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Full stop January 18, 2009

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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Click here to read this properly

Or to put it in less SHINEY terms: [B][SIZE="7"]At last! A moment of clarity.[/SIZE][/B]

:pac::pac::pac::pac:
[SIZE="1"]Please read the disclaimer below if you are an idiot. Here, click this picture of a cat. If you do not see a cat then you have the wrong plugin. Please click the bar below your toolbar and select:
[U]Allow iamanidiot.ipx to be installed.[/U][/SIZE]

Fellow humans, I thank you for reading these humble words that I write, encased as I am, almost only in towelling and thinsulate (NO PANTS!!!!). I am amp or as am I known variously depending on your temporal viewpoint:

Adam Brendan Jewell, amp, ampinstein, pam, AJ, DEATHGIVER2003, Mysterio, First Lord Category Moderator of Games and it’s environs (retired), etc etc…..

I think Douglas Adams said it best with “I’m just this guy, you know?”

Anyhoo, for sometime I have been locked away in my own brain feverishly coming up with somesort of masterpiece of work, and I now have at least a rough outline of what it is, and I have seem to have gathered most of the tools I need to do it with.

[SIZE="1"]Speaking of tools, and in this sense I mean actual goddamned saws with frackin laser beams attached I’M NOT KIDDING – ALSO PLEASE CHECK OUT THE ARGOS CATALOGUE WHICH HAS [I]LASER GUIDED SCISSORS[/I] NOW! You will never know the awesoma power of driving around a german engineered car with the amount of tools I have in it. I could build [B]anything[/B]. If I visited a forest right now I could develop my own civilisation, two weeks tops (honest, I’ve done the simulations enough).[/SIZE]

Boards.ie has grown very large since I joined way back in the last millennium, before most of you were born I imagine, and in that time it has been nurtured and protected by the five admins, and the growing legion of people with the sole ability of having that precious gift of common sense, and all the while hiding boards.ie’s true purpose, which I cannot reveal to you just yet, but read on and I may just wander back to it again.

Boards has been a tremendous force for good in the world. We have, mere nerds, come together and drank and ****ed and sang and laughed, how we have laughed, but as a monolithic culture, well that’s already gone, there is no monolithic culture on boards any more. Boards has become the transport layer, the infrastructure with which new cultures can emerge from. At first this realisation saddened me. The party was over, time to go to work.

But then, in trying to understand the world outside boards, I discovered that the culture we live in, which for most of us geographically at least is known as the West, is heading towards a very important moment.

It’s about to die. Yes, you heard me. The end of the world is nigh.

*/me respectfully waits until the deafening roar of Internet Explorers back clicks dies down somewhat*

Aha! some of you are still reading, which is good. Let me tell you a bit about what I know about [B]you[/B].

I don’t mean plural, I mean you, the person reading this right now. You are bored obviously, but you are the type of person that when promised something can quite stubbornly wade through oceans of drivel in order to receive your prize, but we will come to that later.

You like reading books. You love being kissed gently on the neck.

You have been on boards long enough to figure out where Feedback is, you have your own computer, or are obsessive but poor enough to be in a Nethouse injecting yourself with warm internet goodness.

(I don’t like internet places like that, not to pick on Nethouse, I mean any internet shop. I keep expecting somebody somewhere to suddenly scream out **** IT! I CAN’T HOLD IT IN ANY LONGER!!! before masturbating furiously, and no, I’ve never been tempted, and no, it’s not an ongoing fetish or fantasy (no really, I’ll ****ing use more brackets if you don’t believe me))

I could make further startlingly accurate descriptions of who you are, using simple tricks such as demographics and whatnot but **** that. Onward with the mad ravings of a man firmly holding onto a sandwich boards which reads THE END OF THE WORLD IS ****ING NIGH BABY!

The banks have collapsed and are taking the world as we knew it with them. That final scene in Fight Club? It just happened, more or less. Obama, the new hope, the Messiah sent from God Himself, is among us bringing his two lambs Hope and Change. He’s a clever ****er, I’ll give him that. He’s made it this far, but is he the one that delivers us finally from the overbearing Roman Empire? Is Republicanism really dead? Has the internet killed it? Who knows, and more importantly; who gives a ****? Maybe Obama really is the new Jesus, why not? I’m sure if Jesus were around today he’d be all like. “Seriously, are you still going on about **** I said ****ing 2000 years ago?”

And that’s the problem. Stagnation. Western mainstream culture has stalled, it has peaked and it’s now in it’s final deathrows.

[B]Exhibit A:[/B]
[I]Paris Hilton.[/I]
Famous for being famous, and getting ****ed by an idiot.
Women want to be like Paris Hilton because Paris Hilton is famous. Companies sell **** to women that want to be Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton gets paid, but doesn’t care because money is just a score card. An abstract value which has more meaning to her by a very small margin than her score on her favourite DS game. And that’s not a gag commenting on what an idiot she is, because that in itself would imply that all women who like her are idiots. And they’re not, they’re just too tired to come up with their own identity so why not copy somebody who seems to be good at it? That’s not stupidity, it’s just laziness, brought about by our culture.

[B]Exhibit B:[/B]
[I]DeadSet.[/I]
A thoroughly great zombie flick for everybody who hates the Big Brother money generating machine (sorry I meant ongoing “social experiment”) and was so happy to see Davina McCall do something actually ****ing good on Television again.
And by this I mean the general rise in interest in Zombies. There is that sense we all have that world is going to change immensely over the next few years. Some of it may want to eat your Braaanes.

[B]Exhibit C:[/B]
[I]The Sixties.[/I]
There are those that would have you believe that the Sixties actually ended. Sure from a temporal point of view they have in fact ended. We are not currently in a re-interpretation of whatever decade from the previous millennium Vogue or Cosmo tells us we are in. We live in an age were the ideals of the sixties are getting tantalizingly close. Free love and all that hippy crap.

And all of this leads to us to 2015, the new sixties, when culture becomes steam and you can be whoever the **** you want to be. Western mainstream culture goes out the window, the internet takes over television, television as a concept ceases as more an more people find it simply easier to pull data directly from the people making it. No more middlemen, taxing the gateways of culture. If somebody has an idea, they share it, and suddenly less people die, or more people get other ideas and combine it with yet others until we achieve something greater than the sum of our parts, something wonderful and good and positive and evolving into what will be for lack of a better word:

God

Now obviously, I’m simplifying to a great extent, and from your point of view that’s probably a bit of a stretch, and if you’re one of those people still firmly in the grip of a religious companies customer retention schemes then I apologise profusely for blaspheming or dissing your favourite companies product, to use modern terminology.

Religion as a concept is dying. Oh sure. some flavour is on the rise here or there but inevitably people will try and find their own answers to the big questions.

Capitalism was progress, great progress. Put us on the moon so it did,and gave us the intertubes. It made people rich. It brought liberty and enlightenment to many, but not all. Humanity is bored of capitalism, as a culture we sense it, most of us on a subconcious level, the rest of us on a more personal, but increasingly less isolated level, joining up in little groups, being careful about what we say and who we say it to, ingesting substances, sometimes just to see what reality looks like when you change the voltage, sometimes to try and find that inner peace we all seek, when we are not consuming, feeding, worrying. That day we all hope for, when we can go back to being children again and see the world and how utterly wonderful it is.

We will get to a point were each individual person is their own culture, their own country, their own religion, their own property.

That is the hidden purpose behind this website, this culture of cultures, it is a function of humanities wish to be free. If the Admins hadn’t set it up, then somebody else would have, and it wouldn’t be very different. Boards was something, and I would hope the admins don’t think I’m dissing them at all when I say this, that simply [B]had to happen[/B]

I have been very lucky to have been close to some of the people toiling away behind the curtain, I have been privileged to have been allowed entry to observe and learn from the wizards.

But my lessons are complete, I have learned all I can from boards, and must move on to pastures anew. As I once left the hallowed playground of Alt.Stupidity (HELLO STOOOPIDS!!!!!), I must now leave boards.

I’m currently studying what seems to be called Web 2.0. I’m not going to tell you which flavour, but suffice to say, the data is easier to access, it’s more up to date, and it’s far far easier to filter out the idiots.

This will also be my final FINAL blog entry, because it seems to sum up with what my blog was for. It answers the question of “who am I?” as best I can so far.

Some of my work, in the next while will be condensing the above into the forms of t-shirts or something. Not totally sure yet. Ask me after Obama’s re-election speech, I’ll have a much better idea then.

And now for the dramatic twist at the end!

[SIZE="5"]FOR ADMINS AND THEIR LACKEYS EYES ONLY. ANYBODY BELOW THE RANK OF CATEGORY MOD, GO **** OFF AND IMAGINE BEING PARIS HILTON OR AN IDIOT ****ING PARIS HILTON, OR A SMALL DOG WATCHING AN IDIOT ****ING PARIS HILTON. PARIS HILTON IS A ****ING IDIOT DOG WATCHING HERSELF **** A DOG. **** PARIS HILTON.[/SIZE]

(Right about now, your brain has counted the number of asterisks in the last paragraph and is now thinking “What the **** does he have against her? I’d tap that ass, or want to have that ass (or be a dog watching that ass get tapped)”. The truth is, Paris Hilton is the new Helen of Troy, the last figurehead goddess of a dying culture and I’m merely using her as a comedy prop)

Now, I’ve previously asked to be removed from moderator duties. I’ve poked and prodded my good friend and teacher on many occasions to perform whatever bizarre crap that can disentangle me from the infrastructure of boards. I will do so no more. He is my friend and should not be the receiver of stress from his friend. That should be the sole preserve of idiots AND PEOPLE WHO DO NOT DO WHAT HE SAYS!

And so, I’ve decided to hold a gun to the head of the boards.ie itself. As our new Lord And Saviour receives his titles of office at the head of our wondrous culture, I will go rogue. I will make Pars exit look like a children’s tea party. I will escalate my actions until my demands are met.

[SIZE="4"][I][U]To condense:
De-mod me before Obama becomes King or else.[/U][/I][/SIZE]

Now some of you are thinking. Jesus! the sheer gall of the man. Who the **** does he think he is? Obama? Well **** you. You’re an idiot. I’m just this guy, who helped build boards, who set up some of the **** you either don’t know about or take for granted and I’m sick of receiving e-mail from idiots I don’t care about AND NEVER WILL. I’m sick of a boards that requires me to fill out a ****ING REPORT CARD because some idiot has proven to be lacking the intelligence to continue posting in a forum I moderate. That’s just the level of stupidity I’m no longer willing to volunteer my time for.

Now for the end credits. Fair play to you for making it this far.

[CENTER]The End[/CENTER]

[B]Adam Brendan Jewell:[/B] amp
[B]Amp:[/B] Adam Brendan Jewell
[B]Ampinstein:[/B] Adam Brendan Jewell
[B]Obama:[/B] Paris Hilton
[B]Paris Hilton:[/B] A dog
[B]The Entirety of Western Culture, beginning in Greece, stagnating in Rome, perpetuated by the Roman Catholic Church, reaching it’s Zenith in Washington DC on 20th January 2009 and ending sometime around 2015:[/B] You
[B]You:[/B] That’s really a question you should think about more.
[B]Bill Hicks, The Daily Show, Anyone who uses truth as comedy and comedy as truth[/B]: Enlighteners, Philosophers, Magicians

[B]This post was sponsored by the following madness:[/B]
Glminesweeper – Coming soon in MMPORG FORM!
There is no left or right.
There is no up or down.
Everything you know is wrong.
**** your couch.
Science is my religion.
The secret to being cool is to try as hard as you can NOT to be cool. Buy a stupid hat today.
Scientology is a scam, just on a scale so big it has become a religion.
There is no good or bad, just different shades of stupid.
It’s ok to [B]not [/B]be afraid.
If you think now is wierd, WAIT’LL YOU GET A LOAD OF THE FUTURE!!!!!!!11
Ché wasn’t cool. He was an idiot who died trying to spread idiocy. Anybody who wears a t-shirt that just has Ché on it is an idiot. Please tell them this.
Don’t do this to people wearing t-shirts that say what I’m saying but in catchier t-shirt form.
Language is a tool not a prison.
Don’t let people tell you who you are. Only [B]you[/B] can do that!
YOU ARE THE COMMANDER OF YOUR OWN PERSONAL CHOICE!
I’m not a terrorist. I’m a loverist.
Wake up! Time to go to work!
Time is an idea. Ideas can evolve.
Evolution is STILL HAPPENING! and it’s getting faster! Are you ready?

[U]Disclaimer:[/U]
[SIZE="2"][RIGHT]This post and and indeed any of my posts are the ramblings of a frequently self-confessed madman and general idiot. The respective owners of boards.ie are [B]good people[/B] with [B]good intentions[/B] deserve nothing but praise and blow jobs and should never ever be linked to anything I say or do in any fashion [B]whatsoever[/B]. Parts of this post contradict other parts of this post. Or do they? No animals were harmed in the making of this post, aside from a midge or two contracting cancer from the last of my Polish cigarettes, and Paris Hiltons dog, which got ****ed repeatedly by an idiot. People who have suddenly found themselves thinking uncomfortable thoughts from reading this posts should either lie down OR PUT ON DIFFERENT GLASSES. Certain parts of this post are subliminal. If you have a pet bat in the room please switch on your Batdesensomatic(tm) now. May cause drowsiness. Your contribution is not tax-deductible as a charitibution for Federal income tax purposes. Some of this post has been copied wholesale from people cleverer than me, and I’ve just dumbed it down so you can understand it. Took me many years to reach this point, I hope it will take you less. Curt Ville did not give permission to have his name mentioned in this post. This site is mainosecution in a federal curt. For site security purposes, as well as to ensure that this service remains availaball users, we use software prograhange information or otherwause damage. In the event of authorized law enforcigations and pursuant to any required legal process, information from these sources may be used to help an individual.The Informatained in these Web pages is, to the best of our knowltrue and accurate at the time of publicatolely for informational purposes. OllscoihÉirann, Gailimh accepts no liabilitoss or damage howsoever arising as a result of use of or reliformation, whether authorised or no. Barrel roll flip. Dismount \o/

PEACE! I LOVE YOU ALL! ESPECIALLY THE IDIOTS! YOU GAVE ME LAUGHTER WITH YOUR IDIOCY! YOU INSPIRED ME TO WANT TO BE GREATER THAN I AM! TO BE LESS STUPID! TO THINK OUTSIDE OF ANY BOXES! TO SEE WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN! TO BE ALIVE AT THE GREATEST TIME ANY HUMANS HAVE EVER KNOWN! Christ, I could have been born in the dark ages, or as a caveman OR IN THE FUTURE!…… BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHAKES FIST AT SKY!!
[/RIGHT][/SIZE]

Now, have I forgotten anything?
[B]Disclaimer[/B] – check
[B]Various “truths” from the “intertron”[/B] – check
[B]Intelligent calcium[/B] – check
[B]Cheque[/B] – check
[B]Summary[/B] – ****

Right then ok. So long to all. I really do love you all. I’m not just saying that. It’s a big world out there and there’s only one of me and I may not live for ever. Experience as much as you can before you kick it. I certainly intend to. I’ve done far more than I even thought was possible when I was a kid. I have lived well and hope to live for a long time. I hope you find happiness, I hope you find love, I hope that no matter how much words are abused for the interests of some that you actually still believe that Change is Possible and that hope can be a good thing.

