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

I’m frequently (too frequently, some might say!) posting on Boards.ie, particularly these days in the Politics section, where you’ll find no end of interesting ideas on a) Ireland and the EU and b) Ireland’s economy. Although there are some notably intelligent and articulate posters with some very interesting ideas and facts to present, there are also a sizeable group of people there who might be best described as baboons with basic Internet and computer usage skills. These are people who consider Ireland to be a proud and powerful nation, where the current recession (it’s actually starting to be referred to as The Recession, the capitalisation reflecting the realisation that it’s going to be sticking around for the best part of the next ten years or so) is just a small speed-bump on our accession to the throne of Rulers Of The Free World. With that goes ‘We don’t need the stinking EU’, ‘We should leave the Euro Zone’, ‘Immigrants Out’, ‘Germany owes us because without us the Euro is nothing’, ‘We have manufacturing up there with the best in the world, sure our butter is the best there is’ and of course that old chestnut ‘We’ll retake the North by force because it’s rightfully ours and we have the best army in the world, and it’ll employ people’. Hmm… Yes. Indeed.

Still, these things are a useful barometer by which you can judge the general mindset of people here. While the extremist views aren’t indicative, they give you an idea of where the general trend might be, and it seems that there’s still an incredible feeling of entitlement, of the idea that the rest of the world owes us, and the more we lose the more ‘they’ should all get a move on and give us what’s ours, which is generally lots more money, less working hours and whatever the hell else we want.

It’s not going to happen. Here’s why. In the general healthy scheme of things, in running your country’s economy when you are not totally self-sufficient, you would want a situation along the lines of the following:

I make half the food I eat. I buy the other half from you. Starvation! Except, I also make cars. I sell the cars to you at more than it costs me to make them. This pays for the other half of the food I need. In fact, if the value of the cars I sell to you is more than the food then in fact I’m working on a profit. At least, I can aim to break even.

Ireland isn’t terribly self-sufficient, and back in the 1980s was also very much in debt and had little in the way of native manufacturing. But we had an educated workforce which spoke English, and was willing to work hard:

I make half the food I eat. I buy the other half from you. Starvation! Except, I can work for you for very little, and I’ll let you build your factory in my garden, and turn a blind eye to what you do within that factory. This pays for the other half of the food I need. In fact, if you make enough stuff in my garden and give me enough work then in fact I’m working on a profit. At least, I can aim to break even.

But somehow that changed, probably because the profit part gave an illusion of self-sufficiency, which made costs rise and credit easier, and also the ‘turn a blind eye to what you do within that factory’ approach was applied to regulation within critical areas such as construction and finance. We have had a case here in recent years of:

I make half the food I eat. I buy the other half from you. Starvation! Except, I also make houses. I sell the houses to me at more than it cost me to make them, and I borrow to make up the difference, from you. This pays for the other half of the food I need. In fact, if the profit of the houses I sell to me is more than the food, then in fact it just makes my situation acutely worse, or if you decide to stop lending, or if I decide I can no longer afford my own houses. And I still need to get half of my food from you.

But this is what actually happened, and happened quickly:

You tell me to stop running my economy this way. I take my cock out and wave it at you. You stop lending to me. I stop buying my own houses, and my economy comes to a grinding halt. I decide on a strategy to pay you back, which is to be cleverer than you and sell you the difference in cleverness. Despite all the evidence to suggest the my situation is a symptom of an acute deficit of cleverness, and that you clearly believe at this point that I need to shut up and stand in a corner with a pointy hat until you’ve figured out what to do with me.

Oh, and the kids move to your place, which sort of gives you my cleverness for free. Starvation.

It would have been good for the ‘Germany should bail us out because we’re so special‘ thread on Boards.ie, a hilarious exploration of the Irish recessionary mind-set. I’ve over-simplified it a lot, I’ll admit, and I’ll be open to constructive amendments on this train of thought. It’s probably over-inspired by the ‘two cows‘ humour system (this has better actual examples. The previous one is a little… over-cooked).

This week really took off, and it taken a lot out of me, as mundane as it has all been. It’s also shown me the importance of having supportive people around. Well, perhaps supportive women. Guys are silently supportive, particularly with other guys; after all, who can deny the universal language of mockery, farting and grunting? For example, I had a trying day on Tuesday, with all sorts of stuff not going right at work (which I take seriously, so when things aren’t hitting the right notes for me, I get stressed over it. And can I ever do stress, as we know well) and these things being somewhat outside of my control. But to top it off, a man phoned up, an annoyed man. Not just any man, mind, but a man who had contacted me previously about doing some web design and development work for him, and I had promised to discuss a quote with him, after having consulted with my trusty web designer.

Three weeks ago.

