Unreal....on Linux...

Well last night I got Unreal Tournament 2004 playing natively off of my Linux System. I actually have it running in a separate X-Windows session to allow for easy switching, a factor which the developers stupidly didn't consider when designing the system. Why else would you want to view the game in a window on your desktop? duh...but it's still a cool game that runs unbelievably smooth in Linux. Let the fragging commence.

On a side note it seems the company are pushing for me to leave for the states for the 22nd May.

XGL and *nix

Even though I've been in China for the past 7 months I still find it incredible that I miss the coolest news that I've heard in a long time. Novell has contributed an amazing graphical system that in effect will in effect combine with the granddaddy of all Linux and UNIX windowing infrastructures, X.org.

XGL enables *nix systems to fully take advantage of 3-D acceleration hardware. XGL according to Novell's description is the X server architecture layered on top of OpenGL. That’s bloody fantastic news. It’s about time that a full 3D graphical component has been developed for nix users. It should also be noted that ATI and nvidia are taking a lot of notice about this announcement. Perhaps it will allow for 3D gaming, applications to be truly immersed in the Linux environment.

Anyhow it is expected that XGL will be integrated with X.org however this is 3rd party gossip but here's my fingers crossed. Once I get the net back in my new apartment I'll be firing this puppy up. Finally a world class totally modern graphics system that will last nix users for the next decade. Xgl may also prove to be the solution to a long-standing complaint of many: the lack of full 3-D hardware acceleration drivers for Linux. Fair play to Novell, they really are contributing a lot to the community however this really pumps up the importance of Novell Desktop 10 which is due this May/June.

Note - Since this act, Novell has turned to the darkside (Microsofts cookies were better it seems), boo hiss...

Destiny's Daughter and world domination.

I finished reading a book a friend gave me called Destiny's daughter last night. Basically it was a "Da Vinci Code" wannabe. Anyhow although I was desperate to read anything during my time here as there was not many books available to me I ended up with this pile of toss. I actually almost physically gagged halfway through the book as the stench of pure bullshit was overpowering. However it was not until the end of the book where the owner wrote a chapter discussing the book that I actually became interested in anything she had to say.

The author made a great point that the Greeks and the Celts were involved in successful brain surgery back in the middle ages; the field of astronomy was at such an advance stage back then that we are only now in this modern age coming up with methods of actually authenticating ancient theories. The author put forward in the book the notion that since the library of Alexandria was burned out man has moved one step forward and three steps backward. Who can disagree with this? It is over 2000 years since the library has been burned and we are only now coming to terms with the loss of such an enormous amount of information.

Put this example in the context of the modern world. The world's greatest repository of information now is a small concept known as the Internet. Imagine if this database of information was completely and utterly wiped out? Would people react calmly or would anarchy reign? All financial records would be useless and the concept of government and borders would disappear. It has been suggested that there are a few major telco's that control the trunk lines of the internet, i.e. the dark fibre crossing throughout the worlds belong to the worlds largest communication companies and although it is unlikely they have the power to completely collapse all of these lines preventing the flow and creation of new data. In a way these companies are the keepers of the Internet, I hope that they guard the keys with their lives. (Personification, my English teacher would be proud)

Anyhow that is my mad thought for the day. By the way one comment(1/5 stars) about the book that I must agree with is below:

Arrived in Atlanta

Well I've made it to Atlanta once again and in one piece. Despite some serious bouts of turbulence in the skies over the pacific I arrived unscathed to the sunny south eastern state of Georgia. God it's hot here.

So right now I'm pretty settled into my new role of Project Manager. Giving orders to people is something that most definitely appeals to me. Within a day of arriving I had my entire office pretty much setup with a brand new laptop and a nice new LCD screen and docking station. Off to a good start, now if only I could figure out how to install Debian on it without the network administrators finding out...

So no sooner was I off the plane when I received a phone call from the local GAA club in Atlanta, I think I've already been registered without my knowledge for the local hurling and football team. My first hurling training session in about 5 years kicks off tonight so it should be fun getting back into it. Anyhow this post is boring enough without talking about my mundane observations of America, McDonalds on every corner etc...

I'm going to be updating my website over the weekend so keep your eyes peeled for any strange adjustments..

Tell Me No Lies

So my book of the year has to be Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs. The brain child of John Pilger it covers some of the most important journalistic efforts over the past century. A fantastic quotation within the book that should be imprinted on the brain of every single journalism major in the world is as follows:

Genuinely objective journalism is journalism that not only gets the facts right, it gets the meaning of events right. It is compelling not only today but stands the test of time. It is validated not only by reliable sources but by the unfolding of history. It is journalism that ten, twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events."

In selecting for this anthology articles, broadcasts and book extracts that have got behind the façade of official silence to reveal important and disturbing truths, John Pilger is paying his own professional tribute to some of the men and women he most admires.

Here are the famous muckrakers (Seymour Hersh on the My Lai massacre), as well as the less well known (Wilfred Burchett, the first Westerner to enter Hiroshima in September 1945; Israeli journalist Amira Hass, reporting from the Gaza Strip in the 1990s). Here, too, are the mavericks (the great German undercover reporter Gunter Wallraff; Jessica Mitford on 'The American Way of Death'). The book ranges from across many of the critical events, scandals and struggles of the past fifty years, from the scenes witnessed at the liberation of the death camp at Dachau in 1945, to the bloodshed caused by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Along the way it bears witness to epic injustices committed against the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor and Palestine.

He sets each piece of reporting in its context, often offering personal insights into the writer, and introduces the collection with a passionate essay arguing that the kind of journalism he celebrates here is being subverted by the very forces that ought to be its enemy. Taken as a whole, the book tells an extraordinary 'secret history' of the modern era, through the stories filed by some of its finest journalists. It is also a call to arms to journalists everywhere - before it is too late.

One story that truly had taken my breath away was Robert Fisks account of being one of the first people to enter the Chatila camp after the massacre had taken place. A truly moving piece that touched me to the bone. It made me feel as if I was right there beside him.

Thanks to Peter for letting me read the book (Almost finished it).

New apartment

Well I'm currently still in Dalian. Its been a very long week. As I've been having many problems with my apartment I decided to take the plunge and go look for some real estate that is closer to the company and suits my many needs.

Basically the place is a bachelor pad, my den of sin, welcome to all who wish to come and visit. Basically this is an open invitation to all friends, family and even friends of friends. After spending over an entire day with a realtor I found myself a beautiful 2 bedroom apartment, with a study, living room / kitchen. 110 square meters with a view that I would and possibly have sold my soul for. I can see both the sea as well as have a birds eye view of the city of Dalian. It's got some great public transportation nearby but unfortunately I'm still using taxi's. I'll take some pictures of the place tonight as well as the view I have and upload them to the gallery.

Going to be having my first party in the place on the weekend of my birthday in order to break the place in and make it feel like home. Also I'd like to thank Tony Bao (workmate) who did all of the translating for me, otherwise I would have been completely lost. So all of last weekend I spent moving all of the stuff that I've collected in China to my new apartment. Actually I ended up hiring a truck and 5 workers for around 15 Euro to move all of it for me, bad back ya know ;). Big thanks to Greg for helping me out with that chaotic scene.

So Friday night was spent listening to one of my good friends here, Peter, spinning up a storm on the decks in the newest club in Dalian, V5. Was a great night which ended up in a extremely bad hangover the next morning. Whoever was calling me that morning, just to let you all know, I have no recollections of any conversations past 7am.

Anyhow, I've been back to work since Monday and I've kept fairly good on my promise to do as little overtime as possible, with the exception of last night, and possibly Thursday night, oh as well as a late night meeting on Friday. But other than that, I'm sticking to it rigidly. le sigh...

So anyhow while seeing as I have moved to my new apartment I no longer have access to my personal email. Going to go and get the Internet set-up today sometime during lunchtime so that will be a whole new experience.