Keys. Wallet, watch, phone, testicles. Ok, I’m good. Catch ya on the flipside!
:pac::pac::pac::pac::eek:

[SIZE="1"]P.s. If you think this took a long time to read, IT TOOK ME NINE ****ING YEARS TO WRITE![/SIZE]

[B]Summary/tldr:[/B]
Well, well. Ok then. Basically, I’ve gone a bit looney and started raving about nonsense. Don’t worry about it. Obama, Hilton and Ville never had a threesome, I just used that as bait to get you to click the thread. Love yourself and you will find love. Above all, [I]evolve[/I].:pac:

End of blog. August 13, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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I need to keep everything in my life under constant review. I try very hard not to take things for granted. Some things I have no choice but to take for granted. Gravity for example. Even though I don’t understand fully why two objects are attracted to each other I must accept that they are.

Recently I decided to do the right thing by boards and resign as Category moderator. It was fun being the back up for so many forums, but upon review, I decided that the role should belong to someone who actually posts to boards and is active in that area.

I am not, and I haven’t been for quite some time. There are various reasons why, but I cannot go into all of them right now. I have no beef with the admins, I have no problem with boards, but I find myself uninterested in forum sites as a whole.

And then there’s this blog. I’ve written a lot in this blog, but these days I have to watch what I say so carefully that it’s become unfun.

If I speak plainly then there are repercussions. If I talk in code then it’s usually interpreted incorrectly. I used to see this as a challenge. To see what I could weave in between the lines. But I’ve had enough. I find it tiresome. I find it boring, and I am now finished writing it.

That’s not to say I will stop writing crap about myself. I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing that, but just not in this blog. This blog is finished.

Thanks to those who read it, I hope you enjoyed it.

No, neigh, NEVAR! August 5, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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I’ve been a wild blabber for many a year

And spent lots of cash on whiskey and beer

And now that I’m older, changed jobs and careers

But I never will play the stupid blabber no more,

CHORUS

And it’s no, neigh, never

(RIGHT UP YOUR ARSE)

No neigh, never, no more.

No ventage required, no never

No more

At times I became the colour of green

As the angst built up to heights quite obscene

But life teaches lessons and wise ones take heed

And sort out what one wants instead of ones needs

CHORUS

What lies in my future is still not that clear

There’s still much to do, some things left to fear

I’ll adapt as I can, as oft times before

But some things have changed, right at the core

CHORUS

I may lead a life good things abound

But nothing’s worth more than a mate who is sound

Good friends are more worthy than gold in great store

And so I’ll never play the stupid blabber no more

CHORUS

Intermittant cloud covered dullness of the filthy mind. August 4, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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There are things I tolerate. I have have grown to appreciate the importance of patience. But there are times when action is required.

I did’t write much in the way of blogs this year because I believed I needed to tone down the babble and self-analysis. A lot has happened this year that I didn’t want to talk about. Still don’t really.

If I was to tackle this via a Hollywood approach my actions would be simple. Just get up and go. Leave this island. To hell with anyone else.

To hell with anyone else… sounds familar. So no. Been there done that, ended up looking like a prat and if I try version 2, I could end up destroying myself completely.

I could have written poems. I’m alright at that. Or lyrics. But security. Security SECURITY!

Or I could just finally see what’s really going on. I think I do, but then I thought that before. Which leads to me not doing anything, which is infuriating.

The trouble is, if I declare myself done, then that’s it, I’m done. And if I’m done then am I helping or hindering?

I seem to be going through a phase of fucking up and people trying the best they can not to tell me.

MEH!

Cable Nexus Laser Slicings August 2, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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Was it Zoo TV? Was it Zooropa? Was it the RDS or the Point? I dunno. I just remember lots of big tellies with loud white caps text screeming messages at me. Until EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG! I smiled in a merry way. My smile broke and my brain began it’s usual method of picking at a puzzle as if it were the back of our telly sorting the cables out.

Oh I try,  when a major new thing arrives I generally unplug everything and back in again, but there seems to be some natural tendency for loose cables to wrap around each other in the most convuluted way.

I think at some stage the cables that make up my brain were sliced by a laser. It’s only lately that I’ve noticed cables falling out of the nexus.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore.

Now of course, that sentence when read would lead the reader to observe that the originator is angry and is about to do something stupid. That’s the obvious interpretation. However, another way to look at it is that the word mad could mean insane mad, rather than boiling mad.

With this perspective, some may then wonder what “it” the author means.

The sentence is a quote from Network. Which is a film warning that the commercialisation of tv news could lead to it selling out and putting whatever the people own them want. Of course, it’s pure fantasy, and this could never happen.

I first learned about this film in a second hand book shop in Bruge. I was hopelessly broke and in some dire need of data. Any data, as long as it was in English.

Fascinating read, swallowed it whole in two hours.

The female lead is a fascinating character, closed off, ruthlessly and terrifyingly domineering in an incredibly sexual way.

*pauses to note that the Writing the Blog Fairy has returned*

And the whole things incredibly subversive and seems to have completely been missed by popular culture.

So I brought this book back to Ireland and managed to find a copy of the film the book was based on. Excellent flick.

And since then, or before, I’m a lot closer to having a good idea of how the world now functions. This is hugely important for me, as I find that to write realistically, you need to have a good understanding of reality.

This one goes out Dorothy! Hope you get those new shoes soon :)

I CAN HAS BLOG? July 16, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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During my daily life, when my brain is not completely occupied by either working, driving, or playing games, it goes into blog introduction mode. There are many, many, unfinished starts to blogs loitering around my brain. Some seem like genius but then I forget or get distracted by something shiney.

I think of late, that my raging against the machine has been lessened somewhat. The anger has subsided. I fear that I may actually be growing up. But really, I don’t fear it. I accept it. I’ve spent most of my life fighting in some form or another but to be honest I never really understood what I was fighting.

I am at peace. My worklife goes well, my homelife goes well. I have travelled, and plan to do more. I want to go to New York. As a lover of film and tv, I found it really good to visit the places that often feature in them. For example, London. My first actual holiday in 15 years. The first time I had to change from nightwork to daywalking in 4 years. I see now that I had not adequately prepared for a lot of things on that holiday, but I simply needed to get out of Ireland even if I screwed it up.

Sometimes I do have to throw myself of the abyss. I become comfortable with set routines. Work, sleep, eat, play, watch. And while that is a good life, in some ways it’s not enough. Travelling, exploring, helps me see how the world functions, and that helps me understand how I function. For I am a small cog in the clock that is human civilisation.

But what kind of cog am I? I used to think that the answer to the question of “Who am I?” was what people observed of me. I know how to project an image, but that image is based on me but is not me. The truth is I can never truly answer that question. I have been so many people, during my life that there are times that I believe that when I sleep I die, and when I wake up I am a new person.

Of course that new person lives in the same place, has the same job, friends and belongings, but sees the world slightly differently.

Right now, I think that standup comedy is nowhere near as funny as the world is. But that is probably me become more and more insane. However if there’s one thing that unites all of the me’s in my life, it’s the madness.

(MADNESS? THIS IS CAKETOWN!)

This blog was brought to you by, nigga please, doodly, jollocking, righteous, an ting.

Written while the lads designed car vynals. June 1, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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So, gaming pretty hard at the moment. Got the laptop back and running and installed the aul Andreas. Tis highly pleasant to play on the couch, while stuff happens on the telly that I contribute to occasionally but in fact am really concentrating on the game.I put the Civ4 on but tis a bit flakey and thus not a runner.Meanwhile on the telly, a Golf Gti gets a flaming makeover, with three coats of colours.My M1330 runs good with XP, it’s fast quite, and not too hot. I’m looking forward to trying out the new Ubuntu release that should run perfectly on her, which looks good as the Shuttleworth dude, who setup Ubuntu seems to use my laptop. Which means good things. I’m writing this in Safari which I found from /. Not bad, kinda blurs text a bit, but it’s pretty fast. Of course as long as it’s not exploder I don’t really minds. Has to have tabbed browsing, and the google field, and stuff.The DS, my savior on holidays, is now gathering dust. I just can’t use a portable system when the screen at home are so good. And home is good. I kind of wonder what the point of going to somewhere where all the cool stuff isn’t. But then again, at least I’ve seen some pretty cool things.(But sometimes real life just doesn’t seem as good looking as hi-def)Other times it’s too good looking to be real.I think I need to drink more, I don’t drink enough. Sure it’s unhealthy but I looking into that, and it’s good to have goals. It’s good to sometimes make a subtle connection. Makes me :) ’s Edit: Safari just fucking killed all my paragraphs. Fuck Safari, Fuck you Steve Jobs! Just kidding, love your turtle necks! 

I have no idea what to call this entry. May 26, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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So it seems that, despite solving the comfortable keyboard issue I find myself lacking the urge to type. I also find that I am less willing to post on either boards or SA. And I’m not sure why. This may possibly be to do with time management, which I tend not to be good at. Oh sure, if consequences of being late are present, then I’m usually bang on time, but when it comes to free time, not so good.

I went on a little trip to europe. It involved very little planning. And while I wrote a lot about that, in an offline format, I will not go into details right now. Or possibly ever.

But I will summarise a few thoughts.

I spent a lot of time on my own. In countries were English is a second language. I had a lot of time to think, which, in my non holiday life I don’t. I am easily bored and without all the distraction I have access to, having time to think is a rare thing. I thought about myself and who I am, who I was, who I might be, and I came to some interesting thoughts.

I spent a lot of time, living a relatively 9 to 5 life in foreign countries, eating not that foreign food, doing normal touristy things.

It was utterly surreal.

And that surrealness made me realise that I do not fit properly into mainstream society. I live on the edge, looking in. I sample what I find good about the world and ignore the rest.

Above all of this, I miss the sun. My heart aches, and even though I’ve been down this road before, it hurts just as bad.

omg will he ever stop typing.. my eyes are bleeding.. March 28, 2008

Posted by amp in irishblogs.
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It has been some time since I put words on this here interweb. The reasons are many and varied. Foremost has been the lack of comfortable keyboarding. I had two laptops which both had serious issues. A tosh that needs to be underclocked to be stable and a chinese tablet that had been fuxored by a trojan virus malware triple kick to the windows goolies.

Optimus, my normal pillar of computing stablity has developed an unhealthy whine upon waking from sleep mode.

In short I fell out of love with typing.

The other main factor was the previous couple of blogs where I seem to veer into an area of insanity that I’m really not comfortable with or want to incorporate into my being. Steps backwards. This realisation, combined with the lack of time, the enormous pleasure of being to be able to drive wherever, whenever, WHATEVAR! stunted my entire interweb output for a couple of months.

Not to say I haven’t bashed keyboard during this time, however this has mostly involved the w, a, s and d areas of the keyboard that to construct my usual babbling nonsense.

This has now changed. I type this missive on the finest piece of engineering I have ever encountered in my life. Finally I have the type of computer I have always dreamed of owning. And then it exceeds those dreams. I speak of the Dell XPS M1330. I am that impressed that I’m going to document the story of how this meeting of man and machine came to be.

It was one of those nights where I had fallen back in love with beer again after an age of spiritual imbibement. And instead of my usual feast of exotic hamster porn viewing I found myself looking at laptop porn. That’s when a nerd combs the net extracting specifications and jpgs of sleek, magnesium-alloyed, portable computers and drooling at the possibilities.

The hunt begain on Slashdot, which had mentioned three beasts. Some Samsung Q70 or something, a Lenevo thinkpad, and the M1330. My M1330…

Intrigued, as I had heard mostly good things about XPS, combined with Dells acquisition of gamer orientated AlienWare, I clicked onward. I liked what I saw. It’s an ultra portable, and what I really love about those is that they really are so much lighter. And lighter can make a long journey much more portable. Even my tablet could kill a man and that’s supposed to be carried a lot.

This baby is lighter than an Argos catalogue.

As I drooled down the spec sheet I saw a new logo about financing…. hmmm.. My credit rating has been far far healthier, which is usually ok as I have no immediate plans to get a mortgage or car loan, but not great when trying to convince companies and banks to give you stuff.

I mentioned the rekindling of love for beer? Well that made it easier to say “Fuck it! Sure I’ve got nothing to lose.” Turns out I did lose a couple of hundred in interest, but the fact it was in a sale made it relatively cheap to build a top range spec into an already sweet machine.

Of course I fully expected to been sent a Dear Adam, Thank for applying for finance but OH CHRIST NO! GET AWAY FROM US YOU FILTHY MAN! BACK TO YOUR BAD CREDIT GUTTER!

What I did not expect was that they’d actually do it. But they did. OMG. Sure there was a severe amount of paperwork. Faxing is not something I have to do a lot, which makes it a bit of a pain in the ass but I felt motivated.

They seemed keen but playing hard to get. I would fax them, they’d post out something, emails and phone calls occurred, credit cards were borrowed THANKS NIC! YOU ROCK! until finally, one friday morning an email arrived which mentioned a delivery date and that days date….

However, just like making love to a beautiful woman, I realised that there were further twists in the tale. My future darling had been dispatched but not directly to me, it had to come from Limerick to Dublin. Long, long days passed. I filled them by soaking myself in an obsessional search for data. I watched youtube videos of people unpacking it and turning it on.

I was partly driven by the need to assure myself that I hadn’t been an idiot and foolishly wasted money on a turkey. But it was ok, I did good.

Typing all this has been so comfortable. I’m on the big green cushion of comfort and PROWL* is on my lap. The wedge shape means my palms comfortably rest on the gentle warm wrist rest as my fingers touchtype on what is a full proper, keyboard. Even a G15 doesn’t feel this natural. This is the first real chance I’ve had to type on it since I got it and my wps is pretty much normal. The bottom was getting a bit hot for a while but the answer is provided with the slipcase which came in the box. A great laptop platform.

So glad I went with the 9 cell battery as, despite my severe aversion to operating a laptop that isn’t connected to the mains, it’s always good to have the option of running on the battery, and compared to previous laptops in my posesstion it’s like a mobile phone. I used it for about 2 hours yesterday and when I went to sleep there was still another 5 hours left in the battery. That’s monster. The 9 cell battery is bigger, making the perfect built in prop, increasing the angle of deflection and providing better cooling.

I have yet to really game on her yet, having merely ran the stress test in Half-life 2: Lost Coast. That yielded results of 32.3 fps which wasn’t bad at all given that I had the game at the maximum settings and at 2x AA. In laymans terms it looked real, flowed well, but at times did seem to stutter a little. I imagine if I lowered the settings a little that would eliminated. This is all provided by the Geforce 8400M GS nVidia card and it’s 128 megs of graphics memory. Not the fastest laptop gcard in the world but adequate enough for my current pc gaming needs.

The screen is 13.3″ which is small but the native resolution of 1280 x 800 makes watching hi-def movies not a problem. All my favourite sites load view fine. I went for the LED backlight option which is excellent. It’s hella bright. It’s colour repro is better than my 19″ Lcd monitor. The glossy screen makes type look flawlessly crisp, yet I cannot make out individual pixels. The many reviews I read had recommended spending the extra on the screen and they were not wrong. It’s the same type of screens I first saw on a Sony Viao, which made the page is was displayed appear to be something real, printed just below a layer of fine glass.

