| (no subject) |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|02:20 pm] |
Just cleared old texts out of my phone. There must have been something floating in the air over in Las Fallas festival in Spain (ashes?) back in March, cause I found the following texts sent by me to Mackers at around 4 in the morning:
There are four sides to a sausage - inny, outy, lefty and righty.
Sharks sliding down inclines.
I can't get over how much he looks like johnny depp.
(Mackers:)There are 5 sides to a sausages. North, south, east, west and mystery.
What about strange and charmed sausages? [*]
I'm gone sending to outer space, to find the sausage's race.
That music is like a spanish version of david byrne, ay.
Memorise that mnemonic, fucker.
I need a bubonic plague like i need a falla in the head.
[*] This is a reference to the six flavours of baryonic quark. |
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| Sims 3 |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|03:13 pm] |
Have never played the Sims before, or even seen it played. However, the new one, Sims 3, seems to have an amazing level of AI and personal interaction.
I'm now totally addicted to this blog. The story is a bit of a tearjerker. It's long, but totally worth it.
The guy has created a homeless father and daughter in the game and is watching them struggle to survive and get through their trials and tribulations. There are so many moments where the game takes an unexpected turn and displays real humanity that it's hard to believe there isn't a heart beating in there somewhere. |
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| Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with this review |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|11:14 am] |
What does everyone think of Wolfram Alpha? The demo looked amazing, but I'm having trouble getting it to show me anything not simply taken from the CIA World Factbook and medical and chemistry journals.
I'd rate it like this:
Source data: Meh. I could have got most of it easily myself. For example, Google already solves mathematical equations if you type them in the search box.
Natural language processing: Not fabulous. You can type in stuff like "$1 in 1950" and it extrapolates its value in modern money; but then I tried entering "£1 in 1950":
£1 in 1950
WA isn't sure what to do with your input - Fail.
GB£1 in 1950
Assuming GB is gigabytes
£1950 in GB (inch British pound gigabytes) - Where did inches come from? Fail.
GBP1 in 1950
WA isn't sure what to do with your input - Fail.
Presentation of results: This is quite frankly awesome. Food is shown with a nutritional label, maths has a graph drawn, comparison of values uses a barchart, information breakdowns use pie graphs, etc. It's very clever at figuring out the best way of portraying the info. I wonder if they just use rules here or if it's more interpretive.
Conclusion: Still very much in beta. But watch this space. It's nice to have all the info centralised, and the output is very user friendly. |
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| Further north and south you've ever been? |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|12:11 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Tricky - Strugglin' | ] |
Furthest north
Tampere, Finland. 61.5 degrees north of the equator.
In December 2007 I had a long weekend in Helsinki. I flew directly in but on the way home I got the Ryanair gig from Tampere, the third largest city in Finland. Typical garden toolshed Ryanair airport. Check in desks closed (they had only 2), so I walked straight into the X-Ray area and told them I hadn't checked in. The bloke tells me this will be a problem. He goes off and comes back with a guy with a checklist.
"What's your name?"
"Jonathan Dowling."
*tick*
"OK, you're checked in now."
Runner up:
St. Petersburg, Russia. 59.9 degrees.
Absolutely gorgeous city, full of grandiose architecture and Fatherland authoritarianism. Don't ask a cop for the time, though.
Furthest south
Akaroa, New Zealand. 43.8 degrees south of the equator.
It's a French town formed by French settlers who were given permission to build a colonial town in the British territory of New Zealand. The French captain sailed all the way there with his passengers only to find that the British had got to New Zealand first and claimed it for Britain. In gentlemany style, he accepted this, and asked permission for his passengers to land anyway. The British official he dealt with was equally gentlemany and allowed them to land and build a French town, which would be under the juristiction of British law. To this day, the town is still French, with French signs, architecture, and heritage. And it's all located in the centre of a giant volcanic caldera. Switch to the aerial mapping to have a look.
