I’m stealing a moment from my crushing schedule to squeeze in a post. I’ve fallen so behind in personal correspondence — I’ve got a mountain of emails to respond to, and they just keep piling up. I apologize if I have left you hanging. Crickey, I was reading my brother’s blog this morning over breakfast and realized I forgot all about my father’s birthday, which was four days ago. D’oh! The problem is that I leave for work at 8:30am, and get there around 9:15. I typically work until 6 or 7pm, then it’s a 45 minute commute back home, a light dinner with Christine, and it’s already close to 9pm. Christine & I get to spend a little quality time together, and we might watch a show or go for a walk, and then it’s pretty much time for bed. On the weekends, we’ve been out exploring Dublin and socializing quite heavily, leaving me approximately zero time to write emails and post blog entries. When I’ve had a little spare down-time, I’ve been too mentally exhausted to tackle writing, so I’ve just wasted that time mindlessly playing Oblivion….
The BIG news of late is that the corrupt and overbearing US federal government, upset it cannot easily tax online gambling, and pandering to the fundies, attached a prohibition of online gambling bill to a must-pass port security bill that they knew would fly through congress without issue. When this bill is signed into law within the next week or two, it will become illegal for a financial institution to transfer money from a US account to online gambling services, effectively locking all Americans out of the ability to spend their money freely on fully legal and licensed operations. This bombshell got dropped on us Friday evening. Monday, the gaming companies floating on the London stock exchange plummeted, most losing more than half their value. Most of the online poker sites have roughly three quarters of their business from US customers. Full Tilt Poker plans to carry on business as usual and fight the government on it. Poker is not a pure game of chance, since there is a great deal of skill involved, it should be handled differently than pure gambling games like slots and roulette. Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, and it’s not going to work for gambling when 75% of Americans want online gambling to be legal. And here we thought the USA was a democracy. Governments ought not to dictate one’s right to gamble or not anyhow.
Christine & I have been watching a few of the posted TED Talks each night. They are GREAT. I strongly recommend y’all to watch them. We’re about halfway through them. While watching last night on the laptop, snuggling on the couch together, I started thinking about how rarely the actual television is on in this apartment — almost never. We just watch downloaded content almost exclusively now — a few high-quality shows like Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica, and then more high-brow intellectual material from the internet, such as the TED Talks, and other academic lectures and such. It’s such a superior experience in almost every way. No commercials. No time constraints — watch when you want, and pause/rewind, and so forth. But above all it’s the content. Television is such utter trash 99% of the time. It caters to the lowest common denominator, and hyper-engaging content is almost non-existent.
On Saturday we wandered through the drizzle to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s only a 15 minute walk from our apartment. It wasn’t quite as grand as some of the Cathedrals I saw in England but still quite unlike anything you’d find near Edmonton. So that was fun. Sunday we took the LUAS rail to Dundrum Mall and did some clothes shopping. I bought cozy wool sweater and a pair of pre-wornout jeans. Oh the Irony. There are whole clothing stores there selling things like it’s derelict from Zoolander..
Weird Al Yankovic has a new album out. His Canadian Idiot parody of Green Day’s American Idiot cured a light case of homesickness. I also love the White & Nerdy track — that one hit close to home.
Another CR study has surfaced with some more evidence that CR has a strong preventative effect on Alzheimer’s Disease: Calorie Restriction Attenuates Alzheimer’s Disease Type Brain Amyloidosis in Squirrel Monkeys.
CR has been difficult here this first week, mainly due to the traveling, stress, and abundant socializing and pub-drinking. There are no food places nearby at work, so they bring in a catered lunch every day which is quite nice. There are always several dishes to choose from, and there is usually salad and fruit as well as vegetables. The veggies are great (usually broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots) but they come slathered in butter! Besides the hard-to-avoid high-calorie sauces, once can get some decent nutrition out of the selection, but it’s hard to gauge portions, and with the buffet style, it can be challenging to show restraint. Studies like the above continue to remind me why restraint may well be an excellent investment.