I need to get a mouse, as I really need to try out photoshop on this. The trackpad is functional but I’m used to far finer, more preceese meese control. I can hook it up to my monitor for a extra desktop space, the sound (sometimes a little crackly but overall, very little noise) to my hifi.

It is fast, despite having Vista on it. Having the T7500 Core 2 Duo as a cpu helps, as do the the 4gb’s of ram (3.5 actually seen by Vista). I can’t help wondering what 64-bit XP or even some flavour of Linux (probably Ubuntu given Dells friendliness to it) would be like on her. A triple boot may be a good idea but not until I’ve had a decent stab at trying to feel comfortable in Vista.

I’ve already turned off the incredibly annoying User Account Control bollox. If I want to run a program then of course I confirm that it is something I want to do. You don’t need to hassle me about it and make the rest of the screen go darker. Fuck you anyway. I’ve left the McAfee Anti-Virus on because it doesn’t seem too offensive right now, and a 15 month subscription isn’t bad. Google Desktop had to go as it’s just plain something I don’t use enough to justify any needless caching. So, all in all, not that much bloatware.

Slotloading DVD burners ftw. I probably won’t use it all that much due to the fact that most of my data comes from the internet. Handy for burning dvd’s and a life saver if windows goes tits up.

There’s was a moment when I held a PSP in my hand, watching a video while my brain was shouting WHERE’S THE REST OF IT! I really had trouble figuring out how such a picture could appear that size on a device that small. In my formative years computers were machines, big things that made noise. There was always some trade off. A fast computer was a noisey, hot big thing. The bigger the better. But I now have an actual, real computer, which I can play games on, which doesn’t run painfully hot, which I can take with me pretty much anywear and store loads on. I am truly astounded.

And there is room for expansion. The processor can be removed by me (and I’ve already read the manual on how to do that – piece of piss) and upgraded. The 160gb 5400rpm harddrive can be replaced with an SSD when the price gets down to something less painful. And even in semi-retirement, it would serve as an excellent media centre especially given the hdmi port and the infrared remote.

I used to work for Dell, a company I went to at a time of my life when I really should not have returned to American corporate culture. I did good work for them, I helped their customers as best I could and replaced a hell of a lot of tape drives. Man do I hate tape drives. Never get into server support. All you ever do is replace tape drives. And don’t get me started on DNS. Because I never got DNS.

We parted ways, and I left IT wishing never to return. I tried of course in the beginning simply because I hadn’t done anything else since I left FAS. It was my only career. Thank the God of Luck poker happened or I’m not sure where’d I be today. But while I will never want to work for Dell again, and continue to harbour some confusion regarding how I didn’t make it pass probation but still got the stats for a 4k bonus, I have always regarded their pc’s to be good kit. Their laptops have been ropey, sure, and I never liked their previous designs, having preferred the Viao’s sleek lines and shapes. This laptop smells good, looks good and makes me really feel like I’m living in the future. And if I really want to experience surreality I can flip it over and read the label which includes the text “Made in Ireland”. Bless you Dell, and bless you people of Limerick. Bless you CIT and both the Mr Ryans that assisted me with the ownership of this wonderful portal of joy.

So yes, as you can see, my love of the typing has returned in with a hunger that’s a thirst that’s an image.

* It is sacred tradition that any device that I own that can be named and appears on a network, recieves the name of a Transformer. As I both like lists and am still loving the typege I list them forthwith:

The Ass Creed December 18, 2007

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like... WOWwww *boggle*

Wow, that kicked like a mule. It came outta nowhere and bam, here I am, flat on my stupid ass again. Absolutely unreal, but at the same time, what perfect, albeit dark, symmetry.

But is it true? Is the pain coming from the not knowing or the potential of 100% confirmation and knowing that if that happens, that’s it, fin.

And then how to deal with it. What actions to take, what steps to follow? Do nothing?

I mean god DAMN that’s cold, but maybe it’s just karma equalizing the equation. Hopefully that will make it easier to laugh at.

There is only you, but there’s plenty of me…

fearful symmetry December 17, 2007

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THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Eternal Vitamins of The Gamers Travels (what?) December 4, 2007

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It feels like only yesterday that I was summing up 2006, but I guess that’s what happens when you get older. I remember when summers lasted for years and we had proper weather, with clearly defined summers that fell when they were susposed to and a fair certainity that in the winter it would snow, and we would get at least one day off school.

Of course I’m not happy just knowing that everybody my age feels like time just flies by, I want to understand why it does.

Is it because I understand the world better than I did when I was a kid? Is it because I fill my time awake with endless stuff?

Well back to the summing up. 2007 was indeed a year of change. I finally went on a real, honest to god holiday to another country, in a muthafucking plane no less. And despite this I end the year so close to being completely debt free I can smell it. The instability threatening my working life seems to have calmed somewhat, and I’m putting in consistent regular hours.

I’ve learned that it’s best not to take a specific day and apply that to how I feel most of the time. I now tend to take a sampling over a couple of days or even weeks.

I think one of the best things I’ve done is take a vitamin supplement everyday. Sunshine is not something I see a lot of, and while I’m trying to eat more fruit and veg, it’s not easy when you work nights and can sleep till mid-afternoon darkness. I feel less lethargic, less prone to prolonged colds, and generally more fitter.

Also, something I never thought would happen is that we know have all three of the latest consoles. Can’t really say which one is my favourite as all three have something I like about them. The Wii just feels real, sure the graphics come now where near it’s siblings, but when your playing tennis, bowling or hitting a baddy in Mario Galaxy, you feel more connected to the action on the screen. The PS3 graphics and sound are incredible, and tbh I don’t think a game has used it to it’s full potential yet. That said skidding on the wet road underneath a waterfall that is just so god damned beautiful in Ridgeracer 7 was a moment I will cherish always. And the Xbox 360 (elite don’t you know) has many many wonderful games and seriously impressed me with the graphics in Orange Box and Bioshock. I find it better for shooters. The analog sticks seem to have better range and are more accurate.

But it truly is a joy to be able to walk into a games shop and not worry about which game I can buy. I can get all of them. Well, there are a growing number of titles in the PC section my ageing system just can’t play at all, but that’s a cycle I’ve been through before. When I bought a PS2 I neglected my pc in favour of it until I saw the likes of Doom 3 and Half-life 2 coming. I imagine next year I will decide whether yet another total internals upgrade for my pc is in order, or simply get a decent gaming laptop rig. The latter would cost more, but I find myself not wanting to spend vast amounts of time in this tiny, cold bedroom.

So all in all, to sum up the summary, I have made some simple changes to my life. I’ve cut down on some things and increased other things. I’ve harnessed some of my immense reservoir of stubbornness for my own betterment.

Next year, I really want to see more of the world than just Dublin. Dublins great, but I’m so bored of it. I want to spend a lot of time watching things flowing past the outside of a plane and train. I want to travel across Europe again, but this time as an adult. I want to have a holiday where all I do is get drunk on a beach for a week. I want to go skiing again, possibly even snowboarding.

I’ve spent the last couple of years telling myself there are things I can’t do until I got myself out of a hole. I am both excited and scared to finally see the lip of said hole. And yes, I am still immature enough at 33 to see the double entendre’s in that last sentence. lol

Bebospaceface September 25, 2007

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Bah! Bebo! Myspace Facespace! In my day we had to batter webpages out with notepad and spend days waiting for the modem to scream it up to the internet. And what a place it was, with the gopher and the ftp and irc. Not just the web.

And downloading was a mysterious science which required prayer, prayer that you wouldn’t get disconnected in mid stream. I used a modem for so long I could tell what speed I was going to be getting just by listening.

Back in them days you didn’t need three firewalls and daily updating anti-virus and patches and what not. But neither did you leave your computer connected to the outside world for any time longer than was strictly necessary. I remember USENET where I would download only the headers, then download a post and then disconnect while I replied. Such discipline you don’t see any more, just kids running around the web, downloading porn and getting into mischief.

These days it’s hard for an aul lad like me self to keep up. Apparently the web is now in version 2.0, which I don’t understand. I was sure that these new fangled social interaction sites were just a silly faze for idiots who like annoying flashy nonsense, but look at me now. I have a Facebook, and only recently discovered I had the Bebo. I don’t even remember signing up for the Bebo, but now I have friends on it.

So, from USENET to, forums (boards and SA) to Bebofacespace is it then? Well I suppose I was full of scorn at the boards when I first saw it, I think the web still looked pretty crap back then, when even the smallest pic was evil and using background tiles for the page was trendy.

And you tell that to the Web 2.0 kids today, and they’ll probably google it.

God Sun September 23, 2007

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Recently I plugged the Zeitgeist video, which I still think is excellent. It revealed things to me and connected the dots for a lot of separate things that I knew. What initially shocked me was the argument that Bush did 9/11. I’m not so sure now, there are flaws in the argument but the one thing that has remained is the first part. Christianity is a merge of socialist ideals and sun worship.

For me, that connected recent history with ancient history and all of a sudden my understanding of the journey man has taken has become somewhat clearer.

Sun worship is obvious. It is the giver of energy. It lights the planet. It makes crops grow. And in an age when there were no books, or TV or internet, people would have told stories about the sun and how every year it would go further and further away before coming back in time to grow the crops. But a story with one character can get boring, so hello the moon, representing the dark side.

And that basically is the foundation of a lot of major religions. Sure, lots of other stuff has been tacked on, usually information disguised as stories. The birth of christ on December 25th was chosen so that to anyone who interpreted it collected information on when winter was to end. In early civilisation only the few had access to literacy so oral transfer of data was supreme. Celebrating the day when the sun “wins” and finally conquers winter is knowledge that any civilisation north of the equator would need to know.

Of course, in order to create a complex religion the real reason for celebrating this day needs to be hidden. You do not worship the sun, you worship the Christ, who we, conveniently have in depth knowledge of. So a hierarchy is created, and religion created it. A leader, his council, regional leaders, local leaders. It is fundamentally the same system we use to run our governments.

I love the sun. I didn’t see much of it this year, but when I did, I felt it’s energy and beauty fill me up and make my world more light.

War September 15, 2007

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So yeah, war… On Planet Bob, within the Cyberverse there is war. And it’s probably the biggest one yet, and for once the side I am on is getting swamped by attackers. My own little nation has 5 attackers from three different alliances. What makes it even more interesting is that one of the reasons for the war involves an alliance I created. BAPS tech raids an unaligned, turns out it’s actually a member of the GGA, our protectors get involved and the whole thing begins to escalate.

BAPS has performed well, the squad system is working and we have more of the enemy in anarchy than they have of us, but we are now under attack from 4 alliances, some smaller than us – some bigger.

What’s remarkable about this that is not a bad model for how wars develop in the first place. There are thousands of people on Planet Bob, but behind the scenes only a handful of people direct the actual battles. Soon, one of the largest and most powerful alliance; the NPO, will descend upon the battlefield. Which side they choose will decide the war I think, but if there’s one thing I am use to on Planet Bob, it’s getting the crap kicked out of my nation. They can destroy my nation, but they can’t destroy me, so as far as I’m concerned I’m in this for the long haul, doing what I can to hurt the enemy.

This is what makes Cybernations great. The drama.

Oh yeah and lists, I like lists! September 7, 2007

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Things that drive me nuts:

1. The use of the word more-ish. It’s lazy and stupid and makes no fucking sense at all.

2. Spanish students will cause me to go deaf. Don’t Spanish parents know that Ireland isn’t exactly the holiest of catholic lands anymore?

3. The word “closure”. And that’s means what, precisely? Does it actually exist outside of day time chat shows?

4. Day time chat shows. A load of idiots being stupid and talking stupid and generally being stupid.

5. The glorification of stupidity and the condemnation of intelligence.

6. People who constantly repeat that old joke about there being no number 7 on a list

8. Neo-cons. Cons. Conmen.

9. Racists. Please, your retardation is obsolete. Get something new to blame.

And finally, although I may add to this list in the future:

10. Beans. Don’t really understand why, but I can’t fucking stand them.

How to sell a tell and assorted crap September 7, 2007

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Christ, I hate it when I want to write but I can’t get past the first paragraph. Take this starter:

Playing poker is much like making love to a beautiful woman – you’re trying to figure out what she wants you to do, so you can ejaculate all over the pot…

Doesn’t really work does it?

Then there’s:

Eddie Murphy – lose some weight!

Which was to be the basis for an open letter asking Mr Murphy to leave the fat suit in the closet and make some actual funny movies again. But although Die Hard 4.0 did reasonably well I’m sure I’m not alone in not wanting to hear gravel voiceover man announce the fourth in the Beverly Hills Cop series.

Even just now I started an entry that was about Pavarotti dying and went on to talk about art and beauty and truth and how truth was beauty and therefore art but then as my old signature used to read – “Art is everything and nothing and possibly also a sausage”. In other words I was just mashing clichés together in order to sound clever. Pavarotti is dead and that makes me sad, because his singing of Nessun Dorma at the 1990 World Cup will stay with me forever. A moment of pure beauty, truth and of course art (and a fair few sausages as well I’d imagine) . Thanks Luciano :)

It’s been a long time since I made myself laugh out loud when writing. A lot of these past entries have either tried to be clever or insightful. I seem to be funnier when I’m miserable, which is a trait some comedians share. Of course once they sort their lives out they usually get into acting. I cite Sean Hughes and Denis Leary as examples. Thankfully Bill Hicks died before that tragic fate befell him. Of course sometimes the acting career goes south, misery ensues, and then it’s back to the comedy circuit. Kinda tragic really, unless your Billy Connelly and are in fact, stinking rich.

I also have four separate drafts entitled Come on Motha Fucka! which I think I was trying to write while critically drunk around the turn of the year. It started off as a review of the year and ended up being maudline drunken tributes to various people. Just imagine me going “you guysh.. you know I really love you guysh hic” and you can get a good idea of what it was about. Why they are entitled so is a another fact my brain decided not to store in long term memory.
There was one telling the tale of how I got into Cybernations which I later rehashed in this post which was better anyway although I did like the line about 300 – “Ah 300… A mans movie for manly men indeed.” which it is, and I’m surely manly women enjoyed it also.

Aha, there’s that post on addictions I thought I lost. And it seems to be pretty good and just about finished. But I do like the other one I did. It more rounded and fleshed out.

There’s Confessions of a Minor Internet Celebrity which was susposed to be a parody of the celebrity worship that the masses drink heartily but instead was just self-indulgent twaddle. I still like the title though. Maybe I could turn it into a soft porn script.. hmmm

And lastly there’s a hidden gem that I haven’t read in years. It compares where I was and who I was half a decade ago with who I am today. It came to no solid conclusions, based on the fact that back then I was far more stressed than I am today. I span too many plates and took my oldest catchphrase of “I do it myself!” to new highs and then the inevitable lows. I think it’s incomplete because I just got bored of it’s dreariness.

Looking back, I can see that at times I used vehicles to get the humour out even when all was well in my world. Battle of the Dvd’s was good for that. I may resurrect the concept in future entries.

This entry is dedicated to a poker player who learnt quickly that players have tells but has yet to discover the joy of selling a tell. At least on the poker table anyway ;)

TeRroR August 28, 2007

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Terror. Terror. Terror. Al Queida. Terror. Terror. War on Terror. Terrorists. Terror. Terror. Bombs. Gas. Nuclear dirty bombs. Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. CIA. FBI. BUSH. Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. 911. Terror. Terror.

