A Canadian in Ireland

We have broadband!

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Just barely enough time to post little tidbit of geeky-ness.

In less than 30 minutes it's going to be 1234567890 in Unix Time.

While it probably means more to your computer than to you there are some celebrations going on.

If I was in Vancouver I'd probably head for the Irish Heather, as I'm not I'll just raise a quiet glass on my own.

If you want to watch the count down, or count up, you can click here.

UPDATE:

The brother sent me a screen shot of the big moment.

What have we here?

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Tipperary Institute were hosting Games Fleadh 2008 on Thursday. It a series of computer game programming competitions designed to get students interested in software development, programming, and computer game design.

I wasn't competing, my hand put me out of action at just the wrong time. But I was there helping out on the day. If you watch closely, you might just spot a familiar back.



Events like this are important because fewer Irish students are choosing ICT as a career. If the computer companies lose their workforce, they're going to start pulling out of the country.

The latest in an ongoing series

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At least they seem random

1. Another interesting sunset last night



I tried to get a bit of variety this time, shooting from different angels and using a tripod.

2. I am a grown man, so why did I spend last night looking at this and thinking "Cool!"

3. I don't care what you think, this is damned impressive.

4. Did it have anything to do with the lack of blog activity? Where was everybody yesterday?

5. I love cats, but they can be vicious, bloodthirsty little monsters sometimes. One of ours slaughtered a bird the other day and left the remains in the hall. I felt like calling a Crime Scene Cleaner.

6. Saw my first Vista PC today in the local computer shop. Vista looks nice, but I'd really want to sit down with it for a while before I pass judgement.

7. Some more interesting stats from my blog:

Visitor Country           Visitors          Percent 

 USA                         37              23.72% 
 Canada                      28              17.95% 
 Ireland                     25              16.03% 
 United Kingdom              16              10.26% 
 Netherlands                  9               5.77% 
 Portugal                     7               4.49% 
 Denmark                      5               3.21% 
 Australia                    3               1.92% 
 Greenland                    3               1.92% 
 Norway                       2               1.28% 
 Lithuania                    2               1.28% 
 Thailand                     2               1.28% 
 Turkey                       2               1.28% 
 Vietnam                      1               0.64% 
 Singapore                    1               0.64% 
 South Africa                 1               0.64% 
 Spain                        1               0.64% 
 Malaysia                     1               0.64% 
 Morocco                      1               0.64% 
 Poland                       1               0.64% 
 Hungary                      1               0.64% 
 Bulgaria                     1               0.64% 
 Cote D'Ivoire                1               0.64% 
 Dominican Republic           1               0.64% 
 Estonia                      1               0.64% 
 Finland                      1               0.64% 
 France                       1               0.64% 
 Germany                      1               0.64% 

More random thoughts when I randomly think them.

In my last few posts I've been giving out about My Opera for the problems it's been having the last while. But now I have to say my eyes have been opened.

A friend asked me to help her get started using a My Space account. I'd heard of it, of course, but I wasn't that familiar with how it worked. Still, I had a quick look and figured

How hard can it be?

Well, today we sat down and actually tried to do some work.

Went from to to and finally

What a shambolic piece of confusion. Navigation was non-existant, cutomization was rudimentary, and there seemed to be many broken and missing links. The help section was a joke.

I really should have put her on My Opera and saved us both a lot of grief, but that would have meant showing her my blog, and I wasn't quite ready to do that.

So, despite its (occasional) faults My Opera could be a lot worse. And a lot noisier - Walky preserve us from music on profile pages.

I'm MOW

Who'd have thought it

Of course I only found out a few minutes ago. I was all set to spend last night online catching up on my "reading" when the sky took an ominous turn....

Hmmmm, looks like a storm brewing. The next thing there's a flash, and a distant boom of thunder. Time to batten down the hatches.

Ever since my landlady's PC got fried by a lightning strike down her telephone line - her modem exploded - I've been really paranoid about unplugging my own computer in storms. So that put paid to my surfing.

It wouldn't have mattered much anyway, because the power went out about 20 minutes after the rain started. So I had a quiet evening reading poetry by candle light. It would have been romantic, except I was reading Ian McMillan

The Fog and Me
by Ian McMillan

It was so foggy today
I couldn't see my hand
in front of my face.

I know because I waved at myself
and I didn't wave back.

Today was busy yet again. Mom's gone mad buying plants in the end of season sales a the local Garden Centres. So besides transporting, there was transplanting. Including a crabapple tree.

So I finally get around to checking Opera and I find I'm Member of the Week. I never really expected it. Though, to be honest, I did wonder what it might be like if it ever did happen. It feels quite nice.

Well, thanks again, everyone. I couldn't have done it without you.

Keep the faith, whatever yours is.

Sorry it's not better news.

The weather changed, it was so heavy today and threatening rain. Nothing more that a light mist though. Unfortunately, I get these headaches that seem to be caused by changes in atmospheric pressure. Maybe I should pay more attention to the forecasts Sister Aya?

So I think I'm going to take a painkiller or two and head to bed.

I have a busy day tomorrow. Up to Dublin to collect the Mammy from the airport. Should be fun with the Bank Holiday traffic.

In other news:

Since getting broadband seems to be nothing more than a (fat) pipe dream, I bit the bullet and upgraded my dial-up account. I get more hours and I can go on anytime, not just evenings and weekends. For some reason I seem to be spending a lot more time online.

It's a marginally quicker connection (Every bps counts), but seems a bit flaky at times. I've had a few dropped connections since last night.

That's all I seem to be doing these days.

First there were the June patches from MS. That took the best part of a week using Automatic Updates on my dial-up connection.

Then Opera announces v9.0's release so I had to get that.

While this was going on Ewido decided to stop updating. I visited the website and found that v4.0 was out. So that had to be downloaded too.

And then ZoneAlarm releases a update. Add it to the list.

FINALLY, got everything down and ready to install. (After a backup, safety first kids!) It went smoothly for the most part, although I did have a small problem with Opera.

When I upgraded using the new installer I lost all my Opera Icons - Desktop, Quick Launch, Start Menu - the program was there, but I had no way to run it. (Ok, I'm not an idiot. I could have tracked down the executable and done it manually, but that's what shortcuts are there for.) I had to run the Classic Installer and tick all the boxes for icons to get them back.

Maybe that was the problem, I'd been choosing not to create icons on my previous upgrades because I ended up with two copies then.

Overall I like the new version, though I've only just started poking around the new features. The page preview you get when you hover the mouse over a tab is cool.

I haven't downloaded any widgets yet, because I bought a sync cable for my phone today. It comes with a CD, but that only has the USB drivers. If you want the actual syncing software you have to go to the website and DOWNLOAD it

WTF!!! A whole CD with only 17MB used, and they can't include the other software? The downloads are massive for dial-up too. All 30MB plus. Sony Ericsson should pull their heads out of where-ever they're stuck and realize that this is ridiculous.

</rant> Ok, it's out of my system now On the plus side I found a nice download manager called Star Downloader which has been working very well for me. And my connection has been pretty good the last while. (touch wood)

Also, the local mobile/cell phone companies announced that they plan to offer wireless broadband using their networks. Can't come soon enough.

Back to Downloading.