Sunday, January 30, 2011

34 Years Old + 148 Days

Sunday....

I have a brother in law, well I have only one brother-in-law, but anyway onto Trevor, he is running for election. Vote Trevor! But today was on the campaign trail. I was going door to door telling people about him. It was really interesting.

But I only did that for 3 hours and then we went into the cinema to look at Entangled in 3D in the omniplex.

So it was a good day.

34 Years Old + 147 Days

Saturday,
I spent all day with Mart working on computers. It was a brilliant day and I learnt loads of things from him. The day was finished off in fine fashion playing "Last Night On Earth".

34 Years Old + 146 Days

Friday...

You know what I hate... H A T E....

                                                                           H

                                                                           A

                                                                           T

                                                                           E

I hate when I write something in this blog and it disappears when I go to publish it. Blogger, you have a complaints department that reads random users blogs!!!! Read this! Stop feeding your programmers Mountain Dew and get to fix this stupid problem!!! AAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Anyway, that bothers me.

So I spent the day in Galway taking pictures. I realised that it is really hard to take a good picture. Because with people it is hard to get a photo without feeling strange, it's like... can I take a photo of that person or what? Do i have to ask for permission? How does it work? And with buildings it is really hard to have get a picture that means something. My prize star of the day was bird on the Spanish Arch... it is actually a bird I am talking about by the way, not a girl or woman, but an actual bird.

Friday, January 28, 2011

34 Years Old + 145 Days

Thursday....

We do this thing now where Linda keeps an eye on lucy on Tuesday and Thursday and I keep an eye on her on Monday and Wednesday... it has had this stange and good effect on us that now we are beginning to look forward to the weekend. We are back to normal on Friday with no stange custody like caring of Lucy.

Anyway.. nothing spectacular happened today... my alpha07 game was not working... I figured out why today.... it was a silly problem. But it works the way I have planned for it to work so far. Like you can register now and log in and look at your stats and stuff... Actually the address for it is again:

http://www.cupantae.ie/alpha07/

not much happening there yet... thats a warning....

34 Years Old + 144 Days

Wednesday

Took lucy for the day, she was in and out of the car more times than a humming bird flaps its wings, poor thing. Lucy that is not the humming bird. But then when we got home she slept well.

Nervously went to karate in the evening, there was an emergency class provided for free becuase of the sudden arrival of the grading Master on Saturday. I was kinda nervous because I was worring about knowing the first kata.

Topped of the day (night) with a viewing of Easy A. It was funny a bit, here and there...  a 71% film I would say.. worth the watch.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

34 Years Old + 143 Days

I found it hard to settle down and really do anything today. It is the dangerous trap that you can fall into when you are not working. It is so easy to just do nothing, but often you will say to yourself, no, i am going to achieve this and that from my day, but then when it comes to it, its like, mmmm I really need to tidy this first. I will start on my real work that I had planned after I clean the table I am sitting at or something... or at least that is the way I am sometimes.

I have a bit of a health thing going on at the moment. I have cut down dramatically eating sweets, biscuits, eating crap in general basically. If I have the urge to have something sweet I will eat one of those small little oranges, manderines (is it!?!). So I am feeling alot better health wise, if I could only get to get to sleep earlier. Nothing is preventing me from going to sleep of course, except my own self, but really, is there anything harder to fight than your inner self.

34 Years Old + 142 Days

Man, today was a bit of a bummer, a test, a double edged sword if you will. I was really, REALLY meant to be doing "something" this weekend, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday - all the plans were going well and we had, myslf and Linda that is, had everything planned and ready and then I go into the Karate class and find out that grading is happening next Saturday. So now I have to make a choice, do this other thing, that I really want to do or do the grading, that will happen they assume once a year. I talked to Linda and we decided that we are going to be doing the karate grading... cool, but becuase of the circumstances I am ticked off. It could have all been so good but this is like a little cloud over the whole event, at least that is how I feel at the moment.

Monday, January 24, 2011

34 Years Old + 141 Days

Sunday

Well today, I was up with the kids, kinda, they got up I gave them milk and I went back to sleep again for around an hour again. But the whole rest of the day was go go go. There was a Sinn Fein conference/meeting and we were at it to see Trevor being offically chosen to be the canditate to run for Sinn Fein. It was interesting. It was also really warm - no - really hot in the hotel room that we were in and when the meeting was over it was nice to get some frest air.

