July 2007

May Photos

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »
A small stack of photos from my late May visit to Timisoara in Romania…

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A small stack of photos from my late May visit to Timisoara in Romania; as you may or may not be aware (But you probably are, since you’re reading this, which implies that you probably know a bit about me) I go there roughly every four to six weeks and stay with my girlfriend, Oana, and work from her apartment. It’s good, because as well as us being able to spend time together, I like being in Timisoara – read and see some more on it here (‘h0t chixx0rs!’) and here (‘I’m back!’).

Incidentally, have all of you managed to get your heads around the ‘click on the image to view the larger, high-quality version of same image’ concept? I don’t actually know, but I’m presuming you have.

A view of Timisoara from Oana's apartment - I think that's looking South, over a residential area. Those somewhat dowdy-looking apartments are actually well-built and very comfortable. 13th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »A view of Timisoara from Oana’s apartment – I think that’s looking South, over a residential area. Those somewhat dowdy-looking apartments are actually well-built and very comfortable. 13th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
A view of Timisoara from Oana's apartment - I think that's looking North. At the bottom is the tram station and to the left is the local 'Etti' store, the Timisoara equivalent of 'Spar' in Ireland. 13th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »A view of Timisoara from Oana’s apartment – I think that’s looking North. At the bottom is the tram station and to the left is the local ‘Etti’ store, the Timisoara equivalent of ‘Spar’ in Ireland. 13th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Near the centre of Timisoara, a view of some of the more fancy-pancy apartments. 14th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Near the centre of Timisoara, a view of some of the more fancy-pancy apartments. 14th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana’s apartment has a very fast broadband Intarwebs connection, it’s on the nineth floor with stunning views, bright and sunny, and when she moves out I’m going to miss it almost as much as she will; even the screech of tyres burning rubber somewhere down below every half an hour as some tool tries to demonstrate his lack of ability at driving.

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick glass of drain cleaner at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana (in green) and the girls enjoying a quick glass of drain cleaner at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls warming up for some fancy-pancy disco at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls warming up for some fancy-pancy disco at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls enjoying a quick karaoke crooning session at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls enjoying a quick karaoke crooning session at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
Oana and the girls enjoying a quick... Oh, never mind. They're pretty, and so foarte sexy. At Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »Oana and the girls enjoying a quick… Oh, never mind. They’re pretty, and so foarte sexy. At Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »
That's no girl! Mario tormenting Clea at Mario's birthday. 19th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »That’s no girl! Mario tormenting Clea at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana’s mates are a great bunch, and I really enjoy hanging out with them. Mad, bad and dangerous to know… And they know how to party!

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Open Source, and winding up Tadhg

You’re going to put up some shelves. So, you need a hammer, and you go to the hardware store…

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Every now and again, it’s necessary for the good of the world to ‘flame-bait’ Tadhg on a matter close to his heart (Partly because it’s always a good warm-up exercise for writing my own material), and the matter I generally choose (Because it’s a subject of which I know just enough to get into a conversation about, have some mild opinions on it myself, and Tadhg has some very passionate feelings about it, all of which makes it the perfect combination for this exercise) is Open Source software.

To get some background on Open Source/Free software, you’ll need to read a bit about it (a couple of good places are gnu.org and opensource.org) but in a nutshell it concerns the licensing of software. By and large, when you buy a piece of commercial software, you buy a limited licence to use the software, not the software itself. Sure, you have a cd or a dvd, a box, a serial number and perhaps some manuals of varying degrees of quality, but the software is ultimately not yours to do with as you please. It’s yours to do with as you’ve agreed with the company that publishes the software. You don’t actually own the software.

Now, there’s been a new way of doing this in the last few years, which is the Open Source/Free software movement. Even if you buy and perhaps pay a lot of money for a piece of software, the Open Source licence means that the code of the software is open and available for you to do with what you want, inspect, modify, and a number of other things. Now, there’s still a licence of course, but that is there to protect the author of the code. Again, if you want to know more about it, have a read at the links above and maybe it’ll explain a bit better and in a lot more detail. Personally I think this is a good thing and it’s good for the software industry.

