Via Slashdot, Ireland is putting on a bit of a show to celebrate their EU presidency this year. Vectorial Elevation is a cool, but no doubt costly little exercise that lets you control a bank of 24 searchlights shining over Dublin. Get yourself in the queue.
Archive for April, 2004
Dublin light show
April 28th, 2004Taking things too far…
April 24th, 2004Sometimes you come across people who take things a bit too far. This is a prime example. FFS, give the kid a chance. I know I’ve done the vanity domain thing with Luke (and probably with the next one) but recording that amount of detail?
If I get that sad, I hope our care system kicks into action.
Evolution
April 22nd, 2004I like Stephen Baxter books, when I’m in the mood. He writes ‘hardcore’ sci-fi that takes a few reads to fully appreciate, plus a google or two to understand the background science he bases some of his stories on, but sometimes it gets a bit depressing. This last two weeks have been one of those times.
When I’m not in good form, I don’t like to consider things like the ultimate death of the universe or the futility of evolution on Earth. I like to wallow, comforted by my own little world and the things that I can influence…yet into this comes something like Baxter’s Evolution and suddenly the whole scale of life hits me. Both ways. I’ve just finished the book, I’m in the ‘deep thought’ funk that follows these sorts of reads and I’m facing the birth of our next kiddie circa May 25th.
Altogether, they’re thought provoking, especially for a male approaching his middle years. If nothing gets posted, it’s usually for the best. The boy is behaving well again, thank fuck, so that helps, but it’ll take a few nights for the effects of being baxtered to wear off again.
I’ll have to stop doing this, but he writes so well…
A few piccies from Brainshare
April 10th, 2004Taken by my colleague Luiza. I trust she won’t mind me nicking a few!
There’s a strange convention in SLC when you cross the road. The ideal thing is press the cross button, grab an orange flag, then wave the bastard thing as you cross. Naturally we obeyed the law, all grabbed a flag and away we went, looking like twats.
This is the Port O’Call (the leftmost building), the fine hostelry we spent a large part of the week in. They’ve got a shedload of different beer, some excellent music and pool tables!
There’s no shortage of geeks at Brainshare. According to the estimates, there were about 6000 attendees this year, quite a jump from the last time I went in 2001. One attendee was Scott Lemon which was a bit surprising given his current job and the lawsuit between SCO and Novell. He takes good notes about the sessions, worth a read.
Anyways, there are lots more piccies over at Luiza’s site, so if you’re interested take a looksee.
Home again….
April 9th, 2004Thank Christ. 3 weeks away is a pain in the tits these days, for me and Jude.
I travelled over to sunny Utah to attend Brainshare 2004. As per usual, it was a mixed bag, with lots of good sessions, some not so good and some just awful. So bad you want to ask the presenter for the wasted hour of your life back. The best sessions seemed to be the ones where the Novell engineers dropped the scheduled slideware and just talked about real life problems and how to solve them.
I managed to get into a good old row with a republican about terrorism. Seemingly, nothing bad happened in the world prior to Sept. 11th – everything was cosy and peaceful and the IRA didn’t exist. I suppose I should have shut up early on, but the guy was so ignorant on the subject that he was begging for a slap. I should have walked away, but when my colleague started to commend Al Queda for the ingenuity of using planes to attack New York, he went into ‘I’m not listening’ mode which always riles me. Anyway, I told him what I thought of his attitude and we both stalked off.
Slat Lake City is a strange place. It took us until Wednesday to get to a decent bar where we could smoke. The Port O’ Call is the usual place that the Novell people go to during Brainshare. Thankfully, there were only a few rabid republicans there that wanted to thank anyone from the UK for the efforts in TWAT. Seeing as these were bikers, we didn’t argue with them.
After Brainshare, I went over to my hometown Dublin for a couple of weeks. The smoking ban had just come into force and it was a very weird experience to sit in a totally smoke free pub. Whereas you once had a bluey/grey fug in the air, now the only smells were coffee, farts and BO. I’m still undecided on the whole thing since I can see the point of it, but not to have even a little glass box to go into for a tab is a bit harsh. I hope it never gets implemented over here, or if it does that people show a bit more backbone…
