great for getting perspective. Things really do look different from distance and you should get as much of it as you can – in time and geography. I haven’t taken a sabbatical yet and it will probably be few more years before I do, but I do take a long vacation each year somewhere as different as possible from what I am used to.

Recommendation on what to see and do in Costa Rica are hence welcome.

Three months ago I received an invitation to try and review Toshl , a mobile expense tracker developed by ThirdFrameStudios . I also received code to get? Pro account free for first year to help me test it, which saved me a modest amount of 20 euros. It is also not a secret that I know people working at 3fs and admire their work.

As influences go, that’s it. I received neither threats to pets I don’t have or contributions to a bank account I do have. Also a complete absence of nudges means that this post took longer than planned and that all opinions are mine. Too make them less ignorant I decided at start to give Toshl a proper test and use it for couple of months before passing judgment.

Toshl, as mentioned, is a tool for keeping track of expenses. You are obviously sensible enough to know why this is wise, if you are still reading this, so I won’t bother explaining. It comes as a free application for Android devices and Maemo based N900. I heard rumors of an iPhone version, but Symbian or BlackBerry owners are out of luck (for now). Using web based companion and synchronization is free too, but you have to pay for Pro account if you want to add expenses through website or need a more flexible export of your data.

I tested Nokia N900 version of Toshl and liked it. I don’t want to go into details since they quickly become boring and there is no better test than your own (remember, it’s free). I was impressed how well it handles decimal separator for me, since I sin by using both comma and point.

Entering expenses is easy and quick, especially if you have entered similar recently, since you can reuse tags just by clicking on suggested. You also see already entered expenses sorted by time or tags. There is still room for improvement (like adapting tags suggestions based on first entered), but not much to fault.

I believe Toshl’s goal is to be as simple and fun tracker of everyday expenses as possible. You can do basic add and removal of expenses, export inserted data, categorize each entry with tags and see few different reports. That’s it. There is no integration with banks, currency conversions,? or even a notion of income. Reports are basic and I am not a fan of those included.

I usually used more than one tag on each expense and had difficulty wrapping my head around graphs where same expense could be shown multiple times. I failed at judging how much impact do some expenses have overall without at least some tweaking of graphs. I am certain that Tufte would call it chartjunk, but their implementation certainly is fun to play with.

And that’s where Toshl’s main strength is. A fun way of doing something that most people find incredibly tedious. You might overgrow it one day and switch, but it will help you develop a necessary habit of recording your expenses.

Being simple and fun doesn’t mean powerless. Tags free you to your own categorization and multiple export options give you an opportunity to massage that data further in tools of your choice. It might not be as trivial as clicking on a graph is, but doing it in Excel is not much harder.

I will not continue to use it because I am that sort of person who gets off on double-entry bookkeeping . I’ve been using GnuCash for years and there is no easy way to sync data with it (probably shouldn’t be either) and few reasons to input every expense twice. I do recommend anyone who isn’t tracking yet or is not satisfied with his current approach to give Toshl a try.

And if you are happy with free version, then buy a Pro account. It costs little, gives you features as polished as rest of service and it help secure your apps future.