Wednesday, December 22, 2004

"1001 movies to see before you die"

..is the title of a book I picked up there a couple of weeks ago. Since buying it
I have seen two of the listed movies that I hadn't seen before,
by virtue of them happening to be on telly. So I've decided as an ongoing project
that I will see them all.

Previously I was infamous for not having seen those films that everyone else had seen.
Alien, and The Crow being good examples ( both of which I have seen now).

Well I'm gonna those classic movies here as I see 'em, maybe I'll even say a little
something about em as I see fit. I'll also list off the ones I already seen until
I have all 1001 (or as close as I can get, some of the movies are REALLY ancient)

So without further ado the first two movies I have seen of the 1001.
1)West Side Story
2)Gone with the wind.

West Side story I can see how some people might like it. Micheal jackson ripped off
a huge number of shots and moves for his videos and some of the songs aint bad.
But the Musical just ain't a genre that does it for me. I ,somewhat controversially
I might add, cannot stand Moulin rouge, and would gladly take back those two hours of my life.

Gone with the wind is a movie I didn't think I would like at all. It being long and fully
of characters that you just plain can't like.. However I was pleasantly surprised. Its a
well crafted story and filmed very well indeed. And Rhett(?) Butler is 'the Man'!

right more as I see em'

(p.s I'm breaking my rule here and mailing from my work addy.. it seems like the only way
I'll ever update this site, I'll stick to doing it on breaks and after hours though. I'll
be good!)



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Sunday, December 12, 2004

They're back.

wow october. has it really been that long?
Well I been busy and I can't acess gmail from work. thats all the excuses you getting from me.


To more important matters. I was at the prodigy gig in the olympia last night. they are well and truly back on form. Leeroy was on the Decks before hand keeping the beats coming.

The new material sounds great live, interspersed with the tried and tested old tunes. poison, their law, smbu, mindfields.

They're a fucking brilliant live act. Real theatrical, great energy.
Kieth and Maxim play off each other something wicked. They have these characters they slip into. Maxim is this taskmaster character cool beyond belief driving the crowd harder and harder... Keith is this barely restrained demented creature that at any minute could leap into the crowd in a frenzy.

But the minute liam walked on and turned on a small sign on his equipment rig the read "sex" I knew it was gonna be great!


I'm still deaf.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Gaelcon 2004.

Having recovered sufficiently from the exesses of the weekend. drink,games,sleep deprivation and fun I give you the Gaelcon weekend blog.

I had a ball at gaelcon. This year more than any other since I started going there it felt a bit like coming home.. Familiar faces all round many of whom did us the honour of coming to our convention way out west. Everyone is so friendly and I think I saw maybe one sad face amongst the 600 odd attendees and that didn't seem to last.
actually 2 if you saw my mate duane but that was after I broke the ear off his 1500 euro Batman statue, so you can see why he might not be singing "all kinds of everything" and blowing bubbles. I have already extended my sincerest apologies but I re-iterate them her. hope the damage is fixable...

Games wise it was the Year of Pirates of the Spanish Main ( or BOAT as it is known by some of us). But the other game to really make an impression was Star Wars: The queens gambit. really neat mechanism for having all 4 segments (gungan diversion, storming the palace, Jedi dual, and space battle) affect each other.

Alas I still have not aqquired a copy of the Call of Cthulhu card game. boo.

However I got to play plenty of Call of Cthulhu.. the fairly typical yet dead solid "The Great Game" and "Temporary insanity" which does exactly what it says on the tin...

What else. Karaoke in which Dave (gamer style third person reference not someone else) tries to sing in the Key of C#, fails by several letters then realises its not even the right song..

Pub quiz, which was fun. Club AGM which was actually fairly neat.
Charity auction in which money becomes something far less valuable than it really is and sticking your hand in the air becomes as addictive as crack cocaine.

dissapointingly my efforts to get everyone (including me) to go see AvP over the weekend failed miserable, And the Dang weather here prevented me from doing it today. I better get to see it before vegas, or I shall be very put out.

If I remember anything else I should mention I'll post it next post.

Dave.



Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Empire.

Have to say Empire's a top notch magazine. v. rarely does it fail to nail just how good a movie is. Imagine my dissapointment then, when they give AvP a mere 2 stars. Of course It was always going to be tricky to do either license justice... I'll still go see it. Forewarned is forearmed( and Four-armed is really handy in Mortal Kombat *groan*).

Empire also have a top 100 sexiest movie stars of all time. Which is funny cause this is a discussion I've had several times in the last couple of weeks. Now they got the sexiest men in there and they're pretty much what you'd expect (although orlando Bloom is the top ranking bloke. I would have thought that a bit odd but what do I know.) so I'm just gonna list the top ten ladies ( in reverse order to build the suspense).

10. Grace Kelly - I never watched none of her movies so I dont know if she deserves to be in the top ten or not
She don't look like top ten material from the photo..

9. Rita Hayworth - She was v. sexy, so I won't quibble with her appearance in this list.

8.Natalie Portman - According to empire sexiest role was Amidala in Episode III. Emm. Nope.

7. Uma Thurman - Yeah I guess , to me Uma is a bit too tomboyish to be one of the sexiest. But I'll allow it ;)

6. Scarlet Johannson - I only really noticed her in Lost in Translation so the Jury is still out on her..

5. Jennifer Connolly - Ok wholehearted agreement here. She looked pretty fine in the Rocketeer and she's been
in some other stuff more recently. Hulk I think. Damn.

4. Marilyn Monroe - Nuff said.

3. Halle Berry - Can't stand her. Everyone else is off their rocker for placing her so high..

2. Angelina Jolie - Yeah she is hot, lips to die for but makes some pretty appalling movies plus
a bit of an oddball as far as I can gather..

1. Keira Knightly - I would have said forget about it. But the picture they got of here she's
all done up like some kind of 50's film star and she looks pretty good. But where are (as
a good friend of mine likes to say) the Norks?


Heres a couple from lower down on the list that I think are more deserving of being in the top ten
than some I have mentioned .
Kirsten Dunst, Kate winslet ( having seen her recently in a Beautiful mind) and Selma Hayek.


In other news I have finally got my own copy of "What evil lurks" even if it is a re-issue, and on
vinyl(I don't own a turntable..)

Later.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Do stuff.

Saw adds for The new pratchett book "going postal" made me want to read it. so I pops into easons to pick it up then realise its not available here yet. Howver I subsequently realise that I haven't read Monstrous Regiment yet and it is conveniently sitting on the shelf right in front of me, in handy paperback format. Ah I says to myself I'll get that then. Then I find out I've got the first discworld meetup coming tomorrow night. perfect says I. that'll give me something to talk about then..

Anyhoo. I went to a play on friday, Brian Friels "Faith Healer", I probably wouldn't have chosen to go see it myself but as it was Cap'n Vane suggested we go to the theatre for something different and it was on. It was surprisingly good for a play consisting of 4 monologues.. both Funny and tragic in parts. I liked it but it made me miss the fun we had doing stage performances while I was in sligo....

however I did see that there was a screenwriting workshop going on in the IFI.. Think it'd be interesting even though I shouldn't really be spending money coming up to Vegas (did I mention I was going to vegas next month? go me) and I should be saving money instead, still I think It'd be good to do. I haven't really done anything just for myself since I came to dublin.. I miss acting and Tai Chi and Capoeira and all the stuff I used to do (however erratically) in sligo. Theres definitely less Time here.

More at some point.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Penance

(what you do after you confess? no? anyone?)

Well its all over. And I for one bloody enjoyed it. great excercise...
I've already written a diary for the flat earth site so I won't repeat myself here.

Many thanks to those of you who made the effort get all the way to sligo.
And thanks of course to the other flat earthers who made it what it was.

Anyhoo. I'm still knackered so I'm not gonna rant here.

Although I am working on a little project with mr o'connor which I will post about
at some point that I think is gonna be a bit special. more later.



Tuesday, September 14, 2004

The tragic tale of Varl Bearclaws return.

At the last moment Varl was pulled from the jaws of death by his
good friend Boris the Cleric.

In a weakened state he chose to take a moment to summon his druidic healing powers.

He was then promptly lightning bolted back into unconciousness.

Varl was having a bad day.

Lightning Bolted to death

Thats what my D&D barbarian (/druid) has just been. He went out with a bang, or two to be precise.

Which is why I have a few spare minutes to blog, while the rest of the party continue to battle the forces of "almost as evil as they are". Anyway Varl is off to a better place...

Oddly he is slowly dying by bleeding to death but in about a rounds time his rage effect is going to wear off and he'll lose a whopping 16HP which puts him in the "very dead" category. I would have expected the rage to wear off as soon as he fell unconcious but in the end it makes little difference.

"Ode to Varl BearClaw"
Grrr. Rarrrg.
Grrr. Raaarrrg.
Zzap.

Grrrr RRRaaarrg
Zzap.
Thunk.

Friday, September 10, 2004

A bunch of stuff.

I'm astounded to find that(accroding to the counter) people are still looking at this blog even though I have sorely neglected my updates. I guess folks found something they liked, or are at least curious as to what the hell I'm doing with myself these days.. Either way its good by me.

