Ireland

Ordered Groceries (Tesco Online), Ordered Case of Wine (Virgin Wines), Planned PhD and Literature Review writing (StackExchange) Read more papers (Mendeley) Managed some Investments (Zopa) As I was walking back from our kitchen in the office, I realised that that ’lift coffee cup, walk to kitchen, make coffee cup, return to desk’ was the most inefficient part of my working day; I can even justify writing this post as vaguely productive as I’m waiting for a download to complete… ...

Northern Ireland, its history, and its current situation, are a guaranteed topic of conversation to any self-identifying Northern Irishman, especially one travelling around Europe. As I am neither a historian, a bigot, or particularly political, I don’t know a whole pile of detail, so my explanations become rambling personal perspectives which I generally suspect make things less-clear; otherwise I dumb it down so much that the point is kinda mixed, usually ending something like ‘its weird; its British, but we get to be Irish too, except without being quite so broke’. ...

Contrary to popular belief, the concept of a ‘hacker’ (or at least self described ones) has very little to do with coding and networking wizards pounding through systems and stealing valuable information or just destroying everything they touch. In fact, Google (and Princeton University’s) first definition of the word has more to do with Golf than security (try it by googling “define:hacker”). The so called ‘hacker subculture’ is usually taken as a group of not necessarily like minded, but creative individuals with or without technical or theoretical skill, including artists, musicians, carpenters, machinists, or extreme knitters, and can generally be shortened down to ’tinker-ers’ or ‘messers’.Belfast is a growing hub of technology, software, and art of all forms within Europe; and with Londonderry being named the ‘City of Culture’ for 2013, it is clear the Northern Ireland is no longer (or never was?) the poor child of British (and Irish) creativity and excellence. ...

Yeah, suprise suprise, I’m actually gonna try and keep this up. One of the major reasons for the delay since my last documented fiddle as been job hunting for a placement year next year, but I’ve wonderfully secured a position with Ericsson Ireland in their Athlone R&D centre. Pays good, experience is even better. Beyond that a few other things have been making things hectic, not least of which is the impending Examination period so about the only techy thing I’ve been able to come up with has been a wipe and reinstall to upgrade to Hardy Heron (8.04) (I didnt update because i dont trust dist-upgrade’s ability to do things my way, also meant i could blow out the cobwebs in my filesystem.) ...