Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

'Here's a message for Faggot-lovers everywhere.'

Does anyone remember these? I don?t but my friend Trish does, so as a gift to her, I seached high and low on the net for the advert ? they even had a theme song- but had no luck, its killing me, I want to find it just to see if it will jog my memory!! There is even a ?Faggot Family? for Jasus sake!

_{*faggots are balls of low quality pork, basically pork liver and shredded pork meat, and offal ? ew! I am wondering has anyone ever tried these? I think I would most definitely vomit at the smell, but some people would eat anything!}

Posted by Babs at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Morning Dudes (and esteemed Dudettes).

In case anyone hasn't noticed, my little sister, aka ''Babs', has started posting on the LWT. I don't exactly know what's going to happen next, but the number of posts is likely to at least double, or knowing the verbal diarrhoea that Babs normally suffers from, it will triple or quadrouple. :-P

Anyhoo, welcome Babs to the world of Bloggerland, and if any of you feckers are too harsh on my lil' sis', I'll like, kill you delete your comment.

Posted by Matt at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Well well, what can I say, while I was sitting in the car last night having a chat with my groovy brother this song came on, now I had heard it a few times but never really listened to it, I couldn?t really understand what Shakira was going on about due to the horrific lyrics and also Wycliffe Jean (or whatever he?s called, formerly of The Fugees) shooting his mouth off about refugees and that.

So I decided being kind of anal about things like that, that I would Google the lyrics today, so I did, and from what I can see, its quite obvious that English is clearly not her first language, the lyrics make no sense whatsoever, how did this become a chart topper I wonder, it sounds like just another Shakira song but reading the lyrics you can clearly see Wycleff?s influence in it, apparently his part is about his concern for (you guessed it) refugees and CIA harassment(?). It?s almost as if she just wants it to rhyme and so puts random words together. Hmmm!

Posted by Babs at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

_{Funniest if you're a geek Star Wars fan who has watched 24, imho.}

Posted by Matt at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Seeing as most of the time these days, my spambox is crammed full of mails in Chinese, a good spam is hard to find. So Spam of the Week will now be Spam of the Month (I don't think anyone really cares about it anyway except me, but feck you all, I'm gonna keep doing it anyway).

It's not really Spam anyway, but more like 'Flarf', in that it's not really trying to sell me anything or con me in any way, but more the spam I like is just nonsensical gibberish, lifted straight from crappy romantic fiction with some meaningless extra 'words' thrown in there for good measure.

So this week month, I am giving the prize to 'Daryl Gould', for this:

I have a place I go when I feel like this. costa beige She held her bloody palms out toward him for a moment.
"And that's where your car is now, Paul ? somewhere between Route 9 and the Grider Wildlife Preserve, somewhere in the woods. ""Good. Now that he was dead, Paul could look at him. "Paul put his own spoon down. "Paul, are you really done? "And he had returned to his cal?che without so much as a response to Geoffrey's question. Rainage knew her slightly ? had observed something white lying on the ground of the Congregational church's cemetery as she entered it to put flowers on the grave of her husband, who had died the previous winter. bluebill

_{Wouldn't you love to visit a place called 'Costa Beige'?}

Posted by Matt at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

...Ever do a 20-minute presentation to your Boss, Administrator, and Board of Directors, without using Powerpoint, and get roundly applauded by everyone present? No?

I must be cooler than you then. :-P

(I'm the King of the World, me)

Posted by Matt at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

In this list of the 50 most expensive cities to live in the world, Dublin comes 18th (London comes 5th btw, Adrian, Dan, Annie et al), more expensive than Rome, Dubai (kinda unbelievable?), Los Angeles (I guess Beverly Hills isn't included in the survey), San Francisco and Miami.

What's really weird is that Moscow, of all cities, is top of the list. Is this because you need to buy a new car every month because the Russian Mafia keep stealing the one you have? If so, the statistics are flawed, imho.

_{[via BoingBoing]}

Posted by Matt at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Slowly...getting...there...