As for stuff you like well.. Jesse Ventura got some feedback.. I'd guess Uber is the contributor of the interesting facts. correct me if I'm wrong. Well I just finished watching the making of predator and have learned that Jesse Ventura was a Navy Seal and according to the wardrobe department records has bigger muscles than arnie. though Arnie claims it was a deliberate ploy on his part to psyche out Mr. Ventura. Anyhow the guy is certainly larger than live and seems to be his own biggest fan, but I can't help but like him.

I got some feedback from Saucy Monky clearing up the accents issue, much appreciated!
they are on tour in ireland at the mo. check out www.saucymonky.com. for details!
playing whelans soon if I'm not mistaken.

Confess is practically upon us so I'm trying to focus my attention on making sure everything is going to hold together on the day(s). Which ain't easy.
its amazing the difference that having to commute for an extra 40 minutes to and from work and having to change out of work clothes makes to your free time...
But its looking good.

Xaosseed got his masters which is brilliant and is confirmed for Confess (and running his infamous IOU campaign) which is even better! Hooray.

I just finished putting together the Con Directors round for the Confess Table quiz. Which I think would perhaps more fittingly be called the Confess Table Inquisition! The table quiz is looking like fun actually the "Dynamic" format is a bit cool..

So 15 days and counting. yikes.
better go do chairmanlike things...






Wednesday, September 01, 2004

More Gmail.

Got more Gmail invites.

if ye want one, shout.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Hours and hours..

This is very strange. I've nearly worked up an extra day in overtime this week. 6 hours depending on how things go today. I arrive early and leave late. Sometime in the next few weeks I'll probably be working 10-11 hour days.. In all my time at my previous job there was only one occasion when I worked days as long as these.And that was serious crunchtime with a manager (an ex-army major with the attitude to match)looming over my shoulder as I frantically tried to make all the bits dance together in swan lake style ( they ended up doing more of a cossack dance...) and for that effort I ate like a king and lived in the finest accomodations. This isn't like that. This isn't an exceptional situation. This is just how it is here...

Anyways I hear good reports about AvP looking forward to it. Especially after watching the original predator on monday night.. Bloody good movie, eminently quotable.

"Bunch of pansy ass faggots we got here. This stuff will make you a sexual Ty-ranno-saurus, just like me!"
Good man Jesse Ventura. he was a mayor of some town wasn't he? its a strange world we live in.

Anyways back to work now..






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Monday, August 16, 2004

everything is ok.

For those of you who were worrying. Everything is ok.

I got my prodigy ticket ;)


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Friday, August 13, 2004

Prodigy

Prodigy playing the Olympia this December. How wicked is that. Been hearing it advertised on the radio (which is weird cause I haven't listened to the radion in absolutely ages) and it brings back memories of how cool it was to hear the new years point gig advertised in 1995. I even recorded it.. in fact I remember a bit of it there was silence and the DJ says " the prodigy are back!" and then "No Good" kicks in. that gave me shivers when I first heard it. Yes I know thats daft.So sue me.

The new single "Girlz" is getting pretty good airplay at the moment. I like it.
you can find the video if ye fancy it on the xl website. Its like the evil twin of some old eighties hiphop tune. The video is growing on me too.

Another thing thats been brewing in the back of my mind every time I go to text someone. I reckon at some point new slang terms based on dumb predictive text is gonna slip into our vocabulary.

I give you some examples.. all of which will no doubt be familiar.

" You heading down the sub for a shot?"

"wow, thats really book!"

and my fave

"Iowaya?"







Thursday, August 12, 2004

WooHoo.

Just finished my first task in my new job. After weeks of blundering about trying to get set up I finally got to DO something.

Quite an impressive setup they have here development-wise. The design documents are detailed right down to the level where they blur with implementation. The tools and infrastructure in place for testing and development is pretty hardcore, I'm gonna have to brush up on my old unix sKillz if i'm gonna keep up.
Still tis good to be here today.




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Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Plan B.

Updating my blog is proving difficult these days. What with being in the office under the watchful eye of big brother for most of my day and usually having something to do that supercedes the blogging in priority in the evenings I have decided I'm gonna try emailing my updates for a bit. Its far less conspicuous( and requires less logging in and such) in work so it should work out.

Last night I sat in on a Dark Ages Vampire game and put together my character while observing the goings on. Met some nice folks, Oli,Baz,Meg,Greg,JP and of course Colin who I already new. In fact most of the folks were at least familiar faces from Gaelcons past.

Tonight is AD&D and yet more character generation, But location wise it is next door and not 45 minutes walk away like last nights game.

Gaming during the week is a pretty new experience for me. I understand its kind of a necessity here as people like to have their weekends for whatever else it is they do apart from game, I know I'd be hard pressed to find time to game at the weekend.

The other thing I'm having to get used to is gaming without background music. The last time I would have gamed without and music was back in the days of the Game soc meetings in college. Since then we always had some music, specific mood music or otherwise. On thinking about it I suspect that most gamers don't have music during games. Anytime I've played with other groups certainly seems to indicate as such. I guess I didn't really think about it before.

Rambling a bit now so I figure heres as good a place to stop as any...



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Wednesday, August 04, 2004

The suit.

Tis policy in the insurance firm where I'm based to wear a shirt and tie. I don't like it. And am wary of falling into the suit trap. Y'see way i see it is everyone starts out the same. you wear the suit because you got to. After a while you start to forget yourself and become one of those guys who wears a suit even when you don't have to.

I gotta run. will finish this later.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

"I aten't dead."

I've no excuse. I really haven't got a clue why I didn't get round to updating this last week.
I must have been busy. yeah thats probably it. Anyways I'm here now.

Its been an eventful weekend. Friday brought late night poker and the D&D cartoon nostalgia fest much fun at the expense of the Bow of Complete Brokenness +20 .

Met lots of the native gamers and got beaten at cards by em. Actually I did ok-ish only Doc Dev and Ger (card sharp extraordinaire) managed to outlast me..

Saturday morning was Dragonlance, good fun even if I was half zonked from lack of sleep. Our motley crew of adventurers stumbling from one perilous situation to the next and somehow still managing to achieve all objectives and then some...

Saturday night was the Quartermasters birthday. Guy and Wayne turned up for the celebrations. Good to see the folks again. Everyone seemed in good form the food was good and the beer was a flowin'. Middle names were revealed.

Alan *chortle*.

An expedition of the flat earth extended family to Galway was decided upon. More beer and laughs galore no doubt.

Now I must go to work, where hopefully things are getting into gear...


Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Human Resources eh?

Today I was meant to find out where I'd be working, go there and get filled in the project details and me my new co-workers.

Today what I actually did was wait. Nothing else. Just wait. Reallly realllly boring.

Y'see I came in and laid claim to my "hot desk" and waited for the person in charge of scheduling to contact me as I had been instructed. After 30 minutes of this I grew tired and took it upon myself to contact this scheduling person, her phone was busy. 15 minutes later I manage to get through.

She is surprised to hear from me. This is not a good start. She says she will try and find out why I wasn't put in touch with the right people yesterday and get me sorted.. half an hour later she calls me back and tells me that I am going to be working for one of their insurance clients. however the manager she ususally deals with there is in a meeting until after lunch but she will arrange a contact for me then.

I abandon my now useless "hot desk" and go hang out in the canteen where a couple of the other newbies are in a similar state of limbo. however by 2 o clock they have all gone their merry way and I was still in limbo. So I call her and get her voice mail. I leave a message asking her to page me if she hears anything. I try to call her an hour later. Her line is busy. I finally get through to her at 3.30 and she answers the phone like she never heard of me in her life.
I ask her if there was any progess and she says no.

She then tells me to contact this guy myself.
I am at this point somewhat dubious that she has even tried contacting him.
anyways she gives me a name. I ask for a number she says get it from reception.
At this point I am almost certain she ain't tried to contact him.
she hangs up.

I have no idea who this guy is. I am assuming it is the manager she was trying to contact.
So I get the number from reception and try calling him.I get his voicemail.
I leave a message with my mobile number on it.

I wait. some more.

One of the girls who had previously been in limbo came down for a tea break with some of her new colleagues . show off ;)
anyways I get chatting to them and explain my situation. Really nice folks. they tell me to go home. I concede that this is a bloody marvellous idea. It is 4 o clock and even if I did get a call back by the time I actually got there and got introduced to people I'd not have time to blink 'fore hometime.

So I dawdle a little longer.I Leave another voicemail telling the guy he can contact me anytime this evening and that I'd really like to have this sorted for tomorrow morning.
then I go to reception and they give me the guys mobile number and inform me that he is indeed a project manager in RSA.

and I go home. still in frickin' limbo. what a waste of a day.

I'm afraid I don't hold much with HR. I haven't had good experiences with em so far.
I'm sure there are talented and helpfult HR folks out there ( I actually know one, but not on a work basis) and maybe I just been unlucky with the places I worked so far. Maybe this Lady was having a bad day. she had been out the day before and she did sound a little hoarse or something and she seemed to be in a lot of meetings.. Still I'm sure she could have delegated so I'm not sure I buy that.

Anyhow thats enough moaning from me. The good news is that the accenture staff I have chatted to have told me that RSA is a good place to be based some real nice folks there. Also I think a couple more newbies are based there too. So I'm sure It'll all be good tomorrow.
touch wood.