I flew recently. And when I went through security they asked me to take off my shoes. My fake Nikes posed a possible threat to the security of my flight. Bullshit.

TERROR

Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. TERROR!

Terror terror TeRrorRRWeorwoeroweoorororooroowowowoworo32oooowe

I refuse to be afraid. I refuse to live in fear. I refuse to believe the lies.

I seek the truth.

I return you to your daily dose of terror.

Get a bittorrent client. Go to a bittorrent search site. Look up Zeitgeist. And then look up Power of Nightmares. And when your finished watching, tell a friend.

Gaze into the fist of Dredd August 26, 2007

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For a long time I felt I was holding my breath, waiting for something to happen. During this time I put my entire life into neutral. Nothing else was to cause the boat to rock. I get passionate, I do, when I find something worth get passionate about. And I fight for it, and I fight hard. It’s been too long since I felt that passion. I wondered where it had gone, was I getting older, had the fight been won?

Not so it would seem, not by a long shot. The fight is constant, it is one of the few things that motivate me to do things I am proud of.

But one thing I have learned is that there are more clever ways to fight. The obvious, but stupid way is by directly harnessing anger and turning that energy into action directly. The clever way is to redirect that energy, harness into to alternative motivation, and by not letting it twist and control.

Suppression is no good. If suppression takes hold then the law of the conservation of emotion energy is broken. Input without output leads to leaks, and leaks lead to explosions. Explosions create situations which are beyond control. And control is the key.

Another chapter closes another door opens. I would like to thank all those people who made this post possible.

Gaze into the fist of Dredd!

Addictions August 24, 2007

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I am not a drug addict. I do not abuse drugs. I am never in a state where my moods and thoughts are altered by chemicals. No, I do not get a buzz after eating a good meal, adrenaline does not course through my veins when I am excited or scared.

Lies, all lies. But most humans don’t realise that most of the time they are motivated by the addictions of drugs. Love, sex, food, work all release various chemicals into our systems. Some people get addicted to that, but these are not called addictions, instead they are termed in a more in more acceptable terms like “compulsions” or “obsessions” when they really are similar to addictions.

There is a part of my brains software that monitors my own addictions. It allows a certain amount but alerts me and informs me if it thinks the addiction in question is causing myself or others harm.

Face it, you are an addict, so is your granny. So is your dog and all your friends. Everybody is an addict but if we weren’t the human race wouldn’t exist. If adrenalin wasn’t such a wonderful drug then our ancestors wouldn’t have risked their lives hunting food.

Governments make certain naturally occurring substances illegal. And they spend billions trying to stop their populations from ingesting them. To me it seems that the stated reasons for doing this, mostly health reasons, are both hypocritical and stupid. Alcohol is a dangerous poison, and causes more problems in society than most other drugs. But it is accepted because it’s too easy to make and it is deeply woven into most cultures. From the time early hominids ate some fermented fruit and got drunk, alcohol has been with us. And the same goes for nicotine.

Many drugs are banned for reasons that simply do not apply to todays society. They are born of ignorance and knee jerk reactions to hysteria.

The chemicals I have had flowing in me over the entirety of my life and been wide ranging and various. And I have learned a great deal about the human condition in doing so. Maybe I’m arrogant in that I consider myself to be separate from those who defiantly claim not to be addicts but I really do think that if more people recognise the real reasons they do things then they’d know themselves a lot better.

Alien-Nation? July 21, 2007

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So I’m standing outside the Fitz talking to Dom about the alliance and how best to run a country and some random person sparks an interest. And then you have to try and explain the appeal of web based nation simulation games. I mean for fuck sake. Or Curva Match, which I’m fond of saying. I know, it sounds so deeply nerdy, so fundementally sad that you’d be forgiven for imagining me to be the type of person who has watched every episode of star trek, ever. Including all the deleted bits. And the outtakes. And the makings of. And all the web has to offer. But no books. That would be sad….

Where was I? Oh yes. Nation building on the internet. Well… It all begain one innocent day on GBS. I would be classified as a gbs’r on SA because I spend most of my time either there or in the photoshop forum. And there’s this banner for GOONS on Cybernations. I can’t recall the exact banner but I don’t mind clicking on banners on SA cos they’re funny.

Aha! I had done this before! Why yes indeed. NationStates, some bird called Jennifer, click a few buttons, type in some numbers, make some decisions and viola, your own country. King Amp was I, taking out five mins a day to look down upon my nation and see what I had created. So I quickly had set up a pretty nifty little area south west of Dublin (too far south west as it happens, but it made the expansation that more dramatic) on Planet Bob.

But what was this? Free money from the GOONS, I pumped up fast and grew an army. War was rumoured so we noobs  gathered troops and tanks and built infra.

When outta nowehere comes these orange dudes! And I’m in Anarchy! And I’m fucked! But hold, what lies in the horizon? For tis the Goon Cavalary. Yes, two members of the ODN had snuck attacked me, wiped out my army and sent me into economic depression. And I felt like shit, but I knew help was on the way and it came. My attackers got jumped on by as many as three other Goons. They hadn’t a chance. I recovered, built up my army and went on the offensive, picking targets that were attacking my squadmates. It was a good war, and I was proud to fight. And remember, this is a web based nation simulation game.

The added sauce to this meat is the forums where the drama of politics is simulated in all it’s finery.  There are coups, spy scandals, mergers, declarations of war, surrender terms, lengthy debates about pokemon and thousands of hilarious avatars and sigs.

Obviously I am a dual citizen on the internet. And while I spend more time on boards I have contributed some of my best to SA. So I thought, boards is pretty big, if Goons came from SA then boards could have the numbers to generate a small but functional alliance. Thus BAPS formed in my head and I put a huge amount of time into creating forums and writing threads and validating people and stuff.

It was also hard leaving Goons. Sure, I had been battle hardened, and you learn quickly in war, but it had seemed so short a time and had just about graduated bootcamp. I had yet to be part of a proper squad with a name and cool sigs and all that crap.

And then reallife(tm) said “oi!” and I ran out of time almost immediately after finishing most of the stuff. And I tried to do stuff but I wasn’t sleeping enough and eventually I just had to give up running it. But I think that was a good idea anyway. I’m more of an ideas man then a ruler.  And there are far better people for the job.

Meanwhile on the Moon, in LunarWars, my once proud colony lies in ruins. All I can do now is, bounce out of ed, buy some houses and wait for the next wave of ground attacks and OF fly bys. I can’t replace the houses as fast as they are destroying them but I’m making it take longer. Which still means I’m tying up an enemy colony.

It is saddening to see my colony like this but it is not mine. It is Goon. It will be rebuilt, I still have my AI and my improvements. My upgrades may have to go, but hopefully not, they were handy. I fight for Goondom because as an internet nation, it kinda rocks.

It is gladdening to talk about this, I know I am addicted, but it feels like a creative addiction, a motivating force.

I MADE THESE! :)

Goon Propaganda - FIGHT ON! FIGHT HARD! Goon Propaganda - GOONS GA - STILL ROLLIN.

Love thyself. July 3, 2007

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I write this in the full knowledge that right now, in this moment, my life is perfect. It is everything I have ever wanted and more. The more is the part I am currently trying to process to digest but I have faith in my own ability to adapt. To learn the lessons I have learned and apply them in the here and now and not the fair distant future for once. For once I have entered into a life where my home life, my love life and indeed my entire life is what I feel I deserve, what I have earned.

And yes, that may sound egotistical. It may sound disingenuous coming from a man in my current state (SIX CANS OF STELLA AND STILL GOIN STRONG BABY) but I feel it to be true.

More than anytime in my entire life, which spans three decades and a bit now, I feel like finally I am on the right track. I feel cool. I feel in control. I have repeatedly tested myself through sleep deprivation, nights which could have ended in extreme psychical pleasure, and more that I cannot detail in this my very public blog.

I am a good person, the good guy can win. That is the message of this blog today. Be good and good things will come to you. You don’t need religion or drugs to come to this conclusion. Look within yourself. Smile at yourself in the mirror and see…… you. Like you, LOVE you, and see that you are an incredibly complex yet wonderful culmination of what time and quantum physics can produce.

I reached a decision a while ago. And that was to love myself. And I believe that since that time, when I forgave my own faults and saw the potential I could achieve, I have prospered. I hope that in that reading this you can too. Look within yourself. See the real you. Cast away the doubts, the insecurities and see you for who you really are.

I like what I see, and I think you will too ;)

I’m not a Sony shill but… June 10, 2007

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I have found Megabass again. In the form of a mobile phone that I spent at least six months waiting to buy. It’s a Sony Ericsson K750i and I love it dearly. It does pretty much everything I want in a mobile device. It takes pictures, makes movies, plays Tetris and Bejewelled and most importantly of all, now that I have purchased a cable (that cost nearly as much as the phone itself), it plays my favourite tunes in good old megabass. Oh yeah, it also allows me to make calls and text my friends and loved ones.

I recently redid the feng shooey of my room and during that time I found my first Sony Walkman, and as I studied it I remembered why I fell for Sony in the first place. And that reason was megabass. Fuller bass, true bass, bass that brings out the bass guitar and emphasises those moments in a song that I really dig. When the drums reach a peak or when a guitar kicks in, it just sounds proper now. And all this within a device that is on my person as much as my wallet or my watch. It is a vast improvement over my previous solution which was another Sony device, the psp. Why not put megabass in the PSP? Why don’t Sony Centres sell PSP’s and the games and accessories for them? It’s just bloody stupid tbh.
Yes, I am a Sony fanboy. Sony have developed many things that I thought were remarkable. Megabass was one of them and up until recently Trinitron was another. And although I consider myself to be primarily a PC gamer, I have clocked more hours on Sony consoles then any other. It greatly saddened me to see them make the mistakes of allIwantforchristmasisapsp and the current moronic dustball ads. Oh so tumbleweed thinks I should buy a psp? Shut up tumbleweed, you’re not funny and you’re not clever.

The PS3 is too expensive, I will not spend over 600 euro’s on a console. I have better uses for that kind of money. Much better uses. And 70 quid for a game. No, no, and thrice no. I know in my heart that the PS3 will succeed if only because the general public sees Playstation as the golden standard. The Wii will eventually show up it’s architectural flaws over the next few years, the Xbox 360 will gain share but not become dominent and the PS3 over time will drop in price and become once again the dominant console. Sony are playing the long game here. There won’t be a PS4 for at least five years, I’d imagine.

I have a Walkman again, I can listen to my tunes in the way I want to hear them, with yes, the only earphones that don’t irritate the hell out of my tiny earholes (Sony MDR W24’s, and in searching for the model number I have just found out my worst fear has come true, they’ve stopped making them, FUCKITY FUCK!!!!)

So I raise my premium can of Belgian beer to Sony. Yes, you have strayed from the path, yes your laptops are too expensive, yes you need to kill your entire Playstation marketing crew, but I still love you and I always will.

“amp, you rock” May 18, 2007

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At least that’s what my blog scripty thing just told me. And you know what yeah, I fucking do rock.

My ego is a strange beast. There have been great trials which it has gone through and when I’m through them and on the other side, when my ego should rise up and demand more attention that is when a trip switches in my head and waits for the downside.

It is an automatic response. Far too many times in the past has something concrete been offered that proved I was someone of worth. And far too many times has it come back to bite me on the ass. Instead I learned to value my own worth, independently of standard social markers.

I try and be the kind of guy that I would like as a friend, moderator, worker, lover. When interacting with people I try and see myself and how I act and some of the questions I ask myself during the interaction stick in my head like neon signs in Vegas:

Some people think I care too much what others think of me. They are right. I do care, far too much, because in truth I cannot think of me the way they do. I am inside me. I can see my reflection but find it fascinating to look at my outside from the inside. I don’t think I’m particularly good looking, probably because I prefer the ladies but I have seen something of a muscular definition arriving in my upper body. It is fascinating to me to see this.

I guess three years of dealing cards beats trying to go to a gym. Now if only I could find a job that would take care of this belly.

I’m fairly sure that over time, I have given more to society than I have received. This pleases me. I like human beings. I like the fact that I haven’t killed anybody yet. I did my part to protect the world from Y2k. I helped a friend get to hospital when he got burned. I dressed up as a woman to raise a good chunk of cash for sick kids.

But my ego, restrained and bound though it is, knows that these, the things I gave back to  society will pale in comparison to the potential I have to do bigger and better things.

BEES May 14, 2007

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The thing about being a  Catagory Moderator on www.boards.ie (not to be confused with the famous boardsie.com, which I would highly recommend you visit should you be a fan of having your eyeballs slowly sandpapered away by the scrolling bannerage) is that it’s actually less work than being a non cat mod.

Tbh, I have relaxed a lot more with the modding. Life has been busy for a while now and I find less time for boards. Oh I still read, and post occasionally but I think it’s good to let newer mods find their feet and do stuff.

I tend to go in only when needed. Such as early in the morning when all the norms are in bed and the spammers are cackling to themselves like vultures licking their beaks to the thought of a sleeping mammoth like boards.

And what a wonderful beast the boards have become.  I do be sitting at the poker table, dressed in me dickie, occasionally looking a bit serious while my brain crunches numbers, when I suddenly hear the phrase “read it on boards” and I smile to myself. In a small way, two of my favourite communities have expanded to the stage where they intermingle.

This is a good thing. The world is changing, there are new communities emerging and it’s only a matter of time before they nudge growing and growing influence on the real world. It is remarkable. There are precendents from the past but this new future is full of possibilities. Wild and good.

Give a man 100 million euro’s. Tell him he won’t get it for some time and that man will do nothing but dream. Well apart from making sure he meets the requirements to earn the 100 mill. He doesn’t mind those. He has spent his entire life running around changing. He knows he can’t change forever, that there is a time when the pace of change must slow.

Even if the chances are low, the highs are worth it. It is worth the gamble.

Sweet like candy to my soul May 6, 2007

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Where is the irony? Where is the sense of impending doom? /me looks around for the angst fairy. SHOW YOURSELF!

A lot of times in my life I have almost been as happy as I was when I wrote the last blog. I say almost because nothing quite has left me in this state before. Of course since then I have been reluctant to write anything in case the mere observation of things would cause them to vanish. If you know me and read this then try not to be curious, just be happy that your friend is happy.

I am not punching pillows, I am not losing sleep, I am taking care of myself and recognizing that one of the main things I need to do is stick to the plan; work hard, pay debts and above all remain as sane as possible. I may become lost frequently but that’s ok as long as I keep my general bearings.

For most of my life I have fought against regulation. I have fought it because I value the random, I have cherished the creativity of madness. I have a fondness for the surreal. But there are uses for regularity. Work too hard and stress builds. Party too hard and work suffers. Regulating the two leads to balance. And balance leads to stability.

My life is currently stable. There are no impending crisis’. I do not feel the doom approaching. I feel that for the first time. And it comforts me. Deep inside me there is a warmth; a feeling that I have fixed a number of my flaws and that while the future is still wildly uncertain, it will be one I can face and not make the same mistakes I once did. I may have to make entirely new mistakes this time.

It is possible that age has finally caught up with me and I am calmer and less batshit than before. It is possible that I have sorted the valuable from the trivial in my life. I feel strong, I feel calm. I recognize that these feelings have occurred before but experience has taught me to be patient enough to let time pass and see what is to be seen after the dust settles.

