Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

Via Annie comes this, a word cloud of this post from last Tuesday.

Make your own. All you need is some text and about 3 minutes. Loads of nice fontage and colours available too.

Posted by Matt at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was going to post today about this being the 500th post on the LWT, but del.icio.us beat me to it with my daily links for today. Oh well!

Anyhoo, we're 500. Or 501 even. Hooray! Well done me. And Babs too, of course. And Becca, but we haven't heard from her in a while. Probably too busy with the babby.

I meant to post ages ago about the re-design, which managed to happen without me mentioning it at all. A huge, HUGE thanks to Davy McDonald (blog/Twitter) for helping me with the banner/masthead and the favicon. He even made me a Life Without Toast wallpaper for my iPod Touch, without me even asking. He's the man in so many ways, and even designed several different mastheads, and revised my chosen one a few times too. And all for the promise of a pint (the beer must be shite in Lisburn!). The dude is legend. If anyone out there is looking for something that needs to be designed in a kick-ass fashion, he's your man. Although you'll probably have to pay him with more than the promise of an alcoholic beverage. He's worth it though.

Anyhoo (again)... Hooray! 501, eh? I also recently passed the 3,000 Tweets mark on Twitter, but I completely missed it until I was at the 3,027 mark, and by that stage there wasn't much point. And besides that, Alexia had passed the 10,000 mark a few days previous (and is now rapidly approaching 11k).

Posted by Matt at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been shortlisted for best group blog.

I didn't see that happening. I still don't harbour any illusions that we have the slightest hope of winning (indeed I see us as having the least chance on the list of winning), but still, nice to be short-listed.

I suppose I should probably put my name down to actually attend the awards really! Is anyone else going? We should totally sit together like, wearing our Fluffy badges.

Posted by Matt at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Got me a Fluffy Badge.

I am now certain that my place amongst the Irish blogging elite is assured. Maybe.

Posted by Matt at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m in the middle of moving the ‘Toast over to Moveable Type 4 (with the help of Adrian), and I just noticed that the system may have inadvertently posted all the entries again. Like, 400-ish of them. Well, they all appeared in my Google Reader anyway.

So, if you have a crap load of unread posts from here, don’t worry, we haven’t been posting like we’re on crack. Mark them all as read, and carry on as normal.

UPDATE:We had to re-import everything, again, so you may have gotten everything into your feed-reader, again, so mark them all as read, again, and pretend like nothing happened.

Posted by Matt at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I was browsing through Google Reader's new "discover" section (which is awesome, by the way) just now, and I discovered we now have 16 subscribers to our crazy little corner of the internet.

So 16 people are definitely reading us every day, using Google Reader. I wonder how many are reading us using Bloglines or NewsGator (or another feed reader) or just simply coming to visit (those of you who don't read feeds)? According to the mystical Webalizer it's been as high as 166 per day (in March this year, currently about 80 or so. Which is nice.

I just thought I'd say thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy our particular brand of news, nonsense, stream-of-consciousness, geeky banter, the occasional heart-warming anecdote, reviews, swearing, and babies.

Posted by Matt at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Updating my Facebook profile is my new favorite extreme sport.

Special thanks to Stuart.

Posted by Matt at 1:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi, my name is Matt, and I'm a t-shirt-oholic. Seriously, I have a problem.

Only joking, I fucking love t-shirts, and I also think it's impossible (impossible, Nikki) to have too many t-shirts. My wardrobe is full to bursting at the moment, and I have about 15 shirts in the wash and another 5 or 6 that I haven't even worn yet. I love them as if they were my own children.

Anyway, so I read this site called Tcritic all the time. I have it in my feed-reader. It's a t-shirt review site, and it always has links to cool shirts that you may not have seen before, and other t-shirt related news. It's brilliant. The writer/editor/guardian of the kingdom of Tcritic does this thing where if you send him a link to an interesting t-shirt site or shop, he'll send you a Threadless gift certificate.