As an aside. I don't feel so good these days. I think its the change in routine + stress. hopefully I'll settle down when the work starts.







Monday, July 26, 2004

"This is the first day... of my last days"

..Well the first day of my new job anyways.

Today was induction day. Me and eleven (only 2 of whom would be working on the same project...) other newbies were sat in a room and had an array of people attack us with powerpoint slides. And The company HR squad dazzled us with their professionalism. we all got funky 'induction' folders. ( aside: I always think induction sounds way too much like Injection for my liking).

We had everything from useful stuff like how to fill out your timesheets to standard stuff like their various policies(holidays, disciplinary procesdures and stuff) to absolutely useless stuff like what the company branding is (their font and layout for presentations and stuff.).

Todays blog entry is brought to you by the word stuff. Apparently.

Anyhow its great we learned all about the great perks and stuff. they got insurance, assurance, shares,pensions, credit cards, cheap travel,masseuse, laundry service and even a service where you order a meal and they give you a home cooked meal to take home with you and pretend you're a great chef to all your friends..


At lunch we were assigned to some folks we would be working with. This was the bit where you found out what you would be doing over the next while. I found out I would most likely be working on a forestry project. but not tomorrow or the day after. in fact the guy I talked to seemed to think I would know when I was starting. So 4 o clock rolled around and I still didn't know who I was working for or where I'd be doing it. ( My situation was further confused by the fact that I had been called last wednesday to inform me I would be working on an insurance project.)

Turns out the person who's job it is to schedule us newbies work is away today so I won't find out till tomorrow. In the mean time I've been told to commandeer a desk and wait and see. Yipes. Still I'm not as bad as the guy who found out today that he is going to manila tomorrow!
he didn't know where exactly he'd be working either.

To top it all off I wasn't feeling the best. Very hard to pretend to be listening to the recommended colours to use in presentations when your stomach is doing cartwheels.

Still thats the worst bit done (maybe) . I'll feel better once I get my hands dirty.






Friday, July 23, 2004

The last man.

Been reading Y: the last man on Dr. Devidents recommendation. The Quartermaster has kindly given me access to his significant graphic novel collection. Y, Fables, 100 bullets, hellblazer and the like.  Y is pretty dang good, I have to say I'm hooked. calling the monkey Ampersand is a stroke of genius..

Just got me a new telly. Unfortunately It don't come with an aerial or a.v cable for hooking up to the cable connection. I think thats a bit odd but then it was v. cheap.

Met Mr.E for pints and a chat last night. Spoke at some length regarding the Dark Ages Vampire game they got going on. Have a mission to put together a character for the next session.. I got games coming outta my ass these days (metaphorically speaking) the Savage one has offered me a place in his D&D and there is an opening in next doors D&D too.  I'm not sure how many games I'm actually gonna be able to play and still keep my job and my girlfriend and put together a convention on the other side of the country... should be fun finding out though ;)

 

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

We Have Arrived

..Unpacked and everything. I am delighted with my new apartment. It has bizarre tardis-like properties. While it is only half of the ground floor of a house it still has enough space to store all the stuff I have accumulated from all the places I've lived in Sligo. And there is still loads of room.
I spent today picking up essential things like glasses,frying pans, suacepans,dishcloths and the like.

Took a spin on the LUAS from stephens green to ranelagh village. While it was nice to try it out Its not really practical to use it to get into or out of town for me. Stephens green is too far from work and the ranelagh stop is still a fair walk from my new place. And the bus runs from outside my driveway to o connell st.

I'm pretty much set up here now. My neighbours sorted me out with the wireless broadband ( thats right folks, this post is 'on the air' ) I got my hi fi set up and lo it is still good!

All I need now is my t.v. and I was pricing em today. Reckon I'll give the plasma screens a miss and pick up a standard 20" t.v on the cheap. I hardly ever watch anything but scrubs and d.v.ds any ways.

Strolling down grafton st. today was pretty neat. There's a great life about the place. Street performers and buskers and the massing throngs ( hehe missing thongs, sorry), Life is good!

*touches wood*

Monday, July 19, 2004

Finis

Well thats the last of the work here in sligo. I'm bloody delighted.. One less thing to worry about! I'm gonna have a few celebratory pints tonight, then tomorrow I make my way back to my new home in the big smoke.

Yup, Am officially moved in now. Most of my stuff is in the new apartment and the rest will be migrating slowly of the next month or so. Everybody who has seen my place so far is quite impressed. I't'll be handy come Gaelcon when the Sligo crew come up .. there'll be plently of floor space between my place and the Quartermasters.

Speaking of games.. September is looming fast and still lots needs doing for the con. Lots of good intentions floating about at the moment ( not least from me) , this week will be 'kick in the ass' week again methinks.

I'm just looking at all the crap here and there ain't no way all the stuff I wanna bring this week is gonna fit in my rucksack.
heres my problem.

Laptop - must come. need. do work. have fun.
C.D.s. -rack of favourites. sickens me to leave em. but v. bulky.
Guitar - I been picking it up pretty much every day and strumming a few chords even slowly picking up radioheads High and Dry. If I leave it I might let it fall into disuse again....
D.V.D. player - probably can survive without for week (have no t.v at the moment anyways..)
still.. its v. shiny.
Random board games(hills rise wild and Talisman) - so far I brought no games to dublin barring my rpgs.. again can probably do without. next door have loads of games
Shoebox of important documents
- bugger. I should really bring this. It wouldn't do for it to go astray.

Of course then there are the things that its just not possible to bring...
Computer Desk. 2 printers. and box of truly random things.

Oh well. I'll ponder it all over pints tonight. or not.




Friday, July 16, 2004

Spidey 2 comments.

I'm pleased to say I saw spider-man 2 last night and enjoyed it immensely.
It's a bloody solid film with great set pieces (the spidey/doc ock fight on the
clocktower/train was fantastic). Plenty of comic references (the Doc strange bit, a couple
of shots ripped striaght out of issues of the comic). Great SFX ( they've really cleaned up the
CGI spider-man). Evil Dead style camera shots and action. Some really funny scenes( the elevator is just surreal, but at the same time it could have come straight from a J M Strazynsci penned spidey issue.) and it leaves the door open for 4 villains for the next few movies. Also Kirsten Dunst is incredibly hot ;)

There were things that stop this from being a truly great movie. Some of the CGI isn't quite
up to scratch( some of the early Doc Ock shots are dubious), the dialogue lets the movie down in places, (Aunt Mays speech is notably long winded, perfect for the comic book but not so good on screen) and finally there is a touch of cheese in places...

Sam Raimi has time to improve though..Roll on the next three movies!


Thursday, July 15, 2004

Nostalgia.

I'm moving my stuff to my new abode this weekend. So I was out in my moms place rummaging through the stuff I had archive out there to see what was worth keeping.

God I had a lot of crap.
-Past its sell by date lichen (formerly used as warhammer terrain).
-Birthday cards from when I was 16 (not yesterday I tell ya).
-A whole bunch of those cd's you get free with p.c magazines with loads of trial versions
of things. fine except they were from 1990...
-A whole bunch of old gig tickets that have seen betterdays. Prodigy point depot new years eves 95 and 96. Oasis in cork (supported by prodigy 96) and some other stuff.

(Odd little synchronistic thing here - or maybe I'm looking to hard- last post I mentioned I had seen liquid wheel back in the day.. turns out they supported the prodigy new years eve 95...)

Then I came across photographs. Forgot I even had these. I'm not the kind of person who keeps photo albums or anything but I had photos from my 21st in (what was) the Journeyman. Everyone looks so young (including me). I got pictures of college buddies I ain't seen in years, pictures of some folks I used to think better of and Xaosseed makes an appearance too! All seems like so long ago now.

Anyways I binned a bag o' junk, much overdue housekeeping. time to move on!

Tonight is likely my last night in the Clarence for ooh god only know how long. I been going there since I started college back in the days of (not planning to, but I always turned out ) ending up in Pulsar on a friday night getting hammered and dancing like a maniac.

But more important than anything else.. tonight I get to go see Spider-man 2 ! Woot (as the saying goes..)


;)

*EDIT*: Man Walks on Fucking Moon
*END EDIT*

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Room 101.

This post is inspired by that (BBC?) show where celebs nominate things to be banished forever into room 101 . So without further ado my current list of things to be put in room 101.



  • Ignorant people

  • From that sour old teller at the bank who made little attempt to even mask her contempt for me to managers who won't take no for an answer to the shop assistant who , in a crowded coffeeshop at lunchtime insisted on taking the table with 4 seats and the big couch for her cup of tea while myself and my friend had to squeeze into a corner for our significantly more substantial meals ( o.k maybe I just wanted to sit in the couch still bloody inconsiderate though..)

  • Bills

  • Not people named bill, the kind that gets pushed through your door demanding your cash money...

  • Teletubbies/condescending kids t.v shows.

  • These are making kids stupid. I'm sure of it. I bet there are studies to say as such.

  • MTV.

  • Why don't they change the name to just TV, or better still Lousy T.V. there ain't nothing on there but jackass clones, reality t.v and fricking cribs.

  • Big Brother.

  • How can they call this reality t.v. East-"I want to slash my wrists their lives are so depressing"-Enders is more realistic than this festering mole on the ass of television .
    Seriously though Its so contrived, these people wouldn't spend two minutes around each other in "real life".

