Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

I have a few more. If anyone wants one, let me know with a comment or a mail to the usual address. It's an absolutely brilliant program if you need screenshots and you have a Mac.

Posted by Matt at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

SO! For those of you who don't already know, me and Nikki are now engaged. As you can see in this picture, I surprised her at 10,000 feet at the base of Mt. McKinley in Alaska, on the Kahiltna Glacier snowfield. Many many thanks to Ben from Talkeetna Air Taxi, our pilot for the day, for taking the superb photos.

She said yes (naturally). But from what people have said, I think everybody would've said yes, even a few blokes have said they would have. Just call me Captain Romance. Actually no, don't call me that.

This was on Day 2 of our Alaskan Adventure, nearly three weeks ago, on the 9th of July, at about 3pm. After that, the holiday took on a kind of hooneymooney feeling, and really just got better and better.

I will be uploading about a thousand photos to Flickr in the next few days, and a few videos will be going up too. And I will blog a fair bit about the whole Alaska experience too, so tell me if y'all start getting bored of glaciers and bears (or lack of bears).

WOO-HOO!

Posted by Matt at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (0)

Well I did it, well half of it, one eye in fact so far. God it's hard to type with only one eye.
I got a heap of money for my maternity benefit and rather than whittering it away (or 'pissing it against the wind' as Sean so nicely put it) I bought a new TV, table and chairs for dining room, and two new eyes!!!

I had been talking about it for years and then two friends got it done and thought it was fab so I took the bull by the horns and went for it. I had the first eye done by LASEK yesterday in the Mater Private Hospital. The procedure itself was over in about 2 mins and wasn't sore but by god was it sore last night. It's very disorientating to only have one eye working and I was dizzy and tired and very emotional but today it's less sore but very watery and hard to open - see pic.

I had a check up this morning and the doc says it's very successful and healing well blah de blah but they leave the contact lense in until Monday (another check up) and then I should be able to see properly.
Can't wait for more pain and blindness on August 10th.

Posted by Becca at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday morning was lovely, but on the news (Today FM traffic & weather together) they had forecasted rain, so I braved the sun in my jacket and cycled into work, I was roasting when I got in but soon cooled down to my delight and then the rain came, so I was happy that I had brought it with me in the end, then the sunshine came again and amazingly enough stayed for the entire day and evening, I was chuffed apart from sweating it out on the bike on the way home squinting away without my lovely shades that had been discarded that morning, my old roomies mate Donncha was coming over to collect stuff that he had left behind and was waiting on the doorstep when I arrived, with a box of Lindor from Lindt (my fav), we drank copious amounts of tea (from a pot - cause I am fancy) and sat on the bench in my Amazonian garden (grass hasn't been cut in a while, I would say approx 6mths), then we went out to the driveway where I discovered that his exhaust pipe was literally hanging off "you would want to get that sorted" says I, "yeah I must" says he before he roared off into the sunset!

Posted by Babs at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well OK not prehistoric but bloody old.

Here's the story...My grandparents went to California in 1994 to visit my grand-uncle Arthur where he lived for the winter months in a 'trailer'. He lived the other months back in Canada in British Columbia or some place like that.... ANYways....

Prehistoric Pines

My Granny is up the mountains in Santa Barbara one day and spots this dinky little pine tree, 8 foot high she said it was. There were two enormous pine cones underneath it so she gave one to her friend and took the other one home with her. End of story you would think.
So I am in my aunt and uncles house (Billy and Mary) recently and I see THE pine cone on their windowsill. So I was just playing with it when a few little black seeds fall out. Granny says sure why don't you plant them, I scoffed at her thinking 17 year old seeds? not a chance!

Well I thought I'd see what happened. So I planted 6 seeds 6 weeks ago and this morning I look at the pot and BY JINGO there's a little pine tree growing and another just about to come up!
Have a look!

Posted by Becca at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

[Via Lexia]

Posted by Matt at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

During a kids sailing regatta up to 90 boats capsized after getting into trouble in high winds at the West Pier. All the 120+ children involved were wearing life-jackets and apparently all have been rescued and accounted for.

More updates as I hear them.

UPDATE: The LE Aoife is in the harbour assisting with the rescue operations. It had been coincidently in the Dun Laoghaire area today.

UPDATE: Roads have been closed around Dun Laoghaire to allow rescue services easier access to and from the area. This means I'm pretty fucked when I try to go home, in my car.

UPDATE: All is now back to normal. The weather in Dun Laoghaire between 6pm and 8pm was clear, warm and sunny. The weather currently (10pm) is wet, very windy, and cold. Irish weather is a never-ceasing vortex of uncertainty, always bring wellies and sunglasses.

UPDATE: This photo and story are now live on the Now Public News Site.

Posted by Matt at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well eh hello. I am Becca big sister of Matt and Babs. This is my first confession... I mean blog entry. I haven't a clue what I'm doing so this will probably look crap.

Right... well as I said I've never done this before, just following printed instructions from Matt. I'm sitting her in 'the office' in my PJs, hair like a mad woman's shite, eating toast with marmite and listening out for 'gorgeous girl' AKA Isobel who is my 5.5 month old baby who is asleep in my bed upstairs. I have a monitor and unbeknowst (is that a word?) she is listening to Gerry Ryan on the radio so through the monitor I am listening to it.. haha.

Well that's me for now, I'll post something of interest later maybe if I have time.

I'm off to do some house-wifey type things...
Adios!

Posted by Becca at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been using the über brilliant screenshot/screencap utility Skitch for the past few weeks (thanks to an invite from Adrian) and have found it to be utterly, stupendously brilliant. I mean seriously, if you take a lot of screencaps as part of your daily work/routine, this is the best application I've ever come across for doing just that, and deserves a place in your dock (yes, it's Mac only). That little logo there to the right was snapped, cropped, resized, uploaded and linked to in a matter of about 4 clicks and 2 seconds. Really, it's totally tubular.

You can see a demo of how it works here.

Because I've been using it about a week or two, and as Plasq are nice people, have seen fit to throw me a few spare invites. If anyone wants one let me know in the comments, or by an email to the usual address.

Posted by Matt at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)