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And again 2005 October 23 20:18

Posted by diamond in : Cycling, Work , add a comment

Slept 14 hours last night, which was badly needed. And then myself and dan made another trip to birdhill and back today (36km @ 23.1kmph). Really glad we managed to do it twice in one weekend. I’ve spent the rest of the day sitting in a tired stupor in front of the tv. Finally managed to rouse myself enough to get to irc. Hmm. Is that an improvement? ,-) Have a 10am meeting tomorrow, so i’ll have to get up at some reasonable hour. Oh well.

Talk! 2005 October 22 18:00

Posted by diamond in : Cycling, Random, Skynet , 5 comments

Took the last 2 days off work to try and catch up on sleep, and hopefully get some work done at home. Hah. Well, the catch up on sleep bit was a success, but to no avail (see later). Got up late on friday, watched The Bourne Supremacy on dvd with molc (quite a good movie. nothing at all like the book(s), but good nonetheless). Then i happened to notice that colmmacc logged onto irc looking for some skynet committee people, turned out the 2 heanet speakers had arrived in limerick and were vaguely wondering where things went from there.

Kidnapped them, took care of them for the evening, watched some Bill Bailey before the talks, went to Luigi Malone’s etc. Mild concern then arose as to the location of the google talker, but he did indeed turn up in the end, to my relief -) Both sets of talks were excellent. In my tortured mind, it was my two of my three most desirable-to-work-for companies (the other being canonical, the company behind ubuntu) vying for the top spot.

After the talks we all retired to the sports bar on campus and i had to drag thomas (of google) in particular out of there at the end of the night as he was quite committed to discussing various topics all night -) The heanet guys were getting the 9.25 train back to dubin this morning, and i toyed with the idea of providing liftage for such, but i eventually wimped out due to the late hour and the fact that i had work today from 10 till 5.

As it was, things worked out worse than i hoped (no, not for the heanet guys, they got home fine ,-). Got to bed around 2, tried to sleep. Couldn’t. Figured out around 6am that i’d forgotten myself, in the pub, and had drank 2 glasses of coke -/ Caffiene is a bad idea when you’re trying to sleep at the best of times, and has extra unwanted sideeffects for me related to my existing non-sleeping condition. Finally conked out around 6:30, giving me a little under 3 hours sleep. Not good for someone who has to get up and wash dishes for 7 hours.

Survived surprisingly well in work, had my lunch break around 10:30 which gave me some much needed fuel for the rest of the day. Afterwards, myself and dan went for a cycle. Took a bit of convincing dan to get him to go as he hadn’t slept well last night either, and was feeling stiff tired and sore after work. The plan had been to cycle out to daly’s cross (a 21.3km round-trip), which would be the furthest we’d done together. Instead, we were feeling much better than we expected when we got to daly’s cross, so we continued on to birdhill and back. 35.8km @ 24.7kmph. We’re both delighted at the progress. This is only the 2nd cycle we’ve done togther over 10km in length. Hoping to do the same again tomorrow (birdhill and back). Woo to progress -) Seriously considering buying a decent racing bike in 2 weeks time (when i get paid basically). There’s a very very nice one in town for €750, including carbon-fibre forks. Mmmm tastylicious.

There was an secondary motivation for me for the cycle today. Yesterday i ate more food than i think i’ve ever eaten in one day. For breakfast yesterday (around 2.30pm) i ate half a box of Kellogs Start (i’d eaten the first half the previous night while watching The Exorcist), and was stuffed. About an hour later, molc cooked a pasta bake (the dish holds enough food for 4 decent meals) of which i ate 2/3rds, and was stuffed. Then, the heanet guys were hungry, so i went with them to Luigi Malones for company and decided i’d have the nachos grande to nibble on, of which i ate about 2/3rds, and was stuffed (yes, i did actually leave food behind -P). Then, after the skynet talks, we got served 2 massive platters of food in the pub, of which i ate a small mountain’s worth, and was stuffed. I weighed myself yesterday morning (before breakfast, before getting dressed): 76.6kg. Weighed myself this morning (same deal): 78.6kg. Oops. I should really stop doing that.