    I could dedicate a post to this one but Its just not worth it.

  • that last clue in the irish times crossword

  • Well If it weren't there I'd always finish it ;)



Eric Idle is still alive! This sites pretty funny actually. especially that german song..


*EDIT*
I done gone an' fixed it Ma.

At least kinda. ye can now click the "Add Comment(NoSignIn)" Link to go
straight to the anonymous comment screen.

Or ye can click the "Add Comment(Sign In)" Link to go to the comment logon
bit.

I'm afraid giving ye usernames without a logon is beyond my capabilities at the moment.

*END EDIT*

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

...And Exhale.

I must point out that bugger all sleep has been had over the weekend. and it ain't for the want of trying. Its because there are some people who are just too inconsiderate for words and morons, lots of morons. Anyways on with the recounting.

Sunday Morning
After packing away the tents and such we ventured to the main stage for breakfast and..

The Sawdoctors: Ridicule them you may, but these guys are great fun live and they have a bloody huge catalogue of stuff that you will know and sing along too. They certainly got the crowd going.

Daze: caught the end of the set. uninspiring.

Saucy Monky: feisty pop rock babes. Bloody talented pair of girls. I'd never heard of em before and wasn't convinced they were gonna be so good. The difference between them and Daze was massive.. I understand they're Irish though so I'm not sure what the story with the american accents was..

Turn: veterans of the Witnness festivals. Even with a brand spanking new bass player in tow and plagued by technical problems they guy were great. Cap'n Vane told me the lead singers voice was a bit flat on the day, but I couldn't tell. Even if he was it was still great.

Alphastates: formerly babelfish, wasn't too impressed last time I seen 'em. but they seem to have tightened up their act and were pretty entertaining.

Erin McKeown: Another discovery for me. Well talented. no band to back her up just her and her electric guitar. I'm probably gonna pick up her album. She's got kind of a PJ Harvey thing going on..

Pink: again I only caught one song , a cover of four non blondes "Whats up" pretty good it was too. Pink is one of the few MTV regulars that Actually has some talent.

Faithless: Caught Insomnia from the top of the Big wheel which was a bit mad. Another act that seemed to capture the attention of the crowd. I'm not a big fan but I really like "weapons of Mass destruction" which I was pleased to catch live too.

Bic Runga: Everyone I was there with loved bic runga. personally I'd buy Erin McKeowns album before hers, but I can see the appeal she is very good.

At this point I had to crash for a while a lack of sleep and miserable weather catching up on me so I missed Ash and Wu Tang Clan. The Wu sounded pretty good from the carpark though. When I finally managed to rally i went to see the end of

Muse: Caught the end of the set where they played the big singles. The seemed like a good show but Myself and Cap'n Vane got the impression we got the best of em. Again I'm
not a huge fan and I think there a bit of a one-trick band. Still what I did see impressed.

Basement Jaxx: Bloody great, Big big sound that you just have to dance to. They're really fun too. They played a mad mix of the White stripes "seven nation Army" and Nellys "In the club" . The hyperactive djs and the energy they get going is great.
Some twat climbed on top of the sound box and made an ass of himself mid way though the set somehow managing to take the attention of the crowd away from the main show for a few minutes. left oxegen to the sound of "Wheres your head at" fading into the background.

Darkness: Ok technically I didn't see em but we heard 'em on the radio in the car as were driving back. First off I think they are crap, rehashed big dumb rock sound that wasn't any good in the first place. However. I think that on the festival stage that sound comes into its own. Justin whatshisface seems to be a great showman to , lots of crowd interaction and joking around..

So that was the experience that was Oxegen. Really enjoyed it Overpriced beer and food, sleepless nights and and overwhelming number fo complete twats notwithstanding!

Now as far as my previous post regards comments goes. It seems that I was mistaken in my assumption that it is possible to post without a login. It ain't. That sucks.
however i'm happy to keep blogging away and if ye really must say summat ye can email me.
dave.mcgowan@NOSPAMgmail.com or the more persistant type can get a free account and use it to post.

i wouldn't bother if it was me though ;)




Breathe Deep..

So the weekend that was Oxegen/witnness. Bloody great. So heres what bands I seen and what I thought..

Saturday morning due to rain I found myself starting in the Green Room.

Stone Ocean: Not a great start, nothing mad new going on there but you had to
give the guys credit for their enthusiasm. A cover of outKasts "Hey Yeah" was
funny if not particularily good. complete with dancing "Babes".

God Is an Astronaut: Really good musicians. All instrumental stuff ( the guys didn't even introduce themselves or the songs.. letting the video wall do it all for em..) The melodys reminded me a little of nine inch nails. However these guys never give you a minute to catch your breath its heavy and loud. Each song is like a dirge built up to a crescendo then ending abruptly. Coupled with the harrowing imagery of holocaust victims and nuclear bombs it was pretty heavy for so early in the morning..

Automata: Discovered these guys last year at witnness. Bloody great. Some of the new songs they seemed to be less quirky than the old material, But thats a small complaint.
Again nice video show going on too.

liquid wheel: only saw a little of these guys while sheltering from the rain again in the Spirit dance arena. I heard these guys way way back in the day. they seem to have evolved a lot. Really nice funky dance music with real instruments and all.

Bell XI: Bloody great. Surreal Adam and eve apple head people walked on stage. Bloody great. If you haven't heard music in mouth, get it now.

The Things: again sheltering from the rain caught the tail end of the performance from these guys. The whole punk thing don't really do it for me. But as punk goes they seemed to be pretty good.

Buck 65: Still sheltering in the new band stage the american guy with a pair of decks comes on and does this crazy rapping thing. Really funny and talented. Does a weird song, rapping over an instrumental version of QOTS "no one knows". First new band find which is a tradition of witnness.

Snow Patrol: Started listening to these guys along the same time as bell XI and both albums have since got equal airplay. Their live show doesn't dissapoint, the guys really seemed to appreciate the crowd and played their hearts out.. however I had to leave early to catch the last half of ..

PJ Harvey: on the main stage, looking pretty damn good and sounding even better. Caught a couple of tracks from the last two albums. not sure if she played any of the older material but what she did play was great. oddly it was easy to get right up into the pit for her show.. bizarre. Reckon i'll go see her properly when she plays the olympia in september.

Orbital: One of the bands I HAD to see this year. they don't dissapoint. Great buzz going on in the packed green room tent. Fantastic version of The box (now with extra beats) and the brilliant "You Lot" from the new album. I went nuts to this. I stupidly left before the encore though in order to catch the

Chemical Brothers: the other band I had to see.. I ended up waiting in the bloody huge queue and even when I got in they hadn't come on stage. They didn't dissapoint when they made it on stage though. Opening up with "hey boy, hey girl" and following up with "Get yourself high" and either some kind of live fill or new material I couldn't tell. unfortunately the atmosphere in there was just thick with sweat and the smell of dope. I couldn't make it up to the front either and had to settle on a bit of dancing space halfways to the stage. And having danced myself into exhaustion I squeezed my way out of there.

Massive Attack: Caught a little of this as I left from the dance stage. hymn of the big wheel was on and it stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend..

The Cure: Caught a little of these too. Friday I'm In Love was great but they didn't seem to be too Lively..

I'll give you a little breathing room here and then post day two...



Wednesday, July 07, 2004

"These are a hard working,Simple Folk. Y'know... Morons"

Two posts in one day.. bet you weren't expecting that.

Just been reading Dixies post over at the 'coven.
Its a tale of morons at the top. I can relate to this (admittedly my story is not as
exciting.. can't see the CIA kicking in my door anytime soon (and not just because I live in the west of Ireland)). Y'see I been involved in these rather large EU funded IT projects , a couple of 'em now. You'd imagine that with the kind of bigshots that attracts these people would be either technical gurus or frighteningly efficient managers.

Its true that there are a lot of technically skilled folks at these things. However the Project managers and project leads and whatever they call themselves.. There are a frightening number of people just not fit for the job they are doing..

I'll cite an example:
Firstly the cast of characters

The overall project manager ,lets call him MR.T (I pity the fool), is the guy who proposed the project and got it approved. This is his baby and ultimate responsibility falls to him.

A representative of one of the companies involved in d consortium .. responsible for a relatively small but important part of the project. we shall call him Bert.

Berts end of the project is encountering some difficulty and grumpy is complaining that he does not know what to do.

Mr.T is trying to find out what exactly grumpy can do. But is having a hard time getting Bert to be a little more forthcoming with possible solutions.

Mr.T (already slightly exasperated): Tell me what you can do for us. Help me to help you.

Bert(frowning and making funny noises): I told you already what it is that is my state, I ask you now what should I do?

Aside: I should explain. Being an europe wide project these guys are from various countries and all with varying grasps of the english language ( most seem to be some kind of headlock..)

Mr.T (More exasperated): You are not helping. I am asking you a question so I can know who to help you fix this problem.

Bert: I am already explaining what is the problem.

ASIDE: ETC ETC. ok I'm gonna skip on here. eventually MR.T changes tact.

Mr.T (really turning some quite interesting colours): I cannot help you then. We cannot help you. You must look to these problems yourself.

Bert(angry): Oh I see you would have blame me for how far behind is the project.

