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LWT is now officially on temporary hiatus. Me and Babs are off out to our M & D's for Chrimbo with zero internet access, and Me and Nikki are going to London for New Years' (If any of you Londoners who read this want to meet up, and I want to meet you, you should have my number! Txt m3.). Normal service shall resume in about a week or more, barring occasional opportunistic photoblogging.
Happy Christmas, and in case I don't see ya, Happy New Year. x
Well, here it is ladiesngentlemen, finally, after months of trying our darndest to actually sit down for an evening and record something, if gives me great pleasure to present to you, episode 2!
Click here to download the mp3 file, or click that there little "play" button for your streaming pleasure.
If iTunes is your "thang", do that advanced>subscribe to podcast thing, and lash www.lifewithouttoast.com/Lifewithouttoastcast.xml into that box.
Enjoy! Answers to riddles, comments, complaints and arguments shall all happen in the comments, I'll meet you there dudes.
...And all through the blog, not a creature was stirring, not even a dog.
It's been awfully quiet round here recently, hasn't it? Apologies, both myself and Babs have been too busy for words. I've been working my ass off, and playing Zelda (review soonish), and doing my Christmas shopping (all done, yay!), and Babs has been working her ass off too, and doing college stuff.
SO! In the absence of anything exciting, I though I'd blog about some blogs (apologies if I leave anyone out).
Sevitz has posted his third and final post about Judaism and Circumcision, which makes for good reading. The comments throughout the three posts have been really good too, some good debating going on, especially from Dan.
Speaking of Dan, he still hasn't finished his latest book, Penumbra. Myself and several others had been immensely enjoying his tale of high fantasy in a world where the divide between darkness and light was both literal and political (and fantastical), and then he buggered off to New Zealand, promising he'd finish the book in December. Come on Dan, let's have the rest of it, please? It's totally brilliant!
Nat and Ian don't know what they'll be doing for Christmas. Dudes, if it snows in Dublin, you're more than welcome to come here for the New Year. :-)
Annie has closed her blog "for refurbishment", apparently. Oh, Slaminskly, how I miss thee. Please come back soon.
Gordon raised £400 for charity for his 5K run, amongst answering every question the blogosphere could throw at him. I think his "questions answered" posts were a genius idea, and have made for brilliant reading. For anyone who hasn't read or doesn't read his blog (not many), I thoroughly recommend it, it's one of the best out there, and I count myself grateful to have him as someone who reads this here bloggaroo, it must mean we're doing something right here, I think.
Pete and Karen are still up to their eyes in nappies and coffee mornings, but not too busy to be blogging regularly, which I count as a very, very good thing. Pete recently lost a good friend to the horrible illness that is World of Warcraft, and Karen has inspired me to want to use cloth nappies whenever I have a sproglet of my own.
Calista has had a hard time of it recently for reasons I won't go into here. I hope she, of all, has the bestest Christmas ever.
Tom recently started working in Dublin, and nearly ended up on my couch for a bit, but in the end he found somewhere decent to stay (not that my couch isn't very decent). We still haven't met for that pint though, which is something that MUST happen soon, at all costs.
And last, but not least, Razorhead fixed his Rayburn and the plumber secretly added a nuclear reactor (or so he claims) and he got some hens, and they are laying, which is a very good thing, as I know all too well from 20+ years of tending to the needs of finicky poultry. There's nowt like a free range egg fresh from a hens' arse, I tell ya.
Happy Christmas everyone! Except for Adrian. Happy Hanukkah dude. :-)
I haven't been at a proper "rock" gig in absolutely years, and I was hugely looking forward to seeing the Legendary D live in concert at last, in person, and not on a TV screen.
The dudes started out as I've seen them before, on the aforementioned TV, by themselves, with their acoustic guitars, playing their "old" stuff off the first album, like FHG, Karate and the like. So far, so familiar, so expected. Then, after an unfortunate electrocution by their good "friend" Lee, a projection screen appeared and we saw the dudes descending into hell, and meeting the Anti-Christ Jnr, Charlie Chaplin and Colonel Sanders, and forming the Greatest Band On Earth™.
