Entries in Category "Meta"

Brighton Beach

At 2am last night, I walked down to the shoreline of Brighton beach. I listened to the pebbles crunch beneath my feet, to the sea lapping against them. The light of the full moon glittered off the surface of the water, and a calm came over me as I relaxed and drew it all in.

This experience was marred slightly by the young man who ran down beside me to pee. Now, with each lap of the sea I thought: “Yep, that’s piss”.

Fun times

This stuff is designed to replace lost water and body salts, and tastes like sea-water. With a hint of lemon.

Deadly.

Non-horrific posts will return when I have time, which looking ahead will probably be when I’m in Switzerland, i.e. November.

Needs

Currently...

1. in need of some sleep, and...
2. in quite desperate need of a shave.

People who wonder why I post such shit don’t understand that, when I am short on time, the purpose of this blog shifts almost entirely to “Piss off Des”.

Bonus links

Tards with Mics, and Tards with Mics II.

Dear June 15th Dave

It wouldn’t be a great idea to double your trips down to the pool and increase you the intensity of the work-out, if you’ve been prescribed anti-inflammatories for an injured leg.

You’re sincerely a moron,
This Week’s Dave

Goats

Whose retarded idea was it to make cheese out of goat’s milk? I wasn’t paying much attention at the coffee shop today, and picked up a goat’s cheese sandwich by mistake. Now my mouth feels less like a cave and more like a lair; dark, dank and musty. I feel like I’ve drunk a glass of deer piss.

I don’t know what annoys me more... the fact that I spent good money on a shitty sandwich, or the fact that I still ate the whole thing.

I’ll tell you what I want

I want X-ray vision and a gun, so I can kill whatever stinking animal has made a home in the rafters of my house.

Tap tap tap.
Tap tap tap.
Tap tap tap.

That's what I (try to) fall asleep to.

We’ve checked the roof. Nothing there. This thing is either in the rafters or the walls. Judging by a convenient hole in our roof, I believe it to be a bird.

If I find out it’s a pigeon, then my paranoia is well and truly confirmed.

Dude! You got spam from Dell!

We got some post from Dell one day, a catalogue. I presumed it was for my dad (who doesn't live with us anymore) and, as I have no interest in buying a Dell computer, I just left it one the table by the door.

A few minutes ago, my mum picked up the catalogue and told me that, in fact, it was addressed to me.

I was a bit puzzled. I've never bought anything from Dell before. I have gotten strange spam from domain registrars who have harvested my information from my whois records. It's possible Dell used that.

As it turns out, my only relationship with Dell is that I applied for a job there once, and had a single interview.

This means that Dell are either harvesting addresses from the whois records, or they are using job application records for marketing purposes. Both possibilities are highly annoying, and only make Dell seem like a jackass.

I still want one of their sweet new 30 inch displays though.

Update for now

I am up to my eyes in work. Rock on, I think. But that has obviously hampered my updates (sorry Ms. Ghost!) but I should have some cool news soon.

Over Christmas, my mum got a nineteen-foot trampoline between my brother, sister and I. It is, quite frankly, the greatest gift that has ever been had. I am loving it. Friends are welcome to use it (you have my number), and quite frankly, any chance to see Phil Brennan in action on it is not to be missed.

My dad got me, among other things, Mousetrap. Milton Bradley forgot to include the most crucial part (the actual trap) and in so doing, managed to ruin Christmas. Thanks guys. Expect an angry telephone call soon.

Will probably be putting the deposit down on a MacBook Pro in the next week or two. If Des or Zoomtard want to send me hate-mail, you know the address.

(Also, is Apple.co.uk running on IIS? For shame!).

I'm thinking of heading over to New York this summer for a holiday. Hopefully Adobe's next revision of their suite will be out (and be a universal binary, expected out this spring, early summer) and I can get it on the cheap over there. Currently, even ex VAT, Adobe are gouging somewhere around 20% more out of the Irish. Thanks lads. It's appreciated. I'm also hoping that The Daily Show is still filming over the summer. Anyone want to come along?

Dave, planning on rocking the Statue of Liberty like Ghostbusters II.

So, I gave in to temptation

On day 13, I finally gave in to temptation and bought a caffeinated drink (Coke) with a meal. So, the clock starts again.

Exceptionally busy. I need a staff.

90 and counting

Ninety hours without caffeine. The cravings have started again. If I hit ten days, I should be in the clear. One-hundred and fifty more hours to go.

Nodnol

I'm sitting in Gatwick airport, waiting for my flight to Dublin which has been delayed by three hours. With luck, I should arrive back in Dublin by a-quarter-past one.

I left for London at 10:50 in the morning on Saturday with my friend Conall. Conall was moving to London and I offered to join him for the road trip. We got the ferry over from Dublin Port to Holyhead.

On the ferry over, I did notice something that drove me nuts. One could upgrade one's ticket to a “Club Class” ticket for 15 euro. For this, you got slightly nicer seats and a cup of tea; but the main benefit was the opportunity to pay more money for better food.