So, Seamus gave me a lend of his Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex "1st GiG" dvd's a couple of weeks back. I thought they were awesome, and loved the logo and concept of the Laughing Man character/entity/thing from the series, so searched it out on the intertubes looking for (that's right) a t-shirt. I found TERRATAG, who designed the logo, and ordered a t-shirt immediately. It arrived this morning, along with a bunch of rad Japanese stickers (cool).

So I was reading Tcritic in Google Reader this afternoon, and I thought for the laugh I'd send him a link to TERRATAG. So I did. And he posted about it shortly after, and sent me a $50 gift certificate to Threadless! I think he only meant to send me $25, so Karl, if you want the other $25 back, err... I don't know if I can give it to you. I think I might need it.

Still though. Tcritic kicks ass. Visit it right now.

Posted by Matt at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I was going to stick this into the Linkery Dumpage section in the sidebar, but I think it's just too good:

Posted by Matt at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[Via Lexia]

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

Damien got fucked over by Sky Handling Partners. Damien got a bunch of emails from gay dating sites. Someone in Sky handling Partners had posted his email address on a bunch of gay dating sites (revenge?), not realising that the internet has a memory, and their IP address was traceable. Damien wrote a blog post about it, got Dugg 700+ times, and got about 5,000 hits on the post in the process, hammering his site so much that Blacknight had to move it to a new server.

The power of the internet! I can see this being in the paper tomorrow, or the next day. Although perhaps without the word "cunts" in the headline.

Posted by Matt at 1:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I know, I know, its been way too long, I do apologise, but there are reasons why it?s ben long time, no post., I have ?restricted? access on my computer in my new job, therefore I cannot whittle away the hours online like I used to, I have to actually work, which is good in a way because at least I feel a bit productive, but then it?s also shit, because I can?t fart about on line all day and do posts and buy crap I don?t need just because I am bored, and upload pics, or any of this stuff. But, it?s the only thing that I don?t like about my new job, so yay!
The other reason is that the time that I had online at home was not much, and I needed it to be able to do all of the other things that I was unable to do during work hours. Plus I have been a busy bee, first, I started a new job, then I got sick, really sick, I was deformed for a short time and still sport a scar above my right eyebrow from a shingles blister that was the main cause of the deformation of Babso?s face, I am told it may never go away, lovely, another war wound to add to the collection. Anyway so I was back to worky work then and had to catch up on a load of crap, namely relearning everything, that was fun, not!

Posted by Babs at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry It's been a little bit quiet round here. On top of the fact that Babs can't access the internet where she works at the moment, and has therefore not been able to fire off any of those brilliant middle-of-the-day random stream of consciousness posts that she's so brilliant at, I've been like, busy.

Thanks to everyone again for all those birthday wishes. Thanks for the cards, presents, texts and mails. Thanks to everyone who came to the party. Thanks to everyone who ensured I didn't actually reach into my pocket once that night, and for ensuring that I got thoroughly plastered, and was the recipient of the most ferocious hangover since the last one I had at Christmas, after the staff party in work with the free bar until 7am. It's weird just turning 30, in that it's exactly the same as being nearly 30.

Then, still suffering from the same hangover (I'm 30 now you know, they last longer at my age), for the past two days, I've been working. And going to the last couple of days of my college course. On Monday I was in work at 8am, and in college at half 9. And in work from 4pm until 11.30. And then, roughly the same again today. And then a normal "rest of the week".

I am BOLLIXED. And I have so much to do.

