Back in Dublin, Thoughts on Kerry

I'm back in Dublin after my week away in Kerry. I set a goal for myself of trying to blog more often when I was over there but that didn't work out because I'd either be doing something else or be too tired when I got home. I'll try and summarise my experiences and the events in hindsight.

The typical day involved myself and my Dad getting up at 10am and driving down to the beach (about a half mile away as I described before so quite a short journey). We'd typically be the furthest house who participate so we call along the various other houses (about 3) to see who we can rouse from their slumbers and who's too hungover to open their eyes let alone move. Once we've rounded up what we can we go down to the beach in car convoy, granted the beach is close enough for you to walk down but we tend to use the cars for security of items like watches or phones and also they make a handy changing area. The sea would usually be cold to the unclimatised body, but the change in body temperature and the saltiness of the water is a perfect wake up call and it also sharpens a groggy head if we did manage to raise the hungover zombies.

After we dried and changed back into our dry clothes we'd return home for breakfast. The plan of the day is usually discussed at some stage during or immediately after the swim, If it's a walk it's usually not honed down as to which one out of the range that we've done in the past, so we typically say "meet back at X's house at 1 and we'll decide what we feel like". Sometimes golfing is the order of the day with all the uncles or some of them being tied up. In which case sometimes the cousins would decide on a plan for the day including possibly driving to another beach if it's a nice day or a trip into Dingle to  grab a few things/ potter around.

Dinner in my house was usually 7pm (6pm when in Dublin) and we'd either be left to our own devices in our individual houses or we've been invited to an uncles house/inviting them over or eating in the golf club if it's a special occasion or none of us feel like cooking. The evening/ after dinner events again range on what's going on. Of late I suppose as my parents and the others are getting older they tend not to go out to the pub as much but every week/ odd week there might be a presentation of prizes and then a sing song in the Golf Club. Naturally if we're over at an Aunt's/Uncle's house then the evenings entertainment is there (or if they're over with us), or sometimes we've dined separately but we get an invite for after dinner shenanigans (cheese and crackers and wine/beer and maybe a sing song or a board game) at one of their houses. Other times we have our quite evenings in just watching the 4 channels we have or reading a book (or browsing the net in my case).

I was thinking what do I get out of this annual Kerry trip besides meeting up with family (which is nearly worth it it by itself) while on the train back. I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean I do get a benefit but I was trying to categorise it and quantify it. After much thought I concluded that I enjoy the zen like quietness and the fresh air as well as the breath taking views that are seen on the walks and drives around. Also I get fresh top up of what it is to be Irish, there's such a sense of homeliness and welcome down there. Everyone seems to leave their work life busy personas behind and you can walk up to and chat to other people who likewise make the annual trip down.

Yesterday after arriving into Heuston station at about 5 I rushed home to dump my stuff, shower change and then head back out as there was an Atheist's in the pub meeting at half 7. I ended up being an hour late as it turns out but that was fine as these events tend to be casual about your arrival time. I had a blast but I also approached everything with more patience and a kind of settled serenity thanks to the  battery recharge I received while in Kerry. It was a good evening and I met quite a few personalities that I wouldn't mind meeting again (both male and female). Dunno what It was but maybe as my attitude was slightly less reserved and more comfortable with myself I suppose then that must've conveyed itself and I seemed to get along with people better. Whether this is a lasting change or will I soon retreat back into the persona of before I don't know. I hope it's the former because I found myself getting along with a few of the girls that were there like I've not been able to get along with girls in a while which is a good potential for recurring meetings.

Windows 8, my thoughts and the leaked RTM

I downloaded the supposed Windows 8 RTM release that was leaked to the torrent sites and I installed it in Virtual Box to kick the tires a bit. This isn't my first experimentation with Window 8 as I've had a look at the developer preview and I think the consumer preview also. I'm not sure if there was one after that, there's references on the 'net about a “release preview” I don't know if that's new MS talk for an RC or what.

