Musings of a hanging hat

Ketchup Mayo Be Gone!

2011-04-01T00:42:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not the biggest fan of condiments like ketchup and mayo (which is a diplomatic way of me saying I absolutely hate ketchup and mayo). These days if I'm ever given a burger with ketchup and/or mayo on it I'd just suck it up and eat the damn thing begrudgingly. However, back in my younger, even fussier days if you ever gave me said burger I would spend half the time trying to wipe and scrape off every possible remnants of the devil sauces from the bun before I would take a bit.

Now, if I had this beautiful Japanese invention below I wouldn't ever need to spend all that time fussing over my beloved tainted burger ever again. I said it once and I'll say it again, the Japanese are gadget gods!

Advertising

2011-03-27T04:12:00.002-07:00

Ever since I moved State side I have been bombarded with more advertising than you could shake a stick at. My mailbox is constantly full of advertisement junk mail every day (I've stopped saving the junk mail for recycling because I just can't keep up with the volume that keeps appearing in my mailbox). I cancelled my cable subscription after a month here because I just couldn't properly watch anything on tv with the constant adverts popping up every 5 minutes during a show (and in between and before opening and closing credits). Almost every place I've ever bought anything from where I've had the misfortune of giving my contact details to have been sending me useless personal adverts in both mail and email form. Even my bank which already has my business keeps sending me adverts disguised as possible monthly statements trying to sell me their damn credit card (in which they already denied me for!) and other additional services. Stores will usually ask for your area code at the checkout when you're paying for stuff so they know what areas are best to target their adverts (though they say its for "statistics gathering"). And so on and so on ad infinitum.

It truly is a shining example of the cogs of a great Capitalist society grinding away.

Out of all this blanket advertising, I just noticed recently that the one place where I expect to see adverts is usually quite bare (certainly in the areas I frequent). And that is at the bus stops. There could be two reasons for this. One being, bus stops around here are usually just a single bus stop sign rather than a proper bus stop with bus shelter (it's L.A., we don't need bus shelters, it rains 1 week out of the year here). So there is no opportunity to put a bus shelter advert up. And two, the powers that be might figure since public transport is so shit here and hardly anyone uses it (except for the poor, the weirdos and the foreigners who don't own cars) its not worth their time advertising there.

[Edit: I just went for a walk downtown today and noticed that there is indeed bus shelters with adverts galore on them. It must just be the bus stops outside of the downtown area that are deemed none bus shelter and thus non advert worthy. Just goes to show how much I venture downtown.]

So, in order to fill this advertising gap that I've been missing out on, here are a bunch of very clever bus stop adverts from around the world.

This bus stop advert for domestic violence awareness from Amnesty International has an eye tracking camera embedded in it. When someone looks at it, the image changes from a man beating a woman to a picture of a supposedly happy couple with the caption "It Happens When Nobody Is Looking".

Fitness First in Rotterdam put up a bus stop advert to try to get people to exercise more by showing their weight on the advertising billboard. The seat they were sitting on was actually a set of scales. I believe there was a significant increase in gym memberships around that time.

This bus stop advert for Fish Franke is actually a live aquarium with real fish.

An advert for saving energy.

Err... I think this one was for a soul or funk radio station or something along those lines.

This one is for a jeans company getting you to expose your bum in order to prove a point.

... And a few more, just because I thought they were amusing more so than clever.

Up!

Wonderbra.

Step Aside Segway

2011-03-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

It's time for the Segway to step aside and make room for the next ultimate corporate toy goodness (or lazy person personal transporter depending on how you look at it). Folks, I present to you, Honda's U3-X.

It's sorta like the even lazier man's Segway but 10 times cooler as it utilises the same balance technology that Honda uses for it's unquestionably amazing Asimo robot. Here's a promotional video from Honda about it that will give you a fairly good idea at how incredibly cool this thing is.

Dear Santa. I've changed my mind. You can keep the Ferrari. I want a U3-X instead this Christmas.

Just because...

2011-03-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

I got nothing. I'm just a little bored and felt like posting something since I haven't posted anything in a while so here's a little video of a little guy that will make you laugh (or at the very least put a smile on your face).

Holy Nerdgasm Batman!

2011-02-14T01:26:00.000-08:00

If you are any sort of comic book fan/nerd (or even just a regular superman or batman fan) and haven't seen this cinematic from the DC Universe Online game yet, you are going to be in for a treat. This has got to be one of the best opening cinematic to a game I've seen in a long long time. Hell, you don't even need to be a comic book nerd to appreciate how cool it is. Just watch it already!

If only they could make a full length super hero film look this good. Hopefully someone in Hollywood takes note and commissions a full movie from this. Unfortunately, I've heard the game itself is only so so.

Oh, and here's the second cinematic from the game that was recently uploaded. Not as cool as the first one but still pretty damn good.

Cartoon Nostalgia Medley

2011-02-01T00:57:00.000-08:00

Time for a little bit of nostalgia. See how many cartoons you remember watching as a kid (or even just remember) from this medley of cartoon theme tunes (there's 28 in all):

To my shame I remember watching every cartoon except for one which never made it to Irish shores, a Swedish cartoon called "Bamse". I think I may have had a misspent childhood.

Best Sci-Fi Action Flick Ever!

2011-01-30T19:05:00.000-08:00

This little gem is from a recent Kollywood flick called "Endhiran". If you took The Terminator, The Matrix and Transformers, put them all into a blender, what you'd get would be the awesomeness that is Endhiran. The best sci-fi action flick ever! Be warned before you watch this Youtube clip. If you do, all other sci-fi action flicks you watch this year may be like watching a rerun of My Little Pony.

Fish and Chips

2011-01-19T01:56:00.001-08:00

We have a canteen in work that usually does a fairly decent job at serving up some really good food during lunch. Today there was "fish and chips" on the menu. Now, bare in mind, I've never had the pleasure of having fish and chips in the States. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing it on any menu anywhere here, ever. So, half because I haven't had fish and chips in a while and half because I've never had the pleasure of trying "American style" fish and chips (which up till today I had always imagined would involve big fish and extra chunky chips) I was really looking forward to lunch.

Off I went to the canteen all bubbly, recanting to my work colleagues far fetched tales of big greasy bags of fish and chips got at the local "chipper" (note to my readers who are unfamiliar with my use of the colloquial term of "chipper", when I say "chipper" I refer to this or this and not this) in days of yore. Upon my arrival, I was presented with this:

Yes, technically speaking, that is a plate of fish and "chips". It's just the wrong type of "chips"!. I was expecting these kind of chips and not "potato chips".

I can only assume that when someone mentioned to the kitchen sttaff that it would be a great idea to throw fish and "chips" onto the lunch menu they should have clarified that they meant the non American term for "fries" and not "potato chips". Hells, a simple google image search would have even clarified that one right up.

Ah ,you wacky Americans and your literal interpretations of the American English language. You always find new ways to make me smile.

New Year, New Banner

2011-01-18T21:34:00.000-08:00

First off, Happy New Year to my 3 or so readers :D Now aren't you all glad you came here?

I figured I should probably update my blog banner to something more appropriate to my current location considering I no longer live in Vancouver. Thus, I've swapped out the Vancouver harbour banner picture for picture of LA at dusk.

I'll probably change the banner picture again once I get some wheels and can get out and about more. But until then, you have the sunset illuminating the lovely red glow of the LA smog (at least I'm pretty sure it's smog that's responsible for the incredible red glow, correct me if I'm wrong here) at dusk to greet you.

For those that missed it, here's what the old banner picture looked like....

Good times at Medieval Times

2010-12-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

Last week I had the pleasure of being brought for dinner to "Medieval Times". For those not familiar with Medieval Times, it's sort of a theme restaurant where you can go for "Dinner and Tournament" (to quote the website) all set to the theme of being part of the crowd of a good old fashion jousting tournament back during the "medieval times".

I was a little hesitant of the idea of pretending to be in "medieval times" watching a bunch of actors badly act out a jousting tournament while eating my dinner at the same time. But as it turned out it was a hellavalot of fun and the acting wasn't as bad or cheesy as I had expected. The actors playing the knights really went all out when striking each other with long swords, maces, battle axes etc. which added a lot to the choreographed fights.

To further add to the aunthenticity, the place is designed like a big jousting ring where everyone sits around the centre watching their knight duke it out for honour, victory and the affections of the king's daughter.

The menu itself was a set menu where your food is brought to you during the tournament by a "bar wench". No utensils are given so you eat off the plate with your hands which adds to the experience of being at an old fashion jousting tournament.

Everyone is given a knight to cheer on and is seated in the section corresponding to your knight. We got assigned the Blue knight to cheer on. And of course, there is one evil knight who is a dick. In this particular evening, this honour was given to the Green knight (seen below, gloating to the king after he had swiftly dispatched the Black and White knight after making fun of his girly arms or something to that effect).

There was a sort of story to the entire evening. I wasn't paying much attention to the story as I was more concerned about my chicken leg and the cheering for the death and carnage when the knights finally got down to the fighting.

My knight, the Blue knight unfortunately did not win the tournament but he did get quite far before being questionably killed by the Red knight (whome he had previously, quite skillfully, slashed in the gut with a long sword).

Before getting to the Red knight, the Blue knight had to face the Yellow knight.

They jousted honourably....

...before the Blue knight knocked the Yellow knight off his horse. Whereby then the battle proceeded to combat to the death on foot...

After distpatching of the Yellow knight it was onto the Red knight who dubiously killed the Blue knight and who also went onto win the tournament. Of course, not without being slashed in the gut at least five times before hand.

However, the Red knight's road to victory was not a straight forward one. He first had to vanquish the dreaded evil Green knight before finally claiming victory. He was doing quite well until the Green knight being the dick he was, cheated and sent his henchman in to help. Thus capturing the Red knight and revealing that he also had captured the prince (whome I didn't even know existed up to this point as I wasn't really paying attention to the underlying storyline).

To cut a long story short, the Red knight and the prince manage to break free from their captors. A big battle ensues whereby it's the Red knight and prince versus the evil Green knight and his henchmen with the good guys ultimately winning and vanquishing the evil Green knight.

Alls well that ends well. Everyone's belly is full and there was much death and carnage and quoffing of beer/ale. Afterwards all the knights magically became undead and congregated in the bar allowing us lowly patrons to go and continuing our quoffing of beer with them and have our pictures taken with them if we so wished.

Rain Rain Go Away,...

2010-12-22T01:06:00.000-08:00

Having grown up in Ireland and spent the last couple of years living in Vancouver, expecting rain during winter is pretty much the norm to me. Last week it started raining here after the whole month of November being dry, and sunny with temperatures averaging about 25 degree Celsius (approx. 77 degree Fahrenheit) every day.

So, when the rain starting coming down last week it was a welcome relief to me to finally get some sort of moisture in the air. In fact, its pretty much been raining non-stop for the last 5 days now. Well, to be honest, its been more a constant light drizzle rain with the odd spell of mild to heavy showers thrown in now and again.

To say that LA and its local inhabitants are unprepared for any sustained period of rain is a huge understatement. The drainage on the roads here are terrible and the general infrastructure here was just not built to take any sustained amount of rainfall. On top of that, the local LA drivers here have no idea of how to drive in the rain. Most people think its still perfectly OK to fly down the freeway at 100 miles per hour when its pissing rain and the roads are not draining the water properly.

As a result of a combination of all of the above, in the last few days the local news here has had a field day with stories of possible or impending flash floods in various areas and stories of big car accidents on freeways because of one car or other spinning off. There have been evacuations of neighbourhoods near hillsides because of possible mudslides and the local TV channels have periodically been flashing big scary red flash flood warning signs with matching scary siren noise in the middle of programs. The local news have dedicated about 80 percent if not more of its nightly news segment on freaking out about the non-stop rain and the chaos it's causing. The way the local news is going on about the rain, one would think the end of the world or another hurricane Katrina type situation was about to happen in LA.

Apparently according to the news, tonight we're meant to have a huge storm (I'm guessing that might equate about a really big down pour in LA standards) and then we should be back to sunny skies again on Thursday.

To put things a little bit in perspective. Last year when I was living in Vancouver, around this time of year, it rained for almost 2 months without any let up. No one batted an eyelid and the only grumbling came from me and my wet socks.