Posted by Matt at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't been tagged, but I am off sick from work today - so meh:

Three Things That Scare Me
~ skangers
~being sick because I never am
~motorways

Three People Who Make Me Laugh
~ Conor & Liam as one (my two roomies)
~ Trishbags
~ Any one of my family members at any given time

Three Things I Love
~ Marmite on toast with real butter
~ Really cold Erginger
~ Living near a beach

Three Things I Hate
~Arrogance
~ When people wind me up when I am oh so obviously not in the humour for it at all
~ Overcooked food

Three Things I Don?t Understand
~ A lot of maths (like the hard stuff, not adding etc)
~ Peopl who refuse to wear a seatbelt / indicate / check their mirrors / drive at 70mph in thick fog
~ How come I used to have size 6 feet (39) and now they are a 5 (38)

Three Things On My Desk (its more a dressing table slash desk so...)
~ 2 mirrors
~ make up
~ coconut oil (for my hair)

Three Things I Want To Do Before I Die
~ Own a gaff of my own
~ Go to India and learn yoga from a master
~ Meet all of my living relatives

Three Things I Can Do
~ Counsel my friends when they are having a hard time
~ Make strangers feel like they've known me for years
~ A tripod headstand and then jump into a handstand with no one spotting me and no wall (only since last week - its all in the shoulders)

Three Things I Can?t Do
~ Stop talking (a lot)
~ The lotus position due to my crappy Verso ankles
~ Maths

Three Things I Think You Should Listen To
~ Today FM on a Sunday avo with Jim O'Neill, best ever music!!
~ Your own advice
~ "Dear Jessie" by Madonna (I recently rediscovered this gem)

Three Things You Should Never Listen To
~ A used car salesman
~ People who smile with their mouth but not with their eyes (total sign of slyness)
~ A kango hammer

Three Things I?d Like To Learn (but won?t)
~ To be a weather person
~ How religion makes people kill
~ How to drive a truck

Three Shows I Watched As A Kid
~ Flintstones
~ Bosco
~James Bond Junior

Posted by Babs at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

These dudes borrowed this photo for a post on their blog. Which is fine, as all my Flickr photies are CC-licensed, and they referenced me in their post (as per the "attribution" stipulation of the license).

So it's all cool like, y'know?

Posted by Matt at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[Diesel Sweeties, via BoingBoing]

Posted by Matt at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've started Twittering.

Seems like a lot of other people are doing the same thing. Some people think it's a colossal waste of time. I think it's yet another thing I can fuck about with, to stop my mind from overheating.

A lot of people who have described Twitter as a load of crap have stated that they don't need to know when people they don't even know are eating a bowl of cereal, leaving work, getting into their car or whatever. Me, I see it as just another blog-thingy, like Flickr mo'blogging or whatever. Someone might see a truck crashing into a river, and update their Twitter via text, and then snap a photo and mo'blog it up on their Flickr. That's pretty cool, I think. Some say it's NOT "web 2.0", but I think it is. I see the phrase "web 2.0" as representing any aspect of the web which is shareable, writable, embeddable, etc. Twitter is all of these things. Plus it couldn't be easier to use.

Now, you may not care what I thought of CSI last night, of that I finally cracked Wii Sports Baseball. If you don't, then don't subscribe. Don't read. But if you want to her the occasional funny observation that people (like me) CBATB, or perhaps read a 140 character message about a huge news story, written by a random stranger, then Twitter is for you.

I'm going to give it a try until I get bored with it, or until it changes the world (I reckon the former is the more likely outcome).

Posted by Matt at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

According to Dragon I am "someone particularly high up the food chain in the Irish power and influence stakes".

Now, although I'm the person some people go to if they want to get a free ticket to a gig here and there (because I am The Man), and people have been known to ring me because their computer is "broken" (stock answer: turn it off and back on again), and a lot of people I know would ask me about the enormous electronics purchase they're about to make, I wouldn't exactly call myself particularly high up the food chain. Although it's nice that someone else thinks so.

But then again, I don't think Dragon knows anyone else in Ireland.

_{[note: this entire post is written in the style of someone who is being sarcastically smug. I'm not really The Man, but I do have his e-mail address]}

Posted by Matt at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Me and Nikki ventured into the city last night to meet Tom, aka Dragon, for a pint or three. He's been working in Dublin for a couple of months, and when he announced that he was coming on his blog late last year I had suggested he stay with me for a bit, but that didn't happen in the end, so I had suggested via email that we meet for a pint. Things being as they are, it took until now for me to get my arse in gear and get around to doing it, in the last week that he's here.

