It's been an interesting week

Well, it's been an interesting week. Uncles came up for the Ireland vs Scotland rugby match on Saturday. A ticket I was told was set aside for me and my dad I was told on the Thursday before. But then another uncle put his name in the pot and of course I had to voluntarily give up my ticket so the brothers could have a night of it. We were in the pub before they got the Dart to Lansdowne Road and it was suggested that I'd walk home and watch the match there. I didn't of course, I stayed in the pub to watch the welsh and then the Irish match and then they came back and found me propped up against the bar chatting to the bar men. They then stayed for a few more, as though I was bad I wasn't as bad as I should've been after the amount of pints I had (I'm guessing 8-9 at this stage). I'd say it was well over 10 if not 15 by the time be were ready for the chipper and the walk home! As you can well imagine the following morning/afternoon was fun! I had awoken a few times with trips to the loo and desperate cotton mouth during the night. Anyways, they all departed bar one that day (following the match) and we went out with the remaining uncle to dine out on the Sunday night.


During the week was pretty uneventful but I had applied to write tech related articles for Itchyhippo.com. It's not paid (nor would I expect it to be as the guy is maintaining it when he gets a spare moment with study and work). But I was rattling a few ideas as to what to write for my first post over the weekend and during the week. I eventually did settle on a few things and wrote the bones of it on Wednesday. Thurday I did the proof reading a refinements with sentence structure, grammar, spelling etc. (something I don't always do here haha) and today it's up for the world to see!


Last night I went to an Atheists in the Pub meeting to which I'm a semi-regular visitor (depending on money and the timing). Which was good to catch up with a few of the regulars and mouth off at the catholic conservatives who appeared on the RTE's Frontline along with Michael Nugent (Chairperson) and Jane Donnelly (Education Officer) of Atheist Ireland. Both were at the social gathering and laughs were had all 'round. I'm also a Semi regular attendee at the Dublin Skeptics in the Pub and their other social events and organised meetings/lectures as well as a listener to their podcast the skeprecauns (as you can tell if you've read my past blog posts). I find it good to have these brief sojourns outside my usual social circles as it's not only expanding my social circle but it means I can discuss subject that I mightn't if I was amongst some of my friends as I don't always know their comfort level with all subjects of conversation.

Long time no Posts

Well hey there. It's been a while. Over christmas (which is another rambley topic by itself) I was busy with the festivities and the like. I was also actively job searching and getting organised to send off a CAO application as a mature student to do Computer Science in DIT as I feel it's as close to my carrier calling as I am going to get (what with being into nerdy gadgets and IT). I am also semi into photography as a hobby but have lacked the motivation to pursue it as of late. Alas, the job hunting didn't work out and am currently on social welfare which has taken a while to get used to. I have been attending Skeptics in the pub gatherings on a semi regular basis or when I can as it's good to get out of the house and also I've really kinna fallen into that social circle as skeptics tend to be into science and thus are kinna geeky/nerdy which means we tend to have a few things in common. And even if they're not then we at least have the pursuit of evidence based truth in common.

My dad is of the interpretation of late that the universe is a collective intelligence, it's all connected at the atomic and subatomic level and all somehow centred around carbon as that's the most readily bonded molecule. He saw a clip on YouTube there recently that showed Prof. Brian Cox heating a diamond with his and explaining that he was altering the atomic energy levels by heating them, he then went on to say that all the electrons in all the atoms in the diamond had to alter their state accordingly and not only that that every atom in the universe had to do so. Of course dad saw this as confirming his theory. He goes around talking about what is god and what is intelligence, any time this comes up. He'll argue that atoms and their electrons are god and intelligent and it's all interconnected. ANY way moving on. I get along with him grand until he cracks on about this stuff. He's retired and has a lot of time to think.

My mom on the other hand is a defensive catholic. By that I mean "...and why can't people believe this?" "don't people have the right to believe whatever they want?" "there's nothing wrong with it!". A bit of back story here. My grandmother (mom's mother) was a typical Irish catholic grandmother. Crucifixes around the house, holywater sponges, blessed herself and prayed every time she saw a church or a gaveyard, would say "holy mother save us" every time someone cursed or deaths were on the news... you know the type. Anyway mom took her mental deterioration and death very hard and I guess her holding onto the catholic concepts (even though she's not a practising catholic by any means) is her way of holding onto her memory of her mother and any argument that would lead her to think otherwise would be an insult to her memory of her mother and that she'd have to let go and move on. So broadly she supports my secular views as I can do and think what I like but if I try to "convert" her nooo then she gets defensive hence the "defensive catholic" label. I'd say she'd an atheist/secularist in denial but doesn't want to question it herself.

General Geeky History

I've used pretty much every version of Windows from 3.1 to 7 except 2000, but that was pretty much ME except it didn't suck.

I'm 25 now so that means my dad had a 3.11 machine when I was very young and I remember windows 95 was the thing to beat all things when It came out. Dad upgraded the 3.1 machine to 95 (I can't remember was more ram installed but I've a vague memory of it. Next there was a new desktop with 98 SE and we cept the monitor, keyboard, mouse and ancient printer from the old PC. Those were the infamous and much detested dialup years (this video will bring you back http://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0). 

