October 18, 2010
April 1, 2010
links for 2010-04-01
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Really nice poster-type image.
January 2, 2010
links for 2010-01-02
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MAJOR WANTAGE.
December 9, 2009
links for 2009-12-09
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The problem I see here is that my wife will have killed me long before I'm even finished drawing the necessary cutting lines on the bagel with a marker. Plus, I haven't got a Mobius-shaped toaster.
December 6, 2009
links for 2009-12-06
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If you've never played a game in Nintendo's "Zelda" series (and if you haven't, why not? They're officially the "Best Games Ever?"), you'll most likely think that this clip looks like the biggest pile of hokey rubbish you've ever seen, with below-par effects and terrible acting. If, on the other hand, you've played 7-10 of the Zelda games (like me), and absolutely loved them, you'll probably be looking forward to seeing this as much as you were looking forward to seeing Lord of the Rings in 2001, and the choral version of the Song of Time playing over the end credits of the clip will most likely make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Or maybe it's just me.
November 25, 2009
links for 2009-11-25
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"Reference image database, with more than 37000 blueprints, templates, 3/4/5-views and drawings". Very very cool
October 11, 2009
Best Anniversary Present Ever
As anyone will know from following me on Twitter or being my friend on Facebook, I recently commissioned Tommie Kelly of Road Crew Comic to do a comic-style avatar for me which I immediately used on all on all of my social network places like Twitter and Facebook, and for a few others things like Gravatar, etc.
I also have a wife who is extremely thoughtful, and very clever, and loves me very much (obviously). So for our 1st wedding anniversary this weekend, at breakfast yesterday, she presented me with this, all framed and gift-wrapped with a lovely card stuck to the front:
(click for VERY LARGE full-size version - 3508 × 2480 JPEG, 2.8 MB )
(This cartoon is based on a true story, much to my embarrassment)
October 8, 2009
links for 2009-10-08
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Anyone who ever owned a ZX Spectrum is not going to get anything done for several weeks if you click this link.
September 22, 2009
Honest, Random Thoughts of 25-35 Year Olds
-I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can
think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell
my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves
me.
-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you
realize you're wrong.
-I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to
have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and
sticks when they've invented the lighter?
-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're
going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to
be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the
direction from which you came, you have to first do something like
check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to
yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're
crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.
-That's enough, Nickelback.
-I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
-Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know"
feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose
not to be friends with?
-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't
work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically
fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all
know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards
or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.
-There is a great need for sarcasm font.
-Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and
suddenly realize I had no idea what the f was going on when I first
saw it.
September 8, 2009
Butternut Squash & Sweet Potato Soup
It was yummy.
July 25, 2009
links for 2009-07-25
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NEW TRAILER FOR TRON LEGACY. I cannot describe how excited I am about this, but it's probably at least as excited as I was about Lord of the Rings.
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'In the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan, the main tank called the "Kuroshio Sea" holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world's second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.' Absolutely stunning.
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Good list. If we don't know all these things by next Spring, Lost may then actually suck. A bit.
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After taking a pretty extended hiatus from t-shirt buying, this may be the shirt that makes me fall off the wagon.
July 16, 2009
links for 2009-07-16
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"RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper [...] a self-replicating machine". I, for one, welcome our new self-replicating machine overlords.
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"People like to go fast and film themselves doing so". They really, really do.
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I think the green definitely looks better.
June 5, 2009
links for 2009-06-05
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A beautifully whimsical collection of photos depicting toy AT-AT's in a variety of pet-like situations. Stunningly photographed too.
Sorry I'm Late
You have to watch this, it's absolutely stunning:
[Via]
June 4, 2009
links for 2009-06-04
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And it looks like it's going to be just as much fun as the first one (which is LOADS).
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Actually no, Wolfram Alpha, the correct answer is "there's no such thing as an apple bastard".
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"Unlocking the awesome potential of behavioral disorders". Must-buy.
May 29, 2009
links for 2009-05-29
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"If you need to fit an elephant into a safeway bag, there?s an app for that" Absolute Genius. There really is an app for everything isn't there?
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"With 400 hp and a top speed of 171 mph, the electric race car concept pushes 1,475 lb-ft of torque up to 100 mph then drops it to 590 lb-ft for high-speed traction". But will the batteries go for 24 hours without needing recharging? Anyway, very interesting.
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The coolest optical illusion you will ever see!
May 28, 2009
links for 2009-05-28
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***THIS IS A FAN MADE TRAILER*** Well, obviously, but it's a really good one. See if you can spot all the movies the clips are nabbed from (without reading the list in the "more info"). I like the idea of Nathan Fillion as the Green Lantern, I have to say.
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New series from Mike Judge, creator of Beavis & Butt-Head and King of the Hill about the family that lives by "What Would Al Gore Do?". Looks like it could be at least as good as KOTH.
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I totally want a pair of "WoWnderwear", especially as they "Hold up to 10 movements!". The "Wii Game Defeater" might cut down on the old RSI as well.
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Don't you think "The Lost and Damned" was a better name than "The Ballad of Gay Tony"? Actually, now that I think about it, I like the second one better. Hopefully it'll be a little bit longer than TLAD.
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You can't deny that MJ has been an enormous influence on the music people create and listen to today.
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Yahtzee Croshaw reviews a game that doesn't even exist, and gives it the best hypothetical review ever.
May 21, 2009
links for 2009-05-21
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Funny.
May 17, 2009
links for 2009-05-17
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"If your times are hard, then it's time for hard times with ze frank" It's like a new episode of The Show!
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If that headline doesn't make you want to read the article, I'm afraid there's nothing I can say that will help you.
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Unsure exactly which Star Trek movie you're watching? This should help.
May 15, 2009
links for 2009-05-15
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"An eccentric New Yorker played by Larry David abandons his upper class life to lead a more bohemian existence" - Woody Allen + Larry David = Hilarity. Squared.
May 13, 2009
links for 2009-05-13
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I want the Xbox 360 controller soap. And the Wiimote soap. and the NES controller soap. And and and and and...
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No, really. You can really buy these.
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Lovely.
May 12, 2009
links for 2009-05-12
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Surfing off the coast of Hawaii or California is easy. Surfing off the West Coast of Ireland, in winter, is fucking HARDCORE.
May 11, 2009
links for 2009-05-11
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Exactly what it says. 49 seconds of pure awesomeness, proving once and for all that SW > ST.
May 8, 2009
links for 2009-05-08
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Planning to start a family? Looking for a practical family car? Loaded? Here's the perfect car for you.
May 6, 2009
links for 2009-05-06
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Everyone's favourite bad-girl slayer/doll (who sees dead people) is on everyone's favourite micro-blogging thingy!
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Absolute genius, I want the t-shirt!
May 5, 2009
X Marks The Snail
Three years ago, on a quiet, wet April morning, there was a
profunderance of snails in the "yard" area behind where I work. They
always turned up in droves when the ground was damp. I don't know what
came upon us, but we decided to mark a few of the snails on their
shells, using (non-toxic) "Tipp-Ex" with x's, y's and z's, in a
science-experimenty fashion.
Today, the day after a drizzley bank holiday, an old friend turned up,
making his way back to the flowerbed from the drying yard.
May 4, 2009
links for 2009-05-04
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This has to be one of the cleverest adverts ever. Absolute genius.
May 3, 2009
links for 2009-05-03
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Some of these are just amazing. Actually, all of them are amazing.
May 1, 2009
links for 2009-05-01
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Brilliant
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I love when we discover something mind-boggling that was there all along.
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Oh no!
First Of May
For the day that's in it:
NOT SAFE FOR WORK (both the song AND the video).
Song by Jonathan Coulton, video by Mike Spiff Booth.
April 30, 2009
links for 2009-04-30
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I'm sure most of you are aware of the "Winnebago Man" (if not, the video is at this link anyway). Well, someone's gone and made a documentary about the original viral video (from back when videos were huge black tapes), about how it came to be, and the appeal of viral videos in general. Looks interesting.
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A video demonstration on why owning a cat is such ridiculous fun.
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Padraig Harrington tests the Happy Gilmore "run up and whack it" method for hitting a golf ball off the tee. Results? Watch the video, but it's basically "more power, less accuracy".
April 28, 2009
links for 2009-04-28
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A short, inspiring documentary on how Honda made what's probably the best advert this year.
April 25, 2009
links for 2009-04-25
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New blog. Brilliant name, great content, bookmark it now.
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Cool new Star Wars t-shirts (and mugs and crap... it's Zazzle after all...). I especially love the Hoth, Endor and Tatooine "tourist" t-shirts.
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OOH! WANTY-WANTY-WANT-WANT!
April 23, 2009
links for 2009-04-23
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Completely unbelievable Japanese "human beatbox" dude. Really sounds like he's got some loops running in the background, but it's all him...
April 19, 2009
links for 2009-04-19
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The Music Animation Machine Presents "Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor". Mesmerising.
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Some of these are quite simply breathtakingly good. Inspiring stuff, made me want to go and grab my camera and capture something amazing.
April 18, 2009
links for 2009-04-17
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Really, really worth watching just to see the moment when the second-stage rocket fires, and when the rocket-sled hits the car, in super-slow-motion.
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Testing the largest parachute ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial flight, in the biggest wind-tunnel in the world. Freakin' sweet.
April 16, 2009
links for 2009-04-16
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This could very well prove to be the nerdiest film that has ever existed. It may also be one of the funniest.
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Brilliant!
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"Snow rollers ... are extremely rare because of the unique combination of snow, wind, temperature and moisture needed to create them. They form with light but sticky snow and strong (but not too strong) winds". Pretty cool, another natural phenomena that no-one knew about.
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Sure, you might think that $350,000 is too much to spend on "a stereo", or you might even think you want one, but would you appreciate it? This man certainly would.
April 12, 2009
links for 2009-04-12
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"I GOT A LONG ROAD AHEAD OF ME TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE I'M NOT ACTUALLY A HUGE DOUCHE". You got it in one, Kanye. Admitting you're a giant douche is half the problem. Now you just have to try harder to not actually be a big, giant douche. Not typing in ALL CAPS would be a good start.
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I'm sorry, ordinarily I would try to explain the contents of this link in some way, but I just shit my pants laughing at it.
April 10, 2009
Dead Chestnut
This is the chestnut tree in my parent's garden that I had a treehouse
in when I was a kid, about 20 years ago or more. It has since died
but, being a tree, it will be there for a few more years yet, and will
then be a splendid source of fuel for my "old pair". It's covered in
fungus, canker and incredibly gnarled, pale bark.
I think it's beautiful.
April 7, 2009
Greetings and Salutations.
Having realised that I haven't done a proper "blog post" on this here blog for quite a while, I give you this:
...And a promise that my next post will be soon, and will almost definitely be an extended review of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS, which I'm almost finished, and which contains semi-lethal levels of awesomeness.
Ciao for now.
April 2, 2009
links for 2009-04-02
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"The Other Half of Famous Twins" - Great gallery. Can you imagine being Scarlett Johansson's twin brother? Or Keifer Sutherland's twin sister?
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Ridiculously awesome.
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The Muppets were created by Man... They rebelled. They evolved. You know the rest.
March 31, 2009
links for 2009-03-31
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"School assignment to reinterpret the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood". Very clever.
March 27, 2009
links for 2009-03-27
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"Don?t keep calm and carry on" - I won't spoil the rest. Brilliant.
March 23, 2009
links for 2009-03-23
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Tumblog featuring photos of people dressed as characters from The Royal Tenenbaums. Hilarious!
March 21, 2009
links for 2009-03-21
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Absolutely hilarious, possibly even if you haven't seen Kill Bill. Oh, and it's pats 1 and 2, in one minute and one take.
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Worth watching (it's like 80+ minutes long), if you have an iPhone. Hey, you've got the best phone in the world, you just don't have it yet.
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Yes, when your cat head-butts you, it's actually kissing you. Everything anyone ever needed to know about cats' body-language is right here.
March 20, 2009
links for 2009-03-20
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Okay, so he probably didn't actually make it into space, but that's the wildest ride any bat has ever been on (including Batman).
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The coolest matches I've ever seen, carved from one block of wood. I'd love to light my fags with these bad boys, but $48? Ask my hole.
March 18, 2009
Fog
March 13, 2009
links for 2009-03-13
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Awesome.
March 4, 2009
links for 2009-03-04
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"A report released Tuesday by the CIA's Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters" - Don't you just love The Onion?
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Food for every occasion!
February 28, 2009
links for 2009-02-28
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Raw Milk (as in non-pasteurised) is better for you. "?Pasteurized milk has up to a 66 percent loss of vitamins A, D and E. Vitamin C loss usually exceeds 50 percent. Heat affects water soluble vitamins and can make them 38 percent to 80 percent less effective. Vitamins B6 and B12 are completely destroyed during pasteurization." So what's the point? It doesn't even go off quicker than pasteurised milk, and is full of those much-lamented "friendly bacteria".
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"During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic is clearly flawed, but it could sway the verdict if no alternative explanation is presented. So, if piracy isn?t to blame, then what is *actually* killing the music industry?" - Their sheer ignorance, maybe?
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Remember that scene in Clerks where Danté and Randall talk about Star Wars, in particular the merits of Empire vs Jedi? Well, imagine the complete opposite of that, and you're halfway there.
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Oh my, there appears to be hot coffee pouring out of my nose. That's okay though, as I'm laughing so much I can't feel my face anyway.
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Ohhhh Baby. Sexiest piece of technology I've ever seen.
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"A woman who lost both her legs as a child has been turned into a mermaid by the Lord of the Rings special effects team so she can go swimming" Most awesome work by a movie FX house, ever. Three cheers for Weta Workshop!
February 27, 2009
links for 2009-02-27
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Err... Like the title says. I must be a loser or old or something, because some of these are like totally new to me.
February 25, 2009
Excuse me Sir*...
...You appear to have some brown crap on your forehead?
*or Madam.
February 22, 2009
Andy Hill
I took this video of Andy (who friends will know, and frequent visitors may know from the podcast) on Killiney hill AGES ago, and meant to do something with it. I found it in my video library the other day, and decided to do this:
I'm sure you'll all agree that it's mildly amusing.
[Yes, I know the quality is pants, it's not YouTube's fault, it's my old crappy camera.]
February 21, 2009
links for 2009-02-21
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Oh my god. It just goes on and on and on and on... Too good. Brilliant.
February 18, 2009
links for 2009-02-18
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Moral: If you focus on positive thoughts, expecting good things to happen, expect a punch in the face.
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GTA IV "The Lost and the Damned" in flaccid old man willy shocker...
February 15, 2009
My Twitterstats
Inspired (I seem to be getting a lot of inspiration these days) by Meg, here's my "Tweetstats".
Points of interest: I've been Twittering since March 14th, 2007 at 1.04pm. I have updated (to date) 4,591 times, with a daily average of exactly 7.0 Tweets. I Tweet mostly on Wednesdays and/or mostly between the hours of 12pm and 1pm. The only statistical anomalies are July '07 (when I was in Alaska for most of the month) and October '08 when I spent the month getting married and honeymooning in South Africa, Botswana and Mauritius).
I'm not going to post all the graphs (you can see them at the "Tweetstats" link, above), but I am going to post the Wordle of my most frequently used words, #1 of which is "work" (boring!).
(all @replies have been removed).
What are your Tweetstats, fellow Twitterers?
February 13, 2009
Pop Will Scare Your Granny
Inspired by Dragon's Tweet from earlier today, here's Pop Will Eat Itself on The Late Late show in 1995.
The band had initally been told they would be performing live, but during rehearsals were informed they would have to lip-synch the track instead. So the wrapped sellotape around their faces, simulated having sex with each other, and trashed their instruments half-way through the song, even as the track continued playing. Worth watching for the shot of the audience (before the band started playing) at about 1m 25s in, and for the end where there is absolutely no reaction, positive or negative, from the blue rinse brigade which the audience was almost entirely comprised of.
links for 2009-02-13
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'Hitting bookshelves this May is Seth Grahame-Smith's "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", an "updated" version of the Jane Austen classic that includes new portions featuring violent, flesh-hungry zombie hordes. "Hollywood studios are bidding to turn a radical reworking of Austen?s most popular book" into a blockbuster movie.' Sounds too awesome for words.
February 12, 2009
links for 2009-02-12
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"Upload your photo and see yourself travel back through the evolutionary timeline" Move the slider half-way along for maximum hilarity.
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Every movie that's ever had a big huge dirty pile of shit in it, including several huge dirty piles of shit that talk and try to kill you.
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...is WHAT? Seriously?
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Quentin Tarantino does World War II the way only Quentin Tarantino can. Looks like another classic, although you might not think so at first.
February 11, 2009
Who Said All Country & Western Songs Were Crap?
NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
[via my cousin-in-law Adam, who doesn't have an online presence]
February 1, 2009
links for 2009-02-01
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Unbelievably detailed lineage of the family of Mr. Donald Fauntleroy Duck, Esq. (click image for big .pdf).
January 28, 2009
Vegetarians Have Better Sex
This PETA advertisement (which is NOT SAFE FOR WORK) was supposed to run during American broadcaster NBC's coverage of the Superbowl on the 1st of February. NBC decided to ban the commercial instead, as it "depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards". A PETA spokesperson responded by saying “PETA’s veggie ads are locked out, while ads for fried chicken and burgers are allowed, even though these foods make Americans fat, sick and boring in bed.”
Speaking as a vegetarian, I can confirm that everything the advert says is completely true. That said, however, I would not recommend using a head of broccoli as a sex toy.
links for 2009-01-28
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Another film that's recently been put online in it's entirety, for free. This time it's "The original Parkour or Free Running documentary"
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The Canadian Film Board have put this film online for free - "Murray Siple's feature-length documentary follows a group of homeless men who have combined bottle picking with the extreme sport of racing shopping carts down the steep hills of North Vancouver. This subculture depicts street life as much more than the stereotypes portrayed in mainstream media. The film takes a deep look into the lives of the men who race carts, the adversity they face and the appeal of cart racing despite the risk. Shot in high-definition and featuring tracks from Black Mountain, Ladyhawk, Vetiver, Bison, and Alan Boyd of Little Sparta"
January 26, 2009
links for 2009-01-26
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I agree. Posting a "RT" and then the exact thing that was Twittered in the first place is like posting someone else's blog post, in it's entirety. Even if you link to them at the bottom, it's still essentially spam. "Via" works better, and encourages you to think about what you're typing. [/nerd]
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I've been hoping this was the case all along. The phrase "not physically possible" no longer applies.
January 25, 2009
ABAM - Our Lungs
January 23, 2009
First Attempt At Quiche
Broccoli and mushroom quiche. A product of us getting a new Magimix
and pressure being put on me to get with the baking. Looks pretty
good, we'll find out how good it really is shortly!
links for 2009-01-23
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Doesn't it look like you're peering through space, and seeing the sky?
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And astronaut walks past Obama during the inauguration parade. NASA's next-generation spacesuit looks like something from a 1970's sci-fi movie. A good movie though.
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Actually, the Songsmith version of "Roxanne" by The Police is actually pretty "not bad". The rest of them though, are hilariously awful. If this is Microsoft's answer to Garageband, they didn't understand the question.
January 21, 2009
links for 2009-01-21
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Best Obama rip-off/homage I've seen so far. And it's a Watchmen reference too! On a t-shirt! Double awesome.
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Best shirt I've seen on Threadless in ages. I haven't bought a Threadless shirt in over a year, mostly because most of the new designs are a bit crap.
January 17, 2009
links for 2009-01-17
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"The pilot for The Remnants, written and directed by John August. Starring Justine Bateman, Michael Cassidy, Ben Falcone, Ze Frank, Ernie Hudson, and Amanda Walsh. It was shot during the WGA strike in February 2008, using the SAG internet agreement."
January 15, 2009
links for 2009-01-15
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Another huge collection of hilarious tech support stories. These ones you haven't seen before though. ROFL.
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A Metafilter member took David Lee Roth's vocal track from Runnin' With The Devil and put it through Microsoft's new "Songsmith", a future failed "music" software product. Press "play", think "wtf?" for about 20 seconds, then burst out laughing. That's what I did anyway.
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Movie posters old and new, reinterpreted "in a kinda minimalistic post modern German-ism style". I want them. I want them all.
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"keeps giving me the troubling feeling that Lara's bum needs wiping"
January 12, 2009
links for 2009-01-12
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I'm sure I've linked to this before (Big Picture, perhaps?) but this is simply one of the most incredibly beautiful images of space ever recorded. The most beautiful planet in the Solar System as you've never seen it before, in stunning high-resolution (and "ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus" sounds like something from Star Wars).
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A huge pile of 2008 mashups for your listening pleasure. A bit poppy in places, but still rather good.
January 10, 2009
links for 2009-01-10
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LOOK AT IT! It's like a giant ethereal red dragon-beastie in space! And it's moving at over 500,000 kilometres per hour! [APOD, 2009 January 8]
January 9, 2009
links for 2009-01-09
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"Socially responsible reasons to punch someone in the face". Everyone you hate is on this list.
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Lovely stuff. Agreed on every single one.
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Remember 3-2-1 Contact? I do, and my nostalgia glands are quivering as I watch this video.
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Map of the Milky Way, done in the style of the London Underground (Tube) map. Educational!
January 8, 2009
links for 2009-01-08
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3-D representations of classic 8-bit (and under) video games. Inspired, and quite brilliant in places.
January 6, 2009
Free-Range Estonian Christmas Decorations
January 5, 2009
links for 2009-01-05
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Totally, utterly bonkers (it doesn't even have a windscreen!), and yours for just ?750,000.
December 30, 2008
TGNTB: The Predator Rap
That's Too Good Not To Blog, ladiesngennlemen.
[Via /Film]
God On Lights
(click through to YouTube to watch in HD)
December 28, 2008
links for 2008-12-28
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File under "Ridiculously Awesome"
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People pop their clogs in the strangest ways... [Wikipedia]
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"A short animated film about the Irish transport system. Anyone who has ever been a commuter should totally get this"
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For those of you who are already looking at what to buy me for Christmas 09' (or my birthday in May even), I refer you to this list.
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My personal favourites are "FAIL!" (obviously...), "Lipstick on a pig", "DWT", "Plutoid" (yay Pluto!), "Nuke The Fridge", and "Long Photo" (most of my videos are long photos).
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Worth watching just to once again hear the Lego Star Wars "thingy" being taken to it's logical conclusion (STICKLE-BRICKS BABYLON 5)
December 27, 2008
The Most Awesomest Honeymoon
I'm in the middle of uploading most of the photos I took (while myself and herself were honeymooning it up) in South Africa, Botswana and Mauritius, to Flickr. The first batch of 100-ish are on the way up now, and I'll be throwing another few hundred or so up in the next couple of days. Hope you like 'em (those of you who are arsed having a gander). The only editing I'm doing is removing duplicates, blurred exposures, and unrepairable over or under-exposures. All other photos are untouched by human hands since the moment of capture.
Oh and by the way, most of them are FUCKING AWESOME, if I may say so myself.
December 22, 2008
Perfect CMY*
Funny thing is, this CMY was created by the shadows of an RGB. If you
have any idea what I'm talking about, you're either some kind of
physicist or, like me, you're a lighting professional.
When we saw this (while focussing the lights for a show), all three of
us said "that's the coolest thing I've ever seen". Granted, we're all
lighting nerds, and it was 11pm and we'd been working for 13 hours.
(*actually more of a YCM)
December 18, 2008
links for 2008-12-18
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New ANTI-cute-animals blog. funny in parts.
December 13, 2008
links for 2008-12-13
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"63 years old and with only 42,342 original miles showing on its odometer, this Dodge personifies the term 'reference car'. More importantly, it represents a rare opportunity to experience how it felt driving a new car in the 1940s" - Brilliant story.
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Stephen Fry reviews the new Blackberries. Result: The Blackberry Bold is pretty good (for a Blackberry), whereas the Blackberry Storm is a steaming pile of smelly dog poo. And the iPhone is awesome, despite it's flaws. Brilliant stuff.
December 10, 2008
links for 2008-12-10
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Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? (Astronomy Picture of the Day)
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Mind-bending image manipulation, using maths. I know Photoshop uses maths (in the form of code) to process images, but this time it's not hidden behind a convenient graphical user interface. This time, you're dropping images directly into formulae to get them to do what you want.
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"?across The Third Dimension". Whoever gets the joke in this cartoon is clearly my best friend.
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Newborn Baby Photography by Gingerpixel, who you all know from the "best wedding photographs ever".
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Incredibly detailed article explaining how gaming, far from being a waste of time, actually develops advanced systems processing skills, leadership abilities, and resource management that can and will have relevance and application in real-world-scenarios, and how effectiveness should outweigh efficiency in the modern world, where failure IS an option, as to never fail is to never learn properly how to succeed.
December 3, 2008
28% Dangerous
I haven’t done one of these in ages, so here we are:
I’m 72% un-dangerous, or 28% dangerous. Would you feel safe in the car with me?
How dangerous are you?
December 2, 2008
Wedding Photos by Gingerpixel
For those of you who weren't there, or didn't get sent the link to the whole (private) album, and who want to have a quick look, Claire has put up a few of the photos from our wedding last month. They're absolutely stunning, and the wedding was so UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME that she's had to split the photos over two blog posts, the first time (I think) that she's ever done that with wedding photos.
So the first part (preparations and blessing ceremony) is today, and tune into Claire's blog tomorrow for more photos, of the reception with the drinks and the food and the dancing and the band and the Natural Confectionery Company jellies. And like, me and Nikki and ninety-odd guests, of course.
links for 2008-12-02
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The same model photographed as if she were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 eyars old. Amazing what you can do with a bit lf make-up and lighting.
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I'm going to presume that everyone has seen this, but just in case...
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Ignore the annoying 'Merkin. Instead come to the gradual realisation that chickens are actually complex robots (I for one welcome our robotic chicken overlords).
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I think that pretty much covers it.
November 30, 2008
The Daily George
Cute, isn't he?
Not when he gets stuck in the office while I'm out and takes a
whacking great dump on the couch, he isn't. But like, "it's not his
fault", or something.
The little fucker.
November 28, 2008
links for 2008-11-28
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I could link to the original post, but it's a bit flaky, so here's Kottke's excerpt from it, with all the important information present and correct. Very funny. And at least some of it is true.
November 25, 2008
links for 2008-11-25
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Absolutely beautiful double-sided map of Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity Universe. WANT.
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Jeff Bridges took some really nice on-set/insider photos while filming Iron Man. And here they are.
Weird Fishes by Tobias Stretch
One of the winners of the Aniboom Animation Contest For Radiohead's In Rainbows. I'm filing it under the "weird, but good" category. I don't like it as much as the House Of Cards one that was made with lasers, but it's definitely on a par with the one for Reckoner by Clement Picon, a previous winner in the same contest..
I'm really looking forward to the next videos in this contest/series, for 15 Step and Videotape, due to hit later today and on Friday, here.
November 22, 2008
links for 2008-11-22
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Great new t-shirt shop based in the UK. I love the "Rewind" one.
November 21, 2008
links for 2008-11-21
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Krist Novoselic explains exactly why it was he decided to throw his bass in the air and then catch it with his face.
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JAck Handley's plan, to rob a bank: "The guard must bend over to tie his shoes and somehow he gets all the shoelaces tied together. He can?t get them apart, so he takes out his gun and shoots all his bullets at the knot. But he misses. Then he just lies down on the floor and goes to sleep". And it gets better.
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I agree! Plus: *Awesome* new mascot for Twitter.
November 19, 2008
Eventech Dublin - RDS
Awesome.
links for 2008-11-19
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This is probably the best (and certainly one of the longest) lists I've linked to. It's an awesome read though. I can't disagree with any of their choices really, but I would have placed Gollum higher than #10, and Aragorn would have been in there somewhere too.
November 18, 2008
links for 2008-11-18
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WANT. Seriously, who doesn't want one of these?
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Stunning. When he says "I?d especially recommend that you check out the two small strips below" he ain't kidding. If an "Art of Wall-E" book comes out I'm totally buying it (and whenever I get a coffee table, it will immediately collapse under the strain of all my coffee-table books)
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This looks like it's really going to rock. The only problems I can see are that I can't see John Cho (Sulu) as anyone other than Harold, I can't see Zachary Quinto (Spock) as anyone other than Sylar, and Simon Pegg isn't Scottish. If I can suspend those initial disbelief's, I may like this more than II, IV, VI, and VIII. Here's hoping. Fingers crossed. Pray to Jebus.
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Stunning. I really want to get this, but 1) I don't have $200 to spend on an ornament (or do I...?), and 2) Nikki would under no circumstances allow me to put it anywhere in the house. This is why I need a garden, so I can have a garden shed, to put stuff like this in there.
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OMG OMG OMG! I've never said this before, but MUST-HAVE TOASTER ALERT!
November 17, 2008
links for 2008-11-17
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Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday [The Onion, of course]
November 14, 2008
links for 2008-11-14
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"Empowered Patient asked four experts -- all medical doctors -- what supplements they take every day. Their lists may surprise you -- they all take at least two supplements -- some take three or four or more"
November 13, 2008
links for 2008-11-13
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"When a particle accelerator reaches the end of the road, the physicists hold a wake for its death ... What happens next is less certain"
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One of the best posts on The Big Picture so far. Absolutely stunning. Antarctica is probably the most naturally beautiful place on Earth.
November 12, 2008
links for 2008-11-12
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Awesome. (Scala & Kolacny Brothers)
November 10, 2008
links for 2008-11-10
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Don't sneak up on a brother (animated .gif)
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"He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date, He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside, He uses an Apple Mac laptop, He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21, He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds" And many, many more.
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"More Americans are arrested each year for simple marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined"
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Your Argument Is Irrelevant.
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OMG. (photos)
November 9, 2008
links for 2008-11-09
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A real-life version of the Photoshop window. Fantastic work. I love the Color box, the swatches and the layer box.
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My favourite has to be "No Country For Old Men In Black", followed closely by "Gone With The Wind In Sixty Seconds"
November 7, 2008
Ultimate Power Mullet FTW!
November 6, 2008
Either Our Cleaner...
...has a coin fetish, or just got really, really bored.
November 3, 2008
links for 2008-11-03
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Interesting Halloween squash carving.
October 8, 2008
Kiss
What would you do if, say, you were wandering through a shopping centre, for example the Ilac Centre in Dublin, and suddenly, everywhere you looked, people started snogging each other?
Well done to The Performance Corporation for organising this in almost total secrecy. Not quite Frozen Grand Central, but still very, very good.
October 6, 2008
links for 2008-10-06
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Sarah Palin, of course (it's pronounced NU-CU-LAR, Marge!)
October 2, 2008
links for 2008-10-02
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If I was to buy a non-Apple laptop, it would surely be one of these beauties.
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ur doin it right.
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"In this photograph, the color saturation has been enhanced to bring out the differences in the colors of the various areas of the surface. The hues are correct, just much more vivid than we usually see them" - If the Moon really was this color, sales of LSD would go down.
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"Africa is ripping open, a slow process that will result in the emergence of a whole new ocean, according to Scientific American" Cool! And there'll already be a really huge beach right beside the ocean! Shame it's not going to happen for like ten million years though.
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Holy SHIT! Photo 1 looks like there's no way he could have survived, then you see photo 2 and think "aaaah...". Still very lucky though.
October 1, 2008
links for 2008-10-01
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Cool! Or like, you can just torrent them. Which is much easier.
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A warning to all would-be iPhone app developers: Keep your fucking mouth shut.
September 30, 2008
links for 2008-09-30
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Twenty Major is "retiring" from blogging? Surely not? Who's going to make me laugh every day now? I suppose I'm going to have to buy his fucking book.
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Incredible photos, but you get the impression that the guys at The Boston Globe don't really follow Formula 1 - "Spanish driver Fernando Alonso of Renault gestures after he won the final of the sport's first-ever night race". There's a final?
September 29, 2008
links for 2008-09-29
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"iTunes 8's new default music visualizer, based on the beautiful Magnetosphere plug-in, has several keyboard shortcuts that customize its look and behavior?not listed in the iTunes help file" - Nice to know this.
September 28, 2008
Me, Right now.
Via Pixeldiva. Me in the office working on wedding thingies with NKL
in the background, doing exactly the same.
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
5. Add it to the Pool.
September 27, 2008
links for 2008-09-27
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I think the headline says it all on this one. And maybe this quote - "When the heat reached the tins they started to explode and we could hear what sounded like thousands of gunshots." Brilliant. Exploding custard!
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"This is a hamburger from McDonalds that I purchased in 1996. That was 12 years ago. Note that it looks exactly like it did the very day I bought it." Proof that McDonalds isn't food. It's "food".
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In SLOW MOTION. The "guy on the phone wearing sunglasses" is the best one, imho.
September 25, 2008
On Trouser Snakes In Eden...
There's nothing like Facebook for eavesdropping on hilarious conversations.
links for 2008-09-24
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Can somebody please kill the Mockingbird, it's driving me crazy...
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It really is just a big pissing match though, isn't it?
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That'll be Canon 1-0 Nikon in the first round of the Digital SLR video wars then. Not a trace of the "Jelly Wobble" witnessed on the Nikon D90.
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A 50mm f1.4 lens that'll auto-focus with my humble Nikon D40? Sign me up baby. All I need to do now is find ?383 down the back of the sofa.
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"The African cousins of that wacky family" The wacky family being The Simpsons, of course. Awesome t-shirt, direct from SA. I don't think any American shirt company would dream of doing a "Black Simpsons" t-shirt.
September 23, 2008
links for 2008-09-23
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A 50mm f1.4 lens that'll auto-focus with my humble Nikon D40? Sign me up baby. All I need to do now is find ?383 down the back of the sofa.
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"The African cousins of that wacky family" The wacky family being The Simpsons, of course. Awesome t-shirt, direct from SA. I don't think any American shirt company would dream of doing a "Black Simpsons" t-shirt.
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This is the best use I HAVE EVER, EVER SEEN for YouTube as an advertising medium. Watch the ENTIRE video, then wonder "How the crap did they do that?!"
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"For years now, they?ve told us that we can?t afford?that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can?t be done. We don?t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don?t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can?t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street." [via DaringFireball.net]
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An exploded toner cartridge: "Accidents should always be this beautiful"
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Someone needs to set up a wilwheatonfacts.com website (as I write this, someone very probably is...)
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That's what I always hear as well. And not just about Star Trek.
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Another ARG (alternate reality game)? Maybe, but this one looks very good. It might just be huge. (via ZeFrank)
Oral Perfection
Today, as part of the run-up to the whole "wedding thing", I went to the dentist for a check-up and clean, in order that my gnashers will look their best in the wedding photos. The conversation went something like this:
Dentist: "So it's been eight years since you've been to a dentist? It's definitely a good idea to go every eight years alright..."Me: "ROFL!"
Dentist: "Okay then, lets have a look"
(several minutes pass while numbers are called out, seemingly at random)
Dentist: "your teeth are perfect. How did you do that? I don't understand how some people don't get a check-up for eight years and still have perfect teeth"
Me: "I don't understand how it's too hard or inconvenient to brush your teeth twice a day, and take care of them"
Dentist: "if everyone was like you I'd be out of a job"
Me: "WOCL*!"
(my parts have been translated from the native "GRRHrHrhnrhrhaaaahnnnslurp"-type speech you have when your mouth is full of water-jets, scrapers and Hoovers)
*Writhing On Chair Laughing
September 22, 2008
links for 2008-09-22
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No, not that kind of Speed Dating. This is the WRONG kind.
Stag Don't
So myself and Andy (who you may know from The Podcast) and Adrian went to Amsterdam for my Stag Weekend, which Adrian liked to refer to as a "Stag Do", but I thought was more of a "Stag Don't". It went thusly:
Friday: Arrive in Airport at 6.45am, realise the flight left 45 minutes ago, panic, go to Aer Lingus desk where nice lady changes our flight for a small fee. Praise lord I didn't book with Ryanair.
Get to Amsterdam at midday-ish, check in, go STRAIGHT TO (after getting totally lost for about an hour) ABRAXAS COFFEESHOP and proceed to [redacted] on some of the "local herbs".