Mr.T: I never said this.

Bert(more angry and frustrated): Yes, You are you are trying to blame me for all this problems.

ASIDE: Right this is where it gets surreal.

Mr.T: I would ask everyone to say if I am blaming Bert for these problems.



Mr.T ( to me): What do you think, David?
ASIDE: you read that right. to me. The guy is asking me to exonerate him from saying the other guy is a troublemaker. At this point I felt like I was in playschool again.

Me(way outta my depth and trying to be diplomatic): Umm I think that Bert obviously has some technical issues which we should try and resolve or find a work around between us..

Mr.T( not letting this go): And do you think I am blaming him for this problems?

Me ( Not liking having the attention focused on me at all): No.. I think we are wasting time though..

..and then their attentions turned elsewhere thank god. I get the impression that this kind of shit happens a lot though. All it takes is one person to behave irrationally.

Also I figured I'd mention don't be afraid to leave comments people. While I do enjoy hearing myself Clickety-clack, feedback would be good. Honestly If I didn't know ye were there (got a site tracker, remember?) I'd give up due to lack of interest ;)









"It ain't the years honey, it's the mileage."

In case you don't know the above is a quote from Raiders of the lost ark
which was apparently ad-libbed by Harrison Ford.

Reason it springs to mind is cause tomorrow is my brothers 21st Birthday. Something
weird is going on 'cause last birthday I remember, he was only 18. Similarily I sure as
hell ain't meant to be 25. That just don't suit me. 21 suited me just fine. So whoever is
messing round with time, put it back the way ye found it;)

Just finished reading the Wee Free Men ( theres a little video of terry pratchett talking about the book on the linked page.)
Terry (or T.P as I like to call him. now) thinks its the best book he's ever written. I'm afraid I must disagree. Don't get me wrong its good, quite entertaining in fact, but Its no where near the heights of Gaurds,Guards, Hogfather,Reaper man or Wyrd Systers. Thankfully though its a lot better than Carpe Jugulum or the fifth elephant. If I had to rank It I'd put it somewhere between Thief of Time and umm.. lemmee see... oh yeah Pyramids (which I like and no-one else seems to.) In saying that I'm a little behind ( not having read monstrous regiment or hat full of sky (and still not having read maskerade or some of the older ones)) so I don't know how a few of the books fit into my scale.

Someone else has already created a best to worst list actually. oddly enough while Carpe Jugulum which I hate is near the bottom. Hogfather (which I think is one of the best) is the bottom.

Anyhow in keeping with the time creeping up on me theme I'm gonna steal a piece of trivia from Cap'n Vane. Michelangelo was 25 when he sculpted La Pieta. What have you done?





Monday, July 05, 2004

Scoping out the big smoke.

Am in Dublin today, sorting out a few small details like rent and such. Had hoped to chat to the landlord(s) but turns out they are on holidays until friday. I'll be in Dublin on friday alright but only because of Oxegen, so I won't be meeting em then. Still I left my rent with the Quartermaster so that should be fine. I t would have been nice to get the key so I won't feel a bit cheeky turning up with all my stuff and asking em to let me in next time ;)

Its good not to be working today. Pottering around the big smoke, I notice the new luas lines will be running pretty damn close to my new apartment, which will be most convenient..

I'm hoping my new employers contact me before I have to start and let me know who I'm meant to report to on my first day.. that'll be pretty damn nervewracking if I just have to turn up cold. not that it won't be nervewracking as it is.

Its looking like the 21st will be my official moving up date.. gives me time to finish the last of my work, go out on the raz and say goodbye to the folks here and still have time to recover and set up my new place properly, shopping for essentials and stuff. And then go out on the raz with the folks here ;)

Anyhow. I'll cut myself short here. this is costing me after all.




Thursday, July 01, 2004

Spider-man, Spider-man, does whatever a spider can.

I feel there ain't enough spider-man in my blog. So to make up for my careless neglect I give you the spidey blog!

I've just arrived back from lunch and a quick visit to sub culture here in Sligo (a comic store run by a mate of mine, where I get my spider-man fix.) A small pile waiting for me today.
The Amazing Spider-man, The Astonishing Spider-man, Venom and The Authority:more kev ( spot the odd one out). Having a local comic store has brought with it some problems. y'see in addition to the three spidey related titles above I also get the Spectacular spider-man, peter parker:spider-man and Marvel knights spider-man PLUS whatever one-offs get run and graphic novels sub culture gets in. oh and t-shirts. I am afraid to try and calculate my comic expenditures.

You may note the Ultimate Spider-man ain't in there. Tried it, didn't like it. What ya gonna do.

The new movie looks great, I believe its only 2 or three weeks away. Early reviews say things like best superhero movie ever. I liked the first movie. All right I'll admit I'm biased but the first time I saw it I was dissapointed. The Goblin outfit was lousy (looked like a power rangers reject) and William Dafoes acting was wasted behind that dumbass mask.
But on a second viewing I realised that the best parts of the movie were the ones without the superheroics, just like the comics . It's peter parker that is the compelling part, not spider-man. I gather they have kept that and expanded on it for this movie, pete struggling to maintain a meagre existance while moonlighting as spider-man. And with Alfred Molina on board as Doc Ock (and I gather he does a v. good job) and the spider man animation and such improved I think this could be the superhero movie against which all others shall be measured.

Just to compound the comic book nerd image I got going on here. It's not 'spiderman'
it's 'spider-man'.



Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Generic Blog Entry

First a link:

The Penny Arcade Linksville library forum is a great place to find all thouse dumb flash movies and funny videos you may have missed.. Whole bunch of online flash games there too for those of you who just can't figure out how to fill those hours at work. P.A is great too, but you already knew that.

Then a mini review:

I picked up Orbitals new (and last album) "The Blue album".
First of all yes it is blue. Its a bit of an in joke, orbitals
first and second releases were untitled pieces with green and brown covers respectively and were known amongst the fans as the "Green Album" and "Brown Album"..see what they did there?

Anyhow its kind of appropriate 'cause this is Orbital going back to basics,
harking back to those early days. Theres nothing here as interesting as the tracks found on 'Sniv' or 'insides' (my personal favorite orbital album). Its kind of dissapointing in a way. I had hoped for them to go out with a bang in saying that this isn't a whimper, by any means and I quite like some of the tracks on there.. "You lot" with is huge monologue sample and "Acid Pants" is really upbeat and fun.

And finally some clichéd blog sign offs.
Now Listening: Bomb the Bass - Dark Heart.

The WeatherPixie


EDIT: We interrupt this blog entry to bring you this news.
Aging rocker in remake of prodigy classic

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

The unbearableness of being lit.

Finally things are firming up a little. Looks like I'm almost done with my work here in sligo. My boss is away until the 19th so I'm free to do some handover work next week with the other engineer here. Apart from that there is bugger all for me to do while he is away so I'm gonna spend some time getting my stuff up to dublin.

As I get closer to starting this new job I begin to feel a little anxious. I really am not sure what to expect. luckily there is still enough going on so that that particular though isn't getting much time to germinate..


"So I've decided to take my work back underground. To stop it falling into the wrong hands".

Looking forward to being in Dublin. Meeting up with the folks I get to see all too rarely
on a more regular basis. At the same time I'm gonna miss all the folks here in sligonia, tis the people that make the place.

Hell, there's already a few of the sligo crew in Dublin, maybe when I go the rest will realise that its the place to be and follow suit. Perhaps not.



Monday, June 28, 2004

Whatever>

Well my keyboard is doing that funny thing where fullstops are replaced with >>
This is annoying but I have decided to ignore it> so bear with me>

Oh and my apostrophe is now a @ < its like the shift key is stuck.
oh wait. It was. doh.

Anyhow something pretty shitty happened today which I'm not quite prepared to emblazon all over this site. I'ts not really important what it is anyways. The point is I've decided it ain't worth getting stressed over and that it would have been a hell of a lot worse if everything else wasn't going so well.

It seems that every silver lining has a cloud.

I apologise for being cryptic.

On a lighter note
and so it begins.


Friday, June 25, 2004

Confess

For those that don't know Thursday night is Clubbing Night for me. Aside: I always associate "clubbing" with the kind of crappy nightclubs that you went to when you were 14 with the THUMP THUMP THUMP all night long night with that in mind let me assure you my haunt (the clarence hotel in sligo) does in fact play actual music.

Back to my story though.. So I'm in the clarence and myself, Wayne and Guy grabbed the cosy seats in the
alcove in the front lobby and talked about Confess*. This is becoming a regular occurence. The front lobby beside the 'Zen' fishtank (it's empty) in the clarence is like an official meeting room.

I got a good feeling about the whole thing. Even just talking about it you start buzzing. We almost got the Games all sorted, the Xbox tourney is firming up, pub quiz is coming together , theres still a horde of details we have yet to sort out. Cheap accommodation for punters, prizes for events, timetable details, charity thingy and The construction of the Confession Box.

All that aside. Wayne hit the nail on the head when he said the most important thing is that people leave afterwards saying "that was good fun". I hope it all works out.

*for those that don't know, Confess is the games convention we are running this year in the tower hotel in sligo. 25th 26th september. Be there or we'll send the spanish inquisition after you¹.

