56 - The stars tonight...

My God... the stars tonight. They are amazing. The sky is amazing. Looking out into the infinite universe is both scary and one of the most beautiful things in existence.  

Not my picture

55 - Apple, the Rohypnol of the computer industry.

Linux is the beautiful woman you fall for, and you wake up one morning and she is laying beside you in the bed. She does not pretend to be anything she is not. She is generous, fun, and intelligent. She sticks up for you and defends you. Protects you and the both of you together can move mountains. She is free, she came into your life and asked for nothing.

Then there is Microsoft, she is expensive, high maintenance. You can't walk down the street without spending money on this chick somehow, she demands alot but when met in full this girl is amazing. And you know what, assuming that you bag the correct one your set... but some of them can be dumb as hell, and infact make your life hell with their dumbness. However all through your journey with this woman, you know where you stand.

Then there is Apple. The viper. You will pay the most for Apple. Truly she is the most beautiful by far, but like a siren, when you hold her you are totally under her control. Initially she was the woman in the bar that only drank champagne and ate strawberry's. Lately however she has become more deceiving, not because she can't bag enough men, but because she has found her competition boring. Now she no longer drinks champagne in classy nightclubs, now she hangs around in shady pubs, chats to you for a while, slips some rohypnol into your drink... when you wake up the next morning your head hurts, all of your money is gone, your cards have been emptied out... you realize in the worst way possible that you have been screwed. Your heart is broken and your angry at her, and you wish you never heard her name.

54 - Downloading Videos Off Youtube

Youtube is brilliant. Youtube really is simply amazing. I would like to hear what effect it has had on freedom and education... I personally have learnt SO MUCH from youtube that it almost make schooling a joke. 

However, some times you want to have a video off youtube and not be depending on wireless or your data connection. For this I use:

http://keepvid.com/

It is actually very easy to use... 

1. Find the video you want on youtube and copy the address. 
2. Enter the address in the search bar on the screen and hit Download
3. For me anyway, a security warning box comes up telling me that I am going to use a java program, I am okay with that.
4. Now options appear asking me what type of video I want to download, as in 3PG, FLV, MP4, I always go with MP4. 
5. Click download and boom, you have your video wherever files go that are downloaded with the browers you are using. 

53 - Atomic Bombs are beautiful...

Did I ever tell you that I have a fascination with atomic bombs? Yeah, it would actually be a dream come true, honestly, to see one. The are such an amazing beautiful expression of human ability to conquer and control nature.

Nothing else need be said I think? Kinda like when you see a hot girl and your like "dude - check her out shes hot!" and your friend says "well, shes not my type". Maybe I am like that with atomic bombs, that I see them as amazing, but someone else is like "ain't no thing"... ie - they are simply wrong.

52 - White House Down with Ubisoft.

I am going to assume that you do not know anything about the following: the film White House Down and the computer game Medal Of Honor. Now, the 2013 released White House Down is an action film starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, really you do not know more about the story line other than there are characters in it that have been ex-black ops type etc etc etc. Interestingly in one scene in the film they are talking about all these "baddies" and they are showing the profiled pictures of them... this is one of the stills from the film:

So then I was thinking about this image after the film and I was sure that I saw it in a computer game. Did some Googling and found this image from Medal Of Honor, the computer game. 

See the resemblance? Pretty similar ah. Of course the thing that really made me look for the image was in the credits there is a "Visual Effects by Hybide Technologies - A Ubisoft Division". I

 So Ubisoft made Medal Of Honor and I think that this still was in the film to promote the game Medal Of Honor. What do you think?

51 - Brilliant Toyota ad.

Toyota have an ad for the Toyota Pickup at the moment. I was going to say "Here it is below.... watch it", but I could not find it!

Instead I am going to make sure that you have seen the Toyota Hilux edition of the BBCs program Top Gear. So here that is... 

  

50 - Minecraft Minecraft Minecraft Minecraft Minecraft Minecraft

Minecraft... minecraft... 

Wow, over the last few days I have played more Minecraft than I have in the last few months. Don't know Minecraft? Sure you do! You don't?