Food choice was segregated by class. Classist bastards!

The scenery on the way through Wales was stunning, but I forgot my camera so unfortunately I don't have any pictures.

We travelled from Holyhead, down through Wales, and into England. On the way, we saw a sign for Oulton Park and headed in, catching a bit of a race, which was cool.

We hit central London at about half-eight at night. Traffic was a nightmare, and we didn't quite know where we were going. Conall, worn out by the long drive, started to literally go blind with a dull rage as his vision narrowed to a tunnel. Thankfully, we managed to find his accommodations before he descended into a babbling madness or “the elves” (his words) took over.

On Sunday, we headed out to Brands Hatch to watch the first ever A1 Grand Prix. I watched part of the feature race from the hospitality lounge of the Irish team, and even managed to head down to the Irish garage at the pits (and saw the Irish car wheeled in just feet from me).

It's a about what happened to our team. Michael Devaney was hit on the third corner of the first lap of the feature race (after impressively climbing from tenth to fifth) and was knocked out of the race. When we got to the Irish team's office, someone from Sky Sports walked in to ask Michael for an interview, saying that he “must seem like the Grim Reaper at times like this”. Michael didn't seem to mind.

I won't forget seeing the car from the Lebanon roll in the air less than twenty metres from me. That was unreal. You can find out more about the race at the MotorSport Vision news page.

I got some work done today, and headed into London for some Starbucks, the “Help: A Day in the Life” album, mass pigeon assault (forty plus of the bastards), a goodbye and the train to Gatwick.

And just to prove that I can't escape the nutters no matter where I go, while Conall and I ran for the bus to Victoria station, a man on a bike with a bandana covering most of his face roared at us: “Do we have some nutters here? Would you like a bullet up the Khyber?”

What a pleasant fellow.

They are relentless

Well, it turns out that now I am attracting weirdos via the phone. I just got a call on the landline. I answered the phone.

Me

Hello?

The line seems dead, but I keep checking.

Me

Hello? *pause* Hello?

Confused-sounding woman

Hello?

Me

Hi, who's this?

Confused-sounding woman

Christine, have you picked up the phone?

Me

Who?

Confused-sounding woman

What number?

Me

Sorry, who's this?

They then hang up. Those are actual quotes people. For the next four weeks I reckon I'll still hear What number?, What number? rattling around my head.

Difficult

On Tuesday, after my appointment at the osteopath, I decided to grab myself a chicken teryaki roll from Subway. These things are gorgeous, and apparently not that bad for you either.

So I pop into the one on the Quays, and out of the corner of my eye I spot the shitbags guy. I turn towards the counter, and as I place my order I notice that the woman behind the counter is hot.

She begins to make the roll, and I automatically start flirting a little with her. She seems to like the attention, slight as it is.

I feel a presence to my right.

Mister Shitbags

That looks like a nice roll.

Me

It's a great roll.

I look back towards the woman again, and smile.

Mister Shitbags

It's so hard to be a gentleman these days.

Me

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean.

Mister Shitbags

It's so hard to be a gentleman these days.

Me

Alright...

Great explanation there, sir. The woman behind the counter is putting the finishing touches to my roll.

Mister Shitbags

How much is that roll?

Me

Six - six euro.

Mister Shitbags

Hrm.

The woman hands me the roll, I hand her the cash, and before we can even complete the transaction, in jumps the philosopher-king and asks for the same roll.

Highlight of the week? I saw a badger. Badgers look fucking cool.

Crunch

On Saturday I dropped a three-seater sofa onto my head. On Monday, I went for an aggressive cycle, which somehow aggravated my neck. I am now walking slowly, with reduced sensation on the left of my face.

Great posture though. If this sticks, I might take up robot impersonation for a living.

Exposé Overload

I have so many windows open I haven't even bothered counting... and it's even worse than it looks. Those four Safari windows and eight Firefox windows are full of tabs, and between them have around two hundred web pages open. I don't want to close any of them in case I lose them in the mess that is my bookmarks folder.

All I can say is: I'm glad I have a gig of RAM :)

If you look closely, you'll see the Assemblies of God Ireland placeholder page, that went up tonight.

Yawn

I'm tired. I've worked close to twelve hours today, and worked through the weekend. I still have work left to do, so I feel like I should keep going; unfortunately, the work done over the past hour was consisted of Command-Tabbing between open windows and writing this post.

I've also found that my penmanship is disasterous, and I can only make a good letterform if I try to draw it.

Yes, you read that right.

I have some new stuff to show everyone very soon. I just need to get at a scanner...

PS: If anyone knows of somewhere one can pick up a cheap copy of the original Half-Life, please let me know.

Click

The primary hard disk in my PC died last night with a loud click. Thankfully, all of my work is sitting on the surviving secondary disk, I can still work off my PowerBook, and all of my business work is already backed up elsewhere (even if it isn't simple to restore).