Mini-poll: are my blog posts too long? I seem to write these really rambly ones that go on for ever. I’m wondering if people even read this far before getting bored. Comment welcome ,-)

Poll 2005 October 20 19:51

Posted by diamond in : Cycling, Random , 14 comments

This has been on my mind for the past 6 months or so, and i’m wondering what other peoples opinions on it would be: should i lose the long hair? The main motiviation is maintenance. It takes 30-40 mins in the shower to wash it properly as it’s incredibly thick, and it takes a day to dry. Between the cycling i’m currently doing, and the ju-jitsu and basketball i hope to go back to, it’s becoming a real pain in the ass. That said, i’m always very cautious about making changes that i can’t easily revert. It’s taken 3 years to grow my hair this long, and the thought of regretting getting it cut and having to go through the first 1.5 years again is not pleasant. So, comments below, please ,-)

In cycling news, went for a very wet cycle with dan this evening. It was pouring rain, and very dark, so we went around the tech park a few times. 19.8km @22.6kmph. A long hot shower afterwards was a welcome reward -)

Whose dead eyes are those? 2005 October 19 15:39

Posted by diamond in : Random , 1 comment so far

Oh. They’d be mine. Looked in the mirror this morning, scared myself with the massive dark circles under both my eyes. Look like i’ve been in a fight. The area all around them was red raw last night as they were watering all day and i had to keep rubbing them to see straight. Here’s hoping for a decent amount of sleep tonight, and not the 2.5 hours of trying to get to sleep that i had last night -/

Today i was asked if i wanted to be a singer in an industrial/heavy metal band, which was a first ,-) Not sure if i have the time/ability, but it’s somewhat tempting anyway.

Another first (well, technically 2nd, but the first was about 5 years ago) was going to the debating union meeting last night. The motion was “That this house would lower the age of consent fo 15 (for everything)”, quite a contraversial topic -) It was quite a decent debate, with the opposition winning 11-9 in the end. Went to the pub afterwards with the deb-u crowd, and they twice attempted to knock me backwards off my stool for the calibre of my jokes, which i take as a compliment -) I’ll probaly go back in a couple of weeks time, i may even be tempted to speak at some point, with my own unique blend of pedanticism and ‘wit’.

As it happens, the person who ended up sitting beside me in the pub is the charperson of the clubs and socs council (which i’m now bound to attend. *shakes fist at dan*). A Plan was formed, for the next council meeting (next Tuesday). More info if we pull it off.

Surprisingly sociable 2005 October 18 14:04

Posted by diamond in : Work , add a comment

I’ve spent most of the last 2 days doing demos for the csis stand for the ul open days. My demo was a sound synthesizer, using puredata hooked up with a tactex touch pad as an input. I’d written the module for pd to allow this well over a year ago, but we’d never used it. It’s nice to see stuff like that being used after all. Mikael made the sound generators.

I have to say, over the last 1.5ish years i’ve become much more open to the field of electronic music that mikael loves. I’ve spent most of my time at the stand playing with the touch pad, experimenting with the different types of noises you could make. I think my favourite is the one that sounds like whales. It’s surprisingly fun, and i was quite unprepared for the amount of interest that was shown in it. I think last year no-one cared much about what i was demoing, and i was expecting that to be a constant.

I was also surprised at how sociable i was for the duration. I’m not very keen on large groups of people, especially those that i don’t know, and am expected to interact with. I tend to just avoid situations like that in general. The fact that there were many cute (but far too young!) girls in attendance didn’t hurt i guess ,-)

I had one complaint from the kemmy buisness school stand about 30 feet away. A guy dressed in a three-piece suit, looking exactly like your stereotypical buisness… ‘person’ came over and asked was the sound absolutely necessary. I replied that it was the whole point of the demo. I offered to lower the volume a bit, but that didn’t seem to satisfy him. He told me that in buisness this was what was referred to as a ‘negative externality’. I managed to keep a straight face, but i don’t know how.

Had lunch today with mikael, and he asked me how i felt about doing some microcontroller programming for a couple of days, to which i happily replied “wonderful!” -) It’s been ages since i’ve done any really low level programming, and it’s stuff i used to love, so i’m looking forward to getting back into it (though i expect to be very lost for a while). The idea is to program the microcontroller to measure the frequency of a signal on one of it’s pins, so we can take readings from the ~16′ theremins standing in our lab. This, in my book, is cool. -)