Dónall's Blog

Cigar Box Ukulele

2009-09-11T01:40:00.010+02:00

I recently started playing the ukulele. I was on a beach in Italy in April (at Paganello) and I met a few guys with ukuleles. We played against a team from New Zealand and they sang us a song, accompanied by a uke. Afterwards I went and had a look at it and decided that I needed to get one. So I bought a cheap soprano and started playing. About a month afterwards, I bought a not-so-cheap tenor and started playing a little better. And a month after that I decided I was going to try my hand at building a ukulele myself.

So I did a lot of reading online and came to the conclusion that building instruments is really hard. Who knew? I also came across cigar box instruments and decided that I would build a cigar box ukulele. The reason for this is that building a "normal" ukulele involves bending wood to make the sides and a lot of fairly intricate woodword to build a body that sounds decent. I have absolutely zero woodworking skills and so I decided to go with the cigar box approach because it would, in theory, be easier. Also, when I eventually make a mess of it, all I will have done is ruin an empty cigar box.

So I bought a few tools online: a saw, a spokeshave, some chisels, etc. Then I bought some more. Then I started building and I soon realised I needed more, so I bought some cabinet rasps, some clamps, a workbench, all kinds of files and plenty of very specialist tools for installing frets, etc.

As for materials, I built a test neck out of spruce, just to see if I could do it. I didn't make a terrible mess of it, so I acquired some lengths of mahogany and quite a lot of cigar boxes of various shapes and sizes. I ordered tuning pegs, pre-slotted fretboards and material for making bridges, saddles, nuts, etc. from various web sites and got cracking.

I haven't documented the process as much as I would like to have done, but I have taken a few pictures. Although the ukulele is still not complete, I will put some of them up here as a progress indicator (and also probably because I am procrastinating and probably won't get around to putting up more pics for a long time).

As a disclaimer, I should say that I have made multiple mistakes on this particular uke. I have learned quite a lot from the process so far and expect that the next one I make will look a lot more respectable! So if you are an experienced luthier, keep in mind that this is a first, self-taught attempt. Come back in 5 years and I'll have something worth showing off. :-)

This picture shows the first stage. A length of mahogany is cut into three blocks, which are glued together to form the heel of the neck. A section at the other end of the neck is then cut off at an angle and glued on to form the headstock. In this particular ukulele, I didn't glue any ears to the headstock. In hindsight, I think this was a mistake as the tuning pegs are very close to each other.

These pictures illustrate the process of shaping the neck. As can be seen, I used hand tools (a chisel for the rough shaping and then a spoke shave and a cabinet rasp for the rest). The end result is somewhat odd. Everything is slightly off centre. I suppose you could say it adds character, if you were feeling charitable! As with most things, I suspect that perfection comes after many imperfect iterations.

This is a shot of a shaped, unsanded neck. The headstock still needs some attention, but it is starting to look like a ukulele neck. Notice I left a block at the heel of the neck. It was my original intention to make a traditional dovetail joint for joining it to the body, but I made a couple of practise joints and they weren't up to scratch, so I ended up cutting off that block of wood and I will be attaching the neck to the body using bolts. I should probably also mention here that I'm not using a truss rod or anything. I don't know how necessary it will be on a neck this size (tenor) so I am experimenting.

These pictures show the pre-slotted fretboard (I didn't trust myself to get the slots right on my first attempt) and some fretting supplies. Luthier supplies are expensive!

Here is a shot of the neck with frets installed. They aren't 100% finished, but I think they look reasonable enough here. I added some mother of pearl dots in as an after-thought. I know absolutely nothing about adding dots and didn't even look it up online, so I'm not sure if I went about it right. I made some holes by hand with a drill bit, filled them with superglue and pressed in the dots, then sanded them flush with the fretboard (I think I should have done this before fretting!) I know they're all slightly off-centre but this uke is more about getting something built than aesthetics, so I'm not too bothered about it.

This picture shows the neck as it nears completion. The fretboard is cut down to size and glued on; the frets are all seated (although some of them still need some attention); the headstock has some tuning pegs attached, in a fairly haphazard manner (hopefully there will be no major issues when I string the uke) and the bottom of the fretboard is cut in a circular shape where it will meet the sound hole of the body. I also have a corian nut that hasn't been glued on yet.

This is one of the cigar boxes I acquired. It's a large-ish box, suitable for a tenor uke. I don't know what it's made of, but I like the look of it. It feels pretty solid and seems well-built.

Here is a shot of the cigar box with a sound hole cut. I used a special drill attachment for sawing holes. It came out a little rough, but I sanded down and it doesn't look too bad now.

Here is a preview of what the uke will look like. The neck and the bridge aren't glued on yet - they're just arranged into position to get an idea of what the finished product will look like.

And that's what I have done so far. I plan on attaching the neck early next week, assuming that the threaded inserts I ordered online are suitable for the job. Then I will glue on the bridge, make a few finishing touches and adjust the action of the strings and it should be ready to play. I will probably spray on some simple furniture varnish for now and consider something more elaborate for future projects. The cheapness of the varnish can seems somehow in keeping with the spirit of making an instrument out of an old cigar box.

And that's all for now. Stay tuned for more updates. Hopefully the next time I will be able to include a sound file of how it plays.

Recipes that Scale

2009-09-10T22:54:00.003+02:00

I was reading Paul Graham's essay about Ramen Profitability and what caught my attention the most was this footnote. It is a recipe for rice and beans, which is apparently healthier than ramen noodles (I am entertained by the fact that Paul feels enough responsibility for his aspiring web entrepreneur audience to go to the trouble of making sure they eat right, but that's not what this is about).

The interesting thing about this recipe is that it is for 2n people and the ingredients are listed throughout in terms of n. This seems like a particularly elegant way of specifying a recipe. I like to experiment with recipes I find on the web quite a bit, but more often than not it is a recipe that "serves 6" or some similarly useless number for a singleton chef such as myself. So I try the recipe anyway, but first I have to adjust the ingredient list accordingly. It's a simple thing, but expressing the recipe in terms of n makes it easier, in my mind at least, to adapt a recipe. I wish all recipe writers would make their recipes generic and scalable like this.

Father's Day Card

2009-08-10T16:49:00.005+02:00

I was taking some photos with my camera and, when transferring them to the computer, I came across some photos that I took just before Father's Day.

My sister lives in the US and A and so she e-mailed me a photo of herself with her husband and her son and she asked me to print it and make it into a Father's Day card for her. I arranged it into a suitable PDF and dropped it over to the DCU print shop. I asked them to do two copies - one in colour and one monochrome - so I could pick the one that looked best and use it.

I ended up selecting the colour one for my sister, but then when I got home I realised that I hadn't actually bothered to buy a card for my father (I rarely buy cards because they seem impersonal and overpriced) and that the gift I ordered was not going to arrive on time. So, rather than show up in my parents' house with only a card form my sister, I decided to repurpose the extra card.

Here are some pictures of the results. You'll have to excuse the quality of the photographs. I'm not much of a photographer at the best of times and, in this case, I snapped these to send to my sister as an illustration of what her card actually looked like. I would take better pictures for this post, but I no longer have access to the cards.

First, the card from my sister:

I couldn't resist the urge to add a bit of an in-joke on the back of the card:

Many of the people who read this blog (in fact, probably both of you) will get the first half of that joke, at least!

Here is my modified version:

And here are both cards side by side:

My card is crudely stuck together with sellotape and the Dónall-heads are poorly cut out. I think that it adds to the effect.

I think my father quite liked the cards. Both of them were on the mantlepiece until last week when they were taken down to make way for my nephew's birthday cards.