Then came the big surprise. The lights come up on an incredible stage, with scenery depicting the fires of hell, with huge smoking volcanoes, mountains, and a dark orange sky, and the band launch into a full, electric version of the amazing Explosive, and the entire audience went completely insane. I was genuinely blown away at the brilliance of what followed, really awesomely good live rock, the rhythm section of Chaplin and Sanders (in reality Brooks Wackerman from Suicidal Tendencies and John Spiker, who has played bass with Beck, amongst others) were just awesomely tight, and the Anti-Christ Jnr (John Konesky, who plays guitar on all the tracks on the "Pick Of Destiny" album and movie) was amazing, proper dirty gritty lead guitar, the kind I last heard at a Gunz N' Roses gig about fifteen years ago.
They played almost every track from both albums, which was pretty amazing seeing as there were so many comedy interludes between songs. Standout numbers were Master Exploder, The Metal, Beelzeboss (the Final Showdown), Double Team and Tribute, but there were many more that were great too. They also played their version of Queen's "Flash!" (from the Flash Gordon soundtrack, obviously), which segued into Wonderboy and finished the night with The Who's medley from the movie "Tommy" ("that deaf dumb and blind kid, sure plays mean-muthe'fuckin' pinbaaaall", brilliant).
All in all, totally mutherfuckin' awesome. 9.9/10 (1/10 of a point deducted as we were down the back and missed some of the good bits as a result!)
Photoblogging...
Played Wii for several hours last night. Wii Sports really, really wrecked me. I'm quite unfit, and I never thought a videogame would ever make me feel like that. My arms hurt, my shoulders hurt, and my neck is stiff. Let me tell you, it sounds like I'm talking shite, but seriously, try playing Wii Boxing, Golf, Bowling and Baseball for a couple of hours without tearing a rotator cuff or two. If you can, you must already have a reasonable level of fitness.
Thoroughly recommended though, even if it did curb my Zelda-playing a smidgin. And money spent on the Wii is money saved on a gym membership!
Photoblogging...
Got me one!
UPDATE: My Wii number is 8523 3698 9377 7364. Add me to your friends list, if you have one. Cheers!
There was an article on Slashdot yesterday linking to another article on InformationWeek, about consumer opinion regarding adverts on the intertubes. Apart from the article's hilarious confusion between spam blocking and ad blocking, it brought up some interesting points, namely people hate ads, and some people are willing to go to some length to stop themselves ever seeing them.
I use Adblock on Firefox at home and at work, so that if any sites I visit regularly feature annoying ads that wreck my buzz, I can block them out completely, and never see them again. In fact, when I visit these sites on another computer, I hardly recognise them anymore, as my usual experience of them is ad-free, clean and easy. I also use CustomizeGoogle so that even the big G's "targeted advertising" is thrown in the bin.
So, readers, here's a little poll. Get your friends to do it too, as I'm very interested in the results.
Yo dudes (and esteemed dudettes).
I've had a couple of complaints from some people who have been having problems commenting. This is due to my host upgrading some bits and bobs, to stop the enormous amount of spam I've been getting. Basically, it boils down to this:
JAVASCRIPT MUST BE TURNED ON TO COMMENT.
From now on, if you haven't got Javascript turned on, you won't be able to comment. I have made this more obvious by putting a big notice box in the comment form, stating as much, but to minimise intrusions, I've mucked around with the code so that this box will only appear when you haven't got the Java turned on. The little Java elves will be checking, and if you don't turn it on, you won't get any presents for Christmas (or be able to comment, either).
I hope this works properly, so if anyone's got any problems or still can't comment for some reason, let me know.
So I was out in my parents gaff on Friday night (yes the same parents as Matt) and the feckin electricity was gone due to gale force winds, not impressed basically and neither was my Mam, she called the girl in ESB and was told that this was only happening because of the increase in the amount of new gaffs over the past few years, Mam?s response was basically ?I don?t f*cking think so, this has been happening for 20 years? and then she realised that she was talking to someone in Cork!! Anyway, I got bored very quickly and was getting a headache from trying to read the Irish Times Magazine (from two weeks ago) by candle light, so I fecked off down to my sister Becca?s house. Becca is VERY pregnant and therefore unable to move about much so we just sat on the couch for ages chatting and getting all excited about the baba and making bets with her husband about the sex of the baba etc. Anyway, so then she was all ?Ooooh? and told me to touch the belly and I FELT THE FECKIN BABA MOVING!!! It was weird like a little alien thing inside her, I think it was an elbow or something, it must be so squishy inside the belly. The first thing that she said to me was not ?isn?t it amazing? or anything like that, no my lovely sister says ?don?t you start feckin crying? I was disappointed cause I could feel myself well up. I am a sap, did you not know this already? Anyway, now it feels more real to me, like there is an actual human there. So in 6 and a half weeks (hopefully) it will be born and it will be deadly!! Woohoo! In other weekend news, I worked my nixer in the restaurant yesterday, and me and Rob (yes just two of us) did 200 covers all day, crazy busy but not up the caca once, bizarre! We had great fun belting each other with wet tea towels and generally annoying the shite out of each other. Also the restaurant was reviewed last week, I think they must have paid of the reviewer, they were going on about how great the manager was, he is a knob of the highest order and basically the creepiest man I have ever had the displeasure to meet. In one word: YOCK! Anyway that was it, my weekend, not as exciting as putting together flat pack furniture, but then again, how could it compare!