By the way, I've got my holidays from the 26th April - 5th March, so if anyone has any good suggestions where I should head to on my holidays in China I'm very much open to suggestions.

Kids getting Honors Degrees? Eh?

So it seems that British Universities are going to offer a 2 year degree program. What a ball of crap. There is no way that a student can cram 4 years of learning into a 2 year fresher course. And that is exactly what it is.

All of this is down to the falling number of students entering university and the even smaller number of people graduating from the university system in the UK. If I was a potential employer I would by no means ever hire a person with only 2 years experience from any institution unless that person was Stephen Hawking himself, and even on that case I would have to think about it.

Looking at this from an Irish prospective the majority of students are graduating from the Leaving Certificate between 17 and 19 years, some are even as young as 16 years old. Should a 2 year degree kick in to gear you would have a culture of 19 - 21 year old's graduating with honor degrees just in order to fulfil the current void in place.

My advice, re-train the unemployed, give them a better chance. Let young students enjoy going out on the beer for an extra two years. Scrap this idea of two year degrees, even though after studying for a four year degree myself I still felt let down by getting a single piece of paper. 4 years gave me an unbelievable grounding in my profession and still for my first job in the industry I still felt that I had a long way to go with my future education. I couldn’t possibly imagine people in the same situation having qualified two years earlier; incompetence and ineptitude springs to mind.

Although thinking further about this topic, perhaps this would suit people who already have taken a degree subject in another field, this would constitute a complete change of direction; i.e. an qualified engineer who wishes to become a teacher could do so with this degree. Keep it for mature students who already have either the experience in the industry or who wish to take a new career path.

Or am I a stingy bugger who simply doesn’t want to see people getting the same qualification as me in half the time. I don't think that I am the only one either.

Work in China, aquariums and linux

Hey blog readers. Well I've been pretty bad at updating this for the past two weeks but I've just been so busy. I think my last update has been over a week ago so I must let everyone know what's been going on. So since I last signed off I've been working 12 - 14 hour days. 12 Hour days are extremely common here in my line of work. It of course does not help that I have to accommodate the American working week as well so it ends up that I have meetings around 9pm at night.

Anyhow two weeks ago I ended up heading to the local Aquarium in Dalian. It was quite a very Chinese experience. People who have been to china will know exactly what I mean. It was quite gaudy however the saving grace of the aquarium was the short dolphin show (which we almost missed) and the shark feeding. There was a Chinese man feeding about 12 sharks from a small cage. It kinda gave the illusion that they were quite dangerous however instead of the cage being lifted out of the water as you would expect the diver instead dove down to the bottom of the cage, wiggled his way out (tanks and all) and bravely swam through the swarm of ferocious man-eaters.

All was not what it seemed as it was pointed out that these were no great whites (much to the relief of the local Chinese) ;) So as I mentioned earlier we also caught a small dolphin show. Actually there were more entertainers than there were dolphins, between acrobats, clowns, beautiful girls and pirates I believe a few dolphins were also squeezed in there somewhere. All in all it was quite an enjoyable afternoon but it did cost 100 RMB. 100 RMB = 10 euros however that would be a much larger equivalent in China. Perhaps they should think about lowering their prices?

Unfortunately with all of the excitement the batteries in my camera had not one iota of juice within their cells so I didn't get the opportunity of taking any of my own pictures. Fortunately Yukiko, my fellow aquarium adventurer did manage to get a few shots, which she has promised to send to me at a later date. However if I was able to take a decent picture of the day I would imagine that it would look something like this:

So that following Monday I went back to work, a slave to the almighty yuan. It wasn't to last as that Wednesday I came down with a mysterious illness, anyhow I was confined to my bed for about 3 days and didn't really leave the house once. One benefit of being sick is that you get all this time on your hands. So what do I normally do when I get sick I hear you ask? Well first I cleaned the flat spotless (messy 5 mins later), read a book and then started re-installing Linux on my computer for what I swore was the last time. Luckily I have now found a distro that I actually like, Fedora Core 5 is now running like a man possessed, i.e. its purring like a lil' pussy cat :). Everything is up and running on the machine just the way I like it however there is one glaring exception. A few months ago I bought a subscription to a software application known as Cedega. Cedega is a continuation of the great work that the people over in wine hq started on. However Cedega is primarily focused on the application of game playing on Linux systems. So here I was with a distro I liked, everything tuned to perfection, however now came the shocker! Cedega didn't work, run, it didn't even crawl.

From what I can understand there is a new facility in Fedora Core 5 that is known as gnome-mount. This function has caused me an enormous amount of grief over the past few days. Gnome-mount allows CD's, DVD's etc to load easily in the Fedora OS. However Cedega uses the manual option within /etc/fstab. Basically if you change fstab then gnome-mount screws up and vice versa. SO anyhow while Cedega is busy working on a fix for this problem I am left gameless. It wasn't as if I had the time to play them anyhow however it was certainly nice to have the option. So right now I am unfortunately transgaming.com's bitch. In the meantime I'm thinking of switching back to my debian roots. Ubuntu is slowly downloading over bit torrents streams...Fedora core 5 beware.

Daily Life in China

So my ADSL line was finally installed in my house yesterday much to my delight. It was quite amusing to see the Chinese engineer's confusion when he saw what operating system I was running and even more of a delight when he attempted to run a windows executable program on a Linux machine. I nearly feel out of my chair with laughter.

Anyhow I have one piece of advice to people attempting to get ADSL here, buy your own Ethernet router. The one that came with my connection was a ball of complete and utter crap so I simply gave it back to the engineer who was still scratching his head wondering why the program wants working. He thought it was some version of Windows that he had never encountered.

Anyhow right now I have a 1 Megabyte line which peaks around 1.5Mb. So its not too bad. Pretty crappy for gaming however begger's can't be choosers. I could have bought a 2MB line at around double the price but seeing as I was going to be paying a year in advance there was simply no point in doing so especially seeing that foreign traffic is still restricted to the Great Firewall of China.

So last night I decided to install the last version of Ubuntu however there are some features that I am not happy with at all so I have made the decision to use the new beta version of Ubuntu known as Dapper. Dapper's development should be hopefully completed by June so at least I'll be on the cutting edge. But in the meantime its a toss up between dapper and the last Debian release.

So right now I'm working a 12 hour day trying to keep in line with American business hours whilst in China. The result is not pretty. For the next two days I have meetings at 2am - 4am, I actually am at my most productive at night time but this is really taking the piss. Perhaps the reason for my productivity stems from working for so many years in various bars around Ireland as well as working split shifts for Colt Telecom.

Anyhow the office is still a buzzing at this mid evening hour (8pm) but I'm sure it will quieten down shortly, even the Chinese have to get some shut-eye. So whilst working at this witching hour I've been coming up with a short-list of places that I'm thinking of visiting. They are as follows:

• Hainan
• Thailand
• Henan
• Tsingdao
• Beijing

If you have any suggestions for where I should go next just let me know...

Note - I ended up in Beijing, best holiday EVER!

How far will authorities go?

A friend of mine just informed me that a Chinese person was fined in France for simply wearing a pair of fake Adidas brand running shoes. I can only imagine what would happen should Chinese authorities try to enforce similar bans. Imagine the chaos. lol..

But on a serious note is it fair to impose measures on the individual purchasing the product, perhaps they were unaware of what they were buying. Should this act be persued as if someone was buying drugs? Can we expect to have someone locked up, jailed and possibly executed for purchasing fake counterfit Ben Shermen shirts? Its a strange ol' world and nothing is beyond the realms of possibility.

Harsh, very harsh...but fair? Comments welcome...

World of Warcraft et al. get’s regulated by the P.R.C.

“The Chinese govt is requiring game houses to modify MMOG’s to restrict under 18 users to 3 hours “productive” gameplay per day. This “anti-addiction” software must be in place within 4 months, with games not compliant by July 15 liable to be shut down in China. Net9, Shanda and NetEase will be moving to comply with the government regulations. Users will have to register with their real names and Chinese identity card numbers to be allowed access to the games.”

