Bah Flaf Burb

The new nano, and the future.

2008-09-23T09:28:00.003+01:00

I like to know things about gadgets, although saying that, I very rarely dip into the communion money to get something shiny and noisy (ok, bar the €70 mouse I got last week). But I decided to get the iPod nano. I forgot to actually read up on anything it does before purchasing, because I trust apple at this stage.

After ordering, I watched the video on apple, and the thing looked freakin' cool. You can shake it and it skips to a random song in your library. If you shake it like a polaroid picture, it will skip to a song by Outkast!

As I was saying I like to know things about Gadgets. Well, this "Genius" thing has really thrown me. Actually, it amazes me. This single invention is, in my opinion, the next step towards globally shared interests and "Cloud computing" (I guess...).

From what I can tell, apple takes a goo at your library and then compares it to everyone elses, giving you back your shared interests, so it can figure out what albums are alike and songs are usually owned by a number of people. It's kind of like the amazon, "If you like this ... you'll probably like these because other people also bought ...", except it so much more sublte and actually has produced really good playlists for me over the last few days.

The best thing about "Genius", is that it trasfers to my Nano, so I can create playlists on the fly. Just think, your in the car, you put on a song you like, hit Genius and boom (to quote mr. jobs) you've got 25 great songs you're in the mood for.

Mossy will be in croker on sunday.

2008-09-05T22:28:00.000+01:00

Will you?

Eircom - You are my death bitch!

2008-08-07T09:53:00.003+01:00

Some of you may be aware of my history with eircom, and the wonderful services they provide. If you are not from Ireland, you may not be aware that everytime you need to connect to a DSL or phone service, you must (MUST) connect with eircom first, and then move services. Eircom have 100% control of all telecommunication switches in Ireland, and because of this, they feel they can treat their customers like shit.

I have just returned from travelling and have acquired an nice apartment in dublin city. I like the internet, so I've decided to get broadband from eircom. When I moved in, there was a phone, and eircom broadband router in the apartment, so I knew that it was going to be a straight forward process, and there would be no need to connect the line, so no upfront costs. Boy was I wrong.

I called eircom, and told the lady my address. After spelling it out (metropolitan is a tough word to understand), she informed me that there is no line on their accounts at that address and apartment number. I said, "I find that very unlikely, as there is a phone and broadband router in the apartment.". She said, "I may not have been active in the last eight months, you will have to pay €110, and wait 2 weeks for a technician to call out to connect". "If you want, you can try plugging in a phone, and if you get a dialtone, call 199000 to find out your number".

This left me peeved. But, it's not like I have experienced a smooth conversation ever with this company.

Last night I got a phone from conor, and plugged it in. DIALTONE. Dialed 199000, and boom, a phone number was called back to me.

Lesson: Never trust eircom. If I was a normal punter, I would have been duped and paid €110 to eircom for doing absolutely nothing.

Don't worry, this isn't over yet. I'll keep you posted.

Stephen Morrissey, Where are you?

2008-08-05T13:01:00.003+01:00

I am a bit of a coffee addict. Who isn't in this day and age. And yes, after travelling the world and tasting good and bad, and really bad coffee, I have found myself to be a coffee snob too. So on hearing that an Irish man won the World Barista Championship, I have to find out where he works.

My plea goes out to you, my loyal readers. Where does Stephen Morrissey work? I want to taste this coffee that is the best in the world.

UPDATE: I should have done some googling before posting this. Stephen has a blog, and an personal website. He has a lot of entries, but I can't see any coffee shops mentioned. He has his email address on his site (Stephen Morrissey - World Barista Champion 2008). Should I just email him?

Cunninghams Tribute. Kind of.

2008-06-28T10:01:00.001+01:00

Looking forward to a dooleys when I get home. But this will have to do.

Sabotage

2008-06-27T07:23:00.000+01:00

Zig. Zag. Elvis. Beastie Boys. You do the maths.

Taupo Bungy

2008-05-27T05:05:00.005+01:00

We drove into Taupo the other day, and I had told Blackie that I was going to do a Bungy. Who am I to let the young fella down?

I walked in, credit card in hand, "Take this before I change my mind!". He did, and I couldn't change my mind. Shit.

As soon as I paid, my heart rate doubled, and my anus tightened. But fuck it, they know what they're doing? Right? So after a couple of straps (velcro!) went around my legs, and the 2 guys checked them, barely, I walked to the edge.