Friday night, and all day Saturday, will be spent burning DVD backups of the 300 gig drive that holds years of data. That's 70 DVDs of fun.

When I finally get my PC back from the dead (after the replacement hard disk arrives), I'll be setting up my work directory to automatically sync with the my StrongSpace account on the hour. I'll post it up as a how-to.

Multiplication

Here's a simple one. Around 75 images, each of which need between 5 and 10 minutes of manipulation time (cropping, quick colour adjustment and some sharpening). That's roughly 6 and 12 hours work.

Guess who gave himself 5 hours to do this and a whole heap of other tweaks on a project? This idiot, right here. Thank God that I have a good client.

Galway on Saturday. Rock.

Whoosh

According to Des, if I don't post something interesting soon then he's going to stop reading this blog. This is unacceptable. If I wanted to drive Des away, I'd post gushing reviews of my new Powerbook in a tone unsuitable for use even with one's wife. You know, the tone used in so many Mac magazines; used in painfully worded pleas to Steve Jobs to come and tell them that yes, they are special and that yes, he will touch their penis.

I was in London last Monday. I'm not going to analyse my feelings about the bombings or write some trite condolence to the people of the city. What I will say is that those who deliberately target civilians are asshats of the highest order, and that “He who warns is excused” counts for shit.

While in London I picked up some Starbucks coffee. I finished the bag today. I was pretty sure that the bag had only about three spoons worth left in it, so I just poured the whole lot into the pot.

I was wrong. By about three spoons. And now I'm wide awake at half two in the morning.

Live8 came and went. One thing that annoyed me at the time, and that still does, is the idea that the cancellation of unfair debt repayments is somehow charity.

We in the West live off the continued misfortune of these nations. We get their raw materials on the cheap thanks to unfair trade practices and destroy the livelihoods of local farmers by selling our unused and subsidised crops to these countries at bargain basement prices. We keep their countries crippled with unfair debts, lent to dictators that are in many cases long gone. In some cases, debt repayments are a larger part of the countries budget than health and education. One such country is Malawi, where one in five people are HIV positive.

In effect, we are slavers, and worse; we are slavers who treat our slaves like shit. We shouldn't think of cancelling debt as charity; we should see it as the start of reparations.

It's now four in the morning, and the coffee is finally wearing off. Thank fuck. Goodnight.

When I am exhausted...

...I find that:

• My fingers don't co-operate with my brain. I'll type something, and all the letters will be there, but in the wrong order. I also have trouble communicating numbers. I think five but my fingers say three.
• I have weird dreams. The one I had last night involved me being on the run from a criminal empire, being a child staying over at a friends house, being a posh writer walking through a park and being Batman. I also picked up a premature baby (the size of my hand) who was left on our stairs for some reason. Figure that one out.
• Occasionally I'll have flashes of dreams during waking hours. For a moment, there will be a flash of blurred images and some sound from elsewhere, then I will recover.

Sandwich steak in a steak sandwich

Fry some sandwich steak in a pan. Butter some bread. Add some lettuce and a little mayonnaise. Once cooked, slice the steak into strips and place it on top of the lettuce. Spread some horseradish sauce over it.

The result? Pure joy! There's nothing like a steak sandwich at 00:24.

I have also been staching hard. This is a habit I cannot afford to pick up again.

I was recently interviewed for a job, one that I really wanted to do. I did not get it.

I am oddly comfortable with this, so don't worry. Instead, just go and watch some Walker Texas Ranger clips. You might also be in for some interesting stuff happening right here, as there is now no need to pack in the freelance business just yet.

And for those with strong stomachs, why not read my idea for a fantastic ad?

What has and has not been annoying me recently?

What is annoying Dave recently?

• My allegedly receding hairline. Thanks, Dad!
• The slow and pointless evil of certain unfunny folk.
• People putting two spaces after a period. It's not necessary now we have proportional fonts. Go on, listen to Bill Hill. Remember: you break the flow of the text, I break your legs.
• Apple hardward support. You've had it repaired twice already? Sorry, we'll only take you seriously if you send it for repairs three times and it's still broken. Thanks, asshats.

What is not annoying Dave recently?

• A good pickaxe.
• The idea that clothes can be slutty, but not too slutty; in fact, they can be just slutty enough.
• I Heart Huckabees.
• The fact that the Kotex Maxi Super pad packaging has, on the cover, what appears to be a big red tulip that is leaking blood.

EV1Servers versus the customer

I was (and still am) in the market for a dedicated FreeBSD 5 server. I heard good things about EV1Servers, so I got in touch with them. They were extraordinarily helpful, and very soon I was logged into my brand new dedicated server.

Things went down hill from here on in. What follows is an account of my experiences with EV1 Servers, and why I will not recommend them. I must warn you... it's a long one.

Counter-revolutionary activities

Zoomtard brought up this little event in conversation recently. What that press release does not mention is the protest staged by the local students union.