Meet Adrian, who was flying from London, back at Prinsen Hotel. Chill out for a while and get ready for dinner (where "get ready" means [redacted])
Go to Cafe De Koe for dinner. Have an INCREDIBLE Tuna steak (crispy on the outside, sushi on the inside... Mmmm...) while the lads tuck into their ostrich steaks. Proceed upstairs afterwards for beverages and multiple games of pinball. Awesome!
Saturday:Wake up late (as in after breakfast), [redacted]. Go to some random place for breakfast.
Go to NEMO. Make huge, person-sized bubbles, take amusing photos, watch some dude mess up his Rube Goldberg-esque contraption, generally have good clean geeky fun!
Be very surprised by the fact that there's a sun terrace and bar on the roof of the science museum! Get beer. [redacted]. Be told by random NEMO dude in yellow t-shirt that "err... You can't schmoke weed here guysh". Cool, no problem. Wait until NEMO guy disappears, [redacted].
Go to Liverpool FC v Stoke City in Durty Nelly's Irish Pub. Drink beer. Eat chips. Have half-time [redacted]. Watch a really, really boring football match. Complain. Watch goals in West Ham v Newcastle match on other side of bar.
Back to hotel, get ready (for real this time, change clothes, freshen up, etc). [redacted].
Go to SupperClub Amsterdam. Eat amazing food in an amazing place. Dance furiously between courses. Impress tasty Spanish ladies with awesome dance moves. Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box. Fantastic.
Walk back to hotel, in desperate need of a toilet. Find "outdoor urinal" and investigate. Not as bad as pissing in the street, not as nice as your average public loo.
Buy munchie food. Go back to hotel. [redacted] (again) and stuff face. Fall asleep in bed full of Pringles.
Sunday: Breakfast in some nice Pancake place near Dam square that I'd been trying to find all weekend. Very nice.
Go to Vondelpark to chill out and [redacted] whatever we have left (FAIL: we had to throw away some of the "local herbs" that were remaining). Take photos. Chat. Chill. Watch the world go by very very s-l-o-w-l-y...
Pick up bags from hotel, go to airport, tearful farewell (to the CITY not EACH OTHER), go home.
Verdict: 10 out of 10. Did everything I wanted to do, in the company of two of my very bestest mates. Three weeks to go until the wedding. AAAAARRRRRGGGGH!
(This post has been poorly edited to disguise the shenanigans)
September 19, 2008
links for 2008-09-19
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"The shelving system is fairly high and the top shelves are accessible by using the bottom shelves as steps for access to the higher shelves." BEST BOOKCASE EVER.
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"The 22 villagers fought planners even when they were within hours of the bulldozers moving in to demolish their eight homes. Now, however, they can celebrate, thanks to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority's 'sustainability' policy."
September 18, 2008
links for 2008-09-18
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"The shelving system is fairly high and the top shelves are accessible by using the bottom shelves as steps for access to the higher shelves." BEST BOOKCASE EVER.
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"The 22 villagers fought planners even when they were within hours of the bulldozers moving in to demolish their eight homes. Now, however, they can celebrate, thanks to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority's 'sustainability' policy."
September 16, 2008
links for 2008-09-16
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Brilliant. And probably true. [Image]
September 15, 2008
links for 2008-09-15
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"This place in Uzbekistan is called by locals ?The Door to Hell?.None dared to go down there because the cavern was filled with gas... So they ignited it so that no poisonous gas could come out of the hole, and since then, it?s burning, already for 35 years without any pause"
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Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy! Brilliant.
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Ever had something you reeeeeally wish hadn't shown up on your FriendFeed?
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The short answer is "yes".
September 14, 2008
links for 2008-09-14
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"I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, 'Holy fuck,'" said Oceanographic Institute director Dr. James Aoki, noting that the dolphin has a cranial capacity 40 percent greater than that of humans. "That's it for us monkeys."
September 13, 2008
links for 2008-09-13
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LUDICROUS SPEED! It's not every day you get to see a guy on a skateboard overtake a car.
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The "Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment" dudes are back, and this time they've brought 280,951 Post-it notes.
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Klingon Turing Test FTW!
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Probably the nicest little visual tweak available in iTunes 8.
I have GOT to get me some of this
A Mythbuster demonstrates how helium turns you into Donald Duck, and sulfur hexafluoride turns you into SATAN (or, a butch lesbian, depending on your point of view).
[via Kottke]
September 12, 2008
Note To Self:
BIG FUCKING SCARY SPIDER PHOTO = Increase in visitors and page views (approx 15%-20%). Experiment deemed "SUCCESSFUL", results noted.
Continue experimentation with photos of daddy-long-legs, big moths, bees, bluebottles, dead mice and rats, animal droppings, broken childrens' toys and discarded home appliances. Note pageviews on a per day basis and report.
That is all.
September 11, 2008
HOLY SHIT!
Fucking HUGE SPIDER over at our bin store. Scary. It was like huge. I know there's no poisonous spiders in this part of the world but when you turn around and this motherfucker is looking at you, you shit yourself, poison or no.
links for 2008-09-11
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I really love kids. Seriously. I can't wait to have one. Or a litter. It's gonna be awesome.[zefrank.com]
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"Have you ever seen that commercial where the woman carries her keys defensively and is really cautious on the way home, and then goes into her home, sits on the couch, and eats a big slice of chocolate cake while smoking a cigarette?"
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And WAY better than the live-action one Sky TV did last year, imho.
September 10, 2008
links for 2008-09-10
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Oh dear. WE'RE ALL DOOMED!
September 8, 2008
The LHC Rap
I (as in we) haven’t posted in a while, so I though I’d change that by sharing this NERD-LARIOUS rap video about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland.
You have to be an ÜBER-nerd to write, and video, a rap song about a gigantic atom-smasher. The best things is, if you listen to the lyrics (and read the helpful subtitles) you will almost definitely (unless you’re a HUGE NERD) learn something about the LHC. All the science is spot-on. And it rhymes.
September 6, 2008
links for 2008-09-06
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"Marmite will be introduced initially as a subject in Secondary education with 'Double Marmite' on a Wednesday afternoon being a common feature in classes up and down the country"
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(hilarious graph)
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What a beauty!
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"The plan was to play an unannounced show outside the convention but the local police kept the band from getting to the stage until just at 7pm when the license for the show finished. Unabated the band decided to address the crowd with a couple of megaphones and make their feelings towards the republican party and John Mc Cain well known". Awesome.
September 4, 2008
links for 2008-09-04
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Eww! Dolphin placenta! Seriously though, how cute is that baby dolphin?
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Had seen overturned cars exploding in GTA, so knew that that might happen in real life. Has she never seen Mythbusters? Cars NEVER blow up in real life. Well, almost never.
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"iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don't already have" An automatic playlist generator, that knows which songs go well together? This could be my new favourite iTunes thingy.
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*Rapturous applause* (I agree with all of these)
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"Sometimes life is too short to always be productive or efficient" At least one of these might actually be of some use though. [Mac only]
September 3, 2008
links for 2008-09-03
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Fantastic animated short telling the tale of two Octopi in love, who are destined to be sushi. Or seagull-food.
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"The Tshirt and Tee Search Engine" Looks pretty good too.
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EVERYTHING you might or might not say during the act [via Dan]
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At last, a new Kevin Smith movie that actually looks like it could be very funny.
links for 2008-09-02
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is it sad that I've actually thought about doing this, to the point of wondering about wi-fi at the reception?
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The Big Picture does it again. This blog kicks so much ass every other photo blog might as well just give up now.
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I so want to get a Nikon D90 now it's just not even funny. Not that I need one, I just WANT ONE!
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Yes, printer ink really is more valuable than silver, on a pound-per-pound basis.
August 29, 2008
links for 2008-08-29
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The trailer for The Dark Knight, remixed by whipper-snappers who surely have a future in the movie business. Really, surprisingly, good.
August 28, 2008
links for 2008-08-28
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"It's gone officially rubbish and leapt with gusto over the Carcharhinus leucas". The last straw was that fucking McDonald's ad.
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From 1982, Jim Henson talks about how High Definition Video is the future of both filmmaking and TV, how we’ll eventually have widescreen televisions in our homes, and how George Lucas once had good ideas.
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"The coolest thing about it is its Alien-like retractable jaw, which seems to leap out of its mouth to catch its prey" the coolest thing is also the most fucked up thing. Watch the video, it's fucking weird.
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Absolutely fantastic article about the Red One 4K digital film camera, it's creators, and the future of modern cinema techniques.
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"Toy Story is a Meditation on the Trails of Puberty and Sexuality", amongst other things. Interesting advertising from Volkswagen.
August 27, 2008
links for 2008-08-27
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The iconic end emonomous mouse may actually be in the public domain?
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Absolutely brilliant Mona Lisa parody featuring everyone's favourite danish-pastry-haired space princess. [/Film]
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Fascinating tale about farmers reclaiming the desert in Burkina Faso. Awesome. [kottke.org]
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What DID happen to that "these aren't the droids we're looking for" dude from Episode IV?
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Video clip shows a wind turbine exploding during high winds in Denmark [snopes.com]
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Great remix of the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" t-shirt. I want.
August 25, 2008
links for 2008-08-25
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Great remix of the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" t-shirt. I want.
August 23, 2008
links for 2008-08-22
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This guy has way, WAY too many t-shirts. And that's saying something coming from me.
August 20, 2008
links for 2008-08-20
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I'd hate to be a music nerd.
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"the battle droids all sound like Erkle from Family Matters" Wired thinks you're better off waiting to see it on TV.
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Hmmm... seems this is actually even easier than I thought. Might have to give it a go soonish.
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Just because all of the information in the entire world is at your fingertips, doesn't mean it's actually useful.
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Imagine if George Lucas decided to re-shoot Star Wars, Cloverfield style. This would be the proof of concept. Really nice work.
August 19, 2008
Rainbows Are A Conspiracy!
According to Wikipedia, "Rainbows are optical illusions and meteorological phenomena that cause a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere."
Try telling that to this lady.
I'm hoping that the phrase "only in America" can be applied to this video, because otherwise we're all screwed.
links for 2008-08-19
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I want that "Data" poster more than I want to continue living (that's Data from The Goonies, not the Star Trek one). And the Leon poster as well. Awesome.
August 6, 2008
When You Know Them It Seems Closer
By now pretty much everybody who reads this will know of the ten climbers that were tragically killed after reaching the summit of K2 last weekend, in the worst accident that has ever happened on that most dangerous of the worlds' highest peaks. Most of the media attention in Ireland is focussing on Ger McDonnell, a Limerick native, who had been living in Alaska with his partner Annie prior to his K2 attempt.
I had the good fortune to meet Ger and Annie in July of last year, in McCarthy, Alaska. He was a worker on the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay, working one week on and one week off, and was visiting McCarthy for a bit of craic, being that it was open mic night in the New Golden Saloon (aka "The Golden") and he wanted to share his considerable bodhran-playing skills with the locals and tourists in McCarthy.
Myself and Nikki were inside the Golden when we heard that someone outside had heard that someone inside was Irish, and that they were Irish too (an Irishman is definitely a novelty most places in Alaska, and for two of them to randomly meet is an occasion for boisterous drinking and merriment). We went outside and chatted to Ger for a while, told him what we were doing during our time in AK and he talked about what he was doing and how he came to be in Alaska and general small-talk. He played a bit of bodhran while we chatted, he had an amazing talent with the goatskin. We told him that we would be in Anchorage for a day at the end of our trip, and he insisted that we come over to his place for dinner, even though he was going back up to Prudhoe Bay, and he wouldn't even be there at the time! The real pity is that we actually missed him playing inside the bar for the open mic, because we had spent the entire day trekking on a glacier and were falling asleep standing up.
You hear of people being killed in climbing accidents and other "extreme" activities all the time, and although it often makes headline news, it's rarely talked about for longer than a few days. I know I will think about Ger's tragic death for longer than it's in the news.
Indeed, any time when I think back to myself and Nikki's amazing holiday in Alaska last year, where I proposed to her and we had the most amazing time we've ever had, I will think about Ger McDonnell. My heart goes out to anyone who was close to him, especially his family and friends, and his partner Annie Starkey.
Book of condolences here.
August 1, 2008
The Antikythera Mechanism
There's an amazing documentary over at Nature all about The Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as the first known "mechanical computer") designed to calculate astronomical positions over time, which was built over 2,000 years ago, most probably by Archimedes in the colonies of Corinth in Sicily. It's absolutely mind-blowing.
The The Antikythera Mechanism is basically a big (very complicated, and way ahead of it's time) clock, which calculates the date of solar and lunar eclipses, as well as when the various "games", including the Olympics, are scheduled to happen. In that way it's one of the few ancient mechanisms which displays not only astronomical events, but also events of cultural significance.
I highly recommend you click on that there link above and spend a few minutes learning about one of the most important archeological finds in history.
There is, of course, also a (long!) page all about it ovar at Wikipedia.
I also recommend spend a bit of time going through the Nature Online Video Archive, there's loads more there that will blow your mind.
For those of you who don't watch the video, it's pronounced "ANT-EE-KITH-ER-A".
(I'd embed the video, but there's no easy "embed video" option and I'm too tired to fiddle with embedding .swf files the hard way. Sorry!)
July 31, 2008
links for 2008-07-31
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"Sometimes, after your eyes adapt to the dark, a spectacular sky appears" . Incredible.
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Even Lambos don't have Lambo doors anymore...
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"Piss boiling oil into it's eye sockets". The boy Croshaw doesn't half have a way with words.
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And by "shocking", they don't mean "died of heroin overdose" or "choked on own vomit". Some real tragedies here, most of which could've been prevented.
July 30, 2008
links for 2008-07-30
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I, for one, will never get bored of the "xxxx re-created in LEGO" thing.
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This is, without a doubt, the coolest table you will ever see in your entire life. I don't know if I'd have it in my kitchen though. (Monoscope)
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Twenty muses on summers the way they used to be, and wonders why they aren't so warm and carefree anymore.
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Personally, I don't particularly care for the Bee Gees or ABBA. But that's just my opinion.
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Probably the most useful Lifehacker post in years. I'm thinking of doing it myself, maybe I can start a meme!
July 28, 2008
Nikki's New Itty-Bitty Lappy-Toppy
Yesterday, for no particular reason (birthday, Christmas, etc.), I decided to buy Nikki an Advent 4211 Netbook from PC World in Carrickmines Retail Park. It's very, very itty-bitty and cute, but it's not a lightweight at all. It's got Windows XP (which isn't actually a bad thing at all), an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz processor, a gig of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive, webcam, loads of USB ports, and a 10 (TEN!) inch screen. The only thing it lacks is an actual optical disc drive of any sort.
It's also Nikki's very first laptop, if you don't count ones that she "had", for "work", that actually belonged to "the company".
Apparently I'm the "best fiancée ever", or something.
(it's the one on the right in the photo, the other one is my 15.4" Macbook Pro)
July 27, 2008
links for 2008-07-27
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File under "ridiculously beautiful".
July 25, 2008
links for 2008-07-25
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The coolest-looking eco-friendly iPod speakers I've seen (and made of bamboo too)
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That's no moon!
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Great t-shirt for all of us who have fathers with a lot of face to wash. It is... inevitable.
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Very cool-looking teeny-tiny HD video camera. And not that expensive either...
July 24, 2008
Things I Learned In France
- Driving on the right in a right-hand drive car isn't actually that hard.
- Irish drivers are FUCKING BRUTAL, even when they're not driving in Ireland.
- In France, you can't be busted for speeding by a stationary camera unless there's a sign immediately before it saying that the camera is there and what speed you should be going. So, to get busted for speeding, you have to be very, VERY stupid.
- Tuesday is the day when the Police Nationale cover the countryside with mobile speed-traps. Driving at or under the speed limit is generally a very good idea.
- In your car, you must have: A spare set of bulbs/fuses, a warning triangle, a hi-viz jacket, a spare tyre, and your tires must be the correct thread depth. The penalty for not having all of these is death.
- It's the law in the French countryside that if you are walking down the road, you must be carrying a baguette.
- It's also French law that there must be two bakeries in every village, so you can get croissants on a Sunday or Monday morning even if one of them is closed.
- The wine is approximately as cheap, per litre, as petrol, but tastes a lot better.
- The cheese! Like, OMG.
- Did I mention the wine?
- And the CHEESE. Oh, the cheese...
- A lot of people died on D-Day, and the French (at least the ones in Normandy) are very grateful.
- To say the lifestyle is laid-back (in the countryside of Normandy) is a ridiculous understatement.
July 18, 2008
links for 2008-07-18
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"The exact moment of detonation at Nagasaki is captured in this remarkable photograph. Notice the three people in the foreground, as yet unaware that anything has happened". Japan really is the only post-apocalyptic country in the world.
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"Artist: person getting social security (drawing the dole)" Nice list. Most of it is there. Essential reading for anyone planning on traveling to Ireland.
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"First released as a prototype by EMI in 1971 - the year after the Beatles broke up ? CT scanners started to appear at hospitals in the mid 1970s; today there are about 30,000 in use worldwide."
July 17, 2008
links for 2008-07-17
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Warning: May contain traces of beard
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And coming in at Number 1: IRELAND. Because condoms are more expensive here than ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. I'm importing mine from Shanghai in the future.
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The photo of Mt Augustine in Alaska is my new desktop picture. The ones from the Space Shuttle are beautiful, really amazing.
July 16, 2008
links for 2008-07-16
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Asimovs three laws, plus a few more - "10. A robot, when given contradictory orders by two human beings, and assuming those orders do not violate the First Law, must decide which order to follow based on which human being has a deeper voice."
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Not just a lightning strike caught on camera, but a lightning strike hitting the person holding the camera, caught on camera. Because I know she was unharmed, I can laugh at the screaming. :-)
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Coming this winter on Nintendo DS - I'm really liking the fact that the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection logo is present on the page. GTA Multiplayer on DS? No if they could just make one for the Wii as well...
July 15, 2008
Dropbox
Dropbox is brilliant. I can't remember whether I signed up by asking for an invite or if someone I randomly know via the interpipes, but I received an invite in my mail the other day, and had a look at what the craic was.
It's basically a folder, right, that exists on every computer you use. You download the software (Mac/PC) and it sets up a folder on your machine of choice. On the Mac, it sets up it's very own spot in your "Places" in Finders' sidebar, like this:
(on Windows, it sets up a folder in 'My Documents>Dropbox')
The folders inside your Dropbox look like this:
links for 2008-07-15
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Interesting hypothesis as to how the Moon facing a different way may have resulted in a different mythology about it.
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"If you ever doubted, even for a second, that non-Newtonian goo (e.g., cornstarch and water) is from a totally different (and infinitely preferable) universe, behold!" [Boing Boing]
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The best Batmobile-Transformer mashup ever (yes, I just called the Tumbler the Batmobile, because that's what it is).
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Brilliant, astonishing, amazing. The first music video to be made without cameras, but with LASERS. This is the future people. It's been a long time coming, but we're here at last.
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Best film-related news I've heard all week! Assuming, of course, that the Black/White combination can work the same magic that they did last time, and the whole thing isn't just a shameless cash-in.
July 14, 2008
links for 2008-07-14
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The view from the top of the tallest man-made structure on Earth.
July 12, 2008
links for 2008-07-12
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Larry David calles for a cure for cancer, to increase the quality of life and amount of sympathy sex for naturally bald men.
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Probablt the coolest ornament you'll never own.
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The story of how a woman who saved 3,000 Jewish people from the Nazis in WWII was denied her rightful Nobel Prize by Al Gore and a slideshow.
My Favourite Street In Dublin
July 11, 2008
links for 2008-07-11
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There?s a town called Muff in County Donegal in Ireland. And they have a diving club. They also have t-shirts.
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"a personal thank you for all the phenomenal support and delightful outrage engendered by this whole saga" (the US version of Spaced, which didn't happen, thank God).
July 10, 2008
links for 2008-07-10
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Absolutely f**king HILARIOUS patriotic film from Jim Henson's fluffy friends [/Film]
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Read the story and smile, then watch the video and cry. Probably the most heart-warming story I've ever seen on the internet. Genuinely brilliant.
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Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues.[GraphJam]
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A nice bit of planetary alignment
July 8, 2008
links for 2008-07-08
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Great poster. High-resolution scan available. [via http://golez.net]
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This could very well be the cutest kitten video ever made. WITH TECHNO!
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I'd much rather travel by airship than by plane. Maybe not long-haul though.
July 6, 2008
links for 2008-07-06
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...but it?s cool... it?s aaaall cooooll...
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STOP PRESS: Bugs (or "insects", as we call them in the civilised world) are ugly.
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Utterly insane art videos, which vary between beautiful and hilarious.
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What it says on the tin.
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Interesting choice of title, considering there's actually 4 of them. Very, very cool. I, for one, welcome our bio-mimicking robot overlords.
July 5, 2008
Cankles
In relation to Babs' post from earlier today, here's a photo of her offending cankles:
This is what happens when you don't
- Take some aspirin
- Drink plenty of water
- wear flight socks
- stroll around every so often
When you're on a long-haul flight.
I'd say lesson learned.
links for 2008-07-05
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I agree with most of these, but I think only #1 and #2 will still be seen as classics in another 25 years.
July 4, 2008
Productivity
I've had a productive day today. Apart from getting in at 8am (which rerely, if ever, happens) completely clearing my work email of anything that has to be acted upon (barring those things that are required to be acted upon soon), getting a dance show in and set up (just finished a few tweaks now), getting orders in for major structural components (acoustic doors and the like), I've also found the time to print out this sign, and stick it on my office door:
links for 2008-07-04
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Beautiful photos of thousands of Golden Rays migrating off the coast of Mexico
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Conclusive proof of the theoretically infinite amount of vehicular fun to be had in GTA IV.
July 3, 2008
links for 2008-07-03
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Awesome high-resolution poster for The Dark Knight
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Oh no, I think I've found my new favourite t-shirt site (seeing that Threadless is a bit pants these days).
July 2, 2008
links for 2008-07-02
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Launch a hedgehog into space! But not before equipping said hog with rockets and parachutes. Great way to waste a half hour.
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The incredible collapsible re-usable portable cardboard toilet. Ideal for all your summer festival needs
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"hez a luck dragonz" Best LOLcat/Neverending Story mashup ever.
June 30, 2008
links for 2008-06-30
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1. A retail dealer in crap, especially wholesale consumer electronic crap from Asia. 2. Archaic. A physical outlet that sells such items.
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"Clouds of glowing gas mingle with lanes of dark dust in the Trifid Nebula, a star forming region toward the constellation of Sagittarius". Beautiful.
June 28, 2008
links for 2008-06-28
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Dyson proves his vacuum cleaners are the best, by picking one up and repeatedly smashing it on the ground, and then doing a bit of hoovering.
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"Flabbergasted" NASA scientists said on Thursday that Martian soil appeared to contain the requirements to support life - "There is nothing about the soil that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly. There is nothing about it that is toxic."
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Oh my GOD somebody, somewhere, please make this into a t-shirt immediately. IT HAS TO HAPPEN.
June 27, 2008
links for 2008-06-27
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"A trial found that introducing airport-style checks would be impractical and antagonise the public" No all they need to do is figure out that "airport-style" security doesn't really work in AIRPORTS, as it's impractical and antagonises the public.
June 25, 2008
links for 2008-06-25
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Twenty years ago, and today. My question is this: WHY ARE WE NOT LIVING ON THE MOON ALREADY?
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I DO WANT.
June 24, 2008
links for 2008-06-24
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Right, that's it, I'm going.
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Big Lebowski ACTION FIGURES! With authentic bowling and pot-smoking action! (Actually, that last bit is a lie. Pity that.)
June 21, 2008
Wordle
Make your own. All you need is some text and about 3 minutes. Loads of nice fontage and colours available too.
June 20, 2008
links for 2008-06-20
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The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi. "The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point."
June 19, 2008
links for 2008-06-19
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What better use is there for a several-million-dollar piece of equipment than folding REALLY TINY pieces of paper into bird shapes?
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"Relish the benefits of a sharper mind, improved accuracy and perception, quicker motor skills, keener coordination, and enhanced mood and memory". Zzzzz...
June 18, 2008
links for 2008-06-18
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A long, long, LONG explanation detailing why the author is 100% sure that Tony Soprano was "whacked" in the final second of the final episode of The Sopranos. It's a pretty convincing argument.
June 17, 2008
Seven Songs
Tom has tagged me with this really interesting meme.
“List seven songs you’re into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring.”
Interesting. Mostly because I don't listen to "songs" or "tunes", as such. I mostly have my iPod on in the car, playing everything I have on it on shuffle, or I play an album (any album) from start to finish, and then play another one. I listen to music in a fairly random pattern, so it doesn't really "shape" anything, apart from my eardrums. So, here's seven songs (or tunes) that I've randomly listened to recently, and I like.
"The Lark" by Moving Hearts. This is an epic tune. It's actually a set of dance tunes (as in "Irish" dance), linked together in amazing ways. It starts off slowly, and moved quite rapidly into ass-kicking, jumping about territory. One of my favourite tunes ever, if not my favourite. I couldn't find a YouTube video, probably because it's 13 minutes long. There's plenty of other Moving Hearts stuff there though.
"Group Four" by Massive Attack. Again, epic. Starts off crunchy, goes smooth, and then gets very crunchy again. Not something you can dance to though. Ideally listened to by yourself, at full volume, in a darkened room.
"Inner Universe" by Origa. This is the opening theme from Ghost In The Shell: Standalone Complex, and it's amazing. I have no idea what the Japanese chick is singing about, but it's cool. Gets really thumping at several stages too.
"Tell Me" by the Stone Roses. This was the 'Roses forst single, a double-A side along with "So Young". It's probably my favourite song of theirs, after "I Am The Resurrection". Very raw. I love it.
"Paradise City" by Guns & Roses. This song, for me, means summer. It's designed to be played at maximum volume to a crowd of thousands, preferably on a beach, in 30°+ heat. So not so much shaping my spring, as announcing my summer, with a bang.
"15 Stepz" by Amplive (ok, not really by Amplive, but by Radiohead, remixed by Amplive). This is great, in my opinion. If you're one of those people who thinks Radiohead are "too god" to be remixed, or that remixing their stuff is like, sacrilege, screw you. Besides, Radiohead thought this remix was good enough that they allowed it to be released without suing anyone. Plus, the video is pretty good, if a trifle weird.
"Reptilia" by The Strokes. The Strokes Best Song Ever. Definitely one for listening to while driving at great speed (or, alternatively, depending on your point of view, to be avoided at all costs while driving). Awesome.
My alternative "seven songs" list consists entirely of Tenacious D, picked at random. I think I bogged the one most people would want to read (apart from Andy). :-)
links for 2008-06-17
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"In a very concrete sense, Battlestar Galactica descends from the sci-fi community?s realization that darker and more complex times demand darker and more complex science fiction"
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"They would be allowed to grow up to 12 plants and to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana". Everybody in the world should be entitled to do this.
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STOP PRESS - Watching porn gives men erections, say eminent scientists.
June 14, 2008
501
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).
links for 2008-06-14
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Having kids is awesome, they believe anything you tell them.
June 13, 2008
links for 2008-06-13
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Article containing at least four of my favourite astronomy photos ever. The backlit Saturn one needs to be blown up huge and put on my wall, now.
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Best LOLcats/Star Wars crossover ever.
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Digital Matte Paintings from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. Some high-resolution, all very nice indeed.
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Creative-Commons licensed CGI animated short film, made with open-source tools (Blender), with all animation files also available for download. And it's pretty good too.
June 12, 2008
links for 2008-06-12
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Google adds "Skip Intro" button in search results for pages with annoying Flash Intro pages. Best geek news I've heard this week.
June 11, 2008
links for 2008-06-11
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Creates a URL for a public calendar that you can subscribe to in your calendar of choice (iCal, Gcal, Outlook, etc). Great for never forgetting birthdays again!
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Every guitarist in the entire world wants to spend $6,500 on this beauty. Other-worldly sound from a guitar without using any synthesizers. Lou Reed is impressed too.
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Is this what they call "admitting defeat"?
Interesting Juxtaposition
While browsing the Huffington Post this morning, I came across an interesting juxtaposition of two Google ads:
Google must be using a HECK of an algorithm to put those two together.
June 10, 2008
links for 2008-06-10
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Wesley Crusher may have sucked, but Wil Wheaton rules.
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Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. EPIC WIN, as Wesley Crusher said.
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Only if you're in a movie.
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Movies reviewed, in 1895, by people who had never seen a moving image before.
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Someone cleverly copied that Citroen robot car ad, with an actual Transformer toy. Very well made too.
June 9, 2008
links for 2008-06-09
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If only every last one of these stories were actually true. That's the world I want to live in.
June 5, 2008
links for 2008-06-05
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"Iron Hymen!" and "Sex Is For Fags!". Sex education the way it should be. :-)
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Our sun, setting on another planet. Not, surprisingly, taken by the Phoenix Rover, but by the Spiorit Rover in 2005. Still amazingly beautiful though.
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According to renowned physicist Wellington Grey, the One Child policy in China, together with the overwhelming preference for male children, will be "terribly sexy", but only because of the robots.
June 1, 2008
links for 2008-06-01
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"2. If you cover your face with piercing jewelry, you may not be able to find a job. This also goes for doing weird things to your hair, and getting tattoos in conspicuous places."
May 30, 2008
Towtruck Threesome
May 29, 2008
links for 2008-05-29
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?It was like no holds barred in terms of what people would try to eat, so they opened my fridge and started downing Tabasco and maple syrup? I gotta try me some of this Miracle Fruit. Flavour Tripping is the new regular tripping.
May 27, 2008
links for 2008-05-27
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One of those "one photo every day for a year" things, but with Lego Stormtroopers to make it AWESOMER.
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Awesomeness. Re-using the original Hobbiton set is brilliant. The fact that del Toro is insisting Ron Perlman will be in the film is deadly too.
May 26, 2008
links for 2008-05-26
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Biggest adrenaline rush ever? Next thing you know astronauts will be coming home from the ISS by jumping out the window.
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Star Wars geek joke. If you don't like Star Wars, you won't get it.
May 22, 2008
Toast Force Five
Jesus Christ, that was a while in coming, wasn't it? I mean, the last one was when, April 20th?
LAST YEAR?
Well, I say a while, but as I mention during the show, this one actually went together in record time (once we sat down to actually put it together), thanks to some new equipment and a the fact that we had done some work on a lot of the track choices and mixes previously. Err... Anyhoo...
Wrap your listening organs around it right here.
Right-click the link and select "download", Or press the little blue "Play" button to play it right through your browser (if that's still working... Hey look! It is).
(UPDATE: Now includes MT4 podcast player thingy!)
(UPDATE: iTunes feed is now working again! In iTunes, go to "Advanced>Subscribe to Podcast" and paste in this link: http://lifewithouttoast.com/Lifewithouttoastcast.xml )
My advice for this one is to TURN THAT SHIT UP LOUD. It's a lively one.
May 16, 2008
links for 2008-05-16
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How to synchronise 5 (or more) metronomes. The best metronome video I've ever seen.
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"If you can see this page and still think we're down, it's just you." Brilliant.
May 12, 2008
links for 2008-05-12
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"...Every time I read some dumb anti-gaming proclamation... I get so angry I have to fire up GTA IV and shoot 29 pedestrians in the face just to vent the frustration they've caused..."
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"In every Hero, there could be a Villain. Heroes returns this Fall!" Is the "Villains" tagline going to stay? Radical change for the series? I just hope it's better than season 2.
May 9, 2008
links for 2008-05-09
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Yahtzee answers some mail. "You like numbers? How about FOUR? As in FOURK YOU!"
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Seriously, some of these are DSLR quality. Someone knows their way around their K610i.
May 7, 2008
George Attack
(with apologies to Adrian)
I took a few "action" photos of George and just had to set them to music. I think I picked the right track. I like 8-second videos.
links for 2008-05-07
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Great news if you're a Family Guy fan. If you're not a Family Guy fan, don't click this link. And go and screw yourself.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahhahhahha! What, seriously? Which men did they survey for this, the international convention of eunuchs?
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Anyone out there who doesn't think Moleskines rock? You're wrong. So very, very wrong.
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"Photos like over 100 to 150 years old" Okay, so it's all in Japanese, but hit "browse" or copy-and-paste a URL and hit "convert" and make those nice photos look all oldy.
May 5, 2008
links for 2008-05-05
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New del.icio.us extension for Firefox 3 Beta 5. It's very nice, and shiny. Way better than the old one.
May 4, 2008
Anyone See A Problem Here?
April 30, 2008
Post-Op Kitteh...
...is mad out of it on the narcotics.
links for 2008-04-30
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Probably the best YouTube video ever, or at least so far this year.
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RIP mister trippy pants.
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?The way that games started, they were virtually all casual. If you really think about Breakout, Tank and some of those things, games were very, very simple.?
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Conclusive proof, if any were needed, that IGN are a bunch of dicks. And no, revealing that you can both shoot prostitutes and run them over in GTAIV does is not a "spoiler".
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"Stylish & Clean white extended keyboard. Low profile Scissor keys reduces key stroke travel distances and eases pressure on your finger tips." WANT.
April 29, 2008
links for 2008-04-29
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I'm sorry, but if you don't find this funny then you can't be my friend.
April 28, 2008
It's Like It Was A Rendez-Vous (only not)
I have a few routes I can take to work. The most boring, and probably slowest one is from Shankill to Dun Laoghaire through Ballybrack. There’s traffic lights and boring bits of really straight roads with 50km/h speed limits. I almost never take that route.
The other one, which is quite nice, is straight over Killiney Hill on the Killiney Hill road and Dalkey Avenue, through Dalkey and onto Ulverton Road. I take that one mostly. It’s not a bad drive, and probably the quickest route. But there’s some horrible speed bumps. And there’s been road works on it for the past two weeks.
The best route, which is FUCKING AWESOME, is this one (you may have to scroll a bit):
I’ve driven this one a few times in the past week. It has magnificent views, hairpins, switchbacks, narrow, twisty bits with walls on both sides, blind corners nice straights, and the road surface is almost entirely perfect (which is rare for Ireland).
April 24, 2008
links for 2008-04-24
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Far too funny and true for it's own good.
April 21, 2008
links for 2008-04-21
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Pulp Fiction, as written by William Shakespeare. Well, a couple of passages anyway. Very good, I want to see the rest!
Heads Up
I'm heading over to London this Friday for the weekend, mainly to visit my Good Mate Adrian of sevitzdotcom fame, and also to experience some of the sights and flavours of Londinium I may not have seen before.
So if you're in London (permanently or just by coincidence) this weekend, let me know and we'll like totally hook up. Adrian has lots of stuff planned, and has even created a Facebook event to help organise things, which are set so far to include drinking in a nice pub (probably in or near Wandsworth), drinking (and sushi) in a fancy pub/lounge, going to the Ian Fleming exhibition in the Imperial War Museum, and dinner in Ian and Nat's. If you don't know Ian and Nat, you really should. They're lovely people.
There's plenty of time for other stuff too, so if you want to meet up for a drink or a sambo give me a shout, I'll do my best be there.
If you want to join us, go to Facebook and let us know you'll be there. Looking forward to seeing you.
[photo courtesy Richard Moross]
April 17, 2008
links for 2008-04-17
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BOOM! Awesome.
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"Research was conducted among two groups of boys and the group that DIDN'T play videogames got into more trouble than those who actually played violent videogames." Anyone out there that DIDN'T already know this?
Like Lady Godiva
What do you think, better than or not as good as the Phil Collins one with the Gorilla?
April 16, 2008
Babs - Aged Like, Really Young (or something)
As per Babs request on the previous post, here’s the photo of her when she was all cute and ickle.
AWWLOOKITDELIDDLEBABBY!
April 13, 2008
links for 2008-04-13
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My favourite APOD photo from the past while. She sure is a beautiful place, this planet we live on.
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Totally brilliant, original hand-puppetry. Click "English", click "videos", and watch a few. If you don't laugh, or at least chuckle, you're probably dead.
April 12, 2008
links for 2008-04-12
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The most awesome bit of WiiWare news so far
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A bit like a Flash-based Crayon Physics. Very good.