I downloaded it and installed it (which went slightly faster then I expected). The installation prompted me for my “Microsoft Account” now I had one from the MSN days (approx 2000 when I got it) but I was being spammed out of it on that account so started afresh with a live.com address a few years back. I only really use it for MSN chat these days but even that has been taken over by facebook chat. Email is tried and trusted Gmail. Anyway, I inputed the live.com account details and that was fine, installation went ahead. I noticed that this is your user account and password for accessing Windows 8 which is a huge leap into the relms of cloud computing ala Chrome OS.

The UI (Metro), seems to be responsive and fast but it just isn't designed with a mouse in mind. You can navigate using a mouse but it seems to be an after thought and not the main focus. All the apps are fullscreen with touch friendly toggles and a universal Metro UI/Windows Phone/Zune look about them. There is also a “desktop” interface which is pretty much a carbon copy of the Windows 7 desktop but without the start menu. The full screen Metro tiles UI is the start screen which makes it incredably touch screen friendly but fairly useless with the tradional mouse and keyboard input methods. I'm sure there are substantial behide the scenes updates with Windows 8 vs Windows 7 and I am told it is possible to install a 3rd party start menu on the desktop for a more tradional Windows 7 like experience.

Overall I'd not recommend it unless you had it on a tablet or some other touch input device. Windows 7 will continue to get updates and you can always give linux a go if you have a itch about changing Windows 7.

Train Journey

Well, todays events went quite interestingly. I persuaded myself that skipping sleeping last night was a good idea in order to gain time to pack and clean the house which wasn't going to take much time anyway and to be honest while I did the general bulk of the tasks I needed to do I forgo the hovering and a few minor things like that because “meh, it'll be only a week and I'll be the first one back by a long shot .... right?” well in all likelyhood that is indeed going to be true but there's always the niggling doubt that one of my parents has to rush back to Dublin during the week and to find the house not quite in a heep but still in a slightly “lived in” state, depite the lack of occupants.

I was assured that there'd be free wifi and a socket convenient to every seat for the modern “IT centric” passenger (paraphasing). So I packed for the jounery with this in mind with two freshly downloaded movies if the vast array of internet entertainment options didn't hold my attention for the sum 4 hour train journey. There is indeed wifi but it's worse then dial up and I'm having a lot more success connecting to the hive mind with my phone and it's 3g connection. Then that brings me to the power outlet. They exist but only at the two ends of the carrage. I could turn my phone into a wifi hotspot but I'm getting by fine writing this up in Libre Office and then I'll upload it when I can get a reliable internet connection which could be my return to Dublin..... the joys of rural Ireland.

Anyway I was soon overcome with the desire to sleep and by my estimates (entirely subjective and nowhere near reliable) I got a good hours powernap in. The whole time I was concious of another booked but strangely vacent seat beside me and I cetainly didn't want to impeed on that space in my sleep just in case the guy (guessing from the name although it wasn't irish and sounded eastern european) got on at a later station. Thankfully this didn't happen and I suppose in a way thankfully he didn't get on. I've now transferred to the last bit of the Journey which is on a smaller but still comfortable train which does have conventient power because both my laptop and my phone were on their last legs battery wise. The intercity train fleet have come on leaps and bounds in the past 5 years as before they were barely maintaining an aging fleet that were bought in the 80s by the looks of things and were a hidious orange and black colour skeem.

I'm looking forward to this trip with optimism as I'll be meeting up with family with a handful I would nearly consider pseudo-siblings.

I will try and keep the discipline of a regular account of the goings on even if I end up writting them up as word files and then uploading them en mass when I return to Dublin which I'm sure will not be an information over load at all :P It'll all depend on how reliable the 3g signal is on my phone down at the summer house. My parents use a 3G dongle from the same company and that seems to be working for them fine so in theory it should work but real life rarely works like that. For example they could have more powerful 3g modems in the dongles then Samsung as put in my Galaxy S2, which is entirely plausable....

Edit: the 3G signal seems fine in my room upstairs and I'm able to convert the phone to a portable hotspot for my laptop. Battery life shouldn't be a concern as I've a double socket in my room. I'll try and make posts when some eventful things happen or I'll meld a few (or more) days together in one post if not much is happening.

Dating and other stuff

So this past while I've been making an effort to get out of the rut that is the life on social welfare and get out and try new things/ socialise with my friends more aaaand probably spending alot more then I should in the process.