¹ and no-one expects the spanish inquisition.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Crypto Fascism ;)

The title's a bit of an in-joke I'm afraid. I'm not going to waffle on about disguised fascism , or the U.Ss draconian cryptography policies. sorry to disappoint.

Technology seems determined to undermine my efforts these days..
I picked up Trillian to overcome the fact that I now have contacts on all three IM services (yahoo,MSN and AIM). only to find reports that Yahoo! are now blocking trillian from talking to their users. This is clearly because of me ;)
oh well back to using multiple IM clients for me..

this is funny RPG cliches. Not sure I agree with all of em, but there are some gems. an example is called for...

Ninja Rule. If more than three ninja are attacking, they are invariably cannon fodder and will have their asses handed to them by the players. The inverse is also true: a single ninja will be death on legs.

Especially true of games like feng shui where the p.cs will decimate hordes of Ninja mooks but when the Named character ninja turns up they'll have to pull out the stops to defeat him.

Picked up Kosheens album Resist last week. having had a few days to listen to it. I'm willing to stick my neck out and say its actually very good. Although it obviously won't be a patch on the
new prodigy album, which this site has some decent info on Dutch Prodigy Fansite.. Don't like the album artwork. Thankfully thats not what I'll be getting the album for.



Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Sony are evil*.

I mentioned a while back that I was gonna record the last few games sessions I have here in sligo. Well I did on my shiny Sony NetMD. I had a brief listen to it on the MD afterwards and it sounded good. Next Day I hooked up My MD to the p.c via the USB cable browsed to my new audio tracks and click the "check in" button. A message appeared "the selected tracks cannot be checked in" .

Huh? try again. same message.

try everything and anything.. nothing doing. Figuring I'm just not doing something right maybe the tracks were too big or something. I decided to go to the 'net to find out.
the first thing I found was this.NetMD for Minidisc to Computer*
Audio Uploading: A Proposal



I started to have a bad feeling about this.

Then I found The petition reply. and my fears were confirmed. I can't transfer my recorded audio digitally to my p.c. That sucks big style. There does not seem to be a discernable good reason why not either. In fact as far as I can tell all it would take to implement is a tiny patch to the Sony PC-side software. Sony seem to have taken a policy decision on this possibly for copyright protection reasons.

Anhoo what all this means is I gotta record the audio realtime to my p.c via the analog in so 4 hours of gaming audio will take 4 hours to transfer..Yawn.
Not a huge deal I suppose but its inconvenient.

Today I found out sony are bringing out new Hi-MD format, discs and Players. I get the
impression they will be less draconian regarding digital transfer of material recorded on the MD.

*This does not of course include the wonderful folks you gave me Ripley, my Sony Viao ;)

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

What a bunch of Total Bankers

WARNING: INCOMING RANT

Banks. Who'd have 'em. Ive had a bank account for 18 years. In the last year I've had more trouble with my bank than I've had in that entire time thanks to a breif fling with unemployment.

When things are good the bank loves ya. When they ain't so good you are lower than dirt. Others have said this to me before, especially about my bank, but never having experienced it first hand I've generally regarded such talk as hyperbole. It ain't.

I'm changing bank as soon as possible and even then I'm only gonna keep a current a/c everything else goes to my credit union.

Thanks to a few edits this piece is a lot tamer than it was, I am
pretty pissed off though. Anyone who knows me will know that don't happen too often..

Ray Parkerothep

Hehe.
While snooping for some cool pics of Cthulhu Mythos Entities (if you don't know what that is, shame on you. google it.)

I did a google image search for Nyarlathotep .Look at the bottom row of images. Nestled between the sanity blasting horror of a Cthulhu plush and a model Nyarlathotep...

..Is Ray Parker Junior.

Thats right, the man who brought us the Ghostbusters theme is in fact an aspect of the messenger of the Outer gods.
That explains a lot.


Google knows all ;)



Monday, June 21, 2004

Le Weekend.

Gmail offer still stands. No takers as yet.

As promised the news from the weekend.
Friday eve was a brief visit to Games night which is going from strength
to strength. All kinds of great stuff going on. The Flat earth Magic league in full swing, Space crusade, D&D and Axis&Allies: europe.

I got to play a little of the aforementioned A&A. Great little game. Also its probably the first time I've played it in more than six months (This will become revelant later). I only got to play the first round as Germany but Enjoyed it none the less.

Met Cap'n Jenny Vane from the train.(hey I'm a poet and I didn't realise)
pizza & beer ensued. nice.

Saturday was an expedition to Galway courtesy of my mate Joe we were joined by our resident talented git, Wayne. Anyhoo we explored games stores and generally pottered about. In Gamers realm (those nice gentlemen who will be selling their wares at Confess! end shameless plug) all manner of goodies tempted us. But most tempting for me was the new Axis and Allies A&A:D-Day (kind of a co-incidence I played A&A just the night before no?) . Wayne picked up the "Once Upon a Time" card game which we used to pass the time on the way home. Madness. Joe picked up the Complete Divine sourcebook for D&D which was later used for sunday nights D&D.

Soundtrack for saturday was Joes classic Oldies but goodies.. Beatles, rolling stones with a touch of pearl jam and bizarrely KISS.

Sunday I had to bit farewell to Cap'n Vane,Who is going to visit her sister in London next weekend so I ain't gonna see her for two whole weeks. Nuts.

Sunday night was D&D which I brought along my MiniDisc to record the session for posterity after having experienced RPGMP3. unfortunately my batteries ("Batteraziz!" Name the film!) ran out. But what I did get is pretty funny listening..


"You ask is this still what I want, on a tin can line, oceans apart.
My love you fear I'm drowning slow, but its too hard to prove what humming birds know"
-Hummingbirds, Luminous/Orbital

First come, first served.

Right folks.. I finally got my Gmail invites. I have dispersed some already but I have one remaining. So first come, first served. Send me an email

dave.mcgowanNOSPAM@gmail.com (take out the NOSPAM)

The first request I get will get their gmail invite.

Will post with weekends worth of news n' stuff later

Friday, June 18, 2004

Boing.

boing I know its stupid.
Moronic even. But It's strangely compelling. Thanks go to my bro for cursing me with that one.

Gmail going well. Still no sign of my invites yet. I feel slighted. everyone else is getting them but me. I'm sure I'll get some soon..

Been exploring over on trinity gamers theres a great line in fanfic going for the Empire of the one game ( or league2 as it is commonly known). Prolific is not the word for some of these guys (maybe ultra-prolific is??). It's even inspired me to try my hand at it.

Meanwhile today is the day we were meant to have everything sorted for Confess. Oops. Still not to worry. Kicks in the pants all round this weekend, then we'll get things sorted.






Thursday, June 17, 2004

Gmail

I got me a G-Mail account courtesy of my mate Stu. As expected it is v. cool, also its not "evil".

Your emails get grouped into 'conversations' so If you reply to an email and get a response back they all appear in the same page no having to go to the outbox folder to see what you sent last. It seems nice and fast too. I have had conversations with almost IM reaction times..

The targetted ads work well. chatting about the spiderman movie brings up spidey merchandise.

Talking about email brings up news articles about the new email services springing up all over the place..

but the absolute best thing is this:
"You are currently using 11 MB (1%) of your 1000 MB"

nice.

I've had this on my machine for a while but I have only recently started playing around with it.. Its a lot better
featured than a most of the other cd burning software out there. It might not look as pretty but gets the job done a lot better. One of the nice features it has is to let you create a mix cd by tweaking the audio directly before you burn it.

There is a registration option which gets rid of the 'Nag' screens but the trial is fully functional without registration.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

AudioRPG

RPGMP3.COM
A nice idea creating audio recordings of rpgs and making em availabe for all to hear..

some quotes:
from the Cthulhu "The Haunting" runthrough
"I've guy 80% proficiency with both shotguns. regular and sawn off..."

And from the D&D temple of elemental evil.
"I don't have spellcraft but I think he just cast invisibility.. cause I can't see him. anymore."

Quality ain't brilliant and a lot of the banter is lost especially from those players who ain't near the mike.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Hay fever.

I am just after getting over a pretty bad case of hayfever.
Not fun spending most of your day just struggling to keep your eyes open. I won't go on about it, those of you who have it know what its like and those who don't can count their blessings.

I set up some stat tracking for the site, so I can see exactly what kinda traffic I'm getting. I set it up with these guys. Even though I had an idea what kind of Info you could get It was still a bit of a surprise when I found myself looking at the logs and having a pretty decent idea who the various hits were..

I have received my new employment contract today. Nice.

Anybody ever heard of a little book called "The Art of Worldy Wisdom"?
I came across it by accident the other day. Its a good read, it contains
1000 or so little maxims to live by.
stuff like "the only reason to have great power is so that you can do great good".
I recommend having a peek at it if you come across it in a bookstore..
in fact here are some more excerpts.

Since It's gonna be my new home for the next while I have a request for those of you who know Dublin well. Where are the hidden gems? Those places where you can eat like a king for practically nothing, The pubs and clubs with the best music and people, The bookstores that can get anything thats ever been in print and suchlike. Share the knowledge people. I know you have it ;)


Monday, June 14, 2004

Horsies

I have returned from a most excellent weekend indeed. Done plenty of fun stuff which is always good. Friday evening I travelled up on the train with a bunch of folks who were heading to the Chilis/Pixies gig. I wouldn't have minded going but I'm not a huge peppers fan and I hear they're a weak live band. The pixies would have been great but I ain't forking out 60 euro or whatever just to see one band.