The thing is that this has developed for some into a sort of religious movement, where there is a Right and a Wrong. You can probably see where that might lead. And also, a sort of alternative eco-system of developing Open Source/Free software alternatives for just about any software you can think of has developed. Not that I think that this is a bad thing, it isn’t, but the people doing this are often doing this in their spare time, and tackling big projects which require expertise which they don’t have available to them (And a lot of the time, that expertise is in non-software development areas, such as user interface design and project management). The upshot is that while some projects are incredibly good and innovative, there are others which are technically good but not great, and lack the polish, finish and depth of design of a commercial ‘closed-source’ product. I mean, that’s something you can expect, if you try to create your own alternative to a piece of software which has been designed and created by a team which has access to everything they need, including money, quite possibly working together in an office. It doesn’t guarantee success (There’s an awful lot of very, very bad commercial ‘closed-source’ software out there.) but it’s definitely a big advantage for a commercial ‘closed-source’ product development team.

So, with all that as a background, have a read here (‘FUD about open source Flash’) to get an idea of where Tadhg stands on this. Make sure to read the comments; and I was pleased to see I’m not the only person out there trying to get Tadhg worked up about Open Source/Free software issues.

It came up again recently and somewhat unexpectedly here (AutoHotkey Script for Last.fm). Now, It’s unlikely you’ll want to read the article; not because it’s a bad article, but it’s not really relevant to this story, it concerns some scripting for the (Quite beautiful, actually) Last.fm website. No, what pushed my button was a recent comment by Tadhg about his choice of music playing software and (The important bit) the influencing factor in making that choice. The ‘discussion’, naturally, started from there and I decided just for the hell of it that I’d reproduce my analogy here on choosing software based on the licence.

I’m aware, incidentally, that it has at this stage lost all context. And this post has become one of what Oana describes as ‘the boring ones about software or something’. Still, that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

You’re going to put up some shelves. So, you need a hammer, and you go to the hardware store. In the hardware store there is a good quality Stanley hammer, some other medium-quality hammers, and a cheap but somewhat shoddy G00znr hammer from some guys who make them part-time (during the day-job they make saws for… Stanley) which you’ll have to assemble yourself. Anyway, to make the ethical choice, you buy the G00znr hammer, take it home, spend a couple of hours assembling it and setting it up, and eventually get 2 of your 4 shelves up (one has been destroyed during the learning process, and you ran out of time and got too fucked off before putting up the last one). But you know what, if everybody used a G00znr hammer, we’d get used to putting less stuff on shelves, and the world might be a better place. The guys at Stanley would be out of jobs, and have more free time to improve the G00znr hammer. Maybe we might find we don’t need shelves, and we can start asking ourselves “Where do nails come from?”.

And just for bonus points:
Q: How many Open Source advocates does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Maybe the real question is, ‘do we need light?’, because the lightbulb is a proprietary non-open system, we should explore alternatives to light which negate the need to use lightbulbs…

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Re-active

Right, the site is back again, all is well. I’m going to try this again. Just to deal with the inevitable question(s), someone asked me to take down some photos of them and I since I didn’t have the time, I took down the site instead. I’ve now taken down the photos. If you have a serious problem with a photo of you on the site, send me the exact URL and I will take it down. I won’t like it, it will piss me off, but I will do it. I will obliterate it from my site, and I will replace it and the references to you with whatever I see fit. If it annoys me sufficiently, all this carry-on, I’m going to take down the site entirely and do something else.
My new Opel Astra - it's no racehorse, but a 1.4 litre engine, allow wheels, electrics and extras and great condition make it a joy to drive. It's heavy and reasonably spacious. I'll have to do something about those 'L-plates' though. 7th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »

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Right, the site is back again, all is well. I’m going to try this again. Just to deal with the inevitable question(s), someone asked me to take down some photos of them and I since I didn’t have the time, I took down the site instead. I’ve now taken down the photos. If you have a serious problem with a photo of you on the site, send me the exact URL and I will take it down. I won’t like it, it will piss me off, but I will do it. I will obliterate it from my site, and I will replace it and the references to you with whatever I see fit. If it annoys me sufficiently, all this carry-on, I’m going to take down the site entirely and do something else.