I was right, this year is going very well so far. Some things I expected and some things I plainly did not. This blog is to confirm that the last one was not random insanity but an effort to put things down in words, to mark a glorius bliss I never want to forget. I want to read that and feel what I did then and what I did now.

Love,

A duck.

JESUS! Who knew? April 24, 2007

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A thousand songs are playing in my head at the same time and they are all happy. The sun shines in my head even though I have not fitted my energy saver bulb into it’s socket.

I haven’t slept in two days but I am more alive than I have ever been in my entire life. It’s a  profound level of joy that courses through my veins and stops me in my tracks and almost makes me fall over. Mental martial law must be enforced to stop me bursting into song and tap dancing. And the only drugs I am currently on are caffeine, nictotine and whatever wonderful internal cocktail my brain has ordered.

It doesn’t matter about the past, and even the present doesn’t matter because I know. I know it to be true, I know that it isn’t in fact a mental defect, it isn’t something to be purged or destroyed.

It’s an amazing thing… like a door unlocking into a wonderous room and for the first time I understand things I never understood before.  I cycle endlessly through my favourite songs and nothing fits, it’s all too morose too comforting too whiny until I begin chasing cars and then bang floored again.

So once again tall billowing metaphors set sail on the sea of this blog. There is history to re-write and understand there is a knot untangling and weaving itself in my mind.

I am in a state of bliss that dwarfs any narcotic, action, or dream I have ever experienced before in my entire life.. it is astounding, it is unbelievable, it is real.

Divergence April 21, 2007

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I keep writing blogs and then not finishing them. I wrote something about addictions and it disappeared when my laptop decided to go back one page. I remember most of it and may well re-write in the future.

I did delete a blog and now I can’t find the offline copy. So I have a vague idea of why I took it down but not very specifically. I don’t do this often. It’s either publish and be damned or a series of drafts or offline fragments that fail to make even my lax standards.

My spider sense is tingling. Things are afoot. I feel that there are decisions I will have to make this year that will challenge me, and change me. Patterns are forming that feel familiar, like floating down a river and getting the feeling it’s going to fork into two streams. Impending divergence.

I feel restless, sleep comes but in bursts, my brain eager for more uptime while my body craves rest. Normally this problem can be at least suspended by intoxication but on this established method I feel it’s time to diverge and try a path less traveled.

And I think part of that path will be to concentrate less on figuring out what people want from me and more on what I want to do.

(Man, I remember when I used to write funny blogs. I will not write another blog unless it makes me laugh)

Illic est tantum vos April 11, 2007

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I’ve learned some profound things of late. I have been researching a particular puzzle for many years now and I think I have made something of a breakthrough. In doing so I’ve discovered that I am mentally deficient in certain key areas.

I had to make a decision. This is what I do. I am male and therefore when faced with a problem I get very anxious about finding a solution. Being a person who believes in the needs of the many or the one or the me, I had thought that I had found a solution that would at least give me some dignity and honour. And then I threw that away too.

And all the time I ask myself “why?”. Why did I do that? Who am I to decide what is best for other people? Is my ego so large that I just know that I know best? Did becoming a martyr for myself work? Or was it simply fear, fear of responsibility, of having to look out for someone other than myself? Fear that I just didn’t have what was required. Fear of the infection of my own imperfections.

It’s funny, I had convinced myself that this story I have been writing had almost reached the final chapter. Now I’m starting to look at it and think that the whole thing is merely the first chapter of a much larger work. It is daunting. However while I am mentally deficient I am certainly capable of adjusting my outlook to a different scale.

Grrrrr arg.. March 21, 2007

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I am at this very moment lying in my bed. My body is recovering from the effects of too many stella artois and eight year old american bourbon. My brain aches demanding sugar and water. I shiver because this bedroom is underground and my body is unable to produce heat because I have not fed myself properly in the last two days.

My mobile contains text messages I would like not to have received but I am glad of the knowledge they have brought. Certain mysteries have been resolved. I am forewarned and can see my path ahead a little more clearly.

In the past I have written in this blog about women. Sometimes in general and sometimes in more specific yet cryptic ways. The more specific I am, the more cryptic I get. I sometimes wonder why my life is like this and why it isn’t simpler. I see couples go about there day, holding hands and wonder what their story is. How did they come to be together? Was there sacrafices made? Were other people hurt in the process? And envitably the urge to crawl into self-pity and give up on finding happiness ever again occurs.

I think I probably have given up. At least on the whole get married, get mortgage and breed thing. If I wanted that badly enough I would be there already. But I’m not and sometimes I hate myself for not giving in and settling for what is a perfectly acceptable lifestyle for most people. I have in the past tried to figure out why I am this way. Why I seem to always pick a path that leads to heartbreak and angst and to be honest I think that I actually enjoy it. It’s like the pain makes me feel alive. I observe a lot. I am a repository for a large number of secret confessions and at times I feel disconnected from the rest of humanity. I work a job not just for the money but because I would literally go insane if I didn’t.

If you’ve read this far you are probably judging my mood right now to be depressed. This is untrue. I am not depressed. I am not sad. If anything I’m pretty happy and when I finish this I’m going to get dressed, make myself better and then sleep. Then I’ll go to work where I will deal cards as best I can and come home.

Last night was a good night, I talked little but danced a lot. I drank more than I should have but I think I behaved myself reasonably well. It was a celebration of erasing a large chunk of my overall debt and a deferred Paddies day. It was a chance to get to know some people a bit better and earn some trust.

I am a good person. At times this can be a fault in a world that is run by bad people. But I do not answer to those people. I do not answer to a god. I answer to myself.

But there are times when I wish I would just fuck off and leave me be :)

Shoulder to Shoulder February 24, 2007

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I have just watched Ireland destroy England at Croke Park. I have drunk a few bottles of Stella Artois so you will excuse the fact that I have tears in my eyes and a voice that is now ragged and hoarse.

Ireland as a country has grown. Yes there are still problems, yes there are still things that are very wrong here, but now instead of defining ourselves using negatives like a hatred for the English we are starting to define ourselves with some of our better qualities.

To the world the Irish are defined, especially in the US, as a nation of alcoholic leprachauns. In both the Simpsons and the more edgier Family Guy this is taken to extremes, but I don’t mind that. I note that no other country is honoured so. For so small a nation we have a disproportionate share of world culture. This is in part due to the fact that as a nation we have grown outside of our borders. We have spread, populated and bred in other countries but have still retained some of the features that are unique to this island.

When watching English television, which aside from international matches I watch a lot more of than our national channels I have noticed a significant change in attitude towards  the Irish. We are no longer looked down on so much. We have gained a lot of respect.

I have always been proud to be Irish. My name may not be of Irish origin, but my dna and more importantly my attitude is Irish. I am Irish, I stand to the refrain of our anthem. But I do not measure my Irishness by how much I hate the English. I don’t hate the English. I have studied history and for me 900/600/400 years of being ruled by them is no reason to hate them these days. I understand the context of those years. I understand the bigger picture of what was going on back then in more european terms.

The history I was taught in school, even though it was a very anglican protestant school was still very biased against the English. It omitted a lot of English history and concentrated very much on Irish history without exploring the reasons behind what happened here.

There are still those that hate the English, that would sooner spit on them than say hello. Thankfully those people are fading into a shrinking minority. I’m sure I was not alone when I was aphrensive about the playing of God Save The Queen at the heart of the GAA. I was worried that perhaps the crowd would embarress this nation by showing disrespect to our nearest neighbour. Instead we had relative silence, followed by polite aplause. Bravo. Bravo.

As a country we no longer need to prove that we are a nation. We are a nation. A proud nation. But also an intelligent nation that can see the value of forgiveness and fight our rivalries on the pitch rather than through violence.

We need to forget about the past, the people that wronged our ancestors are long dead. If you disagree with this then go fuck off and live in the Burren and speak Irish and never read or watch anything in English ever again, you are not part of what Ireland stands for right now. We are now a nation with many different nationalities and cultures. What unites us is our friendly laid back attitude and our love of alchohol. I work with a lot of Polish people and I find it odd that despite the fact that they are from a nation so far away that they are so similar to Irish people. I guess it’s the fact that they have a farming tradition and were fucked over by both Germany and then Russia during the last century.

One of my ancestors is English, one out of many. But nationality is not necessarily geographic or rooted in the DNA, it’s to do with a collection of people that share an idea of what is good and what is right.  Let us focus on the fact that we are all European and we want the best for all the people on this planet. We are all human beings so let us try and treat each other with respect.

New Vistas February 2, 2007

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I write to you today from within the shiny newness of Windows Vista ULTIMATE. I feel compelled to type ULTIMATE in caps not because it is, but because of how silly it sounds. I R TEH ULTIMAT! I was initially going to go for a dual boot configuration as my Windows XP install has been honed and tweaked to perfection, but when I tried re-partioning my drives PartionMagic decided that my disk had a bad sector and as a result destroyed said XP install.

My pc went into a boot loop, giving me options and then rebooting when it couldn’t find the windows folder so I decided to throw the baby out with the bath water and go for a clean Vista install. It was a curiously pleasant experience due mostly to the fact that I had four cans of Stella Artois to drink and I was playing a bit of poker on my laptop. It didn’t ask any really stupid questions and didn’t presume I was American. It found and installed drivers for every bit of hardware I have apart from my little used Bluetooth dongle.

The first thing I always do on a fresh install is get internet work. In the old days that would have meant a series of trials. This time I just opened up IE and downloaded Firefox. I exported my bookmarks from my laptop to my server and then imported them back in to this Firefox, thus meaning all I had to do was log into certain sites and tell them to remember me.

Winamp kept telling me it needed a file called PX.dll to work and with a bit of googling I sorted that out. Vista told me it was incompatible but until Windows Media Player comes up with a skin as good as MDD3 I will continue to ignore it, except for video playback. My playlists are all stored server side so no problems recreating that. And just now I’ve fixed a weird reverb problem with audio playback.

I do like the new interface. It’s very sexy. Keeps the good parts that XP had along with some delicious new tricks. The 3d flippy thing is pretty cool although I’m not sure if I’ll actually use it much. The transparency of windows is nice as is the way windows minimise and maximise fluidly.

Of course you can tell that Microsoft have a fair few Macs lying around. Vista is XP with bits of the Mac Os X lifted almost directly and plugged into it but I’m cool with that because I’m just too familiar with windows to make the switch to an operating system that is completely alien to me. Not having a right mouse button causes me a level of anxiety that I’m just not comfortable with.

I stayed with Windows 2000 for a long time. I didn’t like XP’s patronising tone. I didn’t like the stupid dog that came with searching. But this time I’m jumping straight in to Vista. It didn’t try and stop me looking inside system folders. It does however ask me to confirm whether I really want to run certain things and I don’t mind that because there are programs that could be doing bold stuff in the background without my knowledge. So whereas XP just presumed I was a dumbass; Vista asks the right questions.

Of course, as a gamer the final decision will come down to how good games will perform on my rig. Vista tells me my pc has a score of 4.1 which isn’t bad but I can already see that I’m going to have to get more ram. A gig of ram is loads for XP but with merely Firefox, a couple of explorer windows, a VNC window and Steam running I’m already using 70% of my ram.

Therefore my 80gb sata drive is going to be thrashing a lot with virtual page filing and as it apparently has a bad sector a replacement will be required.

But not just now. For now I will make do. When Steam finishes downloading Counterstrike I will be seeing how it plays. If getting new drivers for my Radeon 9800 XT doesn’t help then I’ll have to reformat and re-install XP. If I can’t game then I lose a very important part of why I own a pc.

So for now, I think yes, they’ve created the best Windows interface ever. Yes, it does feel more secure. And yes Gadgets are pretty cool. But as most people are saying it’s not really worth upgrading to just yet. Of course Microsoft are playing the long game on this one. The common masses will just buy a new laptop with Vista pre-installed. Corporates will upgrade because Microsoft tells them to and because of the extra security. But for me, it’s something I have to evaluate and understand before it becomes mainstream.

I think cake January 27, 2007

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I believe in Darwinian thought; that the subconscious brain starts off with a basic unit of thought and morphs it into an idea. Many different ideas will then be joined together, discarded or finished into actual ideas which are then sent off to my conscious brain which then wonders where the hell that idea comes from. My brain does this a lot. It’s pretty good at analyzing systems. It urges my conscious to get as much data as possible, which means that I am primarily addicted to consuming as much of it as possible. Every now and then my subconscious tells my conscious that there’s a backlog of unprocessed data and at that point I usually do very little. I will sleep a lot. I will re-read old books or watch repeats of Top Gear.

During this time my subconscious takes all these things, sorts them and then starts evolving them, connecting them and eventually sounds off a microwave DING noise to let my waking self know that the cake is baked. My conscious pokes this confectionery, sniffs it and then takes a bite. Nine times out of ten it throws it in the bin. But 10% of the time, it eats the cake and my life changes, sometimes incredibly significantly.

Right now I have one such cake sitting before me. It’s a nice looking cake. It’s got everything I like in a cake but to be honest I had a cake like this before and while it tasted great, had no bitter aftertaste and left me feeling very satisfied, I had indigestion afterwards. So, instead of throwing this cake away, my conscious, like an annoying restaurant critic is asking to speak to the chef. The chef will not speak directly so the critic has to relay his queries through a waiter. The chef says that the indigestion wasn’t his fault, that the last cake was baked to perfection using all the right ingredients and that perhaps it’s not the cake but that the critic is in fact allergic to one of the ingredients.

The critic thinks that perhaps the chef is right. Just because the cake looks and smells similar doesn’t mean that it will have the same result. Just because many of the ingredients are the same doesn’t mean that it will cause him indigestion. But even so, the critics appetite for cake has gone and he orders some ice-cream instead.

A Quarter-assed Yogi Bear. January 10, 2007

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I wrote a half-assed piece a while ago which was my attempt at writing how I feel about women. Actually it wasn’t even half-assed, it was about a quarter-assed. It would have a lot of trouble riding a bike.

Over the years people seem to develop the attitude that I am a ladies man. I have wandered through life not really understanding this. The truth is I have always chosen quality over quantity. I have a few one night stands and regret them all. Mostly because I felt I was cheapening what is for me the most intimate thing I can do. And I’m not just talking about sex, I am talking about opening up myself to another person on a level that I will never be able to do with even the closest of my male friends.

There is a theory I subscribe to and it’s called the Theory of Conservation of Emotional Energy. When human beings are full of this energy, they feel the need to export at least some of it to other humans. It works for both positive and negative energy and it always remains constant. I believe in this theory because I made it up. It helps as a tool though. I have found that if I miss someone a lot it helps to tell somebody else about it, even if it through some abstract layer like this blog. There are times when I assign an avatar to a particular bundle of emotions and try to deal with as a whole. I find that it simply doesn’t work.

The truth is that there are a lot of people I miss, going right back to my first girlfriend. I miss her as much as my last girlfriend. I know the things I should have done and the things I shouldn’t and above all I know that I spend far too much time thinking about it. As a result, I think I’ve stumbled upon a new methodolgy, which involves me flirting a lot more with women I find attractive but have no intention of following through with. For a lot of people this isn’t new, it’s just what they do. But I’m not your average kind of bear.