When I got to the bottom, I told the girl in the boat I was Irish, and she said I was quick to jump for an Irishman. So that was nice. Might do another one in Queenstown.

Canberra, Mebourne and Port Fairy

2008-03-23T08:19:00.003Z

Was going to write an insightful passage on our journey from sydney to sydney so far. But instead, enjoy a chat which sums most of it up. BTW, myself and brian are only joking when we are racist, so don't be offended. It's for our own personal comedy enjoyment.

6:44 PM Brian: tomas

me: brian

Brian: I hear Melbourne is beautiful in the fall

6:46 PM me: i hear you're a dick

w00t

6:47 PM on the end of the great ocean road now

Brian: is it fun, it it AMAAAZZIINNGGG

me: will travel back the coast to melb tomorrow

AMAAAAZZZING

you're reading my mind

Brian: wonderful

whats melbourne like??

6:48 PM me: melbournes cool

did some city sightseeing on friday but everyhtinh was closed because of some religious holiday or something

its a nice compact city

more "european" than sydney

6:49 PM Brian: eeehh yuck I hate the jews and their religious holidays its like hello already

me: we stayed in cooes in st kildas

6:50 PM Brian: Yeah I've heard its more cafe lifestlye

me: a nice bohemic area full of ecclectic bars and cafes

WEIRD

Brian: ecclectic

me: yes. ecclectic

Brian: alternative

me: its a word

Brian: tres chic

me: ineed

tres

tres.

hookers too

lots of em

Brian: fabulous,

sweet

6:51 PM me: hanging out on corners

Brian: good ones

did you sample

me: and we think we saw 2 gay old men pick each other up in their trucks

but can't be sure

the hookers were not too bad.

but still hookers

6:52 PM Brian: wonderful, what did you think of Canberra??

me: pfft

didn't do much. went to parliament and war memorial.

memorial was cool and big

6:53 PM we watched some parliament meeting too, it was interesting.

Brian: any shouting or 'here heres'

me: a few yays. and a good few nays

then they called in the bells.

not sure what that is, but i think they had to vote.

6:54 PM Brian: yay

me: milne was trying to pass some 50 million dollar limit on infrastructure thing

maybe it was "aye"

6:58 PM Brian: sounds like the funs being had

me: its grand

6:59 PM port fairy is a lovely little area

packed with weekenders and small.

it was 30 degrees today, and we should get good weather for the drive back to melb tomorrow too.

7:00 PM then off to tassie on tuesday. w00t.

7:01 PM Brian: sweet as. I got a mail actually off the tassies we were travelling and two of them are prob coming to Sydney for Anzac weekend so that will be cool to see them again

7:02 PM me: nobody cares, but whatever floats your boat.

Blog Redesign

2008-03-15T06:40:00.004Z

Yes. Another Redesign.

A few days ago I took a photo with the photobooth app on my MacBook. I really liked it and as a result redesigned the blog today. Not a huge change, but it's a bit sharper and bigger than before. I was worried about lack of whitespace but there is not too much clutter, so that should be okay. Font sizes are all bigger. I've moved from 700 to 1000 pixels wide, as 700 was too squashed, and now theres a bit more spacing between things.

While the old design was a great move forward from the old standard blogger design, over time it became soft and with very little contrast. It was cluttered and the title bar took up too much space before the user hit content.

The new design is slightly less tall, so more content fits on the screen. It is much wider making room for even more content. I'm loving the MG Open Moderna typeface right now. You can be sure I will be using it again for some client work. I found it here. I definitely recommend adding smashing magazine to your regular visits.

Once more, like the last redesign, I am having trouble making the sidebar pretty. They are fine, but not brilliant.

Your comments are greatly appreciated. Ideas. Changes. Dislikes. Likes. Go shithouse.

Should music be limited to a single genre?

2008-03-07T11:30:00.003Z

When a software system is developed and a large amount of data is involved there has to be a way to break it all out, and make sense of the data. Relating data to different subjects and people and chronologically. Essentially, it all comes down to metadeta. Doesn't everything?* At least it does when you're a software developer who's passionate about organising data, relations and making sense of it all for the user.

I was sitting in work, looking at some code and I switched to iTunes to get some coding music on, and as always I looked for an opportunity to be distracted. I noticed that there were way too many genres in my music library.

