Planet Nonado

The installation, Hanging Gardens that Jurgen Simpson and I created for the Two Places exhibition have gotten some great reviews in CIRCA (Issue 124, Summer 2008). This exhibition ran concurrently in two locations, hence two places, in the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast and in the University of Limerick.

The Belfast aspect of the piece was reviewed by Niall de Buitlear who said

Jurgen Simpson and Eoin Brazil have collaboratively produced Hanging garden. The piece, more than any other in the show, creates an environment in which the audience is immersed; it is a simulation of garden in which sixteen speakers represent insects or other small animals which react to each other and to the movements of the audience. The piece responds directly to the architecture of the gallery, in this case the overhead metal grid which is the most distinctive feature of the mezzanine space at OBG.

Overall the exhibition is varied in terms of the quality of the works on show and their engagement with the context of the exhibition. It is at its most rewarding, as in SHRDLU/BELFAST and Hanging garden, when the work responds to the architectural space while engaging the viewer with a range of abstract, suggestive possibilities.

The Limerick aspect of the piece was reviewed by Karen Normoyle-Haugh who said

Perhaps the most successful work in this exhibition is Hanging Gardens by Jurgen Simpson and Eoin Brazil. Occupying the hallway upon entering a campus building, it provides ample space for the viewer to sit and listen to the sounds. Hanging gardens consists of sixteen speakers, each one generating its own sound in response to the sounds around it. Sensors pick up movement within the space and this affects the level and rate of the sound both in Limerick and Belfast through the use of an internet connection. The eerie tinkling and croaking sounds are interspersed with sounds reminiscent of chirping crickets.

Again the work had to compete with a noisy environment. Undoubtedly the idea behind using the campus was that students would, unawares, happily stumble upon the sound artworks. It would unsettle them, disturb them, give them an experience of sound art. However noble the idea, the reality was far from ideal.

I will have to admit to being over the moon at getting such great press and while there were a few wrinkles in the UL end, it was a great experience. Sonic art works well in gallery spaces but in busy campus environments it has got to be notched up but doing so in collaboration with the denizens of a space is not always as easy as it seems. I'm really glad to have had the opportunity to have worked with Jurgen and we're already thinking about a couple of other ideas for future work.

In case you missed it, here's a clip from Limerick of the piece.

An international team of citizen cartographers is preparing to descend on Limerick, Ireland, in what has been called a 'mapping revolution.'

Open Streetmap.org's second annual gathering will take place in the Kilmurry Lodge Hotel on the 12th and 13th July. The project groups over 40,000 volunteers who - armed with GPS receivers, bikes and notebooks - are surveying the streets, footpaths, peaks and rivers of the world. Anyone can contribute and anyone can use the resulting map.

Often compared to Wikipedia, Open Streetmap differs from traditional internet maps in its depth of coverage (others are restricted to just streets) and its open philosophy.

Anyone can download the Open Streetmap data and make their own map from it - one popular example being a unique webmap of worldwide cycle routes, where bike-friendly roads are emphasised and motorways toned down. By contrast, other maps are covered by restrictive copyright rules, such as those produced by Ordnance Survey of Ireland or by Google.

Registration for the conference is open, with further information available from www.stateofthemap.org or www.openstreetmap.org.

Just incase I (or any of you) need it in the furure, here is the link to the USIT/SEVIS/CIEE J1handbook for 2008 (and a local mirror on Skynet).

Since upgrading to Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) I've noticed that Firefox on my laptop drops into 'Work Offline' mode every time I suspend and resume my laptop or change connectivity type. While offline mode is indeed useful, I'd much rather I had to manually select this mode, rather than have the hassle of having to repeatedly tell Firefox it's online. I use a combination of wired, wireless (802.11b/g/n) and 3G connectivity throughout my average day, so perhaps this affects me more than it would others.

It appears that Firefox 3 on Ubuntu queries Network Manager to see if it's online or offline, and sets its status according to this. A neat feature, but it appears to only indicate an offline state, forgetting to turn it back online again afterwards. The internet suggests that this might be due to a bug though it seems there's some debate as to whether it's a Network Manager bug or a Firefox bug.

In order to fix this, I specifically disallowed Firefox from conversing with Network Manager (over dbus), with the net result that Firefox always chooses it's default mode of being online.
Edit the /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf file and replace each instance of
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
with
<deny send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>

You will have to restart dbus for this to take effect, and I noticed some slight strange effects until I rebooted. Firefox now appears to be firmly convinced it's always online, which was the aim; and probably not far from the truth on my laptop. Note that other applications that query Network Manager in a similar fashion, such as Pidgin will also assume they are online all the time, since they are also denied access to query Network Manager.

Thanks to Nikitas350 for his helpful post detailing this solution.

On Monday I mooched over to artemis’ and watched The City of Lost Children. It’s an odd film.