When we all got home we had some shop bought pizza so it was ok. When the kids were asleep we had a game of Settlers. We also did some work on Trevors Sein Fein website, so it is nearly 3am as I write this.

34 Years Old + 140 Days

Saturday.

Today was one of my first days of using the camera correctly, as in I was doing a job for Trevor. He needed photos for the campaign. We took photos at Ros A Mhil and the playground. It was actually really tough going through all the photos, but we got it done and Linda had them sent away to him before the end of the day. Job done!

Saw Inception at Marts place. It a really really strange way everytime I heard the sound track I was reminded of a game I was playing around the same time that Inception came out called MineCraft. What a brilliant game, what a brilliant film.

Friday, January 21, 2011

34 Years Old + 139 Days

You know, it is silly I know but I am really kinda sad. I am rebuilding computers that we had in the cafe. What I mean by rebuilding is that I have put a fresh Windows on it, and now I am installing games on it. The PC will then be sold on to various people, however, we have loads of games that were left to me from both Cupantae.ie and from Wired Ireland that we had in Galway. There are like 70 games or something. But it makes me sad to think that we had a games cafe and now it is closed.

I remember the first time I heard about Wired, Mark Aherns place in Athenry. I was standing outside the Quays pub on a Saturday. I was working, bouncing. I was talking to Gavin another bouncer and I asked him what he was doing for the weekend. He told me that he was going to Athenry to help out a friend of his that is setting up a gaming cafe! I was stunned! He spoke so casually about what I dreamt of. I got to know Mark through Gavin (and fittingly enough Gavin then left for Austrilia - his job was done).

But I remember doing "lock ins" or all nighters basically at Marks place in Athenry. They were brilliant. Getting to know all these people that talked purely about games. Games, games, games. It was the only reason anyone was there. It was the first time I saw the Crytek engine that make Farcry... it was the first time I played the new Counter Strike: Source.I still remember the first time I saw the water in Counter Strike: Source.. it was honestly to God beautiful. I was amazed at the graphics, the physics. It was all amazing.

But now, here I am. Cataloging games so I can figure out what to install on the PC and what not to. I feel like an old libriran who has spent his life collecting brilliant works of literary art but knows that no one will ever read them. Some of the games here are ground breaking in so many way but no one really cares. The xbox 360, for all it flare does not compate to a good game on a good PC.

The personal computer is dying. But its kicking and screaming on the way. But if it closes it eyes for good, will it take with it forever the experience of 8 people huddled into a room designed for 2 where all 8 people have their own computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse and of you looking at the person sitting beside you and knowing you just kicked his ass.

Now even I play a 360... but its potential is only peaked when with it is played with 4 people on Marts mammoth TV. In fact it is so good playing the xbox 360 at Marts place that sometimes for a very brief moment I am brought back again to the hayday of PC gaming.

34 Years Old + 138 Days

Thursday... Linda is back, phew!

There is a book, I am going to give it to Mart, it is called "101 Things To Do Before You Die". One of them, number 87 to be exact, is Conquer Your Fear. So I am wondering, what is my fear? It is not that I am afraid of nothing, but really there is not that much I am afraid of. But then again, it depends on the defination of fear doesn't it. I "Fear" walking out in front of a bus moving at high speed towards me. Should I conquer that? Of course not, fear has lots of practical reasons. I guess what the books refers to is "a fear of walking on the cracks in the pavement" or "a fear of beards". Like I have no strange one. I hate mice, but is hate and fear the same thing? Yoda would say so come to think of it. I hate when I see ants walking on my trouser... I know they are totally harmless. So do I fear them or hate them?

Fear
–noun
1.
a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
2.
a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.
3.
concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.
4.
reverential awe, esp. toward god.
5.
that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: Cancer is a common fear.

Hate
–verb (used with object)
1.
to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest: to hate the enemy; to hate bigotry.
2.
to be unwilling; dislike: I hate to do it.
 
Thank you dictionary.com. I guess I just hate alot of little things. I'm afraid I fear not that much really!!!!
 
 

Thursday, January 20, 2011

34 Years Old + 137 Days

Linda was up in Sligo today so I was looking after the kids on my own. By on my own I mean I took them down to my parents for dinner and stayed there a good while. I did as much actual taking care of them on my actual own as little as I could. I just prefer when I can spread the load of respondsibility. I am not dad of the year I guess!