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Utterly, utterly cool action figures. If these went on sale they'd be perpetually sold out.
April 11, 2008
links for 2008-04-11
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Here's mine. Apparently, I say "fucking" too much in my Tweets. It would seem that way, anyway.
April 10, 2008
Me - Aged One And A Half (ish)
Inspired by ZeFrank, here's a photo of me when I was only ickle. I think (and so does me Mam) that I'm about one and a half in this photo, and teething, hence the red (or slightly darker grey) cheeks.
I also think there's a definite resemblance between me and my niece Isobel, who's currently roughly about the same age as me in this photo. Have a look and tell me if you agree.
Oh, and if anyone else wants to continue the thread/meme/thingy, please find an old photo of yourself, blog it, and tell me about it in the comments.
links for 2008-04-10
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Totally amazing, one of those things that makes you go all warm and tingly inside. WAY better than Frozen Grand Central. [via Kottke and sevitzdotcom]
April 8, 2008
George Update
As requested by TUG, a quick George update.
Georges' current favourite activities are eating, sleeping, and running around at great speed after inanimate objects. His favourite toys are pieces of paper, corks, and a ribbon (do you buy cat toys for your cat? You're a numpty). He's also currently sporting a poofy red elasticated "training collar", after he obliterated the nice reflective one we got him.
We've had lots of visitors lately, and he's coped admirably. I mean yeah, he's mad as a brush, but he's cool. He got on particularly well with Jack, my cousin Ame's (and her husband Adam's) baby. And Nikki was away for a week and a half so he seemed to miss her a lot too, so it's been a difficult time for him*, but he's doing alright.
He's also currently teething (George I mean). At the moment he's got four canine teeth on the top and two on the bottom, He looks like a cross between a shark and a cat. He also has no premolars on one side, so he has the look of a pirate about him too. Kind of like a mutant shark-pirate-cat.
*This is called "anthropomorphism".
April 5, 2008
links for 2008-04-05
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I'd call it "What everyone is any western country should know about the Middle East" myself. Loads of stuff I didn't know here, like Arabs being Semites and so forth.
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A review of Outside (i.e. the outside world) as if it were a video game. Brilliant stuff. I prefer Inside, the graphics are better.
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Hey lookit! It's an umbrella with built-in brass knuckles, in case you get into a fight while it's raining! Why did no-one think of this before?!
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Probably the best URL shortening service in the world. It definitely has the best name, anyway.
April 4, 2008
The Promise Of Future Revenue
I was looking for a transcript of this to write a rambling post with several interesting points of view. But then I though I’d just let you watch it (it’s 30 secs).
Is the Internet ready as a monetized distribution mechanism? The South Park people have put every episode, ever of their show online for all to watch (although apparently they don’t work in the UK), with three 10-15 second ads during the video, one at the beginning, one just before halfway through and one three-quarters of the way through, which can’t be skipped or forwarded. The ads seem to be on a random loop.
South Park Studios seem to have taken a traditional medium (ie, cartoons, on telly) and put it online in a way which makes money, without the major studios (or Cartoon Network specifically) making too much of a fuss about it, and with little or no reaction from the online news/tech people. This is the way forward. If you had the choice to watch Battlestar Galactica next week, on Sky One, with four 3-minute ad-breaks, or watch it tomorrow, on your computer, with 4 or five 10-15 second ad breaks, which would you do? I know what I’d do. And I wouldn’t be taking anything away from the content creators, as I would be watching it on their website, with money from their ads going directly to them. No torrents, no dodgy “rapidsharing” or whatever. Just TV programmes, on the internet, for free.
Discuss.
March 29, 2008
4
Nikki and I are "going out" four years today. Four years in which we have had our ups (mostly) and our downs (pretty much never), bought an amazing house, we've been to several different countries (Italy, Spain, Scotland, Wales, England several times, Fuerteventura, Alaska, and, I'm sure, others I can't think of right now), we've been separated for periods by work (which sucked, and continues to suck, as she is away today when we should be together), we've spent long winter evenings together, been on long walks in the country (not often enough), gotten engaged (woohoo!), gotten a cat, and have recently been planning for our wedding and our future together.
But none of that doing of stuff of going to amazing places would have been half as much fun if we hadn't been doing it together, because being together with someone you love completely and who you know is completely in love with you is the best thing in the world. There's absolutely nothing like it, and if there was, it would definitely be illegal.
Here's to us.
March 28, 2008
Today, I will be mostly cleaning
Nikki's away for a week and a half, and we're having visitors while she's away. She's been away quite a lot recently with work, so the house isn't in it's usual pristine state. See, normally, I do all the cooking and Nikki does nearly all the cleaning. Very rarely, Nikki will cook and I will clean*. Because we're having visitors (my cousin Ame and her hubby Adam, and their baby Jack) for the weekend, Nikki instructed me to clean the house a bit. But she didn't trust me to follow that vague instruction, so she left me a list.
Now, I dunno what would happen if I were going away and I decided to leave cooking instructions for herself. I'd imagine I'd be going away with a black eye. :-)
* Where "very rarely" means "almost never", especially in the case of me cleaning.
March 24, 2008
links for 2008-03-24
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Little Minx - a division of RSA Films, presents a series of short films, made available online - ranging from supernatural fantasy to gritty realism.
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But... Did you see the Moonwalking Bear?
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"From turning down the Beatles to stomping Napster? the most ill-advised, foolhardy and downright idiotic decisions ever made by The Man" - Well, those are #2 and #1, but the rest of the list are no less stupid.
March 22, 2008
links for 2008-03-22
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"We are lucky enough to live in a country that allows us, its citizens, the freedom of speech. I have chosen to put up a statue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to represent the discourse between people of all different beliefs"
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THRILLER!
March 19, 2008
links for 2008-03-19
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The problem with most "Science" Fiction movies is that they seem to forget about the science bit.
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Brand-new t-shirt site, hawking some of the best videogame geek t-shirts I have ever seen IN MY LIFE. I love the "Shigeru & Gunpei & Satoru & Hiroshi" one.
March 18, 2008
links for 2008-03-18
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Science is an affront to God's will
March 14, 2008
links for 2008-03-14
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"The KORG DS-10 is a music-creation software for the Nintendo DS that combines the superior interface of the Nintendo DS and the design concept of the famous MS-10 synthesizer" WANT.
March 12, 2008
Lego Star Wars
There's one or two readers who'll definitely "get" this picture. Awesome.
March 11, 2008
links for 2008-03-11
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"Every single image from the mosaic is extracted from all six of the movies, the total collection is approximately 69 thousand images, or about 1 every 20 frames in the entire series..." - WANT [/Film]
March 10, 2008
links for 2008-03-10
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Possibly the best flowchart ever. But probably not.
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I don't know if "most powerful" is the best description to use, but they're pretty much all good. Nice list.
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The Goonies! Labyrinth! Explorers! Flight of the Navigator! They're all here, and more. Best list ever (possibly). Plus I've now decided to get all of these on DVD, asap.
March 8, 2008
links for 2008-03-08
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Negationism means "the denial of historical crimes against humanity". This article details how Muslim nations conquered India, and killed 80 million Hindus (who refused to convert to Islam) between the 11th and 15th century.
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Show me someone who doesn't want to live in an Ewok-style tree-village, and I'll show you an idiot. Or a liar even. Or maybe just someone who's afraid of heights.
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I like that "nearly any mp3" bit. Still though, brilliant.
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Proof, if any is needed, that Nestlé are definitety evil.[Flickr photoset]
March 7, 2008
The Amazing Evil-O-Meter
March 6, 2008
links for 2008-03-06
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"In 2003, a government commission recommended legalising marijuana in small amounts for personal use. But lawmakers never acted, saying legalisation might entail loss of their country's US anti-drug certification. Countries that lose it face economic sanc
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"According to Scientology, "Thetans" are aliens whose spirits live within humans today. So Thetans are kind of like proto-humans" And Scientologists are kind of like batshit insane.
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"Clone Wars fans have a LOT to be excited about in the near-future" Looks like this could actually be totally awesome.
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The one that was leaked onto the internet for like 5 minutes before being pulled. Because it wasn't the right time. It's totally awesome, I'm really looking forward to Wall-E
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"No other movie series suffers from this wide range of opinions than The Matrix" - Exploring the options and possible plot threads for another Matrix. It's definitely possible, but...
March 2, 2008
links for 2008-03-02
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Neil Gaiman's put American Gods online for free for a month. Shame it's in a fucking flash-based browser and you can't JUST FUCKING DOWNLOAD IT. Bollocks. But still a "Good Thing", apparently.
March 1, 2008
links for 2008-03-01
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Seriously, this is a real piece of genuine Barack Obama merchandise. Or should that be Barry O'Bama?
February 29, 2008
links for 2008-02-29
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"You can argue that Bay?s films are not high art. You can argue that the screenplay/stories behind his movies is generic or stock. But one thing you can not say is that Michael Bay is a hack" [/Film]
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The Sun's tag-line: "What the hell was he inking?" (groan)
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A "visual and musical celebration of the beauty in a dynamic universe driven by gravity", available as a free, burnable DVD disc image via bittorrent.
February 28, 2008
Email Us On This Number
Being the slightly snobbish coffee aficionado that I am, I have a Gaggia espresso machine at home. Like almost all espresso machines, even the really, really expensive ones, it came with a shitty black plastic tamper, rather than something even slightly decent. If you know anything about coffee, you'll know that the quality of the espresso is dependent on several factors, like water pressure, evenness of grind, and perhaps most importantly, the tamping, ideally done with a tamp weighing approx 1/3 of a kilo, and made of stainless steel. So I got bored with drinking good, but not excellent coffee while at home, and I ordered an Espresso Tamper from the Gaggia UK website last night.
This is the confirmation page after placing the order:
Wouldn't it be great if you could send mails to people's phone numbers? Think of the spam though. Maybe not.
February 26, 2008
Orange Garlic
So I was cooking up a tasty stir-fry last night for myself and herself, and while I was peeling the garlic (LOADS of garlic), I came across the oddest thing. When I peeled the skin off one garlic clove, the clove was orange. It kinda looked like a segment of a mandarin/satsuma, and smelled kinda like the smell you get from a garlic capsule (you know, the ones that look like cod-liver-oil capsules). Click the image there for a larger view (the orange clove is the one that's orange...). All the other cloves, as you can see, are totally normal.
Anyhoo, it was fucking weird. So I had to take a photo, and blog it (obviously). Has anyone seen anything like this before? Or can anyone shed any light on why exactly one of my garlic cloves was fucking ORANGE?! Needless to say, it didn't go into the stir-fry.
Nice one dudes.
links for 2008-02-26
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#1: Resistance is futile.
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"This car is expected to have 600 HP, weigh just under 1150 kg, come with a Cadillac Northstar sourced V-8 4.6 liter engine, have a top speed of 240 MPH, and oh yeah, be made of wood." WOOD! Is it fireproof? Supercars get quite hot, you know...
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"7. Creationism is bullshit. Seriously. A big magic guy in the clouds did not wiggle his fingers and create the earth in 6 days. Didn't fucking happen..." Great list this one.
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Hilarious video of some dude's three year old little daughter explaining Star Wars. Check it!
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"We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO" - Amazing stuff.
February 23, 2008
Autoblography - IMterview
[#2 in a series of ∞]
[Where we talk mostly about Ebay and stuff]
17:16:16 Stuart: If you're going for a PS3 for April 29th
17:16:26 Stuart: this might be a good bet, as it's a misspelled listing
17:16:34 Stuart: [Ebay PS3 Link]
17:16:47 Stuart: and the starting price is 99c.
17:17:04 Stuart: not many people will look for a playstaion.
17:23:52 Stuart: Feel free to offer a fair amount if you like.
17:26:47 Stuart: You didn't see me, roight?
18:29:28 Matt: cheers!
18:30:07 Stuart: no problem!
18:31:30 Matt: bidding at ?51 now
18:32:14 Stuart: that looks fishy
18:32:26 Matt: fishy?
18:32:27 Stuart: three separate bidders with stars in the middles of their names?
18:32:42 Stuart: yeah the automatic bids that came up when you bid
18:32:43 Matt: true
18:32:58 Stuart: I have a love-hate relationship with eBay
18:33:02 Matt: me too
18:35:19 Stuart: I bought Guitar Hero 2 with a guitar for $22.50
18:35:24 Stuart: shipping....$25
18:35:31 Stuart: Which was fair enough, I thought.
18:35:38 Stuart: But it was a big corporate ebay-company
18:35:46 Stuart: with 140,000 feedback
18:35:52 Stuart: 96% reviews.
18:36:11 Stuart: and the 4% consisted entirely (as I saw after I'd paid) of people being upset about the guitar hero packs
18:36:31 Stuart: new guitars, secondhand, heavily-used, scratched discs
18:36:41 Stuart: happened to me too.
18:36:55 Stuart: I am very cautious now
18:37:13 Matt: brutal
18:37:46 Stuart: learning curve.
18:37:53 Matt: totally
links for 2008-02-23
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"...in London's Covent Garden in the 1750s, with crime and vice running at very high levels, and before the organised police force existed in England, local magistrates formed the Bow Street Runners and began to impose law and order..." Brilliant point-an
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Manuel from Fawlty Towers/Che Guevara mashup. Excellent. Must have: http://www.cafepress.com/micto
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IR.ASC offers the safety and security has therefore to the asymmetry of power between the individual and Überwachenden. [translated from German]
February 21, 2008
links for 2008-02-21
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"Remarkably, scans showed the device uses a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century. The level of miniaturisation and complexity of its parts is comparable to that of 18th century clocks" I say Aliens.
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Somebody seriously has to make this into a t-shirt. I mean now. I wants it.
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"Upon receiving a secure decommission message all data on the lost or stolen device will be destroyed using US Department of Defence standards" One step away from "this laptop will self-destruct in 5 seconds"
Gorillaz - D-Sides
Just a quick review this one. When I originally saw that the 'Rillaz were releasing another "b-sides" collection to accompany their Demon Days album (similar to 2002's G-Sides, released after their eponymous first album), I decided that I was going to buy it. Then I forgot to.
Then the other day, I was browsing through the iTunes Store on my iPod Touch (which was nice), and I saw it, and bought it immediately (actually my first ever iTunes Store purchase, believe it or not).
It's a much better effort that G-Sides, which contined only a couple of new tracks alongside a few remixes and additional tracks. D-Sides features, in the main, a pile of brand-new tracks and original versions that went on to become tracks on Demon Days, alongside some remixes, the Hot Chip remix of Kids With Guns being a standout track among them.
I'm not going to do a track-by-track analysis, I'll just say that I've been listening to it in the car and in work for the past couple or three days, and it's becoming a favourite. A bit like the way Demon Days took a few listens to warm up to, before becoming one of my all-time favourite albums, this is taking several listens to get into its' groove. My favourite track? It's gotta be Bill Murray.
February 20, 2008
Alexia - IMterview
[#1 in a series of ∞]
[@ 1.20am I Twittered]
01:22:37 Alexia: lol.... gotobed gotobed :-)
01:22:49 Matt: indeed
01:22:52 Matt: sriously
01:22:55 Matt: need to
01:23:01 Matt: but am not
01:23:04 Matt: why is this?
01:23:13 Alexia: you're a rebel
01:23:21 Alexia: you run of B5 eps ?
01:23:30 Matt: I'm a nucking futjob
01:23:35 Alexia: lol
01:23:37 Matt: no more B5
01:23:39 Matt: all gone
01:23:44 Alexia: oh dear
01:24:13 Matt: I have season 2 of Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex on my Mac, but I'm too lazy to get round to actually watching it
01:24:29 Alexia: That's fucking lazy
links for 2008-02-20
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Another single-serving site that tells you if your favourite microblog/communication site is up or down.
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Badum-tsssssh. Every time.
February 19, 2008
Doukutsu Monogatari
That's "Cave Story" to you and me.
I discovered this little of an old-school side-scrolling gem of a 2d shoot-em-up while perusing my Destructoid feed last week. It's totally awesome. It's 100% free, but may require a little patching depending on what machine you're using. On my Mac, it required patching with a translation file, as my Japanese isn't so hot. All the Downloads and patches can be found here, along with details of characters, weapons and the like, and FAQs and Walkthroughs for those of you who suck ass.
I'm a couple or three levels in at the moment and it definitely reminds me a lot of games I played in the mid-90's, sort of between Metroid and Mega-Man, but cuter, smarter and with the benefit of hindsight and experience, better. The level design is awesome and the difficulty curve is bang-on (so far). It also looks cuter than it is, with the weapons getting pretty serious a couple of levels in. The physics of the jumping are also in tune with my inner 90's gamer, being nicely floaty on the jumping, with nice stickiness on landing with a lovely touch of Super Mario Land 2-style momentum.
Seriously, if this was released on the Wii Virtual Console I'd be paying my €8 and downloading it right now. Totally recommended.
links for 2008-02-19
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"Note the device color range greatly varies by manufacturer; mine wasn?t even in the 6 bit range, producing only up to 24 colors when displayed. Invitations are not required for usage of color pencils though the service is paid only, with unfortunately
February 13, 2008
Radiohe_ad Remi_xed
In case you didn't know, some dude called Amplive remixed some tracks from Radioheads' In Rainbows and was all set to release them onto the Intertubes in December, but then received the inevitable "cease-and-desist" from the big R's lawyers, and pulled the whole thing.
Fortunately, they met up with each other since, and decided all that messing about with lawyers and crap was a load of old arse, and as of today the album Rainydayz Remixez is available as a free download, featuring contribitions from Too $hort, MC Zumbi of Zion I, Chali2na of Jurassic 5, Codany Holiday, and Del The Funky Homosapien (two of which I've actually heard of). Some of the tracks are alright. Some of them are really good. I suggest you have a listen.
links for 2008-02-13
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"The King James version has 'harlot' in it 48 times, 'sodomite' 5 times, 'fornicator' 5 times, 'smite' 133 times, 'kill' 208 times and 'maim' 7 times. This is shocking, you have to wonder what any right minded parent is doing expos
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"Neil Gaiman's publisher HarperCollins have given him the green light to do a free (as in beer) web-release of one of his books and Neil's running a poll to see which one he should put online -- go vote! They'll leave it up for a month and track sales --
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What makes Sonic Invaders so special? Well, for starters, it's a videogame for blind people. That doesn't mean that you can't play it, of course -- you don't have to be blind to enjoy it -- but it was initially created with the sight-impaired in mind.
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Including all the "sentient metals", "solid gases" and "criminal elements"
February 11, 2008
Shortlistah
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.
February 9, 2008
Videotape
[via Monoscope]
links for 2008-02-09
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I am SO totally getting one of these for my desk. Or two, for my desk in work and my desk at home. [/Film]
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Shame all the fabulous lighting and HDR photography can't hide the fact that all the aircraft are aged rustbuckets
February 8, 2008
I Can Haz Drrrrill!
DRRRRRRRIIIILLLLL!!!
That'll be putting up some shelves next week so. Or just like, drilling things. You know, like, for fun.
links for 2008-02-08
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"4. When you're about to go genocidal, get a second opinion. Admiral William Adama from the new Battlestar Galactica is one of the best leaders we've ever seen. He's gotten a group of a few thousand humans halfway across the galaxy, despite the fact that
February 7, 2008
links for 2008-02-07
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Online Word Processor from Adobe. Works about a million times faster and better than Google docs. Some lovely touches everywhere, definitely worth a look.
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"To my mind this is unexpected and new, and it's worth exploring all the possible advantages once you're convinced it's a real effect" says Markus Zahn, MIT
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"Take a look at a few of cinema's most mind-boggling moments of scientific inaccuracy?plus a few rare films that manage to get things (mostly) right"
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Bad news for sellers? Not really. As a seller, if you don't get paid, don't send the item. As a buyer, you have much more reason to want to review the seller, and see what the sellers' rating is.
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"The Plain Of Jars is probably South East Asia?s most enigmatic tourist attraction. Situated in the remote north east of Laos, the mountainous communist country which has only been open to tourists for just over a decade, are hundreds of huge stone jars
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Friend of the world?s beaches and former Batman and Real Genius, Val Kilmer, has signed on to voice the smooth-computin? automobile in the latest TV-reboot of Knight Rider, replacing Will Arnett
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The Swedes are after me! Flern! Flergen bjorgk! Flergen bjorgk Sklark!
February 6, 2008
links for 2008-02-06
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"Empire Film Group has acquired the motion picture production and distribution rights to Henson, an original screenplay by Robert D. Slane that tells the story of the life and achievements of Muppets/Sesame Street creator Jim Henson" [via /Film]
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"I wrestled with whether I should open the box, or store it and let it accrue collector's value. In the end, I decided that the reason for my purchase wasn't financial. My very first computer was an Apple //c, and I can't see wanting to part with this com
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"The world's largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible" (that uses only LEGO for illustrations)
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"The production of LEGO bricks is so accurate that only 18 out of 1 million LEGO elements produced is considered defective. It's an astonishing number, considering that 15 billion LEGO components are made every year"
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"Amplifiers at Bolling Field, 1921." Two giant horns with ear tubes, evidently designed to listen for approaching aircraft
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"Lead a ball trough a rotating maze full of deadly traps" - with gravity as your only enemy. Well, gravity and spikey things, and fire. And fiendish difficulty.
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What it says. No more right click>paste for me!
February 5, 2008
Fluffy
Got me a Fluffy Badge.
I am now certain that my place amongst the Irish blogging elite is assured. Maybe.
February 2, 2008
MT4
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.
January 31, 2008
Nominarah
We've been nominated for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards in the category of "Best Group Blog". Thanks to whoever it may have been who voted for us, the cheque's in the post. :-)
I don't harbour any allusions that we might even make the shortlist, never mind win anything, as we're up against some very good blogs, but it's nice to be on the long-list.
January 28, 2008
Say Hello To George
Everybody, meet George.
Isn't he gorgeous?
We picked him up from the Cats & Dogs home (in Rathfarnham) last Friday week, and he's settled in very well. He's house trained (thankfully), and his favourite activities are chasing things, sleeping, eating and spreading kitty litter all over the utility room floor (we're hoping he'll grow out of the last one). He also loves snuggling into his Mammy and Daddy on the couch of an evening.
We always had cats while I was growing up, but George is Nikki's first kitty, and she's loving it. He's also great around guests, and fell asleep last week when we had people around and we were all jumping around playing Wii Sports, so he's pretty cool really. In fact, he's very cool.
January 24, 2008
Wooly Goomba
I will give someone any exorbitant fee they require if they knit me this hat.
There's even a pattern of sorts available.
Or, you could just knit it for me because you are awesome, and so am I.
[H/T: BoingBoing; photie credit: TiddlyPeeps]
January 21, 2008
Skitch Me Baby One More Time
Everybody's (well every Mac user's anyway) favourite screenshot-snapping, annotating, uploading, hosting and embedding application Skitch is now out of private, invite-only beta and into full public beta.
If you have a Mac, and take screenshots in any part of your daily work (or out of work, for blogging n' shit), Skitch is indispensable. I've been using it for ages now, and it seriously improves the whole experience of screen-grabbing, getting rid of all the pain and actually making it a pleasurable experience, helped in no small part from the totally brilliant website, myskitch.com, which comes as part of the package. Watch the intro video to see how:
Scott McNulty from TUAW called it "the coolest thing I have seen at Macworld that isn't an iPhone", and he's right. It's awesome.
If you have a Mac (it's Mac-only), and you've ever taken a screenshot, you've no excuse. Download it right now.
January 15, 2008
(Another*) Five Things
Lyle has dropped me in the shit (for which he has been severely reprimanded) with this here meme thingy.
To quote from Lyle: "The idea of the meme is to list five things in your life now that you would have never thought would be in your life when you were 25". So here we go then (deep breath...).
- Meeting Nikki on the interpipes, falling in love with her, and asking her to marry me.
Okay this one's fairly obvious. If anyone had told me this was going to happen 5 and a half years ago, I would've told them to fuck off. Thankfully, they would've been right.
- (Relating to #1) Kicking every proposer of marriage's ass by asking Nikki to marry me, to her complete surprise, on top of a mountain, in Alaska, and having a diamond ring (that fitted perfectly) in my pocket.
Well, yeah. This one kinda came as a surprise to me as I was doing it. According to several male friends of mine, I've now "fucked it up completely for the rest of us". Hey, I can't help it if I rock this much. :-)
- Buying a house and (even stranger) settling down
It had to happen sooner or later. I just thought it would be later, after I had traveled the world and stuff. Oh well, I guess the traveling of the world will have to wait until (a lot) later, after gardening and pets (I want some chickens) and other settley-downey things.
- Being such a fucking geek
This is actually very surprising to me. I was a nerd when I was in my early teens, interested in the sciences, reading, and getting beaten up. Then I discovered smoking and drinking and... things. Then (more recently) I met Nikki and fell in love. Then I met Adrian, who is a friend of hers, and now a friend of mine. Adrian is an über geek of the highest order. I blame him for my love of gadgetry, for me learning how to code (badly), and most of all for my constant refreshing of Endgadget's reports of Macworld Keynotes and the like (MacBook Air anyone?).
- (related to #4) Having a blog
Hey, if anybody told me that I'd have a blog when I was thirty (and a half), I would have gone to see the doctor immediately to see if anything could be done to prevent it (not because I didn't like blogs, but I didn't know what one was).
So there you go. Funny how life can surprise you isn't it? But if it didn't, wouldn't we all be like, SO bored?
I'm not really arsed tagging anybody. I can't tag Babs because she's only 24. So I'll tag the aforementioned Adrian, because I know he won't do it (and I bet a fiver he doesn't), and Dan, because he might do it, it's his kind of thing. Oh, and I might as well tag me big sis' Becca while I'm at it, as she hasn't posted in AGES.
*(I say "another" Five Things because I've already done a five things meme, but a different one!)
January 2, 2008
Twitter/Twitteriffic/Tweetr/Facebook Stuff n' Things
Adrian sent me a mail today. He's of the opinion (which I share) that Twitter is totally brilliant, and that everybody who blogs, and a few who don't, should totally be using it, since it's evolved from it's "what are you doing?" roots to become a lot more, namely a huge community of people talking to each other about all kinds of crap, asking for advice, sharing links, and generally it's a great resource for what's what in the world of the interpipes. and it's still that great "what are you doing?" thing too.
Adrian wants people like Dan (and a few others I'm sure) to start Twittering. Adrian uses Twitteriffic for posting his "tweets" when he's using his computer (as opposed to when he's out-and-about, where he texts them using his phone, like a lot of others). I used to use it too, but more recently it's changed from Freeware to Shareware, and I hate paying for stuff (especially stuff which used to be free) so I've started using Tweetr, on my Mac at home and my PC in work.
In his mail Adrian also requested I do some sort of how-to detailing how to install Tweetr on your PC and how to link your Tweets to your Facebook status and that sort of thing. Which is what you are now reading.
December 24, 2007
Bah, Humbugn't.
Bish.
Bosh.
December 20, 2007
Upgrade
My guide to upgrading to Mac OSX (oh-s-ten) 10.5 ("Leopard"), the easy way:
- Backup your main boot volume (usually entitled "Macintosh HD) using Superduper. Check your backup, to make sure it's backed up.
- Insert OSX 10.5 disc into CD/DVD (Super)drive.
- Double-click "Install Mac OSX".
- Click "restart".
- Make a cup of tea.
- Smoke a cigarette.
- Look impatiently at your Macs' screen several times.
- Wait
two and a half hours50 minutesabout half an hour. - Type in your password.
- Oh look, my desktop is exactly the way it was before I upgraded my entire operating system. Everything is just the way it was.
- Except, you know, shinier. And therefore better.
Thus endeth the lesson. Now try installing Vista in the same way.
December 15, 2007
Damn Kids!
December 9, 2007
The Business
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.
December 5, 2007
My Top 20 Games List
Dragon is doing a much more thorough job of this, giving each of his top 20 it's own post, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents worth.
So, in no particular order (but kinda sorta in order), here's my top 20, and the consoles I played them on:
Yes, the vast majority of games here are either made directly by Nintendo, or are on Nintendo consoles, and there are no PC games. I've only ever owned Nintendo consoles (bar the original Xbox), and Nintendo are the best games company in the word, bar none. I'm not a PC gamer either, never have been, and probably never will be. Let the shouting begin.
UPDATE: Holy shit! I forgot about Metroid Prime! Okay, it'll have to be a top 21 list so. Or we could lose Sonic, or Banjo.
UPDATE: Other honourable mentions:Super Smash Brothers Melee, Manic Miner, XIII, Pikmin, Street Fighter II (Arcade), Mario Golf, Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racer, 3D Ant Attack, Super Monkey Ball, Carrier Command, Rainbow Six 3, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Chuckie Egg, Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron 2, Halo 2, Pokémon, Every Mario game ever, Every Zelda game ever.
December 3, 2007
Eircom in "Half-decent advert" Shocker!
So I was browsing one of my favourite sites tonight, and I saw this (it's an ad, and if you hadn't guessed by the "turn on sound" button, it's very NSFW to press the "turn on sound" button).
I was mildly amused. I was also shocked that Eircom have come up with an ad campaign that's mildly amusing, as opposed to "totally pants", the way they usually are. I was even more surprised that it was on a site that wasn't from Ireland, but more a targeted ad for people accessing in Ireland. This means Eircom's advertising department appear to have acquired some sense.
I find that the most shocking bit of all. But I'm still not going to get Eircom Broadband, because although Eircom's service is known to be reliable, that's only because they are a bunch of fucking Nazis.
November 26, 2007
Work/Blog Collision
I just got off the phone with Conn Ó Muíneacháin of Digiculture.ie, who is recording an event in my little theatre for the Dun Laoghaire Library Service, for a podcast. It's the first time I've ever had a work conversation with someone who recognised my name more from blogging and podcasting than from my vast theatrical repertoire.
Does this mean I'm famous (for podcasting I mean)? Or just that Ireland is very, very small?
He was very disappointed that we hadn't recorded a new podcast for a long while. I (and by I, I mean we) must get onto that soon.
For those of you who are eagerly awaiting a new Lifewithouttoastcast, we have most of the content figured out, the playlist is fairly sorted (and totally fucking rocks), we're just waiting for our new state-of-the-art recording facility (Andy's new house) to be finished being built. We could do it in my office at home, but we kinda sorta tried that already and the creative juices didn't flow sufficiently, or some similar pathetic excuse.
November 19, 2007
Technical Ineptitude
Babs came over last week, because her Laptop (a 3 or 4 year old Dell) was running "a bit slow", or something. Apparently she now needs an excuse to visit her big brother. :-P
Anyhoo, I would've though that she had some aptitude or knowledge of computers and how to keep them kosher. In this day and age, I tend to assume that most people who use computers for most of their working day have some sort of a clue.
Any IT professionals are probably laughing out loud right now. Lets just say I was very wrong. From looking at others peoples' machines in work (because they asked me to, not because I like "looking at their shit"), and now from ploughing a furrow though the muddy mess of my sisters machine, I now realise that everyone, or at least the vast majority of people, are mucking fuppets when it comes to anything with a keyboard and a screen (this includes phones, ATM's, etc).
SO. Halfway through deleting (or "uninstalling", God I hate Windows) 75% of the programs on Babs ailing Dell (do you ever use this? No? Why is it there then?! DELETE), I decided to update things like Adobe Reader (yes, I could have installed something else, but that would just complicate things further), and Firefox.
This is when I actually started laughing.
Which versions of these programs do you think she had installed? Bearing in mind that Firefox is now on V2.0.0.9 and Adobe Reader is on v8.1.1.
Firefox: Version 1.0.7. Last updated early 2005. OMG.
Adobe Reader: Not even Adobe reader, but Adobe ACROBAT Reader, the really old one. Version 4 or 5 point something. Seriously. Old. Older than her machine. I hate Dell too.
I know that it doesn't make much difference to how a computer runs, but having the latest version of whatever web browser you use is vital I think. I have set up auto-updates on Babs machine for Firefox now.
Also (God help us all) she was using McNortonAfee for anti-virus. I'll have to get back to her on that one, I ran out of time, and send Babs home with her Laptop de-fragging on the passenger seat.
Next time I'll have to have some install discs ready, methinks. And perhaps an external drive and a copy of Ubuntu.
November 18, 2007
Fantastical
November 14, 2007
The Feedreader Of The Beast
November 7, 2007
Tcritic Rocks!
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.
November 4, 2007
Ads on the IV oh IV?
Seriously, they put ads in 404 error pages now? When did this start happening?
November 1, 2007
Stylo-mo-phone
The last six months or so have been a veritable gadget-fest for me. I have purchased or been given the following shiny toys:
- A new(ish) Seat Ibiza Sport (nice)
- A new MacBook Pro (very nice)
- A new Nikon D40 DSLR (brilliant)
- A new Lens for said DSLR (cool)
- A Nintendo DS Lite (awesome)
- An iPod Touch (awesomely awesome)
These are all awesome, awesome toys. I would recommend any one (or all) of them thoroughly to anyone considering buying them.
But today, they all paled into insignificance next to my newest, bestest, shiniest gadget.
October 18, 2007
Chinese* Spam
* May not, in fact, be Chinese, but another Asian language.
** Estimated, there or thereabouts. The vast, vast majority.
*** Doo-doo-bee-doo-doo.
October 16, 2007
Review: Family Guy S6 Ep1 - "Blue Harvest"
It's Star Wars, right, with the characters replaced by the cast of Family Guy. Sounds alright (or: a bit rubbish), yeah?
Let me first say this: If you're not either 1) a HUGE Star Wars fan, or 2) a HUGE Family Guy fan, or preferably both, you won't like this at all. Please leave now.
Still here? Okay. This episode of Family Guy... really is... Star Wars.
No, really.
It really, really is. A lot of the lines are exactly as they were in Star Wars. The music is the music from Star Wars, and I don't mean it's the same basic music played by different people, it's the actual music. It's spot-on, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra-tastic. If you're #1 above, you'll be saying the lines as Peter/Stewie/Chris/Lois say them, whilst humming along with the music that's playing in your head, and coming from your TV, the same way as you be would if you had Empire in your video player on a Sunday afternoon when you were 12. It even has the actual special effects plates for some of the scenes (and all of the effects it has are from the ORIGINAL version of Episode IV, hooray!) that were in the movie. The real ones, not an imitation.
So it's Star Wars. Pretty much completely, and perfectly.
But it's also Family Guy, which means it goes off on insane tangents that you didn't see coming (because it's written by manatees, of course), but this time, they're Star Wars tangents. If I haven't stressed it enough, you must know Episode IV inside out, back to front and upside down to appreciate most of the gags for what they are: Perfect, perfect pastiches or something you know intimately (fnaar), and love dearly.
I found myself actually Laughing Out Loud at the majority of the gags, which is something normally reserved for some of the grosser, more hardcore episodes of South Park, or for when I see someone's pants split open when they bend over or something. It really is properly, hilariously funny.
So, if you like Family Guy (a LOT) and you've watched Star Wars (Episode IV, "A New Hope") as many times as I have (a LOT) and know it every which way you can, this episode will be your new Best Thing Ever™. Seriously, it's that good.
10 pieces of toast out of 10 (if you fall into both categories described in paragraph 2, above. If you don't, probably 1 or 2 out of 10, you ignorant nerf-herder).
October 15, 2007
Radioheaded
I have been listening to every bit of Radiohead I have on constant rotation for the past 4 days. This is how In Rainbows fits into their album discography, in my opinion, in order of awesomeness.
OK Computer
The Bends
In Rainbows
Pablo Honey
Hail To The Thief
Kid A
Amnesiac
Anyone who disagrees with me can do so in the comments, even though you're quite plainly mistaken.
October 12, 2007
Customer Service
Best customer service update ever? I mean granted, it's been about three weeks since I ordered this from them, and I was getting a little worried that I hadn't received a shipping notification from them, but this kinda makes up for it. :-)
October 8, 2007
How To Become A Famous Blogger
I was going to stick this into the Linkery Dumpage section in the sidebar, but I think it's just too good:
Joost - Out of Beta
Everybody's favourite half-decent WebTV service Joost has emerged from Beta all shiny and new and full of goodness. There's now literally hundreds of channels (well, about a hundred) and there's actually some decent stuff on some of them. Over 15,000 shows now, apparently.