Arriving home on Monday I discovered that Greg and Nanda had moved all the furniture in. Took the day off on Tuesday, bought a bed, assembled some furniture, rang SEVIS to make sure I wasn’t going to be deported and tidied up some loose ends. Life in New York is incredibly busy and it can sometimes be hard to find time to do the washing without taking a day off to catch up.

Wednesday started off in an uninteresting manner: work as per usual, tapping away at some SQL and Javascript (and other bit’s in-between). It finished with a job offer (which I wont be able to take up unfortunately, due to not living in NY permanently) and a Launch Party for a new Media Production house, Media at Large, down the corridor. I met a bunch of cool people and had a great chance to network.

More mooching happened after the launch party and artemis introduced me to the Fables series of Comics by lending me Legends in Exile, which I devoured on the Subway home. I’ve never been much of a comic book person but I’ve recently started on the House of Mystery series (written by Bill Willingham too) and quite enjoi it.

Friday evening consisted of firstly meeting up with Francescia, then headed into town for drinks in the Mars Bar (see last week for a description of same). Saturday morning I woke up on artemis’ couch again (in bad shape). On Saturday afternoon I watched Labyrinth (which consists of mostly puppets and crotch) and some Black Books (fantastic comedy staring Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey). Then went home and got ready to head out to Lilianas birthday party.

Amy Brennan, a fantastic friend who I’ve know since birth, is in New York for the summer too and came out on Saturday night. It was fantastic to catch up with Amy, to chat about Waterford, our respective courses, how life has been these last few years, our impressions of Americans, &c. We wound up finding our way to a loft in Brooklyn which an Irish guy lived in with his mates. They had a rocking practice space / recording studio in the loft and myself and Amy stayed up for most of the night playing drums/bass and drinking.

On Sunday afternoon I wandered into Midtown and stumbled upon the NYC LGBT Pride parade. Lots of colour, lots of music, some great crowd participation and an overall fun atmosphere was the order of the day.

On Monday night I tried to convince my sister to buy an ASUS Eee PC instead of a Macbook. I think Creative Zen support in XP and not in OSX may have been the deciding factor. Also popped around to artemis’ to watch Dexter, which I hadn’t seen before. I’ve only seen two episodes and while I find the show to be engrossing and compelling I find it hard to emphasise with Dexter (perhaps because I’m not a sociopath).

I saw one cockroach durring the week while doing laundry in the basement.

As planned we were on the road by 8. However we were surprised to discover upon getting into the car, that the GPS did not have a location for LAX international airport. After some minor pissing around we found Airport Boulevard on the map, which we reasoned was highly likely to contain the airport. So we got on the freeway and started carefully following all stated directions. After about 15 minutes of a complete absence of signs to the airport we realised we could not be going the right direction, at least partly because we would have been there by now. At this juncture PhD boy had the ingenious idea to set the GPS to the Hertz return point at LAX, which had the GPS immediately send us in the opposite direction than the one we had been driving in.

Not only have we not gone to the right way, we now have to get all the way back from having gone the wrong way. So at 8.20, we are farther from our destination than where we started, and PhD boy is beginning to get pretty anxious, as being the driver he has somehow internally assumed responsibility for the screw-up. At this point I am still fairly calm, possibly because the “shit, will we get to the airport on time??” feeling is such a commonplace one by now that I can’t be bothered fully embracing it, or maybe just because when someone else is panicking I always feel like that part is being handled and so I don’t need to do it.

I admit that I did notice PhD boy was speeding. Or rather, as we were on a freeway and seemed to be going substantially faster than the other cars, I assumed this was what he was doing. And we were pretty late. So while I wouldn’t have asked him to do it I certainly didn’t ask him to slow down. What I did not know was how fast he was actually going, because one of the side effects of not being a driver is not really being aware of distances and speeds in the same way, as you are merely a passive observer. So when there were suddenly some pretty loud sirens I was not entirely mentally prepared. That’s right kids, we were getting pulled over by the cops. We had to drive off the freeway onto a side road, at which point PhD boy has gone from anxious to pretty distressed, as he is not exactly used to being pulled over, and is in a foreign country, in a rental car, and we are already very late. So naturally the cop looks in, combines obvious nervousness with speeding, and concludes that we are pissed drunk. It takes a good 10 minutes to convince him that this is not the case, after which he tells us to sit tight for a minute, gets in his car, waves, and drives off. After sitting there for a minute or two confounded by the conflicting actions of telling us to stay and then driving away, we concluded that we just had to go, and got back on the move.

Some more frantic (but below the speed limit) driving finally gets us to LAX which is, surprise surprise, on Airport Boulevard. It’s just that Airport Boulevard happens to be 10 miles long, and our beloved GPS was sending us to the wrong end. I spotted a Virgin sign for Terminal 2, and we pulled up there at about 8.50. There was a reasonable chance that I was fucked at this point, but after bidding a brief farewell to PhD boy I grabbed my stuff and ran into the terminal. To discover that in fact, I should have been in terminal 6 for Virgin America, this was Virgin Atlantic. I briefly contemplated calling the boy and asking him to drive back, but dismissed this as unproductive, and went looking for a way to terminal 6.