In terms of the online dating scene I've been semi active out of part boredom and part desire to expand my social circle and go out and meet up with girls I would never have considered meeting up with before. There was one girl who was quite cute, she was a month "off the boat" from Japan and when I sent out a message asking if she wanted to meet up she replied with "Hi, I'm new to the city and I don't know where to hand in a tax form" paraphrasing but that was the gist of it. I was thinking "a bit unusual but sure if we actually sit down for something to eat for a chat after", nothing really became of it like with most of these encounters but that was one of the more unique suggestion for an activity to do.

A more recent one (only last night) was an Irish girl, who is training to be a midwife and so has a very busy work schedule. So we meet up at a pub that I know does good food and beer. I was quite tired as I had significantly less sleep then I'm used to the night before, I don't think it was that detectable but maybe that in combination with the beer may have given the impression I was drunker/creepier then I was, or maybe this is my paranoia.... Anyway, I found myself doing a lot of the talking, not out of nerves but because my lady friend didn't seem to be that enthused about any subject much. I tried a lot of subjects and tactics and some of them would work and she'd be talking for a about 4-5 sentences but then would stop and didn't seem to ask me questions back much. This was weird, because we seemed to get along fine when sending messages on the site. Anyway it was what it was and I'm in no way ruling out meeting up again and hopefully that would go better or maybe she only does one date "trials" and if it kinna goes a bit flat (which it did, I'm sorry to say) then that's it she moves on to the next guy... if that's the case then I respect that and it's understandable. I've not given up looking just because I wouldn't mind another meeting with this girl, so at least I'm keeping my options open if she's not interested in meeting again.

Anyway on a totally unrelated note, tomorrow I'm off to my annual week long trip down to my parents summer house in Dingle, Co. Kerry. It's kind of a traditional family thing as a lot of my aunts and uncles on my dad's side will be down there and hopefully quite a few of my first cousins also as I would consider some of them almost like additional siblings. It's incredibly picturesque down there and there's a beach within a half mile walk from the house. It's quite large and although wouldn't be considered private, on a normal day you might only see a few locals walking their dogs and that's it. Of course on sunny days it tends to fill up with people on beach towels. A lot of my uncles/aunts/significant others of them/ cousins would be major golfers and there's a links course that's about a half mile in the other direction to the beach, this tends to fill up the mundane/ slightly cloudy days down there but on a nice day sometimes a road walk or a hike up one of the hills or mountains that surround the area. It's very remote down there, the night life consists of going around to one of the houses with the cousins for drink/ sing-a-long with the cousins (and I mean proper songs not camp-fire bull shit) or an occasional trip out to the village which is a mile or two away. It consists of a shop (used to be two, don't know if it re opened as I've not been down there in about 2 years) 3 pubs and one pub that became a hotel with new owners and a complete knock and re-build but still keeps the lower floor as a pub, a post office, a cafe and a primary school. You'd want to go to Dingle (we're about 6 kms away) if you want something more commercial with a DJ or jukebox. There's a ton of pubs there (some late-bars) and one nightclub. I'll have significantly less to spend then usual, as I'm not working and the return train ticket cost me 55 euro, so I think I'll limit myself to going over to one of the houses if there's something on on any given night.

I'll bring my camera and tripod in case just by some chance we get decent weather down there. Also the views from the top of the mountains can be quite beautiful if the weather breaks for a sec (which chances are it'll be fine if it's "walking weather").

Dating...

So I'm sitting here browsing the web while sipping a few cans (on my 2nd, more possibly to follow). Not with any view to get drunk but just to mellow out at my own pace while I casually browse facebook, youtube, tech blogs and whatever else takes my fancy. As I'm doing this I see quite attractive girls from my past (who've thankfully not befriended me) post status updates and photos as I'm passively letting my news feed wash over me.

This brings me the thoughts that I'm altogether disillusioned by the whole dating scene. Mostly, I suspect, because I am woefully ill equipped for these sort of things. I know people who thrive at the game like it's a natural extension of their personality, or at least put enough effort into learning it as they would a sport or profession. Myself? call it a flaw if you will but I'm a passive rather then an active dater or at least any time I've tried to be an active dater I've failed miserably. Composing sonnets? Comparing the object of my affections lips to red roses and their eyes to endless blue oceans that I could get lost in eternity?  Do I object to such language? No I find it wonderfully descriptive, but I'm not so bold as to profess my affections like such in public. It'd make me feel hugely self conscious.