So we moved all the stuff from my sister's garage to the new house yesterday. You may recall an amusing blog post about the original move, and the hilarity that ensued when Sean (the bro-in-law) got his truck stuck up a small lane and needed a Garda escort in reverse? Well, I'm pleased to report that due to our new place being ridiculously convenient to the motorway, no such hi-jinks occured in yesterdays move.

We got out to Garristown (North County Dublin, middle-of-nowhere) at about 10am, mostly due to the new N2 dual carriageway taking about half an hour or more off the journey time, which was brilliant (so from taking an hour and a half to get to my Mam and Dad's or my sisters, it now takes 45 minutes!). We loaded up the truck, chasing away a few cats and spiders as we did so (amid screams of "SPIDER!!!" from Nikki), I had a go around their garden on Sean's Quad Bike which was loads of fun, we had some breakfast and tea, and headed up to my Mam and Dad's for a couple more things.

Unloading was easy-peasy, and all the stuff stacked into one of the bedrooms as we're getting wood put down this week in the other two. We headed to Dalkey for a bit o' nosh, and ended up in the IN bar as there wasn't much else open. After lunch we parted ways, another stage in the moving process completed.

Today, the wood for the floors is being delivered, a skip is coming to take away the rubble from knocking down that wall, NTL are coming to hook up the broadband and TV, and I just got a call saying our lovely couch is ready. It's all go here!

Posted by Matt at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

As a wee follow-up to my Opera Mini™ for Mobile article, here's a teeny list of websites that are particularly good when viewed through the tiny window of your lovely Opera Mini browser.

• Gmail Mobile
  Gmail mobile is totally brilliant. It's essentially a stripped-down version of Gmail (as most good mobile sites tend to be), with all the essential parts on view and all the unnecessary bumph thrown away so as not to skyrocket your phone bill every time you want to check a mail. Each Gmail mobile page is only 1kb, so it's perfect for checking those mails while on the move. It's not quite a Blackberry, but who wants a frickin' Blackberry anyway (clue: not me)? It rocks. If you have a Gmail account and a mobile phone, have a look.
• Flickr Mobile
  I mentioned this in my aforementioned article about Opera Mini, and it really is great. Again, a stripped-down Flickr, but none of the functionality is lost. You can view your and your friends photos, photos by tag, you can look at comments on your pics and you can even upload a photo from your phone. So everything you'd need from Flickr if you were using it on a bus or train, really. Top Marks to this one too.
• Wikipedia
  This one is really good, but I'm not sure if it's an official Wikipedia interface or just some kindly soul making Wikipedia browsable on a mobile. Either way, it works. Perfect for those heated discussions in the pub with friends, and the 'I don't think you're right' moments. Now you can prove they're not right (unfortunately, it can also prove that you're not right, too).
• Google Mobile (obviously)
  It's Google. It's on your mobile. That's it. It's good.
• Sevitzdotmobile
  My good mate Adrian has also made a mobile version of his excellent blog. It's just like the others, a stripped-down version of the main website. He's a clever bloke, our Adrian (I want one of these btw).

So that's about it. Once again, all these sites are best viewed on Opera Mini for mobile, because of it's amazingness.

Posted by Matt at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

Without knocking down a big wall. :-)

Posted by Matt at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

While reading Lifehacker yesterday, there was an announcement of the release of version 9 of the Opera browser. Whilst reading the comments on the post, some dude commented that Opera Mini for mobile was awesome, so I decided I'd give it a try and downloaded it. As it turns out, it's completely brilliant.

For a start, it's only a 96kb download, so that bit only took about five seconds. It's incredibly easy to set up, requiring you basically just to start the application and it takes care of the rest. It's Java-based, so it should work on any mobile device you can think of. The interface is very intuitive, looking for all intents and purposes like every web browser you've used on your PC, with an address bar at the top, a Google search bar below that, and it also has another search bar under that which can be used to search sites like Wikipedia (handy for those pub quiz nights!), Dictionary.com, Technorati and a few more.

