College and Tech Ramblings

So it has been a good long time since I blogged last and in the mean time Liam has written several posts and even Conal and Steve had written one. Today is the last day of my holidays as tomorrow I am starting a job in the University as camera-man for the graduation ceremonies. I did it at the end of the summer and it is a grand job and is pretty well paid even if it is only for a few days. I wont get the money until the end of February but it will be helpful. In other news I have also gotten a part-time job for next semester, in addition to my security one. I am going to be a humanities writing tutor for the UL Centre for Writing (Link: Centre for Writing) which means I will be sitting down with undergrads and trying to teach them how to structure and write properly. Thankfully we will be getting a bit of training as to be honest I don't think I will have a clue. I know I am a pretty good writer but don't know how much of that is down to technique and how much is just bull-shittery. So I am trying to make sure that all my writing from here on is better, hopefully the training will help me with my essays as well. Plus the money is excellent and its less than 6 hours a week.

As a side-note, after talking to Conal yesterday I am trying out my touch-typing. I can actually do it but I am not sure how, its like my fingers know where to go and are just bypassing my brain. The biggest advantage is that I see my mistakes straight away instead of at the end of a sentence so hopefully that will make up for the slower typing speed.

I have not actually done that much over the Christmas break to be honest. Had a class New Years in Fanore, I will try and get some photos off the people who had camera and perhaps put a few up. Other than that I have really just been bumming around at home. My room is finally clean and organised and even decorated a bit. My computer is running tip-top condition mostly because I spend most of my time on it. I was looking through my Stumbleupon settings there a few days ago and saw that since June 2008 i have stumbled through 19,456 pages, which is nice. I also installed this little programme called Digsby which brings together the chat programmes of MSN, Facebook, ICQ as well as my Facebook, Gmail and Hotmail inboxes. Why am I boring ye with all this stuff I hear you ask. Well one of the pages that I came across was from the New York Times and it actually dealt with a phenomena that, because of all the time I spend on the net, I was was just beginning to notice.

The article, found here, basically talks about how people are becoming more and more connected, they call it Ambient Awareness. I first kind of realised it when I was away. I would be able to tell when people were last online from their Bebo profile and manage to find out what was going on my having a look at the comments on their wall. Plus all the chat functions meant that I could be talking to people all around the world whenever I was online, or talking to them through Skype. Since I came back now I am always signed onto the chat things through this Digsby programme but it also gives me updates about when people sign on, if they change their status, add pictures, get wall comments. Sounds a bit stalkerish but it just runs away int he background and keeps me updated on what is happening. There is also this Twitter thing that thankfully, I have not been sucked into yet. Its like the Facebook status-update thing where you have, I think, a 70 word maximum limit to say what you are doing and you can update it from a computer or phone. Apparently it was used to great effect during the Mumbai attacks and when that plane landed in the Hudson River, people around the world were able to get minute by minute updates by real people who were actually involved.

So between this Digsby and Stumbleupon i am kept constantly up to date with what people are doing, who is online and also the general Internet zeitgeist. Thing is though, other people are not. I find myself getting pissed off when people do not answer me back straight away, or who don't spend every minute on a chat programme. Not being able to instantly be in contact with someone gets me frustrated, even text-messages take too long. It will probably be a bit different in second semester though, between the two jobs and college work I see myself spending an awful lot more time in the university and less at home bumming around.

Links of the Day
The Atheist bus Campaign
(I thought the rule was I before E except after C, why is this different?)
The First Male/Female Vice-Presidential Debate
Turns out Palin/Biden was not the first one

Winter is a comin'

Ye Gods its cold out. Just back from work there, you will be glad to hear the cycle is getting better. Its trés cold out though, there was hailstones this afternoon and apparently we have had the coldest September in years. I am still sweating like a nun in a sack though.

So i have decided to bite the bullet, get a bit organised and buy me a computer. Thanks to the wonder that is a loan I have gotten my resident techie so do some research and find me a nice desktop PC. Thing is though, peripherals like a mouse, keyboard or monitor is included. I had the great idea though of getting these off Ebay. Very excited I am, never used it before. Managed to find a monitor on it that is around a third of the price of the shops, and that's including delivery so hopefully I will win that particular auction.

College is going alright, got a bit back into the studying. I have a presentation on Monday and although keeping at it is slow going once I do get going the old bull-shit is just flowing out of me. I really have to get cracking on my thesis though, if even just to get an idea in my head. Was in a lecture on Tuesday about the Politics and Political Economy of Development, going through the liberalisation of trade during the 80's and how the World Bank, WTO and IMF have perhaps been doing more harm than good. Now the thing about the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank in particular is that they were set up for the express purpose of helping less developed countries get more like our great white countries but somewhere along the lines they fucked up. SO I was thinking that perhaps I will maybe look at where they are at the minute and how in the future they can get back to basics. An incredibly broad kind of idea but i will just work from there and hopefully meander into something related that i will find interesting. If ye have any ideas or suggestions let me know.