Saturday I popped into town to meet my prospective new landlord. The Quartermaster is living in the other apartment and did the introductions. Peter (the landlord) seems a real nice guy , had a sense of humour which is a good start. Anyways long and short of that meeting was that they were happy to have me on board. Wuhoo. Everything is falling into placve. Excellent.


Next on the agenda was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Cap'n vane,
After Mega portions of Nachos and Hotdogs. I have to say I really enjoyed it. Sure Its still a kids movie but the new director has stripped it down and makes a lot better use of the whole premise in my opinion. I gather the book is a bit more grown up too so perhaps thats a little unfair on the previous director. Anyways some lovely touches, fx are great.Dementors cool. Last half an hour is excellent ( I'm glad I hadn't read the book. That would have taken some of the cool factor out of those scenes).

After Potter the next port of call was the Swords riding school. Where I made the acquaintance of "Jack" a bloody great big gray horse. I've never really been around horses before. I never realised just how fucking big they are. Anyhoo we walked and "steered" (I dunno what word do you use for a horse?) and we got into a trot. Great fun, tough going though my thighs are feeling it today. We'll be back for more though.
Finally the night was rounded off with a real nice meal out and a few beers in Sopranos in Rush.

Sunday was spent recovering from saturday.

Sunday night back in sligo was my turn to GM. I'm nearing the last few scenarios of "Day of the Beast". Last session was in the sahara where a pair of crocodile mummies demolished the investigators numbers ( actually it was more the explosives the guys were throwing about willy nilly in the ancient tomb that did it but I'm not one to nit-pick )

So I decided to start with a new party for last nights scenario. A Miskatonic sponsored seismology expedition to deepest darkest Peru. Fun was had getting to the mining camp the guys were to stay at. Within hours of arriving they were already breaking and entering. and getting caught..

For my part much fun was had watching the new characters receive vital clues and scratching there heads because the had no previous encounters with the mythos or the elements of this campaign and genuinely thought they were on a simple seismological expedition.. While their players who knew what was going on were pulling their hair out...

Friday, June 11, 2004

Sneh.

For explanation see E.T
I'm off to Dublin to see my wonderful girlfriend for the weekend, also meeting my prospective landlord. News when I get back.

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Linkfest.

My brother pointed me at this.
Guess the dictator or sit-com character
Very tricky to beat, because a whole bunch of people have been trying to be
tricky in an effort to beat it and its getting "smarter" because of it. I certainly passed a few minutes with it...

A.O.N.O for all those who doubted me, in the immortal words of Nelson Muntz Ha ha!

David Hayter seems to be "The Man" these days. from humble beginnings as a voice over artist for the likes of the 90's Amazing Spider man cartoon, the voice of Solid Snake from Metal Gear.

He's scripted Xmen and X-Men 2 and now is moving on to do seemingly every comic book movie out there. O.k I exaggerate a little. But he has signed up to do Iron Man, The Watchmen, The Black widow and seems likely X3..

In fact his profile on IMDB indicates he is directing Watchmen and blackwidow.

please ignore the fact he wrote the scorpion king..

and finally ROTK EE
thats a shame I had hoped to see this DVD arrive by september at latest..


Wednesday, June 09, 2004

The League 2.

After much prompting I finally got off my ass and did some stuff about the
Ketsurians and where they fit in the "Empire of the one".
Its still as time consuming as I remember. *sigh* maybe I'll spend more of my downtime thinking bout it so that when It actually comes time to write something I already have it in my head..
..of course that assumes I have any downtime. I'm sure this'll all be made public on the forum at some stage but for what its worth the Ketsurians have gone through a bit of a metamorphosis. No longer the spear wielding savages that have been given plasma blasters, they actually know how to make those plasma blasters now! I'm picturing a bunch of industrious walking crocodiles with serious industrial capabilities and an expansionist ideal.

Which reminds me.. I still ain't finished, there was an email I had to reply to wasn't there, *sigh* again.

Well before I get round to that some other news.
I'm going horse riding this weekend. Yeehaw ride 'em cowboy and all that. It'll be no time till I'm running rings around german tanks on a white stallion! I'll settle for not falling off first though.

Also I seen somewhere that Kevin smith is gonna make a green hornet movie. featuring Jake Gyllenthal as the green hornet and Kato is uncast as yet. I think thats good news cause it means they're taking the casting of Kato seriously. I mean thats a pretty big eye mask to fill..


Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Grindstone.

So. Back at the grindstone. I had hoped to jump straight back into things and basically continue working in the same productive vein as where I left off last week. That does not seem to be an option today. I have precisely zero interest in working today. Nada. None. Zilch.

I feel tired (even though I had plenty of sleep) and I can't seem to get my thoughts to focus on things like JOptionPanes and XML parsing. Instead the internet beckons.
Son of Quote Quiz at the ever excellent empire magazine size.

Friday, June 04, 2004

My head hurts

"Oh Tequila, she makes me happy"..

No she doesn't mate. Lies and damned lies. Tequila leaves you with a sore head and feeling generally crappy.

So today I'm working from home. Ok. working is stretching the truth a little. At least compared to the work I been doing all week. being as how I only got up at lunchtime. and didn't start till 'round 2 o clock. and now I'm doing this. I think its fair to say my brain is not firing on all cylinders..

My condition has not been enhanced by my rather poor decision to eat in abrekebabra at 3.30 in the morning. In fact now that I think about it it was a little odd that they gave me that free chicken baguette..

So anywho, I'm gonna get back to it. This'll be my last post till next tuesday probably.. I 'm off to Dungloe for the weekend to chill out relax and drink beer. Later.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

The big reveal.

Right today is the day I tell my current employers I'm moving on to greener pastures.
I believe it will go fine and they will wish me well, maybe they'll even help me out with my scheduling problems..

However that paranoid little voice in the back of my head is saying things like "don't tell em nothing you don't have to.." ,"Watch 'em like a hawk, they're gonna try and feck things up for ye!" and "Where's your tinfoil hat? I told you to wear your tinfoil hat today?". We won't be listening to that, if at all possible.

In other news 'tis good to see the scourge of the seven seas, Cap'n Vane, paying a visit to my humble blog. She is a good sport and won't take offence to my previous posting regarding our disagreement over pirate lingo and all this talk of execution is just in fun. So there need be no more talk of that. Fine . Also she's great ;)

"Arr!"
-Black Davy Rackham.

p.s I'm won't be doing this a lot (largely cause I think there are few places that deser ve it.) But I recommend marx for your techie needs.

Also don't order a delivery from peats if you ain't prepared to wait . my 2 day delivery time became 3 weeks for Ripley.

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

"Cute"

My Girlfriend has just descibed my Blog as "cute".

This is not what I was aiming for. Do you see Pikachu here? Or kittens for that matter.
admittedly I don't really know what I am aiming for barring an easy way for folks to keep in touch with me. Perhaps I could got more technical like Mr Kablooie has in his design blog. I don't think I'd have the interest in it to be honest though. Easier to let him do the hard work ;)

I could do the 'review' type blog.. talk about movies or music or something.
or post fiction, or talk about games stuff all the time..

Speaking of reviews. Got me the new PJ harvey album. I like it.




Goodbye Sligo.

I been tellin' people that I'm heading to Dublin next month. Somehow that makes it more real. It's kinda like I could make all the plans in the world but until I actually tell someone I'm doing it , it ain't (yes I do use ain't a lot. Not in real life though.)really happening.

So like I say I been telling people, my work colleagues, mates and acquaintances.
This gets me thinking. I probably ain't gonna see a lot of these folks again. Leastaways not in the same way. Which is a shame. I like most of 'em.

It also gets me thinking about how long I've been here. Twenty Five years. Thats right folks I'm a Sligo native and (mostly) proud of it ;) All my schoolin' years I've been here. I've met a lot of people and done a lot of things here. And its been great, wouldn't swap it for all the tea in china. However it has been 25 years in one town. and its a big ass world out there and I've been itching for a change of scene for a while and I'm finally gonna get it.

It seems right to do this now. Events are conspiring that way anyways ( in a good way thankfully). Touch wood they will continue to do so.

Anyways enough sentimentality.

don't call me I'll call you
fair dues to him. Retiring at the ripe old age of 86.


Sunday, May 30, 2004

Swish! Nothin' but net.

I could have written this post directly after my interview. If I had it would have looked something like this.
"WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, IGOTTHEJOB IGOTTHEJOB I GOTTHEJOB. I KICK ASS!."

I've had a weekend to get over this and get back to reality so you don't have to suffer my gloating at the world.

So yes, I had my second interview and they offered me the job. On the spot too. I was expecting to be dangled from a thread for a while before they put me out of my misery but that wasn't the case. The people I've met so far have been great, the overall 'group' manager who I had the interview with on thursday was a good guy, real down to earth. I like that, nothing worse then Highfalootin'.

hmm. brain no work now. tired. me stop. update later.

except for this which has just come to me.
Faith no more - woodpecker from mars.
what an odd song. reminds me of prince of persia.
I really like it. not mad about the rest of the album.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Expedition Mark II

Well I'm in a cybercafe in dublin whiling away the time before my next interview. Yep, you heard right, they called me back. I'm frickin' ecstatic. This time round I'm being interviewed by someone a few rungs up on the ladder. But I feel good. Feel confident. Show me the money!

