By request of Trina’s friends currently touring in Australia, here’s her engagement ring.
Archive for the ‘Diary & Events’ Category
Ring
Friday, June 19th, 2009Ubuntu or Xubuntu? It’s getting harder to choose
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
I’m testing out Ubuntu 9.04, and last night on a whim I decided to install XFCE and KDE to try them out, see how they’ve progressed compared to vanilla Ubuntu’s Gnome (I have Xubuntu on my father’s creaking old PC and the last time I seriously used KDE was in Knoppix a few years ago). Here, then, are my impressions from that brief session of messing about; if something catches my eye, I’ll probably write a more detailed account at a later date.
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Youth Defence Spread Lies About UCC Stem Cell Research
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
I awoke one morning this month confronted with a large, red, black and white poster, clearly designed to alert me to some hysterical cause. Little did I know at that point that it was only one of 4 on my street alone; with 60 others dotted across Cork and Munster - I’ve seen them with my own eyes in Fermoy and Rathcormac. €60,000 has been spent on these posters, apparently; though whose money paid for them remains uncertain.
To evoke an immediate emotive response, the billboards prominently feature large images of foetuses in utero, despite UCC’s stem cells looking more like microscopic grey rice. They make a claim of ‘lethal research in UCC’, strong words indeed, more akin to Nazi human experiments than poking needles into lifeless goo. As the stem cells in UCC’s research are imported from abroad, this ‘lethal research’ claim is incorrect and misleading - the stem cells are gathered from situations where ‘the life/death decision has already been made’ - that is, the same criteria for cadaver research. As you can imagine, claims that medical research on donated bodies by UCC students and research partners was ‘lethal’ would be thoroughly misleading. This is, of course, exactly the purpose of the campaign.
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To evoke an immediate emotive response, the billboards prominently feature large images of foetuses in utero, despite UCC’s stem cells looking more like microscopic grey rice. They make a claim of ‘lethal research in UCC’, strong words indeed, more akin to Nazi human experiments than poking needles into lifeless goo. As the stem cells in UCC’s research are imported from abroad, this ‘lethal research’ claim is incorrect and misleading - the stem cells are gathered from situations where ‘the life/death decision has already been made’ - that is, the same criteria for cadaver research. As you can imagine, claims that medical research on donated bodies by UCC students and research partners was ‘lethal’ would be thoroughly misleading. This is, of course, exactly the purpose of the campaign.
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I’m engaged! (This time its real)
Friday, February 20th, 2009
I’m a bit late updating this, so apologies to those for whom this is not news. After months of nervousness and considerable poverty, I surprised Trina with a white gold diamond engagement ring. I’ll try to get a photo here soon! I guess there are no excuses for not going into harrowing detail, so here goes…
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Football Manager 2009
Friday, December 5th, 2008
It’s that time of the year again when I cocoon myself away from the real world and tell little dots on the screen what to do, and whether I’m proud of them or not. Yes, Football Manager 09 from Sports Interactive and SEGA is out, I’ve been playing it for a week and I’ve got to say I’m beginning to enjoy it. It is much tougher than previous years, and honestly there are quite a few bugs in the match engine. However, everything else is practically flawless, and you really are sucked into this alternate universe. Thankfully SI release Football Manager just when Cork City FC’s season is over, giving me something to do for a few months!(more…)
In Defence of Atheism
Monday, November 24th, 2008“I’ve never yet met an atheist with a sense of joie-de-vivre… most of them seem to be miserable buggers… I am convinced that (atheism) … is directly responsible for the increase in drug abuse, in crime, and most specifically, in the five-fold increase in suicide that we have seen in these islands over the last 25 years.”The Irish Independent, usually a fairly sane publication with pretty good economic analysis (and more importantly for my Monday mornings, an awareness of Irish football), saw fit to give two-thirds of a page to a focused attack by ‘journalist’ Mary Kenny on ‘atheism’. While she seems partially inclined to bore readers with some jabs at the UK’s Guardian newspaper (she writes for a rival paper in England), the majority of the piece is a scathing attack on what she sees as the root of all our problems.
I am an atheist - I don’t believe there is a God. I usually borrow an analogy and say that “I’m an atheist like you - I don’t believe in Vishnu, in Allah, in Yahweh, in Zeus nor in Thor; I just believe in one less God than you”. Unfortunately this is not always tolerated. (more…)
Zoological Ontological
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Yeah, I sometimes go off the deep end and a quick comment on a facebook note turns into a diatribe about embryos and ethics. The comment didn’t fit on facebook (literally) and didn’t fit here (metaphorically) so I posted it over on a buddy’s blog, the ever interesting Zoological Ontological (catchy name!).
An extract:
Read the rest of the article
An extract:
So what happens if we begin manipulating genes and gene instructions to benefit mankind? If we can stop muscular distrophy, why can’t we stop genetic obesity? If we can stop genetic obesity, why not genetic susceptibility to depression? Or maybe some day, predisposition to sub par intellegence? In my opinion, these ‘ifs’ are simply a matter of time; They depend on scientific advancements to make them possible, not upon whether or not they would be used. Like drug abuse, prostituton or abortion, they will happen regardless of their legal status, and much more benefit would be had to control their usage rather than essentially assigning them to the kind of people willing to break the rules.Heavy stuff given that I usually struggle to add a witty comment to the end of the webcomic I’m linking to on any given day.
Read the rest of the article
Rick Astley To Perform At EMA’s
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Right, some may blame simply the infrequency of my updates for the coincidence of what seems to be a running theme, others won’t.
From Digg:
“We just received word from a reliable source that Rick Astley, the absolute god of the Internet, will be performing at this years MTV European Music Awards being held on November 6th.”
Hurray! It’ll be the first time I watch Music Television since they stopped playing music.
read more | digg story
From Digg:
“We just received word from a reliable source that Rick Astley, the absolute god of the Internet, will be performing at this years MTV European Music Awards being held on November 6th.”
Hurray! It’ll be the first time I watch Music Television since they stopped playing music.
read more | digg story
CCFC Kit Mock-ups
Saturday, July 19th, 2008
Football Manager is fantastic, in part for the ‘open’ nature of its graphics in that real or imagined images can be substituted or introduced into the game to give it that more authentic and engaging feel. The good lads responsible for the SS kits have set a standard with their designs; I’ve been a bit creative today so here’s my take on a few plausible-but-unlikely kits for the 2010 season for Cork City FC.
Click to Enlarge
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Click to Enlarge
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Spore Creature Creator!
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Will Wright’s burgeoning masterpiece Spore may have been in development for what feels like an eternity, but we finally got to mess with the toys he had teased us with all those years ago, today. The Spore Creature Creator is available to download as a trial or buy with a full set of creature features (the price is refundable against the full game, due in September… around my birthday… *cough*). You take an amorphous blob, fiddle with the spine, add a mouth (or two), a few legs (or a dozen) and virtually anything else you can think of, then watch as your Noodley Appendage sculpts a brand new creature. I tried to run it on Ubuntu with Wine, but there were some graphical glitches. Oh well, on to Trina’s Vista laptop, at least the Creature Creator gives the awesome guys at Wine 3 months to get everything running smooth!
Of course, as a dino-geek (you know you’re one, when your daily reading includes Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology) most of my creations have been of a decidedly ancient variety.
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Of course, as a dino-geek (you know you’re one, when your daily reading includes Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology) most of my creations have been of a decidedly ancient variety.
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