The biggest news though, is that Joost is no longer invite-only. Which means that anyone who was previously looking for an invite from me can bugger off and just sign up themselves. Simply click on that there logo and sign yourself up to some webby-TV-torrenty-sharingy goodness.
October 3, 2007
C-Listers
According to this widget, (we place a lot of authority in widgets 'round these here parts) Life Without Toast is a "C-List" entitity in the blogosphere, in the "middle authority" group. I'm quite chuffed that we have any kind of authority at all, even the middle kind. We're pretty much winging it pretty much all of the time.
[via D4D™]
October 1, 2007
LOLHORSE
Claire from gingerpixel.com posted a photo of a horse that she snapped in Mayo at the Breaffy House Hotel. She thought it was crying out for an LOL caption. I agreed.
Lets start a meme, blogosphere! Everybody must immediately make an LOL caption using the original photo, linked above. Go here if you need help with the caption.
September 26, 2007
The Prop Table From Hell
[Photoblogging in Movable Type appears to be fubar, so I'm posting this "manually", normal photoblogging will resume asap-ish...]
September 18, 2007
Review: Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition
"Warning: This game contains strong language and scenes of extreme violence and gore"
And that ain't even the half of it. I played the original Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube, and it was very, very good, but this new, Wii-centric version surpasses it in almost every way there is.
Having played most of the way through the GC version, the majority of the shocks and scares were no longer shocking or scary, but as the entire game has been rebuilt from the ground up, in 480p 16:9 widescreen and with a generous amount of Wiimote waggling for good measure, pretty much everything in the game feels "new".
From the opening scenes in the village, through the rescue of the Presidents' daughter (kidnapped by a Spanish cult called the Los Illuminados), through all the various puzzles, the Wii-Remote controls are really without fault. Indeed, if I had not played the game on a system that requires you to use buttons and joysticks (how old-school!), I would have sworn that the game had been designed for the Wii from the beginning. The point-to-aim system is pretty much flawless, enabling a raft of head-shots to be accomplished with ease, with crazy villagers heads exploding everywhere as a result.
If you're coming to this as a fan of the older Resident Evil Games, you're in for a shock. In the older games, the pacing was slow, the camera fixed, and the tension unbearable. The tension is still present, but the pacing is generally set at a rapid-fire full sprint, machine gun in hand, and the camera is an over-the-shoulder affair that brings you right into the action, almost like a first-person shooter, only not.
The story, is of course, being a videogame story, completely bunk, but it's definitely better than either of the Resi movies that have been released. The scope of the locations is vast, from the sprawling village at the beginning to the labyrinthine castle in the middle, to the sci-fi-like confines of the island laboratories towards the end, and this helps the story a lot. I won't spoil it for you any more than that, as there's quite a few surprises to be had.
The graphics, while excellent, are definitely "last-gen", albeit the very best of last-gen. The enhanced definition and widescreen aspect definitely help. The sound is awesome. The music is perfectly weighted and matched to the mood of every scene and level in the game, and the incidental sound effects are totally spot-on, be they a candle blowing in the wind or a grotesgue monster being frozen by liquid nitrogen and exploding in a shower of fragments. Brilliant.
Speaking of monsters... Oh. My. God. Whoever designed the beasties clearly needs professional help. They are FUCKED UP. Again, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but lets just say the main character, Leon Kennedy, had his head ripped from his neck on more than one occasion by a nefarious hench-thing covered in spikes, claws and drool. If you don't jump from your seat and/or grimace in disgust at least once, then you are clearly already dead. Brilliant stuff. And the 18+ rating of the game is definitely deserved, and should definitely be adhered to.
All in all, totally brilliant. I'll give it 9.5 slices of toast out of 10.
September 12, 2007
"Matrix" Spam of the Week
[Of course, the .gif attached to the message was an ad for cheap "Viagra", but the subject line is still brilliant]
September 11, 2007
Never Forget...
...Today is Johnny Vegas's birthday!
Happy Birthday Johnny!
Oh, and it's Moby's birthday too. And John Martyn's. And Franz Beckenbauer's. And Ludacris's.
I'm sure there's something else I'm forgetting too, but I'm not sure what.
Infinity MPG
They've just re=printed this t-shirt over at Threadless, and I think anyone who spends any time cycling should definitely plonk down the 15 dolla and buy it, it's totally cooltacular. Me, I drive everywhere, so I think buying it would be a crime against cycling, and also cyclists.
September 4, 2007
BUY MY AWESOME GUITAR!
Seriously, buy it. Buy it NOW! All the profits from the auction go straight to charity like.
This Vzaar thing is going to be seriously brilliantly huge, I tells you.
[This entry sponsored by s e v i t z d o t c o m]
September 3, 2007
Alaska Photos
For those of you who aren't rabid followers of my Flickr Photostream, I have now uploaded some of the best photos of mine and Nikki's Alaskan holiday, back in July. There's a few hum-dingers in there, even if I may say so myself. I still have a few from my other (compact) camera left to upload, and a couple of videos which I'm in the midst of editing into something half-decent.
It's almost like being there, only like, y'know, not.
August 22, 2007
Google Maps Embedding Thingamajig
This is me, testing that Google Maps embedding thingy wot is new and shiny.
I'm in that square building there (1/3 is Bodega bar and 2/3 is Pavilion Theatre), in the southern corner, or pretty much in the center of the frame. Cool! It works. I'm sure it has more practical applications too though.
August 17, 2007
Presentation Photos
Here's a few photos of me doing my presentation for my College course, back at the start of July.
(More after the jump)
August 14, 2007
Festival Of World Cultures
Photoblogging...
Just finished installing a projector for Festival of World Cultures. Looks pretty good eh?
August 9, 2007
Facebook - Masters Of The Bleedin' Obvious
August 7, 2007
Alaskan Proposal
This time, a slideshow for those of you who can't quite believe that the picture of me proposing to Nikki is real, here's another 30-something photos of the moment(s), set to some rather appropriate music.
Now do you believe me?
I was going to try to upload all the photos to Flickr, but not everybody would get to see the "story" then, so I thought this was the best way. If anyone wants to see the actual photos (who already hasn't), I can bring me laptop to the weddin' (dodges slap from Nikki)!
August 2, 2007
White wedding? (an IM conversation)
Louise
20:23 so are you having a white wedding?20.23 church?
Matt
20:23 no a brown one :-P20:24 not church, humanist
Louise
20:24 me too. church sucks cock
I love the honesty of good friends. They're always an bullshit-free zone.
July 30, 2007
More Skitch Invites
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.
July 29, 2007
Surprise!
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!
July 5, 2007
Disaster Emergency in Dun Laoghaire
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.
July 2, 2007
Skitch Invites
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.
June 28, 2007
Tetris Fridge Magnets
From Art-Lebdev Studio, Russia. Yeah, the guys who make (or claim they will one day make, and sell) the Optimus Maximus keyboard. But the Tetris Fridge Magnets (or "Tetrius", as they're called, presumably to avoid litigation) aren't as vapourwarey as the Optimus. In fact, they're stuck to my fridge right now, as in the photo.
June 25, 2007
Certified Arts Manager
As of today, I am certified by the University of Ulster as an Arts Manager.
Yay for me! Today was the final, "presentation" day. We had all (16 of us) completed three academic assignments through the year (Leadership, Personal Development Planning, and Marketing) and were given our final grade on those, but today we had to do a presentation on... "Something". Some way the course had helped us do something in our jobs. It's an arts management course, and everyone in it is an Arts Manager or some description, so the variety and "artistic-ness" of the presentations was great.
Mine was very techie. As in Theatre Techie, Health & Safety, that kind of techie.
Here's the Powerpoint presentation if anyone wants to have a look. Everyone thought it was brilliant, I thought it was ok, and it was the only one anyone wanted to ask questions about, and provoked discussion during the presentation. In a good way like. People were interested, if not necessarily entertained. :-)
It's fairly A-B-C, but if any Powerpoint Ninjas out there want to give (constructive) feedback or ask questions, please do.
(Special thanks to iRed Lite for assisting me in using my Apple Remote for my Presentation, letting me walk around in a much more relaxed fashion, and enabling me to gesture profusely, as is my wont)
June 22, 2007
I'm Totally On That Big Ship
Photoblogging...
"La Frigata Liberta".
June 21, 2007
The Best Internet Video Ever
Dun-dun-DUNNNN!
Gay Handling Partners
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.
June 19, 2007
Yellow
I just uploaded another crapload of photos to Flickr. This one is definitely one of my favourites:
I thoroughly recommend having a butchers at the original, full-size. I'm quite proud-ish of it.
June 18, 2007
Stuff
I'm learning that waiting for something to inspire you to write something interesting doesn't really work, as sometimes you will go through periods of no inspiration, and then you're pretty much fucked.
So I'm just going to prattle on about stuff instead.
I've been busy! In work, mostly. Thankfully the community festival is finished. For those of you unfamiliar with the differences between professional and amateur theatre, it goes like this: Professional theatre practitioners know what they are doing, to a point, whereas amateurs are amateurs, and they haven't a clue. That said, working with the group from Inchicore College was fun, as they had a clue, and were willing and eager to learn, and I love teaching to inquisitive minds. Someday I get the feeling I will be involved in teaching to some capacity... Anyhoo, the amateur shows are finished now, and my weeks have gone from 60+ hours to a more manageable 35-40-ish.
Apart from that, I've mostly been watching Battlestar Galactice on DVD, again. On repeated viewings, some of the loose plot threads that I picked up on while watching season three (which is not out on DVD yet) actually make more sense. And the way the fourth wall came crashing down for Dan when "All Along The Watchtower" started playing at the end of the last episode of season three was pretty much negated for me when Starbuck was driving around on Caprica in her Hummer, and the way there was a Citroen DS in the basement of the café the resistance blew up. Fourth wall my ass (cue much shouting from the Danzor).
This weekend, myself and herself went out to my parents on Saturday, got fed (although we were already stuffed from having lunch in Queen of Tarts), and went down to see how my baby niece was doing. She is getting HUGE and so alert and full of energy and inquisitiveness. I have some fab photos of her that I will be uploading to Flickr tonight, and a few that I want to squeeze through Claire's black-and-white conversion technique (which will be hard without Photoshop). Maybe converting them in-camera might be the best bet. We left my Mam and Dads' yesterday afternoon, inspired by my Mams' flourishing garden to go to a garden centre to buy some plantage for our balconies. Woodies was the answer, and we did rather well.
In other news, me and Nikki are going to Alaska in three weeks, just in case there's anybody out there who I haven't bragged that to. I can't fracking wait. Huge bears, landing an aeroplane on a glacier, fjord rafting, etc, etc. Granted, driving like 2,500 miles might be a bit of a bitch, but I reckon it'll be great.
June 9, 2007
Beautiful Day in Dublin Bay
Photoblogging...
June 5, 2007
Check Dem Lip-Sync #3
Wind And Wave
Lexia brings up interesting points about The Electricity Supply Board planning to close a number of its' power stations, and wonders where Ireland will get its' energy from if these stations are closed.
I remember (kinda sorta) the proposed Nuclear Power station at Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford in the 70's. My parents were heavily involved in the Anti-Nuclear movement back then, and also involved in the organisation of the Hippy Jam-Festivals/Protest Concerts of '78 and '79 ("Get To The Point" and "Back To The Point"). These may have been the last time popular opinion and government policy was swayed (for the better) by organised protest in this country.
Of course now, Carnsore point is home to one of the States' biggest wind-generated power stations, pumping out 12MW from 14 turbines. From nuclear power to wind power, hooray for poetic justice.
My point is, this country is battered by some of the strongest prevailing winds in Europe, and the West Coast is constantly hammered by the Atlantic. We couldn't be in any better position to replace ALL of our electricity generation with renewable, wind and wave-powered generators.
So why aren't we doing this? I say close the crappy, dirty old coal and gas-fired power stations as planned, and open up lovely, clean, green wind and wave-powered ones. But of course that's not going to happen, now is it?
UPDATE: Today just happens to be World Earth Day. Total coincidence, I swear.
June 3, 2007
Easy Fruity Geekery
How to set up a local fileserver using an Apple Airport Extreme Basestation:
- Buy an Apple Airport Extreme Basestation.
- Plug a USB external Hard Disk Drive into the USB port on the Airport Extreme, and turn it on.
- Insert the Airport CD into your Mac, and follow the instructions.
- Open the Airport Disk Utility.
- Err... That's it. Your files are now served.
I love Apple.
May 31, 2007
Google Offline
If you're a regular around these parts, you'll know that myself and Adrian have had several arguments debates about the merits of online vs offline applications (ie NetNewsWire vs Google Reader).
Well, lookie what I found in my Google Reader today*. A little button proclaiming something new:
Yes, Google apps are indeed, going offline. When I clicked the little button, this is what I got:
Now, admittedly, I haven't installed it yet. I'm going to wait until I'm not at the start of a 16-hour day in work, and using a computer that I shouldn't really be installing early Betas on.
But I'm looking forward to doing that installing. And saving some of my Google Apps data locally, where I can always get at it. At the moment, they seem so have only rolled out the Google Reader functionality**, but as Google Gears is open-source, I'm reckonin' it won't be long before it works for like, y'know, everything.
*Sorry Gordon, just saw your comment on the previous post. You found it first, I'll admit. :-)
**With a "Please note, however, that Google Gears is not yet intended for general use" -type warning.
May 29, 2007
Googley Goodies
As a wee follow-up to my recent post on how to use Google to convert units of measurement, here's a few more Google tricks I've found on my relentless trawling of the intertubes.
On top of the previously -mentioned conversion tool, Google is also a fully-functioned calculator. Just tupe in the sum/problem, and Google will do the work for you. It even does complex problems and percentages, as well as power-of problems. Have a look at 20% of 4^5 as an example.
Did you know you can use Google to find out how good a movie is? Not just to search for a review, mind. Go to www.google.com/movies and type in your movie title. Here's an example for Shrek the Third (looks pretty good, might have to go see that).
Being a new-found Mac junkie as I am, I was delighted to discover that the big G has a portal dedicated to all things Mac, and it can be found at www.google.com/mac. You can find Mac versions of programs like Google Earth and Sketchup, Gmail Notifier, and (spit) Google Toolbar for Mac.
Finally, if you're looking for a weather forecast, why bother with any other website when all you needs to do is type (for example) "weather Dublin Ireland" (without the quotes) into the G and they'll give you a lovely 5-day 4-day forecast to look at.
See also: Google Labs, Google Moms, Google Dilbert, Google Translate, and many, many more.
Aren't Google great?*
*Apart from when they're evil, of course...
Interesting side-note: If you're a Gmail user, go to your "Deleted Items" folder. Instead of saying "Empty Trash" as it used to, it now says "Empty Wastebasket". Interesting huh? No? Just me on that one? Well at least it doesn't say "Recycle Bin", blah blah mutter mutter...
May 21, 2007
Wantage
May 16, 2007
Apologies!
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.
May 12, 2007
Partially Demolished
Photoblogging...
30th birthday cake.
May 8, 2007
My New Favourite Toy
And this proves once and for all that I am cooler than Gordon McLean.
May 4, 2007
Dead Calm
Photoblogging...
Dun Laoghaire harbour. Lovely evening, eh?
May 3, 2007
I'm Fuckin' Gorgeous, Me
A few weeks ago, Claire Wilson of Gingerpixel fame asked if anyone would be interested in modelling for her so she could build up her portfolio a bit. Naturally, I said I'd be interested, and she said she'd be doing the shooting on Killiney Beach, which is only five minutes from my house, which clinched the deal (even though she wanted me to be there on a Saturday at 9.30am).
So last Saturday, I met her on the beach, had a bit of a chat and she started shooting. We moved around to several different locations on the beach, and she was very pleased to shoot someone who was interested in photography (I had a few ideas) and apparently I was "a natural". It was quite hard to find somewhere with good light that morning, as the Sun was glaring off the sea and sand, so I was a bit squinty some of the time. I think Claire did a fantastic job though, and these are some of the best photos of me, ever.
So, after the jump there's a couple of my favourite ones of me, and here's a link to all the shots of me on Claire's site, and the set of all portraits she shot on the beach on Saturday.
May 2, 2007
Joost
I got an invite to Web TV service Joost several weeks ago. I also got three invites, which I advertised on Twitter and Lifehacker, and which were snapped up within seconds.
Well, now that Joost is semi-sorta out of Beta, I now have oodles of invites. I put a comment on the Joost Invite Lifehacker post, inviting people who want invites to mail me, and got a bajillion mails almost immediately.
So, if anyone else wants an invite, mail me at the address at the bottom of the sidebar (Life Without Toast At G Mail Dot Com, without the capitals or spaces), or leave a comment.
I haven't had much opportunity to do much serious checking-out of the Joost service, but from what I've seen, it's pretty good, and just needs a bit more content for it to be brilliant. All you need to do is ask for an invite to check it out for yourself. Joost is a free download for Mac and PC, and there's a Linux version in the works.
April 30, 2007
Magic Screencap
Does anyone like my magic screencap?
See what I did there? No?
I'll get me coat.
April 27, 2007
Road To Nowhere
Last night, while idly dicking about with Google Earth, I put a start point of my parents house in North Dublin (which isn't actually on the map) and an end point of my house in South Dublin into the "Get Directions" area, just to see what it would come up with. While nothing as ridiculous as "swim across the Atlantic" came up, it did come up with a rather more convoluted route than I would have. And then I saw something funny.
See, in the past two years, the Fingal council has built a lovely, motorway-standard dual carriageway out that way. The directions given by Google Earth direct you straight to the motorway, pretty much. But on the map, half of the motorway isn't there. Google obviously did one of their famous fly-bys of part of North Dublin/East Meath recently, and are using brand-new data alongside 3-or-4 year old data. They really, really do need to get along with more of those fly-bys.
Have a look at the full-size image, it's really weird seeing a 4-lane motorway fade away and turn into a field (like a magic tractor). You can also see clearly the blue line which accompanies the directions, which seems to be telling me to drive through that same field, and then along the miraculously-appearing motorway.
April 23, 2007
Me Me Me Meme
Via the totally fantastic Annie.
- PICK OUT A SCAR YOU HAVE, AND EXPLAIN HOW YOU GOT IT. Ok, it's a little white scar on my left index finger, and I got it from lifting a steel-radial tire when I was about ten. The tire was very old, and had lots of little sharp steel pointy bits sticking out. It ripped open the whole length of my finger, and blood went everywhere. Not that you'd guess now, the scar is tiny.
- WHAT IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR ROOM? What room? My bedroom? Just a mirror (and no, it's not on the ceiling, Adrian). We haven't got round to putting pictures up yet. Soon.
- WHAT DOES YOUR PHONE LOOK LIKE? A very small camera. And I want a new one.
- WHAT MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO? A little bit like Annie, I would refer you to the Lifewithouttoastcast(s).
- WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT DESKTOP PICTURE? In work, this. At home, this. I am perhaps overly fond of a nice desktop.
- WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW? Lunch.
- DO YOU BELIEVE IN GAY MARRIAGE? Of course. I'm totally liberal, and believe in everything that involves people being nice to, and respecting, each other..
- WHAT TIME WERE YOU BORN? I think it was at 9.05am. Ever since, that time is the earliest I've ever gotten out of bed without feeling tired for the rest of the day.
- ARE YOUR PARENTS STILL TOGETHER? Totally. 35years in December. My parents rock.
- WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO? A rehearsal of "Children Of Eden" on a tannoy in my office. It's not very good.
- DO YOU GET SCARED OF THE DARK? Not ever. I spend over half of my working life in the dark.
- THE LAST PERSON TO MAKE YOU CRY? No idea. Last time I even came close to crying, believe it or not, was Spiderman 2. See if you can guess which bit.
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOGNE / PERFUME? I wear L'Occitaine's Eau De Badian because Nikki loves it, and Nikki wears Very Valentino, and I think it's nice too.
- WHAT KIND OF HAIR/EYE COLOUR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX? I honestly don't have a 'favourite', but for fear of getting a box upside the head, I'd have to say blonde hair/green eyes.
- DO YOU LIKE PAIN KILLERS? If by 'pain killers' you mean 'alcoholic beverages', then yes.
- ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT? Pretty much the same answer as Annie gave on this one, not really too shy, more like totally useless. Not that I need to ask anyone out, being as I am, happily living with Nikki.
- FAVE PIZZA TOPPING? Cheese. Okay, apart from cheese, black and green olives. Mmmm.
- IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I refer you to question 6. And a cup of tea.
- WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU MADE MAD? I don't generally get mad, more just 'in a huff'. And the last person to get me in a huff knows who they are.
- IS ANYONE IN LOVE WITH YOU? If you read this blog, you know the answer. If you read the answer to questions 13 and 16, you know the answer. If you still don't know the answer, it's 'yes'.
April 20, 2007
Pod IV Cast
Here we go again...
Ladiesandgentlemen, may we present for your listening pleasure, episode IV of our magnum opus, the Lifewithouttoastcast. Click on the little blue "play" button to listen to the show in a streaming stylee through your browser, or click on the '45 to open/save the mp3 file.
If your all iTunes-ey, you should already have it on your computer, ready for synchin'. If you haven't subscribed yet, like, what's your problem?! Stick www.lifewithouttoast.com/Lifewithouttoastcast.xml into your iTunes (or audio feed-reader of choice), and savour the hours of sweet, sweet audio goodness.
We hope you enjoy what is possibly our most eclectic show yet! Comments, complaints, tirades of abuse and awards for excellence are always welcome, as usual.
April 19, 2007
Star Wars Personality Test
[WARNING: FLASH + LOUD STAR WARS MUSIC]
April 18, 2007
Sunset From West Pier
Photoblogging...
GoogleCalc
I didn't know this, and just found it out by accident. If you want any unit of measurement converted to any other unit of measurement, just type your calculation into Google in words, and it'll do the calculation for you. Brilliant eh? Well, it is in my job, where metres and feet cross paths on a regular basis.
For example, here I typed "8.8 metres to feet".
Those clever Googlers. They really are brilliant.
April 17, 2007
Anatomy Of A Blog
Via Greg Veen I came across Websites As Graphs.
Above is a graph of Life Without Toast. Pretty crazy huh? I didn't know I had created such a
Also, have a look at some other images tagged with "websitesasgraphs" on Flickr, some of them are amazing.
An Ode To Windows
(Or: Why I Am Buying A Mac)
Oh! Windows, you are so totally utterly rubbish,
With your "downloading updates" and "restart now" every fucking day.
Your viruses and bloatware anger and frustrate me so terribly much,
What can I do to make you go away?
Lo! A mystical place place called the Apple Online Store,An utopia of shiny happy user-friendliness, Core 2 Duo™ and "It Just Works",
People may say I'm just a slutty gadget-whore,
But in reality, what other option is there when Windows is so totally borked?
Soon, there shall be podcasts, movies and stop-motion video,Visits to the Lifehacker/software/Mac page, and no restarting,
Aqua and iSight and that cool transformer that the cable wraps around, woo-hoo!
I'm so awfully excited, oh yes, I really, really am, that Windows and I are parting.
FIN
[yes, I am aware that this ode does not follow the "rules" of an ode, but I don't need no STEENKING RULES, m'kay?]
April 11, 2007
Speaking Of T-Shirts
I got this one today on eBay:
100% of the profits of the auction will go to Africa Aid, which is nice (and which means I donated about ?30). If only I could donate to charity for every cool t-shirt I buy, I'd have donated thousands by now. I suppose I could still do that, without the clever, convenient t-shirt auction being a part of it.
This now takes pride of place as my coolest shirt, only to be worn on the most special occasions, or when I need to look really, really cool.
UPDATE: If you follow the link on Jimmy J's comment, you'll end up here, where there's still a few shirts left, some for a lot less than mine went for. C'mon dudes, it's for charidee, and the shirts are fucking cool. Just imagine strolling into a gig by the really cool band that everyone likes, wearing one of these bad boys. You'd be like, the man (or woman).
April 9, 2007
Somebody Buy Me This
Oh and click through to the Threadless site, the detail on this one is very, very cool.
April 5, 2007
Nintendo Rulez
[This post contains extensive details regarding an error on the Nintendo-Europe Website, Star Points, Wii Points, Nintendo of Europe being asshats, Nintendo being brilliant, and other videogame malarky. If you have no interest in Nintendo, you may want to leave now. If you want to continue, great! This was quite fun.]
Since there has been an internet, and a Nintendo Of Europe, there has been a Nintendo-Europe.com. For years and years, you have been able to redeem "Stars" contained in Official Nintendo© products (500-1000 in consoles, 250 in games) on the website. These have in the past been redeemable for such craptacular goodness as wallpapers, ringtones, iron-on t-thirt transfers (!), etc. Sometimes, there has been limited quantities of Good Stuff available, such as games, etc (usually for about 5000 points, or about ?2,000+ worth of Nintendo products purchased). Mostly, the "Stars Catalogue" has been ridiculed by Nintendo "Fanboys" for being utterly shit, which or the most part, it has been.
I got my Wii in December. When the Wii came out, information surfaced stating the if you "linked" your Wii account and your Nintendo-Europe account, Wii points (used for purchasing classic games from the likes of Nintendo, Sega, Hudsonsoft, etc, for download-and-play action on your Wii) would be available for exchange for Stars in the Stars Catalogue, sometime "in the future". I thought this was great news, and promptly rummaged for every Nintendo product I had, and it's associated Stars contained therein, and registered them all. I ended up with about 5,200 points.
And then I waited, all the while checking the Stars Catalogue and Wii.com every week or so for any updates. And I waited.
And then I waited some more.
And then... There they were. A couple of Fridays ago (the 23rd of March, to be precise), I logged on to the NE website and there was "WiiPoints" available for 789 points (a weird amount, but I'll get to that). "Only 1,542 left!".
And then... I got a 404 error when I clicked the "buy" button. Hmmm, I thought. And then I looked at my "Items Purchased" page, and this is what I saw:
Blank. Apparently, I had acquired "--". And then I looked back at the Catalogue page, and lo, the "Wiipoints" were gone.
So I mailed Nintendo, and waited. And waited.
Teeny-Tiny Thumbdrive
I got this in the post today from Hong Kong. It's a KingMax 4GB USB drive. I can't put into words how small this thing is, so I took this picture with a pencil for a size comparison. The pencil is of the standard size (it's a Faber-Castell Columbus 2103 HB, pencil-nerds), and the USB drive is of the teeny-tiny size. And I plugged it into my PC, and it really does hold 4GB.
So, in theory, why isn't the iPod Shuffle available up to 4GB? And surely you could fit more than 8GB into a Nano too? Wouldn't a 16GB or 32GB Nano just be the absolute bollocks? Or even a 32GB iPhone (if you're stupid enough to buy an iPhone, whenever it eventually comes out)?
I love tiny technology.
April 4, 2007
Ladybird On Babs' Hand
Photoblogging...
I love sunny days off.
April 3, 2007
Canadian Humpage
I was going to just stick this in the links in the sidebar, and then decided that no, it's just TOO FUNNY not to post in the main blog. It's Alanis Morrisette. Stop, no, seriously. It's Alanis, doing a cover of "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas. Genius.
Needless to say, it's a heck of a lot better than the (shite) original, mainly because of the hilarity of it all.
The bit where she nuts the gangsta-lookin' dude in the face is the best bit. :-)
March 31, 2007
New Car!
Okay, so it's very similar to my old car. But please note: Newer model, twice (nearly) the horsepower, tasty wheels, and loads of optional new shiny bits. And a lot like, newer. And shinier. And with less (as in none) dents and scratches.
Yay! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to give it a bit of a run-in, courtesy of the M50 and the back roads of Co. Wicklow.
March 29, 2007
Me & Nikki
We're going out 3 (THREE!) years today.
I think that's pretty amazing. Not surprising, but amazing nevertheless.
We've had our disagreements, but never had a "row", as such.
We're very much in love.
We're way, way, way past the stage where silences are awkward.
We have a house together!
We've been on several holidays, and we shall go on a lot more.
We're not sick of each other.
I watch "America's Next Top Model" with her, and she watches "Battlestar Galactica" with me.
And we give each other huge hugs every day.
We're totally brilliant. :-)
I love you Nikki! xoxoxoxo
You Know Your Boss Is Cool When...
...they send the entire building a link to a YouTube video.
[Granted, it's that Ok Go video with the treadmills (ie not the greatest rock video ever), but I still reckon he's pretty cool.]
March 26, 2007
Scooters
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?
March 21, 2007
Té Con Leche Frío
In case you didn't know, Nikki and I went to Madrid this weekend past. We got the flights as a gift from her Mum & Dad for Christmas (thanks!), which was nice. We had a grand old time, spent mostly idly wandering around the streets and plazas, parks and Tapas Bars. And Starbucks (seriously, breakfast in Madrid was hard to come by, we settled for SB's out of sheer desperation, and convenience).
Madrid is pretty amazing, but definitely what I'd call a typical European Capital City. Very grand in it's architectural stylings, with huge streets, lots of people, a huge amount of history and things to do, but what really struck me as odd was the really low level of English speakers, in all establishments, even restaurants which would seem to be "touristy".. What's really nice is that all over the city there are loads of little parks and gardens, which is perfect for a couple looking to do some serious chilling out of a weekend away. There are also a serious, and I mean serious, amount of fountains. I mean hundreds of them. Everywhere.
Some observations about the city:
- The speed limits in Madrid are seen by the locals as a sort of "minimum suggested speed". Everyone tears about the place.
- Taxi Drivers only wear their seat-belts on motorways.
- As I said, the level of English speaking is incredibly poor, probably worse than Paris.
- The Omelette Sandwiches are fantastic.
- The wine is really, really cheap for a big city.
- So is the food, in general. We only spent over ?50 on dinner once, and that was a big dinner.
- I still love smoking in bars, something sadly missed in Dublin.
- Although we didn't wander far from the "Centro" district, the majority of the city seems to be fairly devoid of rubbish/trash.
- The parks and gardens seem to be the preferred spot for the local stoners to skin up and mellow out.
- The Traffic cops use their whistles, a LOT, to direct the traffic.
- Speaking of cops, they use scooters! Pretty cool, I thought. But they also carry guns, which is not cool.
- Madrid is an artificial city. It developed as a city after it was made Spain's capital. Which is weird.
Anyhoo. We had a fab time. We strolled around for hours, ate some nice food (lots of bocadillos de tortílla, found one of the only vegetarian restaurants (for me) and one of the only tea rooms (for Nikki) with the help of the AA "city guide" drank some nice wine and beer, went to the zoo (!), and constantly struggled to get out a couple of basic Spanish phrases. And Ryanair kinda redeemed themselves with the ease of getting there and back. Kinda. We're still never flying with them again, unless we really, really have to.
Flickr photoset here.
March 20, 2007
The Official Internet Bumper Sticker
[Diesel Sweeties, via BoingBoing]
March 18, 2007
Sunset Over Chamberi
Photoblogging...
March 16, 2007
Jardines de Sabatini
Photoblogging...
At night. Lovely. Very chilled.
March 15, 2007
Twittering
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).
March 13, 2007
Spam Recipe of the Month
So I'm a Gmailer, like the majority of people I know. Gmail rocks, yeah?
I have this thing where I have the RSS feed for blog comments at the top of my mail view in Gmail, just for fun. I only turned the option on last week.
Every so often, instead of the feed, Gmail will slip one of those "targeted ads" into the feed slot instead of what I want to see there (this seems to me like enough reason for me to turn the option off again).
So today, I was emptying my spambox, and this is the targeted ad that the big G thought I'd be interested in:
Genius , I thought.
BRBRBRBBRBRBBBRBRBBRBR
BRBBBRBBRBBRBRBRBBRBRBRBRBBBRBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRB
They are power-washing the entire area outside the theatre (where I work, new viewers).
BBRBBRBBBRBRBRBBRBRBBRBBRBBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBR
Oh my God, I think the noise is going to drive me insane.
BRBBRBBRBBRBRBBRBRBBRBBRBRBBRbrbbrbbrbrbbbrbbrbbrb...
It's stopped (but I can still hear it in my head).
Now it's gone from my head. Aaah, peace and quiet. Now I can finally do some work. I can work through a lot of distractions (chiefly, the "I haven't blogged much recently" one), namely the pounding of music (remember, theatre), the grinding of err... grinders, sawing and hammering involved in building sets and scenery, but the relentless noise of a two-stroke pump is not something I can live work through. Even when I put in my earbuds and listen to my iPod, it's still there.
But it's gone now. So I better get on and do some wor...
BRBRBBRBBRBRBRBRBBRBRBRBBRBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRBBRB
Bollocks.
March 6, 2007
For Fucking Fuck's Sake
March 5, 2007
Brown Envelope
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]
Number 8 For Culinary Book Review
So I was idly browsing my site stats, looking at how we're doing on the hits-pages-visits front (not bad, as it happens), when I noticed a discrepancy. Namely, this image comes up at number 28 on the "top urls" chart. Weird, as the post that image was in was like, a year ago or something.
Then I thought of looking up "kitchen confidential book review" (without the quotes) on the Big G. Turns out my review of the Anthony Bourdain book is at number 8! Very interesting indeed. Either there are very few reviews of this book (there are loads) or the review was a pretty thorough/good one, and lots of people clicked on it (bit big-headed of me, but definitely possible).
So, for all those people who came this way looking for that review of the excellent Kitchen Confidential, and ended up having a poke around to see what else there was, hello! Welcome to the madness. There's some good stuff hiding away in the crevices, from what I've heard. Have a look, you know you want to...
March 4, 2007
Mysterious Ways
Yesterday, after putting it off for what seems like an eternity, I finally set the clock on our DVD player back to the correct time, after it had reset itself following a power cut some weeks back.
Today, there was another power cut, and the clock on the DVD player now reads 6.37pm.
Coincidence?
March 1, 2007
Trailer Park Boys - The Movie
"Set in a separate storyline not related to the "Trailer Park Boys" Television show, but with the same lovable characters. The boys get arrested for robbing an ATM machine and spend 18 months in jail. When the get out, they decide to pull off "The Big Dirty" which is to steal a large amount of coins because they are untraceable and quit their life of crime forever."
(From IMDB Page)
Just finished watching this on err... streaming video on some highly disreputable video site (ahem... delicious link in the sidebar... ahem...) and it's brilliant.
Well, if you're a fan of the (hilarious) adventures of the rum-and-coke drinkin', dope-smokin', smalltime crime-dealin', pot-growin', shopping cart fixin', rhyme bustin' boys from the Sunnyvale Trailer Park it's brilliant. If you've never seen the TV show, well, it doesn't really matter. You may find all the lines and smartass remarks that bit funnier if you've watched every episode of the series, and enjoyed them, several times over (like me) of course, but as the quote above says, this is a completely separate adventure from the goings on in the series (so, newbs are more than welcome to enjoy the goings-on, but you better fasten your bicycle clips, because this shit is fucked).
This necessitates some re-capping of what exactly these boys do in their free time (which is basically all the time). This is ok though, as anything that's gone over is done so briefly and concisely, leaving more room for improved, movie-quality hi-jinks from our intrepid group of misfits. This is good. We like hi-jinks.
I won't go into any of the story here, as that would absolutely ruin it. Yes, I respect the subject matter that much. I think Trailer Park Boys is one of the best things on TV, and I would place it above Shameless in the overall scumbag comedy genre, in my very humble opinion (I welcome debate on that matter too!). Suffice it to say that the boys get up to their usual brand of nonsense and hoojah-ery, they go to jail, do some crimes, eat hotdogs, Randy eats cheeseburgers, Julian always has a rum n' coke (with ice, in a glass) in his hand, you know, it's Trailer Park Boys.
And it's an hour and a half long.
And there's a couple of fairly big set-ups, and a couple of big-ish stunts.
But it's still Trailer Park Boys. And it's an hour and a half long. And that's why it's brilliant. Really, seriously, totally brilliant stuff, from start to finish. But it's not for everyone. If any of this review has put you off in any way, if words like "dope-smoking" and "pot-growing" and "crime" put you off in any way, then don't watch it. It's definitely an acquired taste, that's for sure.