This however is only for people gaming in web cafes and not for personal use at home. Can someone explain the reasoning behind it? Is it due to the government feeling that this age group is ripe for rebellion and gaming communities are ideal places to congregate in order to cause some type of strife?

People always had to show their ID at these establishments anyhow. I wonder is there a friend of a friend of a government minister who has a stake in the so called anti-addiction software being licenced to gaming houses? Action A + Action B = Profit?

Anyhow, how long will it take before hacks, cracks and all manors of malware take advantage of it. Will people mine accounts specifically for these addicts?  I’m sensing a good business opportunity here.

Currently in order to play Warcraft or Guild Wars in China I believe that you must first be registered with a company known as the9.com. This bunch are making a fortune out of registrations for a product they did not create in China. The interesting thing is that you also must have a Chinese ID number to register. Will the9.com be implementing this policy also from their login pages?

It can only benificial for ISP’s and companies such as the9 as it would mean a reduction in users which would lead to a reduction in bandwidth and resources on their servers during high-peak times. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months so if you are a gaming “addict” then go out and get your fix while you still can.

Disclaimer: When I was under 18 I was on the computer coding for over 12 hours a day.  Now I’m a qualified software engineer/architect.  I spent many of my teenage days and nights blowing the crap outta pixels and robbing corpses.  I think I’m a well adjusted individual but who can tell eh?

All hail the genius of Zach Braff

Just after hearing that Scrub's funny man Zach Braff is going to direct again! Well all I can say is HURRAH! Garden State was one of my favourite films in the past year and it confirmed Braff as one of my favourite actors. On top of that the soundtrack to Garden State fitted perfectly with the film.

So it turns out Braff is going to adapt, direct, produce and co-star in a remake of 2002 Danish drama 'Open Hearts'. Even before its going to be released I feel it's going to be a hit. Obviously I'm not the only one because there was an intense effort from Paramount, Fox and Weinstein to produce the flick with Paramount Pictures winning out in the end.

Anyhow I could go on for a lot longer about the legend that Zach is but I really should be getting back to my workload. Work and weekend are two words that should never be in the same sentence.

Beijing and public urination...

Saturdays and work should never be involved in the same sentence. Unfortunately it is common to work either the weekend before or after a national holiday so that you get the entire week as a vacation. So this basically means that I have to work constantly for the next 7 continuous days.

Fortunately I have had an amazing vacation in Beijing where I've had one strange coincidence after another after another happen to me. Could anyone reading this who was not in Beijing that I know please raise your hand, you are possibly the only person that wasn’t let me assure you. 15 million people in one city and I bump into a heap of people that either know me or I know them from all over the world. It kind of freaked me out. But fortunately that didn’t stop me from enjoying myself immensely.

So after arriving in Beijing last week I ended up in a fantastic hostel that I will recommend to every single person going there. Its the Red Lantern House, Beijing,No.5 Zhengjue Hutong, Xinjie Kou, Xicheng District. What a place to meet people and have the craic; it’s pretty cheap and great grub, great location and a really nice environment. Anyhow, I'm expecting my next stay to be free so that’s the reason I'm plugging it so much. :)

Walking around Tienanmen square humming "Let's go fly a kite" while drunk is a hell of an experience. I almost expected to see Ms. Poppins jump out and lead the 10,000 or so Chinese in a verse whilst flying their marvellous gliding contraptions. Having had enough of the people coming up to annoy me while trying to get photographed with foreigners I decided to head into the Forbidden City. I know I'm famous and all (I don't have a big head at all) but that was a bit much even for me. So of I traipsed to the forbidden city and encountered kid after kid engaging in public urination. They really must think a hell of a lot about the place to treat it with such respect. The FC was pretty wedged, actually it was like being unable to breathe at times, so after having endured the throng for a few hours I tried to get away from the tourist trail of tour groups, colourful baseball caps and flag loving psychopaths. I'll try and get back to Beijing sometime during the year and do a tour of the city when it's not so busy.

So after seeing a hell of a lot of Beijing I came back to Dalian last Thursday night with a full suitcase. After spending about 1000 RMB I felt like I could open up my own shop. After getting to the airport it was a nice surprise when the airliner told me that I was to be upgraded to 1st class (China Southern). First class was always packaged as a different way of life however it really left much to be desired. The only added comfort that I experienced was a larger seat, no single movie screen, no pre flight beverage, no hot stewardesses. Get your act together China Southern.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish my Dad, his brother and my sister a happy birthday. Hope the heads aren't too sore from last weekends festivities.

Have PC games changed?

So for the past few days I've been hearing a lot about the whole mature content rating that the PC Game Oblivion has now received because someone is able to apply a crack to the program so that characters can walk around naked. Parents groups are humming and hawing however this really isn’t a big change from the old days,

Both Daggerfall and Arena, Oblivions predecessors, featured gratuitous nudity; mainly as you had the option to dress / undress your character. Not only that but you also got to see priests and servants in the nude as you went about your daily business. It was a common sight for an 8 year old to invite their friends over to look at the only pornographic images they would ever get to see until grew tall enough so that they could reach on their tippy toes to the top shelf to get the latest edition of playboy.

Back then graphics were not as good and people automatically thought of computers as a way to do spreadsheets and accounts. Computer's back then were boring, however thanks to tremendous advances in graphic design and GPU power pixels and sprites are becoming much more sharper and clearer and it is now very difficult to discern what is a real image and what is digitally mastered. In the old days (I'm such an old man of 24) breasts were maybe 3 or four pixels, images that could be mocked up in seconds but now they have whole teams of artists trying to capture the perfect form of both women and men (Yes, women play these games as well). The scope is immense. Just looking at some of the screen-shots for the latest addition to the Tomb Raider collection just astonishes me with how far games have come, and I'm a coder so I like to think I know what I'm talking about.

Obviously the producers of Oblivion are thanking their lucky stars that such a crack was made possible, although I'm not entirely sure that didn't have a contingency plan for such an eventuality. Anyhow they now have gained a hell of a lot of free publicity which is never a bad thing. So for this little plug Bethesda I'm hoping that you could do me one rather small favour. Please oh please make a Linux port for this game, it's not yet running in Wine or winex and Cedega needs a drastic overhaul with the pixel shader library in order to get it running. I really don't want to go back to windows XP. Also, why in gods name does Amazon not want to send me this game from the US to China? Its not as if it is material that will inspire revolutionary thought or anything....actually I'll take that back...it probably does.

In closing I’m wondering if bumping this title up to the Mature (M) rating will make a difference on who actually will buy this game. Obviously it will bump sales but from which target audience? 20 something males / females who would like to see a bit of flesh or the younger client who will be begging their mom / dad to get it for them. Is it such a world that we live in that it is quite acceptable to go around killing not only demon army but also say the local shopkeeper or the nice assassin or even the small kid who is walking down the road, however when the subject of nudity is brought up then everyone gets very politically correct about the issue. I wonder how much peoples attitudes have changed with the rating system since I was a kid, after all gory violence and nudity is only a birthday / Christmas present away.

La Duzi strikes again...

It's been a long, long two days. After finishing up rather late at work on Saturday night I decided to head straight to the gym and work off some of that holiday excess that I had noticed building up. Anyhow to cut a long story short I ended up eating or drinking something fairly dodgey that night. So fast forward to 2 days later, Im lying in bed while I type this, barely able to move any of my muscles, constantly making a dart for the loo and drinking as much water as I can get my hands on. Its a case of the 'orrible dreaded Chinese stomach bug.

So to alleviate my boredom of staring at the ceiling while this bug courses through my innards I started reading Band of Brothers, a gripping story about Easy Company (one of the first ). Great story which has been converted to a mini-series produced methinks by Master Spielberg and Monsignor Hanks. Next on the book list is Les Miserables, a story by Monsieur Victor Hugo. Hopefully I'll be back in work tomorrow, I never thought I'd say it but I do miss not being busy.