What really impressed me was it's speed. Whatever the browser that was in my phone when I bought it (either a Sony or a Vodaphone one, either way it crap), it is slooooow. Opera is FAST. Seriously, it's like having broadband in your pocket. No, really! It can download this here blog in about 4 or 5 seconds. It also does really cool things like re-sizing all images on a page so they fit in your phone, and re-aligning text so it's readable within the constraints of your phone's screen. It's got a bookmarks folder too, and you can set it up so that individual bookmarks of your choosing are displayed on the 'homepage' (as in the screenshot on the right). It also stores your full history, a feature that is (shamefully) missing from most default mobile browsers.

So all in all, as a browser designed specfically for a mobile phone, I'd have to give Opera Mini a resounding 10 out of 10. It's lightweight, fast, and has no bad points at all that I've discovered. If you want to browse any website when you can't really whip out a laptop, or where there's no wireless internet, accept no substitutes.

_{incidentally, the Flickr mobile site is brilliant too!}

Posted by Matt at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Vagina Monologues is on in the theatre tonight, and the pre-show house music sounds eerily similar to the opening theme from 'Stargate SG-1', which must be really weird for any Stargate fans in the audience.

_{*see Urban Dictionary definition}

Posted by Matt at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So. Four days later and our fabulous new house still looks the same. It's really nice an' all, but I really really want to get a move on and start actually doing things. I spent most of today hanging around in it, waiting for various tradesmen to arrive, completely bored out of my tits. Good news is that NTL will be installing Digital TV and 2 meg broadband on Monday, so we'll be all wired up before we move in.

This Thursday, me and my Dad are going to knock down a wall that's in a really stupid place. The kitchen as it stands is about 3 feet wide (that's just less than a metre for all you metricians out there), and getting rid of this wall will make it over 8 feet wide, or 'wide enough' as I call it. We have the electrician booked to take care of all the electrics in the wall too, so that's not a problem. This Sunday, a familiar team of movers will be taking all our stuff out of 'storage' (aka my big sister's garage) and moving it to the house. Should be fun!

Wooden floors will be going down (fingers crossed) towards the end of next week, carpets around the same time, and me and my Dad (the ex-master tiler) will be doing all the tiling. We've picked black marble for the main bathroom, and terracotta quarry tiles for the kitchen. The ensuite and utility room tiles are still kinda undecided, but will probably be plain and cheap as we can find, while still being 'nice', and without being 'crap'. I have a mate lined up to patch and plaster the large holes that will be left after we knock the aforementioned wall to oblivion, so we're all cool there.

So! We're getting there. I'm getting really, really, really impatient now, but seeing as the short-term lease on our current flat runs out in 2 weeks, I really don't have long to wait. Roll on the 4th of July is all I can say!

Posted by Matt at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some clever soul has only gone and composed a Wikipedia article of Every Problem Ever Solved By MacGyver, I highly recommend you pop over there now and have a look at this valuable resource, which includes details as to whether each particular 'chewing gum, elastic band and 2 matches'-type solution really could've worked, in actual reality like.

Via TCAL

Posted by Matt at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Gordon:

If you only had £10 ?10, what would you order?

Rules:

1. Must be ordered online
2. Post and packaging cannot take the total spend over £10 ?10.
3. Must be able to deliver to Ireland/The UK
4. ANYTHING goes.

I realise that by changing this from £10 to ?10, I have made it exceedingly more difficult, but I live in Ireland, I pay for things with Euros, and "?14.66" doesn't quite have the same ring to it...

Posted by Matt at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

WOO-HOO!!!

Got the keys to the new house today, not an hour ago.

There will be several posts dedicated to the new place, so stay tuned for all the news. I'm too excited to blog more about it right now.

And one more, WOO-HOO!!!

Posted by Matt at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I love Annie Slaminsky. She's the nicest blogger in the whole wide world. I half-heartedly asked in my post about new Squeezy Marmite that "Should anyone in the UK wish to purchase me a sqeeeezy jar of Marmite, I will re-emburse you to the tune of TEN of your English Pounds" (it being not-yet available in Ireland), but I didn't honestly think anyone would actually do it (at least, not someone I haven't actually met yet). Which means, I suppose, that I owe Annie a tenner. I shall endeavour to make it to the next blogmeet that happens in London in order to furnish you with said tenner, Annie (and probably a hug too, coz I'm like that)!