(Oh, and Mr. Lahey is constantly shitface drunk as usual, and the shit-talk is totally off the richter. Here's a gem of Mr. Lahey "shit talk" for you to saviour, TPB fans)
February 24, 2007
Bounced
I would've said hammered myself, but "bounced" is an accurate description.
February 21, 2007
The Wii Is Working
[UPDATE: I am now 32. Although actually I'm 29.]
Disappearing Lake
This is for Turlough, of turloughrynne.com and this picture on my wall fame.
Dude, I just came across this. That's pretty cool! How cool would be if your name meant that (although I am, of course, the "gift of the Lord God Yahu").
And then I came across this. "The effect of the frequent flooding in the turloughs is to alter profoundly the character of the vegetation". :-)
Anyone else got an interesting meaning for their given name?
February 20, 2007
Yahoo! Maps pwns Google Maps
So I was looking at Claire's photos of Knocknasink in Co. Wicklow (very Lord-Of-The-Rings-ey), and she points out that new-ish feature where you can add a map to a photo page, pointing out where the picture was taken. I zoomed in on the map and found that the satellite photos of the area (a fairly remote place) were really good, and they're supplied by Yahoo Maps.
See, I've been checking Google Maps and Google Earth's satellite imagery of North Dublin, to see if you can see my Mam and Dad's house, in Garristown, on them. Basically, you can't. When you go to Google Maps/Earth and look at most of North Dublin, it looks like this:
So like, just a big blurry mess then. I don't even know if this is even near the actual area I'm looking for, as it's such a big mess. It doesn't even have any roads on it for crying out loud, and this is the "hybrid" of satellite and map images.
February 19, 2007
Lithium with Sock Puppets
February 18, 2007
Alone (sniffle...)
Nikki's gone away for a week and a half. To Fargo, North Dakota, of all places. Yes, THAT Fargo. The one from the Coen Brothers film. She's doing something for Microsoft involving merging several different software programs into one (Microsoft having bought several different software companies that do the same thing).
It's weird, y'know. When we started going out, she was involved in moving some MS call centre from Reno, Nevada to Dublin. She was away a LOT (in Reno), but it was happening from when we started seeing each other, so it was like, normal.
Now, she hasn't been away working on a project for over two years. We haven't been apart for this long during that whole time. It's a bit weird, but knowing we won't see each other again until Thursday week, makes me feel all sad (I'm a big sap, I know). I mean, I know we'll talk on the phone, IM, email each other (and she'll almost definitely comment on this post in the morning (or afternoon, my time), but it's still not the same as chatting over dinner, and it's definitely not the same as sleeping beside her at night.
What's wrong with me?! It must be this love thing, I still haven't quite got my head around the swings from euphoria to utter dejection that can come about during the normal course of a committed relationship. And I better get used to it, as she's going to Singapore for a few days at the start of next month, and then back to Fargo again a few days after that, for Pete's sake.
[ps Love you Nikki, xoxoxo]
February 14, 2007
Schmalentines
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
This is for all of you who won't be enjoying Valentines Day. Unlike me. :-PFebruary 12, 2007
Ultimate Geekery
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the toy I always, always wanted, ever since I was a nipper.
[image links to product page]
I even built one myself (several years ago). In fact, I built at least three different versions. And now LEGO have decided to build one themselves, and sell it in strictly limited quantities, for an exorbitant price. And I really, really want one. My 30th birthday is in May, so if anyone is looking for a horrendously impractical, overpriced gift to buy me, this is it.
Also: Best. Favicon. Ever. Seriously. Check it out. This is the LEGO shop one, the one on the main site is red. Genius.
Also (part ii): LEGO BATMAN! :-)
</inner child>
</geek>
February 8, 2007
Moving Hearts Live
Photoblogging...
Legendary.
February 7, 2007
The Toastcasters - Part III
Surprise! We're back. Fasten your seat-belts, put in your earplugs, tighten your bicycle clips and otherwise prepare yourselves for the rockin'est hour of the Life Without Toast 'Cast yet, with also some mellow tunes thrown in so as to not be too scary.
Click on the ticket to download the show, or press that nice little blue "play" button to listen in a streaming stylee.
If you subscribed to it via iTunes or another audio feed-reader, you should already have it, or it'll download itself next time you open iTunes.
If you haven't already subscribed, why not? It's quite good you know, and subscribing means you're almost guaranteed to never miss an episode. To subscribe put www.lifewithouttoast.com/Lifewithouttoastcast.xml in to iTunes into "advanced>subscribe to podcast", or if you use another feedreader the same address will work there too, if your feedreader is any good.
Happy listening!
February 6, 2007
Cock n' Balls Pasta
Photoblogging...
I'm lost for words.
February 5, 2007
Me Playing Zelda (And also Wii Bowling)
Set laughter mode to "on". This is a video of me playing Zelda on the Wii, fighting on horseback with Moblins riding giant boars in the Eldin province. Blame Dan, he asked for it.
Seriously though, it's a really, really good game.
Babs Email Insanity - Episode III
Ok, for those of you unfamiliar with the mails I get from Babs, I suggest you look here and here, then read on. Or you could just dive right in...
Harro,
I am so dying maaaaaan, help me, not sick or anything, just dead bored and feel lethargic, its all your blempt just FYI, people can be so annoying at times, and bollocky work shite, I am off for loads of days 13 in total from tomorrow, perhaps I am having pre holiday blues or summat but I feel like running even though I am wearing high heels and a skirt, I feel weird in these shoes, they are sort of witchy, pointy toey and that, so I cannot run. The feckin sun is BAITING in on me and its making me feel funny. I am convinced its from the dodgy yogurt that you MADE me eat last night before conveniently not eating it yourself, I hope that you have some with you in worky for your lunch and that, yum yum, I am going to make brownies or cookies or something this week for yum treats. Oh Match, I feel so lazy and bizarre today, I am sitting on my own on my side of the desks cause Anto is off so its boring, its boring without Trishbags anyway, she feckin deserted me so she did, oh its 15 mins till lunchtime, yum, cant wait, have deadly gingery soup and other tasty delights like a pink (ponk) lady apple (fizzylicious) and then some bread roll with emmenthal and moutarde and a pear and a banano for my 3pm slump, sugar buzz maaaaaan but au naturel. So sleepy from this Jasus sun, am I going insane? My arms hurt too for some reason, must have been from making that pastry yesterday ? ahahahaha!!!
Love you xxx
Project Playlist
February 4, 2007
24 - Season 6 - Spoiler
I just had to share this with people who might not be watching season 6 of 24.
No Freaking Out
As per Babs' request, here's the amazing "No Freaking Out" sign, ideal for use in all offices or indeed any work-based environment.
I recommend printing it out, laminating it sticking it in every office and room in your workplace.
February 1, 2007
The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess Review
It's hard to describe to someone who's never played a Zelda game just what it is that makes them the Best Games In The World™. It could be the rich stories, with tales of goddesses and darkness, heroes of legend rising through the ages, ancient prophesies and mysteries, and some dude in a green elf suit kicking ass and taking names. It could be the incredible puzzles, requiring lateral thinking and real attention to be paid at all stages of progress, lest you miss some vital clue. It might also be the epic scale of your quest, with it's vast world laid out before you, or that "what weapon or gizmo am I going to get next that will let me get to that place way over there" feeling, which makes opening every door and treasure chest an edge-of-your-seat experience.
But mostly, it's all of these things, and a whole lot more.
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January 28, 2007
Which Science Fiction Writer Are You?
One for the Geeks this one, although the non-geeks might as well give it a go:
 | I am:Isaac AsimovOne of the most prolific writers in history, on any imaginable subject. Cared little for art but created lasting and memorable tales. |
[via BoingBoing]
January 26, 2007
I'm 43.1% Smarter Than Average
January 25, 2007
My View In Work Pwns Your View In Work
Photoblogging...
Ok, it's the view from the roof, but still.
Micro Blogmeet
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! :-)
January 19, 2007
Healthy Health Service
So, I was in St Vincents University Hospital (aka "Vincent's) today for a DEXA scan. Now, I had an appointment for 8.45, so I arrived at 8.45 with a newspaper in my hand and an iPod in my pocket, expecting an inordinately long wait, and to have to ring work to tell them I totally would NOT be in when I was supposed to be, at ten o'clock.
I was pleasantly surprised.
See, recently they built a whole new hospital at Vincent's. I had only ever been to the old one, with it's cramped, stuffy corridors, interminable waits for any kind of examination or service at all, and faint but definitely discernible smell of pee and/or puke. Now it's all different.
I entered into a huge, glass-walled, light-filled reception area, and went up to the reception desk where there was no, I repeat no queue. I asked the guy where I had to go. He had a list right in front of him with my name at the top of it (this is when I realised things might be radically different than before). He said it was the door on the right. There were lots of doors on the right.
"That door, right there?" I asked. He nodded. How convenient, I though.
I went in the door, and found myself in a waiting room. "Ah-HA!" I thought, "it's all an illusion, I really am going to be here for hours after all!" but the thought had only formed in my mind when a friendly Indian/Asian doctor lady walked in, asked me my name, and said they'd be ready in five minutes, and could I fill out this form thingy.
Five minutes later, I was lying on a bed in a hospital gown, getting my spine thoroughly scanned by a very fancy and modern-looking machine (I mean, it wasn't even powered by steam, which means the Irish Health Service is coming along in leaps and bounds) which beeped and moved around, and the bed moved up and down along with it. It took about twenty minutes for the scan, a quick chat with the Belgian scanner-operator lady and I was done. Back in the car, at work at 9.45.
NINE FORTY-FIVE! I was shocked, amazed, stunned. All of a sudden, we appear to have a health service in this country.
(actually, it was probably an isolated incident, and will never happen again)
January 16, 2007
Le Petit Baba
Photoblogging...
Je suis un oncle! This is baby Isobel Ellen Andrews, my first niece ever! And her mammy. We're all very emotional. :-)
January 12, 2007
Wonderpants
There's an article on Livescience.com about Self-Cleaning Underpants made of fabric coated with "nano-particles". Then, "chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material."
"The technology, created by scientists working for the U.S. Air Force, has already been used to create t-shirts and underwear that can be worn hygenically for weeks without washing."
I have to have them. I NEED them. Seriously.
There's other links in the article about chameleonic clothing and spray-on shirts too. I'm not sure about the spray-on stuff, but a chameleon shirt would be cool.
January 9, 2007
The Sound Effect Of The Beast
Photoblogging...
January 8, 2007
Greader
GEEK ALERT: This post is very, very geeky. Non-geeks should probably give it a miss.
I started using Google Reader about a month ago. I was using Sage before that, which is a more lightweight reader, an extension for Firefox, and while it was fine while I used it, I gave Google's offering a try and now there's no going back.
For a start, it looks and operates in a very similar way to Gmail, with an AJAX-ey interface which updates in realtime, so I never have to hit that "refresh" button to see who's posted something new. It's got a lovely "mark all as read" button too, which is nice for when a news blog has posted a hundred things since I checked and I couldn't be bothered reading them all.
You can "star" posts you want to check back on, similar to the "starred" mails thingy in Gmail, which is great. You can also share posts publicly, and very easily, by clicking the "share" button (my shared feeds are here, just in case you want to have a look). There's a function to enable a del.icio.us-like "linkroll" too, but I'm very happy with the one I have now, so for the moment I won't be using that. Still, very cool.
One other very, very cool thing is that if you put the feed for a podcast into the reader, when you look at the resulting feed it looks like this:
That's right, a little Google Video-like streaming widget, and a link to the original mp3 as well. Brilliant. A similar thing happens with Videocasts like ZeFrank, but you don't get the streaming thing, just a link to the source, which is in a larger format than the one he posts on his site, which is nice.
So there you have it. I thoroughly recommend Google Reader for all your feed-management needs, and seeing as it's part of "Google Labs", and therefore experimental (not even "Beta" yet), it can only get much, much better. Give it a go.
January 4, 2007
That Random Book Meme Thingy
Nat's only gone and bollocking tagged me (that's two tags in two days, a new record!) with the random book meme thing, which goes something like this:
- Take the nearest book and go to page 123.
- Go to the fifth sentence of the page.
- Copy down the next three sentences and tag three people.
Nat has also taken the liberty of adding additional rules about doing it in work and asking whether or not you knew what's written on the page you find.
SO! I turned around at my desk and the first book saw was "Sound For Theatres" by Graham Walne, page 123 of which is almost entirely made up of pictures, and which has only three sentences. Dang. I tried again, picking up the second book there, "The Lost Theatres Of Dublin" by Philip B Ryan, which I have perused before on more than one occasion. Page 123 is about The Queen's Theatre, which was demolished in 1969.
"We know what Mr. Lucas means, he elevates Leno to the status of a serious artist, but we don't know what it was like to experience his artistry. George Bernard Shaw admired Marie Lloyd, but often wondered why someone didn't write humorous songs for her. Her songs, according to GBS, were very funnily sung but were not in themselves particularly funny.
I have to admit, apart from "George Bernard Shaw", I haven't a notion who's being talked about here. Marie Lloyd? A quick glance at the Wiki-wiki-wah gives me some insight. Interesting.
I'm not tagging anyone this time. If you really, really want to do this one, go crazy.
January 3, 2007
Five Things You Don?t Know About Me
Dragon has only gone and tagged me (the bugger). So here's five things you don't know (or might not know) about me:
- I lived with my parents until I was 25 (yes, that's twenty-five).
- I have never been to America.
- I was once a door-to-door salesman for Granton/Ds-Max (and hated it immensely).
- My favourite food is sandwiches.
- I have absolutely no irrational fears or phobias about anything at all (feel free to challenge me on this one).
This is me, tagging Annie, Ian and Sharky. Tell us what we don't know dudes.
Annnnnnd... We're Back.
Me and Nikki went to London for New Years. We didn't do much apart from eating LOTS of amazing Italian food, courtesy of our friend Lauras' ex-chef Dad, drink lots of home-made wine, chill and sleep, however, amongst the highlights were:
- Going to the Science museum (but leaving because it was WAY too hot in there).
- Going for lunch in Reigate.
- Going to Covent Garden (we *heart* Covent Garden).
- Getting totally fucking soaked in a sudden downpour and not really caring.
- Eating 12 grapes, one for every "bong" of Big Ben at midnight on New Years Eve/Day (and watching grapes come out of Nikki's nose due to extreme amounts of hilarity ensuing).
- Learning how to play Briscola (badly).
- Meeting Dan, Nat and Ian for late lunch/early dinner on New Years Day (and watching Dan drink five Virgin Marys in 30 minutes without puking).
- Meeting Adrian for lunch in Richmond (near where he works in eBay).
I won't harp on about how completely SHITE Ryanair have become, and how even their own staff are complaining about their ?8/kilo excess baggage charge, but suffice to say that after our trip to Oslo in March (which is already booked), we will never travel with them again.
Unfortunately, due to several silly circumstances, we didn't meet up with Annie, which is a real, real pity as she is so lovely and we really wanted to see her while we were there. Oh well, next time, ok Annie?
Happy New Year everybody!
December 23, 2006
Hiatical
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
December 22, 2006
Pod Wars: Episode II
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.
December 18, 2006
'Twas The Week Before Christmas...
...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. :-)
December 11, 2006
Tenacious D LIVE: Review
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!)
December 10, 2006
Tenacious D LIVE
Photoblogging...
December 9, 2006
Wii: It's Like Going To The Gym, Only Not
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!
December 8, 2006
J'ai Le Wii
Photoblogging...
Got me one!
UPDATE: My Wii number is 8523 3698 9377 7364. Add me to your friends list, if you have one. Cheers!
December 6, 2006
Ads Suck: Discuss
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.
December 4, 2006
Commenting Problems
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.
December 3, 2006
Highlight...
...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.
November 29, 2006
The Year Of The Hiker
Myself, Nikki, my cousin Juno and her fella Eoghan all went to see Druid Theatre Company's production of John B Keane's "The Year Of The Hiker" last night. Despite working in a theatre every day (and sometimes every day), I hardly ever really properly "go" to the theatre, except when I feel I really shouldn't miss a particulat show. I sit in some nights on the show that's on where I work, but that's not really the same as really properly going to see a show. The last time I went to a show was "Stones In His Pockets" by Marie Jones over a year ago, and the time before that was "The Lieutenant Of Inishmore" by Martin McDonagh, nearly three years ago!
Anyway. Druid's production of "Hiker" was absolutely immaculate. Having worked on getting the show in I may have garnered more of an appreciation for what went into the production, from the enormous set to the multi-projector set-up for the backgrounds, to the lighting, sound, wardrobe and scene-changes, but nothing prepared me for the acting. Mick Lally, Nick Lee, Garrett Lombard, Eleanor Methven, Aaron Monaghan, Sarah Greene and Catherine Walsh are all incredibly good actors in their own right, but under the direction of the legendary Garry Hynes their performances meld with a richness that draws you in and allows the story to wash over you in a way that is quite breathtaking. Several times during the show I myself found myself holding my breath in anticipation of what might come next, and could sense tremendous trepidation from other punters around me. It is rare that a piece of theatre can draw such a reaction from such a mixed audience of everyone from teenage girls to octogenarians.
The production is nearing the end of it's tour of Ireland, and if you can, go and see it, you will not be disappointed.
Opera Mini 3.0
For those of you (like me) who do a fair bit of browsing from their phones, you may like to know that Opera Mini v3.0 has now been released. Your favourite mobile phone browser now features RSS feed-reading loveliness, even faster page-shrinking trickery, secure connections for banking and the like, and photo uploading (though I can't get it to work with my k750).
Go and get it, it totally kicks ass, and even makes me think seriously about giving the full-on version of Opera more of a serious look than I have before. Comments?
November 25, 2006
Review: "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny"
Following on from my review of the soundtrack comes the (some might say inevitable) review of the actual movie itself."The greatest motion picture of all time"
Cast:
- Jack Black
- Kyle Gass
- Ronnie James Dio
- Meat Loaf
- Tim Robbins
- Ben Stiller
Nintendo In "Advertising" Shocker
I just saw an ad for The Legend Of Zelda - Twilight Princess, at a minute past one in the morning, on a Friday night (morning/night/you know what I mean), on RTÉ 2, and Irish TV station. This is the first time I've ever seen an ad for a Nintendo game on an Irish TV station. EVER.
I take this to mean that Nintendo actually intend to sell some consoles and/or games in this "next" generation of gaming. Thank The FSM for that. Oh, and it's out in two weeks too! I'm literally... trembling... with anticipation.
No, seriously. I really am.
November 24, 2006
Sand Fantasy - Art On Sand
Ilana Yahav is a sand animation artist. Using only her fingers, Ilana draws with sand on glass table.
[via DJ Annie Mac's del.icio.us page]
November 21, 2006
Which File Extension Are You?
<geek>
</geek>
November 20, 2006
Review - Tenacious D "The Pick Of Destiny" (CD)
Long Live The D?
I've been an enormous fan of The D For a number of years now, and have probably seen the entirety of their "Complete Masterworks" at least thirty or forty times, and I have no idea how many times I have listened to their first album, the eponymous "Tenacious D", but suffice it to say I know pretty much every lyric to every song on it, as evidenced by these two videos. You may think I'm sad, or a nerd, but I'm just a disciple to the Way Of The D.
November 15, 2006
It's the PICK...
November 14, 2006
164,678,261st
Not really that high, all things considered (click image to see where you are).
November 10, 2006
I'm Not A Musical Genius :-(
I've Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts
Photoblogging...
By "Bunch Of Coconuts" I mean, of course, "Pile Of Brand New Lenovo Thinkcentres". I *heart* the Arts Council. :-)
November 6, 2006
Oh yeah, and...
...I wish they'd use stronger glue to stick the poppy-seeds to poppy-seed bagels, my keyboard has enough poppy-seeds in it to make half a pound of smack
feed a small army of sparrows
make a delicious poppy-seed cake
make cleaning it an absolute frickin' nightmare.
Does anyone know where I can get an extremely small Hoover?
Quote Of The week month Now
I'm doing a Advanced Certificate in Management Practices at the moment, amongst other things. It is mainly taught by Arthur McKeown, a man who, amongst other things, has been a lighthouse keeper, taught English as a foreign language in Libya, and taught the Certificate I'm doing (of course).
In talking about presentations today, he remarked:
All Power corrupts,
Powerpoint corrupts absolutely
Which I thought was absolutely brilliant. :-)
November 2, 2006
What You Don't Want On The Internet
So, idly browsing the net this evening (as you do), I happened to do that thing that everyone swears blind that they've never done, and Googled myself. And what, you ask, was item one on the list?
I was pleasantly surprised, at first, when I found that the first result was Wikipedia. Then I realised what it was for. Anyone remember that time I entered Google Idol? With an hilarious lip-synching of "Double Team" by Tenacious D, and reached the Semi-Final of that round in the competition? No? Well that's what the Wikipedia entry containing my name is about.
The shame.
Fortunately, I've used "Matthew Verso" for almost everything I've done online, and "Matt Verso" for everything I've done in work, so if you Google my "work name", you get a load of work-ey stuff, and none of the bloggy, geeky nonsense that I do in my spare time. Give it a try, and see the difference.
But now that I've gone and used both names in this post, right now, that'll probably bollocks all that up royally. Do I care? Not really. [UPDATE: yes, I've fucked it up completely]
So, anyone else got a Google shame that they wish they could keep hidden?
October 29, 2006
Death By Caffeine
Click the image to try it yourself. Every caffeine-containing drink is there, just about. Interestingly, 70.19 cans of Jolt Cola would also pop my clogs. I used to drink a lot of that stuff, but not any more...
October 27, 2006
Signed-in, Sealed, and Pwn3d
So like, Yahoo! have decided that creating a personalized "sign-in seal" will prevent you from being phished, scammed and spammed. They might be right, but by leaving users open to create their own personal message to themselves when they sign in has left Yahoo! rife for a bit of piss-taking by smarty-pants people like myself, as seen in the picture below.
October 23, 2006
Firefox v2.0
W00t! Firefox v2.0 is released today! The main Mozilla site hasn't updated yet, but via the magic of Lifehacker, I have discovered it can be downloaded from here (Mac version here).
It pretty much rocks, with inline spell-check in all web forms, like the form I'm posting this from (which should be great for Adrian), comment forms, etc. It also has little "X"s on all tabs for closing them (for those who didn't know about the middle-click-trick), better security, and handy "undo close tab" (YAY!) option on the new tab-bar drop-down menu, and a million other things little things I haven't found yet.
The only thing that's a bit of a pisser is that mu del.icio.us extension (or "add-on" as they now appear to be called) hasn't been updated yet. But that's something that will probably be sorted tomorrow if Joshua and co. get their shit together.
Anyhoo, download it. NOW. It's brilliant. And far better than IE 7 which was released last week and is pretty much not anywhere near as good as Firefox version 1, never mind version 2.
October 22, 2006
Harlem Gospel Choir
Photoblogging...
They know a man from Galilee, apparently. :-)
October 19, 2006
Terror Soap
Spotted in a market in Costa Rica, here's one liquid you might not want to bring onto a plane with you...
Well, definitely not in the US anyway.
[via BoingBoing]
October 16, 2006
4 Day Weekender
So, I had a four day weekend.
On Friday, we went to Turlough (my cousin's cousin)'s exhibition, and we bought a lovely picture of his. Click the linked image here for a closer look, it's really cool.
Nikki's birthday party was on Saturday. I cooked a huge dinner, and Nikki and her friends Laura (who was over from London for the weekend), Claire, Deirdre and Catherine, and myself, enjoyed it very much, along with the piles of wine and beer we had, and the banoffee pie Claire very nicely prepared (it was scrum-diddley!).
On Sunday, I chilled and the girls went for lunch in Dun Laoghaire. Claire, Deirdre and Catherine went home, and Nikki and Laura came home, and we chilled all evening, and watched Spider-Man 2 (again!).
Today, I picked up the picture we bought on Friday, and chilled.
It was a pretty chilled weekend!
October 13, 2006
Thirtysomething
Happy Birthday to my beautiful Nikki who has now passed the point of no return, and reached the grand old age of 30!
"Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy biiiiiirthday dear Nikki!
Happy birthday to you!"
Hip-hip, HOORAY!
Apparently (she says) she feels much older and wiser today, but I don't believe a word of it.
We're having a few guests over tomorrow to our lovely pad for a big pile of nosh and booze. Which is nice. I'm cooking, so naturally the food will fricking ROCK ASS.
October 11, 2006
Posty Archivey History Stuff
Right, so I spent a couple of hours tonight (much to Nikki's chagrin) creating some new stuff for the archives page (just in case anyone looks there apart from the DRS's*).
Firstly, I created a list (on the main archive page, just under the 'Recent Posts' section) of the last ten posts from myself, and then the last ten posts from Babs. Go there now, and have a look. See? Nice, isn't it? Not bad, eh?
Secondly, as you can see from the big fat link beside the title of each list, there's now a new archives page for ALL posts by me, and another page listing ALL posts by Babs. Which is also nice, and not bad.
This is mostly for me, to see what I'm capable of in the copy-and-pasting stakes, and creating the odd original bitín of code myself, with this Moveable Type thingy, and this other PHP thingy, and possibly extending the functionality of the LWT a little bit. Mostly for me, I say, but definitely a little bit for Adrian, who's poor head has been fucking WRECKED since he lashed this blog together for me, with constant "how do you do this?" and "can you do this for me?" -type questions. Now, Adrian's a mate, and I hate asking my mate's for TOO much, in anything at all. Ade's been brilliant, but it's really time I started doing some of this shit myself. So I have, and this is what I've done for starters.
*Dirty Rotten Spammers
October 9, 2006
iTunes, Spyware and Other Horrible Shit
So. After I made that podcast that everyone's talking about, I decided that it might be a good idea to put in on my actual iPod, to see what it sounded like. So on Saturday (a little late, seeing as the podcast went public on Friday!) I plugged me iPod into me laptop, to do the auld sync-aroo, and something most unexpected happened. Nothing.
Well, I say nothing, but actually what happened was Windows Explorer opened up and showed me stuff that was on my iPod. iTunes didn't even quiver. iTunes didn't recognise my iPod in the slightest. I looked up the help files on the Apple site and it seemed to be a common problem with this new iTunes version 7.0.1. "Open 'my computer>manage'", they said, "and start the iPod service in 'services'". So I did. iTunes saw my iPod. For about a second. Then it was gone again. Rinse, repeat. Same result.
October 6, 2006
Welcome To The Lifewithouttoastcast!
Well, ladiesngentlemen, here we are.
The result of endless nagging (thanks for all your help Dan), a couple of late nights sat in front of a laptop talking into a mic with my brilliant cousin Andy and wondering if anyone would think any of what we were doing was remorely funny and/or entertaining in the slightest, the with the help of Adrians excellent guide to podcasting with iTunes and Moveable Type, it's finally here.
It's LIFEWITHOUTTOASTCAST time!
Click here to feel the noize (mp3, 61MB), or click that little blue 'play'-type button for your streaming convenience.
If you want to stick it straight into your iTunes/iPod, lash this link into advanced>subscribe to podcast :
www.lifewithouttoast.com/Lifewithouttoastcast.xml (I hope this works Adrian!) (UPDATE: It's working)
Happy listening!
[read previous post and heed warnings about level changes, hardware fuck-ups, etc]
Toastcasting Update!
Well, myself and Andy were up until about 2.30am this morning getting the podcast finished and produced. I'm totally knackered today, wandering around in a bit of a daze (but not in any way compromising the health or safety of anyone where I work, due to my extreme awesomeness).
October 5, 2006
Pinky McPinkerson
October 4, 2006
Supermarket Software
(...Idly strolling through Tesco...)
Hmmm... Sandwich, sandwich, sandwich. These are all crap, I'd be better off going to M&S. In fact, fuck this, I think I will...
I think we need Jam. And butter. That schmancy Italian coffee I got in town will only last until the end of this week.
Tesco Value Digestives are really good. They're at least 95% as good as McVitie's, and they're only 37c. THIRTY-SEVEN CENTS! How do they do it?! It's Witchcraft I tell you!
Hang on. This can't be right. Tesco Anti-Virus...?
"Bollocks", I cry.
No, it's really real.
Holy shit! Tesco Office! Like Microsoft Office, only not quite as good, and it's ?30! THIRTY FUCKING EURO!
Hmmm... If I didn't already have MS office on my computer, would I buy this? Probably not. I'd probably download Open Office, despite it's myriad bugs and problems, because it costs exactly nought cents...
Then again, Average Joe probably hasn't got a clue about Open-Source goodness. He'll buy Tesco Office and like it. He'll think it's the best thing since... Well, either Tesco Digestives or MS Office, depending on where he's coming from. Hmmm... It appears Tesco office is just Ability Office with a Tesco sticker on it. And Tesco Anti-Virus is the godawful Panda in sheeps clothing.
So I was totally right with my cry of "Bollocks!" then...
(...Goes to M&S for a superior sandwich...)
October 3, 2006
US Torture Bill as C code
WARNING: GEEK ALERT
if (person = terrorist) {Can you spot the error?
punish_severely();
} else {
exit(-1);
}
[stolen from via BoingBoing]
September 28, 2006
Older and Wisern't
Happy birthday to Babs, who has reached the grand old age of 23 today!
Hip-Hip, HOORAY!
We're all going to dinner in the lovely Bar Italia tomorrow to mark the occasion, it should be fab.
Happy birthday Babs! Love ya to bits. :-)
September 27, 2006
Lifehacking Commentage
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.
September 25, 2006
Dublin Coastal Developmen't
Seems almost real, until you hear the words "world's first giraffe-only zoo", and you see the island is shaped like a huge shamrock.
(credit to Babs, who mailed this to me. I dunno who mailed it to her...)
September 21, 2006
The Greatest Band On Earth
Photoblogging...
I'm totally going! And so are Babs and Andy. WOO-HOO!
September 19, 2006
Fly me to Mullingar
Last May, for my Birthday, Nikki got me Flying Lessons (thanx Nikki! xoxo)
On Sunday, Midway through September, I finally got round to using them.
It was absolutely brilliant.
September 15, 2006
Meme Me Baby One More Time (slight return)
QE has just, through a miracle of blogging technology (and in his first post in nigh on two months, the neck of him), remembered me of an idea I had back in March, which I asked "someone" to remind me of.
It goes something like this:
I hereby call on Annie, Gordon, Dan, Babs and QE (and me!) to indulge themselves in a bit of musical rehashery, and do that 20 tracks meme thingy all over again. And like, yeah, whoever else wants to do it too. You have one week (let's say midnight on Friday? Lovely!).
LETS GET IT OOOON!
Toastcasting
I finally got around to having a good play around with Audacity last night, in preparation for when I get around to lashing a proper podcast together, if only to stop Dan pestering me about it (actually, mostly to see if I can come up with something interesting). It's ridiculously easy to use, and definitely a lot easier than I thought it would be. I was able to throw together twenty minutes of a decent mix with dialogue and tracks in about 45 minutes. I reckon a half-hour show would be just about right, which means only about 5 tracks per show, with some banter and stuff in between. I'm trying to get Andy on board to be the co-host, as I reckon just me talking and playing tracks would be interminably boring. I may be wrong, but I don't think so. Babs will also almost definitely make a guest appearance or three (I haven't mentioned it to her though, and how do you make an 'appearance' if no-one can see you anyway?!).
Anyhoo. I probably won't get a chance to actually do the recording bit for quite a while (at least a couple of weeks), so in the meantime, I'm putting some stuff down on paper. If anyone has any requests for tracks (that aren't something everyone's heard before) then let me know at the address at the bottom of the page. I've got quite a few ideas already, but I'm totally open to suggestions. If I have more than enough for two or three shows before I make the first show, well, there might even be a second show. But we'll see how the first one goes first.
September 13, 2006
The Funniest Joke In The World
Careful now, you might die laughing...
September 11, 2006
Weekend
I'm cream-crackered.
Friday, we had my cousin Andy and his girlfriend Nikki (no, it's not that confusing) over for dinner. I threw together an enormous stir-fry with everything under the sun in it (we're talking onions, 10 cloves of garlic, baby corn, asparagus, red pepper, carrots, sprouts, marinaded tofu, chilli, Thai 7 spice [brilliant], rice, fish, and other things I forget, it was really good, lots, of 'mmmmmms') and got the beer and wines in, Andy brought some nice cheeses and crackers, and we all stuffed our faces and got a bit pished. It was great.
Saturday Nat and Ian came down to the southside as they were in Dublin for the weekend, were looking to meet up and I had come up with a fabulous plan for them, that didn't involve wandering aimlessly and doing touristy things. We walked up the top of Killiney hill, took pictures of the amazing view, walked down, drove to Dun Laoghaire, got coffees and went for a stroll on the pier, had lunch in Harry's Café Bar, came out to Shankers and showed them our lovely house, drove into Dublin City, had a walk around and went for a drink or three in John M Keatings, a new-ish pub/restaurant/club/thingy built out of a converted church, strolled up Grafton St. and went for dinner in Café Bar Deli in Bewleys Café, before we parted ways and went home tired but happy (Nat and Ian: you guys rock!).
Sunday, we got up kinda late-ish, Nikki went to Dundrum and I watched the Grand Prix (Schumacher announced his retirement!). My sister Rebecca and her husband Sean came over for a cuppa with their house-warming pressie which was lovely. We chilled out for a bit after that, then went into town to see Jimmy Carr in the Olympia. He was fucking hilarious, a million one-liners, and particularly good with the hecklers, which is a measure of how good any comedian is, imho. I give him an 8 out of 10.
Really, really great weekend. I'm knackered. Next weekend I'm going flying. I'm off to bed now. Zzzzz...
September 9, 2006
On The Pier
September 6, 2006
Bestest Of Clobber
Seeing as I totally forgot, and she might not have told everyone, Nikki has uploaded all her photos from the Snowdonia trip and my cousin Ian's wedding onto her Flickr. My Snowdonia pics are up in my 'Snowdonia' photoset, but I got almost no photos of the wedding due to me being an usher all day and having a lot of things to do.
Have a look, to see me, Babs, Nikki and Rebecca (aka 'the big sis') in varying states of drunkenness in our bestest of clobber, along with all the rellies and the campest photo of me I think you'll ever see. Enjoy!
Fucking Scumbags
I know someone, lets's call him 'Aloysius'*, who has a problem. For the last several years, he has been living beside some fucking scumbags, who seem to believe that his garden is a perfectly reasonable receptacle for their empty Guinness and cider cans and flagon bottles. Several times he has had his garden cleared of this rubbish, only for it to return soon after. On one occasion I counted upwards of fifty empty Strongbow (the preferred tipple of scumbags and winos) cans in one corner of the garden.
Last week, Aloysius (in an inebriated, angry state) flipped, filled up a black bag with these cans, and lobbed it over the hedge onto the neighbors path. The bag disappeared the next day, but the cans once again started appearing in the garden. Aloysius is now in fear of his life, or at least the cleanliness of said garden.
Aloysius has called, and written to, the council (as it is they who own the house next door, and not the occupiers, who are too useless and lazy to have actual jobs, and prefer instead to spend their days indoors, drinking and watching tv, and living off the dole), stating the problem, but has had no reply or result. Therefore it seems that throwing rubbish into your neighbour's garden is an acceptable practise. I wonder, though if we all started doing the same thing, would we get away with it, or would a hefty littering and/or disturbance fine be slapped down upon us. Maybe we should all give it a try and see?
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent. If you know the identity of 'Aloysius', please DO NOT reveal it here, or I will have to delete your comment.
September 4, 2006
Le Petit Baba Update
As per me big sis's comment on the post about the lumpy milk, here's the latest scan of my niece/nephew to be, at 20 weeks. Halfway there!
(Any coments about sexual appendages that may or may not be visible in the scan and that you may or may not be able to see, please refrain from commenting them here, as Rebecca doesn't want to know what flavour he/she is until she sees him/her 'for real')
RIP The Crocodile Hunter
Steve Irwin, the eponymous "Crocodile Hunter", has died in a marine accident while filming an underwater documentary off the coast of Australia.
