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

If you’re reading this, you’ll see nothing unusual (other than me posting, which is rare enough). That’s good. I switched hosts over the weekend, moving from an old, overpriced legacy account at Hosting365 to Blacknight. Blacknight seem to attract love and hate in equal measure but I want to keep my hosting in Ireland, and there’s no harm in trying them out for a bit. The other choice was Register365 which used to be part of Hosting365 but are now UK-owned, and big and bland.

Let’s see how this works out. If you came here from Facebook, hi, how are you, this is where the good stuff used to happen, have a good look around.

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 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 »

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 (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 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… 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 »

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!

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 »

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 »

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.

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.

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.