Snow

2009-02-08T21:39:00.005+01:00

It has been snowing on and off for the last week. As I have spent most of my life in warmer climes, this is the most snow I have ever seen (barring the times when I have been more than 2000 metres above sea level). There are parts of the DCU campus that have been covered by snow for an entire week.

I took advantage of this fact to test my new camera. It's a very new camera, so I'm not quite used to it yet. Also, it is a standard digital point and shoot camera, so the quality of the pictures is not comparable to the output of a DSLR or similar.

Many of the photos came out rather over-exposed, which is to be expected really. Several others were somewhat out of focus, which I attribute to experimentation with the various settings. Here are a few shots taken in Albert College Park which I quite like, even if the composition is less than perfect...

I tried to get more of a reflection out of the water on this one, but it was starting to snow quite heavily again (the mistiness in the background is snow) and I didn't want to hang out for too long. I made the mistake of walking through the puddle on my way back. It was much deeper than I expected and I plunged into it up to my ankle. I foolishly chose to press on - the entire section of path visible in this photo is waterlogged and I was thoroughly soaked by the time I got to the end of it.

I adjusted the colours of this one in photoshop because the original was a little under-exposed. I would have taken more care with the shot, but my feet were numb from their icy bath after the previous photograph and I just wanted to get home! As a result, I think the photo is a little redder than I would like it to be. It seems my photoshop skills are even worse than my photography skills!

Cleaning Up After Myself

2009-01-12T22:26:00.002+01:00

I have a confession to make. Two, actually. The first is that I eat fast food. I know it's bad for me. I have seen this video, watched Supersize Me, read Fast Food Nation and even, unfortunately, seen the film version. I recognise that what I'm eating barely counts as food, but sometimes it is just convenient. Other times, to be perfectly honest, it just satisfies a craving for junk food.

Having said all this, I eat fast food quite rarely. I really do mostly do it for convenience. I estimate I eat a fast food meal twice per month, on average. Of course, this is an average figure. I sometimes go months without setting foot inside a Burger King, other times I find myself there twice per week. I don't think it's a serious problem, in the same way that a smoker who only smokes two per day doesn't have a problem.

My second confession is likely to be much more contentious, at least to those of you who frequent these "restaurants". I don't always clean up after myself. I sometimes toss a greasy napkin onto the pile of discarded wrappers, get up and walk out the door.

My motivation for this post is that I was in McDonalds last night (for the first time in about 2 years) with Rose. We had just been to the cinema and she wanted to eat something. I didn't, but I felt it would be rude to make her go by herself, so I tagged along and got guilted into buying a cheeseburger (why are girls unable to eat when in the presence of a man who is not eating?). When we finished, I announced I was not going to put the wrapper in the bin and she looked at me as if I had just urinated in her cornflakes, then proceeded to tidy up after me.

My reasoning for this is not just that I am a complete jerk. That's only about half of it. The other half of it is based on the fact that I am not obliged to clean up after myself. When I receive my tray of "food" I am not reminded of my duty to dispose of it properly. In fact, if you look closely the next time you are in one of these restaurants, you will notice that the person who served you your food will occasionally come out from the "kitchen" (I'm going to keep on doing this to food-related words because it entertains me), put away trays, straighten up chairs and drag a wet mop across the floor.

Of course, that is not the whole story. I am not so defined by my role as customer that I refuse to lend a hand when it costs me nothing. But the fact is that I regard the cleaning up after myself part of the exchange as a kind of a tip. In a normal restaurant, you eat your food and when you're done, you pay for it and, if you liked it and you felt that the service was good, you will leave extra money, often in proportion to how much of a good time you had (note to Americans and other people who pay their waiters less than minimum wage: I live in Europe). In a fast food joint, on the other hand, you pay for your food up front. The staff have no incentive to make an effort because they know they will not get remunerated for it. So I consider cleaning up as making their job a tiny bit easier and that is my tip.

As an example, if I go to, say, KFC, and I get served by a friendly young Chinese girl who doesn't obviously hate me and my food is served promptly and in a warm, edible and moderately tasty state, I will be happy. If I am able to find somewhere clean and warm to sit, I will be very happy. After this sort of experience, I will clear my table and leave it as I found it. On the other hand, if I go to, say, Burger King and I am served by some guy who doesn't understand my order, and gets impatient with me because I don't have the right sort of Dublin accent for his imperfect grasp of the lingua franca, then proceeds to serve me stale chips and a lukewarm, excessively oily burger and the wrong drink, I will not be happy. If I then have to clear a table to find somewhere to sit, i will be doubly unhappy. When I finish, I will plonk my tray on the table and saunter out the door. Bonus points for accidentally dropping greasy things on the floor.

So you are probably thinking that I am an excessively vindictive, crotchety old man. Maybe you're right. I can't say I care.

Coming up: my solution to shops stocking Christmas items before November - hiding them in interesting places (at the back of a freezer, on top of the shelves, etc.). Bonus points if the items are perishable.

Meeting my pseudonym

2008-12-26T14:09:00.002+01:00

I have been reading about Lewis Carroll recently. In particular, I have been reading about the fact that his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and that he first adopted his nom de plume when he was 21.

Reading about this reminded me of my own pseudonym, and the time that I met him.

When I was about 17, I chose the name "Robert Kane" to be my pseudonym, if ever I needed to give a false name, either when publishing classic children's literature or when apprehended by the police. I chose this name because I reckoned it would be easy to remember. The reason for this is that my parents initially planned on calling me Robert (my uncle Robert apparently talked them out of it, so that my name is now Dónall Eoin Roibeard McCann). As for the name "Kane", it is close enough to McCann to be easily remembered (and, in fact, I have read in more than one place that it is an anglicised derivation of McCann, although I can't attest to the veracity of this claim).

So, for a few years, I used this name when I needed a convenient pseudonym. I never used it as a fake name for the police, but I did write a few things here and there that were attributed to Robert Kane.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was studying for a year in Valencia, Spain, and Robert Kane began posting to the forum used by my university ultimate frisbee team in Dublin! As it turned out, one of the new players that year was actually called Robert Kane (also known as Blonde Rob) and was just as surprised as I was that somebody else was using his name.

Since then, I haven't used it as a pseudonym, but I have failed to come up with an alternative that I find suitably fitting and similarly easy to remember.

I'm sure C.L. Dodgson never had the problem of accidentally bumping into Lewis Carroll...

Fun with Hairdressers

2008-12-10T02:18:00.002+01:00

Here is something you can try at home (assuming you live in a hairdresser's) . One prerequisite is that you will need about a week's growth of facial hair.

Go home (or to the hairdresser's if you're not trying this at home) and find a hairdresser with a pretty poor grasp of English. Get in the chair and tell her what you want done to your hair (this is, of course, merely a formality, due to her aforementioned loose grip on the local tongue). Sit back and relax while she performs her dark arts, but remember to pay attention towards the end, when it comes to the part when she gets the razor and trims the edges at the back and sides.

Assuming you aren't some freakish testosterone fiend, a week's worth of facial hair should be relatively sparse - enough to be noticed and make you look badly groomed, but not quite enough to be considered a beard. The hairdresser will not know whether or not to trim the sides, in case you are, in fact, growing a beard and wouldn't appreciate a negative side-burn look.

To complicate matters, your carefully selected hairdresser will not have the ability to ask you to disambiguate your fuzz by the standard method of asking you a straight question. Instead, she will look puzzled at it for a minute, then decide to go for it, and apply the razor to the edge of the hairline. She will then, naturally, turn to the other side of the face, look puzzled again, decide the original decision was a mistake, and turn the razor off and put it away wordlessly, leaving you with a fashionably lop-sided look and a date with the razor when you get home.

Or maybe that just happens to me.