I know some people thought he was annoying and a bit of an idiot, and his famous "holding the baby while feeding a crocodile" incident didn't go down too well with the masses, but he was basically a good guy, in my opinion, who did a lot for conservation and animal welfare during his lifetime, and his constant, boundless enthusiasm for what he was doing was always entertaining.
Rest in peace, Steve, we'll miss ya.
UPDATE: It seems that the news of poor Steve's demise was quite popular, to the extent that it completely trashed many website's bandwidth, including most of the big Australian news sites, and the crocodilehunter.com site I mentioned above. Steve was a popular guy.
Lumpy
Don't you just hate it when:
The milk you bought the day before yesterday has the same use-by date as the milk you bought the week before last, namely three days ago, 1-Sep-06.
Fuck Spar, the non-milk-date-checking bastards.
August 28, 2006
The Devil Plays Off a Scratch
Up in Andys, having a chat, after work. Nice and chilled.
Idly chatting about all kinds of crap, the fantasticness of the festival on the weekend, Andy having to work all weekend and him being teeny tad pissed off and full of coldy stuffy horribleness after getting lashed on at Daft Punk on Friday night, only seeing a couple of things over the weekend, I was all "Trans Global Underground was cool, and the Disco Brasil thing was really deadly, I was really pissed (ow my head when I got up this morning)" yadda blah etc. Ant and Dec's "Northern Rock All* Star Cup" celebrity golf thingy is on TV.
Alice Cooper is playing well (he plays almost every day, you know), Meatloaf's not bad either. Alice Cooper. Meatloaf. Golf. Weird.
Do you reckon the Devil plays gold? I reckon he does. If Alice does, I reckon old Nick pulls on his plus-fours and the old argyle geansaí every so often for an auld front nine before lunch. Probably does.
That's probably all that's on on TV in hell, The Devil, playing golf, all day, every day.
Not in golfer's hell, obviously.
Me and Andy talk about some weird shit.
August 27, 2006
Trans Global Underground
Photoblogging...
Disco Brasil!
Photoblogging...
August 26, 2006
Marzoug Band
Photoblogging...
August 23, 2006
That Time Of The Year Again
It comes but once a year. That week that I do 70-80 hours of back-breaking work, with no overtime, and really, truly don't mind, as it's so interesting and much fun. The week 250-300,000 people descend on the town of Dun Laoghaire in county Dublin, to attend indoor and outdoor gigs, dance shows, theatre, workshops, clubs, markets and 'street events', and generally have a thoroughly excellent time.
This year, myself and herself have the pleasure of entertaining Adrian and Annie over the weekend. The Sev is arriving tomorrow, and Annie on Saturday. In between doing all those previously-mentioned hours of festival work (6 shows in 4 days, plus discussions, seminars, workshops, photoshoots, tv work, and general management and production-type stuff), I will endeavour to show them why exactly, once a year, Dun Laoghaire is the coolest place in the entire world.
As I'm kinda totally up to my tits (did I mention that already?), I don't know what's going to happen here on the LWT. If all goes according to plan, I will be 'live blogging' the entire thing, in photos (if all doesn't go according to plan, you won't hear jack from me all weekend, but that's not going to happen).
Later dudes. Updates (may or may not start) from tomorrow.
August 22, 2006
Eco-Tacular
Photoblogging...
Fill 'er up with Crisp n' Dry there bud.
August 18, 2006
Any Lottery-Related Question Roughly Guessed
In relation to Seamus' questioning of value of the ?2 per question answered on the AQA service, I decided, in fact, to go ahead and ask AQA the question:
What will the winning Lotto numbers be this Saturday 19th of August?
AQA: If AQA could predict the lottery numbers this Saturday, the service would cost more than it does. Here is a suggestion: 8, 19, 21, 25, 37, 44. Good luck!
I'm going to trust AQA and see if I win the lottery this Saturday. If I am successful, I will inform AQA that they should probably increase the cost of the service.
AQA: They don't do 'the future'.
UPDATE: I am no richer today than I was yesterday, despite AQA's best efforts. I deduce that there is no need after all for them to raise their prices above the ?2 per question they currently charge.
August 15, 2006
Any Question Answered
Taking a cue from Dan, I have investigated the AQA service, seeing as how it's now available in Ireland. You simply text a question (any question) to 57275, and you get the answer back a couple of minutes later, for a fee. Dan's had a lot of fun blogging questions and answers, so I thought I'd shamlessly plagarise join in on the fun, and have a go myself:
Me: "If you only have one leg, and you go into a shoe shop, do you have to pay for two shoes or can you just argue "but I only want one"?"
AQA: "There are no shops that specifically sell single shoes, but they could be ordered. Bear in mind that many amputees have artificial limbs and would want two shoes"
Well, that's that cleared up then. AQA: Any Question Answered.
My Mam's Jam Is The Best Jam
Photoblogging...
Bar none. And especially on a hot Marks & Spencer crumpet. With real butter. Mmmm...
And The Rain Came Splashing
Well, there goes the summer. Although Autumn officially started in Ireland two weeks ago (according to Wikipedia and the Irish Calendar), I hope to God The Flying Spaghetti Monster that this isn't the end of the sunshine and warmth I've grown so used to over the past month or two. Just in case though, I would advise Adrian and Annie to bring their waterproofs when they come over for the FOWC in a couple of weeks. Similarily I would advise Nat and Ian to bring their wellies and jackets when they visit Dublin (whenever that may be), even (nay especially) if the weather forecast says the weather will be amazing.
It has been an abnormally err... summery... summer, but the misery that is evident when I look out my office window kinda gets me down a wee bit and makes me forget just how great Global Warming has been to us this summer*. Even though I know it's great for the plants and crops and flowers and trees and all that (which is like, great, an' all), it still makes me yearn for blue skies and sunshine. And above all, less wetness. I think Global Warming means more rain when it does rain too, though (Wikipedia didn't help a lot on this one)?
I suppose I should be happy that I have a window, really.
</whinge>
[*note: Global Warming is BAD]
August 11, 2006
The Time Fountain
From the same school (LED-based techno wizardry) as the Pac Man Spoke Lights, comes the 'Time Fountain'...
Isn't it lovely? I'd love to make one, but I'd probably blow it up, and/or ruin the carpet with the glow-in-the-dark goo.
[via Linkbunnies and Endgadget]
August 10, 2006
Outlook WTF?
I just started using Microsoft Outlook 2003, after using a completely different email program that almost nobody uses for a few years, and getting nicely used to it and it's little idiosyncrasies and quirks. I knew how to use it, anyway. I don't really know my way around Outlook. The '2003' version has this little 'Favourite Folders' box, which I'm sure someone in Microsoft R&D though was a great idea, but I have no use for whatsoever. Trouble is, it's taking up valuable space, and I can't find any way to get the fucking thing out of my sight. Anyone got any tips out there?
And any other Outlook-ey hints and tips would be greatly appreciated too!
Cheersamundo dudes (and dudettes).
August 8, 2006
Book Review - War Of The Flowers
Ah, Tad Williams, how I love thee (in a platonic way, of course). I was introduced to the works of Mr. Williams by a crazy sci-fi lovin' pathologist girl I used to knew (haven't seen or heard from her in about ten years, wonder what happened to her...), through his 'Otherland' saga, which I thought to be stupendously brilliant, and hold on an equal level to Lord Of The Rings in the 'books I love' list, in my brain. This is a slightly less weighty tome, but I thought it was an enjoyable romp, and a real page-turner (I finished it in 3 days, while on holiday, and it's over 700 pages. I'm a slow reader, Dan). Anyhoo...
Theo, yeah? Main character. Bit of a 'dude'. Smokes weed, plays guitar in a band, does a bit of songwriting. Doesn't give a crap about anything except his poor sick Ma. Finds (in a convoluted way) this old journal belonging to an uncle of his, which talks about another place, another world, the land of 'Faerie'. Thinks it's all a load of bollocks, but it like, sounds so real, n' shit. Then a big slimy monstry thing made out of bits of old winos and dead cats comes after him while he's chilling out in a cabin in the woods, and a little fairy called Applecore appears and opens a gateway and the two of them bugger of outta dodge and away from the monstery pile of wino-cat. Good start, eh? But it IS only the start.
Things To Do On A Bank Holiday Weekend
(For all of you non-Irish readers, this weekend just past was a bank holiday in Ireland, so nyah-nyah)
- Get up late.
- Have a leisurely breakfast.
- Read the papers.
- Chill out.
- Go for a drive in Wicklow.
- Make a nice dinner.
- Drink a nice bottle of wine.
- Watch a good film.
- Go to bed late.
- Get up even later.
- Drink coffee.
- Smoke cigarettes.
- Go for a stroll on the pier.
- Go for a coffee & a cake.
- Go for a stroll in Dalkey.
- Load photos onto your PC, a peruse them at a leisurely pace.
- Get an Indian take-away.
- Play video games.
- Go to bed at a reasonable hour, ready for work (gah!) the next day.
August 3, 2006
Nike Air McFly
If there's anyone who doesn't want these, you can't be my friend...
[via some dude]
August 2, 2006
Blonde Moment #92
So I'm on the couch, watching an episode of the Simpsons, and Nikki casually remarks, without thinking about what she's saying:
"That's weird, I haven't got my jugs out yet"
(Cue uproarious, snorting laughter from me, and much slapping of my thigh)
"I mean, I haven't unpacked my measuring jugs, from the boxes, oh, you know what I mean!"
I'm still laughing. :-)
(Heh-heh... jugs... heh-heh-heh)
July 31, 2006
Movie Review - Cars
Words cannot express the level of admiration I have for the guys (and girls) working at Pixar, they've only gone and done it again. All the other studios must shit themselves every time a new Pixar movie comes out.
Anyhoo. It's brilliant. The animation is ASTOUNDING. I never thought I'd see automobiles brought to life on screen in such an expressive way. I mean, cars aren't meant to show emotion (or provoke emotion from you either, at least not that way), but these do, in a way I would not have thought possible. Every little detail is perfect, for the tires on Lightning McQueen (the 'star' voiced by Owen Wilson, in great form) that have 'Lightyear' on them, rather than 'Goodyear' (an Pixar in-joke that I missed until about halfway through the film), to the leaves on the trees, the chips in the tarmac, the rust on the older cars, it's so, like, unbelieveable, that it's almost real. The cast, from Wilson to Paul Newman as the Mayor of Radiator Springs, to the ubiquitous (in Pixar flicks) John Ratzenberger, Cheech Marin (yay!) and even Michael Keaton as one of Lightning McQueen's rivals, all excel and revel in their roles.
The story, well, have you seen 'Doc Hollywood'? It's the same, pretty much. Big city slicker has an accident on his way to his next big break, winds up in backwater nowhere town, can't leave, hates the place and everything and everyone in it, has to do work to make up for making a mess of things, 'finds himself', finds love, makes lots of friends, and decides to stay.
That's it in a nutshell, but there's so much more, I don't really want to give too much away, because you should really, really, REALLY go an see this film. Go now! Leave work, and go. Or if you can't do that, go tonight. Seriously. You'll have the best time you've ever had (since The Incredibles / Finding Nemo / Monsters Inc / Toy Story 2, need I go on?).
(oh, and the short film at the start, 'One Man Band', isn't very funny. It does make you laugh though. And although it's not very funny, it's brilliant.)
July 27, 2006
I Hate Both Of Them
Note: You can, yes you CAN, vote more than once. Please do.
July 25, 2006
Spam of the Month II
Seeing as how almost nobody gives a shit about Spam of the week/month, I'm just posting the first line of a spam I just recieved, and just had to post:
I wonder does this 'Tisha' person mean while I'm undergoing surgery or while I'm performing surgery? Either way, I think I prefer Verdi. But only in surgery. Outside of surgery, it's Abba every time...
While in Surgery, Do You Prefer Abba or Verdi?
I wonder does this 'Tisha' person mean while I'm undergoing surgery or while I'm performing surgery? Either way, I think I prefer Verdi. But only in surgery. Outside of surgery, it's Abba every time...
July 23, 2006
Swedish Chocolate
Photoblogging...
Huh-huh-huh-huh... 'Plopp'... huh-huh...
July 17, 2006
James Earl Jones - The Vader Sessions
I'm sorry, I was going to just bang this into the links, but it's just far too funny not to post.
[via Screenhead]
Why Am I Here?
In work, I mean. Why is it, that on an absolutely beautiful day like today, with not a cloud in the sky, nary a hint of a breeze in the air, and the sun high overhead beating down outside, that I should have to be inside, looking at a computer screen, glancing longingly out the window every so often, thinking how wonderful it would be to be lying down with a book in my hand and a towel on my head, or splashing in the sea which is just visible from my office? Why, exactly, do we have to work when it's plain to see that it would be far better for our overall productivity and mental health so be outside turning ourselves a slightly darker hue and sipping on cold refreshing beverages, occasionally indulging ourselves with a dip in the salty water, only retreating indoors to escape from the far-too-hotness?
I call on all my readers to down mouses and pens, walk outside into the sunshine and declare that it is our divinely-given right to spend time in the sun on one of the few days of the year when it's actually worth doing so! I mean, I don't mind staying inside when it's fucking miserable outside, but please, when it's beautiful, at least let us enjoy it! Please? We can call it the REVOLUTION OF THE SUN, or something equally grand.
Maybe it's just the heat getting to me.
July 14, 2006
The Red Carpet
Photoblogging...
Mmmm... Lovely. Isn't it though?
Apparently I'm 'Creepy'?
Via Winds:
| You Are Creepy |
 |
I didn't think I was scary at all... :-(
July 13, 2006
More Babs Email Insanity
Here we go again... Take a deep breath...
Whenever man o man, I dunno I am starving and I have a head full of snot, like if you turned me on my side it would pour out
Scary thing happened after swimming: a knacker dude collapsed in my driveway (?) and then he had this massive gash on the back of his head and wouldn?t / couldn?t get up and then totally passed out so I called the ambo?s and then he got up and staggered across the road on front of a load of cars and that, and then collapsed across the road and then got up again and staggered away so I dialled 999 again and told them this and then they said that they would still get the Ambo?s bit also the cops and told me to go inside and calm down so I did and then the cops and this RIDICULOUSLY HOT paramedic dude came to my house asking me what happened and I felt really bad cause I told them he was gone down ailsbury road and I said that I told the emergency service dude that too and the really hot Ambo was all ?if he got up why did you call the ambos and then I almost started to cry (seriously they sent 4 cops and 4 ambo?s what the fook?) and I was all tearful and saying I didn?t know what to do he was really scary and obviously totally fooked up he had a massive cut on his head (I pointed out the blood on the driveway) and then he was like ?its ok love, calm down, it happens all the time?. I wanted to ask him out on a date but seriously embarrassing, he was a beautiful man! (I know you don?t want to knw about me fancying anyone but whatever! I am a grown up now!! Hahaha!!
Love you and we will get drunk soon ok
And... Relax... Phew. I'm knackered again now.
Thought For The Day*
Q: What's the difference between an apple and an orange?
A: There's no such thing as an apple bastard.
*Well, it was really the thought for yesterday, but I forgot was too busy.
July 11, 2006
Petrol Tank Paradox
Somehow, my petrol tank is getting bigger. I've noticed this in the past six months or so. When I got the car, about three or four years ago, I could fill the tank with about ?35 worth of petrol, now somehow the tank has expanded so it now holds ?50 worth of petrol when full. I can't quite get my head around it...
Le Petit Baba
Yesterday, by older sister Rebecca called me in a state of some extreme excitement.
"You're going to be an uncle!" she said.
"Huh?" I replied, being a little slow of thought at the time.
"Yay!" she said, when I realised what she was saying. Rebecca, after a long time trying with her hubby Sean, is preggers. Knocked up. Drinking for two.
I'm going to be an UNCLE!!! WOO-HOO!!!
Here's the scan she sent me last night. I think it's very clear. I can totally see my future niece/nephew anyway!
(Oh yeah, and congrats are due too to Babs, who's will soon be 'Cool Auntie Sarah")
July 10, 2006
The Amazing Strip Creator Meme
Via Dan, here's my pathetic attempt:
Why not make your own and keep the meme going? For Dan's sake. He's a good guy, like.
Random Question Meme
This one was so weird I just had to do it! Here go go then...
Have you had sex in the past 24 hours?
Amazingly enough, no.
Are you gay?
Are you crazy?
Do you have hairy legs?
Hell yes.
Do you smoke anything?
I smoke everything. Especially cheese.
Do you like monkeys?
Yes, but I couldn't eat a whole one.
How many fillings do you have?
My mouth is sullied by but one filling.
Would you rather swim in the ocean or a lake?
Probably the ocean, depending on cleanness.
Have you ever licked one of those square batteries?
Every chance I get (the rechargable ones give you a better hit).
Have you ever read the Bible?
Not really. I've heard it's a great yarn though.
Did you ever go to Sunday School?
I choose not to answer this question as it is too American.
Do you wear a lot of black?
Not really, unless I am working on the stage (not often, but sometimes).
Did you ever bring a weapon to school?
If you count my trusty Swiss Army Knife as a weapon, then yes, every day.
Have you ever hugged a tree?
A couple of times. They don't really hug back though.
Do you know what a sphincter actually is?
Err... Yes? Don't you?
Describe your hair?
Short, mid-brown, with 'product' in.
Are you a wildbeast?
I don't think so...
Do you like to have fun?
Occasionally (for 'occasionally', read 'always').
Do you like drama?
Personal drama, no. Stage Drama, yes. TV drama, sometimes. Movie drama, also sometimes.
Have you ever taken a bong hit?
Yes! What's a 'bong' (innocent look)?
Do you like mayonnaise?
That depends on the nature of the sandwich.
Are you afraid to die?
Not right now. Maybe in the future?
Do you like playing in leaves?
Once upon a time, yes. Now, well, yes.
Have you ever peed your pants as an adult?
Not that I remember.
Have you ever thrown up on somebody as an adult?
Hmmmm... See previous question (and also add possibly, probably, dunno).
Are you an adult?
Outside, yes. Inside, not even close.
Ever won a spelling bee?
See answer to 'Sunday School' question, above.
Do you ever eat because your depressed?
I eat for any reason at all.
Are you a television addict?
My name is Matt and I'm a tellyholic.
Do you think OJ was guilty?
I think he was framed, but he looked guilty.
Do you enjoy spending time with your mother?
My Mammy is my friend.
Have you ever had sex in a hot tub?
Not so far. Sounds fun though!
On a swing?
Please explain how one would do such a thing.
Do you like Elvis?
Who doesn't?
Do you enjoy watching animals ?do it? on the Discovery channel?
I am traumatized for life after seeing walruses 'doing it' the week before last.
Ever been hit on at a zoo?
Yeah, the giraffes really dig me
Have you ever had sex with a total stranger?
The very idea is an anathema to my sensibilities.
Do you enjoy the calming effects of turkeys?
Err... What?
Does your mom think someone is hot?
She's a sucker for Sean Connery George Harrison. RIP George, my Mammy loves ya.
Are you a sugar freak?
If by 'freak' you mean 'addict', then yes.
Ever been arrested?
Not yet (touch wood).
Ever commit a crime and get away with it?
Yes. I'm not saying what though (In case Interpol read my blog like).
Do you like orange juice?
Yes, freshly squeezed with juicy bits in.
What sign are you?
"No Right Turn"
Ever do the party boy dance in front of the elderly?
Every chance I have.
Where do you wish you were right now?
Back home in bed, eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
Did you enjoy this?
It was fun for a while, then it got a bit boring...
July 7, 2006
It's In!
Photoblogging...
It almost nearly didn't make it up the stairs... It's so big I couldn't get all of it into the photo... Ladiesandgentlemen, I give you... THE COUCH!!!
The Republic of Gunteria
For those of you who are interested in such nonsensical whimsy, I have decided to set myself up a (fictional) nation state over at Nationstates.net. Anyone who want's to visit The Republic of Gunteria can do so here. Have a nice time in my wonderful, beautiful country!
[via ScrewYouHippy]
UPDATE: Gunteria now has a national flag, pictured to the right.
Babs: She Types Like She Talks, Yeah?
To give you an idea of what Babs is like, as a sister, friend and someone who I love to bits, here's an email I got from her the other day. This Mail has been copied and pasted, with no changes at all:
Howdy Dudey!I am SO bored today, Trishbags is off sick still with some bizarro viral infection jazzaroonie, ew and also scary, she has to go and get blood tests, I am bonnixed from swimming, and also scared that she will make me go into the lane swimming thingymajigaroonie boonie, my chest hurts cause I have a classic Verso spot and no can understand the pain!! I squished myself last night in yoga-toga, I think I mashed my ribs together trying to do that lift up thingy majig, my teacher Ciara told me that I should do some abdominal exercises (?) at home to build up my ?core? and then I can move onto the next level you know like ? a woohoo! Although I am a bit scared of that too, I was thinking of maybe joining the gym but that?s far too boring so have decided against it for the moment, I am SO tired too, felt like I had about 2 hours sleep last night, when in fact I had about 7 ? I am DEFFO going to bed dead early tonight, if I have any choice, that is, I am hoping to be there by at the most 10 o?clock but I just always seem to have SO much to do, crazy town tacular. You know me and the way that I type the way I speak, can you actually hear my voice in your head talking it all out or what, you have a crazy imagination but not as crazy as me, I think I win in the Krazy Kat Kompetition!! I just feel totally drained like I should go to bed or summat, either drained or like I want to explode into hyperactivity, I find it hard at times to decipher which one it is! I am going to Deftones gig tomorrow night in the Ambassador I think, I hope, I have to call Daddio the hero dude father, so that should be good then its dead as a dodo on Saturday I am not doing anything at all, apart from maybe having a stroll on the ?beach? I need a total restamundo day you know what I mean? My whole body feels wrecked, I wanted to make cookies tonight but I think I might be just a little bit wrecked and I cant even think of anything to have for dinner, and I am going over to Trish?s gaff for a while after work, groan!!
Ok I am going to sign off from my rant face!! I am sure that you might be bored, get me a surprise or something, hope that the gaffaroonie is all swell and that, have you slept there yet, whats the bleedin jazz man?
Peace and Love Turtle Dove!
XOXOX
Now, imagine talking to her, every other day, and trying to get a word in edgewise (only messin', as I said before, I love her to bits!).
July 5, 2006
When Hippo's Fly
(Video after the jump, so as not so slow down or spoil your browsing experience...)
(aren't I nice?)
Gmail Google Mail?
Hmmm. When I opened my Gmail this morning I got an interesting surprise. Gmail isn't Gmail anymore (it's still beta though?), it's now Google Mail. What's all that about? Wasn't it Google Mail to begin with, a couple of years ago? And then it was Gmail. And now it's Google Mail again.
I do wish those Googlers would ever make up their mind.
July 4, 2006
We're In (finally).
Last night, 8 months after deciding to go for it, Nikki and Myself finally moved into our new house. Hooray!
I had intended to post last night about it, but when I turned on the laptop all I got was 'the LAN connection has limited or no connectivity' or some such jazz, and after spending half an hour trying to get it to work I came to the conclusion that it was bedtime, and I really couldn't be arsed.
So, yay for us! Even though the place is in a absolute state, with wiring visible in walls I have yet to plasterboard over, kitchen units sitting unsupported on the floor, no tiling or carpets done, bags, boxes and pieces of un-put-back-together furniture lying around everywhere, we are home, in a house that is ours.
Invitations for whatever house-warming events we will have will be announced when the aforementioned wiring, walls, bags, boxes, tiling and carpets have been sorted, tidied, finished, and painted.
July 3, 2006
Last 24 Post (until the next one)
Well. The last two episodes of 24 - Day 5 were on last night, and for anyone who hasn't been following it, they were two doozies. I won't go into them here, as if I do, at least two regular readers of the LWT will cry 'Argh! Spoiler! Bastard!', etc, as they are almost definitely waiting for it to come out on DVD (if it hasn't already).
All I will say is this: Day 5 was the best series so far. No other series had such major moments of character development, so manySo, aforementioned 'regular readers who are almost definitely waiting for it to come out on DVD (if it hasn't already)', buckle up, you're in for a rough ride. Don't be afraid, but it definitely gets worse before it gets better.
I REALLY can't wait for the next series. Anyone got any ideas when it's due out?
Some People
I met, and talked to, approximately 12 people that I knew, before 11am this morning. These people can be divided into two groups:
- The ones who didn't tell me I had Marmite on my face, and
- the ones who did tell me I had Marmite on my face.
I much prefer the second (much smaller, as in one person) group. They are nice.
Question: If you saw someone you knew, in work (or in a café, or shop even), with Marmite (or other condiment) on their face, would you:
- Tell them, or
- Not?
June 30, 2006
Where The Crap Are We Going?
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.
June 29, 2006
OMGROTFLMFAO
Funniest if you're a geek Star Wars fan who has watched 24, imho.
Spam Of The Week Month
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'?
June 27, 2006
PowerMatt Presentation
...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)
Pricey McPriceface
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]
June 26, 2006
Another Small Move
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.
My Gran had given me two leather recliners and footstools after she moved out of her house, and they were in 'storage' in my Dad's shed for the past year or so. After loading them up, we lashed back to Shankill.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!
Mobile Websites Wot Are Good
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.
June 22, 2006
You Can't Make An Omlette...
Photoblogging...
Without knocking down a big wall. :-)
June 21, 2006
Opera Mini™ for Mobile
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!
June 20, 2006
The Gee* Chats
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.
Pain In The Swiss
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!
June 19, 2006
WikiGyver
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
Ten Pounds Euro
Via Gordon:
If you only had £10 ?10, what would you order?
Rules:
- Must be ordered online
- Post and packaging cannot take the total spend over
£10?10. - Must be able to deliver to Ireland/The UK
- 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...
June 16, 2006
We Are The Proud Owners Of A New House
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!!!
Yay! Squeezy Marmite!
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?
June 15, 2006
Google vs. Yahoo / Picasa vs. Flickr: Ready... FIGHT!
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.
June 13, 2006
Got Noodle?
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.
June 12, 2006
Dun Laoghaire Marina, 8.31pm
Photoblogging...
Beautiful...
June 10, 2006
The I/O Brush
June 9, 2006
Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis
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...)
June 7, 2006
Dumb = Rich (a theoretical equation)
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? :-)
June 6, 2006
My Pits Are Sticky
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...
Make Your Sign
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...
June 5, 2006
Fuerteventura: A Review
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.
June 1, 2006
On top of Cuchillo Negro...
Photoblogging...
...Looking out to sea. Amazing views. Really spectacular.
May 30, 2006
It's a SANDCASTLE
Photoblogging...
May 29, 2006
I am SO on Holiday
Photoblogging...
Not bad at all! Just chilling now after a morning spent swimming and sunbathing.
Are ya jealous? :-)
May 26, 2006
Mouldy Sandwich
My poor Nikki is at home in bed after a night spent being very sick. It's only the second sick day Nikki has ever taken, so understandably she is a wee bit pissed off. She didn't have dinner yesterday, all she had was a cocktail sausage or two on a warship (I'll explain this another time), and no-one else was sick as a result of said sausages, so (using my uncanny forensic food-investigating abilities) I've traced it back to a sandwich she had in O'Briens Sandwich Bar in the IFSC in Dublin city, yesterday afternoon. Well, Nikki said 'the ham looked a bit dodgy, but I forgot to check it in the sandwich before I ate it'. See, this is why I don't eat meat. Too much chance of being incapacitated.
Anyway, the last time I was actually physically sick (as in 'puking my ring'), was after having a tuna (ok, so I eat fish) sambo in another O'Briens Sandwich Bar (for those of you who've never been in one, it's an Irish-owned deli-type place, where Asian students make you a sandwich in front of you). I just thought I'd throw the question out there: Has anyone else ever been sick as a result of an O'Briens (or indeed any other deli) sandwich?
Incidentally, this will probably be my last proper post for quite a while, I won't be online tomorrow, and myself and herself will be heading to windy sunny Fuerteventura on Sunday. I shall endeavour to provoke jealousy in all you readers by mo'blogging pictures of us sipping mojitos beside a pool, peering inside volcanoes and generally chilling to the max. Cheers y'all, and see you in a week or so.
May 24, 2006
Nearly There, Not Long To Go...
We went down to our new house for the first time today, to meet a 'snagger' lady to give the place a quick once-over and see what's broken before we stump up the vast wad of cash and call it 'ours'. The place didn't look too bad really, the odd nick and dent and bit of trim out of place, but everything looked pretty fine and dandy.
I did notice one thing though. The living room is supposed to be 'pre-wired for surround sound', but although I can see where the wires come out of the walls, there are several problems:
- I can't see where the wires go into the walls
- There are only three wires coming out of the walls, and
- They are in totally the wrong places.
This irks me somewhat, but it's nothing a bit of drilling and hammering can't fix.
The other thing was, when we were leaving, two painters came in (they appeared to be eastern European, but that's not important). One of them was smoking a fag in our house. Seeing as the house is actually still a 'building site', and therefore a 'workplace', this is totally illegal, and could incur a hefty fine for the building contractor. Therein lies the dilemma.
Should I inform the relevant authorities, therefore guaranteeing that the aforementioned painters will almost certainly do something bad to my shiny new pad, or should I do 'the Irish thing', and not complain, in the vein of 'ah sure, it's grand'?
May 23, 2006
Best Thing Ever
It's called "Marmite Squeeze Me". It will forever change the nature of my morning slice of toast. It is not, as yet, available in Ireland. 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 (or Scottish poooounds).
In other Marmite-news, the last ever 57g jar of The Yeasty Goodness™ was recently sold on eBay UK for £235. That works out at a little over four pounds a gram. That's some good Marmite right there.
Nearly But Not Quite
Last night, in between right now and the unknown date in the near future when we will be moving into our beautiful new dooooplex, we moved into a little two-bedroom flat with all our stuff in piles of boxes and black bags. Well, I say 'we', I mean of course 'me', as we moved Nikki into the temporary place on Sunday, last night was my turn. Apart from one box (the one with the books in it, of course!) which was incredibly heavy and required all of my manual handling training to lift, it was all pretty straightforward.
Well, it would have been, if it wasn't for my uncanny ability to be completely terrible when it comes to getting myself together. Why is it, that I can organise a complete truck-full of lighting, sound equipment, set and costumes to be unloaded and set-up within a fairly tight deadline, but I find it a total 'mare to put my crap in boxes and move it from one place to another...?
The flat is ok, there's plenty of room for all our stuff, clothes, etc, the shower works, it's clean and dry, there's a balcony I can smoke on, and the bed is reasonably comfy ('sleepable in' is how I'd put it). Nikki claimed that the toaster was 'broken', prompting the very real fear that 'life without toast' would become more than just a silly blog name, but a bit of jigging around and wiggling of levers and lovely, Marmitey toast was had this morning.
And so it begins. Nikki and I are now officially 'living together'. If we haven't killed each other by this time next week, we should be cool for a long while yet.
UPDATE:I just realised something. There's no internet access in this temporary place of ours. How am I going to live without my eveningly hour or two of interweb trawling? I'll go MENTAL! Either that or I'll go to an internet café. But I know there's none nearby. Ah... crap.
May 20, 2006
I Never Thought I'd See* The Day...
...That a Finnish Glam-Death-Metal band dressed as zombie demons would win the Eurovision Song Contest. I'm still slightly in shock.
*Not that I actually watched the contest or anything, I just tuned in for the last 5 minutes of voting. I swear. I was working tonight, so I have a legitimate alibi.
May 18, 2006
Let's Go Faster
There's one of those digital signs near where I live that tells you how fast your going as you approach it. You know the ones, with like, "Speed Limit: 50km/h" and "Your Speed: XX", with your speed where the X's are? When I pass it, it always tells me I'm going a lot slower than I think I am. So when my speedometer says I'm doing about 60 km/h, the sign says "52" or something. And it only flashes when you go above 55.*
So therefore, by my reasoning, the sign seems to be telling me that it's ok to do 60. Am I wrong?
*I can also make the sign flash "69" whenever I want. But I probably shouldn't share that with the entire world.
Big Moves Approacheth
After four or five months delay, after a small move in January, after Nikki living in spider-infested, at times freezing cold, temporary accomodation, and after spending the last few months looking at couches, tv's, coffee machines and crockery, we finally got completion notice on our new house.
Well, I say completion notice, but of course I really mean 'snagging notice', in that they told us we could now come in to find every little niggley thing that's wrong with the place, tell them about the snags, and get them to fix them. Hopefully, seeing as they've now built quite a few places in the development, they'll have gotten the hang of it by now andf won't have fucked up too much. But judging by Seamus's 5-week snagging ordeal, and the fact that his place is only two doors down from ours, I'm being cautiously optimistic.
In the meantime, Nikki has to move from her temporary accomodation to yet another temporary place, this time a two-bedroom apartment in Monkstown. And this time I'm moving with her. I figure it's a good way of packing all my stuff up and sorting it out, before moving it permanently into an actual home. But then I also realise it means I'm going to move house twice in the next month. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be plenty of fun to be had. :-)
*
In other news, I have been invited by the Argentinian Ambassador to Ireland and The Captain of the flagship of the Irish Naval Fleet to a reception on said flagship, the L.E. Eithne, next Thursday. This is due to Nikki's dad being a Commodore in the Irish Navy, and this will be the first such Naval reception-thingy I will have been to. There's nothing on the invitation about a dress code though, so I'm going to go wearing bermuda shorts and a hawaiian shirt. And wellies.
May 16, 2006
Frenetic Weekend Malarky
5 Things:
- It was my 29th birthday on Saturday
- It was my cousin Ian's wedding on Saturday
- The wedding was in England
- I was an usher, as previously discussed
- Nikki got a new car yesterday
Fun, games, frustration, hilarity, love, and so much more...
May 13, 2006
Me n' Nikki, v. Drunk!
Photoblogging...
Pished as farts at my cousin's wedding. :-)
May 11, 2006
Relative Betrothal
So, myself and herself are off to the UK for the weekend, to Wiltshire to be precise, for the wedding of my cousin Ian to his fianceé (obviously) Kate. There's five of us going over from Ireland together, us two, my two sisters Sarah and Becca, and my bro-in-law Sean. Getting a flight tomorrow at 6-ish, and back on Sunday late.
I'm actually going to be an usher at the wedding, which is something I actually had to look up myself, as I hadn't a clue what it was. When Ian asked me to be an usher, I said 'riiiight... so what does an usher do?', to which he replied 'what an usher do? Err, I dunno!', so it's obviously a very important position in the ceremony (from what I can gather, the usher is the guy who stands at the door of the church and says 'bride or groom?'. What fun!).
Have a good weekend y'all, and I'll probably post a hilarious wedding-ey pic if I get a break from all my important ushering duties. Later!
May 10, 2006
Ok Maybe I'm A Bit Blonde Sometimes Too
Right. In response to Nikki's comment in the last post, I will recount the embarrassing tale of my adventure in the Vodafone shop. Generally, I tend to let on to people that I have very (pretty?) good knowledge of all things technical, but in this instance, I was proved to be not so knowledgable.
My last phone was a Motorola v550, and it was a big heap of shite. It kept resetting back to the main menu while I was texting, I couldn't access the phonebook at all, the battery life was completely rubbish, I had already had the phone in to be repaired, and at this stage I just wanted a new one.
So off to the shop I went, a vast amount of reasons for wanting and deserving a new phone going through my head, ready to be recounted to the (no-doubt) understanding sales assistant. There was a bit of a queue in the shop so I waited for a bit. When I finally got to speak to the assistant, I started ranting.
"This phone is shite!"
"The phone book doesn't work!!
"It's already been fixed, but it's still broken!"
"It's under guarantee, I want a new one!"
Etc, etc.
The assistant (I cannot remember if it was a male assistant or a female assistant, but that's not important right now) stood there, listening and nodding along to my lengthy tirade, before asking me the vital question.
"Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?"
"Err... No. Bugger." (problem(s) solved, at least temporarily)
And thus ends the embarrasing tale of the Vodafone shop. Thank God for that, Nikki has been threatening to reveal the true secret of my technical ineptitude to the masses for what seems like forever. Finally, I can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge the the whole world (or at least all regular readers of the Toasty Goodness) knows how truly brutal I am (but I still consider myself 'a bit of a geek').