Sometimes I can just forget the world. January 10, 2007

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I am currently a flem factory, designed to produce as much flem as my body can muster. My head throbs despite taking disprin and every now and then I hack and cough as if my lungs themselves wish to take more part of the unit that writes this.

I do not say this to exact sympathy from you, my ever lovely reader, I merely wish to describe the fact that I am not well. My brain however is fighting fit, and wishes that my body was up to all the things I want it to do. I want to go to work and I feel bad that I’m not but there’s not much use for a dealer that has coughing fits while trying to talk a game.

So I sit here, tapping away on my laptop, as I listen to Death in Vegas’ Rekkit while winamp puts up pretty visualizations on a 32″ widescreen lcd.

I do have one regret over the Christmas period. I sent a particularly embarrassing text to someone that really doesn’t need that kind of text from me. That I don’t remember sending it, or that it was New Years Eve is no excuse. As a result I have erased the number of this person from my phone and will never again make first contact. If that person is reading this then please accept my apology. Even at the best of times I can still be a world class idiot.

Incidentally if you want to have one of those nights were you remember fuck all, I can highly recommend a shot of whiskey mixed with a can of Stella Artois. Tastes great but don’t plan on operating heavy machinery anytime afterwards.

Aside from that one moment of weakness it was a good christmas. I am writing a lot more  and have found a writing partner from an extremely unexpected source. I was a little worried that there was a danger I would ressurect demons from my past and go a little nuts but to be entirely honest it’s brought me nothing but good things. I am writing fiction and I like what I’m writing. I don’t care that it’s not really up to publishing standard. I just want to get into the habit of writing stories. I am finding out what I need to work at and what I’m good at writing about. I do seem to have a block on writing about the present, and I’m not entirely sure why but I believe the process we are developing will help me figure out why.

Tis the season. December 29, 2006

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Christmas. I dared not speak it’s name before it was finished. This fictional day, picked to obscure it’s original purpose of celebrating the fact that from now on it’s only going to get brighter,  has a deeper symbolism for me. I hate winter. I hate it, it bugs me. I do not like it. I am not a creature designed for low temperatures. I favour t-shirts over jumpers. I like Bermuda shorts. I miss the suns warmth.

So there are methods I have developed to counter these symptoms of negative emotional output. I work very hard. This gives me less free time and makes me sleep more. Therefore I speed up time. Then Christmas day itself becomes an oasis of joy as I renew my familial ties and hope that in the coming new year I’ll find ways to not let that bond become as severed as before.

And then there is alcohol. I speak to you now with whiskey in my veins. It feels good. It feels right. It’ll feel bloody awful later on but at the moment the muscle I pulled in my left shoulder doesn’t hurt at all and I’ve got a silly smile on my face.

2006 was an interesting year for me. It’s the year I made some very good decisions, and through those decisions I managed to pull myself out of a hole of my own making. I grew up a lot, and at times I wondered had I lost something in the process but I don’t think so. My brain isn’t built that way. I remember a lot. Probably too much. I can feel things getting squeezed out but they never actually leave. My memories are like layers of sediment. If I dig deep enough I can put myself back in the exact moment, I can access all my senses and remember everything as if I had gone back in time.

But I don’t do that much. It’s hard to do for a lot of reasons.

2007 is going to be a good year. I will build upon the base I built this year and by the end of 2007 I will have achieved something I have been dreaming of for years. It will herald the birth of yet another new me, confident but still self-depreciating, mature but still spontaneous,  and wiser but still as stupid as EVAR.

I will finally go on a holiday, I will leave the shores of this fair isle and sample another culture for the first time in over a decade. I will work hard, I will play hard, I will have fun. I hope you do too :)

Laziness December 20, 2006

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If I take a shortcut to the shops, am I being lazy or am I being efficient? In other words if I am being more efficient and doing less work to achieve the same goal am I in fact being lazy?

This thought occurred to me on the way to the shops just now and I’m writing this because there’s nothing on telly and it’ll probably take me the length of time to write this for my chiabatta spicy chicken pizza to cook. It’s going to be yum.

What some people describe as laziness is merely efficiency. Is it lazy to clean up the front room once a week rather than twice a day? Is it slovenly? Should I be making regular patrols seeking out rogue things and enforcing a showroom style dictatorship or should I just relax and clean it up later?

This is the type of crap that goes on in my head all the time. I ponder the things that most people tend not to think about too much. They have fixed idea’s in there head about how things should be done and the best ways to do them. These people fear change, because change leads to the unknown and the unknown requires work to understand.

I embrace change. I have changed my life many times. I have lived in nine places since I was born and I am sure that that figure will rise significantly as I get older. I love to explore, but not just the physical world, the mental world too. And the only brain I can study is my own. Therefore, I embrace change, because my brain has to adapt. I look forward to new things. I read slashdot looking for clues about the future will turn out so that I can be ready for that change.

That requires effort and work and so to some people I may appear to be lazy just because I can’t be arsed walking a few hundred more feet to the Tesco’s to get the same crap for a few pence less.

A blog about a blog. December 20, 2006

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I don’t have many people commenting on this blog. I used to but I think that was in the days before everyone + cat had there own. I think it’s also because a lot of people don’t get what I’m writing about. Well most of the time I don’t care. This blog has many reasons for existence:

This blog is never to be taken literally, when I’m talking in abstract it is like untangling a length of cable. I am probing my own subconscious trying to understand who I am currently and how to manage that person. Or not manage. Or make a decision. Or not.

There are time when I am tired and I write a blog. That doesn’t mean I’ve been tired for the last week. It just means that in that particular half an hour or so, I was tired. If I sound depressed that could be just me writing while hungover or that I’m in a bad mood because somebody was rude to someone I like.
I am very aware that despite this blog some people will see themselves reflected in my text and make their own conclusions about my state of mind. Please don’t do this. Most of the time I don’t understand my own state of mind but often, after spouting it out in this way I find I have a better idea. Oh I could go back and edit it, even delete it but that’s cheating, that removes the spontaneity, it changes the stream of consciousness into a chlorine filled swimming pool.

That said, when I reach the end of a blog, I will proof-read it and correct anything that I feel is just wrong. Sometimes I will tell myself it’s a big load of crap and save it locally in a text file. But when I hit the Publish button, then I’m done. I may re-read it later and cringe but usually I find bits that I like.

And now to think of a title. Something witty.. something.. neutral.. something not containing references to elephants..  something about the circular nature of this blog being about this blog. I have it!

Do No Harm? December 16, 2006

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There’s something that has caused me to write more words than any other topic. And it’s not George Bush Jr. It’s about someone who I have thought about almost everyday for many years now. I have written these words in public under the cloak and dagger of abstract metaphors, hiding key words in seemingly innocuous prose and written vast tracts of angst ridden self analysis in private. And all the while hating myself for not being able to process a disconnection, a lack of data exchange between my brain and another brain. But still I wrote, I learned how to use my grasp of english to convey feeling, to record my thoughts and as a result I have created a decentralised body of work that is pretty much my favourite possession.

I like to think that if my brain has a constitution then one of the cardinal ammendments is “Do No Harm”. And that ain’t that easy. Indeed there are times when I nearly broke. Nearly lashed out with all the venomous fury I could muster, but I always considered it wiser and more… mature when I held back, when I diverted the anger into flame and snarl at the screen and growl.

None shall pass says my brain Gandalf, who stands alone on a bridge facing down the large inflamed yet shadowy beast. That battle represents a visual tool I use to convince myself to hold fast, to keep the shields up, to keep myself sane. The problem is there is an equally strong contigent of variously avatared emotions that want Gandalf to lose, to fall off the bridge and let the demons through. Let the evil take over and embrace the power.

And that scares me, face the demon or jump into an unknown abyss. There is no backing away, there is no retreat possible. Against anything else I probably would relent, and save myself the hassle but not when it comes to this. It’s do or die, sink or swim, catchphrase or catchphrase.

I have this picture in my head of what I would percieve as heaven. I am in a sun chair on a Mexican beach with a drink containing outrageous foliation in one hand and a cuban cigar in the other. I have a pair of rediculously expensive Oakley’s (the gold ones) on and a pair of burmuda’s made up of violently unfashionable colours. The gentle rolling surf is disturbed when a beautiful woman rises from the sea like a sunrise. A goddess on the back of an elephant that for some odd reason has a snorkel and snowshoes on. The elephant seems happy to see me as it sprays me with sea water and then delicately places it’s rider on the beach. She slaps me in the face with a fish and then using lips that hypnotise me whether they move or not she says: “Next time, you’re going to the offy!”.

I say nothing at all because I just can’t stop grinning inanely.

It’s a fantasy, but a fantasy with a compelling power. A power that could cause me to do harm to others. Harming myself is one thing but harming others is something that in itself could destroy the beauty of that fantasy. The ends can be altered by the means.

A Mulled Whine December 15, 2006

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There are times when I think of a cool title to call a blog and I rush in to write something around that concept. This is not one of those times. I do not know what I will call this entry. Is it important? Well when I re-read it later it probably will be. It provides a quick label to box in whatever I’m going to be babbling about shortly.

I’ve been delving into some archive stuff that I wrote some years ago. It was research to help me understand I few things I’m currently mulling over. Mulling might not be the word. Having trouble sleeping and having the urge to get drunk is probably more accurate.  Mulled whine, that’s a good title. Probably been used before by some literary genius but it’s a pun and that’s good enough for me.

Two paragraphs in and I still have no idea what I want to write about or how to write what I want to write about…

Ok, let’s begin then with an episode of Stargate Atlantis. A lovely continuation of SG1 and the heir apparant to Star Trek. They explore concepts much as ST did but within a larger storyline. The episode I’m thinking of is the one where the team find an Ancient  doorway through which time passes diferently. Time on the outside passes much slower than on the inside and when Sheppard enters part of his body ages faster than the rest. This apparently hurts a lot. A scientist looking at this idea would go so far as to say that this would kill a man because the blood flow to say a leg that was in first would go much faster and cause a stroke or something. These people need to understand that in science fiction anything can be explained by more advanced technology. They also need to get laid.

I digress. There are parts of me that are older than others. In some areas I am old and wise and in others I am a child. I try hard to keep the perspective of a child with in me and very often it is the source of my amusement. But just like a child when it comes to deep emotional events I get scared and my older, more rational side has to try and figure out how to make the baby in me go back to sleep. I don’t look as old as I actually am. When I meet new people I often ask them to guess my age. An inaccurate average would put me at between 25 and 30. This used to be a pain in the arse when visiting the local alcoholary but these days it’s pretty cool.

It’s interesting the difference between this blog and what I actually write in my diary. Here I usually have to be more abstract. I can’t really mention any names or events or things that people would read into and go “Hey! You’re writing about me!”. But I think that’s not a bad idea. It’s good to write about things in an abstract way. Language is a beautiful thing and crafting paragraphs from it gives me enormous pleasure even when I do it badly. This particular entry is pretty crap because it’s all over the place. However that’s where my brain is right now so as a snapshot of who I was on Friday the 15th of December 2006 it is, in a way far more accurate than an exact description of my recent life.

Anyway, have a really cool christmas. Enjoy yourself, get drunk, eat too much and remember that above all tis the season to be jolly.

Light. December 12, 2006

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In a strange solar system a man sits alone in a long abandoned research facility. He is the last person left alive. He was born here but the people who were here are long gone. All he has ever known is darkness. He knows of the light, he has listened to recordings about it, he’s fascinated with it to the point of obsession but there is no light on this planet. The planet revolves around a dying sun, it’s orbit such that it’s rotation constantly keeps one ravaged side pointed towards it’s parent the other in eternal darkness.

Eventually the man decides that darkness isn’t so bad. It’s ok to live in without light. He doesn’t need it. He has adapted to not using his eyes. It hardens his resolve and he let’s go of his dreams of light.

The sun goes nova. It’s outer corona explodes. The man hears it as the planet is hit with an immense shockwave, he feels the vibrations in every part of his body and then with utter horror he opens eyes that have been closed for years.

Light floods in, showing him the world he has lived in all his life. For the first time he sees things, familar things, some are how he’d imagined them and some are totally surreal. In the distance he sees the atmosphere of the planet on fire. He sees yellows and oranges and reds. He knows that he is about to die.

“So… beautiful”

The orbit of your hips December 4, 2006

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This is my fourth attempt at writing this entry. Essentially I want to talk about my utter love for women. I generally love humanity, we’ve achieved a hell of a lot for such a retarded species and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that women are so beautiful. I mean all the cool things in the world are influenced by women. Music, architecture, art, car design, when designed well can thank female kind for their brilliance.

No matter how much I run, I cannot escape the loss I feel, I cannot make it go away. I’ve given up trying to find a logical solution to this, my most illogical feeling. I cannot go down the road of being a womanizer as I would hate myself too much. So I must remain alone, I must seek distractions that help me forget, even for only a while. I must better myself, educate myself, prepare myself for the future and whatever that may contain. Above all I must be self disciplined. Acting on instinct is the method of a caveman.

But that in itself is flawed, especially when dealing with the hearts of the fairer sex.

The truth is, I don’t know what to do, I have no plan and have given up trying to make any. My subconscious seems to enjoy tormenting me. And that leaves everything up to my inferior and far stupider conscious self on it’s own.

And that keeps telling me that I don’t care. But if I didn’t why does it keep saying that?

Linky Linky November 18, 2006

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I seem to have settled on a series of links which I put into every browser I use regularly. I find it annoying when they’re not there just like I get anxious if my wallet isn’t in my left pocket. I will now relate these to you; the losers who have nothing else to do but read my crap:

Boards.ie

Well obviously, it’s getting so big now that retarded DJ’s and crappy tabloids are starting to take notice.

Something Awful

See below for a more in depth discussion of this, the largest humour generator on the internet. Boards can learn a lot from this site, especially how they handle high load situations.

Ctrl Alt Delete

Ah the adventurers of  a wacky gamer dude and his housemates. My favourite is the batshit insane chef.

Penny Arcade

Along with Boards, I have a profound loyality to this masterful fusion betwix the wordsmithing of Tycho and the wonderful artwork of Gabe. They embody the gamer spirit like no other.

The Order of the Stick

I don’t remember how I found this, probably through PA, but I’m glad I did. It’s a well written and often hilarious.

Player Vs Player

Another PA find, it’s fascinating to see how it’s evolved over the years and PANDA ATTACK!

Slashdot

This is my primary source of news. It’s got everything I need – gamer, space, computer and gadget features and generally is a good guide to what’s going on in the nerdosphere.

Torrent Spy

This where I get most of my viewing material. I watch more stuff from here than on normal telly. Television is going to die soon as we now it and will merely become another part of the internet.

Bullbearings 

Playing the stockmarket is much like playing poker, you try and get as much information as possible and use that to gamble, fortunately I don’t have 100,000 real sterling as if I did I would have lost about 25,000 quid by now. Mind you, both those were due to me not being a muppet they were due to the site not letting me sell shares when they were through the roof. Still, recommended for anyone wanting to gamble at a higher level.

BBC News

On the occasion that I need to know what’s going on in the real-world this is where I go. I love the BBC, I trust their reporting. In these days of spin and counterspin the least revolutionary place it’s the first place I go.

Online Banking

My current bank’s internet solution is shit. It’s run by monkeys who dance around wearing dresses while defecating on top of my money. I’d name them but they might decide to burn my tent.