Apparently no-one ever does such a thing as walk anywhere in LA, so the only way anyone could direct me to said terminal was via the bus. At this stage my overall likelihood of being royally screwed was exceedingly high, but decided I’d make a break for the flight anyway. Got the excruciatingly slow bus and eventually arrived at terminal 6 at about 9.05 (remember, flight at 9.25), then frantically ran around wondering why all the signs said “Arrivals” on them. I think I was shouting swearwords at the air and mentally writing off a thousand bucks worth of emergency plane fair home by the time I spotted a Virgin employee walking around and accosted him with multiple frantic questions.

When he realised I was incredibly late for my flight he was unbelievably cool. He just said “right, run this way”, and sprinted up to the ticket desk (which turned out to be a floor up, in my frantic state I was apparently oblivious to relevant signage). I asked if I could still check in and his response was “with me you can”. He had the girl check me in and said that we would try our best, that there was no guarantee I would make the plane but we would give it a shot. We then proceeded to literally run through the airport, throwing people out of elevators, cutting in line, pausing briefly at the security desk to throw away all the liquids I had over 3 ounces, then getting through the check. He couldn’t go through that way but told me to run the last 300 yards to the gate and I might make it.

If I had not gone back to training a month ago I might have dropped dead at this point, but I managed to find the energy to run it, and made it to the gate before the queue for the plane had disappeared. By this time I was breathless, sweating, and incredibly relieved, at which point Steve (the incredibly cool dude who saved my ass) re-appeared from somewhere grinning, and gave me a big hug and a voucher for a free drink on the plane. I officially declared my undying love for Virgin America, and then proceeded to collapse into my seat.

New additions to the rules for happiness

- Never believe you can get anywhere in LA in a reasonable amount of time

- Never trust a small talking box to know where the airport is if you don’t

- Whenever possible, fly Virgin America :)

So a couple of weeks ago I flew over to the west coast to join PhD boy on part of his intrepid road trip adventure. This involved flying to Vegas to meet him, going on a day trip to the Grand Canyon, hanging out in Vegas for a night, then driving to LA and meeting up with akawaka and then chronos for food, drinks, and floor mooching.

Overall, this was a pretty rockin’ holiday. Vegas is indeed pretty tacky, but in such an extreme unapologetic way that is has its own bright shiny ridiculous charm. I have to admit that I loved it, though I don’t know if it would be worth spending longer than a couple of days there. Our trip to the Grand Canyon was also pretty fantastic, in large part because it involved helicopters. Everyone loves helicopters.

We left Vegas after a couple of days and headed to LA, stopping along the road at a former copper mine’s ghost town, and a spectacularly redneck gas station with a huge “Ron Paul Revolution” sign 50 feet high. That plus a water fountain outside was pretty much all there was for miles around, they also sold bottled water, various foodstuffs, and saddles. Yes, saddles. Your guess is as good as mine.

We eventually made it to where we were going in LA despite multiple GPS fails. By which I do not mean that the GPS broke in any way, I mean either it failed at telling us exactly where to go, or we failed at asking it. The latter because we were occasionally uncertain about addresses, the former because GPS is only accurate to a range of 10 metres. In Ireland this not a problem, because the concept of having another nearby road when a perfectly good one already exists (and sure we could just stick a roundabout in if there was a traffic problem) would be viewed with skepticism and general distrust, but LA is a finely meshed network of interlaced freeways. Soaring concrete flyovers and bypasses and the dozen looping exits to get from one to another are pretty frequent, and if the GPS is incorrect in identifying which one you are currently on then quite frankly my friend, you be fucked.

This was understandably a source of some frustration for PhD boy, as he was doing all the driving. That’s right, I can’t drive. Yes, I know it’s ridiculous, but you know what else is? Owning a car you don’t fucking need to drive places you should walk or get the train to, and then complaining that the price of petrol is too high and there is nowhere to park. Granted I should learn to drive anyway, believe me, it’s on the list. But so far I have never had even the slightest desire to own a car, or live anywhere where this would be a necessity. So it’s a little far down said list.

In summary, driving in LA could suck a tennis ball through 15 feet of gardenhose, so we tried to do as little of it as possible. After a couple of days of impossibly perfect weather and extremely fun mooching about, it was time for me to go back to new york and PhD boy to continue his journey up to Yosemite, which I was of course deeply jealous of. Being the experienced travel junkie that I am, I did not leave very much of a margin for error in planning our trip to the airport, as it appeared on google maps to be approximately 5 miles away. Flight was at 9.25pm, so I figured if we were driving by 8pm it could not possibly leave me with less than an hour of actually being at the airport time. Now, anyone who knows me has probably experienced my somewhat cavalier attitude toward air travel. For me this actually was a substantial margin. To try and place this in context, ludicrous things I have done at airports in the last 3 years include – but are not limited to, the following:

• Showed up at Gatwick with a boarding pass printed online and no luggage 11 minutes before my flight left.
• Accidentally brought a flick knife to customs at Stansted
• Lost the passport of the person travelling with me in the taxi on the way to the airport
• Lost my own passport the previous day and picked up a new one from Cork the same day I was flying from Shannon
• Forgotten to reset my clock to local time, overslept by an hour, and paid a fortune to get a cab to a ryanair airport an hour and a half outside the city.