Strategically, the protest was a disaster. What I remember of the day was a lot of angry students, who boo'ed the then Minister for Education and Science. They disrupted the activities of the day so much with their noise that the staff and their guests had to move to another room. Some still hold this as an achievement.

Way to initiate a dialogue, guys!

Phil and I were returning from lunch, just as the protest began. Always up for a bit of street theatre, we welcomed the invitation to hang around.

We didn't do much. We stood. We mumbled as the crowd booed. Phil stepped in some dog shit. We broke it down with some impromptu renditions of NWA's finer pieces.

I may have also tried to convince the leaders of the protest that fifty students could pretty quickly overpower the two gardai present, and break through their rather shoddy defensive line and gain access to those inside.

Wusses.

A bit too much?

My brother cut my hair tonight. It feels dangerously short at the sides, compared to the hair on top. And yes, that is my attempt at Blue Steel.

In other news, trawling through census statistics is fun!.

The head cold

Hurrah! I have a head cold.

It's difficult to think past the fuzzy headache; I am frustrated at needing extra effort just to think. I look over the day to come and see it as one of self-maintenance, as I clean up whatever decides to spill from my eyes or nose. I worry that my dashing good looks may be marred by a tissue or two jammed up each nostril - though I could probably try for the albino walrus look.

It's not bad like a bad illness. It's bad like the neighbour bought a new over-powered sound system, failed to set it up properly (damaging the speakers in the process) and is now pumping out tracks from Steps' Greatest Hits. In an offence against Euclidean geometry, I want to climb inside my own head and beat seven shades of snot out of the virus. Judging from what my nose is pouring out, I may be doing just that. Hurrah! I am awesome.

In other, less narcissistic news, good friend Kevin Hargaden will be presenting a talk tonight on The Da Vinci Code. It's on in NUI Maynooth at 6:30pm, and is apparently attracting a lot of interest on campus. I know I'm looking forward to it. If you can, attend. I'll put up a more accurate location when I find out myself.

Ugh, gammy eye!

Ugh.

Beard be gone!

The first picture, A, shows me with the beard. Though it may suit me when it is shorter, at this length (and presumably when longer) it just looks scruffy.

As you can see from the second picture, B, it was apparently all that was keeping me sober. Who needs alchohol when you can just shave?

Run

Today was the first day of my new hobby: running.

I need to be more fit, and my first outing today proved it. After a mere five minutes, I had to stop to for a while to sexily wheeze my lungs out. The run back to my house had to take place in two parts.

Now, I am obviously damn unfit, but the worst part had to be, as I showered, coughing up years worth of phlegm that seems to have made a home in my alveolae. Anyone know how to clear this gunk out? It's not pleasant.

The beard was shaved around Christmas time, but has since come back with a vengeance. I'll probably shave it off later on today, but I'll be sure to take some pictures beforehand. I don't think beards suit me, and this one looks pretty funny.

Is nasal hair facial hair, even if it doesn't stick out? Either way, I have very little nasal hair in my left nostril. The power cut again, and somehow I got it into my head to see if sniffing directly over a flame would make it rise.

That's right. I snorted a candle. All I can say is: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Again with the cutting of the power

This entry was written during one of the power cuts tonight, then posted here afterwards.

I'm writing this now so that I don't forget it later.

It's half two in the morning, on what insists on being called Saturday. The wind is blowing hard outside. Phil and I were having a discussion about this right before the power cut again. My guess is that, in the high wind outside, whatever repairs were done a couple of days ago have been damaged.

For the first time I can remember, I heard the wind roar. I don't mean leaves and branches being waved around, and I don't mean the constant shush. I'm talking about something that hums, and then moves from a hum to something deeper, something harsh that sounds full of malevolent intent.

Intent on ruining my chances of getting a cup of coffee to help me concentrate. Mother bitch.

I better get back to writing part two of the design series, before I fall asleep. Candles are lit, laptop is still working; hopefully my brain is too.

Things to do

I'm not going to plan out my entire year, but here's part of my plans.

Get more work

I have some leads, and I have some contacts that I've yet to contact. I must follow through on these.

Continue the redesign and the redesign series

I think this is going to be really interesting.

Work on the pseudo-secret project

I was going to call this the “top secret” project, but as I'm mentioning it on a public site, that seemed a bit rich. I'm working on a little project that should be of interest to any web designer. More on this in March.

Go to SXSW 2005

Hit the SXSW 2005 Interactive festival in March, find out what all the fuss is about. This will cost a lot. Must also get a new passport.

Get a 17-inch Powerbook

I need one. I really do. Once I've registered for VAT (the form is filled in and on my desk), it should only cost around two and a half grand.

I remember when these things costs upwards of three ex VAT. I have no idea how much the new revisions will cost or even when they are coming out.

Visit New York

I've been told I'd like it there. Plus, I have up to four VIP tickets to the Daily Show for when I go... how sweet is that?

Write more songs

...or, more accurately, finish the ones you've been writing and get a demo together.