Blog

UH OH CIRCULAR REFERENCE! REDO FROM START!!!!

Wiki

If I’m bored I’ll just delve into Wikipedia, and read and read and read. It’s a remarkable achievement and I can see it evolving into some sort of central depository for all human knowledge.

AIP

I got into All in Poker because I did some work for them and stayed because I could put money on to it using ordinary filthy cash. I’ve tried other sites but pretty much consider it my online poker home.

Pics

I have this linked because it’s the root of where I upload my pics to.

Entertainment Ireland

Mostly I just use it for cinema listings

Google

I have both Gmail and Google itself linked. I totally rely on Google to tell me what I need to know. It kind of turns the internet into an extension of my brain so if I don’t know something I will with a few keywords. Gmail is excellent, and while the interface was a bit weird to get used to but now I couldn’t see myself using anything else.

I couldn’t be arsed putting links into any of the above, but if you stick those words in to MSN Search, hahahahah no, I mean Google you can share in my internet joy.

The Beautiful Mystery of Truth November 18, 2006

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In Pulp Fiction there is a case. We don’t know what’s in the case except that it’s shiney and gold coloured. We never find out. I’m sure there are entire websites devoted to what was in it. When I first saw the film it drove me mad. What the hell is it? It’s not gold because gold doesn’t glow like that.

In the Green Mile the big black guy is sentences to death for killing two girls. It seems entirely beyond the scope of this gentle giant. We never find out where he get’s his power from or why he has it.

These two films are two of my favourites and it’s not just that they have great stories and great acting, it’s that they leave some of the threads loose. And that’s true to life. There are some mysteries that will never be truly answered. For me it’s very hard to leave these things lie. My brain demands resolution, it’s curiosity ravenous in it’s hunger for the truth.

So there is a conflict, a war if you will between the part of me that demands answers and the part of me that appreciates the fact that a mystery can be beautiful in itself and that if solved it can loose that beauty.

There is a time for rationality and there is a time for living in the realm of fantasy. Finding out when those times are is very important.

Gamble, no lose… November 18, 2006

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I measured myself today. Not in any physical as I’m pretty sure my dimensions are roughly the same as they have been for the last couple of years. It was a curious sensation being asked questions and answering them, trying to remember the right and wrong ways to say things. I felt good, I felt confident and what’s more I didn’t really care and still don’t about the outcome.

It brought home to me the fact that after years of fighting for control, fighting my instincts and trying, sometimes desperately to instill in myself the kind of discipline I see in the people I most admire, that I have achieved that control.

Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s experience, maybe it’s just the flow of the river fate or maybe it’s just the timing of all of these things. Whatever, I just feel good these days, that the soothing light at the end of tunnel is no longer a freight train coming my way.

There were times when I really just didn’t want to face anything. There were times when I obsessed about certain things endlessly just to ignore other things. Fooling myself essentially. Fool me once.. shame on me, fool me again CAN’T…UH.. FOOL ME NO MORE!

Once I hated the fact that I am not average, not normal, then I reveled in it like it was a credo, and now I’m thinking that maybe there’s room in between these two ways. That it’s possible to follow the path of the norm and yet be subversive in more subtle, clever, ways.

Who knows? Flip a coin, cut the deck, spin the wheel and bet on black. GAMBLE NO LOSE!

Inaccurate reporting November 7, 2006

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I’m having a fun day so far. I’ve been busy posting away on Feedback entertaining myself immensely. Arguing with stupid people on the internet is often described as being retarded but that cliché was written back in the days when the prevailing attitude was that the internet was not to taken seriously. That you can say whatever you like in this electronic world and get away with it. Some people still think that and even go so far as to think that the internet provides unlimited freedom of speech. Of course the reality is that the internet is now a place that people live in. There is little that is democratic on the internet but there are a lot of benevolent dictatorships.

When talking about democracies I tend to think of the greatest one of them all. The United States of America. If you scroll down long enough, past the drunken and nerdy ramblings you will see the open letter I wrote to the Land of the brave to do what I could to stop Bush getting a second term. I enjoyed writing that and others seemed to enjoy reading it. I’m still proud of it but over the past few years I’ve learned that it was a little naive.

You see the USA isn’t a democracy. A democracy is where everyone has the right to vote for the people to serve as leaders. It wouldn’t work on boards.ie but as a system of government it is the best type we as a species have yet to embrace. In reading Slashdot today I came across an article about a HBO documentary about Diebold electronic machines and how easily hackable they are. To quote Slashdot:

“‘Hacking Democracy’ is ‘replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,’ says Diebold.”

How I laughed at this punnage. You see Diebold are 100% right. The film is full of material examples of inaccurate reporting, but while Diebold mean HBO, HBO mean the machines themselves. It’s quite clear that there are those for whom the elections mean big money. Hacking the vote is an inexpensive way of making sure an investment reaps rewards. So there is motive and hacking these systems seems to be laughably easy. Of course none of this stuff will make the it to Fox News. I did a quick search on their website to see what they were saying about the breaking news about HBO’s documentary. Nothing. I did a search for Diebold. I found 72 articles but not a single article reporting that Diebold’s machine could be easily rigged. When I compared my results with CNN I found a completely different story, many articles about or including Diebold. So Fox News is bent, that’s no surprise really, given that it seems to be controlled entirely by the Republicans.

So if the good old US of A ain’t a democracy, what is it? Well, looking at history the nearest example I can see is a feudal system. Whoever has the money, gets the power. To get the money you need to make tell those that have the money that you’ll make them more money. It’s fairly simple really. Rigging the vote is part of the system. Right now, the Republicans have the money and therefore the power. So Bush is a feudal king and must reward the princes of the corporations who got him into power.

When Lord Acton said “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely” he was talking about the effects of power. It’s not the power itself that corrupts it’s the results of that power than can corrupt. If those that lead gain nothing but respect from the people they lead there is no incentive for them to do corrupt things.  Democracy is essentially supposed to be a system to safeguard against corruption. It’s not needed on boards because there is little or no corruption. The Admins of boards would not gain anything by being corrupt. People would just simply flee and the site would die. In essence they are drained of power because they do not get paid to fix problems other companies would pay them large amounts of money to fix.

In the US the very system to remove corruption from the system is itself corrupt. The American public are too busy worrying about the distraction of their brave soldiers fighting the new Vietnam in Iraq. The 30 million fundamental Christians will probably vote Republican and those that won’t will have their basic rights violated yet again and for another two years at least, the Land of the Brave, the Home of the Free will continue to be the worlds largest and most powerful fascist state.

God Bless America.

Only read this if you are drunk. November 2, 2006

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Ahhhh the embrace of mankinds oldest form of intoxication – beer. I sit here imbibed with it’s unique way of making things seem more fun. I’m not an angry drunk. I’m a happy drunk. I haven’t been drunk in a long while – at least two weeks and for an Irishman that is a looong time.

I watched Frasier today and an episode reminded me that although I may think I may have moved on I am not quite there yet. Of course the tv may tell me there is hope but I must remain without it due to reasons I cannot delve into in this, a public blog.

I understand many things better than most. I consider myself wise. I tend to hide that wisdom behind a facade of drunkeness and rank stupidity. It makes my life easier. In that way I excuse the cowardice I feel consciously. But I must respect my subconscious. It knows better. It has guided me to a life I never dreamed of, with opportunities I never dreamed of in this my one and only time on this gorgeous planet.

I see time differently to most. I am old enough to know that in time anything can happen. I understand that if I want something enough that it will happen. If I don’t, it won’t. So my inner turmoil is reduced. I cannot change the mistakes I have made in the past. I cannot change history. I must try to move on. I must try to find another path to true happiness.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Or me. That has been my logical answer to most things for the majority of my life. And usually it has been correct. It has been so because I consider myself of above average intelligence and as such I must help those that are not. I am a human being and so my first loyalty above nationalism and anything else is the better of other human beings. As such I have made sacrifices to my own happiness by serving the needs of others.

This has given me benefits over the years. I tend to think in longer terms than most people. But there are times when I wish, when I beat myself up over the fact that had I been more selfish that I would be a happier man.

And that seems to tell me that I actually do have an enormous ego. An ego that thinks that one day I will become a great man that people will speak of even after my death.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I shouldn’t write journal entries under the influence. When I do so, I am simply not good enough at writing than when I am sober.

Endings. October 17, 2006

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When writing a film there’s a few things you need to do. Firstly you need a good start. It has to be different and possibly unconventional. There is a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, a good ending. The ending is critical. It has to unexpectedly tie up all loose ends with a graceful departure that leaves the audience on an emotional high but yet satisfaction of a story well told. In that way the audience leaves and sells the film for you via word of mouth.

I have a script in my head. I think it would be a fascinating film. A romance for the new millenium or something. I dunno. I just think it’s a good story and that is always the basis of any classic. The Lord of the Rings for all it’s fancy effects and cgi is still only as good as it is because Tolkien wrote it so.

Trouble is this script hasn’t got an ending yet. But I have at last got an idea of what that ending could look like. It’s only a rough idea at the moment but it feels right.

Fin.

The Hack is Back October 6, 2006

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Ahhhh the hack is back. I recently became the proud owner of a PSP. Scorned it is despite it’s 20 million sales for it’s crap games, it has awakened a side of me that I feared dead. Well not really, I just forgot about it. Not since the glorious arrival of our Amiga 500 has something enthralled me as much as this sliver of glossy weighty goodness.

WARNING! VERSION NUMBERS, WORDS LIKE “FLASH” AND “TRANSFER RATES” MAY APPEAR! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
It was a 2.60, I was a 32 year old man, we looked at each other for the first time and we knew… it was love. I had touched others oh yes, but this one, this was mine. I loaded up Ridgeracer and when I flicked my ass out onto that first uphill hairpin I flashed back to the very reason I bought my first PS1. Powerslides rock. That is all.

When I flashed back, my preccccciouss darling flashed back to firmware 1.5. It was a nervous time for me. Warnings of my beloved turning into a brick haunted my very soul and lo, your tuneful boot up sequence revealing a pulsating pink background. We would now go down the emulated highway to the past, reliving games I still own today with receipts and photo’s of me buying them. We would explore areas thought to be forbidden due to Atari still frustratingly sticking to the whole “not making games for the Atari Jaguar anymore” thing. Damn their blackened french hearts.

With 1.5 I am also exploring areas Sony seem not to be interested in yet, like reading a book on it’s beautiful sceen. Such a beautiful big screen. It seems like it’s X-black but I haven’t seen it mentioned as such yet.

I have done some “testing” of certain LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS and it’s remarkably easy to do. At times with DevHook, my honeybuns locks up and a hard reset seems to corrupt the virtual firmware causing me to re-install DevHook again and with file transfer being mysteriously slow (not sure if my usb ports are actually running at 2.0).

God I love hackers, they’ve even written the first program that actually uses the infrared port. And they’ve made a universal remote control app. I hope the range isn’t lousey, I just think hilarity could ensure if I could control EVERY TV IN THE LAND!!!!!111

Yes. I am adoring the games. Loco Roco and Lumines are evilly addictive. It’s like taking crack and then lsd. Ridgeracer is just awesome. It’s litterally like playing it again for the first time. And it’s got nitro which rewards powersliding and thus focussed the entire game on the part I loved the most. It owns me.

I’ve never been able to fly at all in Wipeout. I could never master the airbrake turns and becoming a pinball in a weaving allyway isn’t fun. Wipeout pure gives me hope though as it’s pretty and after about ten laps in freeplay I think I was starting to get the hang of it. Outrun 2006 makes Ridgeracers powerslides look tiny but I think Ridge will be my mainstay for a while. It’s like CS, everybody plays dust2 because it’s familiar, you know the layout and you perfect your approaches to corners.

/me rolls on ground

I do so love the driving games. I’ve been playing them since Lotus Espirit on the Amiga. Also brilliant is Burnout Legends, I’ve been thundering through unlocking everything I can, and it’s just astounding that something this small, this beautiful can producing such incredibly fast fps rates. Didn’t really think much of Need for Speed: Whatever, also I suspose I’ll play it just to get pimpage points in order to create monstrously ugly cars with neon underlighting and tremendous amounts of bling.

Hoo ya September 25, 2006

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I tripped and fell straight out of a bizzare dream I was having about a bus that was actually a green elephant. In doing so I kicked out and fell out of bed. Normality swam for a while as my brain started to warm up and achieve basic sentience once more.

“What the fuck was that about?” I slurred to myself, my hand snaking out of the bed I retaken to find a ciggarette. I lay on my back, exhaled and stared at the moonscape plaster that covered the ceiling.

BAM! Without thinking I dive back to the floor again. I look around. The mirror on the dresser has a new reflection, mostly fragmented and all snaking back to a single hole. A hole created by a bullet. And I know that that bullet was meant for me. Fuuuuuuck…..

I scoop up my rifle and crawl towards the doorway. The door hasn’t been there for a while as this house’s previous tenants are currently outside becoming wormfood. Until we took the house they had been holding up there, waiting for us, but they never saw us coming.

My spotter’s head appears from out of his doorway and we smile at each other in that goofy way two people do when they know things are about to get especially fruity. We crawl to the exit we made when taking the house. It’s a large hole in the wall and it’s on the opposite side of what could only be a sniper. Not a very good one thankfully. We fall back to cover behind a wall that leads up the hill. Crawling all the way. Removing a stone from the wall I carefully take out the ammo cans for my rifle and my spotter lies down and slowly and delicately removes the rock from in front of his scope.

“I have him. Range 1200, no windage”

I setup my rifle and I have him locked. His head bobs around for a while as he takes another shot. He’s firing into the house again. Maybe he doesn’t like windows, or mirrors, because shattering glass is all we hear below the sharp bam of the bullets.

We look at each other and using facial expressions only to relay the fact that this guy is a good shot but that he’s making one very stupid mistake. He’s not moving position.

I exhale, put my finger on the trigger. Through the scope I see the man trying to kill me. He is alone. His attempt at camoflage is weak and while he is lying down, I have an excellent shot.
I squeze, my shoulder feels it and the scope judders. “Got him” says the spotter. We imediately replace the rocks and move back down to the house. It’s quiet, sun streaming in through the broken windows let’s light reflect off the shards of mirror on the floor. It’s a little surreal but beautiful, but I go back to bed.

It feels just like swatting a fly I think before sleep swallows me up whole and spitting me back to my dreams.

Life is like a box a chocolates… September 20, 2006

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…sometimes you leave it in the sun and it melts all over your couch.
I’m in the Fitz now, hogging the staff computer hoping that nobody has a sudden need to play Spider. I’m here because there was some fault in something and there’s little point in going home given that I’m dealing at eight.

I’m 32 now, as usual I didn’t really bother celebrating it as usual but it’s starting to hit home. I’m in my thirties. Sure I’ve had two years to get used to it but I guess there’s something about the number 32 that sticks in my head. 32-bit I guess. I don’t feel that old. I still have most of my hair and quite like the grey highlights that are starting to appear. I have managed not to grow a massive gut and have avoided getting stuck with a mortgage, wife and kids.

In almost every respect I am still doing what I was doing twelve years ago. I’m still renting, still getting drunk every now and then, still playing games, still living in Dublin. Sure my primary source of income is no longer fixing computers but I still do it although on a far smaller scale.