Vocabulary - Pie/Foot

2008-12-03T23:00:00.004+01:00

These are the latest additions to the vocabulary saga. All rely on the fact that the Spanish word for foot is "pie" (pronounced pee-'eh)

"Easy as foot"
"I have a sore pie"

I will recognise that this is probably in no way funny to read. I'm just documenting...

Vocabulary

2008-11-22T04:34:00.008+01:00

I like unusual terms for things. I particularly enjoy made-up terms for things. I thrive on neologisms and newly-minted phrases. A good portmanteau or a recycled and re-purposed cliché can have me chuckling quietly to myself for hours (sad, isn't it?).

Unfortunately, I find that most of these terms tend to be transient and fleeting as they never become mainstream and they are eventually forgotten. With that in mind, I would like to record a few here, for posterity (so to speak).

I suppose my father is the main ~~culprit~~ cause of my interest in this sort of thing. For as long as I can remember he has been happily ignoring general vocabulary conventions and making the language up as he goes along. So much so that I think it would be an interesting project to compile a lexicon of terms that he uses, along with their definitions and usage criteria - but that's for another day.

My father's main source of neologisms is repurposed words, often word pairs combined in new and unexpected ways. As an example, the remote control for the television (which is known to most people as a remote, zapper, etc.) is known as a "bollard jumper" in our family. There is no apparent logic behind this, which is probably what makes it so memorable. Another example of a word used only by our family is arch, which is used to describe something that is in some way excellent or otherwise superlatively positive. It is a very commonly used word, describing anything from a meal to a film to a flight.

There are also "generic" words, like the Hiberno-English (is this getting pretentious yet? I didn't want to say "Irish" because it would be confusing) yoke or the Latin-American vaina. The standard catch-all word used by my father is raspberry, giving rise to exchanges such as:

Dónall: Have you seen the bollard-jumper?
Father: It's under the raspberry.
Dónall: Arch.

In this case, the word raspberry could refer to absolutely anything, and yet the meaning is often, and surprisingly, apparent from the context.

A more easily interpretable word is shed, which is used to describe anything that can contain something else – in practise, cupboards, drawers, wardrobes, attics, cellars, etc.

There is an entire category of words that are melanges of two or more languages, and commonly used in my family. Possibly the most common is to the platform, which means "OK" (via the French au quai). Any conversation between any two members of my family will be liberally sprinkled with unusual terms, mostly taken from combining English and Spanish, although French is usually acceptable too.

The general formula for these terms is to take a sentence in one language and purposefully mistranslate it into another one. This will frequently take the form of literally translated idioms, such as to give oneself of low, meaning to unsubscribe from something. These are usually the funniest types of neologisms, although the potential audience for the joke is restricted to those with a reasonable grasp of all the languages involved…

My friend Tinsley (who apparently doesn't like to be called Tinsley on this blog) has come to appreciate many of these bilingual terms in recent years. He is also frequently a good source of interesting monolingual terms. Probably my favourite one of his is ramipercussions, which is a portmanteau of "ramifications" and "repercussions" and has a wonderfully awkward sound when said out loud. Also, if you believe in the idea of morphological onomatopoeia, I think the surface similarity to the word "rambunctious" gives it a pleasantly whimsical connotation.

A recent gem of Tinsley's is to pronounce things as the crow flies, meaning to pronounce them directly as written, as opposed to whichever roundabout way is required by the language. It was, in fact, this term that inspired me to write this particular post.

My most widely-accepted neologism is weblord. I suspect some people might dispute that I came up with the term as it has reached a certain amount of currency in some of my social circles, but I am quite certain that I came up with it independently of anybody else. The origin, for me at least, is Robert Rankin's use of the term barlord instead of barman. Many years ago, I felt the term webmaster wasn't quite as grandiloquent as it could be, and so modified it to weblord. It gained currency because I insisted that the official title of the webmaster of the DCU ultimate club (and, later, Captain Drinking Binge) be WebLord.

This is quickly becoming a long-winded article, and so I will now cut it short, with a promise to post more on this topic at a future date (as I have only really scratched the surface here). I will leave you with my latest favourite term: The Kablammo. It comes via my friend Gráinne (who uses the word Kablammo as an adjective in much the same way as my father uses arch) and it is a variation on the unnecessary use of the definite article commonly used in the term The Awesome (or Teh Awesome, if you're that kind of nerd).

And that's all I have to say about that. I know this isn't a particularly arch ending, but think of it as more of a "to be continued". Now that I have laid down some basic facts, I will probably sprinkle this blog with occasional new terms as they pop up.

So, for now at least, in the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: "That's masa del dedo del pie, false".

Judo

2008-11-22T04:29:00.002+01:00

I started judo about a month ago. I have, thus far, been to about 8 training sessions and I am enjoying it immensely. I am conscious that I am very new at this (I am, as yet, unranked - not even a white belt), and so anything I say about the subject will probably seem embarassingly naive in a couple of years, so please don't judge me too harshly if you are a seasoned judoka.

I have been meaning to take up a martial art for years now and judo was my first choice as I did judo for a couple of years when I was about 7 years old, although I don't really remember any of it for that to be of any use to me.

This is certainly the first time I have taken judo seriously and I am very impressed with it. It seems elegant and graceful while at the same time being violent and aggressive. It is unlike anything else I have ever done.

For my first few sessions, we practised some basic throws and ground work. We also did a lot of very intense fitness work (one of the requirements is that we be able to do backwards rolls into handstands – which is even more difficult than it sounds!) but, all in all, it was kind of bland – there was a sense that we weren't being thrown hard and that our opponents were cooperating too much for it to be challenging. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it immensely and always looked forward to the next session.

In the last couple of sessions, however, things have been different. I got a new judo suit, as opposed to just wearing a tracksuit and a t-shirt (and it makes an incredible difference!), and we are starting to get thrown more often when we do randori (a kind of practise fight). One guy in particular is very satisfying to practise with. Whereas the higher-ranked members of the club would allow me to set up with grips and offer helpful advice as I made a mess of putting in attacks, this guy refused to let me have any grip at all and actively counter-attacked anything I put out there. Fighting him for 5 minutes was more exhausting than any other aspect of the training. And for that reason, it was all the more satisfying when I managed to successfully execute any throws.

Call me a testosterone-fuelled stereotype, but there is something greatly satisfying about grappling with an opponent of similar size and strength, then executing a manoeuvre and throwing him over your shoulder. I now wake up the day after training to find myself sore and covered in bruises, but I'm still craving another session. Last weekend, I found myself dreaming about judo and actually waking myself up because my body physically carried out the move I imagined in my head. I think this is a good thing.

The nezt training session won't be until Monday and I feel restless for having written this. I find myself looking forward to the adrenaline of the fight, the feeling in my stomach when my legs are swept out from under me and, most of all, the grace of a successful throw and the satisfying thwack that my opponent's body makes as he hits the mat.

My new site

2008-09-16T23:11:00.002+02:00

http://www.yousoc.ie

I just built that. It's an event guide for university students, combined with a web site that gives out free junk. It's full of bugs. If anybody spots a not-very obvious one, let me know.

I might write something more detailed about this at an unspecified time in the future...

Of Finland and the Law

2008-09-12T03:03:00.004+02:00

[I was going to write about my experiences last weekend in Longford at the best music festival ever, but I think I promised another one about Finland first, so Daveness will have to wait...]

The Finns and the Irish have a lot in common. Or so I was told by a barman in the Whiskey Bar in Turku. He had spent a few weeks touring Ireland and had concluded that we, the Irish, are culturally very similar to his own compatriots. I asked him to expound on this subject and he thought for a while, then answered that both nations like to drink copiously.