It always surprises me (although it shouldn't really) that every time I have met someone in "real life" that I had previously only known from reading their blog or them commenting on my blog, that everyone in the little blogging community that I am part of are universally lovely people.

We talked about blogging, bloggers, babies, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 (all the b's!), all sorts of crap. We discussed how we were both at "Wolf 359 - The Alliance" in 1997, and how we both drank copious amounts of alcohol in the bar with Gareth Thomas throughout the weekend, but somehow never met each other (incidentally, Tom also met Pix at the same convention, which I thought was also interesting, I wonder how many other bloggers were there as well?).

We talked games! San Andreas (and "pimping" therein), WoW, online gaming, leaderboards, offline gaming, the Wii and how some bloke lost weight playing it, etc.

We talked work. That didn't last very long.

All in all, a lovely little night out with a lovely bloke (and my lovely missus, of course, who I am surprised wasn't geeked to death by most of the conversation), someone I will definitely look up next time I'm in Blighty. I only wish it hadn't been on a schoolnight and we could have had a bit more to drink! :-)

Posted by Matt at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Life Without Toast is officially ONE year old.

Cheers for reading, hopefully we'll maintain the stunning level of quality writing, reviewing, podcasting and err... "other things" evident in recent times for at least another few days month year or two.

Posted by at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

...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. :-)

Posted by Matt at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Matt at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I have recieved another invite to become a commenter on Lifehacker (and, by extension, all Gawker Media websites/blogs), my third such invite so far (they must like me!). I already gave one of them away (I think I gave it to Annie?), and used the other one myself. If anyone reads any of the Gawker blogs and has always wanted to comment on a post, but hasn't been invited yet, let me know, and I'll forward you the invite.

Posted by Matt at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You are Supergirl

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Posted by Babs at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Winds:

You Are Creepy

Serial killers would run away from you in a flash.

I didn't think I was scary at all... :-(

Posted by Matt at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | 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, 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)

I Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

Result! I couldn't think of a better answer from this thingy really (however that highlights the accuracy of these things, meaning I might really be 32...).

Via Winds and Blogthings.

Posted by Matt at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

So as I gently ease my way into this pastime/hobby/way-of-life/thingy we call 'blogging', I have started doing a few things you may or may not find interesting, but which will kinda (I hope) help me make this whole blogging malarkey enjoyable for me, and for whoever reads lifewithouttoast.com.

1. I have begun the mammoth task of lashing a whole shitload of my pics up to Flickr. I had been Flickr-ing half-heartedly for a good while, but I have recently uploaded pics from my UK holiday last year, and will follow this with Attchoo! festival photos (more on that later), some nice panoramics (a few are up already), and general random crap.

2. I will try and add a few links to my sidebar in the 'del.icio.us lin.ks' bit, every day (the linkroll is missing at the moment, I'm working on that, in the meantime go to del.icio.us/matt_man). These links are all the stuff I find interesting/funny on the web. Read them, most if not all are good stuff.

3. Using the aforementioned Flickr.com, I hope to start 'moblogging'. This will probably start in March.

4. I will be making more (hopefully funny/cool/fascinating) videos and putting them on Google Video, so I can embed them in the blog. Some I hope will be more than 3 minutes long.

Anyhoo, for everyone who reads this blog (there's at LEAST 5 people who do), cheers, and I hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Matt at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

...I've like, started blogging n' shit. Obviously. For those of you who know me, hello! For those of you who don't, err... like, hey, how you doing? Do you come here often?

I'll mostly be showing everyone who reads this all the crazy shit I come across on a daily basis, in my work (in a theatre), in my spare time (places I go, things I see), on the internet/tv (where I spend far too much time) and stuff like the video below, which I made myself. If you like or dislike anything, cool. Lets like, talk about it.

I'm going to try to get my del.icio.us links up here too, so I don't have to post too much 'hey, check out this link' style crap in the main blog, and hopefully that won't be the coolest thing that I have here.

Posted by Matt at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)