On each one of these occasions, I have still gotten the flight in question. As a friend of mine said the other day “I will stop doing things at the last minute just as soon as the universe demonstrates to me that they will not work out”. I have to admit though, that even by my standards my trip back to NY was pretty spectacular.

To be continued….

Just kidding, I have not really eaten a hot dog. Though I am told that to be an authentic new yorker you must have eaten at least one “dirty water hot dog”, which means a tube of glistening meatlike stuff extracted from a container of possibly never changed new york water purchased from a vendor with a cart on the side of the street. If this is a dealbreaker, then I am pretty certain I will never attain new yorker status.

After a couple of weeks of firstly having a houseguest (read: moocher) on my floor, then being on holiday, then having my brother down for a visit, I am finally alone in my tiny apartment once again. Tyrion has further compounded his mooching by publicly calling me a lovely person who merely has a hard exterior. He is a born optimist, and has yet to learn the universal truths that things do not always work out ok, I am not a nice person and that some people really are just stupid. Give him time.

I am growing more accustomed to NY, settling in somewhat, and starting to get to know people. It takes more getting used to than I would have expected, but then I suppose moving from ireland to england doesn’t exactly impose culture shock, whereas europe to the US is slightly more dramatic. It’s hard to say what I think of the states or new york specifically. I see many excellent qualities, but unfortunately the men here tend to remind me of jerkboy (formerly known as the yank) and the women of the more annoying Sex and The City characters. Not that this holds for everyone, but it does seem to be fairly commonplace.

To correct one common misconception however, new yorkers are not rude. They are only rude compared to people from other parts of america. Compared to the english they are the very model of charm and decorum.

Recent thrilling adventure include my participation in a small part of PhD boy’s road trip, and my journey home from said. Since the journey home story is almost too ridiculous for words I am giving these an entry of their own. Stay tuned for yet another tale of intrepid airport adventure and basic idiocy.

“Everybody has their own path”

“And some of them are wrong. I want to be right”

“Wouldn’t you rather be happy?”

“But how could anyone be happy without being right?”

“You might not know you were wrong”

“So I could be happy, and be wrong, but happy because I didn’t know I was wrong?”

“Exactly”

“Then I’d rather be right.”

“You don’t mean that”

“Yes I do. You are just not capable of believing I mean it”

On Friday night my cousins band Leopold are playing in The Sugar Club on Leeson st.
They are worth going to listen too and will also be playing Oxygen on the 11th of July.

So, if your looking for something to do on Friday it is definitely worth going along to:)



http://www.thesugarclub.com/
http://www.oxegen.ie/2008/lineup

Last Saturday I went to a BBQ and birthday party in a converted textile factory. In an unfortunate incident involving alcohol and harnesses I ended up with some rope burn.

Later that night I got my first taste of US pub/club culture. First impressions are that folk on the East coast drink less than the Irish. There is also a very individual and secluded atmosphere in bars and clubs, you stick to your friends and you don’t bother anyone else.

On Monday I moved house to Brooklyn. I’m living in a newly renovated building with two Philosophy postgrads. I’ve a great view of Manhattan from my bedroom and there are laundry facilities in the basement. It’s a good place.

I’ve been trying to find the fastest route to work. I can:

1. Get the R from 45^th St. all the way to 28^th St. without changes. This takes about 50 minutes.
2. Change in 36^th St. to the N and take the N to 34^th. Changing trains is marginally faster as the N is an express train and skips 12 of the stops, but requires waiting at a station.

The plus side to taking the N is that I get to go across The Manhattan Bridge and see this fantastic view of the Financial District and the Brooklyn Bridge twice a day (and not have my ears pop in a subaquatic tunnel).

I’ve discovered that The Onion is available weekly (on Thursdays) in print. The Lisbon Treaty Referendum was the top headline for the Wall Street Journal last weekend.

On Friday artemis’ brother came down from Boston. Spent Friday night on artemis’ roof deck drinking Corona and chatting. Realised that many people end up working with banks, one way or another.

Saturday afternoon consisted of waking up on a couch in the apartment from the night before (at noon) seeking food, playing chess & Guitar Hero and then going longboarding around battery park.

On Saturday night we visited a place called Mars Bar which is the divest dive bar I’ve ever seen. Colm recommended the place and I’m incredibly glad we went. Drinks were cheap (~$4 for longnecks), there were no lights (or very few, the place was in almost complete darkness) the Jukebox died about an hour into our stay there, the toilets were approximately a 7.5 (on a collective scale of 0 to manky), there were no taps and almost every patron in the joint was intoxicated on more than just alcohol (I suspect).