I love the internet. You meet the nicest people there.

Note to Nikki: I do mean (of course) platonic love. You have no competition, m'kay?

Posted by Matt at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I got an email from the bauld Google telling me that 'Picasa Web Albums' would be launching 'soon', so I should 'apply for an invitation', so I did (haven't heard back yet though). It looks to me like Google, with Picasa, is going to try to take on the might of Yahoo! with Flickr in the online photo-sharing world, which seems to me like a gargantuan challenge for the dudes at Google.

Almost everyone I know who wants to share their photos online uses Flickr (with the exception of Adrian, who designed his own photo-sharing experience, colossal geek that he is), and they pretty much have the market sown up as regards online photo-sharing. Flickr has all the tools too, for things like mo'blogging and such, which from what I can see won't be rolled out by Picasa for quite a while yet.

Now, I use Picasa to organise my pics on my computer, because it's brilliant, at least far more brillianter than Windows is. I'm sure iPhoto on the Mac is pretty good, but as regards Windows and organising pics, Picasa is King in my opinion. If it was really easy to post pics online from inside Picasa, and if they rolled out blogging facilities that were as good as or (dare I say) better than Flickr, I might be tempted to change over to this new service, but they'd want to be pretty far along in their program before I do that, and I think I'll wait (even after I get an invite) until they've taken down that 'TEST' banner from the 'Picasa Web Albums' logo before I even think about telling other people to look for my photos there (how is 'TEST' different from 'Beta', that's what I want to know...).

Have any other Gmail or Picasa users (who read this here blog) recieved an invite? Anyone seen what it's really like beyond the 'Learn More' page? Let me know in the comments, if you please.

Posted by Matt at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

As heard on 'Have I Got News For You' (the repeat) last night, during a conversation regarding reports that some Welsh citizens found the new Pot Noodle ad to be racist:

"I see that Pot Noodle are launching their product in Korea, and are bringing out a new vegetarian flavour of their infamous product especially for the Koreans, they're going to call it 'Not Poodle'." (cue endless hilarious variations of Pot/Not/Poodle/Noodle from Merton and Hislop).

Geddit? Genius, no? Kthxbye.

Posted by Matt at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

Beautiful...

Posted by Matt at 8:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

Have a quick look at this and tell me if it isn't the coolest thing one of the coolest things you've ever seen:

Via Gizmodo, Youtube and MIT.

Posted by Matt at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My nose is a funny thing at the best of times. Not funny as in ha-ha, funny as in weird and annoying. There only ever seems to be one nostril functioning within established parameters (apart from when I breathe out through my nose under water, for some reason), and it goes between dry and crusty to wet and watery in a seemingly random pattern. I have to always, always have tissues or a handkerchief on or about my person, and dust of the type that hides in corners of rooms and in ducts and air-vents is the nemesis of my sinuses. And then, when the weather becomes beautiful and all the lovely people are having a fabulous time in the lazy, hazy sunshine, hay fever descends into my nasal cavity like I don't know what.

Those of you who do not suffer from this seasonal affliction have no idea what it's like to blow several pints of water snot out of your face in a matter of a few hours, to tear at your eyelids like someone has blown a handful of freshly ground black pepper in your peepers, to have that gnawing stuffy headache and dry coughy throat constantly reminding you that you're allergic to fucking summer, and as you have no idea what it means, I hate you (except you Nikki, you're exempt). I'm taking these New Era Tissue Salts, as I'm all homeopathic-ey about this sort of thing, and have a profound dislike of anti-histamines, which are worse than the original affliction ('hey! you've no hay-fever! Cool!' - 'yes, but now I have no snot at all, and I believe that's not quite right either...?'). They seem to be doing some sort of job, but the hard thing to remember about taking homeopathic medicines is that less is more.

In other (GOOD!) news, I met the surveyor at our house today, and it's finished. FINISHED! It looks pretty immaculate, and barring a few tiny niggley things that were to be fixed this afternoon, we should be getting the keys and handing over a chaque worth a small fortune sometime towards the middle of next week. WOO-HOO! (More news will follow as I hear it...)

