Thursday, November 30, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Twenty-three: Don't leave messages, they'll only f*ck it up... Instead, just say you'll ring back and follow through ;]

Monday, October 23, 2006

€9.45 for soup and a sandwich, are you high?

Call me an idiot, but I just paid €9.45 for a Medium soup and a sandwich, take-out. That's the final straw. I refuse to pay for lunch anymore unless I'm sitting in a place having it served to me.

€9.45, ask me boll**ks!


Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Institute of Advanced Motoring

Since I got my car, I've been paying through my nose for car insurance. I'm 22 and on a provisional licence, you probably have felt my pain...

One way of reducing my insurance is by doing the IAM Provisional Ignition Test. It's a 1-hour advanced driving test and costs €70. It's pretty much the learner equivalent of the full Ignition test (only shorter...)

I rang the IAM to find out what the prerequisites were (in addition to the €70 fee):
- be confident that if you were doing the real driving test, you would pass
- have proof that you have applied for the driving test

According to the girl I was talking to on the phone the test date should be within 10 days (or shortly thereafter) of confirmation of payment (Laser, Credit Card, Postal Money order...)

The benefit to me is a 23% reduction of my car insurance, which works out quite well. Check out the IAM website for more information. The link is near the bottom of the page to the right of the screen marked Provisional Ignition Test.



Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Twenty-two: Technology won't take care of your problems, but the right people with the right technology can!

Monday, August 21, 2006

www.dublincrime.com

Dublin Crime is the latest in mashup technology. It utilises Google Maps, RTE news reports and crime information to give a tally of all the murders (both Gang related and otherwise) in the Dublin area of Ireland.

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5 Things you probably don't recycle, but should!

1. Tea/coffee grounds. Good for your soil, place them in a compostor (or just toss them into the flower bed in your garden)... Tea in bags? No problem, tear open the bag, toss the tea and recycle the paper casing in your paper recycle bin.

2. Toilet/kitchen roll innards. Put 'em in your paper recycling bin!

3. Vegetable/fruit peelings. If you don't have a compostor, make or buy one immediately. You can stand to cut down on the waste produced by your household and you can also benefit from having fresh (and natural) compost when it comes to doing your garden in the spring.

4. Paper printed on one side. Ok, so this one is more of a reuse before recycling... Simply gather any paper you've printed out and are about to discard (ie printed website pages, c.v.'s or essays with typo's etc) and stack them somewhere you'll have easy access to them. Next time you need paper for a shopping list or todo list or whatever, you'll have a handy supply! Once done, toss 'em in the paper recycle bin.

5. Finally, instead of throwing out your old computers (now against WEEE Waste Regulations in European states) recycle them. Do a search for your nearest computer recycling/reclamation plant. Alternatively, find out if local charities/churches/friends/whatever have a use for them...

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Saturday, August 19, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Twenty-one: Tread carefully on the feelings of those around you.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Twenty: Learn something new everyday in work; it will keep it interesting!

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Nineteen: Don't explain your job away, the less certain people know, the better!

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Eighteen: Always test before rollout!

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Seventeen:Nothing is impossible. The common person's familiarity with the word 'impossible' is unacceptable.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Sixteen:When referring to colleagues outside work use first names only.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Fifteen: Having a cold in the summertime sucks, giving it to other people in your office makes you feel better!

Sunday, July 09, 2006

New job, new dawn...

Started the new job on Wednesday morning. Not too hectic at the moment but I'm expecting the workload to rise significantly next week. Nothing I won't be able to handle though. 'Hot-desking' at the moment, waiting for a desk to become available for me, once I've a desk of my own I'll buy a potted plant and bring in some photographs etc.

Working as a contractor is quite the experience. I've been blogging about it over at The Sole Trader Blog. Not as difficult as I had expected. A little more thought needs to go into it than working as a PAYE employee but it's well worth it.

Thinking I'll have to start investing in property and shares soon enough. Considering pensions at the moment also. I reckon these are things that are probably better dealt with sooner rather than later. A decent stock and property portfolio could make me more money than annual salary in the future...

