Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
07 2006
I'm from Ireland, I'm really just moving home - yet I have no idea of how to move there. What are the priorities for packing? What do I not yet have sorted out here in the UK?
It's an interesting feeling, being in a subdued state of severe panic, tempered by the subliminal knowledge that everything is surely going to work out okay.
My flight is in a few short hours and I've not yet finished packing. I'd better deal with that.
posted at: 14:01 | path: /observations | permanent link to this entry
Musical font goodness from the internet
... make a flight between Dublin and Leeds / Bradford leave / arrive on time? Ever? I've flown that route many times in the last two months and the closest we ever got to running on time was arriving a mere 30 minutes late. Get your act in order guys! Today's excuse, from the pilot of the aircraft, was that there was some paperwork that should have been filled in, but wasn't, earlier today. I mean, really...
Also, can someone explain to me why RyanAir want €30 for transporting my guitar? It's in a hard case, they don't insure it any more than they do any of the rest of my luggage, it's lighter than my suitcase and yet they want €30 for the privilege of 'handling' it. Bizarrely, the helpful check-in girl suggested that I could probably bring it onto the plane with me, but that they'll still charge the €30, even though they don't handle it at all. It's almost like they're trying to gouge the customer for no good reason.
posted at: 00:21 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry
For anyone who happens to end up in the picturesque town of Greystones, Wicklow, I would like to heartily recommend The Happy Pear and in particular, one of their delicious fruit smoothies. Situated up at the top end of the town, The Happy Pear provides a smoothie 'juice bar', an organic fruit and vegetable shop and a little café next door.
The Tropical Temptation, a blend of five different fruits (claiming to get your government recommendation of 5 servings a day into one cup) comes highly recommended by me.
Seb sampled the Love Juice (a drink with a name that made us both glad a certain person with a penchant for double entendres wasn't there to make us giggle) and found it most excellent.
The icing on the cake was the friendliness of the staff there, who very generously gave me my smoothie on the house because they got a laugh out of my MIT t-shirt - the one with "...and God said <insert matter/light breakdown equation here> ...and there was light!" on the front. I'm glad my clothing made their day, and the delicious smoothie made mine. Thanks guys! You rock! :-)
posted at: 17:29 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Today I required Java 1.5 (Java 5??? wtf??? Use linearly incrementing numbers you muppets!) to use some software on my aging, yet still perfectly functional iBook, running OS X 10.3. Much to my amazement, you can't get Java 1.5 for OS X 10.3. You have to pay Apple a chunk of money and upgrade to 10.4 (Tiger) before you can use Java 1.5. I cannot emphasise WTF?!?!?!?!? strongly enough in this case. I can understand the lack of support for legacy platforms, but this is getting stupid! I now have even less respect for Java than I had to begin with.
Dear Sun Microsystems, please take your piece of Java shonk and shove it up your collective $insert_appropriate_thing_here. Or at the very least, put in big, bold, clear letters on the download page that OS X 10.3 is not supported and declare that Java doesn't really run anywhere. It just runs in some places, like an ELF binary, or an EXE file, or perl... No, actually perl does run pretty much anywhere.
posted at: 16:18 | path: | permanent link to this entry
I clearly spent just a smidgin (Yes - it's a valid measurement of time, despite not yet been rationalised by the SI institution!) out in the sun today. Fortunately, I've found some suncream / aftersun that I acquired a while back with Lidocane in it. I'm not sure if it's even a legal painkiller in the UK, but it's great. For those people suffering from sunburn due to the unseasonably good weather in the UK at the moment, I can only suggest that tou should have picked up some 'Banana Boat Sooth-a-caine(tm)' from Mauritius a few years back when it was (allegedly) okay to put Lidocaine in after-sun lotions.
posted at: 02:04 | path: | permanent link to this entry
I was walking with a certain 5 year old yesterday, stopping to look at the interesting wildlife that you get in the suburban and urban outskirts, such as leaves, feathers, lots of caterpillars, ants, dandelions and flying porcupines (Previous procupine comments) when she came out with the following gem:
Róisín: Caterpillars shit in your hand, don't
they?
Me: Yes, they do like to sit in your hand if you pick them up, but
do you know where they'd much rather sit?
Róisín (slightly puzzled): No...
Me: They'd much rather sit on a nice, green, juicy leaf - so they'd
have something delicious to eat.
Róisín (with appropriate disdain): No -
caterpillars shit in your hand... Like, they poo and wee!
Well, that's told me then...
posted at: 16:45 | path: /observations | permanent link to this entry
The puzzle at n.nfshost.com has been providing hours of entertainment (well, timewasting at least.) To prevent other people wasting their time, I've written up a cheat sheet for the first half of the puzzle - I've not had time to write up the rest of it yet, but I will, honest... - which is available here.
Have fun - and please only look at the cheat sheet if you're really stuck. It's rather a fun puzzle but the satisfaction lies in solving it yourself :-)
posted at: 17:19 | path: | permanent link to this entry
In a discussion regarding small children and the female infatuation with producing them, or something...
[11:15pm] kverens: bigbro, had one sprog almost 2 years ago. unfortunately, my wife is on a roll... [11:15pm] kverens: she keeps saying the word "five" to me, where I'm happy enough with "two" [11:15pm] noirin: kverens: Have you figured out what's causing it? [11:16pm] kverens: noirin, beats me - I'm only in it for a minute or so, then there's nine months of moaning. [11:16pm] kverens: followed by two years of moaning [11:16pm] longword: Only two years? [11:16pm] kverens: so far... [11:16pm] longword: Ah, two years and counting [11:17pm] kverens: she /knows/ that kids are a handful, yet she keeps insisting on growing her collection [11:18pm] paul: trying to find a matching pair? [11:18pm] kverens: she thought she had a matching pair early in this pregnancy. I think it was just wind
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