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.