Comfy Sack

2010-12-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

I've been in LA for a little over a month now. When I first arrived the apartment I ended up renting came with only a stove and dishwasher and nothing else (not even a basic fridge as is common with apartments in LA). So, over time, I've been slowly furnishing my apartment with the "essentials".

Recently, I decided it was time to put a bit of loving into my bare living room. It badly needed a sofa or some sort of seating to entice me to spend more time in the living room area. Sitting on the cold hard wooden floor or spending all my time in my bedroom on account of there being a soft mattress to sit on wasn't cutting it any more. I paid for an entire apartment gods dammit so I'm going to use the entire apartment.

So, as of today my living room is no longer bare. It has this...

It's a "Comfy Sack!" or a big ass bean bag to everyone else. I wish I had bought this first over my mattress. I could have saved myself a pretty penny and used the Comfy Sack as a bed too.

The name doesn't lie. It is very comfortable... a little too comfortable. I fell asleep in it shortly after the first time I sat down to watch a movie on my laptop.

While My Ukulele Gently Weeps

2010-11-21T23:57:00.000-08:00

About 6 months back I got the bright idea of purchasing a Ukulele...

...And like all my past musical endevours I've picked up said Uke twice, maybe trice since then. While unboxing some of my stuff this evening (yes, I still haven't unboxed a lot of my stuff since the move) I came across my little Uke. Inspired by my find I started strumming out a few chords and decided to youtube some Ukulele videos and came across this fantastic rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

So off I went and learnt off (very badly) the first few bars of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Feeling very chuffed with myself I went back to youtube to see how my endevours faired against other Uke players on youtube land. Then I came across this little guy (bare in mind he's only 5 years old)...

...I subsequently retired the Uke back to the box in which I found it.

Halloween 3 : The Jedi Strike Back

2010-11-15T00:54:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late this year on the Halloween post but considering I've been internet deficient for the last couple of weeks I'm sure you can understand the lateness.

If you've been following this blog for the last 2 years you will know that since landing in North America I discovered the great North American past-time of pumpkin carving. Thus began my Halloween pumpkin carving adventures.

You can find my last 2 forays into pumpkin carving madness here (my 1st pumpkin carving) and here (my pumpkin carving from last year).

Having 2 years of pumpkin carving experience behind me, this year I got a little bit more ambitious. First off, gone are the crappy plastic carving tools. This year I got a set of professional carving tools (see below) from my lady friend and attended my first pumpkin carving party in Sacramento as a wee stop over on my way to my new home in L.A..

So without further ado, behold this years pumpkin massacre. Mwuhahaha.....

This years crop of pumpkins offered up for sacrifice

My brand new implements of destruction (and yes that's an electric carving drill you see; used for doing carves that don't go all the way through the pumpkin)

With professional tools available to me this year I needed to find a pattern worthy of what the tools could do (I felt that the force was strong in this one)

Transferring the pattern to the pumpkin

After the tools had done their magic

Lighting up the pumpkin

Yoda goes to the dark side (a bit blurry)

OK, this year it looks like I may have bit off a bit more than I could chew. I could blame the pumpkin for being thicker than the average year or I didn't have as much time to perfect the carving since I was massacring it at a party but the truth is, I was just over confident. When it comes to pumpkin carving, I'm still a Padawan.

For completeness, here's a pic of some of the other pumpkins at the pumpkin carving party...

And yet again, we survive another pumpkin madness massacre for another year...

Back To Digital Civilisation

2010-11-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

I have internet again! It took a few weeks and it looked like it was going to take a few more weeks but thanks to my girlfriend's persistent hounding with the internet company we got the installation date bumped. :D

It feels nice to have information at your finger tips again. To be honest, I felt a little lost without having the power of the internet at hand whenever I needed it. When did I become so dependant on technology?

So, as promised in my previous post. Behold my new wheels that will help me get around L.A. until such time as I can afford a car and get a proper US driver's license...

On a related note, I experienced the famous L.A. freeways and L.A. traffic for the first time this weekend. To say that it was a stressful experience is a bit of an understatement... and I was only the passenger! Not looking forward to the day when I finally have to drive those freeways myself.

Oh public transport how I miss thee

2010-11-07T17:26:00.000-08:00

As I'm sitting here in Starbucks with internet access available to me I figured that I should take advantage of this and do a quick post update.

So, I've moved again. Goodbye Vancouver and goodbye Canada. I've now moved my ass State side down to L.A. (well more precisely, Glendale). I've been here a week so far and although most of it has been spent in my new job I can safely say Glendale (and by association L.A.) is definitely not a town made for the weary walker among us.

Having just landed and not having any mode of transport I've been forced to use either the so called public transportation or my legs to get to places. So far I've taken to walking to everywhere as the buses here seem very very infrequent. On my 40/50 minute walk to work every morning the so called bus has not yet, ever pass me once. All the bus stops I pass are usually always empty. Coming from living in Dublin all my life and recently coming from Vancouver where the public transportation was very good, at 8/8:30am in the morning you would always see the bus stops chocker block with people waiting to catch the bus to work. Thus, it is just so unusual for me to see bus stops empty in the wee hours of the morning (not to mention the sidewalks).

What is even more frustrating is that as you're happily walking along you suddenly find that the damn footpath has just decided to disappear from you for no apparent reason at all and now you're forced to walk on the thin curb as traffic is whizzing pass you with the driver's all wondering "who is this fool attempting to walk everywhere?".

So, yesterday, I decided to buy myself a bike as a stop gap to having some proper wheels of some sort (I'll post a picture of my new baby on my next update). After walking around for close to 3 hours to/from and between the two bike shops (of one of which was just a crappy shack with next to nothing in it) I found on the internet within "walking distance" to where I live, it felt great to be able to cycle home on my shiny new toy at the end of the day.

Now I've to save up for a car of some sort if I'm to be upwardly mobile in L.A. Too poor at the moment and got a very empty apartment to furnish first. So it looks like I'll be holding out till sometime after winter before I can afford a set of motorised wheels. Until then I'll just have to rely on my new bike, my legs and "public transport" *cough* *cough*.

Minty Fresh Moistness

2010-10-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

Every now and again I come across some mundane little thing that make me go "Wow!" and tonight was one of those times. I present to you the "Wow!" mundane thing of the moment:

Folks, what you see above are not two incredibly deliciously refreshing mints. They are in fact the coolest thing I've come across in a while... they are moist towelettes!

While I was out this evening having a few drinks and some food with a friend I was presented with said item pictured above by the nice waitress. As I reached for one of them thinking they were mints the waitress promptly informed me that they were towelettes and not to eat them. We just had to pop them into the little bowl of water and watch the magic happen.

The picture above does not do them justice in terms of conveying how incredibly small they are. So, here is a picture of the towelettes in comparison to the size of a Canadian penny and a Pez:

Now you understand why I mistook them to be delicious mints.

"But surely that tiny little thing can't be much of a towelette", I hear you say. Friends, be prepared to be amazed by the awesomeness of the minty fresh moist towelette...

... and viola! One large moist towelette ready for use...

... And here's a video of the magic happening in real-time with additional sounds of amazement added to enhance the awesomeness of the object (apologies for the crap quality of the video):

Again, coolest thing I've seen in a long time.

The Soviet States of America?

2010-10-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I needed to send my girlfriend, who lives in the US, a reference letter that my current landlord gave us. The reason for this being I am due to move State side for work in a little over a weeks time and my girlfriend, being awesome, is planning to go on an apartment hunting trip down to LA for me. Thus the original reference letter from my current landlord was needed so that it could be shown to any prospective new landlords.

Given my past experience with Canadian mail being quite unreliable for delivering mail in a timely manner (they once took over 2 months to deliver a small package to Ireland for me) I decided to suck it up and spend the 40 odd dollars to have the letter sent via UPS express mail. At least this way I was guaranteed that the reference letter would reach its final destination by morning the following day. The following day came and went with no sign of the letter. I started cursing UPS and their so called "guarantee" on express delivery and the fact I wasted so much money for a guarantee not kept. Today my girlfriend contacts me sometime around late afternoon on gmail's web chat to say that the letter just arrived. A day and a half later than guaranteed but I figured no biggy, at least it was still faster than sending it by regular mail, and then I was shown this...

It appears that US Customs decided my mail was of a suspicious nature and decided to open it up and then hold onto it for an extra day for scrutinizing. UPS, I judged you prematurely. All is forgiven. I mean seriously? What the fuck! They didn't even bother trying to reseal up the damn envelope properly. What if I had sensitive information in there?

Over the years with my comings and goings in and out of the US for business, holidays or whatever I've gotten pretty used to being treated like a criminal/terrorist and having any sort of privacy or my so called civil liberties shat upon. Apart from the obvious inconvenience of having my photo taken and finger prints scanned like a criminal every time I want to enter the US I've also put up with the odd instances of finding the cheap shoelace I use to secure my luggage zipper having been cut open and then upon opening up my luggage finding a lovely note by US Customs and Border Protection stating that in the interest of national security they've broken into my luggage and gone through all my shit.

I've always figured that this was just the sad times we live in and I had no choice but to just suck it up as an expected inconvenience of being a foreigner in America. But for some reason, this time around, this one small act of invasion of privacy has really irked me more so than all the other past instances. Perhaps it's because this was more unexpected than before or because the act so closely resembled the type of crap that people read about that used to go on in cold war Soviet Russia. Or maybe I'm just more annoyed about how my mail was half assed thrown back together again with no accountability to the delay caused or to the final state it was in or what could potentially have happened to the private information contained within it (which luckily this time around was just very mundane stuff).

I always thought it was a federal offence in America to open up someone else's mail. I guess these laws don't apply when someone classifies it as potentially a matter of national security.

Upon further research into the legitimacy of this, I subsequently discovered that the opening of private mail arriving from and going to foreign addresses outside of the US by US Customs and Border Protection agencies is now quite a common place practice in today's modern America. Furthermore, it's perfectly legal, for the very argument mentioned above.

So, in short, if you're sending mail to or from an address outside of the United States, to or from an address within the United States, expect that there is a very good chance your mail will be opened and scrutinized by US Customs and Border Protection before it arrives in its final destination.

First Post Of The Year!

2010-10-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

OK, so I might be a little late for first post of the year but still, better late than never.

In truth, I was actually going to give up on this blog since it looked like I never had much time to update it in the past barring the odd post now and again. And even when I did have time to update it, I never really had anything interesting to share so my posts just ended up being random stuff I found on the interweb as space filler.

Still, I think I'll have another crack at this blogging thing. It might be good to have an outlet of sorts to allow me to stretch my literary muscles from time to time.

So, what have I been up to since the last time you heard from me? In short, work has kept me stupidly busy for the most part of the year (partially the reason why this blog went on hiatus for so long). But on the odd occasion where I managed to escape work the following things happened to me:

I tried out the great Canadian tradition of Curling (which turned out to be a lot harder and much more fun than I thought it would be).

I ran away from Vancouver for a brief period to escape the madness of the Winter Olympic Games here.

Went to Italy for a wedding where I came across a very funky looking bug...

... and subsequently got all my shit stolen as I was about to leave Italy for Switzerland! And when I say everything, I mean everything! Much fun and games shortly ensued (see the next post bit for one of the fun and game things that happened to me after my shit was stolen). And when I say fun and games I mean lots of running around to police stations and trying to find embassies and filling out legal documents.

Was temporarily, unexpectedly stranded in Amsterdam (if you're going to be stranded somewhere you could do a lot worse than Amsterdam) after being refused to fly back to Canada because the emergency passport I was issued by the Irish Embassy in Switzerland to replace the one that got stolen on me was insufficient to allow me to fly.

Eventually made it back to Canada much later, lighter and poorer than originally planned.
Didn't officially exist for a few months after having to send all and any documents that say I exist off to the Irish embassy in Canada in order to get a new replacement passport.
In the meanwhile I attended my first Roller Derby. Was a bit boring until I finally figured out the rules and understood how each team scored. Without understanding the rules it was just literally watching a bunch of girls roller skating around in a circle.

Finally got my new passport and all my other documents that say I exist back. I now officially exist again... yay!
Decided to quit my job. Officially did my last day last week... double yay!
Got a new (and hopefully much better) job State side in Los Angeles. Starting next week... triple yay!