It's an entire column in iTunes that I never use (I think it can be hidden, but thats erroneous) . That's one third of the browse bar thats never touched. After this revelation, I started to organise my music into genres. It's more difficult than I thought. Which genre should CSS go in? Pop? Rock? Indie? Soft Rock? And what the hell is soft rock? Is that even a genre? What's alternative? Alternative to what? I kind of guess Alternative Rock is Rock, but different. Isn't that what all bands are trying to achieve? Something the same, but different, something ... alternative.

So the question I ask is should music span more than 1 genre, should it be based on the general feel of the album, or on a specific song? Can a band cross genres between albums/songs?

I'm trying to conclude this post, but can't. Seems that a single album with many genres might give the user too much freedom, it could be dangerous. Constraints are good.

Lesson: Even if you can't figure out why something is built a certain way, there is usually a damn good reason for it, and someone has already sweat over it for a lengthy period before you thought of it.

Conclusion: To bring this back to software development - Just because a user requests a change to a piece of software, doesn't make it a viable reason to make the change. Most users don't know what they are asking for and can't see the long term effects. This is how software becomes bloated, the developer tries to please everyone. Further reading.

* Kind of like the matrix, but the CG isn't as good.

Make Art, Make Art

2008-02-28T03:35:00.005Z

I'm a very faddy person. This means, I get high notions a lot. Daily. Hourly on weekends. It usually happens like this.

I see something that hits me right here (points to his chest/heart area). Usually a kind act, a movie, graffiti, a sports game. Anything that hits you right there (points to your chest/heart). A large amount of this day dreaming happens on public transport with my favourite mix of music cancelling out the noisy world around.
I analyse and break it down to the why, how, where etc.
I put myself in the position of the character, actor, sports person, depicted art. This makes me feel nice and warm and fuzzy (the music mix is partly responsible). Donna catches me doing this a lot of the time. I stare at space, sometimes her, and have a hint of a smiling grin. Mostly the smile is in my eyes.
I snap out of the day dream, but the ideas and feelings remain for hours, days, weeks and sometimes months.

Fads of Late

The Den. I've dreamed of my own dream home for a few years now. Settling down with a bit of land, and the perfect house that nobody else has. The design for the house is in my head. It's fantastic. I wish you could see it. The Irish housing market has squashed this dream a bit, but it's still there (, you'll notice my fads tend not to obey logic or plausibility). More recently, I have honed my design efforts on the den. The den is my home-office & entertainment room. It is used for development during the day. It is used for movies, poker and Wii in the evenings and weekends. It contains a large beer fridge, an old couch and a large workbench for PCs, Macs & pizza boxes. It has one of those ergonomic chairs for working at the computer. It also has a banging TV (which has DVI in, w00t) and 5.1 surround. There are some ground rules. You are allowed in and you are allowed use my shit, but you must respect my shit and remember its my shit. It's awesome ... in my head.

The Freelancer. Meet Mossy. The freelance web (& SharePoint) developer. He works from his Den (see 'The Den'). He meets his deadlines. His attention to detail and quality is excellent, and his clients love him. He is very personable and he is respected by the development community as he blogs about design/coding, shares ideas and contributes to open source projects. He has a comfortable income and still has time to leaving at noon on a Friday to get down the west for a weekend of surfing. In the beginning, business was slow and he had very little creature comforts, and could not afford a car. Now, business is slowly expanding and he has conceived and launched a successful web application (possibly social, as is the fashion these days) where revenue is generated from loyal paying subscribers. He is managing workload with help from a few other freelancers (see 'Luke' and 'Daithi'), but may need to consider hiring a talented coder to take over some of the more time consuming applications. He might lease some cubicles in the city to make this a more viable option.

The never ending traveller. Mossy has been bitten by the travel bug. He has spent 6 months working in Sydney, and is ready to hit the road with his Girlfriend around OZ, New Zealand & Japan. He likes the feeling from this. He wants it to last. He wants to contract for 6 months a year, and hit the road the other six months. Who doesn't? Some people don't, but Mossy does! He'd like to backpack around South America. He wants to visit Disneyland, Hong Kong*. He wants to hang out on a beach in Hawai'i for a while. Possible open a beach bar ... it could happen.

