Saw Daft Punk in Marley Park on Friday with Moley, Col, Sinead & their friends. Best gig I’ve been at – they played all the right songs. Sold a spare ticket I had for face value in the queue about 60seconds before entering the park – wahoo! That coupled with myself and Sinead making into the VIPish pit topped off the experience. Pint with moley in town afterwards.

I hope moley doesn’t mind me pushing this out there. I tried a few times following a Photoshop tutorial on how to vectorise an image with various results, never succeeded with anything other than inanimate objects. This one however is made using some of the gimp’s and photoshop filters along with some blurring and smudging.

Four days ago now, an Irish Dublin based company called steorn took out a full page ad in The Economist claiming to have discovered a means of creating ‘free energy’ – i.e. perpetual motion – i.e. defying the first law of thermodynamics. They, through the ad, are trying to attract a top team of 12 scientists to come and test their technology. I’ve read similar stories on slashdot – and I occasionally buy the cheap ticket for admission into this ride, which is thinking about the incredible impact it would have on all.

I’ve also noticed steorn watch has been put up online…

A good 5 or 6 years ago I bought my first minidisc player the Panasonic SJ-Mj70. It’s been more or less out of commission for the last 3. Low volume was always a problem, but then roughly 3 years ago there bacame a 50/50 chance of the player reading and playing the disc properly. Now theres more like a 1 in 20 chance.

Long Playing MD’s, NetMD and HiMD have all come out since – but my deck at home and my MD collection remains good old standard MD. I happened across the SJ-MJ75 at a consumer electronics shop in Rathmines recently – and I decided €50 was a steal – even for outdated tech.

A new person started working in NewBay recently. He was the best dressed person in the office on his first day; suit, good shoes, jacket – the works. Day two he calmed down a bit but still looked very presentably – nice new jumper, shirt underneath and so forth. Day three he finally looks like one of us wearing baggy jeans and basketball top. The progression was pretty funny.

Thank gods for the *very* casual dress software development environment I work in – I’ll get around to having a wardrobe of respectable work clothes… but just not now.

Two days back at work now after the holidays. Spent the weekend getting the house in order: Bought a hoover, lampshades, hung up a Padraig O’Murchu sculpture, rearranged sitting room and so forth.

Watched Lady In The Water & Nacho Libre. Lady was a bit weak, and Nacho was exactly what it said on the tin.

The Pitch & Putt course on Lansdowne Valley is a fantastic beautiful course. Made me almost forget I was in Dublin, never mind Drimnagh. Averaged 4.25 shots over the 18 hole course – A couple of well tricky holes – Golf balls were lost.

I’m on a new project at work – And just like the few proceeding it – My motto of componentisation and modularisation seems to be just what the architect ordered.

Three full days left to go, the uneasy feeling of returning to work and knowledge that my time off is over is creeping up on me.

I bought and watched through the entire first season of Rome. I’m very glad I bought it, and support the notion of future seasons entirely.

Played pitch & putt in Barna last weekend, and have been practing my pitching on a daily basis since.

I spent two nights in Ballyconneely, Connemara in between Clifden and Roundstone. Nice dinner in the Derryclare restaurant in Clifden Tuesday the night of the 8th. Hit some balls on the commonage of the Connemara Golf Club – the weather wasn’t quite there for a spin on the RIB.

I wrote a Kakuro game and solver last night. After being foiled by a random puzzle left about from an ancient Daily Mail – I thought it’d be quite the hack to stay up all night writing a solver, without net access and the lure of finding one online, to defeat the damned puzzle that I had gotten wrong. I wrong the interface in SWT with some of my custom widgets – I’d like to get it up online over the next day or so…