Here is the official website... https://minecraft.net/
But there is a HUGE community with this game... here is one a few wiki links.... http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Minecraft_Wiki


Okay, you're a guy in this world where you can build redamentory objects like axes, pickaxes, swords to do things like fight of hoards of zombies that attack at night, or build any kind of house for yourself or a rail track to your mine that you are crafting these things in.

This is my house in real life, not my house in Minecraft

Alot of people when they first see this game instantly (and I mean instantly) judge it as crap game from the 80's whereas there are alot of people who play this game and are blown away by it and accept the graphics and realise that the game is about the gameplay. That is why the game is popular with kids too, they see past the graphics and love the infinately playable Lego aspect of the whole thing!

Want to play the game for free! Click here.

49 - Football and cheerleaders go hand in hand

Really today was a kind of an exausting day. Some good things happened and some "ugh... work... life" things happened.

Really today just reminds me of the term.. "an old 49er' ". So I am going to look into what it means...

49ers - NFL
I have found out that the 49ers are a football team in North America. http://www.49ers.com/. Right? How come when I go to this website they are all about the UK?

49ers cheerleaders... why can't Irish sports be more like this?

Well... after searching for a while on Google I have realised that as far as the internet is concerned if you have the number 49 and er put together you are in no way talking about anything other than the football team! So I give up... but instead of showing the actual football team here are their cheerleaders above!

48 - Argh! Headache...

According to an article I just read right now there are 4 different types of headache:

1. Vascular headaches - thought to be caused by blood vessel swelling and hyperemia (increase of blood flow). The most common type being migraine. Migraine sufferers typically have severe pain on one or both sides of the head, visual disturbance, and/or upset stomach. Other forms of vascular headaches include cluster headaches and toxic headaches. Click here to read our separate article "What Are Cluster Headaches? What Causes Cluster Headaches?".
2. Muscle contraction (tension) headaches - also known as myogenic headaches, are caused by the tightening/tensing of facial and neck muscles, these account for nearly 90% of all headaches. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen reported in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology that 3% of the population has chronic tension-type headaches.
3. Traction headaches - these are usually caused by pulling or stretching pain-sensitive parts of the head, as may occur during eyestrain and eye muscles are tensed. G. Kim Bigley wrote in the book "Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations. 3rd edition, "Headaches can result from intracranial mass lesions such as metastatic tumors, abscess, or hematoma (a solid swelling of clotted blood)."Traction headache is caused by organic diseases involving structures in the head
4. Inflammatory headaches - these headaches are symptoms of other disorders, including sinus infection,meningitis, or stroke.

I think I have the second one... muscle contraction. Of course this is making me ask more questions than I had originally thought up. Like, where does a hang over come into all this? I did karate yesterday and that was very muscle tension-y (!) so that is why I think I am in the second category. 

But there was a little that I thought I knew about headaches and this does not fit any of it, I thought when you have a headache that blood vessels in the skin or bag around your brain begin to contract or expand giving the headache feeling. That is why when I was in America a few years ago, Boston to be exact, and that I stopped into 3 or 4 Dunkin Doughnuts a day that and had a coffee at every one with my few doughnuts that I began to have serious migraine headaches. All the new coffee in my unexpecting system was exciting the vesels around my brain. So I stopped drinking coffee on the advice of a cousine that was advising me that this was the problem, of course then I had more headaches, she said that this was because I was "coming down" from all the coffee. 

Maybe they do say that in the above 4 points... couldn't focus enough on the little text there was. 

Oh boy... it is enough to give a man a headache....

47 - xcode... how I hate thee

If you want to write apps for the Apple App Store you will write them in Xcode using a programming language called Objective C. I hate all of it...

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I have spent so many hours, days in fact, trying to get some things working on the iPad that we own, trying to get an app that I am working on onto the iPad. Damn I am tired, and I just hate all of it.

That is all, I have wasted so much time on this...  well, not wasted of course. I have learnt so much, but is my app finished? No.

No it is not! :(

46 - Sunday - Programming Basic on the Commodore 64

Played Annie on LOL....