Our current place in downtown Dublin is perfect as far as being a 5 to 10 minute walk to just about anything one would need, and it has a stellar night life. This is both a luxury and a headache. When you want to have a good time, it’s right there. When you want to get a good night rest, it can be a little rowdy down on the streets below. Thursday in the restaurant below us was karaoke night until 2am. I hope that’s not every thursday night!
The work week went by quickly. The office is big and well lit. There are a lot of new names and faces to get to know there. Tuesday night we had a Server Team dinner at a nice pub in Dalkey (that’s the rich area of town near the coast where the celebs like Bono have their homes). Wednesday night we went out to a nearby pub (I think we could go to a different nearby pub every night for months without repeating). Friday night we had dinner at a fancy Italian place nearby, with Vanessa, a co-worker who is staying in the same apartment building as us. It cost twice as much as it would have in Canada. Afterwards we went to a pub for a drink and at one point a group of guys hushed everyone to near silence and a little man broke into song for a minute, and then it was back to normal again … that was a nice touch of local culture, something you’d never see at a pub in Canada (well perhaps out in the maritimes, but not out west).
Yesterday (Saturday) we slept in and in the early afternoon met up with two co-workers from our apartment (Vanessa & Kevin), and we wandered off to the nearest DART station (another urban rail line that runs along the coast). We stopped in Dun Laoghaire (Pronounced “Dun Leery”, we discovered after some embarrassment). Christine and Vanessa registered there for some Dance lessons and then we found a pub for a late lunch. Vanessa went out for a smoke and brought back a local fellow who was extremely animated and fun to talk to. He was thrilled at our Canadian accents and kept referencing Degrassi Junior High and Trailer Park Boys. We ended up drinking and chatting with him until well after dark. He took us to a posh bar overlooking the marina, where we downed some enormous Hoegaardens. We then went back to our apartment and dressed up to go out clubbing. A group of us went to the club & pub scene just west of Grafton street (a 10 minute walk from our apartment), and we hopped around to several places. The whole area was just packed and hopping for block after block. Unbelievable. We met up with some more Tiltware people. One of them, a friendly local who works for the Database team, knew me from my blog! Hah, that gave me a good giggle.
Some random observations: Television is just as mind-numbingly ass-tastic here as in North America. Crossing the street is pure chaos. It’s tricky enough with the lanes reversed, but here there is no respect for pedestrians from motorists, and vice versa. Jaywalking is the norm — the traffic lights are a mess, and so people just dart out between gaps in traffic willy-nilly. It’s truly terrifying for us. Traffic is so orderly and efficient in Canada. We were entertaining the idea of getting a car before arriving, but after seeing the traffic, and the unnavigable roads, I think we are going to stick to the public transit systems. It is also much harder to walk in crowded streets here — in Canada people more politely yield to each other when walking in crowds. Here, I feel like I am playing chicken with every co-pedestrian, and losing badly.
I found an electronics shop and bought a life-saving piece of equipment for any geek plagued with a pile of electronic gadgets from north america that need charging: A 240V convertor:
Currently Listening to: #2 from the album “Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II” by Aphex Twin
We went shopping today for food. We stopped first at an open market in Temple Bar, where we picked up some fresh fruit and vegetables, spelt bread, and two slabs of fresh salmon. We later found a supermarket nearby and filled up on more staples. Our suite came with a complementary bottle of red wine, so we cracked that open and had the salmon, which I grilled to perfection, sprinkled with lemon and fresh ground pepper. We added some steamed broccoli, salad, and a slice of spelt bread. Here you can see me in our suite’s kitchenette.