So in the meantime, nothing much happened. The last thing I wrote was about the election in Ireland, here, here and here; well, it happened, I voted the way I said I would, and I very nearly (Nearly loves a drink down in the Could Have bar with Almost) got my preferred government of Fianna Fail and the Green Party. Well, that is, Fianna Fail got the numbers they needed, and got back in with the Green Party and the decimated Progressive Democrats (I was on the money there, and in a twist of fate their leader Michael McDowell was beaten by the Green Party’s John Gormley who is now Minister for the Environment – poetic justice, if you ask me) and a gaggle of ‘Independents’. They’re not so very independent, since most of them used to be in Fianna Fail, and a few are even rejoining them.

A poignant moment as Mags Murray's election poster, much like she and the majority of her fellow Progressive Democrat election candidates did, sinks never to be seen again. We wept. 21st May 2007 Click image to view larger version »A poignant moment as Mags Murray’s election poster, much like she and the majority of her fellow Progressive Democrat election candidates did, sinks never to be seen again. We wept. 21st May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Fine Gael did rather well, but not well enough to get a majority, and Labour had more or less the same performance as in the previous election. Labour was clearly prepared to do business with Fianna Fail but they promised everyone (and particularly Fine Gael) that they wouldn’t go into a coalition government with Fianna Fail, so… They didn’t. With more than a little bitterness the leader of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny, eventually conceded defeat (that really took some doing, he clearly wanted the the job of Glorious Leader very, very badly. He won’t get a second chance, and he knows it.).

More on the long term consequences of this later on; there has already been a lot going on, and although it’s early days yet I think this is going to shape up to be an exciting five years in Irish politics. I think there’s a chance of real improvement, and so far, everything seems to be off to a flying start…

Some other stuff that’s been holding my attention other than my usual introspective self-obsession has been driving; as you may have gathered, I bought a new car a couple of months ago and I’ve been enjoying driving it. It’s an Opel Astra XE Comfort 1.4 litre 5-door (hatchback), 2001, spotless condition with alloy wheels and lots of electrics, a great car in fantastic condition.

My new Opel Astra - it's no racehorse, but a 1.4 litre engine, allow wheels, electrics and extras and great condition make it a joy to drive. It's heavy and reasonably spacious. I'll have to do something about those 'L-plates' though. 7th May 2007 Click image to view larger version »My new Opel Astra – it’s no racehorse, but a 1.4 litre engine, allow wheels, electrics and extras and great condition make it a joy to drive. It’s heavy and reasonably spacious. I’ll have to do something about those ‘L-plates’ though. 7th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Again, more on that later – it’s been a big deal for me, and more than makes up for my general lack of interests, hobbies and social life by giving me something new to do with my spare time.

And the rain. Dear God, the rain. It hasn’t let up in months. I mean, really, there have been a couple of days here and there without rain since the middle of May but by and large every day has seen rain, often in a volume which defies belief. Now, it’s been often said and held to be true that Ireland is a country of rain and generally miserable weather and sometimes this is true but of course, not all of the time. But not this year. This year, the whole summer so far has been wet and it shows no sign of letting up before September, when surely the water must run out? I believe that this for Ireland will be the upshot of Global Warming; the additional heat will mean more humidity and so much more rain during the summer months, with the good sunny weather appearing on either side of it for a couple of months, and a very mild winter. I actually previously believed that Ireland might experience serious droughts for the first time, but I realise now that I was wrong, and not taking into account how the heat might express itself with the amount of water in and around this island.

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