Runner up:
San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. 41.15 degrees.
Gorgeous town in the Argentinian Andes. They have a chocolate museum! Me gusta mucho el chocolate! |
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| Car list |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|02:07 pm] |
Nerds like lists, so here's another list.
Things wrong with my car
1. Squeaky windscreen wipers
2. Windscreen wipers don't wipe all the water off the window
3. Strong burning smell when you turn on the air fan
4. Compulsive oil leaks (see #3)
5. Key zapper needs to be pressed around 5 times before it works the locks
6. Steering drift
7. Sticky gears
8. Gear grind when entering reverse
9. No rear window wiper (car design fault)
10. The place is a filthy shambles |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|12:43 pm] |
Good to see people on here starting to update again.
Facebook hog really took over, but you can't write much on that. I'm not too into microblogging, not enough info and most of it is unintelligible. Someone said recently that if most of your tweets are responses to other people's tweets, you're not using it correctly. Seamus, I'm looking at you.
Also, can we have rule for parties: No iPhoning or Laptop IRC crap, please! |
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| MTV - Must Try Veryharder |
[Feb. 21st, 2009|02:32 pm] |
Article that proves MTV are falling ever further down the toilet. They'll be at the sewage treatment plant before long.
They plan to turn around their ratings decline by launching... not music... but yet more reality shows. One of which, College Life, won't even have a camera crew, they're just going to give the cameras to the students, who will record themselves talking to the camera. Have these guys not heard of Youtube?
Absolutely priceless quote from MTV's president Brian Graden:
"These new series reflect Generation 'Why Not?' living, working and playing on their own terms, 'adventure capitalists' if you will, pursuing a variety of thrill-seeking 2.0, express-yourself enterprises."
Epic haha! |
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| Foods |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|03:07 pm] |
Was at a business conference there a while back and we were talking about data mining - searching for patterns in information. The Polish guy presenting was a globaliser's wet dream - fluent English, well educated, good personality. Really scary if you're worried about outsourcing though.
Anyway, he mentioned a study done in the US which found that people are more likely to buy a product if it starts with the same letter as their own name. This sounds like prize B.S., but he assured us it was true, backed up by research. For example, Alex likes to buy apples.
I was thinking of what food that would leave me with -
The J's
Jelly
Juice
Jam
Jolly Ranchers
Jellybeans
The hardest would be the guy in work, Quill -
The Q's
Quorn (artifical carb replacement)
Quince (a bad-tasting tropical fruit)
Quiche
Quinoa (a South American grain)
Wikianswers also has Quail and Quesadillas. Yumm. |
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| I'd Like To Comment |
[Jan. 9th, 2009|05:24 pm] |
Creating a comment function on any website, particularly one obsessed with popular culture, is a surefire way to elicit all the vile language and pointless vitriol that Internavigators are so famous for. Youtube comments are no exception.
Recently, after watching a mentally deranged, anger junkie, ADD arsehole tear up everyone who opened their mouth after watching a video, I made the mistake of getting involved. DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!
Here's how it went...
( Not for faint of heart )
Damn the function that allows you to find out what country users are from. And damn Youtube! |
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| Facebook thoughts |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|05:33 pm] |
- Facebook is a more accurate reflection of life
"I met X the other day. According to FB, he's going out with someone now."
"Really? He denied that when I saw him last."
"Yea, but what FB says overrides that. It's a more accurate reflection of reality."
"Explain."
"Well, in order to deny it to your face, he just has to deny it. But to mark himself in a relationship on FB, he has to edit his profile, then change the selection, then save it. Why would he do that unless it was real?"
- Facebook is the evolution of the soap opera as vicarious living
People complain nowadays that people are living virtual lives online and taking more interest in these affairs than real life. But folks have been doing that for decades. The soap opera is exactly the same construct: an unreal world filled with imaginary characters that many people take more interest in than their real friends' lives. But when it comes to soap operas, you don't hear outcries over how humanity is losing its social skills and preferring artifice to the concrete - society has adapted to this type of voyeurism and it's simply seen as representative of social interest in human drama and interaction.