The people were genuine and friendly, nobody cared about what you wore, when the Jukebox stopped accepting money a Vietnam war vet (a regular) started singing to keep the mood up and the bartenders weren’t pushy.

Two notable incidents come to mind, one was the drag queen who came in, paraded along the bar and then dive-bombed off the bar. Guys really can’t pull off heels. The other was that artemis lost her glasses during the night. I called the bar while they were cleaning up and asked Amy (bar girl) if she’d seen the glasses. She went and had a look for us and couldn’t find them, but suggested that we call the taxi. Considering I was holding her back from finishing cleaning, leaving and going home I found it surprising that she was so polite and helpful. I can see myself and artemis becoming regulars.

Went to the Comedy Cellar on Sunday night, saw some great acts and had a laugh. Those performing were: Marina Franklin, Julian McCullough, Tim Young, Godfrey, Erik Rivera and Ardie Fuqua.

We still don’t have furniture in the house, or an internet connection. Last week the landlord called TimeWarner to see why we still didn’t have cable; the building had been wired and the had to be some issue with TimeWarner because they weren’t delivering bits to our tubes. The TimeWarner guy explained that the building was in fact wired, but cementing the bundle of cables from the building into the pavement would not be sufficient. The landlord was shocked and claimed that once the cables were “in the ground” it was no longer his problem, and was entirely the fault of TimeWarner that we didn’t have a connection. Hillarity ensued.

I still haven’t seen any cockroaches. I suspect they may be a lie.

As promised here are my slides and notes from yesterday's Irish Open Technology Conference (details).

After a 24 hour period of downloading, trying to set a world record for the most downloads in the world ever (or at least for a browser release in a 24 hour period) the firefox party in Dublin kicks off. There's badges galore, stickers and branded lanyards a-plenty, and even a respectable assortment of temporary tattoos with a firefox on them.

In mostly unrelated news, Reilly would like to formally proclaim her l33t awsumness!!!!111oneoneeleventy</aol> Reilly would also like to point out that Thom is 'hot' and has a nice ass. I see no donkeys in the proximity of Thom, so must assume that he left his odd-toes ungulate at home.

Congrats to the Firefox team for releasing another fine product, and thanks to the organisers and sponsors for making the Firefox launch a tremendous success.

The report from the Electoral Area commission is in (and online). They're still using the incorrect census data from the night of the previous ERC trip to Cardiff so I'm taking these figures with a pinch of salt. Limerick city has grow by a mere 500 people or 0.96% to approximately 52,539. They're stating population decreases in Wards 1 and 3 (yeah and who's living in all those new houses ....) and growth in Wards 2 and 4. They've also had to factor in the addition of Moyross to the city.

Net result - Ward 1 gets an extra seat due to Moyross. Wards 3 and 4 are merged and loose a seat to become a seven seater. No change in Ward 2. They also decided to rename the new arrangement.
Ward 1 - Limerick City North
Ward 2 - Limerick City East
Wards 3 & 4 - Limerick City South

If this isn't gerrymandering, I don't know what is. Its clear that the Greens have gotten their say to increase the sizes of wards which will favour the smaller parties. In Limerick's case, the rearrangement also suits Fianna Fail due to collapse of the party in the last local elections as the new boundaries guarantee them some hope of recovery. I really hope this turns into a serious case of Tullymandering for the government.

So for those of you who care about such things, I have lately been appalled by the new Dilbert Flash Website, which seems to have significantly less utility than its predecessor.

Imagine my surprise then at discovering a competent way of viewing new strips without the flash wankery at dilbert.com/fast . A simple page with nothing but the strip (as a downloadable GIF at last check), a couple of back/ forward arrows and a calendar panel to view previous strips. Highly recommended!

I flew into New York last Saturday and have been finding my feet in this city since. I arrived in the middle of a heat wave and suddenly realised that the four hoodies I brought with me were obsolete.

I’ve been sleeping on the floor of artemis’ apartment in the Financial District since I’ve arrived. She is actually a fantastic and lovely person, beyond her armadillo-esque exterior. She has given me some great practical advice on the day-to-day workings of New York. In related news: she’s disappointed that she hasn’t seen a shooting… yet.

After searching around I finally found my own place to live for the summer. It’s near Sunset Park, rent is good, it’s near the R (which I can take to work) and it has just been renovated. I’ll be living with two Philosophy graduates and I’m moving in tomorrow.

I had a job interview on Monday with a Web Design firm. It went well, consisted of “Show me some sites you’ve worked on”; “Here, here and here“; “Cool, you’ve got a job, come in Wednesday and we’ll draw up a contract”. I’ll mostly be doing PHP, CSS, xHTML and SQL work, with a bit of Flash, ActionScript and JavaScript thrown in. It’ll pay the rent.

I met up with Julia & Dan last night for a really tasty meal in a curry house called Brick Lane. The first time I met artemis in London we went to a great curry place too, in the actual Brick Lane in London.

I’ve had my first really bad Customer Service Experience too. I went into a Sprint Store on Fifth Avenue and asked for directions to the Apple store. The clerk replied with “Why do people always come in here looking for other places? We’re not a damn tourist information office! Get the hell out of here!”.