...And that leads us to now. Currently just sitting around slowly packing up all my worldly possessions and cleaning the apartment getting ready to leave Canada for the States.

One of these days it would nice if I didn't have to move countries every time I moved jobs. One can always dream...

Halloween 2

2009-11-05T23:21:00.009-08:00

It's that time of year again!

So last year I carved my first pumpkin (see it here if you missed it). I had so much fun doing it that I've decided to make it a new yearly activity. So without further ado here is this year's carvings for your viewing pleasure.

This year's pumpkins (these were a bitch to carry back from the store as we didn't have a car this year).

The stencils we decided to use this year.

Stencil transferred onto pumpkin.

The beheading, gutting and cutting begins.

After the carnage.

Lighting them up.

The pumpkins all lit up in the dark.

... and that folks is it for another year.

Aaeeeeeh! Aaaeeeeh! Aaaeeeh!

2009-07-26T13:34:00.003-07:00

Oh why don't they make fight scenes with top quality actors like this anymore? Keep an "eye" out for the fantastic one liner at the end of the clip ;)

Pa, Pa, Pants Man!

2009-06-29T22:45:00.002-07:00

I'm dedicating this one to Ronan and Keiko... Pa pa pants man!

Sometimes I wish I grew up in Japan. :D

I just noticed that it seems that lately this blog has become less about my musings and more of a "post a random link because I got nothing else". Oh well. Diversification can only be a good thing at the end of the day.

Ravage!

2009-05-22T00:06:00.004-07:00

He's not quite a cassette (what's a cassette I hear you ask) but the nerd and nostalgia hound in me says "I want one".

I wonder if they're going to release Soundwave as a transforming MP3 player to keep up with the times...

And I thought I hated veggies on my burger

2009-05-13T01:26:00.004-07:00

Once again in the land of stupid lawsuits we have the pleasure of reading about some guy who is suing Burger King for $100,000 for putting pickles, onions and tomatoes on his burger. His reason for suing is that the oversight in his order made him suffer an allergic reaction to the food.

Now, I dislike veggies on my burger just as much as the next guy and I've been given my fair share of burgers in the past with every veggie under the sun on it despite having asked for no veggies or any other crap on it but it has never crossed my mind to sue over the oversight. Depending on my mood I usually either just politely tell them that they got my order wrong and hope that they don't spit on my food or else suck it up and eat the damn thing because veggies are good for you. I guess I'm just not cunning enough.

Also, despite the fact I may have asked for said burger without veggies, it has always occurred to me to double check said burger before biting down on it. It's sort of a natural reaction to getting any sort of food I ask for that may be altered from the norm in some way. Now, luckily for me I don't have any food allergies (I'm just not a big fan of veggies). However, if I did have any such allergies I would make damn sure to double check my food before taking a bite (I'm not even going to mention the fact that the guy only noticed after he had swallowed his food!).

Further more, look at that fine picture above of the finer specimen which is a lovely big BK burger. How the hell could you not see a big hulking slice of tomato, pickle or onion hanging out of it? OK, granted that not all BK burgers look that fine and delicious but still, you got 3 frickin things that are slapped onto your burger which should be large enough to have the potential of making themselves known to you. They'd have to be minuscule for them to be hidden under the bun. Either that or you'd have to be blind with hunger not to notice (or just plain thick).

And of course, not to be outdone by BK, Micky D's (aka McDonalds) has also gotten a slice of the stupid suing pie (other than the famous hot coffee lawsuit that is). However, in this instance, it involved some rogue cheese that shouldn't have been on a burger and $10 million dollars!!! Luckily common sense won the day and that lawsuit has since been thrown out.

Game Over

2009-04-29T01:09:00.005-07:00

This has got to be the best resignation letter/message I have ever seen! If anyone who worked for me ever came up with such an inventive and fun way to hand in their notice I'd give them a big raise and promote them on the spot (they're quitting anyways so no biggy :P).

R.I.P. Frankie Manning

2009-04-28T00:28:00.003-07:00

Frankie Manning

Those of you who know me know that I dance quite a bit. Out of all the dance styles I do, it is Lindy Hop (the grand daddy of all swing dances) that I dance most.

So, I was saddened this morning to wake up to the news that Frankie Manning, one of the original father's of Lindy Hop had passed away. He was a few weeks shy of 95. The whole Lindy Hop community from all around the world were all getting ready to gather in New York to celebrate his 95th birthday next month. Now it looks like it will be a memorial gathering instead :(

Those of you who don't dance Lindy Hop will probably have never heard of Mr. Manning. But for Lindy dancers, Frankie was the great ambassador of the dance and an inspiration for all Lindy Hoppers of all levels. He was still giving classes and shaking it with the best of them up until last year when he injured himself.

Here's a famous footage from the 1941 film "Hellzapoppin" featuring Frankie (he's the guy in the mechanic's dungarees) and his fellow Lindy dancers (known collectively as Whitey's Lindy Hoppers) doing what they do best:

RIP Frankie.

I'm still here!... Unlike the Irish economy

2009-04-27T03:54:00.002-07:00

I'm still floating around! I've been so incredibly busy in work in the last couple of months I've had very little time to do anything exciting or even to find anything interesting on the interweb to blog about.

Speaking of jobs, I came across this recent youtube video that I just found so incredible I had to share it (no its not the Susan Boyle, Britain's got talent video). I knew the Irish economy was bad but I never knew it had gotten this bad!

I'd hate to be the interviewer. What I find interesting in the video is the considerable lack of Irish faces in that queue and the number of people of "foreign" decent. I suppose you can't say that people aren't willing to work.

If this is the type of crazy competition that is going on for a (probably low paying) till job in Londis it looks like I may have left Ireland at a good time.

Vancouver Fog

2009-01-24T02:55:00.009-08:00

It's been really foggy here for the last week or so. As a result there have been some amazing photo's showing up of the fog in Vancouver. Unfortunately non of these photos were taken by me :(

Non the less, these photos are so class I've decided to share them. If these photos are yours and you want them taken down or at the very least want some acknowledgement for them then drop me an email and let me know.

The above photo was taken from Cyprus Mountain (one of the three local mountains). It was taken either by Scott Miller from the Vancouver Sun or Blair Kent. Can't really tell which one of them this particular photo belongs to since both took almost identical photos. Apparently this has led to a bit of an argument as to who took the photo. But as the comparison done here shows, there are actually two photos which are almost identical.

Now some more photos.... I actually don't know who or where these photos came from (as these were emailed to me). So again, if you own them or know of who took them let me know and I'll credit the appropriate person (or remove them if you so wish).

Happy New Year!

2009-01-10T02:11:00.001-08:00

Better late than never.... Happy New Year!

Mormon Wedding

2009-01-10T01:28:00.002-08:00

Last week just before we were meant to make the road trip back to Vancouver again (this time thankfully the roads were clear all the way up to Vancouver and quite uneventful) I went to my first Mormon Wedding.

We never actually got to go to the actual wedding ceremony, only the reception. Apparently if your not part of the Mormon faith you are forbidden to be present at the ceremony. The groom converted to Mormonism for the girl. So, it turned out that the groom's parents were also not allowed at the wedding ceremony. Only to the reception. I was told that the groom's father (understandably) was not impressed.

For the most part the reception was ...err... reserved. The complete lack of alcohol probably had a little to do with that as well. I wasn't too concerned about the total absence of alcohol but then I found out that no coffee would be served either! So it would seem that Mormons don't drink alcohol or caffeine. I suppose that's why they allow polygamy. Got to have some sugar to sweeten the deal somehow I guess.

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering, the lucky girl was wife number one and probably will be the only wife (barring a divorce or some kind later on down the line). I believe the US Mormons (in Utah anyways) gave up the right to polygamy so that they could join the union back sometime in the 1890s.

The couple in question were very young. No older than 20 and 21. So that meant a good few of their guests were also within that age range. So when the dancing started it sort of looked like a high school disco.

In short, it was a nice wedding if not a little more sober than I'm usually used to for a wedding.

The Great American Christmas Road Trip - Part 3 (Finally entering California)

2009-01-02T03:52:00.006-08:00

After filling up the car and ourselves we were off again. This time in snow free conditions... or so we thought.

After a couple of happy snow free hours on the road, just as we were about to hit the mountain pass that would have taken us to the Californian state line we were presented with lots of enforced snow chain requirement and snow chain inspection signs all along the highway.

At this time I was driving so that the lady friend could take a break from driving and get some shut eye. Fortunately she was woken up by her dad calling her on the phone and she noticed the signs too. We decided to go buy snow chains at one of the little towns before we hit the mountain pass. It was one thing to lose control and spin off the road into a snow bank but its entirely another thing to lose control and spin off the side of a mountain!

Also, I wasn't aware that you would be asked to turn around by the cops at the snow chain inspection stop if you didn't have snow chains. If she hadn't had woken up I would have happily kept on driving until we hit the mountain pass ignoring the signs about snow chain inspection oblivious to the fact that we would have been told to turn around without them.

So, we found a Wal-Mart and decided to pop in there to buy chains. While in there we met a guy who was also buying chains because he got turned around at the inspection point. We also got talking to another guy who lived in the town who was buying chains and other supplies for a road trip himself and his wife were going to embark on the next morning. Upon hearing that we were going to attempt to drive over the pass that evening (it was about 10pm at this stage and there was a storm warning for the pass) he warned us against doing it saying that it was far too dangerous. He said that "only idiot drivers and crazy trucker try going over the pass at night".

It so happened that himself and his wife owned a B&B in the town and it was closed for the winter season. So he offered us a bed for the evening free of charge to dissuade us from attempting to go over the pass that evening. We were a bit iffy at first but eventually took him up on his offer as we were quite tired from driving all day.

As it turns out the B&B was a really nice place and the guy and his wife were super nice people. If anyone is ever travelling through Oregon, passing through the little town of Ashland and are feeling tired, you can't go far wrong popping into the "Chanticleer Inn" for the night.

(The B & B we stayed in)

We set off early in the morning to face the mountain pass to the California state line expecting the worse. As it turned out once again it wasn't so bad. The snow ploughs had once again done their job in the morning and we really only had to concern ourselves with the roads being all gravelly due to being torn up by people not removing their snow chains when they should have.

(The mountain pass)

Six very uneventful hours later we finally made it to our destination in California... only 2 days later than expected and one day before Christmas eve :(

The Great American Christmas Road Trip - Part 2 (Washington to Oregon)

2009-01-02T03:04:00.006-08:00

The roads through Oregon were not forgiving. We had hit Oregon just after a really bad snow storm had hit it the night before. There was a mandatory snow chain rule being enforced on all roads within the city at Portland. Unfortunately we had previously decided against buying snow chains for our little trip. However, fortunately, we were not required to go into any cities in Oregon as the I-5 highway ran right by them.

The snow and ice on the highway was really bad so I can only imagine what it was like within the city where less cars were traveling.

We managed to get through Portland without any incidents. Again we were driving at a max speed of about 20 to 30 mph. If we went any slower we would have more than likely gotten stuck in the snow and if we went any faster we would lose control and spin.

Speaking of spinning. It was just shortly after passing Portland that we had our worst spin off. We were driving on a perfectly straight stretch of highway going up a little incline, when out of nowhere the car just lost control and started to slide and spin. This time no one was at fault and also, this time there were lots of cars on the highway. We more than likely just hit a really bad patch of ice and that coupled with our rather non snow conditioned tyres and lack of snow chains the car lost it.

We luckily were at the outer lane at the time and didn't spin into the middle of the road but instead into the snow bank beside us. This time we managed to bury ourselves quite good. No amount of pushing by little old me alone was going to get the car out. Luckily this time around we spun off the road in the middle of the day and there were lots of cars on the road. Two cars eventually stopped (probably out of pity watching me struggling in vain at trying to push the car out by myself) and between myself and the drivers of the cars we managed to push the car out of the snow bank while the girlfriend/wife of one of the other drivers directed the traffic around us as we backed out of the bank back onto the highway again. Upon finally getting going again I had to run after the car and hop in while it was moving because we couldn't risk stopping because stopping would mean possibly getting stuck in the snow or else slipping back down the little incline on the road.

