Yup… Liz and I are moving to a new apartment! Wahoo! It’s very exciting news all around. Why, you ask? Well, things were getting a bit cramped at the old crib… 4 of us living in a 3 bedroom house, even WITH two living rooms, was just a bit on the cramped side. Not to mention the fact that Liz and I really just need some ALONE time, which is hard to get when you’re living with 2 other people. The girls we live with are great, but Liz and I really just need some time living together on our OWN. Not too much to ask for, is it? I can’t wait to get into the new place… it is GORGEOUS. Brand new appliances, a washer AND dryer (the old crib only has a washer, so we’re always hanging our clothes to dry and they never REALLY dry fully, and they’re always kinda CRUNCHY), a dishwasher, under-floor heating, a full sized fridge all to ourselves (many many many of the places we looked at only had beer-fridge-sized under-the-counter units) and storage space out the wazoo! Oh, and a nice shower, which will be a lovely change from the old place (where our shower is AWFUL), and underground parking! I’m very excited, to say the least.
Liz and I went to Amsterdam just over a week ago. Amsterdam is a phenomenal city, with outlets for pretty much every vice imaginable. We did the mandatory walk through the red light district (didn’t partake of any services, of course), where we saw many a sad lookin’ prostitute. We were also offered coke and ecstasy and any number of other things approximately every 30 seconds. The smell of marijuana/hash in the air was astounding, you just couldn’t escape it! Our hotel was fine, if a bit on the thin-walled side (and we couldn’t get a non-smoking room either, which was a bit of a drag). I was shocked at how accessible Amsterdam is by transit… we got a 10 euro transit pass, which was good for 48 hours on the metro AND the trams, which will get you pretty much anywhere in the city. It was awesome. We also hit the Van Gogh museum (interesting, but I’m not overly bothered by seeing art in person as opposed to, say, online), and the Ann Frank House, which was AMAZING. Went on a canal tour, which was lovely, and went to the Heineken brewery only to find out that it was CLOSED ON MONDAYS! D’oh! We also ate our faces off for most of the weekend, and Amsterdam has GOOD FRIGGIN FOOD. We didn’t actually eat any Dutch food, but we had some phenomenal italian on the first night and a kickass steak at “Gaucho’s” steakhouse on our last night there. Breakfasts were similarly yummtastic, not to mention the crazy desserts. All in all, a lovely long weekend trip. We probably could have done another day or two there, but I was happy enough to be heading home.
Wow… that was a bit stream-of-consciousness there wasn’t it? Any way, I liked it. Amsterdam gooood! Our next trip isn’t until January sometime, I think… I have to say, I’m glad I’m getting a chance to see some of Europe! Living here in Dublin is SO awesome! Everything is ridiculously accessible! 
Update: Amsterdam pictures are finally up!
Very existential questions, I know. Basically, here’s the short version: went to Amsterdam, read a bunch of books, moving to a new apartment. Oh, you want more? Well, I’m splitting all 3 of those up into separate entries.
There are 72 bands referenced in this image in one way or another… I’ve gotten a fair chunk of them, but still have a ton that I haven’t gotten yet… The ones I’ve gotten are in a “more” link so as to keep the spoilers out.
(more…)
(or, how in the world do I have a girlfriend if I find this interesting?)
The Number Spiral shows some of the really intriguing patterns that show up if you arrange numbers, starting at 0, in a spiral. Ok, it’s only “really intriguing” if you are a super nerd, like I am. And I thank my lucky stars every single day that I’ve got a kickass girlfriend like Liz to support me in my ultra nerdy endeavours!
(via Digg)
Top 30 Chuck Norris Facts. One of my favourites: “The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.”
Plus a bonus! Top 30 Vin Diesel Facts. My favourite: “Vin Diesel is the reason why Waldo is hiding.”
Update (18/11/2005 10:09AM): Top 30 Mr T Facts!! My favourite: “23. That’s the number of people Mr. T has pitied in the time it has taken you to read this sentence.”
(via MeFi)
The Grand Illusions Shop has a ton of super cool things to buy for that geek guy or girl in your life. Magic tricks, magnets, you name it! Very cool.
(via MeFi)
Ok, not *really*… but I felt like designing a goofy shirt to see if it would get accepted, and it did! So if I win and they decide to make my shirt (unlikely), I get a bit of cash and some credit to buy cool shirts at the store. Go and vote for me! Give me love!
Katie Holmes is giving up acting to be a full time housewife. Joyous day! Oh thank merciful crap! I know that Liz will be upset by this, but not many others will. If you saw Batman Begins, you know what I’m talkin about here.
(via MeFi)
Sweet mother of God, I really don’t! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, clearly you’ve been hiding under an internet rock. Basically, Sony has some software on their CDs that you are required to install if you use the CD on your computer. That software basically makes it so that you’re limited on the number of copies of the disc you can make, and a bunch of other things. It is apparently pretty crashy, and makes it so that virus writers can piggy-back onto it if you have it installed and be undetectable. Generally, a piece of junk. I’m not overly surprised though, and the *outrage* from the internet community is frankly a bit OTT. BoingBoing has *8* front page articles about this right now. It’s ridiculous. Yes, DRM bad. We get it. But frankly, I just don’t care to hear about it anymore. Really. Unless you have some INTERESTING news about it, why just keep reporting the same tired stories? “Oh noes! Sony is actually even more super bad than we thought! Here’s one more tiny piece of information!” I really don’t care! Find something else to talk about!
Actually, BoingBoing can be a bit ridiculous with stuff like this… They really beat the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster thing right into the ground.