I was, of course, unable to deny this, especially as I was in a Whiskey Bar at 3am when I had a conference to attend the following morning at 8:00. Not only that, but I had a drunken retinue of Americans, Belgians and Dutch seeking advice from me on which were the best whiskeys to try (the poor fools!). As for the barman, he had been clearly drinking since he started his shift and was somewhat unsteady of hand as he measured out the Middleton and the Black Bush.

And it is true. Like in Dublin, Turku has a number of clearly drunk, apparently homeless people hanging out on its streets during the day. The only difference is that in Turku they don't wear tracksuits. Just like our very own Liffey, the banks of the river Aura are to be found sprinkled with small groups of unwashed old men imbibing cans of cheap beer by the crateful.

There were a couple of music festivals on in Turku while I was there and so the drinking was particularly pronounced. Much like Dublin on St. Patrick's Day, a walk from my hotel to the river often involved circumnavigating a group of men drunkenly trying to revive a fallen comrade lying sprawled on the pavement.

The difference is that Turku manages to maintain its charm. The sight of an unconscious man in a tracksuit accompanied by a woman, in a similar tracksuit, screaming at him to "gerrup, willya" is a reminder of everything that I dislike about Dublin. In Turku, it is a break from the norm and so it is more of a novelty, almost like street theatre!

The fact is that the Finns are, in my experience and for the most part, incredibly law-abiding. I never once felt unsafe walking around Turku, by day or by night. I never saw anybody fighting or yelling or otherwise being aggressive. In fact, the opposite was true. I found that people were particularly friendly. While I was there, I attended a concert as part of a punk festival. I was alone and it was a particularly hardcore crowd and yet, within the space of twenty minutes, somebody had struck up a conversation with me and invited me to join his friends and he for some beers.

There are none of the usual signs of a city that requires control measures to keep the citizenry from committing crimes. The parks didn't appear to close at any time. There wasn't a noticeable police presence, even after dark (in fact, I couldn't recall ever seeing a Finnish policeman). People loitered without being asked to "move along".

And the population is clearly quiescent. The most striking example of this is the fact that nobody seems to lock their bike to anything. A very significant number of Finns appear to get around by bike, and so there are plenty of designated bicycle parking areas, and yet a lot of them don't have any sort of frame or bar to lock the bike to. Most bikes have a kickstand and they are left much as one would park a motorbike. The only concession to the possibility of theft is the fact that the back wheel (not the front one) is chained to the frame. Of course, this could equally be a measure to prevent the wheel from turning and the bike from falling over! Certainly, the chains used are flimsy enough that they could probably be cut using a swiss army knife.

I would estimate that an enterprising thief with a truck could lift 2000 bikes from the banks of the river Aura in the summer time.

A particularly unusual trait of the Finns is that they never jaywalk. They will only cross a road at a crossing and when the light is green. I have stood with a large group of Finns at a quiet road in the late evening, with no cars in sight, and waited with them until the light turned red.

It is quite pleasant to walk through such an environment, but also disconcerting as one wonders what one would have to do to a population to make it so instinctively law-abiding.

Based on all this, I have devised a plan to raise the crime level in Finland. Because they are so well-behaved, the crime will have to be pretty serious, for purposes of balance, and so I have settled for murder. Or manslaughter. We'll let the judge decide...

The plan is simple, and it is actually based on an experience I had on my last day in Turku, when I was 15 minutes late meeting some friends for dinner. I was waiting to cross one of the busier roads and the light was taking a long time to change. As I was in a hurry, I waited for a gap in traffic and crossed to the other side, although the light was red. I was immediately followed by two or three Finns. They are clearly so used to nobody jaywalking that they assume that any movement must be the result of a green light.

I hastened to the other side of this road, because I had picked a small gap in traffic. The unsuspecting Finns behind me were ambling across, confident in their right of way. It wasn't until the cars blew their horns and braked hard that they jogged to the other side of the street.

And so my plan is as follows: Find a very busy street at a time when traffic is dense, yet fast-moving. Wait until the pedestrian light turns red and a crowd gathers at the crossing. Walk over and stand waiting for 30 seconds. Then suddenly take a few steps forward at a leisurely pace, slow enough that you could be easily overtaken. As your victim draws near to you, and before you reach the flow of traffic, bend down and tie your shoelace, then look up and see the carnage. Stand up, look distraught and call for help. As the crowd gathers around the corpse, melt away. You might never be caught.

You just might become the most successful serial killer in the history of Finland.

Finland

2008-08-31T23:24:00.006+02:00

I was in Finland at the beginning of this month. I was presenting a paper at the SWDMNSS workshop, as part of SAINT 2008. I meant to write some things about that, but never got round to it. In my defence, I have been completely snowed under with work recently. My supervisor has been pushing for some software to be completed in the labs, and I am developing a web site that is to be launched next week (but more of that in a future post).

I recently got my hands on some photos of Finland from some of the people I met there, so I'm going to post a few of them here. I will probably follow this with a post or two about my experiences. So if you really don't care about Finland or computing research conferences, I would advise tuning out the next few posts!

I was in Turku, which has a mediaeval castle from which Finland was governed for centuries. The conference banquet was a mediaeval banquet in said castle.

I went to the conference by myself, but I was fortunate enough to make some friends when I got there. A lot of people are alone and so people are quite receptive. I ended up hanging out with the people in this photo most nights.

Because it was a mediaeval banquet, we used a slice of flat bread, instead of a plate, and we didn't use forks, because they hadn't been introduced in Finland yet! We ate with our fingers instead. It was a lot of fun.

Our hosts for the evening were Duke John and his wife, Catherine of Poland (whom we had to address in Latin, the lingua franca - Vivant Iohannes et Caterina!!). They were played by some talented actors. They greeted us and entertained us with songs, and explained the customs of the period to us. It was probably the best dinner entertainment I've ever seen.

After a couple of different courses, Catherine of Poland introduced us all to a new, modern implement - the fork. After Duke John implored us all to be very careful with these dangerous new devices, the servants came out with huge trays of roast chicken and vegetables and we all received forks. Ironically, the chicken was in drumstick form and most people used their hands!

After the banquet ended, we went looking for something else to do. We came to a bar on the main square and drank until they closed at 3am. We then went next door to a late bar (!) and we were eventually joined by the waitress from next door, who I suspect was coming onto one of us, but she was too strange to tell! We eventually went back to our hotels at about 5am, in full daylight (Finnish summers are pretty great).

Needless to say, I didn't show up to the conference the following morning!

(The next installment of the Finland saga will feature, among other things, an experimental method for killing Finns using traffic lights)

(Also, I am using these photos without permission. I believe they belong to Shanti and Sam (with maybe one or two of Pieter's) so if any of you guys are reading this and have a problem with these photos being here, let me know!)

Miracle Berries

2008-08-23T22:06:00.002+02:00

I recently jumped on the miracle berries bandwagon. It was an interesting experience.

For those of you who don't know, and those too lazy to read the Wikipedia page, miracle berries are a type of fruit that trick your taste-buds into tasting things that are usually sour or bitter as sweet.

I first heard about them a few months ago, somewhere on the internet, but it wasn't until ThinkGeek started selling them that I seriously considered buying some. So I sauntered over to eBay (shipping from ThinkGeek's warehouses to my house is pretty damn pricey) and bought some off some guy in Scotland.

They arrived on Tuesday. I got a pack of 10 tablets, which is allegedly 20 doses, but I'm not convinced of this fact. I called up my friend Tinsley and we went to Tesco to buy some supplies.

We got lemons, limes, kiwis, grapefruit, tomatoes, goat's cheese, Guinness an mustard. Which, I'm sure you'll agree, is an odd combination.