Sorting out the provisional license at the moment too. Oasis is a great online resource, you can even request the forms to be posted out to you online here...

...and that

Friday, June 30, 2006

Small update...

I've begun work on my IT Consultancy website (and associated blog). Been doing some trojan work as acting IT Manager in work. Finish here on Tuesday, moving on to greener pastures Wednesday morning.

My results came through from college on Tuesday. I'll be adding B.A. Mod ICT after my name in official correspondance from now on! Well pleased, although my gut feeling about two of the exams was correct. I don't think it's hit me yet that I never have to return to college if I don't want to. The lads seem to be pleased on the whole also. Then again, they're in Hawaii so I wouldn't really know.

Longer updates coming soon...

...and that

Monday, June 26, 2006

Finals Results tomorrow...

anticipation blooms...

...and that

Monday, June 19, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Fourteen:You can't hope to properly work and interact with people whose industry you don't have a basic idea about.

Major post-college updates coming soon...

...and that

Monday, April 17, 2006

'Happy Slapper' gets slapped!

The craze of 'Happy Slapping' had subsided or so I thought, now there surfaces a video of one of these idiots getting his just desserts.



Btw, busy with final year project report & study, hence the lack of posting...

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

he who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence

It seems I've been breeding pestilence for quite some time now then, isn't that right Mr. Blake [wikipedia.org].

I've let so many things fall by the wayside while complaining, moaning and ranting. Something needs to change. I think that'll be my attitude then.

Rag Week was a bit of a rager last week. Did a load with the SF Soc [www.sfsoc.com] (that's SciFi, not Sinn Fein). Completely messed up my biological clock. I thought today was Monday earlier for some reason.

Been getting into more online stuff. Signed up for Bebo [nocent7.bebo.com], got Skype [skype.com] installed, opened a flickr account [flickr.com/photos/dodublin]. So with all of this activity, I got to thinking. What does the irish blogosphere look like?

Luckily, there are guys far more interested in this and far more gifted with the aul coding than I am. Check out the POTB interlink utility [planetoftheblogs.com WARNING: JAVA-enabled]. Here's the paltry image one sees when they load up the interlink for this site:


Sunday, January 22, 2006

It's getting scary now



There's only seven weeks of lectures left this year for me. Which leaves me with a final year project and four exams between now and the real world. That's scary.

I seem to have been groomed for procrastination in college. I'm going to place the blame for that on my own shoulders. In addition to my final year project, I've got a graphics project (some more MAX & some OpenGL), a webservice for distributed systems and a data mining project for information management. I could have had all of these finished over christmas and left myself plenty of time to get ontop of my final year project. However, not all doom & gloom. The graphics project is mostly done, I've made a good start on the webservice, but I haven't done anything much with the java code for infoman. I'm finding it difficult, once again, to be motivated by college.

On a different note, I noticed that there's no real definite frequency to my posts here . I feel better about having removed the ads from the site, they just added clutter. I've also put a little thought into a new template but as of yet nothing has been put onto paper...

Prey Alone was shown earlier on RTE2. I had been wanting to see this short for a while. It did not disappoint. Hopefully it's an example of just what the irish cg market can become. All plot points and physics flaws aside, some totally surreal animation going on there. The full film can be downloaded from http://www.jonny3d.com/

...and that

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Simon Singh and the ever growing idiocy of the general public

While I realise that the title to this post is long, it's deservedly so.

SFSoc in association with Astronomy Ireland held a talk in Trinity about his new book Big Bang. (Not to be confused with the other bestselling book The Big Bang.) While I expected the talk to be a certain amount of PR for Singh's new book, I didn't expect Astronomy Ireland to be hawking their wares every five seconds. Out of an hour and a half talk, 20 minutes were spent waiting for the head of Astronomy Ireland to stop talking.

