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across the SJ-MJ75 at a consumer electronics shop in Rathmines recently – and I decided €50 was a steal – even for outdated tech.

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…

I wouldn’t normally post about my housey service providers; vodafone, smart telecom, ESB, Sky Digital etc… But Damn. Hibernian Direct just saved me the bones of €1,000.

I did the Ignition Test with them well over a month ago and I’ve read mixed reports online about it – mostly from boards.ie. I found it a long day but worthwhile in itself and for the reason mentioned above.

Number one on my wishlist for quite some time… My Dell 30″ will be here soon! In preperation for the arrival I just received in the post my new Dual Link DVI capable graphics that I need to drive the beast. I had a dilema in purchasing this card… Two options… 1: New CPU, MB, RAM and PCI express dual link graphics card 2. New AGP based graphics card. Well I ended up buying, currently one of the best nvidia based AGP graphics cards out there, a Gainward Bliss 7800 GS 512 MB AGP. The reason was twofold; cash & I don’t think I need much more out of my machine right now or the foreseeable future.

I’m no gamer – but I brought up Half Life 2, Doom 4 and Civ 4 and they all ran astonishingly well compared to my older gainward. Civilization IV runs a hell of a lot better now in Cedega than it did in windows before. This could be dangerous!

Was at home by myself this weekend, Anna was at a birthday in Galway. Decided not to go – wanted to catch up on some episodes and get a patch for drag and drop in java-gnome in. Didn’t manage to get the patch together – spent alot of time reading the bindings and figuring out what I could regarding it’s memory management. Very late sunday; I finally managed to figure out why dragging as a source in Java Gnome wasn’t working. It’s a little tricky – but I hope to get a patch for that and setting the data bytes of SelectionData before the end of today.

I watched Battlestar Galactica Season 2 finale over the weekend. It was a cracker! Lay down your burdens part II – a 90 minute episode that really broke all the rules with the ending. I’ll be ordering the Box Set as soon as it comes out and am considering buying a ‘So Say We All’ T-Shirt…

I had a dream Stephen Fry lead, the company I work for, NewBay on a treasure hunt around Dublin. Stephen was very witty, and I laughed out loud a number of times.

Myself and Anna are together six whole years! Our anniversary was over the weekend and we celebrated in our usual tradition of cinema with popcorn. We got through 3 films in all; The Matador, Proof and The Weather Man. I enjoyed The Weather Man the most – it evoked a true ineasiness in myself, but was worth it. The other two were just alright. All three films starred Hope Davis, a name and face I’m destined to unfortunately remember (valuable neuron real esate etc…). We ate at a noodle house on Saturday and took a Bombay Pantry take away home on Sunday.

Spent a crazy night yesterday in Doyles, Dublin having a few drinks with Liam and co. Managed to stay out of Eddie Rockets – it looked so tempting at 4am with a belly full of drink. Noteworthy topics of conversation included AIB online account lock down policy. mmm… But Wait! That’s not all – theres more tonight – different venue – different outcome?

Spent a relaxing weekend at monart this weekend. The whole event was filled with luxury and good taste. Everyone walked around on site with white monart robes. Wonderful pool, indoor and outdoor saunas, salt room, massage and relaxation rooms. An incredible experience, one that I’m glad to have had the pleasure of indulging in. I would not have guessed such a place existed in Ireland. Highly Recommended. Oh, the 6 course meal and the waiter with obligotory French accent made the destination that more surreal.