Yesterday was one day less

 No fancy towels, you treat yourself as well as you treat your guests

 You don't need to apply AI to every problem, sometimes you just have to apply common sense 

 Think for yourself. Always ask questions. Ask better questions

 Show up for yourself better than how you show up for others

 Change your towels once a week

 Set a routine to fall back on for when you don't know what to do next

Take care of family 

Take care of yourself 

Take care of business

 Find yourself a why

 Every day you keep your kids alive and happy is a good day 

 People will hold you to account for things they let themselves away with

I grew up in a middle class home in Ireland. We were very lucky in many ways. Six kids and for the most part a single income must have been a significant challenge for my parents. There was always technology though, from a gigantic VHS recording camera (before CamCorders were a thing and there was one of those in time too) to a BetaMax player and then personal computers. There were plenty of small electronics too for my young mind to access with screwdrivers. Things often came apart pretty well but didn't go back together all of the time. My Dad wasn't always happy about this but the screwdrivers were never taken away so maybe that says something. Of course, he didn't stop buying tech or gadgets either so maybe it wasn't noticed.

The presence of computers in my early years and some encouragement prompted my choice of college degree and ultimately my career so far. Here are some random memories...

In primary school one of the teachers got a computer with educational games. Each class was allowed a time or two to play the games, I don't recall it being a regular thing. The idea that you could play games on a screen was pretty cool, this was before I knew about games consoles but well after they were a thing. As my older brothers grew up and got into college they started to use computers for their work - a drawing board was replaced by a computer screen. In addition to serious applications like AutoCAD and 3D Studio, games like Doom, Quake and Descent made it into the house. Serious in a different way. These were very different games to the ones I was allowed play on the Sega Megadrive. Ecco the Dolphin didn't have a BFG...

There were a variety of computers in the house over the years in various different shapes and sizes - a 286 (I think) that ran the OS from a 5.25 inch floppy disk. Back when floppy disks were actually floppy. The black screen with orange text was mesmerizing. I can still hear the beep of the computer, the read head of the disk and see the flashing cursor in my minds eye. There was also a word processor - an assembly of a printer, keyboard and small enough LCD screen which my Mam used for writing a thesis for a postgraduate qualification before returning to work. That single income with six kids obviously prompted the need. Embarrassingly, I also used that word processor to send letters to a pen pal. Back then it must have stunk of privilege but I was none the wiser. I also for some reason wanted a Palm Pilot when I was in my early teens. I can't remember what I used it for other than to be a nerd... 

The coolest gadget from over the years was one of the most simple in ways. A Casio programmable calculator. Every so often we'd remember it and take it down from the shelf and break out the mildewing manual that came with it. It must have been from around the same time I was born in the 80s. Games could be programmed on it using BASIC. I remember the Golf game being fun. Hand typing the games could be challenging if there was a data entry error. The keys were tiny. Of course, my brothers had to "hack" the code to make the shots infinite distance and win in one go too. I wonder if that's still around somewhere...

Like the hand me down clothes, I inherited old computers from my brothers as I was completing secondary school. Over the years there were DOS PCs, Windows 3.11, Windows 95 & 98. I got in trouble for replacing the Win98 start screen with one that said WinBlowz :D - I could never figure out what was so great about Windows NT but of course these were single PCs, not on a network. I also remember the first Windows 2000 machine we got in the house and my brother going through driver and DLL hell trying to get everything to work. What else... oh yeah, SoundBlaster sound cards! Rifling through three PC carcasses to make one. Figuring out that different frequency RAM wouldn't work together and having a beast of a PC that not only a 20Gb C: drive but also an additional 10Gb D: drive. I think that was one of the first Pentium chips. No Turbo button for me anymore!

That machine provided great learning. That was where I installed my first distro of Linux. I was working a part time job during the summer and saved enough to go to CompuStore and buy a boxed set of RedHat Linux 6.2. There were loads of CDs with it, pretty much every RPM imaginable. This was before the days where you could yum or apt get things from your dedicated internet connection. RedHat was pretty user friendly compared to installing SlackWare for the first time. I had to dual boot with Windows 98 and use Outlook to reach out for help to a Linux User Group. They didn't always appreciate that. Aside from being clueless, I was a fairly asinine kid. Still, knowing the innards of computers and the internet gave me an edge when it came to college I think so the experience was useful. I've forgotten more than I remember about all of these things.