The fact that there would have been no venue for the talk if it wasn't for SFSoc (disclosure: I am a committee member of the SFSoc), was glossed over quite quickly. The fact that many of the audience seemed to have problems in understanding concepts which Singh explained in laymans terms also brings into question what sort of people Astronomy Ireland are accepting money from. (By the sounds and looks of it, everyone and anyone... seriously, if someone wanted to convert from kilometers an SI unit to light years why would you ask an author how to do it?)

On the upside, Singh's talk did more than just advertise his book. He had some pretty good basic information there about the Big Bang theory. He also explained some of the background to the whole Big Bang debate. An electrified gherkin brought applause (come on public, do bright things still interest you that much?!) and he used the power of suggestion to make over 300 people hear the "hidden message" when you play a verse of Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' backwards.

For those interested, the backwards verse is said to contain the words:

oh here's to my sweet satan.
the one who's little path would make me sad,
who's power is satan.
he'll give those with him 666,
there was a little toolshed where he made us suffer,
sad satan.


You can listen to the track both forwards and backwards on Jeff Milner's website.

Enough ranting, I've got projects to do...

...and that

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Thirteen: Don't procrastinate with ideas, instead research, plan and assess how you can go about bringing these ideas to fruition. Then go ahead and follow the plan.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Chillin'


Got home yesterday to see my package from amazon had arrived. The two Jack Johnson DVD's I had ordered took less than a week to get here (surprising, given the last time I ordered a DVD from them, it took about four weeks!).

Being a fan of his music, but not of surfing in general, I was quite happy to find I enjoyed both films. While short, The September Sessions (~26mins) is quite well shot and gives you a nice warm feeling most 'extreme' sports films don't. Johnson's second offering Thicker than Water gives a longer run-time (~46mins). Twinned with the use of 16mm film and a slightly fleshed out message (read: plot) the film evokes the same sunny day feeling as his first.

The scores also please, being an affront to the typical mix of amateur speed metal and rap you find in most extreme sports flicks. The melow tones of Johnson, G-Love and some more traditional sounds (cringable when combined with Bundoran, Donegal but just as cliched as the trad stuff from the Pacific islands...) give a warm tone to the film.

All in all, a thoroughly chilled out evening yesterday...

...and that

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Five weird things about me

Ok, so I got a phonecall earlier from Liz letting me know I'd been 'tagged'. I don't know what's wrong with me in the new year. Could be that I'm turning into a mushhead, but first I'm joining facebook, now I'm doing one of these meme dealies?! Keara must be getting to me.

First the rules:

The first player of this game starts with the topic “five weird habits of yourself,” and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

Anyway, 5 weird things about me (that you didnt need/want to know):

1. I'm quite intelligent, but I'd rather do manual labour than sit behind a desk pushing paper/writing code. [Pushing pixels, however, does appeal to me. May have to look into doing the MSc in Multimedia in DCU or something undergrad in NCAD.]

2. My musical taste is (viewed by others) dubious. Personally I like it. ;-)

3. I work better at night than during the day. That's not just something I say, literally I do. You can throw the "but your productivity is affected" argument at me all day, won't make it any less true though.

4. I never forget promises I make, I just don't follow through on some of them. I'll even feel guilty afterwards for not having kept it. Sometimes I feign forgetfulness in order to shirk my responsibility.

5. I am the Devil's Advocate. If you argue with me, we may have the same opinion but I'll still argue the opposite point. I'll do it well and with finesse too, because I'll always steer the argument to where it's a case of your opinion vs mine. What's more, you can't tell me that my opinion is wrong, because it's mine. Somehow (thankfully) I managed to stay out of debating in college.

I'll finish this post with a quote from The Dude: "That's, like, just your opinion, man..."

I'm not going to 'tag' five people though. The weirdness ends here...

...and that
About this Blog
I'm currently playing around with the Layout for my site so if there are any glitches or weird bugs please bear with me. I'm slowly but surely cannibalising someone elses work and making it my own. Going from spiderman to something else altogether hopefully. Any comments please email me: nocent -at- gmail.com
I'm a fightin', f*ckin, pinchin', robbin', stealin', fleecin', eatin', drinkin' man.