The Cog. Mossy is returning to Ireland in July. He has experience in a Focused IT Field, which is currently in high demand. He may have an option to return to the organisation he was with before travelling. He probably has other options too. He could see what other roles are like in competing organisations. Either way, he should not find it too hard to get a decent wage when he returns to Ireland. He can start saving for a deposit on that Den (See 'The Den'), and get a loan for a car with electric windows, and a heater that works on 1 and 2. The job is not exciting, and he is working for faceless large clients, but it pays well and he has weekends off. He doesn't get down the west until later on Friday, and doesn't have time to contribute to the development comminuty or his blog. His side-line clients suffer from missed deadlines and lower quality, and he regrets taking on the extra work.

The Busker. Mossy was inspired by Glen Hansards acceptance speech at the oscars. He decides to get the guitar out again. He always loved it and he enjoys singing at parties. He gets piano lessons and learns how to read music. He starts writing and recording with his friend brian. Brian remixes their words and music into electronic, yet heartwarming melodies. They get brief success when one of their catchy tunes is featured in a Bulmers television commercial, and return to their freelancing work once the country stops humming "Faddy Faddy Fad Fad" from the Purple Monkey Dishwashers.

"So?"

This is just a small selection of the fads that enter and exit my head daily. I guess they are "dreams of an idealist" more than fads. Others include but are not limited to: Philanthropist, Charity worker, Full-time surfer, Triathlon take parter, Ultimate Frisbee player, MOSS Guru, Film-maker (my personal favourite) & Furniture Maker.

I have a feeling that a lot of idealisms I've described above may be popular with a lot of people who mirror my style of life, so reading back on it, it's not too off the wall I suppose. I guess I just wanted to write it down. As a reminder maybe.

*Disneyland, Hongkong. After myself and Donna have visited Japan, we will both have been to 4 out of the 5 Disneylands in the world. On that note, who looking forward to DubiaLand?? I'll tell ya who. Me and Donna!

Sufjan Stevens...

2008-01-20T02:14:00.000Z

...was class.

Economies of Scale? Nah

2007-12-02T23:16:00.000Z

I've started developing ASP.NET apps on my MacBook (Isn't that just pure evil??), So I bought VMWare Fusion (excellent product BTW) and I have my environment sitting nicely in a Win2k3 virtual machine.

I bought the MacBook about 3 months ago, and didn't have much money at the time, so got the 2x512Mb basic ram option. I'd now like to upgrade to 4Gb (my macbook only recognises 3.3Gb, officially 2Gb), and found great value macbook ram in a shop on Pitt Street. Apple's prices are a complete rip off, but I went to check anyway. here's what I found.

I wasn't the best at algorithms in UL, but why would getting 2 of the exact same product product in 1 box incur a EUR10 extra cost?

Las Vegas

2007-09-24T11:26:00.001+01:00

What a hole. Nah, for what Las Vegas is supposed to do, it does that. It's just like ronseal. We drove to vegas through an amazing thunderstorm with lightning all around. When we arrived from los angeles, it was so much hotter than there. A dead heat with no wind.

We are staying in a really nice hotel called Harrahs. There is a TV in the bathroom, what more can I say? We have a pool, and the casino is not too bad downstairs. Great thing is the location tho, we are right across from the Venetian, Ceasars Palace and the Bellagio.

We both lost about $50 each over the 4 days. We are soooooo chronic gamblers, you don't even know! Anyway, I found that the people are snobby, and everyone seems to be after your money. I know, I know. It's Vegas!!! Donna loves the place tho. Poker slots all the way for her.

To sum up. We spent 4 days in Vegas. We are flying to San Francisco now, and I bought a MacBook, because I'm a nerd, and that's what I do.

Los Angeles

2007-08-26T08:27:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Los Angeles, fuckers! We arrived after kind of shitty rain in New York to beautiful heat, but it gets cooler as the sun drops which is nice, as you can wear pants out for dinner.

We are staying in a lovely little hotel called the Magic Castle hotel. The staff here are over the top, kick me in the balls friendly. They have a snack bar behind reception that is all free, and they force candy on you. But we resisted as we're not fat bastards, like you. The place is 1 block from the chinese mann theatre which is handy, so we walked up Hollywood Blvd and the walk of Fame. Yes, the highlight was Angela Lansbury.