I’ve also had an Overheard moment:

Guy #1: You know about the Swedish; those guys in Paris.

Guy #2: Naw, the Swedish are from Norway.

So, to sum up, so far New York is: busy, hot, smelly, expensive, multi-racial, tall and fun.

I'm travelling to Limerick to vote on the Lisbon treaty today. It's my own fault for not managing to move my vote to where I actually live on time, but I feel voting is important enough to travel the distance. Whether you're going to vote no or yes, be sure you vote. Kev also feels it's important enough to travel from Dublin to Galway to cast his vote. Hopefully Ireland will make the right decision for Europe today.

Well for a long time I wasn't fully convinced for why I should vote Yes tomorrow. I had waded through parts of the treaty but ended up scratching my head. The papers and general media were pretty poor and the referendum commission materials were freeze dried. However, over the weekend finally a couple of factual articles in plain English helped separate the lies from the actuality of the treaty. What really surprised me was watching Prime Time last night and actually watching RTE put a report together that made it clean why (if you're sensible) that Yes is how you should be voting.



The discussion and arguments were even better and I have to admit that Pat Cox is some speaker. I can see why he was president in the European Parliament.



Maybe the arguments here will convince some people to vote no and point others to vote yes but the important thing tomorrow is to vote. I don't know how many voter registration campaigns I've helped out in and I can't say it more vehemently but get out and vote, regardless of which way. Not using your vote is in my mind a sin when you think about how many people in this country fought to ensure we had one and when so many in other countries would and do die to get a vote. Democracy only works if people participate so vote tomorrow! If you're not sure, my two cents is vote yes.

Just about to hop on my flight to NY. Free wireless in SNN rocks. I’ll keep this updated with news and info during the summer (I’ve been hopeless with updates recently).

I’ve been enjoying twitter for a while now - but the ease with which it allows me to write down individual thoughts means that this blog has been rather neglected.

In the last few weeks though, I’ve been thinking more and more about the various bits of technology, none of them things that would have been available to my parents - or even to someone, say, ten years older than me - that make my life easier, more pleasant, more fun. There are so many of them that it’s hard to know where to start, but these are just a few of my favourites.

When I was born, contraceptives were only available on prescription in Ireland. At first glance, you might say “but that’s still the way” - after all, you still need a prescription for the pill. But in January 1985, you needed a prescription for any kind of contraceptive (other than, presumably, the rhythm method/abstinence!). Earlier this year, I got the last contraceptive prescription I hope to need for a long time - and had an Implanon rod embedded in my arm. It took me a couple of weeks to get used to it, and probably a month before I completely stopped worrying about it popping out through my skin! But I’ve found it an absolute dream since then - and it’s one of the things that makes me so glad to live in the age I live in

When I was a very small child, I got my first pair of glasses. I believe mum still has them somewhere - they’d fit a medium-sized doll just about perfectly, they have amazing curls at the ends of the arms to keep them hooked over small ears, they’re just so funny to look at now! I’ve had all kinds of different glasses over the years - big, pink ones; small metal ones; frameless, full framed and half-framed… But apart from one short period after an operation, I’ve always worn glasses. So when I met Rosie in town and I wasn’t wearing any, she thought that maybe I’d had surgery! Not quite - although when I woke up this morning and could see clearly, I did begin to wonder myself! What I’ve got are “continuous wear” contacts - designed to be worn for a month at a time. I’ve only had them for a day or so at this stage, so it remains to be seen whether they’ll work out - but it’s definitely a change!

Finally, when I was growing up, one of the regular tasks that had to be done around the house was the hoovering. When I moved out, I discovered that it still had to be done, but now I couldn’t foist it off on my siblings every other week I hate hoovering, but I also hate the dust bunnies that build up in the corners and under the couches. So yesterday, our new pet did its initial exploration of our living room & hallway. Animals aren’t strictly allowed in our apartment complex, but the landlord didn’t seem to mind too much when I explained that Poomba the Roomba would be coming to live with us. Poomba is a “vacuum cleaning robot”, and I’m in love! Not only does he uncomplainingly hoover, he also sings a happy little tune when he’s done, and a somewhat sorrowful one if he gets stuck! He can clean a (pretty large) room in about 45 minutes, and if he misses a spot, his spot-clean mode works wonders in just a few minutes. He does have a tendency to randomise shoes and scatter shopping bags, if they’re left out while he’s running around - but he’s definitely our new best friend!

The more I write, the more things and toys I think of that make the way I live so different to how it might have been if I’d been born at a different time. But for now, let’s just leave it that I’m so very glad to live in this time, in these places. Life is such an adventure!

I do not mind paying for things. I am not particularly rich, certainly by NY standards, but I am also distinctly not poor. I am not (in my opinion) particularly cheap. I do not resent paying for things that I want unless I genuinely feel like I am being ripped off, in normal circumstances if I feel something is not worth what I would have to pay for it I simply don’t buy it. Ditto for the many things that are more than worth it but which I clearly cannot afford.