Work towards winning a Bloggie in 2006 / 2007

Stiff competition, but I'm hopeful. Work done over this year may be enough to win a coveted Bloggie, if not... well, setting extremely difficult goals for oneself is useful for getting work done.

Get this plane

Quite likely to be a UFO-nut fantasy, but they seem so freaking sweet. The TR-3B is a craft that is alleged to have anti-gravity technology and be capable of speeds of roughly Mach 9. I dunno about you, but if this thing has a decent interface to it and is nice and nimble too it would be sweet to fly.

Maximum pose value

Phil:

For maximum pose value, post up on your blog about your purchase of the notebook. Go on, you know you want to.

Me:

I do now.

I got a Moleskine ruled notebook on Sunday, and paid seventeen-euro-sixty. Phil is disgusted.

Anatomy of a face

As I do not have any client meetings until the new year, and have no pressing need to look dashingly handsome - having no particular fair lady to impress - a strange opportunity arose... to grow a beard. I had also blunted my last razor-blade... a new one would require half an hour of travel (and a solid short-term memory). The beard is therefore a combination of experimentation, laziness, and clear hilarity.

My problem with hot women

Like most people, I have hang-ups about sex. I worry if I'll ever be good enough in bed, and I worry if I'll ever get over my performance anxiety enough to actually enjoy myself. I'm a virgin, and I know that after my first time I'll probably be a bit ashamed at myself for my obvious lack of finesse. Well congratulations, dipshit; you're bound to be crap the first time. Don't expect to be some kind of sexual virtuoso on the first attempt.

But, I've got a bigger problem. Because I believe what I believe, I can't have sex before I get married. Now, I'm sure this is for the best in the long run, but it is (to put it both mildly and bluntly) a right pain in the sack.

But that's not my real problem. My real problem is this. When do I say to a woman who I've met and that I'm interested in, that I can't have sex with her unless we end up getting married?

It certainly can't be the first thing I say. The following isn't a great way of starting a conversation:

Me:

Hey there.

Hot woman:

Well hello!

Me:

My name's Dave. You won't be getting none of this ass.

But similarly, I can't say let the situation progress to here:

Hot woman:

Well good morning, sleepy-head!

Me:

I have something to tell you. You won't be getting none of this ass. Er... again.

So, how do I deal with this? I know from experience that it's not necessarily the kind of thing a woman wants to hear. How do I bring this subject up?

Nordie words

I have found myself slipping the phrase “just a wee bit” into my sentences a lot recently. As in: “just a wee bit more sugar”, or “that's just a wee bit too much food; my stomach hurts and I'm starting to feel really dizzy”.

I think I might be hanging around with my Nordie friends too much. Next thing you know, I'll be replacing the word “yes” with “aye”. If the word “ach” ever preceeds it, friends are given permission to hit me.

Now, if a Northern Irish woman, speaking with a not-too-harsh Northern Irish accent, was using such phrases she would sound fantastic. A Northern Irish man, speaking with a Northern Irish accent, would sound consistent.

I have an accent which is seems to be a mix of Irish, English, American and Nordic accents. When I use such phrases, I don't sound fantastic. I don't sound consistent. Lets be honest: I sound retarded.

Friends: If you hear me say “ach aye”, then as we say south of the border free digs.

I am a foot

If I have neglected this blog recently, it is only because of the five hour daily commute to and from the office of my current client. I'm working there 'til Friday the 29th.

It can't come soon enough. No offense to my client, but that amount of travel is a killer. It's really taken a toll on other projects I'd like to contribute to; this site for one, and a substantial reading list for another. Most importantly, it has cut my sleep down to four hours a night. I am not a fan of this.

I usually try to catch up on my sleep debt on Saturday. By Fridays, the cumulative effect turns me into a shell of a man. Last Friday I had picked up a combination of involuntary twitches and winces. It's a pity I didn't pick up some form of Tourettes.

Monday is a bank holiday here in Ireland; that means I should get some work done this weekend. You should see the results here in late November or early December.

By the way, if I plan to go to the US and Canada without a bank loan, I'll need to save at least two grand a month for the next four months. I need to get serious about getting more work.

The trip

I'm hoping to head stateside in March, for roughly three months. I want to see what the country is like, but there's a lot of planning to do:

• So far I've only figured out three places in the US I definitely want to visit:
  • SXSW 2005 in Austin, Texas: where web-nerds flaunt their geekdom. Music festival there seems pretty cool too.
  • New York, New York.
  • San Francisco. I've been told by some friends who've been that I'd love it, because it's full of lefty hippies
  ...but I'd like to have a better idea of what to do and where to go before I leave.
• I need to raise roughly seven thousand euro, for the cost of my stay and flights... ten if I expect to buy a laptop over there. This is possible, but I suspect I'll have to take out a loan. I would like to be able to do some contract work in Ireland remotely... hopefully this can be arranged. It's certainly possible to work on a cool project while in a different time-zone.
• Logistics. My mobility will be restricted by any luggage I bring. If I'm going for three months, I'll have a lot of clothes with me... certainly more than I can carry around all the time. I need to figure out where I can safely stash stuff and what I can safely bring.
• I'm debating whether or not it's a good idea to wear a “This is an insult to my dignity” tshirt for government mandated photoshoot at border control.