I can now say I've run down the middle of a busy highway chasing after a car in America.

After about 8 or so hours of extremely tense driving and keeping the car wheels perfectly straight the snow disappeared and the roads were drivable once again. It was at this stage we decided to pull into somewhere to get something to eat and to fill up the tank as we couldn't afford to pull off the highway previously at the risk of getting stuck in a snowed in town and having no way to get back onto the highway again.

Interesting side note. Apparently Oregon is one of two states in America where you are not allowed to fill up your car yourself. You have to let the petrol pump attendants do it. Your breaking the law otherwise.

The Great American Christmas Road Trip - Part 1 (Vancouver to Seattle, Washington)

2009-01-02T01:37:00.009-08:00

Warning, this is a long posting but an interesting one (well at least I think it is) non the less. It's split into several parts for your reading pleasure.

I left for Sacramento, California from Vancouver, Canada two weeks ago to visit the lady friend's parents for Christmas. We decided to drive down. A 15 to 16 hour drive. No problem says I. We'll do it in a day... was I ever wrong. It ended up taking us 3 days to get to our destination in California.

On the night before we were meant to leave it decided to snow quite heavily all day (as can be seen from the picture of the view from our balcony window).

This resulted in the car being buried in about a foot if not more of snow the next morning. We had to dig the car out and even then we had to push it out from the curb since the snow had it stuck in good. Little did I know that this was the start of a lot more pushing out of snow to come. We had contemplated on getting snow chains for the trip but decided against it at the last moment thinking that we wouldn't need them once we got out of Vancouver. Big mistake.

From the outset the weather was not our friend. There was snow and ice all the way from Vancouver, through to Seattle continuing all the way into most of Oregon; And just when we thought we had made it through the worse of it with the Californian state line in site the snow got us again. More about that later.

(The Road out of Vancouver)

On a "normal" day the drive to the Canadian/US border from Vancouver would take 30 to 40 minutes. Then it would just be a simple case of staying on the I-5 highway for a leisurely cruise all the way down into California. On this day the drive to the border took us an hour and a half and when we hit the US side the snow and ice on the highway was so bad we literally had to travel at 20 to 30 mph max. It just felt really strange going so slow on a highway but I'm very glad we did.

We managed to spin off the road a couple of times. The first time was when we were on our way to Seattle. The idiot driver in front of us decided to inexplicably slam on their brakes despite the fact that there was not a single car or turn ahead of him/her. They somehow miraculously managed not to slide or spin (if they did slide I might have seen it as them just slowing down). This caused us to slam on our brakes to avoid a head on crash. Instead of stopping, the car just kept on sliding towards the car in front of us. Fortunately we were a good 6 car lengths if not more away from him at this stage and we were only traveling at about 20 mph or so and we were the only 2 cars on the highway at that time. We tried turning the wheel at the last minute to avoid a crash but this just made the car spin. The result of this was we spun off the road. Of course the idiot in front of us was oblivious to this and simply just sped up again and went on his/her merry way. Luckily we didn't spin too far into the snow bank so we could easily enough back out again without anyone having to get out and push.

We had to stop off to fill up the tank and our bellies before we hit Seattle and this resulted in more getting stuck in the snow and pushing. The petrol station we tried pulling into was so deeply covered in snow that we got stuck trying to get into it and then again when we tried to get out. It took myself, a friend who was traveling with us who we were dropping off in Seattle and some other people at the station to push the car to the pump. We left the car sitting at the pump as we ran across the road to grab a quick bite to eat... but not before stopping to help push several other cars who had gotten stuck trying to get into the petrol station. We eventually decided to play dumb to all the other cars otherwise we would have been there all night pushing cars in and out of the petrol station never making it that 20/30 odd yard to the burger joint.

So, what should have been a 3 hour trip from the Canadian/US border to Seattle took us 6 and a bit hours. We decided to stay the night in Seattle at the friend's place and continue the trip in the morning. There was a lot more pushing and getting stuck in the snow inbetween that I've skipped over.

(Setting out on Seattle roads - there's a road under there somewhere)
In the morning we continued our trip but this time it was just the two of us. Once we got onto the Seattle freeway it was surprisingly snow and ice free. The snow ploughs had obviously done their jobs that morning. Then we hit Oregon and it all started again.

Adventures in Pumpkin Carving land

2008-11-01T00:49:00.012-07:00

This is going to be more of a really long "photo blog" entry than a regular entry. Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present to you... the Hanging Hat's grand adventures in Pumpkin Carving land.

The pumpkins to be massacred

The implements that were needed in order to carry out the massacaring

The mini test pumpkin and test pattern

The massacre begins...

...and the result (mini test pumpkin with mini friend)

Now onto the big pumpkin...mwuhahah! First, the image we are going to use.

Putting the pattern onto the pumpkin

Cutting off the top and cleaning out the innards before getting stuck into the hacking and slashing

...And the eventual result from the hacking and slashing

Oh! And just in case you were wondering; The other pumpkin also got hacked and slashed

Thus ended the grand adventures of the Hanging Hat in pumpkin carving land for another year. Actually, that was so much fun I'm contemplating heading down to the store tomorrow when all the pumpkins will be going cheap due to post halloween pumpkin sales and getting another one to hack up.

Raccoons And Bears, Oh My!

2008-09-13T01:26:00.004-07:00

I saw my first raccoon the other night as I was walking into my apartment. It was the first live raccoon I'd ever seen and it was less than 3 meters away from me walking on the fence.

Those suckers be big! It stopped momentarily and gave me the beady eye as if it was getting ready to hop off the fence and run into the building behind me so I promptly got inside and shut the door before it could make its move.

I wish I had my camera with me at the time. I'm sure the raccoon would have attempted to rob it off me but it would have been worth it. Now every time I walk outside or into the apartment I'm always on the lookout for raccoons.

Also, in the last couple of days, just walking around I've noticed an increasing number of signs outside shop windows advertising "Bear Spray"! Is this a necessity in Vancouver in the Autumn months? Do the bears start coming out soon? And is a little spray bottle really good enough to keep a big hulking bear from charging you down and ripping you to shreds?? I for one will take my chances without the spray and on the odd chance of ever bumping into a bear will use the time tested method of running and screaming like a little girl.... or was that lie down and play dead? Those two always confuse me.

Simple K

2008-09-02T04:05:00.003-07:00

It's 4am and I'm sitting here not ready to go to bed yet. Back home in Ireland if I was still awake at this hour I'd go and pour myself a nice bowl of Special K (or "Simple K" as an American friend keeps accidentally calling them) as a post post midnight snack. I'm not much of a cereal person. In fact I wouldn't really have cereal at all but every now and again I do really enjoy a bowl of Special K.

As luck would have it I bought myself some Special K yesterday while out shopping. Oh how unprepared was I for the disappointment that was to follow.

Now, to say that some things are a little different in North America than to things in Europe would be putting it mildly here. The Special K in North America tastes nothing like the Special K in Ireland. It is essentially just Rice Krispies. In fact if I blind folded you and fed you a bowl of Rice Krispies and a bowl of North American Special K you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In fact, you can hear the "Snap, Crackle and Pop" from the Special K flakes when you add the milk! Imagine Rice Kripies being a little bit flatter instead of roundish then what you have is North American Special K. I wonder does the "K" in "Special K" stand for "Krispies"? Hmmm... Now I know why my American friend keeps calling it "Simple K".

I've just had a thought, if Special K here tastes like Rice Krispies perhaps the opposite will be true? Must go buy myself some Rice Krispies tomorrow and put that theory to the test.

Still Here And Gone

2008-08-26T20:56:00.002-07:00

I'm still around. Just haven't bothered updating this blog in a loooooong time due to laziness on my part.

I've moved cities and countries since my last update. As of 3 weeks ago, I'm now living in Vancouver, Canada. That's right, I've sold almost everything I own in Dublin and upped and moved several thousand miles across the world. So as a new beginning I'm going to try once again to keep this blog active and update it more often than once every 3 months or so. That should hopefully keep my 3 faithful readers happy... you know who youse are ;-)

So, Vancouver in 3 words.... Lovely, Relaxed, Rainy. OK, that last part isn't entirely true. The first 2 and a half weeks I've been here its been really super sunny. Its only really started to rain in the last couple of days and according to the weather its going to be like this for the rest of the week. I was warned that it rains a lot here. I guess I was just lucky in terms of the weather when I landed.

I've spent these last couple of weeks here looking for a place to live and a job. Just got a place to live this week after a slight chicken and egg problem. It seems that you can't get a place to live unless you have a bank account and you can't get a bank account without a place to live. I finally managed to find a nice place where the landlord understood the problem and agreed to rent to me. And with a place to live, presto! I also have a bank account. Now all I have to do is find a job... hopefully that little problem will be solved sometime soon this week. I got my fingers, eyes, legs and toes crossed.

Other than the above mentioned I haven't really given myself much time to do much sight seeing. I figured I'll have plenty of time to do that later on.

Dream job

2008-05-08T08:22:00.002-07:00

Having recently given in my notice I'm on the hunt once again for another job. As luck would have it it seems that I may have found my dream job (pun intended). Apparently NASA are looking for people who are willing to stay in bed for them. In fact they are offering $17000 for you to stay in bed for 90 days! As demanding as that sounds I think I could manage that. I wonder what the qualifications for such a position would be. If "lazy bastard" and "not a morning person" are in the requirements section then I think the job is practically mine.... now where is that application form?

The end of an era

2008-05-06T04:52:00.003-07:00

Today I handed in my notice. It was a sombre affair. The angels cried as I broke the news(well not really but it sounds good). Having stuck at the job for so long I was getting kinda institutionalised so its probably a good thing that I've decided to move on. I originally only planned to stay in the job for a year but then they offered me more money and I ended up staying a year and a half more than I originally intended.

As I gave the bad (or good news, depending on how you look at it), my boss turned around and said to me: "I thought something was up when I saw you in so early". Have things gotten so bad with my time keeping in work lately that I can't even come in early anymore without someone suspecting that I'm up to something?

So, from next month onwards I'm going to be an unemployed bum. I can't say that I'm going to miss the work but I know I'm going to miss the money ;) The big bad world with the big bad lions and vultures await me once again. The inevitable job hunting and the interview processes are going to be a huge pain in the ass. However, I'm not too pushed about getting another job until at least August so that should give me plenty of time to motivate and psyche myself into getting another job (and hopefully one that I'll actually like).

Thus beginneth the new grand adventures of the hat...

I h8 fckng txt spk!!!

2008-04-11T03:43:00.002-07:00

As I was browsing the cinema listings in entertainment.ie to see what was out this week a review in the "your reviews" section caught my eye. It wasn't the fact that the review was profound or anything, it was more the fact that I thought entertainment.ie's page was faulty and was spewing out random symbols. Then I realised it was someone reviewing "Step Up 2" writing entirely in text speak. Given the movie in question being reviewed I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.

In any case, I decided to click on the "more" link to see if I could decipher what the said individual had to say about the movie since I wasn't in the mood to do work and wanted a bit of a puzzle to solve to pass 5 minutes of my time. To my horror I find that the public reviews page is just a mass of text speaking reviews of said film.

It would seem that "kids" (I'm presuming that it's kids here even though I know I'm wrong on this occasion) these days are incapable of writing properly anymore. I wonder is this how they write when asked to write an essay in school/college? If so, does the teacher/lecturer just dismiss this little "phenomenon" or does he or she give them a deservedly big fat zero mark for not knowing how to write properly, never mind coherently. When these "kids" submit their CV for jobs I wonder is the majority of their CV written in text speak as well. Do they have things like "Nme : D8co d" and "Adrz: 4 me gaff"?

If this is a sign of how society is going I despair for society. These are the people who will one day (if not already) be running our country and services and more than likely have children (if not already) themselves. I'm not looking forward to the day when someone finally gets a book written all in text speak published because its now the accepted way to write.

The early bird gets...errr... stuff fast

2008-04-04T05:45:00.003-07:00

I've been stuck in Cali time ever since I got back from my little trip to California a couple of weeks back. For some reason my body clock just dosn't want to adjust back to Irish time. So as a result of this I've had a good few nights/days where I've stayed awake for 24 hours in a vain attempt to get my body clock back in synch with Irish time. Also, anytime I've fallen asleep I've fallen asleep super early due to being really tired and then waking up super early again. At this stage I've just come to accept it as the norm.