So I find it annoying when people bitch and moan about say, the price of popcorn. Yes, it is blatantly ridiculous to have to pay $8 for a carton of dry disgusting lumps of food with the texture and taste of polystyrene foam. Absolutely agreed. (As you may be able to tell, I hate popcorn anyway). But the exercise of disagreeing with the price of an unnecessary commodity, and I cannot emphasise this enough, intrinsically involves not buying any.

By all means complain about income tax. You have no control over how much you are obliged to pay, what it is spent on once you’ve paid it, and not only do you not have a say but you don’t even necessarily know. But do people not understand how ridiculous it is to stand there and bitch about how it can’t possibly be a dollar fifty for a can of coke while paying for the beverage in question?

Allow me to introduce the concept of worth in economics. What something is worth, is what someone else is willing to pay for it. Is a one dollar umbrella worth $4 in a rainstorm? The answer is probably yes. You are paying a dollar for the umbrella, and $3 for the umbrella _now_. You could have bought it for a dollar yesterday when it was sunny and carried it around. You didn’t, and so you pay $3 for the privilege of not looking like a pillock wandering around the park in the blazing sunshine with an umbrella. The vendor is making $1 for the umbrella, and $3 for standing out in the bloody rain. Don’t want to pay $4? Then there is a very simple solution - get wet. Is this approach morally justifiable? I don’t know, but I have had more than one job that involved standing out in the elements and I would dearly have loved the ability to charge my employer extra when it pissed rain.

Granted, there are certain types of socio-economic unfairness that only apply to people who are of very limited means. Wealthy individuals can afford to say, buy a house and pay the mortgage, as opposed to paying rent. On a smaller scale they could also afford things like health insurance, so if something does happen they will not be stuck with insane medical expenses. I freely admit that generally, it is easier for someone with large amounts of money not to spend that money if they don’t want to. Tragic injustice? Probably. It still doesn’t explain why poor people buy more fucking lottery tickets though. Because lets face it, thats just dumb.

Essentially though, this just makes it all the more irritating when someone with a good income writes letters to the Times about the exorbitant price of salted snacks, cinema tickets, or trips to the seaside.

In summary, if you have money, do whatever the hell you want with it. Save the whales, buy a dirtbike, see Star Wars 167 times in the cinema, I could not care less. Just remember that you fucking spent it, not the whales or the bike salesman or George Lucas (may he rot in the specially conceived hell for people who resurrect rejected scripts). So if you don’t like where it went, next time you get your paycheque have it inserted rectally so that you can have something legitimate to whine about.

Apress sent me a copy of “PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice (second edition)” by Matt Zandstra to review.

As hinted in the title, this near 500 page tome is split into three parts: objects, patterns and [best] practice.
The section on objects covers the basics and then the advanced features of object oriented facilities in PHP and tools such as namespaces, autoloading and the reflection classes along with design basics, class scope, encapsulation, polymorphism and some UML.
The patterns section is obviously inspired by “The Gang of Four” (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides) and covers what design patterns are, enterprise patterns, database patterns and also the basic patterns such as the factory, fascade, decorator and composite patterns along with a few more. This section is far from comprehensive, but is a good start. (If Patterns do interest you, and they should, have a look at patternsforphp.com)
The last section, focuses on PEAR (including writing your own packages and setting up your own PEAR channel), phpDocumentor, unit testing with phpUnit, version control with CVS (which struck me as a bit odd - I had expected subversion to be covered either instead of or along with CVS) and setting up automated builds with phing.

While being an easy read, this is a well written, serious book and is aimed squarely at enterprise-level developers and software engineers who make their living through the development and architecture of solutions developed in PHP.
Any PHP developer wishing to improve his skills should get a copy.

So, Noirin has gotten a job with google in zurich, and i’m transferring over there to be with her. We’re both starting in google.ch at the beginning of august (2008). Time to start learning german i guess.

... to the roadworks happening outside my office. Thus far, all the parties involved in extending the Luas Line have spent 365 days creating havoc with traffic, generating noise and large holes in the ground, depleting the worlds tea stocks and generally making life just a little more unpleasant for all of us working here in the IFSC. Oh... I almost forgot... they have succeeded in laying all of approximately 30 feet of track, of the hundreds (if not thousands) required for the 7 minute journey time they're adding.

</rant>

So got my confirmation and bio sorted out with Barry Alistair for the IOTC conference which will be held in Dublin from June 18 to 20 in the Dublin CineWorld Complex (the old Virgin cinema on Parnell street or the IMAX for those really old heads). The press release for the talk is online. So if you're interested in learning a little about the Arduino and what whacky things you can do with it, I'll endeavour to give you a good foundation.

Here's the badge:


Thanks to Gabriela and to James for their hard work in organising a great 3DCamp in Limerick last week. My notes and slides are coming but I just haven't had the time to organise them properly yet! I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot as well as meeting some really friendly and interesting people. Lots of very interesting things happening in that space in Ireland which was really great to see.