Any friends, or otherwise, who can give me advice are asked to post it in the comments.

Futility

There is a horrible feeling of futility when you take some pills for a rotten headache you have, only to throw them up ten minutes later.

When my headache disappeared the moment I finished hurling, I had a zen moment.

Time for some ass-kicking

I just started a contract somewhere, and I'll be sure to fill you in on the pertinent details once the job is finished. I'm very happy with the work I've produced so far, and I'm very interested in seeing what it will turn out like.

The contract finishes in roughly four weeks. After that, I should have payed off all of my offical debt... my overdraft, credit-card balance and bills. I'm planning what to do next.

I need to write. If I do not write, I will die.

I also need to work on the concepts and technology behind my new site. I hope that any visitor can move around the site easily, not just those with a similar brain to my own. There's a lot of content to write, interfaces to design, and other strange things I won't mention until they are done.

I definitely need to plan for the working holiday of a lifetime. March, April and possibly May of 2005 will hopefully be spent in several different countries, while I have a blast.

Your intrepid reporter, signing off at this late hour.

To the guy from the Gents in the Roost

There's not much I'm willing to put up with from strangers in the Gents. Though my dislike of peeing in public may seem odd, I do not expect to be criticised for this while waiting for a cubicle to clear. I also do not expect:

• The first thing you suggest to be that someone is in the cubicle skinning up for me.
• When I tell you no, to then ask am I going in to crack my balls.
• When I mishear you the first time, and stupidly ask you what?, to be told You know, crack your balls; have a scat (a phrase I believe, and sincerely hope, you misused).
• To be given the suggestion that, as the cubicles in the Gents are in use, I should head to the Ladies to have a scat in there.

This may seem odd for you to hear, and it is certainly odd for me to say, but I don't like total strangers ask me if I am about to either masturbate, masturbate with faeces or have anal sex. I'm afraid that as my slang is imported from California, I can't figure out exactly what you were talking about; and to be honest, I don't think I want to.

And thanks for reminding me about the American girl who decided her first and last words to me would be a far too graphic description of the sex-life she shared with her boyfriend.

To my regular readers

Obviously, I am a weirdo magnet. If anyone knows how to make this stop, that would be great.

Reading that old blog entry reminded me that I never wrote the follow-up I promised. I'll write it as soon as I can figure out how to make the disasterous sound hilarious.

Any future kids of mine are screwed

On Tuesday, on my way home from Dublin, I bumped into my friend Jen. We got off the bus early and, taking a back route through our local park, walked the rest of the way.

Somehow we started talking about how Jen's descendants would see her. I told her that, though any future children of hers would probably be well adjusted and have a fine opinion of her, her grandchildren would think she was insane. In many of Jen's more endearing habits they would, incorrectly, see warning signs of senility.

I'm not too worried about my own grandchildren. I'm certain that they will see me as noble, wise and patient; a man to respect. But I can see them saying to their parents, as they drive home from one of their visits, Grand-dad is a great, isn't he?. And whichever one of their parents who is my child will turn to them and say No, grand-dad is a psycho.

Here's why:

My first son

Have pity on my first son. He does not exist yet, and may never exist, but even the idea of my first son is to be pitied.

Assuming his mother agrees, he will be called Nathan. There are three reasons for naming him Nathan; the first is that I do genuinely like the name. Second, is that Claire hates it. She would be made godmother, and so be forced to use that name again and again.

The third is that in the novel that I am slowly writing, there's a character called Nathan Bright. Sounds a lot like Nathan Barrett, doesn't it?

I will keep a close eye on Nathan's actions as he grows up. Every time he acts out of line with the character of Nathan Bright, he will be told with a calm and firm voice: That's not what Nathan Bright would do. I expect that over time this attempt to mould him into someone he is not will make him angry. He will probably shout back at me But I'm not Nathan Bright!. This leads us onto punishment.

Punishment

Traditionally, parents punish their children using a variety of means. Some use corporal punishment, lightly striking their children. Others deprive their children of treats or ground their children. These parents suffer from a severe lack of imagination. As my sole means of punishment, I will make use of the velcro wall.

The concept is simple. Lift the child, and press them lightly against the wall. They will become stuck in place; they can be stored like this for as long as their misdeeds demand.

My grandchildren

I said previously that my grandchildren will think only good of me. This seems at odds with how I plan to treat my children, but it isn't. What better way of screwing up my childrens lives is there than making their own children believe they are a pack of liars? I shall play my character well.

Conclusion

As you can see, any future kids of mine are screwed. I haven't even mentioned sending them down the mine.

To Do

I've made some tweaks to the visual side of this site, but there's a lot more to do before I can call it finished.