Another thing I did this evening was download a Commodore 64 emulator. Yeah, after realizing a few things namely that I wish that I had programmed the Commodore 64 when I was alot younger and that any programming I do today will help me with my current learning of programming. So with that said I have begun to learn how to program the Commodore 64. Now, I do not mean I am going to become a Commodore 64 programmer. Just in case you do not know the Commodore 64 was released around - my God - 30 years ago!

Here is a little same of code:

1 REM UP, UP, AND AWAY
5 PRINT "(CLR/HOME)"
10 V = 53248 : REM START OF DISPLAY CHIP
11 POKE V + 21,4 : REM ENABLE SPRITE 2
12 POKE 2042,13 : REM SPRITE 2 DATA FROM BLOCK 13
20 FOR N = 0 TO 62 : READ Q : POKE 832+N,Q : NEXT
30 FOR X = 0 TO 200
40 POKE V + 4,X : REM UPDATE X COORDINATES
50 POKE V + 5,X : REM UPDATE Y COORDINATES
60 NEXT X
70 GOTO 30
200 DATA 0,127,0,1,255,192,3,255,224,3,231,224
210 DATA 7,217,240,7,223,240,7,217,240,3,231,224
220 DATA 3,255,224,3,255,224,2,255,160,1,127,64
230 DATA 1,62,64,0,156,128,0,156,128,0,73,0,0,73,0
240 DATA 0,62,0,0,62,0,0,62,0,0,28,0



Now, if you typed that in in your Commodore 64 you would get the following image...

Oh.... ahem, well. I was going to have a screen shot here but it seems like the Commodore 64 emulator I was using did not like being screen shot.

ha ha ha... I actually find it really funny. It is exactly like something that would happen after typing in tons of a program, you type in the whole thing and then it does not work or something happens and then you have to type in the whole thing again!

ok this is lame, the image is so pale because a print screen would not work! this is the screen grab after the image crashed! lols... but if you look you will be able to see the little ballon that was floating across the screen. 

45 - The Beatles

Brilliant music... The Beatles... for FREE! :)

Ever go on a torrent and download music?

Yeah.. No?

Well you know who is totally okay to torrent... The Beatles... yeah. They do not even own their own catalogue. They kinda got ripped off and the rights to their own music was bought from them mostly by the late Mr Michael Jackson. So.. ahh... he's dead... again, you know God rest his soul. But basically who is going to loose money on you downloading the Beatles back catalouge.

Certainly not the remaining member of the Beatles anyway!

44 - Light bulb

Ah the Incandescent light bulb! Where would we be without it? Sitting with my camera in my kitchen looking for more things to shoot, I found myself gazing at the lights.

Why am I taking pictures of a light bulb?

I tried to look at the filament... kinda worked.

43 - Commodore 64

Wow. I think I have felt my first regret? No I don't even think it's regret more a feeling of "damn I wish I could go back in time". Back to a time when myself and my brother Mart were kids. We had a Commodore 64 and to tell the truth we barely knew how to use it. Back then it was our oldest brother Johnny who was the computer wizard. I remember him using a hand held scanner and being amazed and kinda confused at it.

I remember the loading times. My god what would the youth think today? Ha ha ha! We had a game we loved called "Get off my garden". It took 15 minutes to just load the game! Imagine that.

But then Supremacy. Was that on the C64? It was such a great game? Was Multi player soccer manager on the C64 too? Great games!

I remember Mart typing up a 'huge' program from the back of the manual that came with the C64. When it was finished you could play a midi keyboard with the letters on the keyboard. It was simply seriously cool.

So what's all the regret? I had good time did I not? I definitely did. But there was so much wasted potential. I could have been programming basic on the C64. I could have been making games. Instead I hardly remember the 1980's. I hardly remember my youth at all.

42 - My karate.

My karate is going okay. The next belt that I'm going for is called Tekki Shodan, first brown. I'm looking forward to getting a Brown belt. One of the things that happens when speaking to people about karate is that they do not understand the belts. They don't understand the order that they come in, why would they? I didn't understand the belts myself until I began karate. 

