Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

This cold/virus thing going around

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

Anyone else experience this motherfucker of a virus? It started on New Year’s day and I still have it. Chest infection and cold thing and a really nasty and annoying cough. Out sick from work most of last week and have no energy to do anything. It took me about 2 hours to answer that meme from Suzy. Antibiotics run out tomorrow and really have been no help. Woke this morning from fevered dreams and pains all over. Muh. 2006 better improve!

Meme Quartet

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

Suzy tagged me with the four meme.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:

Worked in a pound shop when I was 15/16.
Hospital porter.
Tech support monkey.
Technical writer.

Four movies you could watch over and over:

Amelie
Terminator 2
The Godfather
Old Boy

Four places you’ve lived:
Knocknaheeny
The Cork countryside 🙂
Drumcondra
Ballintemple, Cork.

Four TV shows you love to watch:

The West Wing
Battlestar Galactica (the new version)
Deadwood
Doctor Who

Four places you’ve been on vacation:
Russia
Virginia
Iceland
Andorra

Four websites you visit daily:
Visit 130 sites via Bloglines
Boards.
Internet Movie Database.
Amazon.

Four of your favorite foods:

Rare bloody steak
Sushi
Most fish
Chips and curry from Lennox’s, Bandon Road

Four places you’d rather be:
Iceland
Sitting on some craggy rocks, breathing in the sea air rolling in from Galway Bay and just taking in the magnificent views as the sun in the evening starts to fade and you can still feel the warmth on your face and the sunburn starting to tighten the skin on your shoulders. All senses at work yet feeling so relaxed.
Cork. Think of the Tommy Tiernan joke about Cork people. Sure it’s not Cork, like.
Sitting on a stairs.

Four people to annoy with another annoying meme.
United Irelander
Elana
Gerry
The yank.

Morning becomes Eclectic Video Podcasts

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006

Via MacWorld: Good news for music gourmands, Morning Becomes Eclectic is now going to do video podcasts. If you don’t know what MBE is, think of it as Pet Sounds but during the Ray D’Arcy slot and they do podcasts already. How great would it be to hear such good music while at work or college and now see videos too? The audio podcasts would interest me more but it is good to see that already 2006 may become the year of the video podcast. Bell X1 did a great show a few months back on it. That’s how I found them.

My neighbourhood getting all tarted up.

Thursday, January 5th, 2006

Found on boards.ie are these pics of a new development near Pairc Ui Caoimh. Very nice. The NMRC is moving near my place. Great idea.

Development near Pairc Ui Caoimh

Development near Pairc Ui Caoimh

Dublining

Thursday, January 5th, 2006

I’m off to Dublin and Maynooth in the morning. Am around Dublin on Fri, Sat and Sun. If anyone is around give me a shout if you want to go for a drink or two. I’m going to see Mogwai play on Saturday evening, anyone else going to them?

I won’t be checking mail til at least Fri evening, I should think, so if you need to contact me have your people talk to Sinéad’s people who will ask Sinéad to supply my number.

Anyone know of a place in Dublin that does cocktails after lunch? Yes, I’m starting early.

Goodbye Nape Piercing

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

About 13 months ago I got a nape piercing. After constant fighting with it, my body won and I decided to take it out. With overworking myself and always being run down, the piercing was getting infected every few days. It got really bad the past two weeks as you can see:
Infected piercing

So, tonight I unscrewed a ball and pulled it out from under my skin. This is what the bar looks like:

Nape bar

I guess I should really just stick to tattoos. At least they don’t get infected.

That’s me in the Examiner looking pissed off, apparently.

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

So I just saw a pic of myself on page 10 of the Examiner. I look pissed off, apparently. Yes, I’m talking about broadband as usual. Broken record!

Oh and tune into RTE News at 6pm and 9pm. One of the IrelandOffline supporters is going to be on talking about broadband.

Meaty Christmas

Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Today was the first time since the end of August/start of September that I had meat. I decided to challenge myself as I do when I get bored, so the challenge back then was to be a veggie for an extended period. No meat or fish. As I progressed with this new diet I decided that December 25th would be the day I end the madness, I had hoped to do it for a year. And madness it was as I found my health deteriorating, I lost a good bit of muscle mass and I gained a lot more body fat. See, I’m not a good cook or a cook of any type and I think to have a proper veggie diet one needs to know how to make more than pasta. Too much carbs and not enough good proteins has damaged me.

So I started off breakfast this morning with an amazing piece of very rare steak. Mmm, dripping with blood which mixed nicely with my scrambled eggs. I’ll have to hit the gym soon now and help recover all that lost chest, arm and shoulder muscle. I think I’ll see an end to the lingering heartburn which I was experiencing too. Happy Meatmass!

My bloggers, my friends, thank you.

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

I have to say that 2005 was definitely the year of the blog in Ireland. A community quickly came together thanks in no small part to the IrishBlogs and the PlanetOfTheBlogs aggregators. I’ve made a good few friends and hardly any enemies from this blogging lark. I’ve also found a new play toy called United Irelander. But more of that in the new year 😉

The quality of content coming from the small but growing boggersphere community is fantastic and we need to encourage more people to join this community and be their guides and mentors. We have the like of the lefties interviewing us, so we can learn more about ourselves, even silly memes that fly around the boggersphere faster than UI gets taken to task by the feminazis are good things for becoming more comfortable with each other. We have reporters, academics, artists, politicians, business people and social satirists in the mix and it’s enriching our daily reading. This is such a good thing. We even have a lovely Russian lady giving her views on things. I’m still looking for the elusive Polish bloggers though.

We also seem to be reaching out further to cyberspace and making our presence felt. We had Robert Scoble over here to visit Cork and Dublin and he helped advertise other Irish bloggers. Sites like PodLeaders and Newsroom.ie are interviewing international tech leaders as well as local tech and business influencers. Us Irish bloggers are doing well!

We had a good few events like TechCamp and IT@Cork where the bloggers got together. Most recently being the Dublin blogger meetup where the real TwentyMajor may or may not have appeared.

It was through the Irish blogs community that the Digital Rights Ireland group formed and they’ve already shown their worth with massive media coverage. 2006 is looking like an amazing year for them, but I’m biased being a director. 🙂

Now that I don’t have work for a while, college is over til Jan 3rd and both the lobby groups I have fun with are slowing down for the holidays, I really really really guarantee I’ll do something about the Irish Blog Awards.

So, to get to my point at long last, I’d like to thank everyone who blogs because you contribute a great deal of knowledge to my daily life now and educate me non-stop. Keep blogging, keep your current high standards, keep encouraging your fellow bloggers and try and get more and more people to blog.

A wasted opportunity – Politician’s Blogs

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005

After glancing at Liz McManus’ blog I’m quite disappointed that it reads like a newsletter or something sent through PR filters. Her blog would have been a good platform to explain herself more and to go away from the scipt. Less soundbites and more discursive posts. She is not writing for her audience or conversing with them, she is lecturing. While comments are allowed, there doesn’t seem to be any way of motivating people to comment. Shame really.