I finally got my full driver's license on Tuesday. Yay me! I actually got it surprisingly fast. I went down to the motor tax office on Monday afternoon and threw in my application form and had the license in my post box the following morning/afternoon. Now if only everything was always that efficient.

I just subsequently found out that there is a little flaw in my grand plan of being able to rent a car during the weekends once I got my full license. It seems that you are unable to rent a car with any car hire company in Ireland if you had not held your full license for at least 1 year. This in my opinion is stupid. What is stopping me from sitting on my arse for a year then going back to a car hire company to then hire a car. By that time I would be rusty behind the wheels, being more likely to crash the car all because I haven't had the chance to practice my driving due to the fact that I was unable to rent a car and too poor to buy a car. In my opinion they should just introduce higher rates for those that have not held their license for more than a specific time rather than down banning them.

This week I also got myself a brand spanking new laptop. I figured it was time to upgrade my current laptop. The old laptop is about 4 years old now but still has a lot of mileage on it but I figured 4 years is a good turn around time for most things. The new laptop, like my driver's license arrived super quickly. I got it in just under 3 days. I ordered it late on Sunday evening/early monday morning during one of my sleepless nights and i got it delivered to me first thing on Wednesday morning.

Now if only my police certificate would get here sometime soon. Six almost seven weeks on from the time I first asked the gardai for it and I still haven't seen head nor tail of it. The gardai told me that I'd have it by the end of this week. It's now Friday and i haven't checked my mailbox at home yet but I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the mailbox will be empty (except maybe for bills) when I get back later on this evening. Stupid gardai.

D&D Co Creator Fails Saving Throw

2008-03-05T06:32:00.002-08:00

Yesterday while sitting watching TV I oddly felt a chill run down my spine. As it turned out this was the result of the collective mourning cries of millions of gaming nerds worldwide as they learnt of the passing away of Gary Gygax, one of the co creators of the grand daddy of all role playing games, Dungeons & Dragons! Alas, it would seem that the health potions have run out and no Clerics of high enough level were to be found to cast a powerful enough resurrection spell to help Mr Gygax :(

While I wouldn't classify myself as a nerd in the traditional sense (though others may disagree with me on that point) I do admit to playing (and enjoying) a little bit of D&D back in my younger, "wilder" days. Yes, I even admit to owning a few sets of 20, 10, 8 and 4 sided dice at one stage as well.

As such I felt that Gary Gygax deserves an honourable mention on this blog. Putting aside the spotty misunderstood nerd stigmatism associated with role playing games (or any other type of games of this nature), the man did help to come up with a fairly complex but yet easy to follow rule system, concept and set of universes. The game itself was simultaneously easy to get into and inevitably quite fun if you gave it half a chance. This not only gave many a... erhem, "socially challenged" child (or adult) another outlet to express themselves it also spawned a multi millon dollar industry in fantasy literature, computer games, movies and other such merchandise. For that you've got to give him some kudos.

Here's a little tribute from the blog of celebrity Star Trek TNG character and nerd, Will Wheaton, about Mr Gygax.

Hobbling Hat

2008-03-05T05:18:00.002-08:00

Last Friday I was down at the hospital for a routine checkup when the nice doctor lady noticed a blood clot looking thing on my leg. Told her that I'd had it for a while and wasn't too concerned about it. In either case she got a few of her colleagues in to have a quick look at it just to be on the safe side. One of them (who happened to be one of the top dermatologists in the country) had a look at it and confirmed that it was an arterial bunching and wasn't too overly concerned about it. However he then pointed down to a smaller similar looking mark further down my leg and said that he'd be more inclined to remove that one as it looked more abnormal. As luck would have it he had a spot free later that afternoon and said that he'd remove it for me if I popped in to see him at 2 to save me having to make an appointment and waiting 2 months or so.

I figured why not. No harm having the bunching removed just in case there might be complications down the line. I figured it was small enough, I'd just pop in and he'd do his magic and that was that. Little did I know that it involve minor surgery which took up to about 40 to 50 minutes. The waiting room was full when I went in and when I hobbled out again (with my head spinning from all the local anesthetic I had gotten the doctor lady who was hacking me up to inject into me) it was completely empty. I ended up having a thumb size chunk of meat cut out of my lower leg and then given 16 stitches to help cover up the nice big gash that was left over from the hacking and slashing.

So as a result of that, I'm now hobbling around very slowly in a bit of pain desperately trying not to tear my stitches. It now takes me about 45 minutes to walk to work in the mornings (usually only takes me 20 minutes max) with grannies speeding pass me on the path with the look of frustration that I usually give when I'm stuck behind a really slow walking person for ages. On top of this humiliation, I've even been beeped by a few cars as I've hobbled across the road at the pedestrian lights, as if to tell me to "hurry the fuck up, I'm really important and want a clear way so that I'll be able to drive away before the lights actually hit green". Like beeping me will magically make my leg feel better so that I can run across the road quicker for them. Fecking stupid Dublin drivers!

I'd take the week off to properly recover but I'm off to California in about a week and a bit so would just feel guilty in taking time off so soon before my trip. On the plus side, at least my leg isn't bleeding as much as it did on the first day I decided to try to walk to work so it must be getting better.

I had grand plans of skiing and attending a big swing weekend event in Sacramento while I was in California but now it looks like I'll just have to confine myself to tour buses and other things that don't involve a lot of walking or any sort of physical activity :(

And to top all of this off, the bathroom of the people living upstairs from me has begun to leak, leaving lovely water marks on parts of my ceiling and wall. (Mental note; must call landlord soon to sort this out). I told yous the last time that Sod the bastard was just warming up. Lets just hope this is the worse of it. Bring on the good times.

Stupid Sod's Law

2008-02-19T03:14:00.003-08:00

The last few days have been a good few days for yours truly. Everything just seemed to be going my way. So much so in fact I was preparing for the inevitable heap of pure bad crap that usually always follows a run of good fortune. It's just Sod's Law. It's his job to kick you in the nads when your on a high and least expecting it. As expected and right on schedule, Sod came alone and did his job.

So, where to begin? Well, lets start with the good stuff first. Last Saturday evening I went along to a charity event held by a swing dancing friend in aid of Habitat for Humanity. It was an Oscar themed swing dancing event. Before you went into the event you were asked to fill out a sheet predicting best actor, best actress etc. A big prize was then given to the person at the end of the night who managed to give the same predictions as that of the local resident "film expert" in Filmbase Ireland. It just so happened that I was that lucky person... yay me! I won myself a lovely big hamper of goodies and a weekend for 2 away in Galway. I knew all those misspent late nights watching crap movies would one day pay off. Up to that point in time I have never ever won anything in a raffle or anything of that nature before.

Roll on Monday morning. I had a driving test scheduled for that afternoon and had borrowed a friend's car over the weekend for the test seeing that I didn't possess any wheels of my own. The test was in Rathgar which was not the original test centre I had applied for (still with a 6 month wait I wasn't about to complain). I had previously checked the pass rate at the Rathgar test centre and it stood at 44.5%, the lowest pass rate in all the test centres in Dublin. So needless to say I was not looking forward to the test and was preparing myself for failure. On top of that, I managed to stall the car every single time I went out in it over the weekend which was not doing anything for my confidence. In any case, roll on Monday afternoon and the test... Low and behold I passed!!! First time and all. Didn't stall the car once! Of course on the way back home I stalled it again :)

So at this stage the Sod's Law alarm bells were starting to go off in my head. Too much good stuff was happening to me without any bad stuff. Now the bad stuff.

About a month ago, on a whim I applied for a position with a particular animation studio in the States (lets just say the name of the studio starts with a P and ends with an R). Not thinking anything of it, 3 weeks ago I get an email from their HR department asking for a quick phone interview. So since I was to fly out on my ski trip at the time I scheduled it for the Tuesday that I was back. Of course, I didn't tell anyone about this interview cause I didn't want to Jinx it. The interview itself when I finally had it was a short 20 minutes or so chat with one of the software engineers in the place. They basically wanted to talk to me to see if it was worth flying me out to California for a proper full interview. The guy at the end of the phone seemed nice enough and he didnt' really ask me anything that I couldn't answer. He basically described the position and what the job entailed and asked if I had done x,y and z before to which I answered yes to, promptly followed by long winded examples of using x,y and z in current and previous work (it's what I tend to do when I'm nervous, I babble). In fact the position from what was described to me was exactly what I always wanted to do and just seemed so perfect for me. In anycase, at the end of the "little chat" I was told that I'd be contacted shortly about their decision. All in all, despite my ramblings I thought the "interview" went quite well.

So a week later on Monday evening, the day that I passed my driving test and when Sod's Law alarm bells started going off in my head I received a PFO letter from the HR department :(. It wasn't entirely unexpected. I did get my hopes up there for a while after the initial interview but overall I guess it was just nice to know that my background and qualifications were good enough to warrant being noticed among probably the dozens of other applications I'm sure the studio gets everyday. I'm just going to put it down to that they decided at the end of the day it would be less hassle for them to interview and hire someone local. Besides, they are surrounded by some of the top ivy league universities in the states (i.e. Stanford and Berkley) so it would make more sense to interview and hire graduates from there and save the inevitable headache and cost of potentially hiring someone from abroad. Still, I'm glad I got the initial interview if nothing else. At least it shows that I'm more qualified than I've given myself credit for in the past.

So, now I'm expecting Sod to continue his "good" work and I'm bracing myself for a lot more crap that he's going to throw my way in the next few weeks. To Sod, all I'm going to say is : "Bring it on!".

Ski dancing week

2008-02-13T08:19:00.003-08:00

Just got back from a week of skiing in St. Anton's in Austria followed by a kick ass weekend of dancing in Herfordshire in good old merry England. My legs ache, my arms ache, my neck aches, in fact my entire body is in a considerable amount of pain at the moment.

Mental note; "do not go directly to a 3 day all day all night dance festival straight after spending a week skiiing. You are not as young as you once were" :(

All in all, the skiing was good and despite the fact that the "Aprés ski" was better in Austria than it was in France (and also ignoring the fact that everything was almost twice as expensive as would have been in France) I think I still prefer the usual resort in France that I usually go to. Speaking as a person who dosn't drink (well hardly ever anyways) and/or generally likes really noisy pubs and bars the "kick ass aprés ski" thing is meaningless to me.

This time around I went with a rather large group of people. There were 11 of us in all but there might as well have just been the 2 of us. We rented 2 apartments (each one about 5 minutes from each other but a good half hour walk to the slopes) since there were so many of us. 7 in one apartment and 4 in the other. The majority of the people were all the new post grads from the new lab which meant that I really only knew about 1 and a half people there (I say half because I know one of the post grads but only on a friendly hello basis). So as a result of this, they all went off and did their own things with each other for the most part and never made an effort to include myself or Chris (the other oldie) in any of their activities. I didn't mind so much as I was there for the skiing but still a token gesture towards the "old folk", no matter how meaningless, would have been nice, otherwise we might as well have gone on our own (which wouldn't be too far from the truth in this case).

As for the ski runs; we were lucky enough to have good snow fall for most of the week but a lot of the ski runs at the resort just didn't do anything for me. Instead of having the usual 4 marking systems (i.e. green, blue, red and black) for piste difficulty levels, the pistes at St. Antons' did away with the super beginner green and just started at "improver" blue (probably presuming that only menly men go skiing at St Antons and thus would never be caught dead on a green slope). This I later found out was a bit of a misnomer. Some parts of the blue runs I would probably consider easier red runs and the black runs (the supposedly most difficult runs) were nothing more than what I would have considerd a hard red. In fact some parts of the red runs should have been blue runs. The marking system overall for the pistes were a little erratic.

I left the ski resort a day earlier than the others so that I could catch a plane from Zurich to London and then onto Haileybury College (home of Harry Potter) in Herfordshire for a long weekend of swing dancing. I arrived at 11pm just in time for the evening soiree.

