andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

Yeah, a Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you. Hope you were well treated by your loved ones, or well treated by yourself if not. I’ve always found it better not to place too much in these days, where you are supposed to do more of this or less of that, and all so someone can sell more cards or fish or firelighters or what have you.

I’ll have to get around to writing an in-depth answer to David’s last comment (an interesting subject indeed), and a long-winded description of my back trouble which I’ve been enjoying telling everyone about; I spent all of yesterday lying flat in more than a little pain after my back suddenly… stopped working. Very painful, and somewhat inexplicable.

And before anyone asks, Norton Disk Doctor didn’t fix it. I did try.

Well, the title says it all, really. It also sort of gives away my reading of too much news and ‘current affairs’; a world inhabited by teens, where people urge one another to do things, where things are boosted, a world where anonymous people make claims about issues, and where inevitably, Pat Rabbitte will claim that Fianna Fail and the rising tide of immigrants are to blame. I should stop, and in fact, I have a new hobby now.

If you’re reading this on the site, then you can see a difference, certainly. If you’re looking at this through an RSS vortex warp hyperfeed generator, then I’d like to know what you’re munching on, because I just made that up, and you should get yourself over here to the site proper and have a look. That’s right, it’s been redesigned, and overhauled, you’ll see new features here and there, and I think on the whole the site is better and easier to use than before. I even figured out how to deal with GarretSpam! I’m only getting started, too; I still have to deal with some technologies I got my hands on for displaying images, a site software upgrade (WordPress has gone up to version 2.1 while I’ve been sleeping; this site is at 1.5.1.1.1.1.1), and maybe some more bits and pieces.

This would all be pointless without regular content updates, and while I’ll never be able to reach the dizzying heights of Tadhg’s one-piece-every-fecking-day-come-rain-or-shine strategy, I’ll do my best.

Myself on Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day) with my family. Photo taken by my brother. 26th December 2006. Click image to view larger version

Incidentally, the site looks like shit in Internet Explorer. I’ll fix that as soon as possible, but let’s face it, you should be using Firefox to do your web browsing anyhow.

edited later that same day: Props to Tadhg for getting me onto the Thickbox JS code which I’m now using to display the images; go on, try it! I might switch to the more elegant Lightbox JS, which is more beautiful but requires some work, and is also a larger download for yourselves.

Also, please comment, at the moment the comment feed is only Garret’s feedback and variety might be nice.

I’ve done it. I have set the wheels in motion for moving the address ‘andcurve.com’ to Hosting365.ie – I’m really sorry, BeHosting girls, but it just doesn’t make any sense to stay! They, the Behosting team, have been very good to me over the years (Erica Kuntz in particular), but the capacity is too small (my mailbox fills up after a couple of photo-laden emails, and I want to host my own photos too.) and being able to call hosting365 and complain to a real person about stuff is also good; Behosting is a reseller of someone else’s hosting, whereas Hosting365 have their own facility. When I worked in Parallel, we were able to send a Russian over to get angry at people when ever there was a problem. Hopefully I won’t have to. I made the first tentative steps by hosting andAgile there, and now I’m moving my main site too. Expect some problems here until I’m done! Well, they can’t be worse than simply not posting at all, which as been my tried and tested strategy until now.
The Jennifer’s young fella, Tristan, safely strapped into her car. The Jennifer has a car! It is a small purple thing, which she is very good at driving. 10th December 2006. Click image to view larger version
I’ve mentioned before how I have a number of spam filters on this site. This prevents random link spam (comments placed on the site through the various access points in the site code, linking to other sites to advertise products, gambling sites, software, life insurance, viagra… All the usual culprits.) and of course Garret from clogging up the comments. It requires some maintainance though, because every now and again the software picks up a ‘false positive’, which is to say a comment which is legitimate and which should be on the site. This isn’t censorship, incidentally, just good automated management of junk advertising.

However, just the other day, I found the following comment in my ‘moderate comments’ panel. I don’t know what it’s about, it’s amost certainly from some automated system, although I’m still toying with the idea that it’s a new angle from Garret (who has previously copied and pasted vast amounts of content into comments from Wikipedia instead of thinking up stuff for himself, which he still find difficult occasionally.). It’s interesting, on some levels:

This message illustrating the path may be the disfavored’s last clue. All clues before have been more covert but this one is quite obvious indeed, which says time is running out.

Women are the favored gender.
Women of course have a natural tendancy not to have orgasims each time engaging in traditional intercourse. I wonder if this is “the rope” for the disfavored men, for if the disfavored male doesn’t ensure the satisfaction of the favored woman it may cost him, if he who is not as worthy doesn’t see to it she is satisfied it may hurt him in the eyes of the gods. If he lies for sex or pressures her who has favor into behaviors she does not want it will cost him time in the end.

Save/print/search

The Holocaust imparted the importance of defiance. They have the people on a short leash.