Dating sites while useful for seeing that yes there are attractive girls with which, on paper, I should get on with like a house on fire. They are am sure bombarded with messages from suitors on a daily basis and while I feel that what I write, when I send them a message, accurately reflects who I am. I'm sure it's as unique to them as a piece of gravel on a driveway. The solution, so guys are told by other guys (which is always the primary source of knowledge on these things, rightly or wrongly) is to stand out, be slightly obnoxious, as the girl won't be expecting that. "It works!" so they claim "sure fire, tried and trusted method!" they always sound like snake oil salesmen from the 1850s. This maybe true, you may get a girl to think "wait, he's not showering me with complements, that makes me want to go out with him to find out more" The thing is with this is it makes guys like me disillusioned with the dating process.

I'm not a complete hermit. As I said, I'm just not an active dater. I'll strike up a conversation with any girls in my immediate vicinity when out and about or going to parties. And if they're not interested or we've nothing in common then that's ok it's not my primary purpose for being there. Alas, if only all this was much simpler.

Next Photo Walk I plan to attend

I'm attending a Meetup with PHOTO WALK http://meetu.ps/dNrqH

General recap of the last while.

Ugh, It's been months since my last blog post so this one maybe a bit long and disorganised.

I was on Linux Mint 13 Mate for quite a few months and so would have no complaints over the stability or functionality. It's quite snappy and responsive in it's Mate guise, I've talked about it at length either here or on itchyhippo.com so I won't go into much details about that now.

By the way, as a little aside, I've not heard sight nor sound from Andrew from Itchyhippo in months (could be part of the reason why I haven't posted here much, as I've not really thought about writing for either, it just hasn't occurred to me much). To those who wonder if I know him in real life or if we've met, well sorry to disappoint but it's a no on both counts. I was one of his subscribers on youtube because I thought it was refreshing to hear an Irish voice doing tech tutorials and linux distro reviews, and when he asked did anyone want to write for his site I applied, directed him towards here to give him an idea of my writing style and luckily enough was accepted. He's a nice down to earth bloke but I've not met him, no, haha.

Anyway back to what semblance of a track I have laid out for this blog post, ah yes! Linux Mint! well I must confess that I am back to Windows 7, not because of a specific programme that I have to use (though I may have to do that when I go back to college, did I mention that in the past? well if I didn't I've applied to DIT to do a 4 year course in Computer Science and I've been accepted), no it was in part inertia and other parts trying unsuccessfully to flash a new rom to my newly acquired Galaxy s2.

What else have I been up to? well as you know I've been kind of dabbling in photography on and off this past while and I thought I'd put a bit more structure around the pursuit. So I had a look at meetup.com to see if there are any regular photo meetups in Dublin. Turns out there are a few, so I settled on one called "Dublin photo walk" and the results of my first meetup with them I posted here a few weeks ago for your viewing pleasure.

A few nights ago I saw the new American Pie movie and although I'm nowhere near the age of the characters portrayed in said film, it kinna made me feel sentimental about my youth and also made me think about a few of the girls who I probably could/should have dated but due to my deftness in matters of the heart at the time being similar to a camel in ice skates, I messed up more then one chance with them. I'd love to meet up over lunch with a couple of the more special ones sometime and maybe assure them that I'm not the dick they probably think I am (or more accurately am no longer, I hope) even if they're seeing someone and we depart as friends I'd at least like to chat with them and catch up. It also made me think when our reunion would be. Let me think, we're class of '05 and the first one would maybe be the 10 year? that would place it at 2015, barely 3 years away! Bloody hell does that make me feel old! It'd be nice to catch a few beers with some of the lads (though I've not really lost touch with some of them), and also the girls! not just the one's who I wouldn't considered dating back then but also just in general to see where they are in their life. I know some have married and had kids (boy does that really make me feel old).

Until next time (whenever that may be) I bid you adieu.