But more people understand brown. In belt terms it comes before Black. And everyone understands the black belt right. So it is more obvious... Brown, Black...

41 - Wikileaks, Adrian Lamo... whistle blowers....

I'm kinda confused about something here. I read up a bit on Adrian Lamo a few years ago and I knew that he was known as "the homeless hackers". When I got to know read up about him first I read about the way that he would be break into websites, identify security weaknesses and not charge anything for the service, if you could call it that. He did this for some companies and he to this too some companies. He was somewhat of an ethical hacker, a grey hat. He broke into these sites because he wanted them to be more secure.

Then one day in 2010, Adrian Lamo was contacted by the now famous Bradley (Chelsea) Manning. Bradley Manning basically confided in Lamo telling him (Lamo) that he had leaked thousands of files to the website wikileaks. Files leaked were about the American government and issues regarding matters of national security.

Lamo reported the the soldier Bradley Manning to the US Army counter intelligence and Manning was arrested. Manning is now in prison and is not going any where for at least another 8 years (at least that if she is lucky.

My point?

Did Lamo do right? Did Lamo do the correct thing in whistle blowing the whistle blower? There is alot more to it than what I written here, like a-l-o-t! But to me, it is a basic question. Within the computer community alot of people knew Adrian Lamo as a grey hat hacker. Manning must have known it too. Was Lamo wrong? Was Manning wrong leaking the files?

40 - Day forty...

So as you may or may not know I am doing a test to see if I can post one blog post every day for the 37th year of my life. So far I am getting there.

39 - Sunday

Not alt happened today. I worked on a website that I am working on and I had dinner down at mom's and dads. Linda and the kids came back from Castlebar and I was happy to have them back. Played League of legends this morning with Barry Mart and them. It was all good. Really good fun actually.

38 - Stargate SG-1

The first episode of Stargate SG-1 was aired on the 27 July 1997. Over the last week or so I have begun watching them... yep I never miss a beat.

Stargate SG-1 - Classic

So anyway, I saw an episode today - Singularity - that was just for the record first aired 31 October 1997. My god it was brilliant. I really do regret not having watched them all before this I have to say. This episode was so good that I would love to talk to someone about it, but you know what not that many people are interested. I know a handful of people who have watched all of these episodes before and when I talk to them about them they are like "oh yeah - Stargate was really good". I am literally 16 years too late to enjoy the hype that goes with this sort of thing.

37 - CERN Google maps tour of the LHC

You know the way that Google have a street view in Maps.... well the boys and girls at Google Labs have made a street view of the the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

LHC at Cern... so many wires... so... many.... wires...

If you do or do not know about this please do look it up anyway. It is definitely going to make you appreciate more the amazing technology at CERN.

https://www.google.com/maps/views/streetview/cern?gl=us

A little side fact that I like to tell people to make them appreciate the CERN more... you know the way that you are reading this off a web page, yeah... webpage were invented at CERN as a side project to help them view the vast quantities of information that they had. Tim Bernard Lee worked for them back then. My point is, you want to know about tomorrow, look at CERN today.

36 - Keeping the wolf from the door.

What is government there for?

When I vote in government I am voting them in so that they will do my bidding. I do not mean that I want the government to clean my clothes and do my shopping. What I want is that the government do the job that we all expect / want it to do. Run the country for the people.

I should not be afraid of the government. I could ask if I should be afraid of a member of staff that I have working for me. No I should not. So is "the government" my member of staff, yes and no.

No of course they are not my PERSONAL member of staff. But yes, I do pay them. They are there to do what is best for me, or to hold the analogy, my business. You get the point of what I am saying.

What is wrong with this picture?

Where did we go so wrong then that I overheard the following conversation today... Two men were speaking on the stairwell as I passed. I heard the first man say that he was happy that he was on the road more often now, because some other person was doing the paper work and that he never thought that he would be happy in a partnership but it was actually working out fine actually.

So, clearly person 1 had begun a partnership with someone and he was informing person 2 of this fact. Person 2 said "ah, it will keep the wolf from the door".

What wolf?

Who's door?