We moved onto a new Dell during the pentium 4 time (with xp) and that's still the "family" PC (though dad uses it exclusively). My first laptop was in or around the purchase of the Dell (maybe 6 months to a year later), it was pretty basic and slow my parents paid 400 new for it off dell. My parents were probably under the "new car" philosophy to get the kid a basic model and it'll incentivise them to work to get something better even though I was 19-20 and wasn't gonna spill crap all over it. It had a 1.4ghz celeron singlecore that could barely run xp). It prompted me to work and save and blow over 1000 euro on a 1.66ghz core 2 duo Acer (just before vista was on the cards so I got XP MCE). That was my well used (and abused) personal workhorse for ages (saw manys the OS experiment including vista, quite a few ubuntu releases and the various public, and not so public, test builds of windows 7). I'm currently on another acer that's 1-2 years old and has a 2.26ghz core i5 with 4gb ram.

Around 05/06 I heard about this thing called Ubuntu and that it was a free OS. I looked up the website and screenshots and I didn't like the Gnome top panel and dismissed it as too OSXy. I then heard about a "windows user friendly" version called Kubuntu. Our house had slow broadband at the time and I thought I wasn't gonna download it as it'd take ages. So I saw that they'd post it out for free to any country so I opted for that. I installed it on my laptop and wifi didn't work out of the box and this was a deal breaker. I wanted portability and needed wifi for college so back to xp I went (I had a system install cd).

From about 9.04 (or possibly earlier) began an on again off again flirtation with ubuntu, monitoring it's progress and doing a full install (as I wanted to go full out using as my main OS to give it a fair chance, and also I hadn't heard of virtual box at the time). I always was left thinking it's 85% there to being my main OS, ... ok it's 90% there,.... ok it's 95% there etc. But If i'm prefectly honest it wasn't until 11.10 and Linux Mint 12 that I thought "I really can use this as my full time OS and not have a niggling 1% instance where I want to use windows. I have a PS3 for gaming and Libre Office is now at a level where I don't have to install Office 2007 under wine anymore (it's possible and works 100% but after a while and the rate I tend to distro hop or try out new stuff in virtual box, the functionality gain isn't worth the hastle of installing as I don't use it really). Any games I do run are mostly emulators and casual stuff.

Terminal, I don't touch really unless it's a "copy these sudo commands into the terminal to install". I've gotten used to the fact that ubuntu and mint are easy to install software to and Wine is now virtually bomb proof unless you need direct x or .net framework or something).

In conclusion right from the beginning I was fascinated by the prospect that a full desktop OS can be completely free but in a way that has hindered it as it doesn't have the financial resources of Microsoft and Apple to iron out the niggling aspects as quickly or to get huge software vendors to support their platform. For me it has taken this long to rival them in my mind and cause me to possibly switch for good. I'm more mature now and so are (some) Linux distros. The back and forth with windows has stood to me well as both my parents and the vast majority of my friends use 7 and I can help them as I've used it extensively since the public beta.

Windows 8 hasn't impressed be at all thus far. I realise it's just a developer preview but I guess it's a "love it or hate it" interface. It's geared towards touch input (tablets and in the case of Windows Phone 7, phones) I understand that, and they are making a huge gamble by porting it over to the ARM architecture. What I wish they would do is have an option upon installation to install the Metro UI (what they call it) or to just stick with a refined and updated Windows 7 interface. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the Windows 7 "Superbar" (the bottom panel) and the Ribbon interface they employed in Office 2007 and 2010 as well as MS Paint and Wordpad and a few others. I find it's pretty intuitive yet powerful.

Skeprechauns Podcast

Well last night I listened to their first episode of the podcast and I must say overall I am quite impressed. There were a few things I feel they could've done better but I put it down to their first podcast. They seemed a little disorganised at the start and seemed to look at each other as if to say "Right will we just press record and bite the bullet? and if we fuck up it'll be edited out" In some ways I commend them with just getting on with it but I would've at least liked them to take a 10 min discussion on how to do the opening ie: settle on the name (not sure if that was ment to be them kidding around) and more importantly  a quick  2-3 min intro from all the people in the studio, and weather they bring their professional opinion into it like the skeptics guide or if it's ordinary people discussing news topics. I was left wondering "wait, who is this guy?", "how many people are involved in this?" I feel it was important to at least determine the names and the number of people speaking. Anyway, they soldiered on and I actually find I quite entertaining if a little slower paced then other podcasts I listen to (for clarification this isn't a direct comparison with the skeptics guide, as that would be unfair, I mean in general as I listen to at least 4-5 in total).