Figure out what I want the header to do, then make it do it

The header of this page lacks character and distinctiveness. The real reason for this is that I haven't figured out what I want it to do. It's very difficult to design a solution to a problem when you haven't figured out what that problem is.

Find a better colour for the H1

The colour for the H1 on the homepage needs to be tweaked; it doesn't fit in with the rest of the colour-scheme.

Make nice icons for the list items in the sidebar

I think some small, well designed icons could really help out here. At the moment the caret is a bit bland.

Write a CMS

Moveabletype is fine for a single blog site, but it's pretty useless for what I want it to do. I've looked for a free CMS that does what I want, but nothing exists.

So, inspired by all the nifty features on Dunstan's blog, I thought it would be nice to be able to add some nifty features of my own to my site. This is not easy with Movabletype, because you're fighting against someone else's idea of what the software should do.

Of course, it would have to be written in a decent programming language, as opposed to some piece of crap.

I also need to build some of the sections of the site. Lots of work left to do.

I am no evil genius

I once had dreams of being an evil genius. My domain would span nations, and all would fall before me.

On Sunday night, I hit a stumbling block. I was trying to threaten Claire. Now, an evil genius should be able to come up with a threat very quickly, and it should be both evil and genius. It's part of the job description.

Unfortunately, the best I could come up with was I will staple your, erm, lip... to, to, something..

What I should have said, and eventually did, was I'll staple your lip to a plank, that will cover your eyes. The only way you will be able to see is if you pull at the plank until you rip you lip in half! Muhuhaha!. But an evil genius should be fast to respond, and I was not.

I guess I'll just have to fall back to the other career path I'm suited for: superhero.

Fibre

It has come to my attention that I'm not eating enough fibre. Yesterday, I felt like I was crapping granite out my ass.

I'm betting most readers are trying to figure out some way of burning that image out their minds.

Autographical Notes #1

Thanks to the excellent shaving skills of my brother Richard, I am now sporting a dashing new haircut. The picture in this post should show the results.

I applied for a job in Lucidity Technologies. Even though I was interviewed for three and a half hours, I didn't get it. As I can't seem to shake the idea of freelancing out of my head, this is probably for the best.

Of course, I'll need to do something to increase my cash flow. To that end, I'm looking for a part-time job: something that I can do for twenty to thirty hours a week that will earn me a decent wage, yet still allow me to do freelance work for the other twenty hours or so. I've applied to a couple of places already, and I hope (read "need") to get one soon.

I've been trying to sing the Dave Matthews Band song "#41" all day. That high note is a bitch.

I signed the lease on my new place. It's a temporary, eight week lease of a pretty spacious apartment. The lease itself is standard and off-the-shelf; full of pointlessly dense and barely intelligible English. Here's a sample:

In this Agreement unless the context otherwise requires words importing the masculine gender only include the feminine gender, words importing the singular number only include the plural number and vice versa and where there are two or more persons included in the expression "the Tenant" and "the Landlord" covenants expressed to be made by the "Tenant" or "the Landlord" shall be deemed to be made by such persons jointly and severally.

From what I can tell, it's published by Legal & General Office Supplies. Yo guys! I'd like to introduce you to some friends of mine:

The test lies

Another big pack of lies from Tickle, courtesy of the Are you Evil? test.

70 percent good, 30 percent evil

Good for you, you're human. We all have evil thoughts, and you may have acted on a few of yours, but you're probably okay traveling through Buffy's turf. Or maybe you're an aspiring evil person and you've never given yourself a real chance. Go ahead and forgive yourself for the mean-spirited — but ultimately harmless — pranks you pulled in grade school. Whispering behind your co-workers' backs won't flood you with bad karma. And we've all held out for ourselves in the throes of passion a time or two. So keep listening to that conscience of yours, but don't worry about tuning it out every so often. Keep reading for more evil details!

70 percent sexually good, 30 percent sexually evil

So, you have a healthy sex drive — good for you! No one likes a prude. In general, you give as well as you get, though everyone can get a little selfish under the covers, so don't beat yourself up about going for the big one on your birthday. And while you're at it, go ahead and admit it — you've probably flashed a big smile to get your way in the bedroom before. But for the most part, you strike us as a pretty generous lover who's doing well at keeping your raw, sexual power in check. Yeah, baby!

5 percent passive-aggressive, 95 percent not passive agressive

I translate this as 95 percent agressive agressive

Okay, admit it — sometimes you'd rather avoid face-to-face conflict. Now, was telling us that to our face so hard? No. Being up front about any concerns as soon as you have them, rather than letting them build up and turn into, say, a tire-slashing incident, is a good thing. And it sure beats getting a reputation as someone with a taste for revenge. Sure, you probably wouldn't make a very good bouncer, but that's okay. Take comfort from the fact that, overall, we think you're just swell.

35 percent black-hearted, 65 percent not black-hearted

Your heart's a little dark, but your kindness makes up for any evil deeds (except for that stunt you pulled in elementary school — yes, that one — tsk, tsk, that was pure wickedness). But you can forgive yourself for coming off as a meanie, because if you were 100 percent sweet, you wouldn't be normal. So continue being considerate of others, and remember — when you get cut off in traffic, it's okay to give the finger every once in awhile.