Seriously though. Everyone and their hamster are wishing me good luck. With so much goodwill behid me I could go into the interview with no pants and
still get the job. Just to be on the safe side, I'm gonna keep the pants on..

In other news "Ripley" is earning her keep. I have been up and down on the train more times than I care to think about. But I was hardly once bored 'cause I could always fire up the old IDE and get some work done...

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

just say Arrr!

Pirates say Arrr!.
Arrrgh! just doesn't make any sense.
Arrrgh! is the noise 3rd rate actors make when they get stabbed in movies
and comic book villains make when their plots are foiled by the hero.

just thought I'd clarify that.

Expedition Report

So I had my interview yesterday. And blimey if I wasn't thrown a curveball. I was expecting a java exam, as in heres a bunch of questions answer 'em as best you can you have fifteen minutes.
instead I got "here is a problem. Here is the slowest piece of crap laptop we could find, it has jdk1.2, here is notepad. you have 45 mins. go."

I didn't complete it. It's not that the problem was technically difficult but between nerves, second guessing my implementation and a laptop with a function button where CTRL should be ( causes real problems when you decide to move a block of code to a different method..) I only completed a third of the solution. V. disappointed.

On the bright side I managed to compose myself and I'm pretty sure I breezed through the technical interview. It was just a normal conversation between two people who spoke the same language.

The subsequent HR interview was trickier. She spoke HR-ese, "Where do you see yourself in 3 years time","Have you ever dealt with conflict in the workplace","what would your strengths and weaknesses be?" these questions may seem straightforward questions but there are right and wrong answers.. saying "I can't tell what I'm doing tomorrow never mind 3 years time." isn't what they're looking for ;)

I should get a call in a day or so to let me know If I have to do another interview or go back to the drawing board.. watch this space.



Friday, May 21, 2004

Polly Jean.

Been listening to tracks off the new PJ Harvey album ("Uh Huh Her" *EDIT* thats the title of the album and not a comment on my part, just in case you were wondering*END EDIT*).
you can find em here on her website.

'The letter' and 'Who the fuck'. I think they're fantastic, even better
than the tracks off the last (great!) album , which was my first proper introduction to her stuff.

And the best thing is I'm gonna see her live at Witnness ( Sorry, Oxegen .. still think Hydrogen would be a better name since it's Heineken and all. Maybe they're trying to be clever and not do the obvious.)

Oh yes. I have a job interview on monday. I'm both thrilled and terrified.

Fridays are great.


Thursday, May 20, 2004

Perspective

Another touchy-feely blog entry . Avert your eyes to this if you ain't interested.

Y'know what, sometimes you just need a good kick in the nads to realise that things ain't so bad ( metaphorically speaking of course). I was bitching about all this stress and how things seemed to be mounting up. And then something really important came up (no I ain't telling, it's not important to you, dear reader) and I forgot about all the crap I'd been whining about the other day. It paled into insignificance.

The important thing is being dealt with and doesn't scare the living crap out of me anymore. But those other things they still seem insignificant.Their false image of importance shattered. (give me a week though and i'll be harping on about 'em again)

I guess my point is (not that I have to have one, or you should expect one. This is a blog after all) that there's a silver lining to that kick in the nads sometimes. ;)

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Overwhelmed

Sometimes everything just happens at once. Good things and bad and either way they all seem to be one more thing on the pile of things that need to be dealt with. Which creates stress which I do not deal with very well.

People who can like, I dunno, 'switch off' that constant buzzing that is stress are alien to me. In my head all these things become blown out of all proportion and sometimes you just wanna crawl under a rock and wait till it all blows over. ( you cannot of course do this because by the time you crawl out from under that rock theres a whole bunch of new things for you to deal with cause you ignored the last bunch.. and none of your friends recognise you cause you're hairy and smell from living under a rock.) I've been told to make a list and prioritize. Sounds like sense to me. All I gotta do is find five minutes where I have time to compose such a list ;)

I've got an interview for the previously mentioned job. Or at least they're trying to set one up for me , It happened to be on the one day where I have an appointment I cannot possibly postpone. nuts.

lots of buzz about Gmail going on. Check google news. You know where it is.

I should be on commission ;)

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

News from the Edge.

People who ain't living here anymore often ask me 'what news?' . I am of course the last person you should ask this question of, for the simply fact that I can never think of anything that has happened when asked.
One of the more extreme examples of this is a conversation with the Flat Earth Soc Quartermaster who has lived in the big smoke for bloody ages now. We spoke pretty regularily on the phone and during these conversations the dreaded 'any news' question would be posed. 'No, nothing' I would say. This conversation was repeated many,many times.
Anyways, long story short It turns out it had completely slipped my mind that one of The Quartermasters close friends had a baby. Not exactly an insignificant event. Doh.
SNIP.
I had intended to write the latest news from sligo here to prevent a re-occurrence of the situation described above, but I can't think of anything.


Freddy Vs. GhostBusters

Also anyone who knows me will know what this means to me..
the new album and NME have heard some of it!!!

Random thought: Y'know when you get old and you can't work anymore. I want to still be doing something interesting. Something you can talk about and people will listen. I reckon voice acting is the way to go, Hell I think that'd be a pretty cool job now.
I don't have a particularily flexible voice or nothin', I'm lousy at impressions. But I think I'd have a good voice for that kind of thing. just a thought.

Monday, May 17, 2004

Its so shiny.

I got me a new toy.. Sony Viao. It kicks seven shades out of my desktop p.c. So far I ain't got round to really pushing its capabilities but I did try the Unreal 2004 demo, which it had no problem with.. no slowdown, no sluggish response. Nice.
Huge installer though, even for the demo, over 200 megs. I'm assured by someone more au-fait with the gaming SOTA that this is 'cause 64bit textures are the norm these days(back in my day we didn't have textures, and we liked it!), and that the full install is 6Gb! Which I think is daft. but that's probably just because I only have 40gb space on my laptop which don't equate to many games at 6Gb a pop.

the incredibles - now this looks funny!
Garfield - this I'm not so sure.

That's enough for now. Maybe more later.

Friday, May 14, 2004

One of then Co-inkeydinks

Woohoo!
I'm working as a contractor at the moment in sligo, but I have been looking at getting permanent work in dublin. So about a month ago I was looking for jobs on monster.ie and irishjobs.ie etc.. not having a great deal of luck (or indeed any).
One of my former workmates ( a contractor from india) mentioned to me I should try @ccenture, cause they paid well and seemed like good folks to work for.. so I checked out their website and sure enough they were hiring.

Now I was redoing my c.v at the time so I held off on the application but I mentioned the job to my girlfriend. She said she knew someone who worked there (small world eh?), anyways I got into contact with this friend who from this point I shall refer to as "the insider"! So anyways I'm chatting to the insider and I gave her my c.v to pass on to her superiors (if I get hired she gets a finders fee. sweet) after being on a buzz for a while and having great hopes not much was happening..

couple of days ago the insider comes back to me , her boss ain't sure if accenture are still hiring and when I check out their website again I can't see the Java developer jobs. "Ah well" i said "scratch that one"..

This morning I got a phone call from @ccenture HR. Admittedly they were just calling to get some more details (salary, job level, availability) but she seemed enthusiastic and fingers crossed I'll get a call for an interview. Time to start brushing up on those none existant interview skillz!

maybe nothing will come of it but Its really cool when life throws you what you need just when you need it.

in other news : Tekken 5

Thursday, May 13, 2004

"The Dawg! You are named after the dawg!"

doubts about Indy 4

Booo. Spielbergs doing another movie (which likely puts Indy IV back even further ). This one is about "the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics" ,. Oh well that sounds like a much better movie than Indy IV, good move there senor spielbergo. You have noticed that Harrison ford will be in a zimmer frame by the time you get to filming??

Still in the meantime theres always spidey 2 ,the new batman .. in fact the comic book superhero thing seems to have gone off the wall..Marvel have licensed practically all their characters.. even such non events as Sub-mariner and luke cage...

And it looks like Guillermo del toro is revving up to start work on Mountains of Madness drool.

I think Hellboy and punisher are the next two to hit screens on our Island..

Thats enough movies for the time being.
yeti sports : when you are finding it too easy to get work done..



Wednesday, May 12, 2004

test.

This is just a test to see if the blog by email feature is
working.

Hello World.

...bet that title's been used a few times for blog entries, but who am I to break with tradition! So this is my first blog so apologies if it ain't up to scratch. Dunno how much time I can devote to it. Sure we'll see.
I chose blogger cause of a couple of reasons:

1> Its run by google. I like google. Hope their free email thing works out, i'll sign up for that too!

2> Its got some nice features! post by email (which means If I get a fancy phone again I can post on the move..)

3> It was easy to get set up on.

I figure the folks who are gonna be reading this are my mates in Sligo who I will (all going according to plan) be abandoning for the big smoke pretty soon. But you never know maybe I'll attract a huge following. ( And pigs will fly.)