After we had each taken half a tablet, we tested it out by biting into some lemons and soon discovered that the tablets do exactly what it says on the box. The lemons still tasted of lemons, except that all the sourness had been replaced by sweetness of the same magnitude. The result was that the lemons tasted like lemons that had been marinating in sugar syrup for a week. It was an interesting novelty, but a bit too sweet for my taste.

Next we tried limes. They tasted much better, and the sweetness wasn't too overpowering. My favourite items were the kiwis, which had an excpetionally smooth flavour to them while under the effects of the berry.

We washed all this down with Guinness. According to this site, the berries cause Guinness to taste like chocolate milkshake, although I didn't find it to be the case. It certainly didn't taste like Guinness, but there was nothing chocolatey about it. Perhaps the reason is that I accidentally bought regular canned Guinness, as opposed to the draught variety. I know the draught stuff is creamier and tastes a bit different. I'll have to make sure I get the right stuff next time...

The tomatoes tasted particularly like tomatoes, except that they weren't as sharp. As I don't like tomatoes, I was not happy with this turn of events! Goat's cheese is supposed to taste like icing, but to me it just tasted like very mild cheese. I didn't try the mustard, as I was apprehensive that taking a spoonful of mustard would be a mistake, considering that the tomato taste wasn't significantly altered. Having said that, I have read reports of the taste of vinegar and tobasco sauce being completely transformed. These will be items for future experimentation.

The effects of the tablets seemed to be wearing off after about 20 minutes, which was less than the 30-60 minutes we had expected, and we still had a lot of fruit left, so we took another half-tablet each, peeled all the fruit and blended it into smoothies. These turned out to be exceptionally sweet (probably from all the lemon juice) and I was unable to finish mine.

All in all, it was an interesting experience, and I'm looking forward to trying out other things in the future (I have 8 tablets left). It feels pretty weird to be eating lemons like they were oranges, but I think I would have to disagree with a lot of the hype. The berries don't seem to fundamentally change the flavour of the food being tasted, just to make it a lot sweeter. I could probably achieve the same effect by dipping the lemons in sugar, but with the berries I get to save on the dentist bill.

Altruism

2008-08-05T19:09:00.002+02:00

I have been polling a number of my friends recently on how they think they would react in a given situation. The situation in question actually occurred to me last Thursday in Turku, Finland, so I was eager to find out how they would have reacted.

What happened, in essence, was that I came across a crying girl, but didn't stop to offer any help. I was walking down one of the main streets in Turku city centre quite late at night, after everything had closed up for the night, when I heard loud sobbing. I looked up and saw a girl, who appeared to be Finnish, crying disconsolately and making no effort to hide this fact.

My first thought was that she must be very embarrassed to be walking around in such a state, and I reasoned that she wouldn't welcome any intrusion from a complete stranger (on the basis that, if I were in the same position, I wouldn't want strangers interfering). It then occurred to me that, even if I did stop her, she might not speak English, and I know only a handful of words in Finnish, so we might not be able to communicate and things would then become very awkward indeed.

By the time I had considered these things, the girl had passed me by and her sobbing was fading into the distance. I turned a corner, then changed my mind. I decided to go back and check that the girl was OK, but when I looked back down the street we had passed each other on, she was nowhere to be seen, so I continued back to my hotel.

I have been feeling guilty for not offering her any assistance. It is unlikely that she would have bumped into anybody else on her way, as there was nobody else around.

I believe in the notion of "what goes around comes around". I think that, had I stopped and offered help to that girl, it probably would have had a knock-on effect. I would have gone to bed feeling good about myself, and she might have been in a better mood around her family and friends. If nothing else, we might both have an interesting story to tell. Perhaps we might have discovered commonalities and become friends. As it is, I failed to act on time, and so I feel guilty and a girl in Finland felt sadder than strictly necessary. The world is a fractionally worse place.

In an attempt to assuage my guilt, I conducted the aforementioned survey of my friends. Interestingly, my male friends were generally of the opinion that they would have stopped to help, with the exception of one friend who had found himself in a similar situation recently and reported the same experience as mine. Of the girls asked, half said they would have stopped and half said they would have ignored her. Almost all of them said that they would only stop if certain conditions were met, including knowing that they were in no personal danger, checking that the girl wasn't drunk and, most memorably, depending on whether or not they were in a good mood!

My friend Kat had a particularly interesting view on the subject. She was of the opinion that whether or not somebody would stop would be dependent on how altruistic they are. I asked if somebody would be considered not altruistic for not stopping to help the girl, even if they then went on to do something else, such as help a blind man cross a street (because I have done this on a number of occasions and was trying to justify myself!). Her interesting premise concerns the level of personal involvement. Helping a man cross a street only involves taking his arm and walking him from one footpath to the other, whereas helping a crying girl will offer a certain amount of consolation, discussion, etc. If the girl's problems are severe, it might lead to a much greater commitment. The measure of a person's altruism is how personally involved they are prepared to get (this is quite paraphrased, so I hope she doesn't read this and conclude that I wasn't listening to her at all!).

On the surface, this seems like an excellent metric. It's easy to help the blind man, but not the crying girl. In the same way, it's easy to donate a small portion of your earnings to charity, but not so easy to volunteer your time to a charity project. Is Bill Gates more altruistic than my friend who works in a soup kitchen once a week? I would say it's probably the other way around. Even if Bill Gates spends more than one night a week on his charity foundation, he does so from the vantage point of being extraordinarily wealthy, whereas my friend is a college student.

So I think I will resolve to be more altruistic. I think that, in general, I am reasonably altruistic. For example, I have been known to spend several hours of my time helping various people with their computer problems (I really believe that what comes around goes around in computing - I am writing this in Firefox running on Ubuntu) because that is my area of expertise; on at least one occasion I have contributed cookies to a charity bake sale because I enjoy cooking; I generally tend to offer to translate for people who are having trouble making themselves understood because I am bilingual and have worked as both a translator and interpreter.

But I will offer to help with these things because they are my particular skills, or because I enjoy them. It's easy to be altruistic when it doesn't cost you much.

Logic and Romance

2008-02-08T16:02:00.001+01:00

I try very hard to be logical. It is an obsession of mine. I sometimes say that I was born to be a programmer because I like to think I have a logical mind (and because I’m pretentious), but I sometimes think that perhaps I am logical because I am a programmer. I was always good at logic and rational thought (or so those aptitude tests my guidance counsellor made me do would have me believe), but I didn’t have a tendency to try and debug the universe until I had started Java programming in college.

I insist on a logical representation of the universe because I like to believe that absolutely everything, including human emotions, can ultimately (very, very ultimately) be broken down to a logical representation (it seems self-evident if you accept that there is no such thing as a soul and that humans are merely a collection of atoms interacting with each other as a relatively closed system). Of course, this is not a very practical way of viewing the universe and I think it alienates people to a certain extent, but I can’t say it bothers me too much. I’m not really a machine, nor am I the stereotypical nerd who is incapable of human interaction. I do have some emotions (my mother says I’m very empathetic!) and I think I am capable of emotional insight when called on (this aspect of my personality has been known to surprise some of my more female friends). But it bothers me that people aren’t more logical.