We’re now in a drastically new time-zone. Wednesday night we went for dinner with Christine’s family. During dinner I commented that we’d leave a bit early for the airport the next morning, as you never know if you’ll need some buffer time for an unexpected delay such as a flat tire. When we finished dinner and went out to the parking lot, we found our car with a flat tire! Better then than the next morning on the way to the airport, but arg. Christine jumped right in there with her high-heels on, to work-replacing the tire. I stood there like the a-mechancial dork that I am. It was a classic moment.
Our flight thursday had us going to Chicago before connecting to Dublin, so we had to go through US Customs. We were ‘randomly selected’ for a very invasive laptop search — they actually went through our laptops looking for kiddie-porn and terrorist plots. Thank the gods they weren’t looking for pirated TV shows. This was yet another fine example of America’s steady decline towards a liberty-free police state. I fully expect a mandatory cavity search next time I visit.
We flew the trans-atlantic stretch first-class on Aer Lingus. First-class is definitely something a guy could get used to. Lots of room, giant reclining seats with leg rests. Champagne before take-off, bottomless wine, gourmet meals, gift bags, individual TV sets, and so on. It made the 7-hour flight zip by.
Flying over Ireland….it really is GREEN. The Irish customs agent was far friendlier than the US one. He warned Christine to keep an eye on me because Irish women were dangerous.
We had a little trouble locating our driver at the airport. Our flight had been delayed 2 hours in Chicago, and our poor driver had been waiting all morning for us. He was a super friendly older gentleman, and answered all our questions on the way into the Dublin city center. Our temporary accommodations are right in the heart of Dublin — walking distance to all the old historic sites and touristy areas like the Temple Bar district. We’re a block off of St. Stephen’s Greens, a beautiful landscaped park — which has been packed this weekend as the weather has been gorgeous.
When we arrived, our apartment was not ready yet (it’s a strange mix between being an apartment and a hotel), so we had 2 hours to kill. We dropped off our luggage and then strolled through St. Stephen’s Greens and then found a pub for lunch. It was traditional Irish fare. I had a quiche with salad and a Guinness of course. The Guinness here is far more quaff-able than the foul stuff I’ve tried in Canada. I’m still not a fan (I prefer lighter ales and lagers), but it was not half-bad.
Our apartment is very nice. It has tall ceilings and a clean and crisply modern decor. The bed is a little stiff, but I had no problem sleeping (though that may have been the jet lag).
My Canadian cell phone doesn’t work at all here. That’s disappointing. When I went to England in 2000, my cell phone worked fine. Why the regression? The people here are quite friendly. They also look really Irish.
Also check out Christine’s blog. I’m sure she’ll be far more verbose and observant that I — She’s the artistic one, and I’m the autistic one.
Cheers from Dublin!
I’m experimenting with a new Blogging App called Ecto. I dunno if I’ll use it or not yet, but I’m going to use it to compose the next few entries. You may notice some new layout changes and banners and such while I goof around and play with things.
Currently listening to: The Hand That Feeds (Photek Straight Remix) from the album “Every Day Is Exactly the Same (Remixes)” by Nine Inch Nails
I just spent the afternoon working on my show-off page: My Software Portfolio. I’ve revamped my old software listings with a stylish new page with pictures and descriptions alongside each. It appears I’ve been rather prolific. This list is terribly incomplete, but It’s just so much work to show it all off.
It turns out my cat needs one of these, and they are not easy to get:
One thing that came as a huge shock to me was that moving a pet cat from Canada to Ireland is not a simple matter. I had assumed that moving pets around modern countries was a fairly common need and that there would be slick procedures in place to do so. Otherwise how would Paris Hilton jet around the world with her purse-puppy?
Ireland, being a small Island, is rabies-free and very paranoid about keeping it that way. When I looked into it, I was shocked that the easiest option by far is to:
- Get cat vaccinated for rabies and wait several weeks for antibodies to show up in blood
- Get a rabies blood test (had to draw blood and send it to a special lab in Kansas)
- Wait SIX MONTHS quarantine for the cat to not die of rabies.