Over the years I've done some cool things (well, what I thought were cool things anyway) with computers. I can't recall where the memory surfaced from but at one of my first proper jobs we put a 42 inch plasma screen TV in the lobby of the office. This ran a PowerPoint slideshow on a Fedora Core box which I think was in the server room. That was a seriously long VGA cable. Surprisingly, OpenOffice did a decent job of displaying the PowerPoint. We loaded the slideshows via SSH. Pretty sure that plasma screen burned in very well over time. Quite cool the things you can do with a bit of technology and some creativity.

Somewhere along the way I have lost this inquisitiveness I had with technology and computers. I'm more likely to use something out of the box now than hack it together. I think this needs to change.

You can't just read about it in a book. One of the things I know to be true but don't always put into practice enough is that you can't just read about things in books to truly know them. You have to do it too. When I was in my teens I wanted a motorcycle. (I've since had three motorcycles but haven't ridden for a good while). I used to buy motorcycle magazines, I watched TV programmes about them. I was obsessed.

My Dad had a Vespa which he bought with his brothers when they were young. They ripped it around a field until my Uncle crashed into a wall and flew headfirst over it. Luckily, or so I was told, he was uninjured. I've never heard this story from either of my Uncles. I also don't know whether this was the first hour they had the scooter, the first day or when. Unfortunately, when their father (my grandfather, never met him) found out they were made "get rid of it" straight away. Probably at a loss from what they bought it for.

This was an enduring memory for my Dad, he told me this story multiple times as I grew up. So when I started to become obsessed with bikes every effort was made to prevent me from getting one. My Dad bought me coffee table books of classic Harley's. There, that's all you need, admire bikes in a book. Not a bike. A book. The problem is, that's not motorcycling. You can't crash a book into the side of a Ford Transit. You can't adjust the idle on the front cover so the book unintentionally does a wheelie when you take off. The wind doesn't rush through you as you turn a page. Fork oil doesn't leak from it. You can't foul a plug when starting a book. Replacing, restoring and servicing a book aren't the same.

You have to do something to experience it. You can learn the theory from a book but you must do it to actually learn in practice. Sometimes it's a close call with a corner because of target fixation. Sometimes it's a limp and a sore knee because you pulled the front brake on gravel instead of gently pressing your foot on the rear brake pedal. But you sure go tentatively on that gravel the next time, that's for sure.

Don't get me wrong, books are incredible and amazing. I love reading. They can impart knowledge and bring you to places in your mind that are not possible in reality. But in the real world you have to get on the bike and go. You have to actually do the thing to do the thing.

Hat tip to William Blake for the badass quote.

 We'll grind that axe for a long time...

Let's just ignore that the last time I posted to this blog was fourteen years ago.

I posted my first video to YouTube 18 years ago. 19-Apr-2006. Holy moly that's a long time ago. That's just about a year after YouTube started in earnest. It's been public that long (oops) and has a whopping 650 views. The video was a simple 3D overview of my final year project from my college degree. Not exciting, no music. I'm not even sure why I made it, probably a distraction or procrastinating way of not actually working on the project itself. We had a great computer graphics module in final year which included learning 3D Studio Max.

Second video, I posted something slightly longer (video of a bike run) on 31-Mar-2015, it's got 2 views. It was a poor mobile upload from my phone at the time. That must be a record breaker.

They're both unlisted now, thankfully!

Finally, I posted a 17 second video of the CD disc changer in my Dad's car on 05-May-2015 and it's got a whopping 1,019 views in the last 9 years. It's bittersweet as that was shortly after my Dad died after a long illness. Probably the last time I was in that car before we sold it. I'm leaving that one up.

I completely forgot about these videos and it was only when I started uploading videos for a passion project of mine (Echoes of Ireland) that I realized they were there. A small part of my digital footprint. I wonder how long that will perpetuate after I shuffle off this mortal coil as Shakespeare said via Hamlet.

So work has been majorly busy recently and I haven't had much time to do more thinking about anything really. One thing I did find in relation to the "Bittorrent CDN" idea was fsniper.

It's a pretty cool app by the looks of it. Basically it runs a script based on a file appearing in a directory. Once I get my linux install back up and running (planning to evaluate Linux Mint on an old laptop of mine) I'll be testing it out.