In particular, interactions between men and women have too much to do with reproduction and genetic replication. If I meet a girl I like at a party, I want to get to know her better. I want to take her out somewhere and have fun with her, then I want to go somewhere and relax in her company and talk about grandiose things (because I’m pretentious). I want to understand and be understood (if this is starting to sound a bit gay at this stage, just bear with me). I don’t want to just bring her back to my place and impregnate her so that my genes will be passed on to another generation (although I am prepared to concede that I am attracted to certain body types for that reason, at a subconscious, instinctive level). If we accept that most meaningful relationships between modern humans in the western world are not solely vehicles for survival of the species (or selfish genetic replication if you believe certain geneticists) then it seems silly to insist on courtship rituals that are based on millennia of evolution. The male of the species must still prove his dominance. He must prove he has something that separates him from the rest of the herd and that makes his genes more desirable. This is meaningless in modern society. It is especially meaningless when you consider that some people claim to have hacked the system and that they can falsify all the requirements for creating attraction in women (and, whether or not you believe in their methods, they do have some very compelling results which can’t be explained as statistical flukes). In fact, falsify is a harsh word. They are not necessarily making themselves out to be something they are not, they are merely presenting themselves in an appropriate fashion.

My point here is that “the spark” and the “butterflies in the stomach” can be synthesised (consider how many people fall in love with actors based on the qualities they display as characters in films). That’s a pretty impressive claim, I think, but these things are instinctive responses to certain stimuli and so they can be achieved by providing the right conditions. This is a powerful notion. It means that anybody can successfully seduce anyone else if they know how to trigger the correct emotional response (this is obviously an exaggeration, but there is a significant element of truth to it). It actually raises a lot of ethical questions, but I won’t get into them at this point, especially as the question of double standards and sexism will rear its ugly head.

If we are not reproducing because our instincts tell us to and, even if we were, we know we can’t trust our instincts, the entire system breaks down. I can’t speak for anybody else, but when I look for a girlfriend I look for somebody who is compatible with my personality, who is intelligent (ideally, more intelligent than me) and who is kind and generous. Incredible beauty, perfect body and fabulous wealth are all desirable, but largely optional, extras… If somebody could guarantee me that a woman I had never met fulfilled these requirements, I wouldn’t hesitate to go out with her and see for myself (I think normal people call this a blind date, except that there is less lying involved in my hypothetical example).

So my logical approach to the universe tells me that the correct way to approach seduction should be to locate a potential partner, approach her and find out what her requirements are in a partner. If I meet these requirements, I should present some sort of indication that I do (perhaps some sort of curriculum amorae) and then explain my requirements to her. When we are both satisfied that there is a potential match, we can then decide to take the relationship further until such a time as it is discovered that one of us does not entirely meet the requirements, at which time the relationship will be terminated, for practical reasons.

Of course, this is not really the way seduction works (and I am not seriously advocating such an extreme approach either). If I walked up to a pretty girl in a bar and presented her with my CV, she would quickly find a way to ditch me. But this is a pity because I’m sure that a lot of people who are not skilled in the art of seduction (or who refuse to play the game) still have a lot to offer (or so Hollywood would have us believe).

The most interesting thing is that my logical approach to seduction actually essentially how it is performed. The male approaches the female and demonstrates certain qualities that are known to be attractive to females (“Hi. I’m a handsome, wealthy, successful, self-made entrepreneur with a fantastic sense of humour. This is my puppy Cuddles. He was a present from my mother. I’m also a volunteer fireman.”). If successful, the female reciprocates by acting in a way calculated to attract the male (“I am a poor, defenceless female and I need a big strong manly presence in my life to make me feel complete. I also love sports and beer and don’t really buy into that relationship crap and nagging nonsense. In fact, I have had quite a lot of beers and feel justified in taking you back to my place for a marathon session of rumpy-pumpy. But first, let me rock out to this killer guitar solo.”). Once this exchange is complete, they both retire to somewhere private (or possibly not, whatever they’re into) and reproduce. (This might have become a tad facetious at this stage…)

So until the world comes round to my way of thinking I will have to continue doing the same old mating dance that every other idiot out there is doing. But I want it to be known that I find it degrading and I do so under silent protest.

An Update

2007-10-05T17:24:00.000+02:00

I haven't posted in a while because I have been very busy. I have just moved to Dublin and started a research M.Sc. in DCU (Dublin City University - my "Alma Mater"). I am working in the Interoperable Systems Group in the School of Computer Applications (and I now have a web site about it, which doesn't contain much info just yet). For those of you who are particularly interested, the project involves querying RSS streams. I'm not going to post any further details to this blog (largely because I don't really know any at this stage!)...

Thanks for the food

2007-09-08T02:46:00.001+02:00

I have been living with my parents again for a month now. The reason is that I will be unemployed until October and so I can't afford to pay rent elsewhere. Living with the parents again is an interesting experience.

In my family, we generally say grace before eating (except when we are in a restaurant, eating in front of the TV or we have a guest who has decided to go ahead and start eating before anybody has had a chance to say grace).

Every time I visit my parents they ask me to say the grace. This is just something they do. They like everybody to contribute and so any family member who hasn't been around in a while is asked to say grace.

In our house, grace is formulaic. We first started saying grace at meal-times when I was about 11 (I think) and we were encouraged to say whatever we felt was appropriate. As a result, the standard grace formula in the McCann household was conceived by a child more than twelve years ago, and yet that is the model that my brothers and sister (and myself up until recently) have followed ever since. I often think that visitors to the house must be either surprised at the fact that we say grace at mealtimes or surprised that the grace is so uninspired and meaningless.

As a result of this, I started playing around with the formula a few years ago. After a while I came up with a new formula, which pleased me because it was so general and ambiguous. Essentially, it was "Thanks, God, for the food, the stuff, the things and the etcetera". Other words, such as "junk", can be added to taste.

The point I was making here was, of course, that it doesn't matter what is said during the grace because it is so formulaic and repetitive that it is completely meaningless anyway. If we were truly grateful for what we had received, we would probably sound a lot more sincere. When somebody buys me a meal, or when a friend cooks me dinner, I am very thankful because I appreciate the effort involved. When my mother makes me dinner, I am thankful to her (even if I rarely actually thank her for it - I'm a bad son, but that's a whole different story) but I am in no way thankful to a deity in a different plane of existence.

Those of you who know me well will consider that there is nothing unusual about this statement as I do not believe in the Christian god, or even in any of the traditional notions of "God". But even if I did believe in the white bearded man in the sky wearing the nightdress, I don't see why he should be thanked merely for creating the means by which we feed ourselves. If you're going to go down the road of thanking him (yes, God is a man and no, it doesn't matter that he's a man because he doesn't exist - call him "her" and "she" if it really makes you feel better) for creating life-supporting elements, then why don't we thank him for every breath of oxygen? Or for every drink of water? I'm not bashing the notion of being grateful but if there is a God, I think he would wonder why we're so pleased about the food and not quite so impressed with, for instance, the gravitational force that is also an essential part of our life (at least, it is for now - a disclaimer for the Arthur C. Clarke fans among you).

So what I'm trying to say is that the very idea of saying grace is pointless and naïve. It is even more pointless to recite a meaningless phrase before you eat. It is of about the same value as tapping a can of beer before opening it - some people believe it helps in an unknown way, others think it is a waste of time.

My parents are Christians and they therefore won't listen to rational thought about matters of religion (a fact that never ceases to amaze me) because they don't need to know why they know something if they know it hard enough (if you catch my drift). As a result, they probably won't accept my preceding argument as a valid reason not to say grace, so I have hatched a plan. It is based on the idea of doing something so incredibly badly that you are never asked to do it again. Essentially, the idea is to say grace whenever it is required of me, but to thank the wrong god consistently. So today, I thanked Shiva for providing us with haddock for dinner. The last time it was Odin and before that Thor. I will go through Lugh, Zeus and Baal and, if that doesn't work, I will test the water with Hades before dropping the bomb: thanking our Dark Lord, Satan.

I expect that at some stage over the next few weeks, I will be quietly removed from the grace-saying roster. If I die from salmonella in the next couple of months, feel free to say "I told you so".