...Of the weekend spent mostly at my parents, chilling out, eating good home-cooked Mammy food and watching tv, spending much-needed time with my lovely girlfriend and generally hanging out, chilling, and the occasional building of a flat-pack desk from Atlantic Homecare (although that was fun let me tell you), was a moment on the Jonathan Ross show on Friday, when Elijah Wood was on. He was talking about his new film Happy Feet where he plays a little penguin.
Anyhoo, Jonathan Ross said "Walrus". It was brilliant.
I was in Galway on the weekend with two of my four roomies, or roomdawgs if you please, and when we got home on Sunday evening we found a plate with toast crusts on the doorstep and a teacup, we thought that the lads had gone mad, actually mad, we were trying to figure out how this had happened, thought that they were taking the piss etc, but neither of them were there, so basically we left it there till they got home / up. Conor aka: Ricky B was up first (was on the old night shift in the baby factory) and he explained what had happened. It sounds like an unbelievable tale, but it true, this is the story of the Mutant Ninja Bum, Conor got home at approx 8.10am on Sunday after a night of hard work and saw someone sitting slouched on our doorstep, thinking that it was one of us for a split second he started to laugh, but then realising that none of us were there, he soon copped on, ?don?t get out of the car? he told himself, sohe reversed and saw what was an old lady bum, with strips of black fabric all wrapped around her face (like a ninja apparently!) so she was fucked basically, all over the shop and had blood on her face and smelled like wee, and was shaking and soaking wet, so he went to the garage across the road, got some ingredients, and made her brekki, he didn?t bring her inside (smelled like wee remember) and some tea and gave her his favourite jumper (sheesh!) and was the best ever good Samaritan ever! So he went off to bed and then she was gone. Flick to Monday morning, she is there again, I opened the door and almost stood on her, she scared the bejasus out of me, started telling me that she lived there and why would no one let her in (obviously lost her marbles) I felt so terrible but was already mad late for work and that (stayed up talking shite till 4.20am) so I had to run past her, this was after screaming from the shock. Then the other roomies also got scared when they were leaving. But seeing as we didn?t feed her, we thought that was the end of it. No sign on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I was off, so was Eimear and Conor was in at 8am, at approx 7.15 Conor was banging on my door and me in my sleepy hazy dreamy state was all ?I am NOT IN TODAY MAN!!!!!!? and he was like ?can I come in pleeeease!!? so I said yeah and he jumped in the door almost landing on me and whispering ?the bum, the bum, the bum is outside what am I going to do I have to go to work, help me?, apparently she was banging on the door and scratching at it and ringing the doorbell all night, (I love the way these things don?t even wake me up!!) so we decided that he should jump over the back wall into Tesco underground carpark, good idea? No it wasn?t!!! He was covered in old leaves and other jazz and there was a beat cop looking at him, then me and Eimear went onto my balcony and started to flap about in our jammies, then we saw a beat cop (yeah same one!) and alerted her by jumping up and down and pointing, she got rid of said bum and then knocked on the door, she came into the house, and told us that she thinks the bum has some ?psychological issues? as she said that she lived in our house and was waiting on the bus and loads of other stuff, she hasn?t been back since but every time I open the door I think she will be there. She is scary looking but I would say fairly harmless, apart from the fact that she has been weeing on our doorstep and that!! Erk!
4.21-en
Geek Support, fixing of bugger-ups, moral support, code splicing, tech. administration, whining, über-nerdery and fetching of fluffy coffees by 
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