So, obviously, he was annoyed that I hadn’t gotten back to him, and that was bad, not least because although I’m contracting (I’m a third of the size I used to be), I’m also technically freelancing, and extremely fearful of not knowing where my next pay check is going to come from, or if I’ll be eating food or sleeping rough next week. It was also bad because of my inherent insecurity and need to please people, even complete strangers, and because of a recent episode involving what I still refer to for some reason as ‘my’ car mechanic.

My car, a ’98 Mazda 121 1.3 litre 5 door go-busters machine which I bought from my mother during the summer. It is slightly ill, and needs a good car doctor. The whole story of me driving, well… You’ll have to sit through it soon. Lollers. 8th February 2007.. Click image to view larger version »

After an initial consultation with Ultan Potts, ace mechanic, about several things that needed fixing on my car, and several weeks of fruitless phonecalls, I realised that this man had no intention of fixing anything on my car at any price. He was just going to ignore me until I went away. I was pretty annoyed because I could have had these things fixed many weeks ago by someone who could both fix cars and operate a mobile phone, and that the state of the economy was such that tradespeople could do this to you in this day and age, and wouldn’t it be better if it was like in the eighties where no-one had any money and people climbed over each other to do things for you, and how dare he. Yes, it was all very frustrating, and a little new to me since I rarely need car mechanics or builders or plumbers, I can usually fix any small thing I break with sellotape (to be fair, I fixed the broken wing mirrors on my car with Duck tape, so you can see that I’m moving up in the world) or blue-tack. Now, I’ve since managed to find a big and relatively expensive garage to fix the issue with a no-nonsense approach and at four times the price, so I’m only bothered now about the principle of the thing.

Which of course, is why I was more than a little bothered about having unintentionally inflicted a very similar situation on someone who won’t forget this in a hurry, and I’ll have his irate words floating through my mind as I eat scavenged three-day-old french, sorry, freedom fries to eat in my cardboard box near Camden street. The supportive remarks came from the ever-pragmatic Oana, who (more delicately than that) more or less told me to get over it. Here’s a gratuitous picture of her, since many people have asked about it:

This is Oana Bizian, my girlfriend. She’s sort of looking very… Russian or something. And not being as sarcastic as she can be. She’s Romanian, and this was taken near Oradea where we stayed for a few days here and there to get the salty water there around New Year’s. 31st December 2006.. Click image to view larger version »

The ‘pleasing complete strangers’ issue is something I should look into, really. Before I know it I’ll be featuring in a Ken Loach movie.

What a response on that last post! I didn’t think anyone actually read this any more, but they do. More accurately, you do. That actually does mean a lot to me, which is part of the reason for the redesign and some of the new features; time to see if I can add something new to help you use the site, enjoy the pictures and all the rest of it. And those little user icons on the comments; send me a picture or get your own on Gravatar.com. I’m trying to change my daily and weekly schedule a bit to fit writing into it, to avoid what Anthony calls ‘boo-urns’. Boo-urns is a technical blogging term for a fairly serious state of affairs, and you should check out his site for a more detailed explanation, since he once nearly lost not only his job, but in fact his left leg over it. He was lucky, but I might not be if the situation gets out of hand. Anthony’s site is entertaining, and also unique since he has more links to individual Youtube content than actually exists on Youtube; there are now people in San Francisco who have a cult based on him, and his Youtube linking ability.

That’s Anthony ‘Boo-urns’ McGuinness in the middle there. Ironically he’s drinking some piss of some sort which isn’t Guinness at all. From left to right, Martin, Paul, Paul and Kenny. We had a vote to see if we could call them all Paul but ended up with Clive instead. 20th October 2006.. Click image to view larger version »

The other thing that interested me about the last post was that although there were many comments (for which I thank you all very much) there were no comments from Garret. At all. None. I was wondering about this, but there is an answer; Garret just hasn’t checked back recently. He’s been relentless surfing Youtube for months now, discovered some hilarious videos of kittens trapped in toilets while their owners film them drowning, and so hasn’t checked back to see if I had written any more. Garret is entertaining, and also unique since he has viewed more individual Youtube content than actually exists on Youtube; there are now people in San Francisco who have a cult based on him, and his Youtube viewing ability.

G—– S—– and N— A—–, and explosive combination! Chortle chortle, a bit of an in-joke there. Man, you can sympathise with N—, huh? G—–’s very nice, really. 18th October 2006.

However, one of the things that made me pause and re-evaluate what I was doing here on the site was in fact Garret’s comments to my second-last post, which started at severe mockery and ended up quite rapidly with severely abusive, which was less than entertaining. Offensive, actually. You’ll see it on that post, and you’ll see that I sanitised several of them. Censorship? Well, yes, basically it is, and I don’t have a problem with it, because those comments are sitting on my site where anyone can see what were, let’s be honest here, incoherent rants. I mean, really inarticulate, badly-spelt, nuggets of abusive rage which I haven’t fully understood but in the interests of not getting shouted down on my own web site I decided to clean them up. I know many of you (indeed, most of you) find Garret’s comments amusing and of course so do I, but… For me this crossed a line.