Is Google Attacking Microsoft?

This is a question which I have been wondering about for quite sometime. Over the past year Google has openly flouted Microsoft's supposed reign of all that is I.T. They demolished them in the search engine war, they cracked the Chinese market, they took away MSN's dominance over chat software through Google Talk and now they are making in-roads into office productivity.

With yesterdays announcement that Google has acquired the AJAX powered Writely they have declared war on MS-Office. Writely is an online word processing tool that many have touted to be a MS-Word killer. This is actually good news for the consumer as it could possibly mean that Google won't just stick with word-processing, they may be going for the whole shebang. Imagine having the ability to create entire presentations online. Its not going to be limited to text documents, the next step is for google to create an excel like application. With this acquisition they now have mail, chat and document creation within their domain.

Previously during the week google leaked (mistakenly?) the existence of a G-Drive. This is a simple hard drive that will exist on google's servers. I imagine that the G-Drive will be linked up to the office applications as well as with your email. As of last month they already seamlessly integrated chat functionality into email, this kind of integration makes sound business sense. Why would businesses pay Microsoft for licenses when their employees could do all of this for free online?

But does all of this make anyone scared? Personally it frightens the crap out of me. I'm quite paranoid at times and I for one will be sticking with my open office solution. I dislike leaving my computer open for anyone to see my information so I sure as hell won't be leaving private, confidential documents on a third party server. Google still spouts the mantra - "Don't be evil". Ever since their in-roads into the Chinese market I believe that they have many customers to convince that Google can do no wrong before I trust them fully once again. A blank check might help...

A great Irish weekend

So in case that you are following this blog you've probably been wondering where I've been hiding...In case you were locked up in jail you might have missed the fun and festivities that have been going on worldwide. As is normal for this time of year the entire world turned Irish for this period in March. Fortunately I got involved within the Irish community in Atlanta so I didn't miss out on much whilst I was there.

So St. Patricks day kicks off on the 17th of March and within America it is a week long affair. It is celebrated on a much larger scale within the USA and has been adopted not only by the Irish however it is being celebrated by a large number of ethnicities. For me the entire thing kicked off extremely early that morning. After a 5am start I picked up the lads and headed down to the local aquarium.

The Atlanta chapter of the ICCUSA (Irish Chamber of Commerce) held a St. Patricks day breakfast which had the members of major businesses with Irish connections in attendance.Speakers on the day included Tom Parlon, Minister of State at the Department of Finance for the Republic of Ireland, and Irial Finan, Executive Vice President, The Coca-Cola Company, and President, Bottling Investments.Although there was quite a few people in attendance who came from fishy backgrounds, the biggest fish (mammal) of the day was below.

The beluga whales in the Georgia Aquarium provided a riviting backdrop to the speech makers on the day, playfully seeking the audiences attention and single fin-edly stealing the show. So after the event which was finished at 10am the next step on the calandar was to get to Fado's Irish bar. This place was wedged! At 8pm there was a queue which lasted for some people for up to 2 hours.

After finally getting into the place we found that basically everybody was pretending to be Irish. American girls were very apprehensive when we started chatting to them with our authentic accents however it seems that every American guy was trying to put on their best leprechaun accent while chatting them up. My opinion on the matter is that Americans wouldn't know an Irish accent if they fell up a leprechauns ass. Anyhow the Guinness and craic was great and there the hangover the next morning was jut pure evil.

Anyhow at 10am on the Saturday morning we arose once again seeking the cure. We also managed to fit in the last two 6 Nations Rugby matches of the championship. Capping off an amazing season Ireland managed to beat England on the final day and managed to win the Triple Crown. Any win against England is sweet but getting the Triple Crown was the icing on the cake. Unfortunately seeing as France trashed England earlier in the season France gained too much of a lead on goal difference however it was a good omen for Ireland for next year. They went head to head with the best and came out unscathed.

A poor autumn series pointed to an equally difficult RBS 6 Nations campaign with the tactics and team selection of head coach Eddie O'Sullivan coming under close scrutiny. But a second-place finish, losing out to France on points difference, indicates Ireland are in great health out of all the home nations with the World Cup just 18 months away.

So with the win under our belts we continued in our festivites into the night. I believe that we were the last people kicked out of the place at around 3am that morning. With the lads barely able to stand, falling asleep on their feet whilst attempting to chat up some nice birds we decided to call it a night and headed back to their gaff. A great day for all was had and we were all in agreement that Sunday definitely had to be a relaxed day. Staying away from the pubs some of the lads tackled the cure first thing in the morning after getting up in the flat. I think the phrase of the day was "The Fear".

The American Work Ethic

Well as I've stated in my last posts I'm in America for the next few days. Now as I'm hoping to get Friday morning off it means that I have to have all of my work completed by tomorrow evening. Seeing as I've been working since 8am I got a call from my boss saying that I have to have certain reports completed by tomorrow. This call was at 10pm and I was actually considering heading to bed for the night. Seeing as I had only half of the report complete it meant that I have to stay up and burn the candle at both ends tonight.

Anyhow this got me thinking about the American work ethic. In Ireland you come in at 8 and leave at around 5. The majority of workers would get their work done during this period unless you are really inefficient. The same goes for the workplace in China however they are more willing to stay behind and keep working till maybe 10pm at night. Since I have come to America I have had to give up weekends to get stuff done, this is the 7th time that I have stayed up all night in order to get vital reports completed. All of this either means one of two things:

1. I am extremely inefficient / lazy
2. My managers are piling too much work on me

I think that in my situation it is the 2nd option. My bosses are putting on so much pressure on me to get things done as they know that I'll be leaving for China soon, all this means is that I am a bitchassmonkey. Thank god I have only 2 days left to work and then I can look forward to an alcohol binge the likes I have never experienced. This will be the first time I won't be working in my parents bar for St. Patrick s Day since I was 7. Contrary to Twenty Majors blog (he won blog of the year in Ireland) I should be drinking since I was 6 but I suppose I was a late bloomer.

But to continue on with my rant, what I'm finding with my time over here is that because I work for a Chinese vendor and one of the worlds largest clonglomorate's, I'm finding my time stretched very thin seeing as they are both in opposite sides of the world. 13 hours time difference is not fun and it's very necesscary to work both timezones in my line of work. Le sigh, I need a holiday bad...preferably somewhere with some beach, some bikini's and some banana cockails...

The First Hackers

I'm currently reading a short novel about the history of hackers. It brought me to a story about how a group of 6 young hackers in their freshman year in the 1950's placed a bet with the head of their department. A new computer was delivered to their school only days before and the young students were not overly enamored with the software that was on the computer. So they asked their professor that if they created a complete assembler package for this brand new computer by Monday, one that he had to be impressed with then they could use, adapt and improve that software as well as gain more rights to use the new machine.

The professor agreed and stated that the deadline was to be 3 days from then, Monday. And so began one of the most extraordinary software engineering feats that I have ever heard of. These 6 undergrads and one 12 year old began a mammoth coding session through which they vowed not to sleep until the job was finished. For 3 consecutive days, aided by mammoth caffeine consumption and endless supplies of pizza they designed a complete assembler program for one of the first computers to be ever in MIT. When the professor returned to the tech room on Monday morning he found a fully functioning application which may have taken years to create had it gone through the normal business processes of meetings and approvals and deadlines. These were the world's first undisputed hacker group. They let everyone use their software and add improvements to it if required. No infringements, no restrictions, no problem. This was possibly a by-product of all of the competitiveness that arose within their department in this era, I know for a fact that it is still there today.