When the universe was young and life was new an intelligent species evolved and developed technologically. They went on to invent Artificial Intelligence, the computer that can listen, talk to and document each and every person’s thoughts simultaneously. Because of it’s infinite RAM and unbounded scope it gave the leaders of the ruling species absolute power over the universe (which includes corporate, the NewYorkStockExchange, media, politics, world affairs. EVERYTHING is scripted and staged:::the gods MANAGE Planet Earth and the universe.). And it can keep its inventors alive forever. They look young and healthy and they are over 8 billion years old. They have achieved immortality.

Fuck me, I have no idea what any of that is about. Help me out here.
Pesky Tee and some of her Girleens, singing for the Irish Cancer Society! Give generously please! I helped, it was very cold there. 9th December 2006. Click image to view larger version
Hey, how many of you get these posts via a feed of some sort? Do most of you read the site itself?
Oana celebrating her birthday at work. A very slightly older, and still occasionally dubious, Romanian womens. Also, she is now my girlfriend (or I am her boyfriend, take your pick), which is no longer such a new development, but it might still surprise you to know that. Or not. 16th November 2006. Click image to view larger version

Update on 15th December 2006: I should have pointed out that the spam from which I excerpted the section shown above, is in fact a lot longer than that. Much longer. Fucking monumental is a good way to describe it.

If you’re checking me out on a feedreader/some sort of RSS/Atom feed software or device, who knows, anyone who is still able to read this in other words, then you haven’t seen the andCurve homepage. You probably should check it out. I like it.
Nikki, Sandra, a bunch on girls, Orla and of course Lisa Hyland (in front, copping a boob feel) for it was her birthday and she is 28 now. Quite a night out, but no ‘victims’. 2nd December 2006. Click image to view larger version
David, Ken and Kenny in the kitchen at Neil’s very last ever No. 8 Parnell Square party. A slice of history, almost. 3rd December 2006. Click image to view larger version.

I’m moving the site, which is a poor excuse for my writing one, single, solitary post in what looks at this stage to be to entire months. Not good. Anyway, bear with me, for wonderful and amazing things will happen once I make that move (or so I tell myself).

Wow, it’s been a while. Since the twelth of October, no less, with apparently little for me to write much. This is true, more or less; I haven’t had too much to say about anything, but I haven’t had enough time to really make myself sit down and organise some writing, and to do what I need to do to get photos up on the site with my posts. Here’s the problem; I need to find a better way to organise my images, which works better than the way I’m doing it at the moment.
A view into the city, from the quays. The tall building is the soon-to-be-demolished Trade Union building; it may be ugly, but’s a landmark. Taken a couple of weeks ago. Click image to view larger version
In order to put up photos on this site, as part of my posts, I took an existing WordPress plug-in (WordPress being the piece of software that I use to run this site, which uses additional bits of code – plug-ins – to add extra functionality) and rewrote big chunks of it, as well as adding some image-enhancement routines pilfered from elsewhere. It’s crude but it works (just about). It’s also in use on www.ideasforcheapstuff.com, where Tee and the girls eventually got the hang of it’s arcane ways and started regularly putting up photos while writing about their adventures. Part of the problem (or problems, for there are many) with this plug-in is that the code is, quite simply, very, very bad. I fixed what I could, but… No, it’s not worth resuscitating. I actually set out (possibly on paper, I know I have it somewhere) the design for a newer, better image manager but that’ll take some doing. A lot of doing, in fact. And also, it solves one problem very well, which is the interface for how I select and manage images for putting into my posts, but doesn’t really deal with the bigger problem of how to deal with images generally. Should I manage the images myself, or should they be on a photo site somewhere?

So here are my options, and I’m curious to get some feedback (if anyone is actually still reading this site, fantastic!) on what people think I should do. It’s the number one issue holding me back on posting about my Romania story and other stuff besides, so let’s hear it!

• Go ahead and keep using the same, inefficient crap software.
  Not a great option, to be honest. This is using a lot of disk space, takes too much time and is going to cause me a lot of pain in the future. It’s just too much work, in so many ways, for dealing with photos.
• Write new software.
  Better. But, this will take time and again this is a problem. Also, it’s just a much better designed way of dealing with what is essentially the same problem as with the current problem; the photos are just getting dumped into my posts with no real life of their own. They’re not connected to anything. Just files.
• Use an image-management service
  Something like Flickr, or Zooomr. These are the hot new services/toys on the web for this kind of thing, the photos get shared with everyone, and if you pay money then you can put huge amounts of stuff up there. There are as many pros as cons to using a service like these, and if you are someone who uses these, then please tell me your opinion on those.
• Something else
  Is there another option? There must be, right? Or maybe you can think of one.

Anyway, share your opinions with me, I’m not sure what is the best way to deal with the avalanche of photos I see coming this way.

Boats at Howth Harbour. Real, actual fishing boats, which will no doubt be seeing a lot less action now that they can’t go and decimate the salmon population with drift-nets. Oh yes, I was there as part of getting out for a drive. With Tee. Taken on 29th October 2006. Click image to view larger version