A person came to look at the VW Caddy. I am selling it :( Good memories I have of the little Caddy, I was a place for some of the staff to go that worked in the cafe if they wanted to get out of the shop. He did not take it away, he might tomorrow he said... I wonder.

But at the end of the day I was jack'd. Too tired to do anything constructive, I just look at some t.v. and when I realised I was fallin asleep I did some Java before heading off to the land of nod....

***Regarding Day 133 - A snake in the grass is like, I didn't see him coming, he surprised us :) ***

34 Years Old + 136 Days

Tuesday!


Ah this day will live in my mind forever... or, at least until the end of the week... I was emptying the bin and we have these big green bags in them so that when the bin does need to be emptied we just pull out the green bag and replace it with another one. So, threw out the old bag, and the new bag comes in a roll or like 20 bags or something and the are attached to each other lightly where a machine perforated across a line. Basically, I opened out the bag, and opened, and opened... the perforation hadn't happened! So I ended up with one really long bag that was around 6 foot deep!

What to do next was obvious, put the bag over my head and cover my whole body and walk down to the bedroom and scare linda. So I pulled the bag over my head but my shoulders were too wide. So I moved around as much as I could and I somehow managed to get the bag down over my shoulders, but it was tight. Really tight. No more fresh air was coming into the bag. Then I had to get the bag down around my whole body down past my knees, you know, to get the whole scary effect. All the time breathing up my remaining air.

Finally I had pulled the bag over my whole body, but now I had to go out the door of the kitchen, down the hall all the way, and down to the bedroom and open the door there as well. So actually opening the door was a kind of a struggle, it was hard to get the handle, but then with the light off in the hallway and the visibility being so bad in the bag I was crawling down the hall. By the time I was at the outside of the bedroom door, I realised I was no longer breathing fresh air at all. I opened the door of the bedroom and looked inside as much as I could see but now I was starting to feel nauseated by the lack of oxygen. My chest felt really heavy and breathing was uncomfortable. I looked around, Linda was in the en suite bathroom taking off makeup. I walked around to the door and where I had first thought in my mind Linda scream with shock when she saw me and I would roar to scare her more, I limply ambled in the door behind her. Now I was beginning to feel my brain... I could feel a headache coming on...

She turned around and laughed and as soon as I realised that she had seen me I immediately made a hole in the bag around my facial area... man the air felt incredible! I tell you, its not easy being a jackass :)

Monday, January 17, 2011

34 Years Old + 135 Days

I was at Karate again today. First one this year. It was brilliant. There is a program on at the moment on Discovery Channel, about the american armys training of new recruits for special forces called Making the cut (?!?)... basically the point that the program is making is that when your body phically gives up that it is up to your mental strength to keep you going. Karate was tough for me, I was thinking about that program loads. Only bummer was my little karate kid was not there with me becuase she was home because her asthma was bad. She getting better thought!

34 Years Old + 134 Days

Sunday. It was cool, for a Sunday nothing  exceptional happened. We visited the family, the usual! I like that Sunday is totally unsurprising. Of course it means that there is not a whole lot to talk about that happened on the day. We did some Kennedy's style political discussion over the dinner table, talking about Trevor upcoming campaign.

Poor Sophie was to have a terrible night sleep because if Asthma. I set up the xbox360  in the computer room where I am building a Windows 7 PC to I can clone it and sell it. But whilst the building of the PC was going on I was playing a star wars game on the xbox.. class....

Saturday, January 15, 2011

34 Years Old + 133 Days

Saturday...

Rick came up and we did some work on our future, hopefully, short comic. There is alot of work involved in it. Like when you think that everything that it in a comic is drawn in by someone, and then colored... the whole thing adds to to serious work. Rick then had a quick piano lesson on the piano that we own. Did I tell you about that piano? We rescued it from the shead where it was for all the world left there to rot. We took it in, literally, into the kitchen and it is drying out. One piano player looked at it and told us to throw it out! It was beyond repair they siad! But a piano like that, so old, has so many stories, has gone through so many things, it has lived more than I have. It is a sin to throw out a beautiful old instument like that. So we talked around 2 years ago now at this stage to someone about fixing it up, he is the best of the best in Ireland at fixing and restoring pianos about fixing up ours again. But ahhh, we're still waiting on him to come to us. Hmmm. Anyway, Rick played a bit of it and showed a Shine like ability at playing it. I was really impressed, even though he seemed lack luster.