I'm thinking some dedicated servers on the likes of OVH could be an option to start testing out the "CDN." Also recently the idea of a Darknet has come up. So maybe a Darknet CDN running over Bittorrent may feature as part of the idea soon...

I've been mulling something over for a little while, based on something from work... I'm thinking of a CDN which uses Bittorrent to replicate the files thereby reducing the need for major bandwidth infrastructure? It's just an idea, a mental exercise to keep my brain idling.

So far here are my thoughts:
- A pickup directory which is monitored by some form of service
- Once a file is placed in the pickup directory a torrent file is created and replicated to all of the edge sites (custom private tracker?)
- The torrent then seeds as usual until all sites on the network have a full copy
- Clients can then get a local copy of their data.

I'll work on this as a thought exercise a bit more over the coming weeks. I'm sure this is full of holes as it stands and maybe I've got the CDN part completely arseways when I say no need for major bandwidth!

I'm aiming for a cross-platform sort of idea. Possibly something web-based? I dunno. Might be interesting, we'll see where it goes.

Just heard that great phrase yesterday - "The New Economy"

What a cracking phrase. It really brings a positive outlook to the doom and gloom of the past months. It got me thinking, which recently has been something I've tried to avoid. It's not that we are all doomed (where there are ups there will surely follow downward trends) but it's just we need to adjust to the current situation and come up with new ways to enjoy ourselves and to use creativity to spur on innovation and conjure up new ideas for earning a living.

I'll definitely be using this phrase but hopefully not for long!

Physorg: New Pirate Bay to be based on give-and-take models.

I've been reading news that The Pirate Bay is to harness it's technology to pay both content providers and users for their content and upload respectively. It's an interesting concept of legalisation. A site once known for its open taunting of legal threats is to be purchased by Global Gaming Factory X and turned legitimate.

It hardly surprises me the owners (who have been found guilty of Copyright Infringement and fined) have considered selling their site. It makes sense. Sell to someone legitimate in order to pay off the fines. This would suggest any earnings of the venture so far are either tied up somehow or spent. Another alternative is that if the owners were found to have made significant sums from the site that they would be taken to court again by the aggrieved parties to recoup their "losses."

What I fail to see is how soon this legal give-and-take model can be up and running. By the time such technologies are put in place I would imagine that the vast majority of the userbase will have moved on to using different torrent sites or other means of sharing illicit files.

Then comes the question of ISPs. Already some have throttled bittorrent packets across their networks. I think that the minute this service is launched those same ISPs are going to start making noise. Why should users make gains by running data across their networks, they'll say!

The micropayment platform with which to pay users will be equally difficult. Sure, you could link the give-and-take platform into a service such as PayPal, but if I were a company like that I'd want to pay out as little as possible. That means I'd want users to sign up, spend a certain amount and only be able to make a predefined amount of money back (say, the price of a movie download). In essence, what you would really want to do is have a method of "paying" users a balance that they would in turn spend on more downloads. Does the long tail apply here? Would a company trying this sort of venture end up coming up against the law of diminishing returns? What then?

It will be interesting to find out what does happen with this. I'll be keeping watch on how The Pirate Bay fares in future. Somehow I doubt I'll get an account with them but if it's all it's cracked up to be I may end up eating my words. Hmm, food for thought indeed...

First off, full disclosure, although I work in the Travel trade I am in no way associated with Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel. To be honest, after seeing their latest marketing ploy make its way to my inbox I wouldn't want to be either.



The above image was attached to the following email:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel has great news for you...

To celebrate the launch of its wonderful Summer Break Packages, we would like to treat you to a wonderful weekend of luxury.

You and a friend will enjoy :

- a 2 night stay in a Luxurious Suite

- wine & chocolates on arrival

- a sumptuous dinner in one of Fitzpatricks Award-Winning restaurants

And

- a wonderful relaxtion treatment of choice in our Treatment Rooms

To indulge yourself in this weekend away, all you have to do is:

Simply send this email to 8 friends and cc competition@fitzpatricks.com by Monday, June 15th for your chance to enjoy a relaxing weekend away.

Please see our Summer Break Packagesn Attached to forward to your 8 friends"

Essentially what they've done is ask 1 person to give up 9 email addresses in order to win a competition. So what do they do with the email addresses after that? I can guess, I'm sure you can too.

I suppose this just gives them more publicity though, doesn't it... *sigh*