Is it just me, or is the Firefox popup blocker in 1.5 RC2 not doing all that great a job? I seem to be seeing all kinds of popups lately. And on top of that, even though I have it set to “Force links opened in new windows into a new tab” turned on, it still opens in a new window! What the hell! Perhaps I’ll need to uninstall firefox, and do a “fresh from scratch” installation. But that sucks.
Most geek guys of my generation and older will gladly tell you that Leia in the metal bikini in Return of the Jedi is one of the sexiest things in history. It is, seriously. So, geek guys, hold onto your hats for this one: 10 pages of fans in Slave Leia costumes. At something like 12 per page. It even has instructions on making your own! Hot stuff indeed.
And no, of course I didn’t look. I have a girlfriend!
(via BoingBoing)
Ok, Gmail, I’m not gonna lie. I’m gonna tell you straight up here. Your spam filter is pretty shitty. How can I be so cruel and heartless? It’s simple, really - every morning I open my inbox, hoping against hope that you’ll finally clue in. You’ll finally realize that a mail message saying “HOT STOCK TIP! MAKE MONEY FAST ON THIS HOT STOCK!” is actually spam. Regardless of which stock it is! Yeah, I know that I marked MXON as spam. And after marking about 150 of those as spam, you finally started getting it. Of course, at that point, the pump-and-dump was already complete for MXON. So I don’t receive any more MXON messages in my inbox, OR my spam box. Super. But now there’s a new one. Epic Media! Set to take over the world, they are! Wooo! Yay Epic Media! Somebody buy me 800 million shares of EPMI.pk!!! Oh, wait, no, just another pump and dump spamming scheme. Google, come on. Just because it arrives from somebody with a different name, how are you not catching this? My Gmail spam statistics are showing you at roughly 77%, after over a month of handling all my email. 77%!?!? I was up at over 90% within a week of using Popfile, and by the time I switched over to Gmail a month ago, I was up around the 99% range consistently. GMail, you have truly let me down.
For the third year in a row, Penny Arcade’s children’s charity, Child’s Play, is officially up and running. For those of you who don’t know, Penny Arcade is a webcomic about videogames, sort of. Two years ago, they decided they were sick and tired of the media portraying video gamers as anti-social mass murderers in waiting, and set up an Amazon Wishlist for their local children’s hospital. Gamers donated over $100,000 worth of toys and cash. That is astounding. They did it again last year. The grand total is up to near a million dollars I think, and it’s just getting bigger every year.
Yes, I have blogged about Child’s Play before. And I’ll continue to do it as long as they are running it. This year, I can finally donate to my local hospital, Toronto Sick Kids. It’s astounding how much has already been donated, and they just announced it yesterday! So, in the spirit of the season, consider donating a toy to a kid in a hospital.
I find it hilarious that www.ctrl-alt.del.com takes you to the dell website (accidentally found when I was trying to find the link for Ctrl+Alt+Del the webcomic).
Man, I spent so much time browsing and voting for the shirt designs over at Threadless, it’s really quite astounding. At LEAST 10 minutes! Ummm yeah. But, basically, the point of the site is thus: people submit shirt designs, and other people vote on said designs. The winning designs get made into shirts that people can like, buy and stuff, but only in limited quantities! Enough demand will bring about a reprint, if you’re lucky. There’s some AWESOME shirt designs on there though, I have to say. And I like me some t-shirts!
(via Ctrl+Alt+Del)
Ever wonder what would happen if you dropped 50 lbs of Silly Putty™ from the 7th floor of an office building? Well wonder no more! Pretty cool, actually
(via Steve Bass)
So, some crazy kid goes up and shoots a neighbour and his daughter. Tragically typical, really, nothing to get surprised about these days. But it turns out that a few days before, he was trolling the SomethingAwful.com forums, trying to find information on where to get buckshot ammo for his shotgun, because it was more lethal than birdshot. It’s kinda eerie to see that kind of premeditation at work. Of course, because he killed himself it doesn’t really matter, but still pretty creepy. Here’s the SomethingAwful thread where they link the two occurrences.
(via MeFi)
A day too late I guess. Hope everyone had a great hallowe’en! I didn’t really do anything festive this year - most years in the past I would’ve gone to The Phoenix or something but, being as I’m in Dublin, that didn’t really happen. We *did* go out for Sarah’s birthday on Saturday, but nobody dressed up. I don’t think Hallowe’en is quite as big over here in Ireland - and this was fairly well confirmed by the approxmiately 10 kids total that showed up at our door. It appears to be a much more inflammatory holiday here - there are huge bonfires and fireworks like CRAZY. At one point in the night (around 9, when we went to look at the bonfire in the park) there was at least one firework going off per second. You could hear them going off all over the place! It would have been pretty cool to go somewhere up into the hills and check it out, but we were MUCH too lazy for that. Didn’t even watch any scary movies! However, the Dublin Marathon was yesterday, and that was pretty cool to see. Lots and lots of people running, walking, cycling along the course - some even had costumes on! That’s pretty hardcore, to run a marathon in-costume.
What else… oh! Went to see Tara Road on Sunday - not bad. Kinda sad at points, but all feel-good at the end. Based on a Maeve Binchy novel. Take from that what you will. I would recommend it as a decent date movie. And on Friday we went to see Broken Flowers. I had heard good things, and it WAS quite good, though a bit slow moving at times. The ending was… well, it was an ending. I can honestly say I haven’t heard that much murmuring after a film in a good long while.