Posted by Matt at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

A New Theorem on Salary states:

Engineers, Teachers, Programmers and Scientists can never earn as much salary as business executives and sales people.

This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following three postulates:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power (Knowledge=Power)
Postulate 2: Time is Money (Time=Money)
Postulate 3 (as every Physics student knows): Power = Work/Time

It therefore follows: Knowledge = Work / Time
Since Time = Money,
We have: Knowledge = Work / Money

Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches Zero, Money approaches Infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

Conclusion: The Less you Know, the More you Make.

I just thought I'd share that. Don't you all feel so good about your jobs now? :-)

Posted by Matt at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

It's 24° outside and humid, there's hardly a breath of wind and whenever I go outside I look like someone who's been jogging for an hour, but I've been sitting down. There's no air-con in the office and all the fans have been pilfered while I was on holiday. I have an overwhelming urge that I'm trying hard to quell to go and get a coffee. I'm a little pissed off really, as it appears to be hotter here than it was last week off the coast of Morocco. Ah well, there's no swimming pool here though...

Posted by Matt at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Via the ever-resourceful Annie:

I'm sure I saw this AGES ago, but I didn't have a blog then, which is why I'm blogging it now...

Posted by Matt at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, We're back (and browner than before).

• Hotel: Good. Really nice pools (2), spacious room with enormous bed, private access to beach, discount at nearby massage/'Thalassotherapy' emporium, and they had Erdinger in the bars. The only complaints (and they're two big ones) is that the food was really, really shit, and most of the staff had some sort of 'holier-than-thou' attitute where they wouldn't give you the time of day, let alone come over to take your order at the bar when you'd been frantically waving at them for about five minutes.
• Weather: Fab. Cloudy most mornings but that burned off by about 10 or 11am each day. 30 degrees or so every day, with a nice breeze preventing you from sweating like a knacker (actually, on one day it was less breezy and more windy, which started a bit of a twister going in the desert just outside Puerto de Rosario, which prompted Nikki to plead with me to go faster while we drove past it. It wasn't exactly big enough to do any damage, and I wanted to stop and take a photo or two, but she was having none of it.
• Food: Ok. Not brilliant, but ok. Being a vegetarian (but eating fish), and being on an island which is part of Spain, a country full of rampant carnivores, there wasn't a huge choice (ie fish, or 'vegetables'). We had a good indian on one day though. And there was an Italian gelateria across the road from the hotel that did some ridiculously tasty desserts.
• The Island: Great. The scenery (volcanic in nature) was spectacular, deserty in parts, craggy and black in others, and so like the surface of Mars in places I'm surprised they haven't filmed some kind of Martian Exploration docu-drama there yet. The Northern port town of Corralejo was a bit tacky and divey, the southernmost town of Jandia was lovely and had an amazing beach. The villages in the middle of the montains were sleepy, and when we drove around in the afternoon during Siesta-time, it was like driving through ghost towns, and kinda eerie and weird as a result.
• Car Hire (and driving on the right/wrong side of the road): Cool. We got a brand new Seat Cordoba for two days for ?75, which was pretty good I think. Drivig on that 'other side' was really easy, to my surprise, but that may have had a lot to do with the profound lack of cars, traffic and people on the island. Seriously, in parts we drove for miles without meeting another car at all, which was a blessing when you're driving on a mountain road with a cliff on one side and not exactly enough room for two cars to pass each other.

A great little break in the sun all in all, I would recommend Fuerteventura to anyone looking for a quiet sun holiday, but there really isn't enough on the island to keep you occupied for more than a week or so, unless you're a devoted sun-worshipper who doesn't care about anything but the amount of hours of sunshine per day. Didn't take a lot of pics, a few panoramas that will appear on Flickr as soon as I get round to it, but not much else, as I'm not reallt into the whole "and here's another pic of me beside the pool, sunbathing"-thing. Or pics of women with fake boobs, sunbathing topless.

Posted by Matt at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

Photoblogging...

...Looking out to sea. Amazing views. Really spectacular.

Posted by Matt at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)