I guess, that it would be akin to playing a gig, performing your music somewhere, and someone you know just screaming abuse at you, for no reason whatsoever. Is Garret secretly my jilted lover? Is it because I eloped with his dog? But in a situation like that, I think most people would ask themselves why they should bother producing something, which I did, and the answer was because I enjoy it, whether or not anyone else wants to read it. And if anyone doesn’t like it, then they can choose to not read this. I’ll have to thank Tee for a bit of solid perspective on that, and of course the inspiration of Tadhg for his relentless writing, which would surely inspire anyone, regardless of how they felt about messing up someone else’s pages with Oily Orang-Utang, or whatever it’s called.

Therese O’Reilly and Some Girl. Man, I should remember these things. It was a crazy night out and there was… stuff. And things happened. And later that day, I had alcohol poisoning, which just goes to show what an eejit I am. 28th December 2006.. Click image to view larger version »

Oh, and before I forget, I got treated to the Slovak perspective on European history last week by Maddy’s (One of my housemates) boyfriend Rado. Apart from the fact that it was highly entertaining, I never realised that their empire lasted for so long, and was so powerful; they ruled over the Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians, and even gave some of their territory to the Russians, because they were so generous. And those other guys, the Slovaks fok them, and the other guys get fok too. But they got fok by some guys from there. Eventually of course, they had to let the Hungarians and the Czechs get independence, and rather generously the Slovaks let the EU join them.

Of course, if you ask the Czechs, then they’ll tell you that they had the most powerful country in Europe, and they fok these other guys, and I’ve heard similar tales in Romania too, where they ruled this that and the other, and fok a whole bunch of other people. At least they all agreed one one thing; they all fok the Turks. I just never knew that European history involved so many people get fok by other people.

(edited 28.06.2007)
Obliterated the photo of Garret and Nora, by request.

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

Right, that ‘Phil’ business was entertaining – and so was Garret, from time to time – but it’s dying a death. www.make-phil-and-his-fucking-contraption-history.com. I’m in Romania right now, having a ball, relaxing, enjoying myself, having an actual holiday (I was told they were good, and I thought I’d take the plunge, so to speak) and taking about four thousand photos, you’ll have to sit through some choice cuts before long. I’d put up a photo now except for the fact that this damn Internet cafe doesn’t actually have USB on this computer (This USB business is important because it means I can attach the memory card from my spanking new Canon Digital SLR to the computer and… Well, you’re clever people, you’ll get it.) and it’s pretty slow. I know you’re all going to say something like “Hey you, like what is the fuck this, you know?”; to which I’ll probably reply “Well whatever fuckarse, because, hey, you know.”.

Special shout out to the beautiful, clever and occasionally dubious Oana, who is chaperoning me, owning me, taking care of me and showing me around Romania. Shouts also out to Roxana, who has suggested many clever things to get up to, and the girls of ExamPlus for keeping Oana on her toes and being a generally great bunch of people. I’ll be curious to hear what they thought of ‘Intermission‘ featuring Colin Fucking Farrell which I thought was a reasonable Irish film with contemporary Irish culture, and ‘The General‘ which is a pretty good representation of Ireland in the nineteen eighties.

Anyway, better go. Oana’s getting bored and we have a train to catch from (as she would say, and probably will) a dubious train station, else we’ll be trapped in Sighisoara tonight. I’ll try and post again, but I’ll be back on Wednesday night, and by Saturday you’ll all be wishing I’d stayed here; by then Garret may actually seem like a less painful option after all.

Oh, and one more thing; I finally met Ovideo! It was sheer coincidence, but it was icing on the cake for a great week. It really was.

This is great. “Hi, my name’s Phil…” – etc, etc. What an opening line to a demonstration video of some guitar japery in ‘Phil’s Epiphone Les Paul Kaoss Pad Mod’. There’s a lot more where that came from, along with a number of fascinating yelps, squeals and strange noises for which there are, in all likelyhood, no names yet assigned. If this guy was to really try to extend his vocubary of noises, then I doubt even a hardened team, hand-picked by Garret himself, could keep up.

I got this link from this article on Ars Technica, which is a great site, full of pearls of wisdom and often some good writing too by fellow geeks.

Incidentally, this link is dedicated to David and to Sean, who are both great fans of making peculiar and frequently loud noises with guitars and other implements (and, damn their talented hides, quite good at it too.) which I enjoy listening to. I’d like to learn how to play guitar myself one day. I have no talent for music, but these things don’t always stop me (even when it would be in the Greater Good for me not to try).

If either of you guys have an opinion on this link or additional information, please comment below!