Haileybury College I must admit is actually quite a nice place. You can definitely recognise the locations used for the filming of the Harry Potter movies. You could also see that it is quite a rich, posh school. Fortunately, the students were all on mid term break so we were given make shift accomodation in around the common areas of the students' usual accomodations; for example the students' tv room (which incidently had a huge 46 inch flat screen plasma tv in it). Because we got there a bit late all the good spots were already taken so we had to make do with laying our sleeping bags inside one of the small corridors outside the students' rooms. The only problem with this solution was that the corridor lights were controlled via a motion sensor. This meant that everytime someone turned in their sleep they would set off the motion sensor and thus switch on the lights and wake up everyone else :D This problem was promptly solved the next night with some tin foil and selotape, McGuyver style.

Caught the 6am flight back to Dublin on Monday morning to be nicely on time for work (after having danced all night the previous Sunday evening till 4am before getting a taxi from the venue straight to the airport). Luckily I fell asleep for a few hours (ok it was a lot of few hours) after dinner on Sunday so work on Monday wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Oh, and did I mention I had a driving lesson straight after work? Now that was a loooong day :)

Back with a bang... of sorts

2008-02-01T05:24:00.000-08:00

After over a month of silence I've decided to give this whole blog thing another try. You know, with the new year and new resolutions and all that other jazz. It's not that I've had nothing to share or say, it's just that I got lazy.

So, in another attempt to get my literary juices flowing again, may I be so bold as to suggest the topic of the humble "rail gun". Why do I bring this up I hear you mumble? Well, other than getting the chance to play with one in Quake, it now also seems that the US navy get to play with one in real life as well. It's not as, erhem, "portable" as the one in Quake it would seem but I'm sure the US navy boys/girls are going to have just as much fun with it. The lucky gits.

Cymothoa exigua

2007-12-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

Just came across this on my interweb travels and just had to share it.

Behold the almighty Cymothoa exigua. Possibly the most disturbing parasite I've ever had the pleasure of reading about.

While I'm on about things connecting to other things, I came across this fantasy proposal to connect ireland to britain via a bridge over the Irish sea. I don't see this ever happening in my lifetime but would be very cool if it ever did happen.

Christmas Parties

2007-12-14T05:09:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since I updated this blog. I haven't forgotten about it. It's just that I've been a little busy lately and plus I haven't really had anything really interesting to share.

I've been doing a lot of dancing at Christmas parties over the last few weeks. This means my time has been taken up by work during the day and then practice after work in the evenings for these Christmas party gigs. At first I thought it would be fun to be paid to dance but boy was I ever wrong! I don't mind the performing for the crowd bit. It's more the bit afterwards when the organisers want us to hang around for the next hour interacting and dancing with the "punters". I personally hate to be bugged after dinner by some fake cheerful git coming up to me trying to drag me up to dance with him/her while all I really want is to sit there in peace and chat with my friends. But yet, I am the fake cheerful git this time around doing that very thing to people that I know I would hate to be done to myself. Not only that, it feels like your gate crashing someone else's party most of the time as everyone on the dance floor has their own little group who they dance with and then you jump in.

The type of crowd at these things really do make all the difference. Some nights the crowd are great and really get into it but other nights they are just disinterested and it's just horrible. The gig I did last night was possibly the worse night yet. Not only was there possibly more "lads" than girls (this makes a huge difference as girls are more likely to be enticed to dance and guys are more likely to get up and dance once they see the girls dancing) but in general the crowd was a purely "lets get rat arsed" crowd. This meant that there was hardly anyone to bug to drag up to fill the dance floor as the majority of them were all hanging out at the bar or outside smoking. Those that did stick around at their table just wanted to be left alone to their drinking and chatting with their mates so were irritated when you tried to get them to dance. In fact, at one stage, I believe I was told to "fuck off" by some girl in a lovely thick Dublin accent and some guy thought I was asking him to dance with me so also came close to telling me to "fuck off".

Quick word of advice to anyone who is organising their Christmas party; If your place of work is predominantly guys or "the lads" do not book them into a Greased themed Christmas party. Save yourself some money and just drag them all down to the local instead. They won't notice the difference.

To top off my current Christmas misery, I pulled my right pectoral muscle a couple of weeks back and with all these Christmas gigs I haven't given it any time to heal. So as a result it's still really really sore. I can't wait till this silly season is over and things are back to normal again.

R.I.P. Matteo

2007-12-03T03:16:00.000-08:00

I just heard this weekend that Matteo (or "Matt the Jap" as he was more commonly known as to people) of whom I had recently written about had just passed away. This is very sad news indeed. He was one of Trinity's last remaining characters. I had thought he looked very frail the last time I saw him and hadn't expected him to have many more years left but I had never expected that the years I thought he had left were only to be mere weeks.

Rest in peace Mr. Matteo (Masahiso) Matubara.

Matteo the Japanese Gentleman

2007-11-26T05:12:00.001-08:00

I recently encountered again after many years, a little Japanese man named Matteo (or "Matt the Jap" as he is more commonly known to the students, staff and visitors of Trinity College Dublin), one of Trinity College Dublin's' resident characters. Matt, for lack of a better name and description for him is a well known but very mysterious little Japanese man (usually seen with walking stick and his bag of sandwiches and newspapers walking around the Arts block or Front Square) whom you will eventually bump into if you ever idle long enough in Trinity College Dublin. Every student who has passed through Trinity since the early 80's (to late 70s even, I think) would have at one stage heard of and quite possible have seen Matt walking slowly past them.

Not a lot is known about him but there are plenty of rumours. These range from Matt being an eccentric genius who studied in Trinity a long time ago but the pressure of his thesis was too much for him so he snapped to him being thrown out of college for fouling an ancient manuscript (by writing footnotes on it) in the library. Some say that he is deaf and dumb while others say he is perfectly fine but just doesn't like to talk to people. Some say that he is actually French and not indeed Japanese. There are people who say that he is harmless while there are others that tell a different story saying that Matt is indeed a violent male chauvinist pig with a grudge against all women.

My recent sighting of Matt got me thinking again about what actually is his real story. These days, sadly to say, he is looking very old and frail and I'm sure that he hasn't many years left on this earth. I'm sure he must have had led a very interesting life at one stage. One that many students and staff of Trinity would like to know about (even if it is just to reaffirm some of the rumours about him). Luckily for me I got some of my answers via this little interview I found today done by the Record with Matt. It's not a great interview and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (partly because another rumour about Matt is that he is a notorious liar) but non the less it has shed some light on this mysterious little man whom I associate to be part of my overall college experience. From my initial reading of the interview it does seem that some of the rumours do run true. He does indeed appear to be deaf and he does seem to bare a somewhat a grudge against women as this shows from some of the answers he gives in the interview.

On a completely different topic. I went to see "Eastern Promises" last night. Damn good film. I highly recommend going to see it when you get the chance. It's David Cronenberg at his best... and for the ladies, you get to see Viggo Mortensen's, erhem, sword, erhem, at some stage in the film.

Take that Tooth Fairy

2007-11-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

The last time I visited the dentist I got knocked out via a good gassing and woke up spitting blood into a bucket with 9 of my baby teeth missing. So, you can't really blame me for not wanting to go back to the dentist any time soon after that. However, after 25 years of shameful neglect I finally decided to pay the dentist a visit once more. OK, truth be told, this was out of necessity rather than shame. My bottom left molar had started to hurt me within the last few weeks and someone scared me into it by suggesting that I may need a root canal.

So at lunch time today I decided to pop into the dentist around the corner from where I work to make an appointment. As luck would have it he had a cancellation just as I walked in so the dentist could see me straight away. Considering that this was my first dental visit in a quarter of a century and that I rarely brush my teeth at the best of times (never mind the fact that I hadn't yet brushed my teeth that morning) I was expecting the worse.

As it turned out it was a rather pleasant experience. After a quick x-ray and finding nothing wrong with my teeth, it seems that the culprit for my recent tooth discomfort was the area over my wisdom tooth, which hadn't come up properly, thus leaving a gummy bit which in turn was being bitten down upon by the top tooth. The result of this was a slight infection in that general gum region causing my tooth pains. So I was given the choice of either having the top tooth pulled or else rinse my mouth out with disinfectant mouth wash 3 times a day (and then perhaps getting the top tooth pulled in the future if I felt like it). I happily chose the latter.

I was then told by the dentist that I had very good teeth and that I didn't need any fillings. At first I thought I had misheard him. Surely after 25 years of neglect and very little brushing I was expecting the dentist to take one look into my mouth and then either jump back or run away in utter disgust. I had never expected to hear this little bit of good news. My surprise at the news was such that I was very briefly tempted to protest. In fact, the state of my teeth were so good it was suggested to me that I would only ever need to visit the dentist every 18 months to 2 years considering I'm such a "low risk case"!

So it would seem that this time around its Hanging Hat : 1, Tooth Fairy : 0. Go me!

Wonderful wet weekend

2007-11-19T07:50:00.001-08:00

It has been the most miserable rain sodden weekend I can remember in a long long time. Luckily for me I spent most of the weekend indoors at a Boogie Woogie and Balboa workshop so I was kept occupied for the most part.

The only good thing I can say about the cold and rain is that it kept most if not all the scumbags and drunk people indoors as well. I normally hate walking home through Dublin city centre late at night during Fridays and the weekends specifically for the aformentioned reason. As if to remind me of this, today I came across this video (see below) taken from a taxi going through Harcourt street at around 5am in the morning after all the night clubs had finished up and things have more or less really wound down.

Now, imagine it being ten times as bad and you can see why I hate walking through the city centre in the evenings. I cannot tell you how many times I've had some drunk idiot jump in front of me acting the spa as I've walked down the road minding my own business. The odd time, if the guy (and it always seems to be guys for some reason) is significantly bigger than me he will just stand there in front of me blocking my path thinking that it was really funny because he had probably just itimidated some poor little asian looking guy who probably can't speak the language and is scared and confused at this big crazy Oirish guy. Normally, I would just stop in my path and start to stare the guy down until he got bored and got out of my way or I would give him a hug (only cause he has begun to do the same). It has only ever happened the one time where this breed of drunken idiot has caught me in a really foul mood whereby I have uncharacteristically sped up towards said idiot pushing him backwards with fist clenched ready to start a fight. Fortunately at the time, the drunken idiot in question wasn't quite that drunk yet and realised that the little asian looking guy he was about to piss off or itimidate was already in a really bad mood and decided very quickly to grin, hug me and get out of the way before a fight started.

This is why, despite the cold and rain, this weekend, it was actually a very pleasant walk back home in the evenings as the streets were almost deserted. A sad but small price to pay for a peaceful walk home in the evenings.

The good, the bad and the ugly

2007-11-16T05:45:00.000-08:00

First the good; I came across this interesting little article today about an Australian team of physicists who have managed to measure the phase of a pulse of light so precisely that the only error in the measurement is that of what is dictated by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Now the internal science nerd in me tells me that is one of the coolest thing I've read in a long time. Of course, I haven't had the pleasure of reading a lot of scientific articles in a long time (not since I stopped buying American Scientist anyways) so I may be more easily impressed by stuff like this than I used to be.

Now the bad; If you recall a couple of weeks ago I was rejoicing over the fact that the Smithfield on ice... erhem... 'extravaganza' was unduly cancelled this year. Well it looks like my celebrations were a little premature. It seems that Dublin City Council have managed to sweet talk some gullible corporate souls into keeping this 'fine event' alive this year. You can read their press release here. As the Russians would say... "Toughski Shitski" to the Smithfield residents who's apartments and houses face out towards the ice-rink. Looks like you'se just have to put up with a month of excessive shit pop music blairing from very loud speakers and the increased scumbag presence in your area (not to say there isn't already enough of them when the ice-rink isn't there) again this year.

And lastly, the ugly; Well, not so much ugly but more towards the "What The Fuck??" region. Lately I've found myself reading articles from "The Register" more and more. Maybe its because its sort of light reading and the brain doesn't have to do too much work. In any case, I came across this little article that made go WTF??? This guy brings a whole new meaning to "riding your bike". Not my cup of tea but still, everyone to themselves I suppose.

Why did I even bother?

2007-11-14T07:39:00.001-08:00

So after years of putting it off I finally decided back in June to try and sit my driving test and get a full license. Knowing the horrendous wait times for getting a driving test date in Ireland I figured that if I applied for my driving test at around the same time my provisional arrived I would be happily doing my test by December at the latest.