Is the government the wolf? In all honesty people what has gone so wrong? How much do we fear the body of people collectively known as the government that we now see ourselves as the lambs in this scenario?

35 - Ass kicking machines of the future...

Terminator 1, Terminator 2... basically machine that kill and do amazing things. Of course machines do amazing things right now, computers, cars, MRI Scanners etc are amazing. But we are used to seeing these things in every day life. Wanna be impressed? Look at some new tech... take a moment and look at some of the following videos:

The first is Big Dog.. a friend was telling me that they have discontinued Big Dog for military purposes because the soldiers that were working with him were getting to attached to him.

Second one is totally class and I am hugely impressed by it. You know the way a flea can spring and jump really high.. that ain't nothin'. Look at this....

Third and last one is. Think you could outrun the fastest man on Earth - This website has the following data "The data on Usain Bolt showed that he reached at top speed of 12.27 metres per second, which is 27.44 miles per hour!" Look at this machine how fast it can run... just imagine when it has had a few years more progress.

All these amazing videos can be found with alot more on Boston Dynamic.

34 - Mini Reunion

I met up with some college friends this evening and we all talked about work and college and regular life and about TV shows, what to watch and what not to watch. And you know what it reminded me of... well, college life. I remember when I got my degree there was alot of work, there was alot of stress. The pain of coming into college, living on the bread line some what, alot of the people in your class were very different to you. All of this was good and bad. But it was a certain type of challenging to when I got my post graduate last year (well 2012 - 2013).

This time college felt like if I turned up I would pass my exams. If I paid attention in class it would do reasonably well. Definitely the course I was on this time around was harder than my degree but I still did better in my post grad than I did for my degree.

It just leaves me with one question.... what the hell was I doing in college?

33 - Bit of work.

Put the kids to bed. Did some work, like an hour and a half work then looked at a tiny bit of X Factor. Then did counter strike maps. Ah the glory of map making!

32 - Steam Box specs revealed.

If you have read my blog alot or popped in and out over the last while you will know that I am looking forward to the new Steam Box that Valve, the computer games manufacturer, is about to release. Well specs have been released for the model of the Steam Box that is going to be released in 2014. Here the specs are:

Here is a quote from a website describing the specs better than I will "First and foremost, there isn’t a single static spec — even for the Valve-made beta units. The prototype units will ship with an Intel Core i7-4770, an Intel Core i5-4570, or an unidentified Core i3 CPU. As far as GPUs go, there will be a mix of Nvidia Titan, Nvidia GTX780, Nvidia GTX760, and Nvidia GTX660 models — all with 3GB of GDDR5. All units will ship with 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, hybrid 1TB/8GB SSHDs, and a 450w power supply. Impressively, all of this equipment is designed to fit inside a 12-inch x 12.4-inch x 2.9-inch case."

Yes the Steam Box might look like this... or nothing like this?

What sticks out to me is the 1 Terrabyte solid state hard drive! I have a new computer and I have to say the difference between a solid state drive and a regular disc drive is amazing in terms of speed. I am seriously looking forward to it. Valve are making up a machine that runs a hackable scaleable machine that seems to kick the ass of Xbox One and Playstation 4 in terms of specs.

The only thing that we do not know about yet is the price. If you valued these parts today for a machine it could come to €1500+, not the €400 - €500ish that we would like!?!

31 - Film Review - How I Live Now

Saw a cool film in the cinema this evening.. How I Live Now. I saw it, with my wife, it in the Castlebar Cinema so when there was a quiet moment in the film we were able to hear sounds from the paper thin walls of the screen beside us. All of this did not in any way detract from the tension filled any sometimes scary atmosphere of the setting. Not scary in a "he's behind you!" kinda way - think more like Children Of Men. The kind of scary that makes you go "holy God I hope this never happens in real life" and you find yourself saying it because you know in the back of your mind that this

really

could

happen.

How I Live Now

What the "this" is that I am talking about you will have to watch the film to find out. The picture itself it nicely shot. Kinda has a nice indie feeling to it, you know, there is no sun flare happening all the time around fully glassed interior buildings a la Jerry Brucheimer. No, this was one of the times that a film could have done with a bit of optimistic sun flare but the films grim setting would not allow for it.