- Get a European Union Pet Passport
- Get some more shots 24 hours prior to leaving quarantine, and entering country.
So the end result is…. we have to leave dear little Vega in Canada for six months before she can be brought over to Ireland. Luckily we are able to leave her with Christine’s sister who is moving into our house while we’re gone. It will be hard spending all those months without her though. My precious little kitty. God, I’m such a softy. But LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS, DAMN IT! I fear that won’t be the end of the troubles though — finding a place to rent in Dublin that is pet-friendly will be no easy task. She’s an expensive little fur-ball to keep around.
Today I went downtown for lunch with some of the Poker Academy guys. There was some discussion about the latest shenanigans over a Dublin-based company called Steorn making a big stir over alleging to have developed a free energy technology. Naturally, I’m exceedingly skeptical that they have broken the laws of thermodynamics. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. It seems every year there’s someone or some company that makes a similar claim. It’s always a hoax or a scam — a modern day proclamation of the perpetual motion machine. Terry, who never ceases to surprise me, tells me he’s been following the news for the past few years, as an personal interest. He also pointed me to another company called Black Light Power, which at least isn’t claiming to break laws of regular physics — but it does break the laws of quantum physics. As I said then, “Show me the money”. A pretty web-site isn’t gonna convince me. Give me a laptop battery I don’t need to recharge.
I remarked that we see the same kind of kooky claims come up year after year in the file compression world (information theory), where some kook claims to have invented an algorithm that can compress any file, including random data (which by definition, cannot be compressed). I then offhandedly remarked that the two claims are pretty much the same thing. This was just an intuitive guess, and I’ve been thinking about it all day. I’m not sure if I made the comparison because it’s just an obvious analogy, because it’s true in some sort of deep way, or if I merely read it elsewhere a few years ago, and simply can’t remember a source of attribution. I do recall that entropy is related in both thermodynamics and information theory. So is getting over-unity the same as compressing random data?
I’ve always been extremely interested in information theory. In high school I played with my own compression algorithms. A few years ago, I even came up with my own kooky scheme to compress arbitrary data using checksums and constraint satisfaction searches … knowing it had to be wrong, I bitterly worked out the math until I was satisfied it was impossible (but what a cool idea!). This week, I had to get intimate with random number generators and entropy collection. It’s just fascinating stuff to me. I would have pursued it beyond mere hobby, but my math skills are too weak to keep up, I’m afraid.
So now I’m all intellectually stirred up, but steadily getting sleepy. I’ve got about 20 web browser tabs open ranging from obscure sites of hydrino physics, information theory, compression, and energy scams. And now I’m getting too sleepy to read them.
G’nite.
By the end of this week, I’ll have spent close to 6 of the past 8 weeks in Los Angeles. I kind of feel like I can almost say ‘I’ve lived in LA’, since staying in a hotel for a month is almost like having a tiny apartment with a maid service. So how long do you have to stay somewhere to say you’ve ‘lived’ there?
On Saturday I fly back to Edmonton and mid-September I finally head off to Dublin! Eeeeeeeeeaaaaaah!
Christine & I rented a car this weekend and drove out to Santa Barbara for the day. We booked a Prius, because we wanted to test out a Hybrid. But the Prius never came back to the dealer, so they upgraded us to a hot Lexus Hybrid SUV for no extra cost. It was very cool — totally silent on ignition, so hard to tell it was in drive. It had a center computer display full of good geekery, including a GPS navigation system. I spent half the drive playing with it while Christine drove. It proved invaluable for navigating everywhere, since we had very little idea how to get anywhere. I thought it kicked the most ass when I had to pee like crazy and I could use it to find the nearest gas station and easily navigate right to it. Otherwise I would never have even known it was there. In Santa Barbara, we took a touristy trolley tour around the city, did a wine tasting, hung out on the beach, and then had a lovely evening sailboat dinner cruise along the coast.