We had dinner one night on Sunset, in a place called Chin Chin grill. It's beside Ketchup, which was in "The Hills" and is co-owned by tara reid. Didn't spy LC (Laguna Beach & The Hills) tho. Dang It! I had hoped to meet and give my screenplay to Larry David, but no such luck their either.

Other than that, this place is big and boring, best part of the visit was the Hotel. We drive to Las Vegas soon, so hopefully we'll go through a storm and get lightning on camera, but maybe not, and maybe we'll go to a show with wayne brady in it. Who knows??? I know I don't because we are still in Los Angeles.

New York

2007-08-23T00:41:00.000+01:00

Well. Was in New York. It's a City in the U.S.A. Because that's what I do. I go places. I'm Mossy, that's what I do and who I am.

We didn't really do anything there. When we arrived we go a taxi from JFK to our hotel on Broadway and 54th. It was right beside the Ed Sullivan Theatre, so that was cool. We went down the next day and entered a "random" draw for tickets to the Tonight Show with David Letterman. We got a call later, woot. The show was pretty cool. Tom Arnold and Kristen Gore were on it. Yawn, except Tom seemed like he was on drugs and David only got 2 words in for the entire interview.

We went to see Chicago (the musical, not the city). It was cool, I guess. Nah, it was class. Musicals are fun.

We did a open top bus tour of the city which gave us our bearings, so we could get around a bit easier. The subway is really easy to use and fast for getting around, so I liked that. We used it to get home from the Museum of Natural History, and also to get to Greenwich Village and back. In Greenwich Village we went to a cool restaurant called Jeckle & Hyde. Lots of quirky shiz and talking heads on the walls, and singing things.

We saw the Statue of Liberty on a boat tour which was grand, like. We also went to the top of the Empire state building, did you know that New York is known as The Empire State. Little fun fact for you there. We went to brooklyn which seems like a cool place.

Me and Don are beginning to fall in love with Mexican food. Chevys in Time Square was lovely. Nachos with Loads of Crap on top is da bomb.

My favourite area of the city is Greenwich Village, because it less tacky and less crowded and nice little restaurants that aren't chains and all that jazz. Man I hate the tacky. Bring on LA and Las Vegas. Woot.

I Taste Like...

2007-08-01T11:32:00.000+01:00

I taste like Peanut Butter.

I am one of the most blendable flavours; I go with sweet, I go with sour, I go with bland, I go with anything. I am practical and good company, but have something of a tendency to hang around when I'm not wanted, unaware that my presence is not welcome. What Flavour Are You?

This Weeks Web Design Roundup

2007-04-23T16:12:00.001+01:00

Some noteable sites I've found with all the CSS Galleries out there this week.

Left Bar Simple and Effective combined with logo.
http://www.webbyawards.com/

Nice idea for scalable navigation bar. Intuitive and works without out having to think too much.
http://celblos.com/

Joomla CMS is something we should look at for future clients and sites. Only problem is getting hosting
http://www.bestofjoomla.com/

Big text used really well in intro paragraph
http://www.happycog.com/

Top right extra links bar works well without overpowering content
http://www.jubii.de/jubii-partner-1.0/viewSimpleLogin.do

Sharp and soft seems to work here. Contrast is great.
http://webinale.de/konferenzen/webinale07/ansicht_open.php

Will Airtunes Work with my setup?

2007-04-09T20:34:00.000+01:00

Story People?

I am considering* getting an Airport Express Base Station for my aparement. Will it work with my current setup?

I have a mac mini running OSX 10.4. I have no wireless in this mac mini. It is plugged into my wireless router by ethernet and my work laptop and donnas laptop connect to this wirelessly.

On the other side of the room is a kickass amp and surround sound system that came with the place. Can I get a AEX base station and plug it into the wall and amp, and play music from my mac on the amp?

The store description is vague on this scenario, the difference being with my scenario, my mac has no wireless card, and I'm not using an airport extreme router.

* I'm not actually considering it, but would be if I wasn't saving up for something much bigger. But I like to know my options still, and I feel others would too.

I'm a pussy.

2007-04-01T12:38:00.000+01:00

When it comes to sports and stuff, i'm usually up for anything. I love extreme sports and love skiing and surfing (although I don't get out much).