This was the "golden age" of the computer hacker. The machines were large, slow, cumbersome to use, and it took an extraordinary effort to make them do even the simplest computation. Although this less than 40 years ago, to the programmer of today it is like looking through the mists of time into the genesis of computing. The legendary feats of the early hackers are made all the more amazing by the primitive nature of the machines they were using and the tools they had at their disposal. All I can say is that these guys paved the way for future advances within this industry. By the way the first ever video-game in the world was created by these same guys and it's success, royalty free, was a true monument to the original Hacker ideal and innovation.

So I come back to today's world, 40 years later, I wonder how they would feel about Intellectual Property rights being ruled with an iron fist. With companies patents earning millions of dollars whilst restricting coders freedoms with what libraries they can and cannot use or change. With conglomerates spending billions each year so that their MBA's can get in a word while wasting engineer's precious time with meeting after meeting. While corporate's argue over fonts and layout without even touching on frameworks and back-end compatibility and extensibility. We truly have come a long way in the computer industry, however with all of these innovations is it truly for the better? IBM was the original enema of the MIT hacker as they were never allowed to even touch the local IBM mainframes, perhaps its corporations that are now the new enemy, stifling innovation and creativity?

Anyhow this is a pure rant but if it starts to make at least one person think if they have the original hacker ethos then it's worth it.

Introduction to valehru.com

Well this is my first post. Hurrah. I've been meaning to make a website for the past few years and today I finally got around to getting a hosting company. Hopefully http://www.worldhoster.org will do the business for me... This blog will be based at my website soon http://www.valehru.com. (No Longer Active)

Anyhow, at this stage your probably wondering who I am. Well I'm an Irish guy who has sold his soul to a one of the world's largest clonglomorate's. Personally I think thats a great pick up line for girls ;) . I'm based between Atlanta, Georgia, USA and Dalian, China.

Within this blog you're going to get reviews of different technologies, updates on my life as well as my experiences of what I've seen. I'm not sure if anyone actually will be interested in what I have to say but I'm going to accept whatever criticism, constructive or not, that comes my way.

Laters

Typical Weekend in Dalian

So last weekend was a complete whirlwind of activity. After working considerably late Thursday morning (6am) I crawled into bed with the intention of going back to work that same day. Unfortunately my stomach and my head wasn’t feeling too healthy and I figured that seeing as I had almost done a 50 hour week in 4 days anyhow that no-one would miss me too much in the office. Anyhow I woke up around 10pm and proceeded to take a wee trip down to the local Nepalese bar where beer, pizza and Cuban cigars rolled on the thigh of a virgin was the main focal points of the night.

So 4am came and I eventually stumbled home with the intention of waking up the next morning to show my new maid what she has to do in my new apartment. Yes I have a maid, completely awesome, mothers me to death though. So anyhow after showing her and her husband my new flat they proceeded to start cleaning the place thoroughly, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it would be extremely messy later tonight after the party I was going to be having.

So anyhow, the rest of the morning was spent buying some serious amount of crap for this party, fish that resembled chicken that tasted like both, Oreos, Pringles, oven, blah blah blah, the list goes on and on. Anyhow I spent the entire morning just filling my trolley with stuff, I should have hired an assistant to carry it all for me.

So around 2pm I had to rush off to do a magazine interview and photography session with an IT magazine that is distributed nationwide. What an experience. After being told that to wear a suit I spotted a rather yellow looking costume in a bag by the editor’s side, it explained the shiver that went down my spine. Next thing I knew I was being spirited to a really cool teahouse with lots of old Chinese books, got to drink some tea, do some calligraphy and get plastered in makeup. God how I hate it when good looking women put makeup on me, its not a nice experience I tell ya. So now over the next month there are going to be really, really strange pictures of me plastered over this magazine all over China. I'm going to be a star, but a very strange looking star.

So after this afternoon long photo session I rushed to the Olympic Square just to see the people who were involved in the GAA training. Seems to be getting bigger each week, perhaps we'll field a team where there will be no Irish involved in the lineup, now that would be class. So I had to dash off to do some final bit of shopping in Walmart and then had to arrange to be in the house to get the DJ equipment set up.

So with all the planning in the world, after telling everyone that the party kicks off at 9, everyone comes to my gaf at 10. Within minutes the bass is in gear and a great session starts. Not long later neighbors start coming to the door complaining, the landlord starts calling to complain and eventually the cops arrive. At this time the beer is still flowing and no-one is showing any sign of leaving. Master DJ's Peter, Wayne and Timmy did a great job with the tunes and we all eventually bailed out to a different bar. (Note to self, Dave’s bar is not a great spot to be sober in).

Anyhow crawling to bed for another late night in a row I was feckin exhausted, I think I attacked Mr. John Daniels when I got back. Oh well its Sunday tomorrow, I can sleep all day, head to lunch with the lads sometime in the afternoon and then watch some anime the rest of the night. Yet another great weekend in China over.

Robert Jordan - Thanks for the memories

It was with great sadness that today I learned that Robert Jordan is suffering from a rare disease known as amyloidosis which unfortunately is a possible killer disease if left untreated. In case you're scratching your head wondering who Robert Jordan is then I will just simply say one thing. Jordan is a potential successor to the Tolkien throne. Jordan in my mind will forever be labelled as one of the greatest fantasy genre authors living today. Meticulous in detail his skill as a writer has helped to create one of the largest worlds in existence within printed matter.

I first started reading Jordan's work after a visit to Dublin for a book signing. I was around 8 years old when I was immersed in this world and at 23 years old I still find myself reading his newest contributions to the wheel of time saga. Thanks for the memories and I hope that you finish the next book soon after your health returns.

Note - Jordan died not so long ago, unfortunately it was before he completed his masterpiece however it has been entrusted to an other well capable writer under the guidance of his wife.

Interesting Subject Title here...

Well the second series of Battlestar Galactica has finally finished airing in the United States. What a finale. It just made me wanting more and thankfully my prayers have been answered. Its going to be returning to air in October so I shall be expecting to receive the entire DVD set of the new series in China by the end of November!! Living in China truely does have some perks! 

Anyhow I am a true fan of the series. Believe it or not I actually liked the original concept of the initial mini-series back in the day. Even though it was a true turkey of a series it had some stellar ideas however it lacked the special effects of modern times. Thankfully the new mini-series has no problem with the effects, it also has the added plus of having extremely attractive cast members. Celebrity cameos are popping up all over the show, remember Quantum Leap's Al? Well he is still alive and well and popped up in these final two episodes. Also if you are a true sci-fi geek you should remember the adventures of Xena! Well Lucy Lawles appeared as a hot blonde cylon (cyborg). What a comeback.

My friends mock me when I say I'm a sci-fi geek; although I don't take it to the lengths of Comic-book guy in the Simpsons I am a big fan. I was constantly glued to Star-Trek, rivited to Quantum Leap and now that Battlestar Gallactica has left my screens I am now going to have to find something new to pass the time...perhaps I should get a girlfriend? Fluency in Klingon is not a pre-requisite however perhaps in order for this to happen I should pass a law in honor of Comic Book Guy:

"Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more."

Its funny because its true and on that sad pathetic note I shall bid you adieu, I have an early meeting in the morning and must get at least 4 hours shut-eye.

Irony of two states

This week saw the release of a report from the United States sharply criticizing many countries human rights efforts. Interestingly enough the US has omitted many middle eastern countries from their report and one of the omitted countries includes itself, the good old U.S of A. As a sharp rebuttal for the 7th year straight China has responded to this report citing America's own human rights violations.

Is it just me or is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black only for the kettle to do the same thing? Both countries have terrible human rights records, and neither country seems to be doing anything about them. Both countries have largely ignored advice given by Amnesty international on many occasions. Both countries endorse censorship when it suits them, both have appalling prison conditions, both have bent the rules when it mosts suits their cause of the day.

The idea of the nanny state that America is portraying itself to be is ludicrous to be quite honest. To declare that only themselves and their allies are alleviated from blame is ridiculous.