We also had a game of settlers with Wallace and Dee and Mart and Marielle, good game, who won again? I lost I know that much, oh yeah, Wallace won... the snake in the grass! :)
Wrote my first "Hello World" java program!

34 Years Old + 132 Days

Friday...

Linda was at the mother and toddlers.... shortly after she came back her parents came and myself and Linda went up to Castlebar and celebrated Finola and Marks engagement! Yippee it was good fun. We went to Collettes place and stayed there until the late(ish) morning. It was good fun, and we met interesting people.

34 Years Old + 131 Days

Thursday...

Hmm, boring day...

Linda and the kids went to the swimming pool....

The big, Big, BIG news is that Trevor is running for Sinn Fein!!!! For government!

Events wise that is.... sometimes it is nice not to write stuff...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

34 Years Old + 130 Days

Wednesday

Secrets are funny aren't they. I have often wondered if it would be better to live in a world where there were absolutely no secrets at all. Why do you have secrets? You see the thing is that secrets weren't invented lately. Secrets weren't a tool first developed by the American military. They weren't invented by some company like coke. Secrets have probably evolved as a part of our humanity just like everything that makes us people. I don't know why we keep secrets but it is interesting isn't it. Do animals keep secrets? Hmm...

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

34 Years Old + 129 Days

Tuesday..

Was really at work today trying to fix computers. Linda was the exercise class.

34 Years Old + 128 Days

Monday...

I guess really the only thing that happened today that was worth writing home about, or in this case writing here about was that we had a cool game of Settlers Of Catan instead of a grupa caidreamh.Well, the game was held in Irish. It was interest and cool, I learn the Irish for a few of the settler words, "ridire" is knight, "cruithneacht" is wheat. See, interesting.

Saddly today, I was giving the first demo of my online game to Mark, my friend and guess what. It did not work. He could not create an account! Ahhh! Why!!!! As in seriously, why? I have looked at the code and can't figure out why?

Monday, January 10, 2011

34 Years Old + 127 Days

Lazy day, Sunday.
Sophie is back at school tomorrow so we took it easy. Hardest thing was for Sophie who cycled to mom and dads on her bike. It's one of those little saftey wells on the sides of the back wheel bikes and unless the road is flawless she is going to struggle. She did alot of struggling, but we got there :)

34 Years Old + 126 Days

Saturday...

Wow, keeping an eye on the kids can be a handfull. They are actually easy to keep an eye on its just that the whole pressure of me having to keep an eye on the all on my own for a while is alot for me to handle. Like today for example, the kids were all mine for the day because Linda was in town meeting her friends. So I took the kids down to Mom and Dads, always a great detraction. Then I had some friends over and that passed more time and then Linda was over. Poor Sophie, the friends that did come over, Sheila and Nadia and Katie... and Amina.... we played a board game, but Sophie wanted to play too and she was getting frustrated when we were all answering the questions so quickly and after a while she went off on her own to play her own stuff but she was constantly calling for me attention and really did want to play with us. I can't wait until she is able to read and then she will be able to do everything we can. She can already play chess! And I only showed her once! She even beat be on her first game with me, although I don't know if that says more for her and less for me?

When Linda did come I hightailed it up to Marts where we had a quality xbox 360 night. I actually learnt how to play better at Halo Reach and Call Of Duty MW2. So the games were brilliant. Again Marts screen is SO BIG that we can easily play 4 player on the one screen and have like a full regular screen size quarter to ourselves. Rock.

Friday, January 7, 2011

34 Years Old + 125 Days

While Linda was at the mother and toddler today I had a job interview. We took down all I think of the christmas decorations :( Then again, the house does look slightly cleaner without them in here.

34 Years Old + 124 Days

Thursday...

Myself and Rick worked on a few drawings. I finished of 3 laptops today too, so that was good to get through them. The work is not so bad when the computers come in, you work on them, and then they ship out again pretty soon.

34 Years Old + 123 Days

Wednesday...

One of those non starter days, I speat loads of it trying to fix a software problem on a computer. Which I should not do of course, I can fix the hardware and the operating system all right, but when it is a specific piece of software there is no reason that I would be necessarily be able to fix it.

On the flip side, I did apply for a job today. A help deck job... hmm.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

34 Years Old + 122 Days

Tuesday... 4th of January...