And I'm good at kiting. A few weeks back myself, bitzi, blackie and ian were out with bitzi's kite on dolymount beach. It's a 2.5 metre kite for boarding on the beach. The wind was pretty high, and so there was a pull off the kite. I launched it and the kite went straight up. There was such a pull off it, I was afraid to bring it down and across the beach, because I was afraid the pull would be too strong. But all that can happen is it crashes or i'd have to leave go. Since then tho, I've been too afraid of it in strong winds. Shit.

Last week we went karting with work also. I'm usually good at karting too. But I got in a 2 crashes in my first 2 test runs, and pussied out from then on. I didn't even make the final for fear of hitting another wall. Bollix.

So what the fuck is going on? I don't know, but I gotta get out of this funk. I wouldn't mind, but I fall like a leaf. I can jump onto concrete face first and not get scratched, so whats wrong with getting dragged down a beach? I'll tell you what's wrong with it! Nothing, that's what.

Bitzi says my Mojo is gone. I got to get that mother back. In other news, you may think I'm scrawny now, but Jesus I was some scrawny fucker almost 6 years ago.

Mossy on the right. Scobag tony in middle

Also, a few photos from Kiting yesterday.

Snowing in Tramore, Co. Waterford

2007-01-22T10:56:00.000Z

Tramore is by the sea, so it is less likely to snow there than midlands. But no snow in dublin which is more northerly.

Dave and Mick should have stayed in Ireland, because apparently there is no snow in Andorra. Oh, lol.

You need to commit to the role

2007-01-20T15:32:00.000Z

A few months back I was looking for a good torrent site. I don't be bothered searching the internet for these sort of things as Google results are mostly flawed for these things because of SE spamming and cetera.

So, I just mail a service I like to call "Blackie and Luke might know". Looking back the mail now, which i refer to every so often, I noticed a key difference in Lukes reply to Blackies.

Here's what I sent.

What's the best torrent search sites out there for music and tv mostly?

To which blackie replied:

http://www.torrentscan.com/

A few moments after this, luke replied:

below is the list of torrents i use.

best for tv shows, updated every morning with shows from usa:
http://eztvefnet.org/ (currently down, but should be up by monday)

use this is know whats on usa tv and when so you can expect torrents to be posted:
http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/

good for any torrents, in order of preference:
http://www.mininova.org/
http://www.torrentspy.com/
http://www.torrentz.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/
http://www.torrentz.ws/

good for naming any tv shows downloaded with the correct episode name:
http://epguides.com/

Can you see the difference? I can. Not sure why there is a difference tho.

icecreamireland.com

2007-01-16T19:33:00.000Z

I like Ice cream. And I know you like Ice cream. Don't lie to me. I fucking know it! Just own up, you glutenous bitch.

Apologies to my lactose intolerant friends.

Kieran Murphy’s blog - all about making, eating, pondering about and enjoying sweet things by an Irish ice cream man and chocoholic in Dingle, Ireland with recipes included.

Ice Cream Ireland. It's got loads of recipes, and I found it because I Googled for a brownie recipe which Donna is going to bake for me. This site came up number 10 so, its doing quite well with Google.

Broadband (cont'd) is "on it's way"

2007-01-04T20:46:00.000Z

I say "on it's way", because I have been hurt before and am still finding it hard to trust any broadband provider.

You will remember an earlier post about getting broadband from eircom. This is the second stage of that.

After my raging rant from before, Luke put me in touch with a nice gentleman in eircom. He will remain unnamed as if I were to name him, he may get barraged with emails. He checked out my line with a little more conviction than [mary] on the phone last time. He said that it was capable and forced the line to pass. Yay! One question tho. Refer back to the earlier conversation with [mary].

"I SEE, AND WILL I EVER GET IT?", "NO".

"EVER?", "NO".

"LIKE, FOREVER?" "NO, BUT YOU CAN RING PEOPLE, AND ASK THEM TO DOWNLOAD YOUR PORN FOR YOU!".

So, what's going on then? Well, I'm not sure. But it would be nice to have this service on a public front, like an escalation system. If I'm not happy with the first line service i'm getting from the sales rep, I should be able to talk to a more senior technical person and they can look into the issue in more detail. Just a thought. Eircom, I hope you're listening.

Anyway, moving on from that, eircom are pretty much the worst value for broadband and phone services in Ireland at the moment, and my original plan was to move to EsatBT who provide a much better service at a cheaper price. But as mentioned before you still have to connect to eircom first before going to any other provider. This intial connection cost a total of €145 (€110 connection charge + 1 Month line rental).