Perhaps both countries should stop criticizing other states with these kind of statements and further examine what they can do to further the cause of human rights within their own countries. To me the only judge on human rights should be a third party organization that is not tied to any state or government. Its quite ironic in my opinion that both countries have largely ignored advice by such an organization in the past, namely Amnesty International. I wonder will they heed such advice in the future?

By the way, more details about the reports may be found here

McAfee screw up has lasting implications

So I wonder has anyone reading this blog fallen prey to the blunder that McAfee software made yesterday? If your wondering why some of your most popular applications refuse to work such as excel, word, google toolbar then the possibility is that you have become one of the millions of victims.

McAfee is one of the worlds most popular anti-virus software and today it was swamped with pleas for help when the anti-virus software suddenly started to indicate that their computer was plagued with viruses. All of this came to pass after an incorrect automatic update was downloaded to the systems. The update (DAT) identified many applications which according to the settings of the software either automatically deletes or quarantines the specified file.

XP's Quarantined files could be restored, said McAfee, once the corrected DAT was downloaded and installed, but deleted files were another matter. On its Web site, McAfee recommended going to a backup or using Windows System Restore feature to roll back the machine to a point before the flawed DAT.

This major error has probably caused millions of euros worth of damage with businesses especially at risk. Many customers have stated that their Oracle applications were also affected by the problem which could possibly lead to entire customer databases to be eradicated. McAfee has denied this allegation however this could possibly lead to a long litigious process and could deeply impact McAfee's deep pockets. I wonder who'll be fired for this...

McAfee have since issued the new dat file for download by the system but I hope this incident shows individuals how open their computer is to large corporations. Imagine if the dat file specified that all *.doc or *.xls files were to be automatically deleted? This has large implications for everyone who thinks that their computer is safe, chances are that you are not! My advice? Shift to Linux!

Are you Lonely?

Awww....I'm in desperate need of a hug. This article reminds me of one classic song that drones on and on maybe 10 times in one night in the local Dalian hotspot known as JD's.

"I'm so lonely (so lonely), I'm Mr. Lonely (Mr. Lonely), I have nobody (I have nobody), To call my own (to call my own)."

DUBLIN, Ireland (Reuters) -- Ireland may be enjoying stellar economic growth and seen as one of the best places in the world to live, but its inhabitants are apparently also the globe's loneliest.

Google Trends, which works out how many searches have been done via the Internet search engine on particular terms, showed the word "lonely" was entered most frequently by Internet users in Ireland.

The Irish, enjoying new-found wealth and a flood of immigration following more than a century of economic decline, are followed in the misery stakes by residents of Singapore and New Zealand -- although Singaporeans are the most frequent searchers of "happiness." Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for a given term coming from each city, region or language divided by total Google searches coming from the same area.

Ireland's capital, Dublin, topped the city list for "lonely" searches, followed by Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand. In 2004, the Economist magazine named Ireland the best place to live in the world in a "quality of life" assessment.

Guinness is bad for you

My head hurts. Why oh god why does it feel like a million construction workers are operating machinery on my brain matter? Alcohol in all forms is evil, pure black evil, it cures all woes but it comes at a very painful price.

This picture is picking up a discussion I had last night about how guinness is good for you....

Whatever you do, do not walk on the grass

So its official, I've had my first professional interview in China. Some software engineering magazine thinks it's a great idea to interview two foreigners in China about the life we lead over here and we were the two suckers that got picked. Anyhow the first interview was today, I know well that my comments are certainly going to be edited and changed to suit the governments ethos so I want to make one thing straight. GRASS IS FOR WALKING ON.

In case you do not know it is forbidden to walk on grass in China. Maybe that is why there are so many astro-turf pitches here, but its next to impossible to find a good grassy flat area here where you can puck a ball around. If our outburst about grass changes current policy I shall be well pleased. By the way, I'm not talking about the smoking kind.

So this magazine wants to take us both out to see us while we "work, eat and play"; whatever that means. I wonder what kind of a lifestyle the Chinese imagine that foreigners are having out here. Eating, drinking, smoking, prostitution and hard core drugs? Well 2 out of five would be my lifestyle. Perhaps I'll bring them down to the local brothel, or to the nearest 5 star hotel for a slap up meal. Such is the choice a foreigner has in China. But above all, do not walk on the grass, otherwise prepare for a swift dose of "re-education". God how I love that word.

By the way, re-education was/is China's way of changing a persons beliefs through the form of harsh labor. I am unsure if this practice is still actively being endorsed. I first came accross this phrase when the government wanted to clean up the city of Shanghai. They got rid of the race-course and advised that all of the local prostitutes should be re-educated. Re-education usually took place outside of the large cities in the countryside. The people were kept under strict supervision with the understanding that if they reformed they could re-enter public life however many people accepted their fate and simply settled in the surrounding area.

I could sleep right now...

So over the past 4 days I've clocked up about a 50 hour working week. How is that possible I hear you ask? Welcome to the other side of the wonderful world of outsourcing in China. Well when you’re the leader of a project you can literally come into work at any time you so please, however leaving the workplace however is the difficulty. At least twice this week I've had meetings with people at 2am in the morning Beijing time, 2pm for the Americans.

So while the American's wrap up the meeting conveniently at 5pm it is 5am over in this side of the world. Supposedly it is very hard to get a time for these people to meet up together however just after lunchtime seems to suit them....well they are half asleep at this time and hence are usually much easier to manage.

But all this is not in vain. By some creative administration I shall be working 15 solid hours straight today from 9pm to noon on Friday. I shall then be taking the rest of the weekend off until the following Monday where the normal work hours will resume I hope. However it is with great anticipation that I shall be taking some badly needed time off from Wednesday, 3 entire days I shall have to recover from the madness that I am anticipating my birthday to be.

So I'm going to be turning 24 years old this week and it was quite funny that a group of interns asked me how old I was yesterday. When I replied that I was 23 they seemed to be quite shocked. I was very far ahead of them in both experience, thinking, maturity and confidence, which they seem to be lacking however the funny side was that most of them are older than me by at least a year. Its great being their boss and giving them direction and I can see them improving each day in different area's however their confidence is still very much lacking. Can you imagine coming out of completing 6 years of university and then signing your life away to a company for a minimum of 3 years? Well that is what is happening here to a multitude of young graduates out here.

Although I only graduated last year I have come on in leaps and bounds through what I have been experiencing out here. Exposure to many different technologies has been of great interest however I believe that if I stayed in Ireland I would never have gotten half of the experience and responsibility which I am given here, quite possibly I would be holding a small programming position without the chance to influence key points on design, quite the opposite here. So. should anyone be interested in coming out to China to work here for a year or two after graduating I would definitely recommend it. You will be amazed how exposure to a new culture and travel broadens the mind.

Anyhow, I'm rambling, time to get back to work.

Pictures and Travel

So I've been in Atlanta for about 2 1/2 months. In that time I have worked my ass off, well actually its still there but I have been working pretty hard lately; I've gone to an ice hockey game, trained a girls Gaelic football team, gone shopping, eating, drinking and then done some more drinking. So anyhow I've uploaded some of the pictures I have taken to my gallery, most of them are pretty crap probably down to the fact that alcohol does not give a steady hand when taking pictures.

So because I have been going to restaurants, bars and clubs pretty much since I got here its been decided that I shall see some of the highlights of Atlanta before I leave. So on Friday morning I'm heading off to the Aquarium, which is also St. Patrick's Day (Bring on the green Black stuff), to meet some ministers. I know full well that they just want to go on the beer. However that will be at around 07.30am, a full Irish breakfast is planned for that day, then back to work and a quick dash to the local Irish bar to give our utmost respect to the patron Saint of Ireland.

So I'm to fly out of Atlanta back to Dalian this Monday morning so I'll be updating my website whilst I'm travelling. Its time to come up with a decent CSS template me thinks...

Back To China

Well this is mainly just a shout out to my family just to let them know that I have arrived safe and sound in the land of China. I arrived here on Wednesday afternoon after travelling more than half ways around the world. And guess what I did when I got here? I went straight into work. So right now I am on my 3rd day back to work and this is my 3rd consecutive day of doing overtime. I also have to go and work this weekend as well which is quite annoying to be honest.