Saoirse Ronan is fantastic in it as the initially flippant Daisy who personally morphs to adapt to the changing surrounding about her. The male lead is played by George MacKay who has an equally turbulent time as Edmond.

I cannot ever give away story lines as I totally believe in not spoiling a film. But I can say when a film appelled to me. Well shot but obviously on a non-Hollywood budget. The music was great, acting for the most part was good. The idea is the film is very good, I'd say it is a cracking book but I do not know.

Is How I Live Now worth seeing in the cinema or is it one of those films that would do equally well on a smaller screen? There are no David Lean style sweaping vistas in it or massive special effect moments that have to be seen on a 40 foot screen so yeah I guess that it would do to see it at home if you have a good screen with good sound and some peace and quiet for a few hours. These are things that you should get in big screen however (ahem Movie World in Castlebar) so that you could immerse yourself in the story driven chilling bleak vision of the world that is How I Live Now.

Acting 7
Picture 6.5
Story 8.5
Sound 7

Carraroe And The City Rating :- 7.25/10

30 - Opps, missed a day!

I was meant to do this on the day of Friday the 4th of October 2013, but I did not, instead I am doing this on Sunday the 6th of October 2013 at nearly 3am. Now I could simply pretend that I wrote this on Friday and write Friday like comments like "thank goodness that work is over TODAY, I might have a CRUNCHIE, after all, it is FRIDAY" or I could just say I was pretty busy living it up, which I was.

By living it up I do not mean that I went out partying all night. No, I went down to my parent and spent some time with them. And you what that is going to be the theme of this blog entry. I is about missing something so you could go to something else or missing something the opportunity to do something that you wish you had done.

The God knows that I have missed chances to make right what I have done wrong, and I have done alot of wrong over the years so I am speaking from experience here. The thing that sucks about doing something wrong often is that while you are going through the process of the wrong doing often you will not know it, or at least how serious the consequences of that wrong doing it. There are a few people that I do not speak to at all really for exactly this reason. I guess I was a jackass. They did not behave the way I wanted them to and then I drew a line in the sand and said "that's it - they are no more!"

Lines in the sand only result in one thing, empty seats at the table where only ghosts of your friends long gone now reside. It is so easy to miss the opportunity, to miss the day, because in so many cases opportunity never happens. You make your own opportunity. Create the situation for yourself. Banks, bills, work. Screw all that. Family is friends is where it should be at.

Oh yeah, for those that do not know the reference, a reference image is below.

Thank Crunchie it's Friday!

29 - Some phone pics over the last while

We had some good days in September this year... they made some nice photos. I wish that I had my Canon with me, but I was happy to have my Samsung Galaxy SIII.

Sunset going home from work towards Carraroe. I loved the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sun.

Sunset on that lake in Tismean. The dead calm made the lake into a mirror reflecting the gorgeous evening and the setting sun. 

Mushroom growing on a tree in Westport house woods.. they were interesting shapes.

In Westport we saw this lonely  Volkswagen Camper, obviously misses the 70's

So they are a few photos. Nice and colorful overall, but I think when I see them all together that I have alot of yellow in the set. Maybe I like yellow more than I think.

28 - Dead tired...

Man I am so tired I had loads to talk about, but I am so tired now... so tired...

27 - The Woman In The Red Dress and 3kliksphilip again!

There has been a wrong I am about to right and a right that I am about to write about...

Ahem...

Remember in The Matrix... there was a "woman in the red dress". Well a great wrong has happened in that no one knows who she is! Her name is Fiona Johnson. But guess what, that is pretty much all we know about her. Click on here name there and it will take you to her IMDB page! What ever happened to her? Fiona Johnson - Carraroe we salutes you!

You were looking at the woman in the red dress weren't you... ah The Matrix

And now for the good news....

I wrote about a rant that 3kliksphilip made in blog number 25 a few days ago. Well guess what, he replied to my blog yesterday. Much respect to Philip... Carraroe salutes you too my good man.