After a little over 4.5 years, bob.nonado.net has been shutdown, and is due to be reclaimed by the hosting company (bytemark.co.uk) at the end of this month. Bob is dead, long live bob.

A while ago I received, from packt, a copy of “UML 2.0 in Action: A project-based tutorial” by Patrick Grassle, Philippe Baumann, Henriette Baumann. This book certainly lives up to it’s byline of being “a detailed and practical walk-through showing how to apply UML to real world development projects”.

UML is a standardized visual specification language for object modeling and is short for “Unified Modeling Language” that includes a graphical notation used to create an abstract model of a system, referred to as a UML model. There are many software tools available which can be used for code generation and reverse engineering, such as the new PEAR package PHP_UML which generates a UML representation of existing PHP source code.

This book assumes no prior knowledge of UML and this works very well. It is by no means comprehensive but that it’s what the authors set out to write - this book is focused on being a practical tutorial for learning the essentials of modelling business systems, IT systems and systems integration - no more, no less. It does this admirably and I’ll recommend this book as a reference and introduction for developers performing system analysis and design activities.

I’ve noticed that Richard Heyes, who professes himself to be a php guru, deleted my comment on his “Some common regular expressions” posting which simply pointed out his expressions didn’t quite do the job and suggested a few PEAR packages that should be used instead of the expressions that he proffered for the following:

• Email addresses
• Usernames
• Telephone numbers
• Postal codes
• IP addresses
• An SQL date
• A domain
• A UK sort code

Why he deleted it is anybody’s guess - he deleted a few others too.

Anyway, for the record I thought I’d reproduce my comment from memory (I didn’t think to make a backup copy for obvious reasons but hey nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition).

The problem with just relying on a regular expression for validating data is there is no “defense in depth” to that solution. Sure the expression might catch the main bulk of data entered but there’s always going to be data that get’s through.

For example a simple regular expression for validating phone numbers won’t catch area codes or country that don’t actually exist and another that’s used for validating entered dates might not catch leap-year based exceptions.

Email addresses - use the PEAR Validate package for email address validation

Usernames

Telephone numbers - use Validate_UK; this package will also validate UK specific details such as:

• SSN (National Insurance/IN)
• Postal Code
• Sort Code
• Bank AC
• Car registration numbers
• Passports
• Driver license

Postal codes - use Validate_UK or counterpart as appropriate.

IP addresses - use the Net_Check PHP5 port of Net_CheckIP or the original Net_CheckIP for php4 if you really have to.

An SQL date - what Richard provided validates the form of a date in yyyy-mm-dd format but not that the entered value is a date; one could enter 2008-13-42. Again, I’d suggest using the Validate package.

A domain - You could, in theory use the Validate package’s uri method, prefixing the domain with ‘http://’.

A UK sort code - Validate_UK.

If you follow these suggestions it should make your input validation more robust than simply relying on regular expressions and nothing more.

Yesterday evening I had the privilege of seeing one Joe Satriani who rocked out in Vicar Street here in Dublin - and today I got to see my native Munster beat Toulouse in the Heineken Cup Final. Yay! :-)

I love how you can be wandering along with a vague future plan in your head one day, and the next everything has changed. A couple of days ago, the idea for the next year was that I would move out of where I'm living at the end of July, into somewhere a bit more central, smaller and nicer, and therefore more expensive. Then in January I would hope for another contract to follow on from the current one. And in the meantime I would do my best to pay off my loan.

Then, out of the blue, a friend said she was going to South-East Asia for three months in March. And now the plan is to pay off the loan, move home to my parents' house for a few months and save like the clappers, and then head off with her. Initial plans are to visit New Zealand for a few weeks in February, then meet up with my friend in March for 8 weeks or so in South-East Asia. And this whole idea has made me so happy. I absolutely love it. The nature of my job means that a few months out of the picture shouldn't have too much bearing on future prospects or plans, though I haven't mentioned my plans to the Dad-Like Boss as yet. Still though! Thailand! Laos! Vietnam! Cambodia! And I'll be travelling with someone who understands the benefits of travelling alone, which makes it less likely that I'll have to cut and run :)

At the moment, all plans are pretty damn tentative... the New Zealand idea might not get to happen at all, but the prospect of maundering around somewhere new for a while is overwhelmingly excellent. Anyone going to be in that part of the world early next year? I will do my best to meet up/ visit.

In other news, I've been deliciously sociable the last few days. There has been meet-ups, parties, dinners, lunches, exhibitions and whatnot. Today is a run up to Dublin to do some work-related stuff, then lunch with the John and then pretty much straight back down. The tragedy of today is that I won't have time to see Indiana Jones today. FORTUNE AND GLORY, KID! FORTUNE AND GLORY!!!!

(Now if only Iarnród Éireann would get their act together enough to realise that not providing WiFi on cross-country trains is just laziness on their part, pure and simple, and I could post this MoFo)