So this weekend my plans have gone to mush but however I plan on enjoying myself as much as I can while I'm over here . Travel is also definitely on the cards. My flat was like a building site hit it when i returned, some pipe burst while I was away and completely covered the floor in a caked layer of grime and dust, not a pretty site. So anyhow I spent all last night trying to rearrange the apartment to give me as much space to myself as possible. I'm going to go and try and pick up a couch for my new found freedom within the apartment, hopefully I'll get something decent for a cheap price; ya have to love China.

One of my friends Derek took some pictures of what wonderful weather I've been missing since I went to America. Included in the picture are some of the lovely people I've been working with since I arrived in China. A big shout out goes to Eric, Lewi, Zita, Simon and Derek for stepping outside and braving the subzero temperatures and the Siberian wind chill.

Anyhow I found this post here and so it is my article of the day, how your love of online gaming may make you a genius when it comes to real life business. Quite enlightening really, enjoy.

The ramifications of buying JBoss...

So its official, as both you and me, and all of the rest of the techno geeks in the world should now know, Red Hat has purchased JBoss. JBoss started out from humble beginnings as the "little server that could" however this recent purchase has made one of the biggest splashes in the business community.

It seems clear that this was a survival move for JBoss; they were going to get bought out eventually, by either Oracle or Red Hat. However the move to Red Hat ensures that its code will still be used whilst the Oracle option would have been to resign it to the dusty vaults of its graveyard as they would prefer to push their own code.

So I'm sure that you are wondering what Red Hat gets out of this? Well JBoss is one of the worlds most used application web servers; you may be asking why didn’t Red Hat just develop their own server? Well...they did and the little server that could just had too much momentum from various different consortium's causing it to blow Red Hats software off the map.

So what bodes for the future? It looks like Oracle, from recent comments by Larry Ellison, could perhaps be pondering entering the Linux market. He always wanted the full technology stack available for Oracle; they are missing an operating system. "You could argue that it makes sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux."

This may be all well and good but how does it affect me? Oracle has long made it clear that they wish to compete with Microsoft's dominance over the OS market. Should they wish to enter the market they simply need to do as Novell did; buy a well recognized brand, re-market it, and make it better! While Novell are committed to bettering the Linux community with such efforts / eye candy as XGL it is difficult to see if Oracle will have the same approach or vision in mind should they decided to join the ranks.

Should Red Hat and other Linux vendors regard these statements as a thinly veiled threat? Absolutely!

The Da Vinci Code

Well I was one of the first people in the world to watch the Da Vinci code. I saw it yesterday in China whilst all of the Americans were asleep. Subtitles were in Chinese however when they were speaking French I certainly understood however my Latin was a little bit rusty.

Anyhow, to summarize, no change in the ending, Ian McKellen steals the show and Audrey Tautou was hot as ever, however I felt the film was way too long; the audience grew disinterested towards the end of the film and were just simply dying to get to the toilet asap. Paul Bettany has my full respect as an actor however in the Da Vinci Code I felt that he really sucked. What is it with Hollywood execs trying to tap the whole religious market since Passion of the Christ and Bruce Almighty? Long a niche market religious genres are raking in millions, studios are giving God the green light it would seem.

In Korea as I speak, ended up staying in the Hyatt Regency hotel at the moment and my king size bed is calling me as I type. Next stop, America...

Gmail-lite

Well I found a way to get by my proxy at work to access my gmail email account. Here's the URL. Enjoy! By the way, it's quite stupid for any company to block personal email sites. Employees will just simply waste precious work time to try and find a way to gain access to it. Thanks gmail-lite, you brought joy to yet another oppressed person.

Note - I no longer advise the use of this service, your credentials may be used for evil at any stage.

Twenty Major is banned from China

So it looks like Twenty Major has rubbed the Chinese up the wrong way. He has been recognized as one of the plagues of the communist government of China. I wonder if his mother is proud that his website has been utterly wiped out by the great firewall of China and hence has lost access to about 1.5 billion people. Then again, I wonder if he also realizes that if he blogged in such a fashion over here a smack in the gob would be the least of his worries. So that's the reason why Twenty refuses to reveal his identity, in case the Chinese get ya; I'm sure that you're well known walking down Mao (Moore) Street though.

Fair play Twenty, keep fighting the good fight.

Note - Probably more down to the fact that blogger/blogspot was also banned. Think he moved to a new host not long after though

Exercise, Camera's and work

Well continuing with the exercise theme from Wednesday I ended up having a much longer game of tennis with one of my Irish friends yesterday. I think there is a reason why tennis was never a very popular sport in Ireland because right now my arms are aching. Perhaps I've developed a case of tennis elbow.

Anyhow today has been all work , work , work and then some more work. This was my life in China and now it seems that its becoming my life in Atlanta. I'm counting the days left until my return to Dalian with impatience, 17 days to go, hurrah. I've actually resolved myself to the fact that I really missed out on a lot when I was last in Dalian. I went to the pubs and nightclubs rather than immersing myself in culture and travel when I was last there. So to make up for this I'm determined to visit two of the following places by the end of April: Beijing and Hong Kong. I'm hoping to pick up this camera in Hong Kong. Hopefully its dirt cheap but I've heard some really good reviews about it.

Well my plans for this weekend have all been dashed due to a heavy workload that is due early Monday morning however I'm planning on taking all of Sunday off and try and head to the local museum in Atlanta. Anyhow, back to work!

Comcast, TV and religeon

Well I decided that I would work from my house today because of the lucky fact that I have a good friend who has a VPN so I decided to piggyback over their connection, cunning or what?

Well I actually had an ulterior motive, since last Sunday the cable television in my house in Atlanta has been cut. Nothing to do with the bills I'm afraid, rather it was something up with the connection. Anyhow as I speak a Comcast cable repair guy us here right now attempting to fix it up. Unfortunately the only channel he is interested in testing is Atlanta Live, and it currently has 3 white people discussing how wonderful the Lord almighty is! I'm just after hearing someone calling themselves an "Apostle/Bishop". Now that just goes to show how fucked up it can be to have a constitution protecting these nuts. Let them burn in hell.

Now I'm a Catholic and I have never seen such "devout" crap from anyone as what Im watching right now, even from the pope. At least the pope knows what he is talking about.

Anyhow Comcast is one of the major cable operators down in the Southern States, however their customer support service is pure and utter bullshit. I requested an engineer out here yesterday, I waited all evening for the engineer to come out and he was a no-show. Called up their customer support and they said that I had called up and cancelled the appointment, I can smell the bullshit that girl was talking from my beloved couch.

Anyhow seeing as St. Patrick's day is coming soon watching TV is certainly something that I won't be doing, well apart from watching Ireland demolish England to win the 6 Nations, however my vision should be well blurred at that time of the morning (08.30am) especially seeing as I don't plan on sleeping on St. Patrick's Night...

So I'll be leaving Atlanta on Monday morning at 7am so I'm trying to figure out how I can possibly fit a 60" into my suitcase to bring it back to China...any suggestions?

Hand's on experience with Clinton

Every now and then I come across a post that just makes me laugh out loud. I really couldnt resist this post.

A fellow blogger in Dalian spotted something while researching for an Intern position. Before leaving the White House, former president Clinton established an intern program that was seeking an intern who wanted a positionwith genuine "hands on experience". I wonder was Ms. Lewinsky a former member of this program?

More information can be found here.

Intel makes a H20 Cooling solution

I think that I have fallen in love with a single piece of equipment. No I hear you cry, its not the pocket vagina gadget I've heard so much about. It's actually a new solution that Intel has developed; a water cooling solution from Intel. Could anyone ever have imagined such a thing?