Random Web-site of the Day: Interesting Graph: Us Europeans Are Not as Clever as We Think

A Word-Cloud of my Blog

Joan might remember me talking about this web-application. Its a website you can go to and either put in a block of text or web-address and it will go through the whole thing, count the words and make this customisable cloud of the most common, with size depending on frequency. Click on it to get a higher resolution picture. Glavin

Link: http://wordle.net/create

1 week down, more to come

So first week of Uni over. Went out on Friday and had a good larf, only spent 20 quid so that is all good. Joan 'surprised' us by coming down without any notice. I had work till 10 so i only got in a bit after 11 and went straight to Costello's to meet up with Joanie. Its a pity I had work so late as i had several beers and a bottle of Jim Beam back in the house. Saying that though I managed to get pretty drunk, which was nice.

Over the weekend then i had planned on doing a bit of study and cleaning up a wee bit. Of course since I am a Master of Procrastination instead I just cleared up my room. what I did do however was go right back over this blog and dress it up a bit behind the scenes. Ye may not have noticed but i changed around the fonts and colours a wee bit. The most time-consuming thing was going back through all 189 other posts since 2004 and add labels. They are the the word things at the bottom of every post and along the side. That was actually kind of cool, got to re-read all posts from Foreign Affairs, Maine, 4th Year and of course New Zealand and South America. Of course how long my enthusiasm for this blog thing lasts remains to be seen.

Have put up pictures on Bebo

www.kernunos.bebo.com for ye cretins without a page

You know, i try and not make my blog just about 'What i Did Today" but to be perfectly honest, most of the time that is all i do with this. Any of ye that have blogs know how tough it is to actually try and think of something to say once you sit in front of the screen and the effort involved in thinking of pertinant current affairs opinion things to write about is just too much. I do think however that maybe i will start trying to write smaller more regular posts, in the style of Sarah in her hey-day. When i read back through my blog, something that is fun but someimes cringing, i think my best posts were in Maine, when i would actually go to the bother of putting in pictures and stuff. Appearantly you can embed videos into the blogs now so how cool would it be if i started a video blog? You could see me hum and haw for an hour while i try and think of something to say. fun times

iPods suck almost as much as Pa

I am at this very moment talking to my good friend conal on MSN and he is harping on about how great his broadband is. Pity he knows nothing and soon his computer will crash and BURN. I sometimes think that people should not just be allowed get a computer, its like being a parent. People get a new computer and then fill it full of crap, never clean it, never immunise it, let it hand around bad crowds with no protection and let it get slow and stupid. I mean the first thing you should do with a new computer is get an anti-virus and get free internet downloads like Adaware and Spypot, i have not gotten any spyware or pop-ups since last Christmas. And even if once a month they clean and defrag their hard-drive then their computer will last for ageslonger and they wont have to run off to Daddy to get a new one after a few short irritating months.

My brother asked me today why did i not do computer since i can fix most of the bugs that pop up at home but to be honestI actually hate the things though. I spent hours tonight trying to get my sisters iPod up and running before she headed off to Australia tomorrow. TO be fair to her she spent two hours on her own before i came home trying to crack it. That in itself was quite unusual because i am usually the one who does computer stuff in the house but she did everything that i would have done and still no avail. Still i came home and then tried to sort it out, computers are shit, the internet was acting up, as was my computer plus the home computers and the software was manky. I wont even try to explain but i would not reccommend an iPod to anyone, you can get Creative ones that are much easier and more friendly to use. It took more than three hours to change my songs to iPod format as well. Long story short i managed it in the end but now my eyes are killing me from staring at a computer screen and my testicles have been microwaved all evening so no chance of kids for me.

Ya my sis is heading off for a year tomorrow, its weird cuz i have only been back from America little more than a month. We had a big 'Christmas' dinner yesterday cuz it was her birthday and none of us were going to be around for Christmas anyway so we got the Turkey and ham and stuff and had a big gettogether with all the aunts and uncles. Twas a good night, even though all my relatives live in Limerick i do not get to see them all that often, i have not seen my aunt since Christmas. Tonight we just had a closer family sit-in and just messed around and cursed iPods. It will be sad to see her go but if everything goes according to my master plan then she will only be back a month or two next year before i head off on my travels. I think i have gotten much more used to not seeing people for extended periods at this stage. The world is small and we have plenty of time to see people. Rachel our British friend that we met in New Paltz came over on Tuesday and stayed one night before heading home and Liam will be going over to visit her soon as well. I will see them in the future and if you stay in touch then there is no problem. On that note i will of cours ebe ringing my favourite New Zealand girl soon so she need one worry.

The problem wiht not blogging a lot is that there are too many things to talk about when you do, i could write about how i am trying to start a capoeira club in UL at the moment, or Liam and Owen's class Halloween party or Rachels visit but it is late and i am tired so they will have to be described by personal request. I must off to bed be, a shout out to negro-nose in Dublin and to all ye plebs who live through my blog. ...man i'm down with the lingo