I felt myself being drawn into the atmosphere, it was a homely "we're regular people who meet in the pub and we're gonna forget the mics are here" atmosphere. This adds to the uniqueness to the podcast and I suppose would help the speakers get over their nerves but I feel they shouldn't completely forget that this is a podcast and to explain things that mightn't be 100% apparent to the listener. Like say something like "I'm reading off this guys website and he says X" or "this was in an article in Y newspaper and I've printed it off and highlighted it". There seemed to be a tad of "I was reading this guys website x.com and you guys all know it" *cue agreement from the other panelists* and then they go on and read the lasted post from it without explaining the general feel or genre the website falls in. Now to be fair they may indeed have imparted the needed information to the listener but this is the lasting impression I have from listening to it last night.

I have yet to listen to episode 2 and I have no doubt these niggles will eventually be ironed out. As I said, overall this has given me a good impression and I am willing to put the small niggles down to it being the first episode.

Irish Skeptic Scene

So I was browsing the Dublin Skeptics in the Pub page. A group that I would love to go to one of their meetups as I regularly went to Skeptics in the Pub in Vancouver during my year there and made quite a few friends through that group, In fact I doubt I'd have enjoyed my trip there half as much if I hadn't come across those meetings. Anyway I've known about the Dublin Skeptics in the Pub since before my Vancouver trip but alas, the schedule didn't really suit me then and now since I'm out of work I'm unfortunately less likely to get a chance to go to them. I might make an up and coming brunch they have organised as there isn't the social pressure and the temptation to have a few pints (a few pints often leads to more).

 Anyways I was on their Facebook page when I noticed a url skeprechauns.com, hmm ok you've intrigued me, turns out they have a podcast that I didn't even know about. As I've previously said i'm a bit of a podcast listener in my spare time and particularly like skeptic/science/tech related podcasts and here was one in my home town that I didn't even know about!, with about 15 hour long episodes so far! Well I've subscribed and am committed to listening to them all in order even if it takes me 15 days!

I will report my opinion on the first episode when I get around to listening to it. Either later this evening or I might listen to it in bed tonight as I tend to do.

History of Moi, The Atheist

Well I guess it started off with my Parents. My parents didn't baptise me and decided that it would be wrong of them to impose any religion on me at such a young age. Sound thinking since you can join any religion at any time and religions indoctrinate children out of fear that their "souls" would be lost if they were to die and they weren't made a member of the cult/religion. They enrolled me into a non-denominational primary school that wasn't local to us but was on the commute to my mom's work (or at least not too inconvenient from it). Catholic instruction was possible in this school but it was outside of class time and was an opt in rather then the non religious opting out.

I'll fast forward a bit to around the 10-12 age. At this stage I was an early bloomer in terms of intelligence. I was no means "gifted", I would struggle at things like Irish and some aspects of Maths but myself and another kid, would've been above our age in scientific interest and comprehension. I would've been a regular watcher of BBC Horizon and Wildlife on One at this stage and would've understood most of it. This I feel was key to laying the foundations of evolution and the relationship between similar animal species in my head. I could see the similarity of Humans and the other great apes and of dogs and wolves and other examples. I was only just hearing of Darwin and his body of work at this stage as my first, and still one of my greatest, hero of Biology and natural world was David Attenborough. It just made sense to me and the evidence has only gotten stronger since then.

My transfer to second level wasn't an easy one, I went to the local one whereas my primary school friends naturally went to the nearest one to the primary school. I retreated quite a bit into my shell for the first 3 years and in some areas I haven't fully gotten over those self esteem issues. I was convinced I was the sole atheist but funnily enough that didn't make me feel down as I had built up a mental brick wall and a facade towards my fellow students. I was only myself around my immediate and extended family. It was 4th year or transition year where I came out of my shell quite a bit and made lifelong close friends. I saw no need to keep up the facade and saw transition year as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. The fact that there were several bonding trips such as cycling for a week or paris or skiing (5th year) only catalysed my intent.

During 6th year, religion class was a study period with occasional guest speakers from various religious groups we had an ex Jahovah's Witness (he gave us the inside scoop that a practicing one would never give us), group of Hare Krishnas and maybe a few others I forget. I wasn't an outspoken atheist at the time but wouldn't have hesitated to let people know if they asked. The same as I feel now. I found out a few of my friends were also atheists at this stage. But my closest friend funnily enough I don't think I ever asked him. He either is or a very lax catholic otherwise he would have put up with me all these years. This pretty much bings me up to speed as my views haven't changed since then. I subscribe to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, The Atheist Experience and The Non Prophets podcasts (among others). I am a loose member of Atheist Ireland, by that I mean I subscribe to their newsletters and Facebook page/group (whichever it is, Facebook blurred the lines between them) and occasionally fall in for their social meetups but am not as of this moment a fully paid up member but I certainly would be if I had the disposable income (it's not much but I'm THAT poor).


Well I'm off back to my incessant browsing, Until next time!

ubuntu phone/tablet mockup

ubuntu phone/tablet mockup

This is quite an interesting mockup of Ubuntu on phones/tablets. It actually looks quite usable but since it'll be two years away according to Mark Shuttleworth himself. In the meantime the phone i'm lusting after is the Galaxy Nexus, or a Galaxy SII as they are pretty comparable.