4th of January is significant to me, it is the date when myself and Linda officially began going out. So today was our 7 year anniversary. So to celebrate the event, we went out to what is now our favorite restaurant Cava's in Galway and we saw "Little Fockers" afterward. Fantastic food, silly film, lovely night..

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

34 Years Old + 121 Days

Bank Holiday Monday over here in Ireland, or here in Ireland if you are currently in Ireland.

We were meant to throw out the recycling bin but because it was a bank holiday i thought they weren't coming, of course, the came so I guess I will have to burn all my paper instead in the back yard... like we did in the old days before Ireland was rich and had so many people on the payrole that they could hire a man for every village in the country to spy on the locals to make sure that they were all keeping in line and back when the ozone was but a young hardy buck and not like some thin veil of silk that was drapped over a princesses face as she stood at the alter in front of prince charming about to tie the knot. Yes... there will be fire.

Myself and Rich have started on a little project that is making a few page comic book. Not sure how it will turn out except to say that is going to rock.... watch this space!

Monday, January 3, 2011

34 Years Old + 120 Days

I found out today that 2 people have "Signed Up" to my online browser based game "Alpha07". Even my writing that line like that makes it more hype than it is worth at the moment. I fully accept that it is only a pet project at the moment, but I see the potential that it has and all that I could do with it, so I am going to keep on working on it. When I looked in the DB I realised that 1 other new person had signed up too, so thats cool, get some opinion going.

We had a game night this night, and it was class. Wallace (1 of the new Alpha registrars) and Dee were there and Rick (and Alphaite) and Mart with myself and Linda. I have to say, board games in Ireland are so under rated! You hear all the silly cliches on the radio and stuff about family getting together and having big fights over it because they are all drinking, but I think alot of that is media crap just to talk about something. Basically, we had as we always do, a good night except that last night had a touch of the absolutely hailarious about it.

"Good times, good times...." 

34 Years Old + 119 Days

He Actually Is A Rolemodel!
Got my first computer job today. Thats cool, hopefully I will be doing alot more of this now.

Linda went up to Castlebar today with Sophie so I was taking care of Lucy all on my own! Ahhhh. But it wasn't bad, like alot of kids her age she slept for a good streach during the day and when she woke up I took her down to my parents for dinner. So handy having parents close to you for that reason alone, free babysitting, they generally care, and they always provide dinner for the young-ons.

When Linda and Sophie came back in the evening, Linda had to pretty much turn on her heals and go out the door again to the cinema, what a tough life she has! I do not know the film they where going to look at...

We found out that someone close to Linda is engaged but I do not know if I can say it because this person has not told all of her family yet for some reason. But speaking of films above, while I was doing things around the sitting room and kitchen, I watched "There Will Be Blood". Linda is all that fond of the film so it really was a good time for me to be watching it. I love it so much. I love the Daniel Plainview character played by Daniel Day-Lewis. He is class, but what I find disturbing is how much I relate to him....

Saturday, January 1, 2011

34 Years Old + 118 Days

Friday 31st December.

I have explained before I think about the way that I update my blog? Well lets say this day is 118 days after my 34 birthday. I am blogging my whole year. So it should be Friday 31st December 2010 = 34 Years Old + 118 days however that is not always the case. In reality a day runs into the night, so while day 118 started off on the 31st it ended up in a different year! So in that regard happy 2011. That is so much handier to write! 2011...

The day was cool started off by looking at 2 films in the morning with the kids, something I should do more often. Linda gave me some time off during the day and I got my php game alpha07 working online. It can now be seen at the following address

http://www.cupantae.ie/alpha07/index.php

If you do go to it, please please please, tell me what you think honestly. I know what it is myself, and for my first game that is written as a lesson in php I like it. You can only help, but I would love to see a "real" person in the game, doing stuff... there is hardly anything to do either by the way, so I guess I should have an updates page.... hmmm. Anyway, if you are so inclined, please register.

It was moms birthday too today. We were down at her house and took a nice family photo, minus Bree obviously.

But for new years night, a few people came down and we played Settlers! It is now a time honoured tradition, as in, we did the same thing last year. It was cool, nice and relaxing.

Happy New Year Everyone!

The Reality Of The News

There have been a few times where I have clicked on a news article only to realise that I have been hit with a paywall. I don't mean thi...