- Scrabbulous is a damn fine game |
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| GPS Moment |
[Dec. 18th, 2008|06:49 pm] |
Last night I was heading out of town using the SatNav. As you approached the canal towards Ballsbridge, you couldn't turn right, so the satnav said to go through the lights and make a series of left turns. There was a landrover in front of me. I got to the turn which was a tiny alleyway and was surprised when the landrover turned into it as well.
Up ahead, I could see there was a sign telling us that the left turn we wanted wasn't available, as it was a one-way street. The landrover stuck his indicator on to turn down it, realised, then started doing a U-turn.
Looks like he was using the same dodgy out-of-date mapping of Dublin as me. :) |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 16th, 2008|08:31 pm] |
Hello Internet, whatcha knowin.
I'm just back after 3 weeks road trippin around Argentina. I visited Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. South America is certainly a place to bring out the emotions: great beauty, amazing food, high quality of life, but with huge social inequality and constant political instability. I didn't take notes along the way so it will be a long time before I write it up. |
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| Russian Socialism |
[Oct. 15th, 2008|06:08 pm] |
Am writing up a detailed diary of the whole Latvia and Russian adventure, but below is an account of the most interesting day.
( Action Packed Day ) |
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| Latest hollyers |
[Oct. 12th, 2008|06:27 pm] |
I just spent the last week in Riga Latvia and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Surprisingly, couldn't find a single thing going on in Riga.
St. Petersburg is an absolutely beautiful, civilised place, filled with wonderful architecture and art, wide, grand, spotlessly clean avenues, gold leafed monuments, Venetian canals, and top notch restaurants and bars. A huge, bustling place as prosperous as Paris, Milan or London.
Pity about the people though. Russians are the rudest, coldest people I've ever encountered. I know they've had a harsh history, but so has Latvia, where customer service is a concept that is understood. They order you around authoritatively constantly. You'll be told "Nyet!" (NO) all the time when you break the rules. It's a language that is ideal for a brutalist, harsh country where the police are the most dangerous people you'll encounter on a dark street.
That said, it was a week filled with adventure, excess, and wonderful moments.
( Current Status ) |
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| Che Tee |
[Oct. 3rd, 2008|07:40 pm] |
Che Tee |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 24th, 2008|07:36 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Flight of the Conchords | ] |
From Russian Embassy With Love
-or-
Nightmare on Orwell St.
Came home from South America
Filled in passport form
Rang Tallaght Garda station to get their address - they didn't know
Found Tallaght Garda station by identifying it in an aerial photo on Google Maps, got garda to sign my shit
Sent off form
Got passport back
Got Russian accommodation company to fax invitation letter to Dave
Dave posted letter to my gaf
Filled in Russian visa application
Sent off form as registered post with registered SAE and with postal order and photos attached with paperclip
Received An Post form in letterbox saying they'd missed me
Looked up Tallaght Sorting office on internet
Picked up letter from sorting office
Letter informed me that I hadn't filled out part of form that wasn't even relevant to me and passport photo wasn't glued along in accordance with instructions
Wrote "N/A" in part of form that wasn't relevant to me and glued on photo in accordance with instructions
Posted off form as registered post with postal order and another registered SAE
Still hadn't heard back around 10 days later
Headed for Russian Embassy
Joined long queue of Russian people getting hassled by their own countrymen over tiny problems with their passports
Lied and jumped the queue by claiming that I was only there to pick up my completed passport
Was told they'd already sent passport back to me several days ago
Started to panic - got reg number
Found Tallaght Sorting Office, headed in without form
Guy gave me letter they were holding for me even though I'd no form
Letter contained passport with Russian Visa!! Yay!!!! |
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