I don't like Wicklow

2007-09-05T17:37:00.006+02:00

Wicklow has never been known as a bastion of intellectual thought. I attended the local boys' secondary school here. I would estimate that less than 20% of the guys from my class are now college graduates. I would also estimate that less than 20% of my teachers were college graduates, but I'm reliably informed that it is a requirement for getting a job as a teacher.

The point of this is that there are occasional moments in Wicklow when something happens to bring home the notion that the town is essentially one large community for the hard of thinking.

Today I went to the local Super Valu to buy some lunch. I approached the deli counter, presented the girl with my best smile (it's a good one reserved solely for people who are about to make me a sandwich) and requested a chicken fillet baguette with wedges. There are some who might not be familiar with the chicken and wedges roll, but it's a reasonably straightforward request and not particularly uncommon or difficult to make. Essentially, it involves cutting up some chicken, placing it in a baguette and adding wedges on top of it.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when the deli counter girl responded to my request with a simple "no". I immediately retracted my best smile and replaced it with my most persuasive smile. I pointed out that all the necessary ingredients were present in abundant numbers and offered to share the recipe with her, if necessary (my cheeky smile was employed for this last comment).

She failed to see the humour of this and impatiently told me that she was not permitted to make a roll with chicken and wedges in it. I couldn't believe this. This means that there is a deli counter in Wicklow that considers the combination of chicken and wedges between two slices of bread to be so problematic that they have made it an officially proscribed sandwich. Perhaps they can't afford to train their staff to produce sandwiches with more than one ingredient.

I switched to my disbelieving smile and made the point that this position was a bit ridiculous. This was met with a tut, a sigh and an announcement that that was the way of things and that if I had a problem with it I was welcome to speak to the manager. In her defence, I suppose it's OK that she treated me like a piece of dirt she had found on the underside of her shoe. After all, I'm only a paying customer who has requested that she put two of the ingredients on offer in a roll. Obviously she doesn't get paid enough to deal with that kind of nonsense.

The manager approached, unbidden. He was a big hulking sort of man who looked like he should be pulling a plough across a field or forging swords on an anvil (actually, this is an unfair statement - obviously I'm just intimidated by a man with the sort of skill required to be the manager of an entire deli counter in a small town in Wicklow who still manages to find the time to come up with such inspired policies as "no wedges with chicken"). He came over and stood uncomfortably close - the way older, bigger guys do in school when they want to intimidate you - and asked me what my problem was. I explained my predicament and he confirmed that it was indeed the case that it was their policy not to make the Sandwich That Dare Not Speak Its Name. I made the point that this appeared, on the surface, not to make an awful lot of sense. He shrugged and looked at me as if to say "do you want to make something of it?" and so I thanked him for his cooperation and went to the Centra on the main street, where I bought a chicken fillet and wedges roll.

Employment

2007-08-24T12:15:00.001+02:00

Those of you who have been paying close attention to this blog will have noticed that I am doing the coolest of cool - living in a small town outside Dublin with my parents and claiming the dole every week.

I have made a handful of applications to a handful of companies. I'm looking for a role as a software engineer. The position has to be genuinely interesting, challenging and well-paying. There seems to be a shortage of this sort of position for recent graduates...

Last week I interviewed with a certain well-known business consulting company, for their technical solutions subsidiary. The interviewing process consisted of three separate interviews: a technical interview; a HR interview and an interview with the senior executive in charge of the department.

The technical interview was, quite frankly, a waste of everybody's time. It consisted of standard java interview questions which are freely available on the intertubes (what's the difference between an interface and an abstract class?), questions about unix (CHMOD and PWD) and questions about my college projects which the interviewers didn't really understand.

The HR interview was the usual bullshit questions that everybody gets asked. The senior exec interview was the most interesting. He was an hour late, presumably because senior execs are startlingly inefficient.

It quickly emerged that the man in charge of the software engineering department knew only a little COBOL. When I tried to talk about anything even slightly technical it went over his head. He was a very pleasant person to talk to and quite intelligent, but he was a businessman and should not have been heading a technical department. We talked about the technology they use and why they should diversify in order to actually be innovative, rather than just saying they are.

At this stage, he told me he had the impression that I had doubts about working in a corporate environment. I told him that I did and that I had read the horror stories about the engineers writing poorly designed, inefficient programs because that's what middle management wanted. I explained that I wanted to write interesting software in the most efficient manner I could. I told him I didn't want to be a "drone in the corporate machine". I explained that if he was looking for somebody with basic Java skills who would translate his notes into bytecode without ever tuning in and thinking about the problem, he needn't bother offering me a position. He then asked me if I had sat a Java test and I told him I hadn't. He called up the hiring manager about that, spoke to her briefly and then announced that they didn't think one would be necessary.

Two days later, the hiring manager called me to say that they felt I should look for a job somewhere which wouldn't be as structured and restrictive as their company. While they felt I had the technical skills for the position, they thought I would be unhappy for the first two years as the work would be routine and boring.

It seems I'm not enough of a hacker to work for Google but too much of a hacker to work for a regular company. Thankfully, I have three more aces up my sleeve. Stay tuned...

Montserrat

2007-08-06T17:06:00.000+02:00

I am moving back to Ireland in a couple of days, so I've been trying to think of things that I should really see or do in Barcelona before I leave. High up on this list was a trip to Montserrat. For those of you too lazy to follow that link, it is a mountain in Catalunya with a series of oddly shaped rocks. It is famous as a centre for Christian pilgrimage as there is a monastery there with a statue of the Virgin Mary which is famous for its black skin (which leads one to wonder how a black woman could have given birth to Jesus, who, as we all know, was a fair-haired Aryan sort of character who, no doubt, looked very out of place when he lived in Galilee). It was also apparently a centre of resistance to fascist rule in Spain. In any case, it's quite a nice looking sort of place and I very much recommend it to anybody who happens to be in the area.

I took some photos while there. Here is one of the Black Virgin:

Here are some random photos of the mountains:

It's reasonably high up. We took the "funicular" up to the mountains and then there are a series of paths that lead to different parts of the mountain. We wandered off the beaten track and climbed up through the undergrowth to one of the peaks. It took a while, but it was very rewarding. The girl in the photo above (Anna) was wearing beach sandals which added a new dimension of excitement to mountain climbing. It was particularly hilarious when we met a couple of serious mountain climbers in hard hats and with ropes and miscellaneous climbing gear. I think they were a bit put out that a girl in sandals had made it that far...
Here is a particularly great photo:

I'm considering bringing that hoodie with me to other religious sites and making an album of sacrilege across Europe. Watch this space...

Malignant design

2007-08-01T18:11:00.000+02:00

I was reading an old article about the American government and its attitude to science. In particular, it mentioned the increasingly prevalent notion that "intelligent design" is an acceptable alternative to the theory of evolution. The Bush government claims that all alternatives should be taught in school so that people can be informed about the issue. Chomsky, being the clever boy that he is, then proposes the concept of "malignant design" for which there is more (empirical) evidence than intelligent design and possibly even evolution. This is obviously facetious, but I like the idea of going to some redneck town in the US and A and teaching the book of Genesis one day, then Darwin's evolutionary theory on the second day and coming in on the third and telling the kids that they were all created by our Dark Lord Satan to spread evil around the world.

I wish somebody would do that.

Homage to Anarchism

2007-07-30T02:05:00.000+02:00

Disclaimer: This is a political discussion. As such, I understand that many people will disagree with my opinions (those people are wrong!). If you do disagree, feel free to comment on the article, but please only comment if you have an informed and coherent opinion. Offensive posts or posts containing current dogmas about political systems (basically, anything that claims that democracy is fair government or that it safeguards freedom, liberty or anything else that Americans like to go to war over) will be deleted.
Also, the historical facts mentioned in this post are based on Orwell’s account of the war. If you were there and can prove that they are wrong, please enlighten the rest of us.