Roll on December and over a hundred euros down and still not a word from The Road Safety Authority (RSA) who manage all the test applications. No problems I say as I was expecting a really long wait time anyways despite the government's assurance that driving test wait times around the country were to be reduced to an average of 10 weeks. While browsing through a local discussion forum today I noticed a little thread about rumours over the fact that the Tallaght test centre has been closed. Then it struck me. That's the friggin test centre that I applied for!!!

So, I ring up RSA to enquire whether this rumour was true or not. I was told that it was indeed true (nice of them to let the applicants know!). Was told that they referred all the tallaght applicants to a third party testing company called SGS out in Fonthill instead (I have no idea where that is, I think it may be out near Lucan which is miles away). So, being the cautionary lad that I am I ring up SGS and ask them whether they received my file from RSA only to be told that they got nothing on me and to ring RSA!!!! So, reluctantly I ring back RSA only to be told once again to ring SGS!!! Told the RSA person at the end of the phone that that wasn't going to happen as I was just on the phone to SGS. On hearing this the "nice" RSA person transfers me to a friggin answering machine!!! What the hell am I to do with an answering machine??? Only thing I could think of doing was leaving a really long winded message explaining my predicament all over again and leaving my number in hopes that someone somewhere would actually give a shit about the message that I had just left for them (which is very doubtful).

After speaking to the "very helpful" answering machine I decided that it would be easier to just reapply to another test centre. So onto RSA again and this time talking to a real person. Told the new person that I just wanted to change the test centre to the Rathgar test centre instead. No problems, they just have to get my file back from SGS (which apparently don't have it) and I just have to be put at the back of the waiting list again which means I'll be apparently waiting for another "few months" (which when translated means I'll have my test date sometime in June 2008 if I'm really really lucky and if the Rathgar test centre doesn't decide to close). I left it at that and now all I can do is sit back and cross my fingers.

It seems that the gods are doing everything in their power to prevent me from driving. The driving test situation in this country, like most things, is such an unbelievable joke. How the hell can the government promise to improve wait times for driving tests by opening more centres and then on the other hand closing down other centres?! And the annoying thing is, when (notice that i say "when" and not "if") I fail my diving test, if (notice that i say "if" now and not "when") it ever comes around, I will have to go through the whole application process again. It could potentially be 2 years before I can even come close to finally applying for a full drivers licence. No wonder there are so many people in this country just driving around illegally on their 8th,9th,10th etc. provisional licences. It's not their fault. It's the system that is to blame here. I do not know of any other country in the world which has as ridiculous a situation as Ireland does when it comes to getting a full driving license.

No news is good news

2007-11-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

OK, I got nothing. I felt like posting something but alas my day to day life is not anywhere near interesting enough to generate stimulating conversation or news on a regular basis. So instead I think I'll share some news articles that I've read on the interweb during my "downtime" while waiting for my programs to compile.

First off, Christmas has come early. It looks like that Smithfield on Ice has been cancelled this year. For those who don't know what this momentous event is, basically for the last 5 odd years Dublin city council erects one of the most miserable ice rink possible outside the Smithfield market area for the month leading up to Christmas. While it's a nice idea and could potentially be a very nice day out for the kids/family/girlfriend/boyfriend/miscellaneous etc. it invariably is just extremely overcrowded, always full of little scumbags and the ice rink always ends up being mainly sludge due to the hot lights shining down on them. All in all making for a very miserable experience. I'm sure this news will come as a welcome relief to the poor residence of Smithfield market area who have to endure the noise generated by the very loud ice rink speakers and the crowds just outside their living room windows every year. I now believe that Dun Laoghaire will have the pleasure of hosting it due to the change of management.

Does anyone remember that totally blown out of proportion kiss that Richard Gere gave Shilpa Shetty a few months back? You know, the one where people were calling for his head because of... gasp... immoral public displays of affection! I'd hate to think what would have happened if they had started going at it like rabbits in public. Anyway, I digress. Why I bring this topic up is because of this little news item I recently came across. It would now seem that you can't even give an innocent goodbye hug to your friends in public anymore. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see the authority figures in question burning effigies of the poor little girl in protest of their disgust. If this kind of crap keeps up soon people will be making it a habit to quickly glance over their shoulders for the immorality secret police before even considering the simple act of shaking hands with anyone. I seriously think that the people who are disgusted by public hugging just need a good hug themselves.

Talking about indecency, now, this is taking the piss. It brings a whole new meaning to using a "wii-mote" :P I wonder how you complete a race and if there is a multiplayer option. Would you be able to take advantage of the slip stream of larger vehicles ahead of you I wonder. OK, enough urine puns. As you may have guessed this is a slow day for me.

While we're on the subject of excrement of sorts, let me introduce you to this little article on "Butthash". Apparently getting high on fermented fecal matter and urine is the new craze these days for kids. First of all, how did someone discover that this was possible. Did some kid decide to bottle up his fart one day, forgot about it only to go back to a seemingly empty jar a year later, opened it and got a little buzz out of the expelled methane? Thus began the brainwave and the craze that is Butthash. This reminds me of a guy i knew in secondary school who tried to get high on the fumes from Tipp-ex one day. All he succeeded in doing was giving himself a white tipped nose for most of that day.

And to end my little non-news on a lighter note (very American news broadcasting of me I know) I leave you with this little gem...

I generally don't go much for fan made movies of video game character cross overs but the one linked above is one of the coolest video game cross over vids I've seen in a long time. It's basically a big fight between a few of the female characters from the final fantasy franchise and the dead or alive franchise. Very well done. Some people just have way too much time on their hands.

...and we're back

2007-11-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a while but we're back again. Was going to try to keep the blog updated while I was away but to be bluntly honest I just got lazy and couldn't be arsed about it.

So, how was Palermo I hear you ask. I'll sum it up in one word... meh. Don't get me wrong, it was all in all a nice trip and a good tango festival for the most part. It's just Palermo the city itself didn't really appeal to me. Being a person who likes a bit of peace and quiet I just found Palermo as a city to be dirty and very very noisy, unbearably so in fact. It says something when the first thing you notice about Dublin upon landing back home again is how wonderfully quiet and clean the city seems. I suppose having a miserable start to the trip didn't help my overall experience or mood either. Let me recount my adventures from the beginning. Be warned, this may turn into a very long rant post.

First our plane from Dublin to London Standsted was late (almost an hour) and then Ryanair lost my baggage in between Dublin and London. Since the plane was late it meant that we had little to no time to sort out the lost luggage as we had to go immediately to check in for our connection flight to Palermo. When I asked a girl behind one of the Ryanair desks for a customer support number so that I could ring Ryanair about the status of my lost luggage I was shushed away with the knowledge that Ryanair does not have a customer support number! Luckily for me, knowing Ryanair, I had prepared myself for the fact that the airline was going to lose my luggage somewhere along the way from Dublin to Palermo so overall I wasn't overly upset about not having my luggage. However I was a little pissed off that they were so dismissive about not having any sort of customer support number people could call for occasions like this.

On the plane from London over to Palermo I was flicking through the Ryanair magazine and as if the gods we're trying to be funny I noticed the following full page ad for Ryanair:

At that stage I just closed the magazine (after taking a quick photo of the ad for irony purposes) and went to sleep. To top off my misery, it pissed down for the first 2 days in Palermo and I was stuck with soggy clothes with no dry clean clothes to change into. In any case, they found my bag 3 days later and sent it onto the hotel I was staying in just as it stopped raining and the sun came out... friggin typical!

To top all this off, we discovered, after having to pay for our stay in full first, that the hotel we had booked ourselves into had a 12 o'clock curfew. We told them that we were tango dancers here for the tango festival and that milongas starting at the earliest at 10:30pm and having to come back before 12 each night just wouldn't work for us (plus things only really start to kick off in Palermo after 11pm). We wanted our money back and only to stay for 2 nights instead of 2 weeks. On hearing this the hotel person suddenly didn't speak english and told us that it was OK and we'll sort the little problem out in the morning. So in the morning it was a different person we spoke to and they assured us that despite the curfew for us they would make an exception and have someone at reception to let us in around 2am each evening which made it very difficult for us to use the 12 o'clock curfew excuse to check out early so we ended up letting them keep the money and staying the whole 2 weeks there. We're such push overs.

Palermo as I subsequently found out is a very very noisy city. There is constantly the sound of engines (very loud engines) flying down the road accompanied by the beeping of the car horn every few seconds for no apparent reason at all. I firmly believe that if you were to take a driving test in Palermo you'd fail the test for not beeping your horn enough times during the course of your exam. Despite there being car lanes and traffic lights there might as well not have been any. Every driver was just weaving in and out of each other and trying to squeeze into the smallest of open spaces on the road. I'd go so far as to say that over 95% of the cars i saw in Palermo either had a couple of dents on the side and/or a wing mirror missing from trying to squeeze through impossibly tight spaces between cars on the road. To make matters worse, we had to walk on the road a lot of the times as well because a lot of the cars would park right up onto the footpath leaving you no choice but to use the road to walk on. Palermo is definitely not a city to have a big fancy car in. Interestingly enough I didn't see one bike on the roads the entire time I was there.

If we weren't being kept awake from all the noise outside our windows during the evening (our fault really for choosing a hotel in the center of the city) we were being woken up really early in the morning by the lady who runs the hotel shouting at the top of her voice at all her staff. Either that or else she had been asked to give someone a wake up call in the mornings and had forgotten which room had made the request so decided it was best just to stand outside every door and shout at the top of her voice. After a few days we got used to all this and learnt to block out all the shouting in the mornings.

I always thought the Italians that visited Dublin were really loud because they were tourists and tourists usually have an innate ability, regardless of nationality, to talk as if they were shouting all the time when in a country that doesn't speak their native language and they think no one around understands them. I now believe that Italians are naturally really loud when talking so as to be heard over all the street noise and then each other. Due to the fact that they need to constantly have their voices raised it eventually becomes the norm even when abroad.

We got 3 days off during the two weeks where there was nothing on for the tango festival so I took the opportunity during one of those days to escape the hustle and bustle of Palermo city and went to visit the nearby sea-side town of Cefalu. After a week in a dusty noisy city I cannot describe how nice it was to hear nothing but the quiet calming sound of the tide on the beach and be able to breath the fresh sea air. It was a struggle to get back onto the train again to return to Palermo.

OK, it seems that so far all I've got to say about my trip has been bad things. That's not entirely true. The people I found to be generally quite friendly and helpful. For example, I got a really bad tooth ache accompanied by a headache one day. My house mate/tango partner, the thoughtful person that she is, decided to go find a pharmacy to get me some stuff to relieve the pain (she later told me that she just wanted to make sure that her only tango partner there was well enough so that she wouldn't have to miss class later... I suppose it's the thought that counts). Unfortunately it so happened to be a national holiday that day so very few places were open. However she met a very nice Sicilian guy outside one of the pharmacies she went to who subsequently offered to drive her to an open pharmacy and then waited for her and brought her back to the hotel again. Of course, me the cynical type of person that I am still think that if she wasn't (1) female (2) blond and petite and (3) somewhat attractive the helpful guy would have just told her where to go for an open pharmacy rather than going that extra mile of bringing her there and back again himself. Yes, I know, I am a very cynical person.

The other good thing I can report about Palermo is that you can generally get some very nice clothes there at very reasonable prices. Even I, a person who hates clothes shopping picked up a few things while I was there. One day I decided I could do with a new belt because the leather you can buy in Palermo is quite cheap. Instead of going into a high street store where I would be paying about 20 to 25 yo yos I decided to buy a belt from one of the many stalls in the markets. I found a stall with some nice looking belts, picked one out asked the guy how much it was. He told me it was 7 euros. I figured 7 euros is pretty good, I'll try it on. Tried it on and found it was way too big for me so I handed it back to the guy, told him it was too big and I wasn't interested and was about to walk away. Before I could blink, he went "no problem sir", took out a big pair of scissors, cut a chunk off the belt and told me "now fit, 6 euros!". All I could do was smile and point to the now lack of belt buckle on the belt. He then took another belt, took out a butter knife and preceded to unscrew the buckle from the other belt in order to use it to replace the now missing buckle from the belt that he just cut up. I figured, hell if he's gone to all this effort to try and sell me the belt I might as well buy it so I ended up taking it (of course first trying to get it for 5 euros since it was now technically speaking a Frankenstein belt).

