Today I turned 33.

Another year and another birthday, and another shocking realization that I am an adult and not a [long-haired 18-year-old dork playing Metallica in his bedroom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r-yQBKe2gI).

Fortunately I am *not* said dork (well, mostly), and I am hugely thankful for the life I am blessed to have. I am thankful for my wonderful and beautiful wife, our lovely little baby on the way in November, my fantastic family, fun and rewarding job and great team at Canonical, and many wonderful friends across the world. Thank-you everyone for everything.

Now, birthdays are usually days when people buy you nice things to celebrate that day you came crashing into the world, but to be honest, as I get older there are fewer and fewer things I actually want. The other day I found myself struggling to update my Amazon wishlist, realizing that I generally have most of the things I want in life, and I was merely picking things for sake of picking things.

As such, for you lovely, generous, handsome, beautiful, people who want to contribute, I figured it would be a better use of everyone’s time and money to do something good, and instead of buying me a ‘New and Sealed Generation One Transformers Optimus Prime in Mint Condition’, to instead use that money to help children around the world. I am not going to deny my impending fatherhood is not an inspiration for this.

So, for my birthday I am going try and raise some money for [Save The Children](https://www.savethechildren.org). They are a fantastic charity who do wonderful work, manage their donations well, and I am using crowdrise to handle the donations, and they provide a great, efficient service for handling contributions.

**Contributing is simple, just [click here](https://www.crowdrise.com/jonobaconbirthday) and donate using your credit card. If you have any questions, [check out the crowdrise FAQ](https://www.crowdrise.com/about/faq). Also, please spread the word about this on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and elsewhere: let’s see how many donations we can raise! Thanks!**