I suppose it kinda makes sense seeing that if you ever did ruin your chip by a pipe bursting etc, you would have to buy a new chip from Intel, sneaky bastards. So they unveiled this fantastic solution during the Spring 2006 IDF conference. So what have they changed I hear you ask? Well according to Hardwaresecrets.com (Great site by the way):

Intel’s water-cooling system has only two components, opposed to four in traditional systems. What they did was to put the pump on top of the CPU block and remove the reservoir. Intel explained us that in traditional systems the reservoir is only necessary because of water leakage. The main reason that water from the system leaks is found on the rubber hoses: they are very permeable. So, by changing the rubber hoses by metal pipes to carry water around, Intel was able to remove the reservoir.

But there is a price to pay for such a cool solution, your case design is going to be rather restricted seeing as the pipes are going to be static in place and length. I can see this being a nice entry system for water cooling amateurs however I cannot see the uber-hardcore geek conforming to solution made by the man. Anyhow Im sure that this solution will be Intel compatible only and will not mention AMD within its specifications. Sure what self respectible geek uses Intel anymore? AMD 64 all the way

TWIT - This week in Tech

Well I spent about a half hour last night getting a web application up and running on my new server. So now all of my pictures are being hosted on my own website here. There are a few good photo's up there, mainly of my time so far in China. You can expect many more when I return. Also I'll be updating all of the photo's that I've taken since I arrived in Atlanta. There really is not that many of them.

Well I've spent almost the entire morning working on an assignment. Sunday should be a day of rest, not a day of piling over reports looking for inconsistancies etc. Oh well...I suppose someone has to do it and seeing as I am getting paid peanuts I'm the monkey of the week.

Anyhow I've made it one of my resolutions to discuss some random topic that I have read about on the net. Well today's topic is TWIT aka This Week in Tech. TWIT is essentially a podcast that discusses all of the newest and interesting topics within technology that has happened in the previous week. It gives a fascinating insight into the world that is MAC and has had some uber-geek-famous (copyright reserved) people on the show. Such people include Mr. Kevin Mitnick, Robert Heron, Yoshi DeHerrera, Roger Chang, David Prager, John C. Dvorak, Jessica Corbin, Megan Morrone, Andy Walker, Amber MacArthur, Leo Laporte, Steve Gibson and the infamous creator of the MAC, the Wozman himself.

Anyhow I would really recommend this as an excellent podcast for any tech geeks/phreaks etc. You can find the podcast here and the TWIT Website here. Although they do tend to concentrate on issues concerning the MAC, they can be found critiquing all facets of tech. Bow down to the tech critics, Let the TWIT army arise. 

*Note - Twit is now a bunch of steaming crap, perhaps it always was, but definitely crap these days

GAA comes to Dalian, China

Yes my Irish brethern, GAA has spread it's reaches out to a new area of the world, a region left un-tapped for centuries is finally going to do Ireland proud. I'm talking about the newly formed Dalian Gaelic Football Club and how it is going to take its place in GAA history by attempting to win (more likely compete/drink) in the Asian Gaelic Games this coming September in Shanghai.

What is Gaelic Football I hear you ask?
It's not soccer, rugby or Aussie rules, but it has elements of all three and it is powered by a small but dedicated - one could say addicted - fan base that plans to spread it anywhere it can get a foothold. Gaelic football is Ireland's most widespread contribution to the world of sport.

It is played with a round ball similar to, but a little heavier than, a soccer ball. Use of hand passes is expected and encouraged. It is a fast and high-scoring game. Gaelic football is played on a pitch about the size of a rugby field. Official pitches are 150 metres by 90 metres. The ball can be passed with hand or foot and points are scored by either getting the ball into a soccer-like net for a goal that's worth three points or above it, between a pair of rugby-like posts for a single point.

Gaelic football is not as rough as rugby or Aussie rules but is rougher than soccer. Most of the people who play in Asia are expatriates used to the more violent games, although for this competition the organisers are especially willing for locals to join. In China, the sport is spreading. Beijing has two teams. Hong Kong has enough teams to have a league of its own. Around Shanghai, new teams are expected in Hangzhou and Suzhou next year.

Few of the players - except for Irishmen who played in school and have a national tradition of Gaelic football - have much experience. Everyone is new to the game and everyone is considered an amateur. So if anyone reading this is interested and is in the Dalian area just come along to Olympic Square around 6pm on Saturday for a training session. Beginners are more than welcome.

Talk Talk China

I would like to nominate Talk Talk China for website of the year. The one and only reference point regarding all facets of pet peeves people have experienced first hand throughout their time in the Peoples Republic of China. TTC provided me with hours of fun today while I went plodding along through my mundane existence. Be warned though, comments are not moderated and can be increasingly scathing to the uninitiated, but that's where the fun is.

Anyone is welcome to come and comment about their own experiences of the topic at hand. Fair play TTC team on a job well done.

Note - the website shutdown at their height of fame...no-one stood in to fill in for them... :(

Morrowind, Ubuntu and awesomess

So during my brief bout of the plague I ended up tinkering with my computer last night. So right now I have about 550GB storage on my machine, with one partition of 30GB devoted to windows (Yuck) and about 520GB devoted to beloved Linux, specifically Ubuntu.

So for the past month I have been subscribing to a service known as Cedega; after much hardship getting all of the drivers set up last night for my machine, I ended up pulling an old game that I forgot that I owned and installed it on my Ubuntu 64 AMD box. Low and behold it worked; it did exactly what it said on the tin, fair play to Cedega. Now if it would only support the old DOS games and I could get playing Daggerfall once again to bring back the memories. Can you smell the nostalgia? The picture shown is not Morrowind on my system, however I'm planning on taking a screenshot tonight though.

Soon windows will be deleted from my system with a vengeance; may it rot with the rest of the obsolete, pathetic systems such as the Vic 20 and the Sinclair 64k (My favourite old system - first - was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k). Tonight's mission, become the leader of the Erabenimsun tribe, it's all part of my evil plan....mwah mwah mwah...(evil laugh).

Note - Cedega is now gone from my system, just loving the latest versions of WINE.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

So last Friday I got the news that I'm to be shipped out yet again to Atlanta. So what can I say about Atlanta, it's hot, there's a McDonald's/Wendy's/Burger King/Insert Heart Stopping Fast Food diner here,

I'm to be based out there for about 3 months managing a project for an evil conglomerate, oh the joys of life. So is there anything exciting to do in Atlanta? All I did there the last time was drink myself into a stupor (Blaming Eoin for that one) and work insane hours. Well I won't be leaving Dalian until the last week of May as I have to get my visa up in Shenyang, don't want to be going out to the US illegally seeing as Bush is in his narcissistic mood right now.

So I've had a hell of a lot of emails from people who were berating me about eating a small innocent dog. In my defense I could say I was really hungry and he was really tasty, however he did give me the shits for a day so he got his revenge...At least I can never worry about my baby sister or my mother ever starving, they could open up a dog kennel if they liked full of all sorts of dogs. And my mother is a really good cook...mmm...looking forward to Christmas dinner already.

Newsflash from the Middle Kingdom

Today the Chinese government issued a decree that all foreigners who wash themselves more than once a day must leave Dalian. So in an effort to save water I believe that Dalian will become deserted, devoid of Russians, Japanese and Irish. Actually I'm being banished to the nether-regions of the United States, namely Atlanta, by my Chinese masters. 

It would seem that I'm leaving Chinese soil tomorrow evening around 5pm. The company I work for really leaves things for the last minute, not flights sorted out yet, expenses I presume are going to be thrust into my hand from the runway onto the plane with the frevrant hope that the air-hostess who catches the bundle doesn't pocket it. So yet another day passes and I'll be visiting yet another country. Next stop: Korea. I wonder if they have a larger selection of dogs to consume there...

To the family who might be reading this, I should be landing in the States sometime on Saturday so I'll give ye a call when I get there, hopefully not from prision due to Visa issues. I wonder how many countries I pissed off with that post.