Blonde Moment(s) #76 & #77
(while viewing that Nescafé ad with the fortune cookies in it)
Nikki: "I didn't know you could make fortune cookies, I thought they just came like that"
Me: "..." (look of extreme disbelief)
(Later that same evening)
Nikki: "I'm cold"
Me: "Put the heating on then"
Nikki: "Nah, I'll just put another jacket on"
Me: "Err... You're not wearing a jacket..."
May 8, 2006
Looking For Inspiration
So, despite being rebuffed by a German TV station after they had requested the use of my lip-synching madskillz and then decided it wasn't what they were looking for, I am continuing to search for a suitable track to use for my next GoogleIdol entry (or rather our next entry, as Andy has an equal chance of doing 'lead vocal' on our next number). There are no prizes for second place this time. Actually, there are no prizes for first place either, but that's beside the point.
So I have narrowed it down to the following: Me and Chan doing 'Dub Be Good To Me' by Beats International, Me doing 'Jump!' by Van Halen, or Chan doing 'I Am The One And Only' by Chesney Hawkes, or a combination of these. But I can't decide which one to do. Can anyone help?
UPDATE: Looks like Van Halen are the current favourites, with Chesney close behind. I'm quite disappointed at the number of suggestions for other tracks though (ie zero). Come on you lot, give a dude a hand. Suggestions will be credited in any video made!
May 6, 2006
Lovely Day
Photoblogging...
May 4, 2006
Spam Of The Week V
After all this talk of on-again-off-again Germanic infamy, I'm going to relax it all down a bit, with another Spam Of The Week™.
Following a few interesting BoingBoing posts about the phenomenon of 'Flarf' (spam/net inspired absurdist poetry), I decided to compose a flarf poem entirely out of a spam mail that I really recieved in my inbox.
I've entitled this little ditty "Re: [17]" (I'm sure you know why)
He never forgot these things
these words, these names.
in 1862 into account
She was glowing with excitementAnd there was not just one piling but two;
the pain was the pilings
and part of him knew
for a long time before
most of his mind had knowledge of knowing
that the shattered pilings were his own shattered legs
But oh, Mr Rancho Grande!
"At least, not if I have just a little luck"
She looked at him with no anger or suspicion
only faint curiosity
Did that mean he was making progress?
Paul crawled over to his bed
pulling himself on his elbows
and got hold of the coverletThat night I changed your medication
for something a little stronger
and when I was sure
you weren't going to wake up
even if someone exploded
a grenade under your bed
I got my little tool-kit
from the cellar shelf
and I took the keyplate off that door
in 1975...
Not bad, not bad. Reads quite well, and it even sounds like it's making sense about halfway through, but I assure you, dear readers, it really, really isn't.
The Germans DON'T Want My Madskillz...
Ah, bollocks.
"Hello Matthew,
thank you very much for your email!I am sorry, but I have to say that today we decided not to broadcast videoclips from the internet, so we don?t need your clip anymore.
In the last few days we saw a lot of videos from the world wide web and we all agree that it is not the stuff we were searching for.
Thank you very much and have a nice day!Best regards
Tobias
Well, so much for that. There goes my big chance for my fifteen minutes of German fame.
ps: Fuck them. Fuck them all, the bastards. :-)
May 3, 2006
The Germans Want My Madskillz
I just got an e-mail from "a German TV-production-company named 'Constantin-Entertainment GmbH' from Munich":
"Since four months we are producing a funny Clip-Show called ?ClipCharts? which is on air at 7.45 PM on the German broadcast station ?kabel eins?.
Within 30 minutes we show twenty funny homevideos, videoclips, webcamvideos and similar stuff like that.
My name is Tobias and I work in the editorial department of "ClipCharts" .
At present we are searching for new funny stuff and in connection with that we found your great videoclip on www.googleidol.com.
If you agree, we would like to broadcast this clip in our show. In this case we need your videoclip as an .mpeg- or .avi-file.
If you are interested in a cooperation with us and agree that we show your musicclip / videoclip on our TV-Show, please write back as soon as possible , because we would like to use your video in the next few weeks! Further details you´ll hear from my colleagues of the legal department, who will contact you."
What should I do?! Do I want to be famous in Germany (and possibly the next Hoff?!)?!
May 2, 2006
Riddle Me this
You've got a cutlery drawer, with four 'slots', for knives, forks, spoons and teaspoons.
Where do the chopsticks go?
April 29, 2006
I Call It The 'Layered Coffee Mountain'
Photoblogging...
A little creation of mine, heated whisked milk and brown sugar mixed with an equal amount of freshly brewed espresso. Darn tootin'!
April 27, 2006
That Birthday Meme Thingy
Via the ever meme-tacular Annie, comes this.
Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
13th of May
Events
1888 - With the passage of the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law"), Brazil abolishes slavery.
1950 - First All-time Formula One Grand Prix. It is held at Silverstone Circuit, England (how cool is that?!).
2005 - The final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise airs in the United States, bringing to a close an 18-year uninterrupted television franchise, Enterprise being one of two series created by Gene Roddenberry ending on the same day (the other being Andromeda).
Births
1939 - Harvey Keitel, American actor.
1977 - Samantha Morton, English actress. (on the exact same day as me!)
I've chosen not to do a death, as I'm (like Annie) all about the positive vibes, man. So instead I'll draw you to the fascinating fact that the Ancient Romans used to celebrate the Feast of the Lemures, when they performed rites to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes, by offering them beans.
I'm not sure if offering a tin of Heinz would get rid of any malevolent spirits these days.
Sucking Eggs For Grannies: Vol #1
So today I learned how to lift a box. Or 'Manual Handling Of Loads' as it is known amongst health & safety jargonists. How to lift things properly. Now, I've been working as a stage hand and lighting technician and sound technician for ooh, about fourteen years now, and I kinda know all there is to know about lifting all sorts of stage production-related 'gear' (lights, speakers, flight cases, mixing desks, I could go on...), but I was pretty sure there must be something I don't know, which is why I was doing the course. And then the tutor very spent all morning teaching us how to lift an empty cardboard box. Using a 'wide palmer grip', and a trolley. And then he gave us all certificates.
April 26, 2006
I Got Into The Semi-Final!!
WHOA THERE!
I just idly checked out Google Idol, after remembering I half-heartedly entered into their latest competition, and discovered to my delight that I had gotten into the semi-final of their 'rock' category, being beaten by the excellent Reaper Videos version of 'You Give Love A Bad Name' by Bon Jovi by a margin of 579 votes to 473! Why didn't anyone tell me this?! Did anyone vote for me (and Andy! He was there too!)? I'm amazed that 473 people voted for something we did when very drunk at about 3 or 4 in the morning, totally on a whim. That's amazing!
If anyone followed the link from Google Video to this here blog, thanks a million for voting for me, and I already have an idea for the next competition, news soon(ish)!
Wow. I'm still pretty stunned. I mean four hundred and seventy-three people who we don't even know voted for us! That's a little bit scary actually. :-)
April 25, 2006
Awesometown!
Has everyone seen this? If you've ever seen any of the new Saturday Night Live sketches featuring the writing and acting talents of Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg (aka the Lonely Island team), like "Lazy Sunday", or the most recent (and recently del.icio.us-ed by me) "Laser Cats", and wondered where how those dudes got a contract with NBC, here's how. Running time is 19m39s.
Exploding high-five everyone!
April 24, 2006
Cream-Crackered
(Yawn...)
After a shortened 'long' weekend (shortened as in it was just like a normal, non-holiday weekend) last weekend, and a pretty busy week last week (busy as in there were four different shows in, we are short-staffed, and the biggest show this year getting in yesterday), I was working all weekend, Friday until late, and all day Saturday and yesterday, and now I'm going to be working every evening this week. I'm stifling multiple yawns and fighting my body's inner urges ('faaaall asleeep Matthew... Just lie down and shut your eyes... it will feel SOOOO gooood... mmmm... zzzz...'), but I am safe in the knowledge that on Wednesday I have one serious motherfucker of a lie-in coming to me. Unfortunately, I just read on Wikipedia that "you cannot 'store' sleep by sleeping more on the weekends in preparation for the normal work week", so therefore, but that reasoning, there's no point in having a lie-in. But I don't care, I'm going to have one anyway, because it doesn't say you shouldn't have a lie-in. I usually require at least seven hours sleep in order to function properly the following day, I haven't had seven hours sleep since about, ooh... March?
Incedentally, has anyone ever heard of someone falling asleep on top of a ladder like this one? No? Okay, maybe it didn't actually happen then. It was probably a dream.
UPDATE (in answer to comments): Yes, I did manage to sleep in to a respectable 10.45 (thanks ladies, for the non-ringing-or-texting!), then sat in bed reading a magazine until about 11.30. A successful lie-in I would say. Off to work in 5 minutes. Later dudes!
April 22, 2006
Gotta Love Those Ladies
Photoblogging...
Four Queens beats two Aces, every time. Heads up. All in. I had the Aces. Bummer.
April 21, 2006
Yet another Web 2.0 thingy Boxxet.com
Ages ago, while watching something on Rocketboom or reading something on BoingBoing (or somewhere else, I can't remember), I ended up on the Boxxet (box-set) site, and signed up for an invitation. Then the other day, I got a mail from You Mon Tsang (founder of Boxxet) saying my account had been activated, etc, so I went along and had a wee look.
Boxxet appears to be a fancy-schmancy aggeregator of sorts, but then there's a little bit more. As it's in beta, there isn't a lot of content, but it seems you can create a boxxet with just about any content you desire, and the aggregator will fill it up with news stories, blog posts, pictures and other related content. The aggregator seems to be kind-of 'clever' and in my first boxxet there was a link to Google's very first search page, which I had never seen before, and some other stuff including a 'Chuck Norris Facts'-style blog post, but about Jack Bauer, which I found hilarious ("When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer fucking hates lemonade"), if slightly derivative.
April 20, 2006
Pwned by a Grue
April 19, 2006
Several Things
Hmmm.
I've spent several minutes (or perhaps at least an hour) in the past few weeks thinking of something entertaining to blog. Something interesting, or at least something I find interesting. I just came to the realisation that it's not about that, this thing called blogging. It's about... 'whatever'. Whatever I want. Whatever happened, or will happen, or something I saw or did or thought or experienced, anything at all. I am, after all, pretty new to this whole thing, and thought I've been doing pretty well on the content front, but seeing as I only started doing this to see what it's like, I've found that it's like... I dunno.
So I'm going to share a couple of observations and things that happened recently.
*
Last Saturday, after a night spent playing poker, I got a phone call while still in bed, from my little sister Sarah (aka 'Babs', regular commenter on this here site) saying she'd locked herself out of her room in her house, and was greatly in need of some 'big brother' (no, not that Big Brother) -style help. So I got out of bed, discovered to my horror that not a drop of hot water could be squeezed out of the shower, put on clothes, hat, and shades, got into my car, and drove like you can only drive with a bit of a hangover on you (that's very slowly, and very inconspicuously) over to her place (20 mins drive).
Spam Of The Week IV
Actually, that should read SpamS of the week, because there are two this week that I found intriguing, confusing, and weird, and I couldn't decide which one was err... 'best'. So if anyone cares, pick one from these two:
"Donn Barry" sent this:
"You may think you can fool me, or trick me; I know I look slow and stupid. Sports Illustrated The Sims please.
There had been no trouble between them since the blowup over the typewriter paper. When he took it out, the swelling seemed to have gone down a little. "he asked. Then it went cold. "Pomeroy was hitchhiking. "he tried to scream, but only got out Annie you before his head flew off and rolled to the wall. He looked around quickly, chin down on his breastbone, eyes crafty and frightened. in 1856..."
"Alejandra Isaac" sent:
"Help me! Madonna Sony The one shallow drawer spilled out.
Psychotics can cope in the world ? after a fashion ? and sometimes, as I think you well know, they get away with some very nasty shit. Because if you want me to, I'll go. of course! "Did I say I wasn't going to start? homeenglish. t be long, either, although it may seem longer to you than it really is ? when it hurts a little less. He blinked, lowering his head and staring stupidly out into the summer he had never expected he would see. Matrix..."
I really can't decide between these. Maybe you, my loyal readers, can help?
April 17, 2006
Lazy (Easter) Monday
SO, unlike most of the civilized (read: Christian) world, I'm working on a bank holiday. And I'm feeling very lazy. So instead of some photos or a meme or something really interesting, here's a load of unrelated links to all sorts of crap that I found to be funny and/or interesting.
First up, an Easter Egg, for the weekend that was in it. Google have revealed that their search technology is entirely powered by PC's, or Pigeon Clusters, "One of the most promising projects in development involves harnessing millions of pigeons worldwide to work on complex scientific challenges", they say. I'll be very interested to see where this pigeon-based computing technology goes in the future.
For those of you who use Firefox (you do use Firefox, don't you?!?!), and haven't seen this before, try typing about:mozilla in the address bar.
Next up, it's Google in Klingon, and also l33t-speak. How fun its that? And also very geeky. Actually it's definitely more nerdy than geeky.
For those of you who think manhole covers are boring things that should only be used to cover manholes, the Japanese are out to prove you wrong. I'd hang some of those on my wall, I tells ya.
And to finish, here's Google Video's Top 100 Videos. If you can spare an hour and twenty or so, you really, really should go and watch 911 Loose Change 2nd Edition, #4 in the top 100, and possibly the best documentary you'll ever see on the internet. Or you could just watch "Webcams Girls Go Wild" (I'm looking at you, Adrian Sevitz). But whatever you do, don't watch this guy getting his hands chopped off by a helicopter.
Later dudes!
April 14, 2006
Friday Night Poker
Photoblogging...
Guess who got knocked out first? :-(
UPDATE (1:57am):Won the second game with some power plays (getting 3 aces twice, and a full house) at heads up while very short-stacked, came second in the third game. Net profit: ?40. Not bad, considering how much poker I haven't played before, and how much homemade italian grappa was consumed.
April 13, 2006
Weekend in Wales
Apologies for the lateness of this post (seeing as I came back from Wales on Sunday night).
Well, an excellent weekend was what was had in beautiful Snowdonia. I was there last summer, but only really passed through quickly, on the way to the English Midlands. We got the HSS from Dun Laoghaire (which was handy, as in 5 minutes away) on Friday morning and got to the caravan park (via a nice drive on the A4086, a really good drive, and at least two wrong turns that may or may not have been due to map-reading errors by my trusty navigator) at about half past four, just in time for several pints and dinner in the country club, followed by an early night (relatively anyway) in anticipation of a dayincluding 'a fair bit of walking'.
After a breakfast of pastries and coffee which had been cunningly purchased in Bangor on the way to our wheeled weekend abode, we debated joining the others for a hike up Snowdon. After looking at the torrential hail, rain, sleet and snow that looked pretty imminent, and our poor choice of non-waterproof clothing and footwear, and thinking of a 5-hour hike up a mountain and back, we decided (wisely) against it. So we went on a drive to Betws-y-Coed and a bit of a shop for appropriate clothing for future hillwalking adventures, some lunch, and to find a smaller walk to go on. We found a nice lake up in the mountains (I can't remember the name) and had a wee (2 hour or so) walk in the sunshine that broke as soon as we got out of the car, took some lovely photies, and then headed back to the caravan to chill for a bit. Dinner on Saturday was to be a gigantic pot of Bolognaise, made by Kabbage, (fiancé of Ciara, who's 30th birthday was the real reason for being in Wales, as I mentioned previously) up in a shack in the middle of nowhere, followed by several games of pool and copious drinking back at the park.
On Sunday we had to be checked out of our caravans at 10am, so we all (about 28 of us) headed out to get breakfast in a roadside café that Ciara had found would probably have space for all of us. After a few goodbyes and a look around the outdoor clothing shop that was attached to the café (every other business in Snowdonia is an outdoor clothing shop, you'll find), Nikki, Deirdre, Claire and myself (the Irish contingent) parted company with the rest of the gang and headed back to Betws (and yet another outdoor shop or three), and on to Electric Mountain. This was an excellent detour, a pumped storage power station deep underneath a mountain, that looked more like something out of the last half hour of a James Bond movie than anything I've ever seen. To say I was a bit pissed off when our guide said we had to leave our cameras and phones in lockers at the start of the tour would be a colossal understatement. The main cavern of the station is hundreds of metres underground (about a ten-minute bus journey down a huge tunnel in a bus), and is over 125 metres long, and I really expected a bald supervillain to pop out of somewhere and snicker maniacally at his creation. Visit Electric Mountain, it's cool.
From there we headed to Bangor (where it seems absolutely nothing happens on a Sunday) for some lunch, and on to Holyhead for the 6.30pm ferry back to the Pale. An excellent weekend I'm sure you'll agree!
April 11, 2006
Another 'Blog Thing'
| I Belong in 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.
April 10, 2006
Skanger Scanger: defined
My ever-resourceful little sister has uncovered the Wikipedia definition of the very 'Dublinese' word Scanger. I recommend you all follow that link down to Wikipedia and learn yourselves some proper Irish slang. The discussion page is especially good, I've found, the arguments for and against the inclusion of the article in Wikipedia are actually longer and more detailed than the actual article itself! Controversy breeds the best arguments.
(the closest UK equivalent to 'scanger' is 'chav', but they are definitely two different genuses of the same species species of the same genus)
April 9, 2006
Meme Me Baby One More Time
And here we go again... Thanks to QE for this one.
What time did you get up this morning?
About 9. Had to check out of a caravan park by 10 this morning, to go for breakfast in a roadside café, somewhere in Wales.
Diamonds or Pearls?
Diamonds
Narnia I think. I must go to the cinema again soon, it's been too long.
What is your favourite TV show?
Currently, 24. Previously, various shows from Babylon 5 to Farscape and many more, some actually not
sci-fi, amazingly enough.
What do you usually have for breakfast?
Two slices of toast, one with Marmite, one with good quality jam, a mug of tasty latté (made properly), sometimes a glass of OJ (let's say 2 out of 5 times), and a cigarette.
Favourite cuisine?
Italian
What food do you dislike?
Chicken. It's fowl (ha!).
What is your favourite CD at the moment?
Hmmm. Possibly Demon Days by Gorillaz. I haven't listened to a cd since I got my iPod at Christmas, but that's the album that I burned to my iPod from a cd that I listen to the most (this question is dated imho).
Morning or night person?
Night.
Favourite sandwich?
Ooooh, now there's a question. If you expand this question to include to include any type of bread split in half and filled with tasty stuff, and you expressed the number of possible sandwiches that at any particular time I would classify as my 'favourite' in kilometres, the answer would be roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Today, it's Roast Mushroom and Gruyere.
What characteristic do you despise?
Stupidity. I really hate when I or anyone else ever does anything stupid. Because it's stupid. And therefore unnecessary. So there.
Favourite item of clothing?
Pants.
If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?
Anywhere? Anywhere at all? But in the world? Antarctica.
What colour is your bathroom?
Kinda off-white-ish. Or something.
Favourite brand of clothing?
Threadless.com
Where would you retire to?
Where would I retire to, possibly New Zealand. Where will I retire to, probably like, Wexford or something.
What was your most memorable birthday?
Dunno really. Never was a huge 'birthday' person. 21st? Something like that.
Favourite sport to watch?
Football/Formula 1/Rugby/Snooker. Pick one.
Who do you least expect to complete this?
Adrian.
Person you expect to complete it first?
Possibly Annie.
Person who is least busy?
That's a bit of an open-ended question isn't it? What does that mean? Person who is least busy? Anyone who is asleep!
When is your birthday?
The 13th of May. I was born on Friday the 13th. Nikki was 13 on the 13th (her birthday is October 13th). BWA-HA-HAAA!!!
What is your shoe size?
8 or 42.
Pets?
Two: A spider in the corner of my bedroom who I have named Spidey and a plastic skeleton that hangs off the mirror of my car called Mr. Bones.
Any new and exciting news you?d like to share with us?
Err... Hmmm... Not really. You all know me and Nikki bought a house, right? No? Well we bought a house. Yay!
What did you want to be when you were little?
An Astronaut of course! What a silly question.
What is your favourite flower?
That ghost orchid thing from out of Adaptation. S'lovely.
What date on the calendar are you looking forward to?
Whatever date it is when I move into my new house. It will be soooooon (crosses fingers, prays to God...).
One word to describe the person who you snaffled this from?
Geek? I dunno. I think I met him once, but I only know him through his blog. And that tends to be at least moderatly geeky (at it's most non-geeky times). And geek is a good thing, to all you non-geeks who think it's not.
April 7, 2006
Vibrating Bog Roll
So myself and herself are off to Wales for the Weekend, for herself's friend Ciara's 30th Birthday party. Ciara lives in (err...) Manchester (?) and there's a few people from Ireland going, so she's meeting us all half way, somewhere in Wales.
As part of my packing and preparations today, I decided it's high time I bought myself a new toothbrush, as my old one is getting a bit old (and covered in dry toothpastey crud). Tesco were doing a special on the Oral B Pulsar, ?3 off at ?4.99, so I decided to give it a go. It's got "vibrating micropulse bristles™," which "pulse to lift up plaque and stimulate gums", so I just had to show it to Andy (and prattle on about it for about fifteen minutes). And it got us thinking.
What with the Gillette M3 Power™ and upcoming Fusion™ products, and now this new vibrating toothbrush, what's next?
"Vibrating facecloths?" I pondered, "Vibrating loofahs?"
Andy pondered also, "Hair brushes!" and then came the clincher, "Vibrating BOG ROLL!"
How we laughed.
nb: Yes, I am aware that Oral B is owned by Gillette
April 5, 2006
Oh What A Beautiful Morning
Photoblogging...
April 4, 2006
Spam of the Week III
This week it's all about the orgasm, with a mail from 'Medina Howard'. Or so I would've believed, but then, once again, I highlighted the big blank space at the bottom of the mail and revealed the true, spy-novel-like nature of the spam:
"'As almighty God's my witness,' said Nikanor Ivanovich, ' I never touched any and I never even suspected that it was foreign money. God will punish me for my sin,' Nikanor Ivanovich went on feelingly, unbuttoning his shirt, buttoning it up again and crossing himself. ' I took the money--I admit that--but it was Soviet money. I even signed a receipt for it. Our secretary Prolezhnov is just as bad--frankly we're all thieves in our house committee. . . . But I never took any foreign money.' On being told to stop playing the fool and to tell them how the dollars found their way into his ventilation shaft, Nikanor Ivanovich fell on his knees and rocked backwards and forwards with his mouth wide open as though he were trying to swallow the wooden parquet blocks. 'I'll do anything you like,' he groaned, ' that'll make you believe I didn't take the stuff. That Koroviev's nothing less than a devil!' Everyone's patience has its limit; voices were raised behind the desk and Nikanor Ivanovich was told that it was time he stopped talking gibberish. Suddenly the room was filled with a savage roar from Nikanor Ivanovich qut ktn utu ut jtnuopgtl ujtft fuqskugup u ou fu lqkuu uh ui nnsh pgq kp p plqiplptqhnnp tpmpppkpgtfprquq r unphqoqsqlqr"
Funny the way that it mentions something about someone being told to stop talking gibberish, and then almost immediately starts talking gibberish.
Fabregasted
Comment by Jimmy McGee on Setanta Sports Boxing last night:
"He was flabbergasted.
-He plays for Arsenal, doesn't he? Flabbergast?"
Genius.
April 3, 2006
10 Pitchers
Damn you Annie, I saw this and then I just had to do it myself. It's a bit of a weird one I must admit, listing my ten favourite films but excluding any I think might be one of the ten best ever made. Hmmm... Here we go so:
1) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension
Anyone else seen this? It's fucking brilliant. Starring Peter 'Robocop' Weller as Buckaroo Banzai, brain surgeon, test Pilot, rock star and international crime-fighter, and also starring John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd and more, made in 1984 for approximately twenty pence and featuring evil Red Lectroids from Planet 10, It's a laugh-a-minute sci-fi 'Z' movie that I really love, not least for it's sample-friendly quotes ("Sealed with a curse as sharp as a knife. Doomed is your soul and damned is your life").
2) The Day The Earth Stood Still
Forget the numerous alleged religious references (Mr. Carpenter anyone?) and instead have a good look at the far-ahead-of-their-time special effects and the beautiful art direction, not to mention the message contained within the economically-told story, which is basically "come on, humanity, grow the fuck up, for crying out loud"
3) Evil Dead II
Apart from being the 34th funniest comedy film of all time, it's also a superlative horror/schlock/splatter romp that hits every mark it aims for. Starring Bruce Campbell (BEST...ACTOR...EVER...) and directed by the ridiculously talented Sam Raimi (of recent Spider Man I & II fame), the "GIMME BACK MY HAND!" scene is worth whatever admission price you may or may not have paid alone (oh, and I choose this one over the original Evil Dead movie on the basis that it kicks it's ass).
4) Back To The Future
Do I really have to explain myself on this one? When this came out in 1985, I was eight, and it was the coolest thing in the history of the world. Every boy my age wanted a DeLorean, and to travel through time, and to have a crazy old 'Doc' as a friend, and to skate like Marty McFly.
5) Finding Nemo
I don't actually think I need to explain this one either! Pixar really have set the bar unattainably high with their last few films, but I still really (just by a tiny amount) think this is their best work, even though it's also possibly their most kiddywinkle-friendly outing. I really, really, really can't wait to see Cars, from what I've heard, despite some poor early reports, it's just as good as Finding Nemo and the Incredibles. WOO-HOO!!!
6) Raumschiff Surprise - Periode 1
I caught this completely by accident late one night on TG4, the Irish-language TV station. It's not in Irish, but German, and it takes the complete piss out of every sci-fi or fantasy film you can think of, from The Phantom Menace to The original Star Trek, from Back to the Future to a Knight's Tale and beyond, all in the highest camp German accents you can imagine, and with a gay Mr. Spock. Brilliant. Real Shame you can't gt it on DVD with subtitles (as my German ain't the best) yet.
7) The Rocky Horror Picture Show
I actually started loving this while working on the Rocky Horror Show for a month about 9 or so years ago. From "Over At The Frankenstein Place" to "Super Heroes" (which used to send a shiver up my spine, believe it or not), the songs are all superb (if also superbly 'lame') and the humour has it's tongue so far in it's cheek that it's like, touching it's ear or something. To quote: "Yes, it really is the greatest cult-film of all-time".
8) Clerks
"Hello. What? No I don't work today, I'm playing hockey at two.". So you think, Danté, so you think. In fact, you'll be working all day, during which you'll make a sign using boot polish, people will throw cigarettes at you, you'll knock a coffin over at a wake, you will play hockey (on the roof of the Quick-Stop), you'll talk about Star Wars a lot with your friend Randall, and your ex-girlfriend will fuck a dead man in the toilet, thinking it's you. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, and I really hope Mr. Smith doesn't fuck it up completely with Clerks II.
9) Team America - World Police
When I saw the South Park movie, I thought Messers Stone and Parker had finally shown their true genius, but I also thought it would be their finest (two) hour(s). I was wrong. With Team America, they have not only rekinded the memories ot the Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet et al, told every actor in the world that they're a wanker, and constructed some of the finest puppet-based action sequences ever comitted to celluloid, they've also made me nearly poop myself laughing, and made Kim Jong Il cry (if he's seen it). Respect, Matt and Trey.
10) Brazil
Terry Gilliams 1985 opus is number ten on this list, but I've saved the best until last. This fantastical tale of the heroic dreams of a bureaucrat in the ministry of information in a distopian future society sees Gilliam at his visual and creative peak, full of completely insane characterisations, scenes and situations. The cameos by Robert De Niro and Bob Hoskins stand out as significant and throw-away at the same time, Jonathan Pryce's central character of Sam Lowry is inneffectual and essential simultaneously, and the film is full of such paradoxical situations. It's crammed full of visual detail, from the propoganda signs present everywhere ("Mind that parcel. Eagle eyes can save a life" / "Trust in Haste - Regret at Leisure"), to Bob Hoskin's hat with the stupidly oversized peak (which emphasizes the ridiculousness of his character's occupation), to the "MOI" (Ministry of Information) logo seen on everything from cups to goldfish bowls in Kurtzmann's office. The Final scene in which Michael Palin's character Jack, best friend of Sam, is revealed as the torturer who is to extract information from Sam, is brilliantly executed as both touchingly affectionate and brutally sinister.
So that's my ten, like them or lump them. Comments very welcome on this one, and I'm not tagging anyone.
March 30, 2006
Only Two Years...
So me and Nikki are together two years now (anniversary last night, 29th March). Two years since our first proper 'date' (we met before that but then we had a row, and it's a long story, but here we are, two years later!). I can't believe it's been so long, it's really flown by, but then time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?
We've been around! Had a lot of fun. We've bought a house and we're moving into it next month (fingers crosed, builders permitting!), and I'm looking forward to seeing where we go on the next stage of our adventure. I'm loving it so far.
I love you Nikki! HUGE MWAH. :-)
March 27, 2006
Apparently I'm 32 'at heart'... (I'm 28)
| You Are 32 Years Old |
 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax. |
(via Babs, my lil' sis')
March 24, 2006
Spam Of The Week II
Surprise! It wasn't just a one-off post at all, I really am going to try to find one funny/strange/interesting thing in the tide of spam that I recieve each day, and I'm going to post every week I can be bothered to post one.
This week's dubious award goes to 'Hardy Ted' who, just before trying to sell me some 'SPUR-M' (Improves Orgasm! 500% More Volume! Sweeter Tasting Sperm! WHAT?!) pills from a very spurious supplier, recounted a fascinating story about 'The Variety'...
"...the senior remaining member of the Variety's management. By ten o'clock the ticket queue had swollen to such a size that the police came to hear of it and rapidly sent some detachments of horse and foot to reduce the queue to order. Unfortunately the mere existence of a mile-long queue was enough to cause a minor riot in spite of all the police could do. Inside the Variety things were as confused as they were outside. The telephone had been ringing since early morning-- ringing in Likhodeyev's office, in Rimsky's office, in the accounts department, in the box-office and in Varenukha's office. At first Vassily Stepanovich had attempted to answer, the cashier had tried to cope, the commissionaires had mumbled something into the telephone when it rang, but soon they stopped answering altogether because there was simply no answer to give the people asking where Likhodeyev, Rimsky and Varenukha were. They had been able to put them off the scent for a while by saying that Likhodeyev was in his flat, but this only produced more angry calls later, declaring that they had hjmtm g momu ljm oi m lrm pmhmrmsmjjkkilhj jjojjju j qfl j p jkjl i j l tlflolql i ljljl tl mj rlpl il tmomsirmfmq mn hjmtmklglhm umslt ij lsmo lu ls mflfjlju jhjsjo fnjjjmj j mt h jhkhi iu h nhflg imi ughijioijiui qmlipiki l p guqu ltrtsq..."
Isn't it weird the way they start off quite interesting, then degenerate into total babble, then say 'Hey! Buy our Mickey-Pills!'? I'm going to do a paper on the actual origins of Spam, as I think some are created entirely by machines...
But I probably won't bother.
March 23, 2006
Check Dem Lip-Synch #2
I meant to post this ages ago, it's actually the first of two lip-synch vids that I made towards the end of last year, the second of which was my first post on this here blog of mine. I was reminded by Annie's recent post about Google Idol, and also inspired to 'audition' it for the next competition. I hope I'm not being a bit conceited, but I think I kick the ass of most of the entries on Google Idol, except maybe the Two Chinese Guys. Wish me luck everybody!
You may need to turn up your brightness a little. It looks fine on my laptop at home but on my CRT-monitored work computer, I can't see a f***in' thing.
ps: Tenacious D ROCK ASS!!!
March 22, 2006
Negative Teeth
It's amazing the results you can get while experimenting late at night a camera. Most recently I've been messing with the 'negative' effect on my K750i.
There's a few more of these, follow the links on the pictures to see them. It's been a while since I experimented with photos, I'll be doing more soon, and I'll also be uploading a load more older ones that I really should've already done, so stay tuned. See also pics tagged 'experimental' on my Flickr Photos for an idea of what's to come.
March 19, 2006
Don't Be A Fuckin Eejit
I was up last night at about 2am. I was in work until about 1am, and met Andy in the pub where I had one bottle of Heineken and gave him and Nikki (his girlfriend Nikki, not my girlfriend Nikki, I'll explain another time) a lift home. "Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello was on the radio in the car as we pulled up to the house, and as we went inside, Andy turned the radio on the hear the end of the song. We left the radio on (Today FM plays some good music in the wee small hours) and had another beer or two. Then we heard a very eye-opening advert (on the radio, which was still on).
It started with what sounded like a very real person telling a very real story about how someone he knew had killed himself and his girlfriend (the speaker's sister, from what I gathered) in a drink-driving accident. The tagline at the end of the ad was Ray D'Arcy saying:
"Don't be a fuckin' eejit, don't drink and drive"
-Not the kinda thing I can remember hearing before in an anti-drink-driving campaign, and something that kinda made me think a bit more about the fact that I'd just had a bottle of beer (probably not over the limit of 80 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood, but still) and driven home. I think it was basically the use of the "fuckin'" in the tagline, instead of the usual "(please) don't drink and drive". It's part of a campaign directed at people my age, who would be up at that time of the night, and who probably would have done what I had just done, and wouldn't be averse to using that kind of language, and would probably take the message in the right way rather than finding it offensive.
Made me think to myself, "don't be a fuckin' eeejit dude". Which means it's the first ad of it's type to really make me do that.
DEFCON: Ernie?
Via Google Personalised Homepage:
I'm terrified at the prospect of us going to "Elmo", and really wish we could get back to "Oscar".
March 17, 2006
Spam of the week
As you can guess from the title, I've decided to keep with this thing I've been doing with the opening spam mails and all that. I use Gmail as my primary (non-work) mail address, so any mails that make it even so far as my spam box have been thoroughly sniffed at by Google's rabid spam-hounds, so I think I'm pretty safe in opening them, much as Seamus might fear the consequences.
This week's award goes to "Demetrius Burgess" who tried to sell me a fake Rolex but left this beautiful passage (almost invisible, in white text) at the bottom of the mail:
"The eyes were wide-awake, everywhere at once. byzantium successor terrier bullet nose collegial roundhead constellate cornelia hickman bury marina mercilessly excavate radar hack virulent berth kudo ravenous aptitude varitype olga dionysus luge webster aid clothe imposture bivariate tutorial doleful slew boat wigging arroyo avarice cease dialysis courteous interruptible bed gallop sled redshank expend il student knurl carcinogenic cloddish befogging forsook operant abel d's piddle pub prurient gland alumna bergman capacity credo typhus norton connecticut The pain!
I held it all the time you were gone, Annie, but I can't hold it much longer, and I don't want to wet myself again. Annie's boot-heels rattled staccato down the hallwav. Only a little. At the same time another voice was screaming: I'll be good, Annie! And the only emotion this thought engendered was tired relief. Half the story existed, full-blown, in his mind, and the rest was rapidly falling into place. "Now Paul went on: "I guess he told me to keep my eye on my wallet so many times that it's stuck inside for good. flight pseudo lorelei teeth howe coarsen scandal wormy herbert nascent triable egocentric belvedere buck spoonful commendatory ding quadrant electroencephalography victual evil opus..."
Ok, so it doesn't make any sense, but it's still pretty poetic, in a not-quite-poetry kinda way.
The pain!
March 16, 2006
It's snowing again...
Photoblogging...
It was snowing as I left the house this morning. Pity it's still not sticking. Bloody cold out too, unsurprisingly.
March 15, 2006
What is not right? This:
More statistical nonsense.
According to this article, 4 out of 10 people think it's acceptable to talk on their mobile phone while they are on the toilet. I myself am horrendously embarrased if my mobile even rings when I'm on the toilet (in a public toilet, not at home, obviously). If I know you, and I ever ring you, and you are on the toilet when you see my name come up on the screen of your (ringing) mobile, please don't answer. Press 'silent' or 'busy'. I'll leave a message/ring you back later.
In other news, 54% of Germans still are available on their mobile phones while in flagrante delicto. Ahem. Err...?
March 14, 2006
New Year?!
To: Head of Advertising, Sky Tv
Re: "New Year, New Documentaries"
Dear Sir/Madam,
Last night I was watching 'The Simpsons' at 8.12pm on Sky One, and during the advertisement break there was an advert for National Geographic Channel. The tagline of the advert was 'New Year, New Documentaries".