As for the tango festival itself. In general it was very good. The classes were very good and the teachers full of energy and entertaining which is always a nice thing. The festival organisers on the other hand just seemed not to care for anything or anybody for the most part which was very disappointing. I had the feeling that they just wanted the international presence to help fund bringing over the good teachers for themselves. Also, during the first week the classes were all on at ridiculously inconvenient times, for example starting at 8 pm and ending at 12pm. This meant that we generally had no time to grab dinner before or after class because people, it would seem, eat late in Italy and it was too late when the classes had ended. This however gave the little cafe place at the venue a chance to sell some finger food at whatever prices they wanted to us. I couldn't tell you how much food cost at the venue mainly because it kept changing every day. A small bowl of fruit could cost you 2 yo yos one day and then 4 yo yos the next day.

The people attending the festival seemed like a nice bunch. We met a couple (in the sense of dancing partners) from Hamburg whom we hung around with a bit. The guy was a cigar smoking author and translator of German romance novels who used several nom de plumes since women (and I say women here as I can't imagine many guys reading romance novels) were not really enticed to buy romance novels written by a guy and especially from someone called "Wolfgang". Instead his publishers had made up several other names in which he published under accompanied with background story to the name. One of them being a 40 something Scottish mother of two called "Scarlett O'Doherty"! :o) They even went as far as finding a profile picture to accompany the background story.

Jet setting again

2007-10-20T19:55:00.000-07:00

I'm off jet setting again on Monday... woohoo! Once again its for another dance festival. However this time its for an Argentine tango festival in Palermo for the Sicilia Tango Festival and it's for 2 whole weeks. I like dancing Argentine tango (as well as a lot of other dances) but recently I've gotten a little disillusioned with the tango scene in Dublin and I'm hoping that this tango trip will re-ignite the "tango fever" in me again. If I hadn't agreed with my roommate that I'd be her partner for this tango festival months ago (although at the time it was only for 1 week) there would be no way I'd be going away to tango for 2 whole straight weeks with my current frame of mind for the dance. I'm going to treat this as a 2 week holiday with tangoing rather than a 2 week tango holiday. Luckily I have a few days off where there is no tango where I can veg out or do touristy stuff. Why is it that almost all my trips away this year have involved going to dance festivals or dance related events? I gots to find myself another excuse to take trips away.

In other news, and this one is for Harry Potter fans out there, apparently Dumbledore is gay. I guess the signs were always there. Those beedy eyes, that long white beard, how he always preferred to wear long robes and his unsubtle interest in Harry :P Just think about it, Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie had the same dress sense and he's gay.

I guess J. K. Rowling had to have one gay character to keep the PC brigade happy. Actually, come to think about it, I can't recall there ever being any black characters in any of the Harry Potter books (of course I could be wrong about this). Maybe I should alert Ms. Rowling to this little fact before the PC brigade does.

Go Ireland

2007-10-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

It's official folks. Ireland is the friendliest country in the world according to Lonely Planet's 2008 Bluelist guide. Now, if only we could relay that message onto the customer service people who work in the local Spars, Centras, Londis', Tescos etc. It's just not right when the self service check out machines, despite their limited vocabulary, gives you more conversation and social interaction than the check-out people actually do in some of those places. I'm not looking for a smile or anything drastic like that. I'm a simple man with simple needs. All I want is for the person to stop talking to their friend beside them for 2 seconds in order to properly acknowledge my existence. Sticking your hand out for the money while in mid conversation with your friend/fellow co-worker is not acknowledgment people!

Come to think of it, this week has been a pretty good week for Ireland (and its still only Wednesday). As well as being named the friendliest country in the world we've so far also had:
- an Irish author, Anne Enright, win this year's Man Booker prize
- an Irish firm, Wavebob, be one of a few companies around the world to successfully generate power from using the sea.
- Oscar Wilde named... erhem... "UK's" greatest wit.

On that last point, before people start jumping down my throat with things like :

"We didn't suffer through 800 years of oppression to be still considered part of the UK."

Yes, I do realise that Ireland is not part of the UK. Now, if only we could tell the people who conducted the "UK's greatest wit" survey that. Well, I suppose considering that Oscar Wilde lived between 1854 to 1900 when Ireland was still under British rule I guess technically speaking you could get away with calling him the "UK's greatest wit".

Coincidentally, this is not the first time this week that I've had Ireland referred to as still being part of the UK by the English. During the Lindy Hop Festival that I attended in London over the weekend my nationality was put down as being "British" on my registration/welcome card despite me clearly putting down "Irish" when first registering. Then, when I went to buy the festival dvd and put down my shipping address the girl behind the counter said to me after seeing me put down "Ireland" as the destination country, and I quote : "Ireland, that's still the UK isn't it?". It was at this point that I looked up at her and gave her my best "800 feckin years of oppression" face. It was an honest mistake. I suppose I should have been more specific and wrote down "REPUBLIC OF IRELAND WHICH IS NOT PART OF THE UK". This little incident made me wonder; do a lot of English people still consider Ireland as being part of the UK?

Fire!, Fire!...

2007-10-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

So there I was on Friday evening, sitting in Dublin airport, slowly dozing away while I awaited my flight to open for boarding when suddenly I was awoken by two men in what looked like security uniforms running really fast past me towards the boarding gate entrance. I then noticed that half of the people who were waiting for the same flight as myself were up on their feet and had their faces pressed against the window looking out at our plane. Out of morbid curiosity at what people were staring at, I too preceded to look out the window, (as everyone does whenever they see a large crowd of people gathering around a window). What I saw was 6 or 7 fire trucks all parked outside our plane with the lights flashing away and what looked like all the hoses at the ready.

At this stage, I thought to myself : "Oh! maybe the plane had to make a really bad emergency landing". Then I thought to myself : "Ah feckit! My plane has caught fire. I'm going to be stuck in Dublin airport for hours now". It was just then, another really official looking guy appeared. He promptly started walking around to the awaiting (and at this stage, somewhat bemused) people telling them in a hushed sort of voice that the special Olympics Irish team were on that plane that had just landed and it would be really nice if we could give them a big cheer when they disembarked!!! Then a piper appeared out of nowhere and started bellowing "music" out of his bagpipes, the special Olympics Irish team, one by one, started to appear out from the boarding gate and people proceeded to cheer and clap (myself included) until the last of them were off the plane. After the last person disembarked, all the fire trucks drove off, the official looking guys disappeared, as did the bag piper and all was well again.

Now, what was the purpose of that little anecdote? I hear you ask. Well, first of all; I find it highly amusing and somewhat perplexing as to why it was necessary to have all those fire trucks at the ready? Did they expect the special Olympians to spontaneous combust out of sheer excitement at being back on Irish soil again? Has this type of phenomena happened in the past? Our "non-special" Olympians would probably have gotten proper garda security vehicles as landing escorts but our special Olympians get fire trucks instead!?! Perhaps the powers that be just figured "ah sure, they're special Olympians. We'll just throw some vehicles with flashy lights at them. They'll never know the difference".

Secondly; why was it necessary to have some official looking guy run around to everyone telling them in a really hushed voice that it would be really nice if they gave a little clap and cheer for the special Olympians when they disembarked. If they were the Irish team for the "normal" Olympics that was disembarking I can assure you that people would be cheering for them without being told. Why must we be told to cheer (and be told in what I thought was a very condescending manner towards the athletes) in this case? OK, I understand that the special Olympics are in no way near as grand a scale as the "normal" Olympic games but should we not be taking equal pride in our athletes be they "special" or not? The ironic thing about all this is that the Irish team for the special Olympics actually win a crap load more medals than the Irish "non-special" Olympics team ever could. Of course, you had the obligatory smart arse making the remark that all the medals the Olympians had around their necks looked liked giant chocolate gold coins.

OK, little rant over. Onto the Lindy Hop festival that I attended over the weekend... In short, it was OK. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed but I think I ruined it for myself by having really high expectations of it before hand. The classes for the most part were quite good. We unfortunately only had a short (but excellent) class with the one teacher I specifically went over to the festival for which was a real let down. To top it off, my thighs were killing me all weekend which was really weird since I wasn't doing anything strenuous (in fact I wasn't even using them that much). Of course, since I've landed back in Dublin they are all well and good again...typical! The black and tan masquerade ball that was held on Saturday evening turned out to be a black, white, red, blue, green, purple, orange and whatever other colour you can think of and tan ball. People obviously have very different concepts of the colours "black and tan". The highlight of the whole festival for me personally was getting to watch the Harlem Hotshots perform. Those guys are scarily good.

Also got to walk around London for the day to do a bit of site seeing. Hadn't done that in years. It was really enjoyable. More so than I remembered it being all those other times. Of course, it's around about this time in conversation about major cities that I've just visited that I would start complaining about how our public transportation system here sucks donkey balls compared to said city in conversation but I'm not going to. That's more or less a given at this stage. However, why is it that that always seems to be the first thing I notice whenever I'm abroad in any major city? Roll on the first phase of the kick ass Dublin metro in 2010! *Note, I'm being highly sarcastic here*

London Baby!

2007-10-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

I'm hopping over the pond to London this weekend to do a spot of, errr... , Lindy Hopping at the London Lindy Hop Festival :D Those who know me will know that I like to dance from time to time and there is nothing like a bit of swing dancing to get that booty shaking. I'm really looking forward to be dancing with (and being humbled by) all the incredible swing dancers from around the globe that are going to be at the LLH festival this weekend. Why is it that dancers from abroad always seem to be 10 gazillion times better dancers than you are? Must be something in the water.

Also, it's been years since I last stepped foot in London (if you ignore the stop overs at various London based airports while flying elsewhere that is), so I've decided to take an extra day off work to go reacquaint myself with the city of London again while I'm over there. Haven't decided yet whether to try my luck at the London Eye or go sneer at the crack in the ground that passes for "art" in the Tate modern. I only have one free day to explore so I'd better choose wisely.

On a sorta related noted... I hear that they have new proposals for the U2 tower down at the docklands. Its now going to be higher still; 180m higher! That's taller than the spire (about 60m or 197ft taller to be pedantic about it). It's no longer going to be of a twisty glass design, which I thought was quite cool looking. Instead its going to be a tilted triangular tower design, a design by Foster & Partners, the guys that came up with the "Gherkin" building in London (see, I told ya it was sorta related news). Here's the article about it for all those interested. And Ronan, if your reading this, knowing your strange fascination with all things sky scrapery (i just made up a new word :D), you can stop salivating now.

In one way I think its sorta nice that Dublin is going to finally have a nice fancy high building but in another way, considering that I currently live right beside the proposed tower site I'm also sorta a little hesitant over the new bigger, higher, fancier design. I can essentially say goodbye to what little sunlight I have once that tower/sky scraper gets built. Still, considering that the tower isn't due for completion until circa 2011 and I don't plan to be living where I currently am come 2011 I guess I have nothing to worry about. Instead I'll just content myself with having to put up with constant construction work right outside my bedroom window for the next 3 to 4 odd years :(

The beginnings of a beginning?

2007-10-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

OK, so I've been putting this off for years now and I've held out for as long as I possibly could but finally I've crumpled to peer pressure and succumbed to setting up a blog... yay me!

I can't guarantee that I'm not going to eventually forget about this little corner of the interweb and leave it collecting virtual cobwebs. However, I've finally gotten off my arse and started "blogging" so that's just as good a start as any and if i do end up neglecting it after a while at least I can say that I tried... and who's to say, despite my reluctance this might actually end up being something fun (and a somewhat productive exercise in social writing).

For a while there it was a toss up between actually doing a written blog or photo blog. I figured that a photo blog might actually force me to start using my overly expensive digital camera more but I eventually concluded that with a photo blog all you'd probably see is the front of my TV for the most part (or lots of shots of my crotch when I'm really bored). So, to save everyone's eyes from possibly being corrupted we're going to try your normal written blog for now.

To start the ball rolling... anyone interested in being invigorated by a "black bastard"? And I always thought the Japanese were the funny ones when it came to drinks branding (case in point).