I called EsatBT today and have ordered 1Mb Broadband and Talk. Blackie has 2Mb and says that it is more than he needs so I'm going with 1Mb for €35/month incl. tax. There is a €45 charge for the Wireless Modem and free connection, so it's a pretty sweet deal.

But the total cost so far for Broadband in ireland for is €145 + €70 = €215 just to get connected. And timewise, at least 2 months. I'm still trying to find where the government is getting off saying we are a broadband enabled nation.

Some Related news on Broadband penetration in ireland: Ireland Lags in broadband league, Govt. urged to fund broadband, Eircom on target in 2004 (I think not), Broadband Initiative for Rural Areas, Ireland drops one place in broadband league.

BTW there are people to go to if you are not happy with what you're get from a tech provider. ComReg will listen to all of these kind of issues and you can get all your money back from some providers just by mentioning comreg in a letter/email.

Taking a Mac Mini Apart

2007-01-02T23:04:00.000Z

It's Tuesday. Dinner is cooked, eaten and washed up. The girlfriend is watching some shit on the telly. What do you do? I dunno, but here's what I did. I took my mac mini apart.

Alright, there is some motive for my decision. Luke bought me a Mac Mini about 18 Months ago as a "gift", in return for some work (not done yet). This is reason enough to rip it apart, because little did I know at the time, but a substantial gift in exchange for work done means that you cannot charge for that work afterward. You bastard Luke!

Back to the Mac. The Mac is great, I've made the switch, and I no longer have a PC. But it's pissing me off a bit lately. There's no wireless, and the usb ez connect wireless dongle I have doesn't have mac drivers. The ram is 512Mb and is getting a bit hammered at the moment, especially when iPhoto is open (jesus that app sucks almighty).

I wanted to see if I could get that Airport Extreme Card, because there was nowhere on the web that would tell me for sure. The tools needed for this are a a little phillips screwdriver and a putty knife. The manual I was using said to sharpen it, but I got away without doing that.

Below is the Mac with the top cover off, the cd slot thingy unscrewed and in the top left, and the putty knife on the left.

Check out this arty photo below. It's all angle-ey and the lighting mental and cool and shit. Wow. I should get paid for this. You can also see the little screws that I took out of the top casing to remove it. One note on this, they are initally not very tightly screwed so be sure when replacing them not to tightly screwed. The only reason for this is at a later stage you may want to take them out again, so ringing the screws will not help.

There was one little thing I noticed. I am not sure if it was intentional, but the power cable is taped to the top cd slot thingy. I think this may have been intentional, so to remove any part of the internals, the power must be removed from the mainboard. This is a nice little thought from apple. Well, I think so anyway. Obviously, most people would have it plugged out before doing this, but just incase.

When you are taking a tiny machine apart. A tiny machine with tiny screws and delicate bits and bobs, what's the best thing to do? That's right. VACUUM. My girlfriend starts up the hoover and is lifting the table corners and my feet to "clean up". It looked f*cking clean already. Jees!

I found the slot where the Airport Extreme card sits, so I am confident I can buy it and install it without any bother. My OS (10.4) already has the airport configuration software for it, so it should be plug and play. I'll update you in a few weeks on this front.

I also wanted to double check the ram, so I could find a suitable replacement. A cheap one from a third party vendor. What's great is that it is a full size ram chip, so not too difficult to replace. Here are the details: 512Mb DDR - 400MHz - CL3. Note that the Mac Mini is will only take a max of 1Gb Ram and there is only 1 slot, so the 512Mb chip will be made redundant unless eBay can do anything with it.

I successfully got all the internal parts back in without any issues. I did find it a little difficult getting the outer casing back on the base. Simple clicking it back in didn't really work, so I clicked in the front joints first and applied a bit of extra pressure to the get rest clicked back in.

For such a compact device, it isn't too difficult to take a look inside, but it is important to take your time and consult some sort of intructions with photos. The photo below shows the back of the casing. I clicked in the further side from this first and then the rest sat easily enough.

Below, back where she belongs. With my 19", my Icy Box and Bob Marley. Don't you love Mac keyboards, they're so trendy and white.

To summarize, not too difficult to take a peek and easy to upgrade. BTW, my new mantra, one which has come from a bit of a personal budget crisis. Don't buy new, upgrade what you've got.