I am currently re-reading George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia”. I started reading it when I was a lot younger and don’t believe I ever finished it as I was too young to really appreciate what it was about.

It is particularly interesting to read it while living in Barcelona. He writes about marching around the “municipal park” opposite Plaza Espanya. I find it hard to imagine companies of anarchists and communists parading in military formation around present-day Montjuic. It’s such a tranquil place in the winter time and so plagued with tourists in the summer time.

It’s also interesting to cycle around the city, contrasting it with Orwell's description of it in civil war times. Barcelona is famous for its impressive architecture and ostentatious buildings. When Orwell was here, they had all been taken over by the communists and anarchists and the businesses in them collectivised, right down to the city’s bootblacks.

Now, walking around the city, it seems that the Bourgeoisie has been replaced by the capitalist elite. Walking down Passeig de Gracia, you see all the famous buildings designed by Gaudí and the like, but their bottom floors are occupied by the outlets of multinational corporations doing a brisk trade selling goods to tourists. The quioscos on the street sell drinks made by Coca-Cola and ice cream made by Frigo/Walls/HB/Whatever it’s called in whatever country you live in.

It seems that Barcelona has become a whore to capitalism. And I don’t think that this is a necessary state of affairs. There are those who would claim that prosperity comes from capitalism, but this is confusing the issue. Prosperity comes from industry (ranging from heavy manufacturing to selling ice cream to tourists). Under capitalism, the industry is in the hands of a select few, who often have a parasitic relationship with the general population, profiting from their labour without giving much back. In an anarchist or communist setting, the industry is collectively owned and all labourers should benefit from it fairly. The key word is “fairly”, but it is outside the scope of this post to discuss what precisely that entails.

It seems to me self-evident that locally and popularly owned industry would make Barcelona a wealthier place, as measured by the tangible wealth and quality of life of the average citizen and not by the amount of money exchanging hands (a system that measures wealth based on the exchange of glorified IOUs between those who have them is really missing the point!). The tourists will continue to come here as they are not brought here by the Nike shops, the Sony Centres and the Burger Kings, all of which they can probably find in their home towns – they are brought here by the impressive beauty of the city, its vibrant nightlife, pleasant climate and generally friendly inhabitants.

In Orwell’s time, class distinctions were abolished. “Respectful” terms such as “señor”, "usted”, etc. were banned and everybody was treated as an equal. Orwell famously got in trouble for trying to tip the lift operator boy at his hotel! That’s really impressive if you stop to think about it. He is describing a society in which a lift operator is wealthy enough to be able to snub tips from clients! Imagine a world in which you didn’t have to tip your waiter because you know he is correctly rewarded for his work. Under the anarcho-syndicalist government in Barcelona, prostitutes were asked to stop being prostitutes and get more rewarding work. I cannot imagine a society in which a significant proportion of the population is not forced to do unpleasant or dangerous work in order to survive. Nor can I imagine one where the lowest employees of a service business don’t have to resort to tips in order to pay the bills.

It seems to me that “democratic” capitalism is a deeply flawed system and, in Barcelona, at least, anarchism has been shown to work. The reason the anarchist government collapsed was, essentially, because the fascists arrived with German and Italian weapons and shot them all. But while the government lasted, militias like Orwell’s defended the city from the invading rebels (Franco’s army – to anybody not entirely familiar with the Spanish Civil War, it should be noted that Franco and a few other generals and influential figures gathered the army and overthrew the democratically elected government because they did not agree with it) and they did so in an anarchist army. This meant that a mere private in the army did not have to salute a general and could, in fact, stroll up and have an informal chat with him. What’s more, a private was not obliged to follow orders unquestioningly and yet, as Orwell noted, very few men deserted the militia and most fought enthusiastically, if not always skilfully. The anarchist soldiers understood the validity of their endeavours and were allowed to question orders which they did not agree with. They believed in their cause and were prepared to fight for it. I don’t know of any group of men who would display similar loyalty to a capitalist system.

Orwell did not come to Barcelona to fight a war - he came to write articles because he was a journalist. And yet, when he arrived here, he perceived that there was something worth fighting for and he enlisted in a militia. And he wasn’t alone. The Spanish Civil War was famous for the huge amount of help from outside on both sides. We know what the fascists were fighting for – power and the established order, but the Reds were fighting for what they knew to be a superior system of government.

What has changed since the 30s? The monarchy and the church have lost their power, so we are no longer subservient to them. But in the 21^st century, people’s lives are dominated by multinational corporations. We work for unseen superiors whom we support with our labour. Wars are still waged for money and power, but today they are backed by large businesses instead of the monarchy and the church. The governments of the world are not directly accountable to the people and, in fact, go out of their way to keep their populations subdued. Things are not so different today. Why then should we not believe that anarchism can work today? Why is it no longer worth fighting for?

Mischief with Bicycles

2007-07-27T20:06:00.000+02:00

I went for a cycle today, as I often do when the weather is fine and the bicycles are free (which is to say, all of the time :)).

On my way home, I decided to park my bike at the Bicing station nearest my house, on Av. Meridiana. When approaching from Les Glories, this involves making a questionable manoeuvre of crossing some tram tracks and a pedestrian crossing, then cycling about 10 metres against the flow of traffic to the station. There's generally enough clearance to do it comfortably, and there is rarely heavy traffic when I'm out and about, so it's by no means a dangerous manoeuvre.

The bicing station has an area marked out in front for cyclists to stand when retrieving or returning a bicycle. Today as I approached there was a car parked in that space. Inside was a suit talking on his businessman phone and making notes in a pad. He had obviously pulled in off the road and, rather than park in an actual car space, or turn the corner 5 metres in front of him onto a side street, he had decided to be an ignorant bastard and park across about 8 bike slots.

This annoyed me as it meant that I had to cycle out onto the main road and into oncoming traffic to get around him, because all the bike slots in front of his car were full already. So my normally safe, but questionable, manoeuvre became questionable and slightly dangerous today just because some suit wanted to park his car in a bicycle parking space. That attitude among motorists that cyclists aren't legitimate road users really bothers me.

As a result, I decided it would be a good idea to leave my bike as close as possible to his car. He had pulled his car up to within inches of a bike on the front of his car, and so I placed mine a similar distance from the back of his car. Because the bikes are parked perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis of his car, this meant that there was no way he could possibly remove his car. He would have had to either run over one of the bikes (a difficult thing to do without damaging his car as they are slotted into a rail at the front) or wait until a cyclist shows up to free him.

For all I know, he's still there.

Serves the fucker right.

Next for Dónall

2007-07-21T15:23:00.000+02:00

People have been asking me about this, so I am posting a short explanation.

After consultation with a number of different people from a number of different backgrounds, my next step is now apparent.

I had considered returning to college but those in the know about these things consider it to be a waste of my time, so I will be seeking full time employment. The Google thing failed due to a lack of experience, although it was apparently considered that I would be a good fit in the company otherwise, so I need to enter a graduate training program. If I work hard for a couple of years and make a real contribution to whichever company hires me, I should then be in a position to select my next job at my leisure. Or even just stay put if I get into an interesting graduate job.

And so I am currently in the market for a graduate program in a major software engineering company. Recommendations are welcome.

I will be returning to Dublin on the 8th of August with a view to actively pursuing employment opportunities, as the only job worth applying for is with a certain software giant which isn't starting their graduate program until after September (although I could be tempted to return for it).

In the meantime, the current goal is to have earned the title "software engineer" by Xmas. Stay tuned.