Conclusion

This is the last cliched post you'll ever see on this site. Cliche's are bad, a pox upon humanity akin to day-time television. Let's work to make them stop, people.

Sometimes, I'm an asshole

My last journal entry here, I showed that it's easy to exact revenge on someone who rips off your layout by simply linking to your CSS file. But more than that: I showed that sometimes I'm a complete and utter asshole.

My joke went way too far. I've sent an email to 1VO3000 apologising for my actions, and offered to design a new site for him. I'll also be password protecting the stupidripoffs folder where this and future site rips will be stored.

1VO3000 shouldn't have ripped off my site. I shouldn't have taken such a childish and vengeful response. As 1VO3000 is a 15 year old kid who was just trying to make a website for himself, I think it's pretty clear who's the bigger idiot here.

Don't rip me off

I keep a close eye on my web stats. Probably the biggest reason I do this is vanity; I like if I see I'm getting a lot of traffic, and I like to see who's linking to me. If I see that my site traffic is increasing, that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I looked at my stats this morning to see a lot of traffic from a geocities site:

I suspected all of these referrers came from some automatically set up webpage for some spam bot. It's happened before, but I thought I'd check it out. I found something very familiar:

Right. My brand new site design, so new I haven't even had a chance to write about it or even finish off, has been ripped. This is not on; this is stealing my work. But still, why are the number of referrers so high? I didn't notice a link to my site on the page, so I looked at the source:

Instead of copying the CSS, the idiot had linked directly to my CSS file. On my server. So I wrote him a new CSS file and made sure his site was served it with this .htaccess file:

Go have a look at the idiot's website. I've saved a copy of the infringment, as well as a copy of my revenge in case he changes his site. If it still looks like mine, just hit refresh (that's F5 or Ctrl + F5). Just make sure to hit it again when you come back here!

I feel good.

Update: It looks like I've scared the guy off. His site is deleted. I still have a copy of both the infringement and my revenge for people to look at. Hopefully a few people got to see it first over at his site. I don't think he appreciated Paul's photoshopping.

Birthday today

Today is my twenty-second birthday. Tomorrow night is the big dinner (those who've been invited know the time and location).

Twenty-two is a bit of an anti-climax, after my rip-roaring, action-packed twenty-first (involving a large hall, lots of people and much more lasagna than today); though I did win a lot (25 euro) on the scratch cards various aunties and uncles bought for me, and my brother gave me a picture of a monkey.

My mum's card was quite soppy, as one would expect. It read:

Son, remember how you always wanted to grow up and become something special?

...well, you did.

As the picture inside the card shows, it turns out my mum thinks I turned into Dave Shea...

Not just Dave Shea. Dave Shea flying a frickin' kite.

New URL structure

I'm slowly working towards implementing the changes required for the redesign. I've implemented the first change today. The URLs on the site are now in a future-friendly format, which means I can switch all of the pages to something more dynamic than HTML in a manner completely transparent to the site visitor.

I also hacked Movable Type code to produce Google friendly URLs. According to Christoph Cemper, Google doesn't like pages which have redirects, so I may soon no longer be the first result for Joanne Colan on the search engine, but hey :)

There's much more to come, I'll keep you posted.

Snaps

About two weeks ago Paul and I headed out to a client to discuss their new website. Paul took some pictures of their facilities for their website. He had loads of film left, so it was out the back garden to snap some shots of me for this site. This is me:

Window dressing

Regular visitors will notice a much different, and far clearer, colour scheme. I've added in rounded corners to the main content area and the menu, and I've changed the branding of the site to be more obvious.

The new colour scheme really helps to bring out the photos on this site. You can see examples of this in the Photography section.

Thanks to Fuller` on the Boards.ie IRC channel for noticing that the site didn't validate. I've fixed that, and will now be turning my attention to the sidebar.

Header images

I'm working to improve the look of this blog, but because of a design choice I made a long time ago I've painted myself into a corner.

I need to have different header image for each section of the site (my design decision). I'd like some suggestions. I have emphasised those sections I have already made a decision on.

• The main index
• The list of archives
• The monthly archives
• The individual entries - one image covering all entries
• The about page
• The sections:
  • About this Blog
  • Christianity & Church life
  • Design
  • Humour
  • Miscellaney, general postings
  • Writing
  • WTF, for those What the fuck? moments

If you have any ideas, please post them in the comments. Thanks.

If you're wondering why things seem a bit "off"

It's because I'm in the middle of the promised redesign. At the time of writing, the frontpage is nearly finished, but the archives remain untouched. It still needs a lot of work, but this design is growing on me.

First post. Second blog.

I used to have a blog.

It was powered by GrayMatter, and I did not post to it too often. Then, due to failures both technical and human, the server it was on was lost. As was the blog.

Bummer.

Now, I'm starting again.