It is now the 14th of March. I mean seriously, for fuck sake.
Regards,
Matthew Verso
Regular Sky One Viewer
March 13, 2006
Note to Spammers: Must Try Harder
You know spam, yeah? Those silly emails you get every day advertising everything from cheap Viagra and Rolexes to eternal salvation to the latest breakthrough in sex-organ size enhancement? You know sometimes (not often, but sometimes) you open them, because the subject line sometimes sounds remotely funny and/or interesting? No? Well I do. Sometimes.
So here's what I got in my spambox yesterday:
Unknown sender. No Subject. That's not a very good effort is it? I mean who's going to open that?
(ok maybe I would, just to get the screengrab, but you know what I mean...)
March 11, 2006
Emerging Technology
For anyone with even a passing interest in technology and the web, anyone who's ever wondered exactly what 'Web 2.0' means, and almost every blogger worth their blog, the 'eTech' conference in San Diego last week was choc-full of great news, developments and gadgets that I found fascinating and educational all at once, even if I only read about them (much as I would've loved to be there). Click the picture here for a gazillion (ok about 60 or so) links to articles all about what exactly the web and apps like RSS, Atom, Ajax, blogs, and pretty much any online application you can think of, and a few more besides (like Google, eBay, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, the usual suspects) are thinking up to make your web-based experiance all the more interesting, user-friendly and downright cool in the next year or so.
(nb: Web 1.0='readable' web, Web 2.0='writable' web. Easy eh?)
March 10, 2006
20 Tracks Meme
Sorry if it's all a bit meme-y here recently, blame Gordon for being a bad blogging influence if you want. Anyhoo, here we go again...
1. A track from your early childhood
"Robert De Niro's Waiting" By Bananarama. Bugger off.
2. A track that you associate with your first love
Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes - "(I've Had) the Time of My Life". It was the 80's. Dirty Dancing was cool.
3. A track that reminds you of a holiday trip
"Holiday" By the Happy Mondays, camping trip, '03, West Cork.
4. A track that you like but wouldn?t want to be associated with in public
See # 2.
5. A track that accompanied you when you were lovesick
"Just The Two Of Us" By Bill Withers. Lovely song. "We can make it if we try, just the two of us..."
6. A track that you have probably listened to most often
Jeepers. I dunno. Summat by Bob Marley. Probably "Exodus".
7. A track that is your favourite instrumental
"McBrides" by Moving Hearts. Most of you will never have heard/heard of this, it's amazing.
8. A track that represents one of your favourite bands
"Fools Gold" by the Stone Roses. The 9.53 version that goes on forever, unlike the Stone Roses.
9. A track which represents yourself best
"City Hall" by Tenacious D. Coz (I'm sitting 20 floors below sea level. In a bunker...) I don't like politicians, as a rule. We should all rise up and beat the bastards. Just listen to the song and you'll know what I mean.
10. A track that reminds you of a special occasion (which one?)
Really stumped on this one. Generally it's the people that remind me of a special occasion, so let's just say err... "High And Dry", by Radiohead, coz the last time I saw them play it live, it was special.
11. A track that you can relax to
"Sarah" by Thin Lizzy/Phil Lynott. Very nice.
12. A track that stands for a really good time in your life
Right now is a really, really good time in my life, probably the best, so like, "When The Sun Goes Down" by Arctic Monkeys I s'pose.
13. A track that is currently your favourite
"When The Sun Goes Down" by Arctic Monkeys. :-)
14. A track that you?d dedicate to your best friend
"Friendship" by Tenacious D. To my very excellent mate and dear cousin, Andy.
15. A track that you think nobody but you likes
"Build It Up, Tear It Down" by Slimboy Fat Fatboy Slim
16. A track that you like especially for its lyrics
"War" by Bob Marley. Because every word is the truth: "Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanantly discredited and abandoned: WAR"
17. A track that you like that?s neither English nor German
"Mamo Bajo" by Kanda Bongo Man from the Congo. I have it on tape from years ago and it makes me dance uncontrollably.
18. A track that lets you release tension best
"I Am The Resurrection" by The Stone Roses. It's John Squire's guitar you see, and the chorus. It's something I can shout and play air guitar to.
19. A track that you want to be played on your funeral
As in the previous meme, "Don't Stop Me Now", by Queen.
20. A track that you?d nominate for the ?best of all times? category
"The End" by The Doors.
Hopefully that'll be the last meme for a while, but you never know, I might run out of stuff to blog and have to meme something. I apologise in advance.
March 9, 2006
Pac Man Spoke Lights
March 8, 2006
Desert Island Memes
Pick eight significant songs to take to your desert island, but you only have two days to come up with them, said Gordon. He didn't tag me, he didn't tag anybody, because he 'can't be arsed'.
Right (deep breath...), here we go:
1. I Am The Resurrection by The Stone Roses
We might as well start at number one, in order of amazingness. Let me put it this way, the super-brilliant twangly guitar bit near the end is my ringtone. I put it on every time there's a party, and I want people to start shouting and flailing immediately. It's #1.
2. Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles
Absolutely one of my favourite songs ever. I originally heard it at a Beatles tribute show, before I was actually into the Beatles, and it was so far ahead of it's time, I was sure it wasn't the Beatles. I thought it some modern remix of a song I'd never heard, but no, it was recorded by the Fab Four in nineteen frickin' sixty-six!
3. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
Seriously, how can this not be on everyone's list? Embarrased as I am to admitting having ever watched 'The Word' in the 90's, but it was on that (absolutely terrible) show that I first saw Nirvana. They played 'Smella Like Teen Spirit', and needless to say, it was the talk of the schoolyard on Monday. Bacause I was like fourteen or something.
4. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2
On the Under a Blood Red Sky album, Bono says 'this is not a rebel song', but I think at it's heart it really is. It's a song about a terrible thing that happened and the feelings of helplessness felt by a nation, and the feeling of betrayal and (unfounded) hatred against an army in a place they probably should not have been. It makes me feel very Irish when I hear it, and not necessarily in a political or patriotic way.
5. Don't Stop Me Now by Queen
"I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars, On a collision course, I am a satellite, I'm out of control, I'm a sex machine, ready to reload, Like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh explode...!" Not to be morbid and/or inviting disaster, but I want this playing at my funeral. Say no more.
6. I Want You (She's So Heavy) by The Beatles
I really love the guitar in this, it's so... heavy. The lyrics don't really add up to much ("I want you, I want you so bad it's driving me mad"/"she's so heavy" is basically it), but the heavy crunchy guitars and the sparse lyrical variety add up to a very complete whole. Really something you only start to appreciate after the 20th listen or so.
7. Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers
To anyone else who likes/loves this song, I don't really need to explain why this is one of 'The 8'. To everyone else: Have you ever been in love? Ever missed the object of your affections? This is what it's all about (well, it could mean something else entirely, but that's what it means to me).
8. Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield Move on up!"
I'll just quote from the last verse:
" Just move on up, and keep on wishing, Remember your dreams are your only schemes, So keep on pushing. Take nothing less,-not even second best, And do not obey -you must have your say, You can past the test...
And that's my 8. I'm not tagging anybody either. Except maybe Dan.
March 7, 2006
Time to Recycle?
Photoblogging...
Recycling is all well and good, but you need to actually do it.
Do You Work In The Nude?
Yesterday I read this article (via BoingBoing) which stated that their survey said a surprising 12% of men and 7% of women work in the nude when they 'telecommute', or work from home. Now, I have worked from home on a rare occasion or two, and I have either worn a dressing gown/slippers combo, or sweatpants and t-shirt (aka 'sweats'), which 39% of respondants admitted to wearing while working.
Other stats included:
44% of women shower on work-at-home days, as opposed to 30% of men (the filthy scumbags).
21% admitted to taking an afternoon nap (not a 'power sleep'?).
45% listen to music and 28% watch tv (music ok imho, tv bad).
18% of men and 38% of women found their attention 'claimed by chores' (hmmm... what does this say about... err... I'll stop there).
All fascinating statistics, but I'd like, if I may, to come back to the working in the nude one. Has anyone of the approximately 10 readers of this blog ever worked in the nude when telecommuting? I don't think I'd feel comfortable taking a work call from someone I didn't know or possibly even sending an important email while my schlong was hanging out for all to see (all as in 'nobody', but you get what I mean). Am I weird for feeling uncomfortable about working in the buff?
(note: I have no qualms about blogging in the nip)
March 6, 2006
Strictly No Parking In The Car Park?
Sign outside the car park at work. Can anyone guess what it means? The prize for the correct guess is... Err... I'll think of one later.
March 3, 2006
book review - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
I borrowed this book from Andy one night when I couldn't find anything to read I hadn't already read. I didn't have high expectations, having not heard of the author or the book itself before. I was pleasantly surprised. Anthony Bourdain, as an 11-year old child on holiday in France, discovered that food could 'be important. It could be an event. It had secrets'. He and his older brother were left in the car one day while his parents went to dinner, and this sparked a desire to eat food meant 'only for grown-ups'. He started eating brains, cheeses that smell like old boots, and towards the end of that summer, tried his first raw oyster, and experience he remembers better than 'losing my virginity or smoking my first joint', it was his defining moment, when he stopped being a boy.
Following his schooldays, and a period living in New England where he cut his teeth as a dishwasher in a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Cape Cod, he commenced his education with the CIA (The Culinary Institute of America, the other CIA), where he learned what it really meant to be a chef.
The author has an almost dangerous passion for food. He is known for eating anything which is edible, from lambs testicles to whole snakes, bile, guts and all. But it's the way he describes the food he eats and prepares that makes this book special. The smells, tastes and sensations encountered when consuming food of the highest order are almost like a drug, something truly mind-altering. I am a vegetarian, but when he describes rare steaks, lambs liver, sweet breads and other 'pieces of dead animal' in such a romantic, seductive way, my mouth starts watering for bloody, stinking food that can blow my head off with a single bite. Basically, you should really have a good meal before you read the book, otherwise your mouth will be watering most of the way through it.
March 2, 2006
Firefox, Favicons and Favourites
In an email conversation with Adrian yesterday, the subject of a recently-missing favicon on Dan's blog came up (it was missing due to being transferred to another server and conversion into php, etc, etc). I was a bit peeved, because favicons are truly wonderous little pictures, and are an essential part of my interweb browsing experience.
You see, I use Firefox, and I use it well. I have about 30 or so extensions installed, giving me everything from weather updates to extra buttons on websites to speedy downloads of every file on a page in 3 or so clicks to getting rid of the ads on Google to opening a tab in Firefox which contains, get this, Internet Explorer. My interface is very customised to make browsing a pleasure and never a chore, so I can have several sites visible at once, and every site I visit regularly available with one click. I use the bookmarks toolbar as pictured here, with only the favicon visible for each particular website.
To do this, simply save your favourites in your bookmarks toolbar folder, in your bookmarks. Right click on your main menubar and make sure your bookmarks toolbar is displayed. Right-click on any bookmark and you will get a 'bookmark menu' - click on 'properties'. Delete all the text in the 'name' field, and click 'ok'. Ok? Easy eh?
March 1, 2006
I Don't Know If I Like Ricky Anymore
I like the Ricky Gervais Podcast. I think it's hilarious. Steve Merchant is an admirable co-host, and Karl Pilkington has now become an internet phenomenon all of his own creation. So when I got an email yesterday saying that 'the first in a new run of at least 4 shows is available right now!', I was happy. I looked forward to more Monkey News, more entries from 'Karl's Diary', and lots more observations and comedy musings from the point of view of the ineffable Ricky Gervais.
But then I clicked through from the mail I recieved from rickygervais.com to Audible.com, I got a horrible surprise. For 4 episodes of the Podcast, which up until now has been completely gratis, they wanted nearly seven flipping euros, or nearly two euros each. Now, if it was something I thought I'd listen to over and over, I probably wouldn't have a problem with that. But The RGS is not like that. I listened to all 12 episodes from Guardian Unlimited (for free), and thought them funny, but funny in a 'yeah-that-was-funny-but-not-a-second-time' kinda way. Three dudes sitting around a microphone and prattling on, occasionally interrupted by hyena-like laughter, while very funny the first time, isn't something you can listen to over again and again. Well I can't anyway.
February 28, 2006
It's Snowing!
For the second time today, it's snowing outside my office! Shame it's a teeny bit warm & wet (ooh-er) for it to be sticking to the ground, and consequently preventing me from coming into work tomorrow, but what can you do (Hope?! Pray?). There's supposed to be 8 inches of snow on the Dublin Mountains tonight, maybe it'll make it's way towards Dun Laoghaire...?
UPDATE: It's stopped now. But the clouds look very snowy over Howth, and they're heading this way. :-)
Dublin Anagram Map
Some clever lad has had a bash at the Anagram Transit Map meme that's been doing the rounds, with a map of the train lines in Dublin. It's pretty funny (in parts). Shame he seems to have 'forgotten' to anagramise a few of the stations, but still worth a look.
February 27, 2006
Bigoted Fucker 'Republican' Riots
I don't know if news of the riots in Dublin on Saturday travelled across the water, and it's already been blogged to death by several more 'journalistic' bloggers than I, but I might as well throw in my 2 cents worth and what I think of the whole thing.
I'm not even going to bother to comment on the rioters themselves, or the loyalist marchers, as neither side deserves any comment. I will, however, mention the ineptitude of the Garda Síochána in initially posting only 250 officers along the route of an extremely controversial parade in the first place. Given the size of protests in Northern Ireland during essentially pro-Britain loyalist parades, surely they must have forseen that this would not be the friendliest of occasions, especially in Dublin, where (since the civil war) an Orange/Loyalist parade/march is (I quote) 'unprecedented'?
I also would like, after the above 'diss' of the Gardaí, to praise them in their swift response when the parade and protest turned into a full-blown riot and street battle. From what I saw on the news, and in the papers, they really took care of the situation in a professional way. If only there had have been another few hundred of them, perhaps the thugs responsible for the violence would have been cordoned away from the general public a bit quicker and with less damage and injury. But hindsight is always 20-20 isn't it?
Anyhoo, the real shame is that this happened on a rugby weekend, so the city was full of Welsh (and other) revellers and supporters, over in Baile Átha Cliath for a bit of a hooley and a nice game of rugger (which we won 31-5, wahey!). What a pity they were subjected to seeing bigotry and hooliganism of this order on what would otherwise have been a quiet Saturday afternoon in my beautiful hometown.
Fuck the fucking bigoted bastards.
Rule # 1
Don't drink on a School Night.*
*Much as I love unexpected/unscheduled late-night drinking sessions, I really must learn to just say 'no' when I have to work the next day, and especially when I have to be in EARLY the next day (that's today by the way). My head hurts...
February 24, 2006
The Power Of The Moon
There was a programme on RTÉ 2 last night about the effect the Moon has on the inhabitants of it's nearest celestial neighbour. Among several fascinating sequences including the religious significance of "devine" occurances of annular eclipse's (and all eclipses) like the one shown on the right, and the Callanish Sleeping Beauty, where every year the Moon traces a path along a range of hills in the shape of a 'sleeping beauty'. There was also a sequence where coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean released all their little tiny reef sperms and eggs into the sea during a particular phase of the lunar cycle, at a certain time of the year. This phenomenon of saltwater lunar orgies is also prevalent among a large variety of fish and other marine life.
"So basically", I pondered, turning to Andy, "the sea is fuckin' crammed full of fish jizm?!"
Without pause, Andy replied:"That must be why it's so salty".
February 23, 2006
Five Weird Habits
So apparently I've been tagged by Tatiana. Yes folks, it's meme time again (already...?)! So here we go, five weird habits.
I constantly 'line up' objects aroud me into right-angles and parallel lines, but only at home, never in work (hence my desk in work being in a terrible state).
I brush my teeth exactly the same way, every time, rhythmically. 32 strokes top, bottom, inside, outside, front.
I check my pockets every time I leave somewhere, and therefore never lose anything, ever.
I talk to myself when I'm absolutely sure that no-one can hear me, and have entire two-sided conversations, again, with myself.
I love making lots of noise in the kitchen, closing cupboards and breadbins with a huge 'BANG', rattling cutlery, pots and pans, etc. I have no idea why I do this.
Is This Really Happening?
So I was in the chemist getting a prescription, idly standing around waiting, looking around.
"Hmmm... vitamins. I should probably get me some of those. Fisherman's Friend! They're great they are. Gillette razors... I wonder when that new Fusion's coming out. It's got SIX blades! COOOOL... Polaroid Sunglasses... yeah RIGHT... Sanitary Towels for men......"
Hang on a gosh-darned minute now.
(look again)
WTF? I believe I am 'flabbergasted', but I've never been flabbergasted before to my knowledge, so I'm not quite sure. Perhaps I am hallucinating? I don't feel faint or anything, so I pick up the prescription and head back to work, and hit up the big G for the word on the street.
So apparently they make sanitary towels for men now. Well ok then.
(thank the FSM I didn't embarrass myself by asking what they were for)
February 22, 2006
Blonde Moment #54
Why I love my girlfriend:
Nikki: "When is pancake Tuesday, is it next Wednesday?"
Me: "Err... I think it might be Tuesday..."
:-)
February 21, 2006
The 'Inventing' Factor
So I see Simon Cowell is looking for budding entrepeneurs and tinkerers to take part in his new show, 'American Inventor'. Entrants from across the US of A will compete to see who can come up with the best 'product concept'. It's a good idea, but I really don't think Cowell is necessarily the best person to oversee/produce this show, and the name 'American Inventor' is a bit of a misnomer, as they're looking more for entrepreneurs than inventors when it comes down to it.
I think the BBC show 'Dragons' Den' is the best show I have seen using this idea. If you haven't seen it, basically each week someone comes in with an business plan/concept, and has to persuade a panel of five business investors to give him the dough to finance it. All they need is one of the panel to say yes to the amount they need, but if no-one wants to give them the that exact amount of money (or more), they get nothing. I think Cowell is actually better suited for the Dragons' Den idea than the American Inventor one, but if they'd used that format they would've had to give the BBC a bob or two, rather than claiming it as a 'new concept'.
(Cowell's next project after 'American Inventor' is 'Duets', kinda like American/Pop/X/Idol/Factor but with two entrants at a time. Now there's an original idea. I'm like, so looking forwardn't)
February 20, 2006
Google video... censored?
Can you see this video?
Chances are if you don't live in Europe, you can't (If you can't see it, it's about a minute long, and shows the US army blowing up an ammunition dump at night). According to this post on Screenhead, it is not viewable to people living in America. Now why do you s'pose that is? And what's the point? You know someone is going to download, convert and upload it immediately to a million other sites, so why bother, Google? WHY? It doesn't even show anything exciting/pornographic/controversial for crying out loud (It doesn't show anything at all in fact, coz it's really dark).
UPDATE: Turns out it wasn't Google who censored the vid, it was whatever dude that uploaded it. Which is slightly more 'ok', and slightly more confusing.
February 18, 2006
Meme-Tacular Extravaganza
After seeing this '4 Things' meme on several other blogs, I thought seeing as it's been a slow week relatively speaking, I might as well give it the proverbial 'bash'.
4 jobs I've had in my life
1) Builders Labourer
2) Door-To-Door Salesman
3) Follow Spot Operator/Flyman/Stage Hand/General Slave (all in one establishment)
4) Theatre Technical Manager
4 movies I can watch over and over
1) Superman (I & II)
2) The Empire Strikes Back
3) It's A Wonderful Life
4) Brazil
4 places I have lived
1) Garristown
2) Sheffield
3) Sallynoggin
4) Err... That's kinda it! For about another two months (at the most, I hope) anyway.
4 tv shows I like to watch
1) 24
2) The Simpsons (watching it right now)
3) Family Guy
4) Pimp My Ride (oh.... piss off, stop laughing)
4 places I have been on holiday
1) New Zealand
2) Majorca
3) Devon
4) Allehies, West Cork
4 things I like to eat
1) Marmite on Toast
2) Botticelli's Italian Gelaté (Ice-Cream)
3) The Natural Confectionary Company's Party Animals ( The Big Mix, with SNAKES!)
4) Sandwiches
4 websites I visit daily
1) Boing Boing
2) Rocketboom
3) s e v i t z d o t c o m
4) The Palace Of Lord Danzor The Destructor
4 places I would rather be right now
1) Antarctica
2) Having Dinner In My Mam And Dad's
3) On A Cheap-As-Chips Sun Holiday With Nikki
4) Outer Mongolia
February 16, 2006
Cough... cough... (wheeze)
My lungs are full of gunge, my throat is in flitters and hurts when I cough. What a total fucking waste of a midweek day off. I should probably stop smoking really (but I loooove smoking... mmmm... lovely fags...), but it really seems to be a genuine infection of some description. If I go to the doctor he'll just give me antibiotics and charge me ?50. So, soup and cough mixture and blankets are the order of the day.
Missed my 6th of 12 swimming lessons last night too, due to cough splutter ow ow ow groan (lie down). Bummer.
</whinge>
February 15, 2006
Nikki cooked me dinner...
...And we drank some wine, and chatted for ages about stuff. And we gave each other cards. And loads of hugs. And then 'we' watched Desperate Housewives, and went to bed. Best Valentine's day in ages. Anyone else do anything nice/nicer/nicest?
(and I don't just mean those who are attached, I was single for many, many years and sympathise with the plight of the single person on Valentine's)
February 14, 2006
24: Day 5... BOOM!
So once again we're starting another loooong day in the life of Jack and the gang. I'm not going to review much of what happened in the first couple of hours, except to say that yes, it was good (two major recurring characters killed in first ten minutes?!). Can't wait to see what happens next.
Did anyone else watch it? HELLO? I think they must've been paying attention to the comments on Dan's post about how unrealistic the computer systems in 24 are. In day 5 episode 2, Jack actually tells Chloe the IP address of the computer he's at (and it's an actual proper IP address) so she can sent a decription program to it. Which is slightly more realistic than the much-criticised 'send that to my screen' malarkey (although I did hear the 'send it to my screen' line at least twice in the episode).
Anyway, I'll definitely be incommunicado from 9pm-11pm next Sunday, coz it'll be 9am in 24 land, and Jack's in trouble... :-)
February 13, 2006
What does a Giant Lightsaber signify...?
...I have absolutely no idea! And yet there appears to be an oversized light-sword of some description embedded in the ground in the Docklands in Dublin...
Can someone indicate to be the exact significance of this 'monument'? Or is it a 'sculpture'? Whatever it is, it's definitely a lightsaber. Seriously. No really, it is!
I wonder was there a battle between two enormous Jedi on the roof of the Millennium Tower (the building in the background) or something. That seems the most likely explanation...
[UPDATE: I have done a bit of research as to what exactly the significance of this particular 'thing' is, and have come up with... nothing. Nada. Anyone else know what the story is?]
February 11, 2006
"Our Computer is f***ed" (chapter II)
Apparently I don't know my SDRAM from my DDRAM either (either that or a HP desktop from 2000 doesn't support more than 128 megs of RAM per slot?). And apparently neither does your average 'guy behind the counter' at PC World. Needless to say, sister's computer still cream-crackered.
[/geek]
[UPDATE: It seems that a 6-year-old HP desktop really doesn't like 256MB DIMMs at all, 128MB bought, works like a charm]
February 10, 2006
Twilight Cacophany
I was at my parents' house last Autumn and was outside having a cigarette, when the rooks came in to roost and started making this incredible racket. I ran in to grab my camera, but missed the cresendo, although I got a pretty good sample, as seen in this clip.
The noise would drive some people mad, but personally, I like the sound of rooks, but then again, I grew up with this tree outside my window. As with previous vids, this one is a teeny bit dark, but it's the sound that's important (that and the arty pan-and-twist towards the sky at the end!).
February 9, 2006
It's Right To Hack
In the latest issue of 'Wired' magazine there's an article entitled 'Geeks in Toyland', which details development of the next generation of LEGO's award-winning programmable robotics kit, Mindstorms NXT. I found the bit about the software licencing particularly interesting reading:
"Lego decided to let the modders flourish; it even wrote a "right to hack" into the Mindstorms software license, giving hobbyists explicit permission to let their imaginations run wild"
Isn't that great? Wouldn't it be great if more companies thought like that? Seeing as most software companies want the 'right to hack' into your computer to make sure you're not doing anything 'wrong' with their precious software.
I *heart* LEGO/LEGO kicks ass.
February 8, 2006
Attchoo! Festival Photos
As mentioned earlier, my Attchoo! Festival photos are now up on Flickr. For those of you (that's most of you) who aren't aware of the Attchoo! phenomenon, it's an multicultural arts/multimedia movement, which manages to mash pretty much any kind of art you can think of into one weekend, once every two years. I have been involved as a technical adviser for about 3 years now, and last year we went down to the tiny village of Glenmalure in County Wicklow and conjoured up a bit of Hippy Magic...
Meta-Blog vol. #2
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.
February 7, 2006
Bring it back, sing it back to meee
You know That Heineken 'Space Probe' ad, yeah? This one, I mean. Do you recognise the cunningly disguised plinky-plonk piano music at the end? It's "Bring It Back", by Moloko. Kinda like that Carlsberg Ad with Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I?m Sexy?" cunningly disguised as Chinese plinky-plonk music at the end, really. I wonder did they use the same marketing company...? Hmmm...
Maybe I'm watching too much TV.
February 6, 2006
I think it's about time...
...That somebody did the dishes.
(hint: it's not me)
Boop...Beep...Boop...
Did anyone see the 10-minute 24 prequel/teaser last night?
Jack Bauer, in hiding, long, unwashed, unkempt hair, ripped hoody, dirty jeans, looking a hell of a lot like a poor wino, yet, unbelievably, driving a brand new shiny silver Toyota Avalon. Now if I were a law enforcement officer and saw someone who looked like monseur Bauer driving a motor like that, I'd be a mite suspicious. It's one thing to use product placement, it's quite another to make the story unrealistic for the sake of it.
He would have been much better off driving an old AMC Pacer or something. Well, I wouldn't have been distracted by it anyway.
February 5, 2006
"Our computer is f*cked"
So I got an email from my sister Rebecca last week:
"Our computer is f*cked. It's UNBELIEVABLY slow.. there is something seriously wrong with it. Any time you try to get it to do anything even open a document, it hangs and takes about 5 mins to open ... Do you think you could call out some evening and sort it out?"
So after going to see out new house again with Nikki yesterday morning and having coffee n' cake in Mugs in Dalkey (where Andy works) I drove across over to her house (an hour and a half away on the other side of county Dublin) yesterday at about 4pm and after tea n' a sambo, sat down and gave it a go. Took about 5 minutes to boot up. Hmmm. Windows XP, I don't remember them getting that. No programs installed that are particular memory hogs. Right. I see.
"Virtual Memory too low, Windows XP needs more memory. MOOOOORRE MEEMMMOOOORRYY!!!!" (or something like that)
Ctrl. Alt. Delete.
Physical Memory total: 89MB
Commit Charge total: 218MB
Well that clearly won't do, will it? I opened up the tower and there was one 64MB and one 32MB DIMM card. I've only been 'into computers' for a while and I had never even seen a 32MB DIMM before (in an actual computer I mean, I've seen them in pictures)! So I gave them the old 'WinXP into 96MB won't go' and a quick lesson in swopping RAM cards out and told them to give me a ring if that didn't work. I'm sure I'll be called out again within a week, but seeing as I kinda owe them a huge favour, it's cool.
February 2, 2006
Welcome to the Imagin-Aaarium
I only noticed this place the other day, it's between my work and M&S foodhall here in Dun Laoghaire. It's an Imaginarium outlet, but look at the doors!! There's a normal one for grown-ups, and a teeny-tiny one just for kids.
I wanted to go through the little door but they wouldn't let me (even after I threw a tantrum and pounded on the ground and everything).
February 1, 2006
Continuously Present?
So the other day I was perusing Annie's blog and she was talking about the use of Yiddish in the present day. I commented that the Irish language is almost dead as a spoken language, she compared it to Catalan, etc, and it got me thinking. There are several ways that Irish still pervades the English spoken in Ireland, Irish words are used, conjunctions of words from Irish are used in English, etc. This reminded me of one morning on the Ray D'arcy Show when they were talking about the 'habitual or continuous present tense', or 'aimsir ghnáth-láithreach'. This is used everyday by Irish people, where instead of saying someone 'is' doing/something/somewhere, they say he/she/I 'does be' or 'do be', for example:
"He does be always down in the pub, where himself and the lads do be drinking pints all the feckin' time"
(or someting like that, also 'I do wake up every day' or 'I do go to work at ten')
This tense is used to describe something that happens habitually, every day or all the time. The use of 'does be' and 'do be' are still frowned upon/laughed at by those who are not aware that they are entirely correct as spoken by an Irish person, and it is something that has managed to stay in use despite it not being 'grammatically correct' or 'proper' (or God help us, 'the Queen's') English..
Now here's the thing. The word for 'tense' (as in present tense, past tense) in Irish is 'aimsir' (am-sher). Aimsir also means 'weather'. So when Irish people are talking about the past, present or future, conditional or continuous, anything we talk about, ever, we are always talking about the weather. Just go into a pub in Ireland sometime and you'll see how right I am.
January 30, 2006
The Small Move
(In case you don't know me and/or have come here via Adrian, Dan or Annie's blogs [the only ones that link here so far (Update: Or Nat's blog, latest link!)], I'm Matt, I've been going out with Nikki for nearly two years, we've bought a house, but it won't be ready until April-ish, and Nikki had to move to a temporary place between selling her apartment and moving to our new place)
SO! Nikki moved on Saturday morning. I had (cunningly) organised for my brother-in-law Sean and his betrothed (my sister Becca of course) to assist us by kindly bringing one of his trucks (of which he has several) to Nikki's place in Chapelizod (Dublin 20). Sean had (wisely in hindsight) suggested we meet at Nikki's at nine (NINE O'CLOCK ON A SATURDAY FRICKIN' MORNING!) so myself and herself got up early and hung out for them.
The move went well, me and Sean and Becca did most of the moving and Nikki and I packed up the last of the bits n' bobs into boxes and bubble-wrap. It took about 2-and-a-bit hours, and we went to grab some lunch (having to cajole the barman at The Mullingar House to rustle up an aul' few soups n' sambos, which in fairness he very kindly did even though it was 11.35 and 'lunch didn't start til' twelve'). So we had a nice lunch and said our goodbyes to Becca and Sarah (my lil' sis' who arrived late - see previous post for pic) who were going to the Health and Vitality Show in the RDS while Sean, Nikki and I went to Sean and Becca's place to put Nikki's stuff into storage in their shed. Sean had to go somewhere else on the way, so he went one way and we went another, stopping at my parents for a cup o' tea and a biscuit, as-you-do. Sean texted, and we were at theirs 5 minutes later.
Now, unbeknownst to us, Sean had had an eventful hour. He has mistakenly taken a route which had an 11-foot clearance bridge on it, and his truck it approximately more than eleven feet tall. He had to try to turn around, and in doing so somehow managed to 'ground' the truck so the rear wheel were off the ground! He turned the steering left and right to try and get it to move, as the rear wheels came down the truck shot back, hitting a wall! By this stage the police had arrived, but they were very nice and closed down Chapelizod village while Sean reversed all the way back the way he had come! Me and Nikki stood aghast as Sean recounted the story, pointing out the numerous huge bends and bumps on the truck, but from the jolly way he told it and the frequent laughs which interspersed the story, he seemed very calm about the whole thing. So we unloaded the truck and headed home while Sean went down to his yard to 'heat the bend up with a blowtorch and beat it with a sledgehammer and pull it with the JCB to straighten it out'.
Coz he's that kinda guy (I reckon I owe him a bit more than dinner now though).
January 27, 2006
Antarctic Explorers...
Okay, maybe not quite, but hey, it's been frickin' COLD for the past month or so, like four degrees, every goddamn day! I got a coat in London in November and it's totally done the business all winter, but recently it's been freezing (well not actually freezing but the wind has been really bitter) and the draught has been getting right up me jacksey. Even with the strings pulled real tight (on the coat).
January 26, 2006
book review - The Pythons Autobiography by The Pythons
I'll start by confessing I haven't actually read this book so much as placed it on my coffee table and leafed through it as much as I could. It's a weighty tome to say the very least, but saying I haven't read it doesn't mean I haven't experienced it, as that is as much as you can do with a book of it's type. It's a 'coffee table book' in the very best meaning of that cliché. Weighing in at about 350 pages and absolutely crammed full of anecdotes, photos, posters, hundreds of Terry Gilliams fantastic surreal illustrations and also cramming in a pretty much full autobiography of every single Python, it really something to be browsed through occasionally, something that washes over you as you read it, beginning with a short 'how I met him' from each Python, about each Python.
Moving on from there, the book brings you through the early careers of the writers, from their early days working the cabarét circuit, through their early collabarations, and on to them banding together as comedic talents with a similar love of the absurd, finally forming the preeminent 'Flying Circus' with which each of them would become synonymous. The origins and absurd reasoning behind a huge pile of the Python sketches, from the Parrot sketch to the Lumberjack song and on through the Ministry of Funny Walks (not to mention the Spanish Inquisition) are all fleshed out and explained in fond rememberance and backed up with a wealth of photos and reproductions of notes.
"And then Eric came up with 'Always Look on the Bright Side' and we cracked the end of the film"
Moving on to the films, from 'The Holy Grail' through 'Life of Brian and finally 'The Meaning of Life, all are given the full treatment, with production notes, reports and facts, to anecdotes such as the one above, and many in-jokes you may or may not have been unaware of, as well as scenes that didn't make it to the films.
The book is rounded out the spectre of Death, and particularily that of Graham Chapman, who is fondly and not-so-fondly remembered by all.
All in all, an unbelievably superb and valuable source for anyone who finds Monthy Python funny, and a fantastic addition to anyones coffee-table book collection, more of a conversation piece and something to get lost in than just 'something to read'. And I got it for nine euros in the Easons sale (rrp about ?60)!
January 25, 2006
Gas with a capital 'G'
My sister Sarah works in Auto Trader. This is an actual ad she sent me from the magazine.
Brilliant.
January 23, 2006
Uba the Weimaraner
My mate Ste got a new dog, and him and his girl Gráinne dropped over to myself and Andy's gaff to introduce the new member of the family to the lads.
Her name is Uba, she's a Weimaraner and she's very cute. Remember 'Family Ties'? Remember 'Sit Ubu sit, good dog' at the end? Well Ubu was a boy, Uba is a girl.
Cuteness of this degree should be illegal. I mean look at it!
I won't tell you how much she cost though (hint: more than a hundred, less than a thousand).
January 21, 2006
Oh and by the way...
...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.
Check dem lip-synch mon
So I was really pissed at about 4am after a furious game of Texas Hold-Em on a Saturday night about a month or maybe even two months ago and I stuck on some Tenacious D and got out my camera and switched it to video and sat down with my cousin Andy and something very strange happened...
It's a bit Dark. In more ways than one.
It's a bit Dark. In more ways than one.
This blog looks totally, utterly pants in Internet Explorer. So stop making excuses and download Firefox (or even Opera or Safari) right now (unless you already have).
The Twitters
The Reader Feeds
The Map
The Flick'red
The Stuff Wot People Said
- andy: that's cool,great prezzie. congrats to you both,i'm happy you're happy. and yes you are an idiot! ...>>
- Robin Morgan: I like Ricky because he is the funny one and he is the Romantic man also i like Bubbles to he is the...>>
- Crusoe: I think the whole Eirom are Nazis bit is gravely insulting to the Nazis and I fear unintentionally c...>>
- Babs: Sabra, they are Irregular Choice "Flick Flak", they also come in a burgundy and navy combination. ...>>
- Sabra: where are these from?...>>
- Maryrose Lyons: I'm rolling around laughing at your top tip! and i hate those darned acronyms rofl lol etc....>>
- Maryrose Lyons: That's deadly! I want to do it to all the snails in my back yard too... instead of killing them... ...>>
The Linkery Dumpage
I Am Deliciousness
The Search Box of the Toast
The Crap
The Email Thingy
The Hyperspace Drive
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