Half my life ago, I should have been rebelling against authourity just like any other teenager does. I should have raged against the machine. I think I did, but for about six months. I didn’t see the logic in battling with my parents when they fed, clothed me and generally did a great job bringing me into the world. I should visit them more.

I recognise that pretty soon I will be facing another transition into middle age. I hear the stories of middle aged crisis’ and the stereotype of men going barmy trying to recover their lost youth.
Trouble is my life rarely follows stereotypical paths. I rarely know what I’ll be doing two weeks from now let alone two years from now. I’ve made plans, voiced commitments that have failed to materialise but there’s something that usually de-rails these things. I’d like to blame it on my previously bad budgeting but the truth is that there’s something stopping me.

Mostly that something has been that I potentially might hurt someone. It may sound ironic to someone who knows me from boards, but have always tried my best to help people. I want to be a force for good. The problem with that is that it’s sometimes hard to know what that good is. There times when I did things that were good for other people, that helped them become happier but resulted in years of troubled sleep for me. Was it worth it? Would I do it again? Was it actually good for me in the long term?

I don’t know. Maybe the very definition of someone who is a good person is someone who does things without want of some sort of profit. Some people might call that person naive or a sucker but I’m intelligent enough to know when people are taking advantage of me. I’ve let people use me because I felt that I was strong enough to handle it. Or even if I wasn’t that the experience would make me stronger in the future.

This week has been wierd. I’ve managed not to go and buy a large bottle of whiskey and get emotional about the mistakes I’ve made in the past. I’ve had the motive and the opportunity but I think for the first time I can actually just tell that part of me to shut up and just get on with the business of living in the present.

When I was 16 I was an habitual liar. It got me into trouble. I lied usually to save myself from getting into trouble but lying just increases that trouble. As a result of this lesson I will normally tell the truth or plead the fifth. Life is easier when all you have to remember is the truth.

Here endeth the confessional blog. I apologise to any and all that I have undeservingly hurt in the past. I am flawed but I think that makes me a good person overall.

In the beginning there was brown. August 29, 2006

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In the beginning there was brown. There was chaos, there was the lightening. A devil and a cloud cameth upon the brown and created the world. The world was brown with some occasional bits of red. And they did gather the first lovers of the brown into this world and thus the board was formed.

The board was small but there were those who told the others and they came. But not all were lovers of the brown. Some loved other colours. So the next board had many colours and it was good. In time there sprang forth different boards with different shapes and forms and colours and they were good.

It was the time of the flame warrior. The flame warrior would drive the demon trolls from the board using their mighty flames of wrath to which none could survive except the hardiest and most fit. The boards grew. After a time the devil spinned new lords to watch over the boards. They were the engineer, the watchman, and the builder. They were wise and good lords and the boards continued to flourish.

In time, the lords of boards saw that there were troubles on the boards but that creating more lords would be a dangerous thing. So they looked to the mortals and picked some of the champion flame warriors to act in their name. Those flame warriors would banish those who caused the troubles but still used the power of the dark and light flame to rid the board of demons.

Boards continued to grow ever bigger. As it did there joined those who had never heard of the brown and who fought well against the flame warriors. The lords looked down and knew that the time of the flame warrior was over and decreed that they should instead become guardians of the boards.

Thus there was an exodus of flame warriors from the boards. Some left silently and some went out with glory. Those that remained put down their mightiest flames and became the guardians. The guardians used knowledge instead of flame to warn the mortals of the sins that would have them bannished. They sought to spread the light with the coming of the charters. Thus the mortal could gain the knowledge without being subjected to the flame and in time become a guardian themselves. The guardians grew in number. Some gained extra powers to rid the boards of stronger and stronger demons but all remained loyal to the lords of boards.

In time a hell and a heaven were created. In the hell, the art of the flame was once again lifted up by many a flamewarrior young and old. Some picked their battles with the weak, less with the strong. In the heaven the guardian allowed the mortals to play but not to eat from the thread of knowledge. Some ate and were bannished from the heaven, others remained and together built tall threads made from spam. And it was good.

And the lord of boards looked down on their creation and they were pleased.

Drunk Boards beer journal August 27, 2006

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I’m very drunk. I’ve been to the porterhouse and have drunken many different fruity things with many different fruity people. It was good and I enjoyed myself. I had a great conversation with Shabadu. She’s one hell of a sexy woman and she talked a lot of sense into me at a time when I needed sense.

There’s this woman. I love her. I love her so much that I cannot even begin to think about being with another woman. And yet I, who regard myself as someone who can face pretty much anything and survive cannot even say this to her face. I despise myself for my own terrible cowardice. I use various excuses to excuse this. I tell myself that she doesn’t want or need me in her life. That I’m just not good enough, that she’s better off without me.

But nothing works, nothing removes the bond I feel towards her, nothing eases the pain of not being with her. Just being in the same room as her. I tell myself that the only reason she liked me in the first place is that I seemed to be cool. I’m not cool. I’m a nerd that figured out how to talk to women. That’s all. At boards beers I don’t know everybody but they know me. They seem to think I’m something that I’m not. To quote Beeblebrox: I’m just this guy you know.

So how do you tell a woman you love her without ruining her image of you? I don’t know. I’m just drunk and writing a blog. I’ve used the backspace key a lot.

I love you. I will always love you and there’s nothing that will ever change that. Ever. I don’t care any more. I don’t care about about anybody else. Fuck them. I want you and I couldn’t give a shit if anybody else get’s hurt in the process.

The sound of silence. August 7, 2006

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Sometimes there no sweeter sound than the sound of silence. Take my pc for example. It was a very very loud thing that was driving me mad. I invested in a Zalman fanned aluminum Praetorian (bought off boards as usual). Still sounded like a banshee in a blender. Decided it must be the stock fan on my Radeon. Nope. THE NORTHBRIDGE FAN!!!11 Hmmm not that either. It only became apparent what was making the noise when my ancient 80gb ide drive decided that the time was right for it to occasionally go offline and take my pagefile and therefore my system into a fairly disturbing sequence of blue screens of doom.

Using my now automatic methods of troubleshooting I disconnected it and my even older IBM deskstar and installed XP on to an 80gb Sata drive. At first I thought something was wrong. It was quiet… too quiet… As an experiment I hooked up the 80gb to my oh so handy ide->usb2 interface and switched it on. It wound up like a jet engine and I knew at last I had found the source of my audio discomfort. In fairness to my old ide 80gb, it worked it’s arse off for many years and even allowed me to copy some of my more important files off it before it joined the deskstar in long overdue retirement.

Optimus Prime is now remarkably quiet. I actually like listening to it now. I could probably sleep with it turned on. Hell even my laptop is louder and that’s something. Of course no sooner had I got it all hooked up to my precious G15 keyboard and finished the install, I found that my beautiful Mx1000 LAZER mouse had decided that it was to be an UNKNOWN DEVICE and refused to work. Later today I will be in contact with Logitech and no doubt have to repeat all the steps I have taken to determine it’s deadness. I will jump through their hoops and hopefully by then I will have completed what I think is a very cool system that should see me through many years of gaming and whatnot.

There are many things that I have been waiting for but was unable to do because Optimus, in it’s previous incarnation was too slow or noisy to do. Things like editing video’s, playing Half Life 2 without the whole system nearly crashing any time something blew up and basically being able to write stuff without having cotton wool stuck in my ears.

And now for some specs:

Optimusprime (added the prime to the name to mark it’s rebirth)

So it’s not got PCI-e and it’s only got one cpu core, but I’m not the type of person willing to pay for the newest stuff. I prefer being behind by at least one generation. New stuff can be buggy and expensive. And if there’s one thing a veteran tech support guy hates the most it’s having an unstable system.

Can’t get no… July 31, 2006

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I’ve been playing a lot of poker this week. It was not a good week for me, pokerwise. When I had good hands I’d not get callers to even the most timid of betting and when I had marginal hands that hit I’d get outdrawn. That’s poker I suppose, but I understand that fundamentally I’m never going to be a professional poker player.

In the Fitz I have developed a reputation as a nerd. In this case I choose to interpret the word nerd as “Guy who knows about computers and the internet and all that stuff” rather than a acne ridden socially inept gimp. As such I’ve been getting asked a lot about the Irish assault on the WSOP to which I usually respond by advising a visit antesup.com. Yes it’s managed by my good friend and flatmate Tom Murphy, but you can’t fault the quality reporting that’s coming out of it.

Frequently I get asked “Why did you give up doing I.T.?”. At the time I didn’t really have much choice, I took up dealing cards as a temporary thing until I found another company to work for. Thankfully what was a part time job became a fulltime one and as a result I realised I was far, far happier working for a card club than I had ever been watching blue bars crossing screens. Working in I.T is boring, repetitive and the higher up you go the more you have to deal with the politics of bullshit.

Maybe it’s the friendly atmosphere of the Fitz, which technically is a company but really does feel like a club, much like boards. It’s owned and managed by people who love poker and who understand something that most companies don’t. Keep the players and staff happy. Sounds simple but so many companies can’t see the wood for the trees and think that sending staff on Customer Satisfaction courses is the best way forward.

Let me tell you, thanks to my time in IT I have been on countless versions of these courses and I will never go to one again. Why? because it’s all a load of bollocks. You can’t learn how to treat customers better by learning stupid acronyms. In Compaq I had to learn an acronym called P.A.S.S.I.O.N. Don’t ask me what it stood for because I haven’t a clue. The only good thing I’ve ever gotten out of one of those courses was a nice lunch.
Looking after customers is simple. Be nice to them. Even the wankers that annoy you. We had an Australian guy in on Saturday and it was his first time in the Fitz, I explained some of the standard rules we have about string betting etc. and after I heard his name I used it. He was in again for Sunday’s tournament and when he got knocked out I heard him say  that he didn’t mind as he’d had a fantastic time and would be back in a couple of months. That made me smile and you can safely say that that’s one customer that will be telling other people about the friendly, enjoyable atmosphere that makes the Fitz such a cool place.

That’s why I got into IT in the first place. I had a fondness for computers and the desire just to help people. In my time I’ve saved companies from literally going bankrupt, I’ve installed, rebuilt and managed large networks, but the most satisfying jobs I’ve done are small things like making it very simple to put songs onto an mp3 player or that time I cleansed a pc of not one, not two, but three seperate virii.

On boards, I am not an employee. I moderate because in most cases I was chosen to moderate. And I try as much as possible to walk the line between keeping order and allowing people to express themselves in their own way. There are a lot of things that people have in common but each human being on this planet is an individual with their own quirks. You can’t make up standard ways to deal with people. If you do then you end pissing people off. When I ring Eircom support and get some robot that demands I talk to it, I can’t help taking the piss to which I usually get the answer: “I’m sorry but I didn’t understand you”.

Yes Mr Customer Satisfaction V1.9, you don’t and god help us all when you do.

-===Mini Journal News Round up===—

Good luck to all the Irish in the WSOP, especially Oscar! Well done Mick on your Tottenham win ;)

I’d also like to thank Logitech for creating the wonderful G15 keyboard. Not only is it a joy to play games with (I CAN CHANGE MP3′S WHEN INSIDE OF AZEROTH!!!!!11!) but it also is incredibly pleasant to type on. I think it’s because it’s got smaller keys which is great when you have woman sized hands.

Love Joy July 21, 2006

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Am I not sexy?Comedy. It’s not to be taken seriously. Or is it? The ability to make someone laugh is a powerful thing. It gives a person joy and people love joy. My hero’s all have one thing in common, they A: Are not Lovejoy and B: Have a good sense of humour.

You can get away with a lot if you’re funny. Spike Milligan was one of the funniest men on the planet, helped evolve the art of comedy and to an extent philosophy by a great deal, yet he was no paragon of moral virtue.Spike Bill Hicks has influenced many people in the way they think. You come in for the laughs and leave with the idea’s. For almost as long as there have been people in power there have been those that poke fun at them. By and large they got away with it because laughter is a distracting thing and because of that it tends to be dismissed as not being “serious”.

As you can see I am not the ugliest man in the world, and I’m certainly not the tallest, so I must make up for these advantages by making them laugh instead. Running out of jokes can be a problem and there are times when timing can be just a nightmare mix of adrenaline, alchohol, nicotine and whatever the hell else is in my bloodstream at the time. Water probably. And those little men that carry around all the oxygen cylinders.

I find it hard to be deliberately funny. I cannot remember many jokes, my head’s too full of other crap to remember good jokes. I can remember about five or so which I tell endlessly.

So I prefer to try and be creatively funny using whatever catalyst I can find. Often it’s a post I read and it causes some spark to go off in my brain and make me giggle. Take that pic of Jim Larkin I’ve abused. It’s a great pic as it shows Jim hands aloft with an enormous phallic symbol in the background. I merely added the faked quotation just to push it over the edge.

That’s why I love Photoshop Phriday’s on SA. It provides the spark that lights the comedy fuel and even if I get stuck, I can still see what path others have taken for possible inspiration. Then I usually just weld two jokes together using photoshop’s blurring tool and hey presto; comedy. Often it involves some sort of running joke that’s stuck in my head. Take Linkin Park, the poster boys of nu-metal angst rock or whatever they actually do. Mix with an old superboy comic which originally had a far more innocent America feel to it and there it is.

I'm so on the leading edge of the bloggerati here with my timely Superman reference.

I love laughing, it’s a whole body thing with me too. I laugh from the gut and if you’re on a couch with me and we’re watching something funny, prepare to bounce.

The problem with this type of laughter is when you get stuck into a laughter loop. I remember getting drunk in the first flat I moved into. We were drinking a lot of beer and later something that they make vodka out of. Evil stuff. I ended up laughing at a mates laughing. It was a bizarre laugh but so is mine so we kept making each other laugh simply by laughing. I literally crawled out the door on my belly in order to breath I was laughing so much. I then had to try and stop myself laughing at the fact that I nearly died from laughing.

And now for some other things that don’t deserve a complete entry:

Got a G15 keyboard at last. It’s a joy to type on. The keys are smallerThe power of l33t compelled me. than my olde trusty HP keyboard and they are back lit for those times when I forget where the “¬” symbol is. I love the LCD display and the ability to change mp3 track while inside Azeroth.

Speaking of that magical land I am nearly 30 in my new incarnation of Bovinstein. Hamsterface continues to grow and I have obtained hoody status, and will be a 10 slot bag maker as soon as I find a handy source of silk. I’m trying not to drool about the forthcoming expansion pack but I just love the look that Outland will have, I hope they make it look pretty.

Bovinface and hamperstein...

Time – Space – Cake July 10, 2006

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HI MICK LOCKE! Seriously mate, paying 80 quid for a pair of destroyed jeans isn’t fashion, it’s just stupid. :p
Right, that’s that over with. Curses to Richie for telling the other dealers about this blog.

Thanks to some upgrades to my pc, I am now capable of playing WoW without everything turned off and not looking all last millenium and shit. It is good to once again frollic along the wonderfully rendered highways, byeways and freeways of Azeroth, ending the lives of various beautiful woodland creatures as I do.
Yes, I am reborn in Azeroth, this time as a moo cow called Bovinstein. The name chosen to reflect the joining of cow and ampinstein, which is the name of my main and generally the name I go by outside of boards. If you think that’s bad I have Hamsterface (a lion) and Idiot (wolf) for pets. I feel it’s important to give pets names that A: Are not “Suki” and B: Reflect humanities superiority on this planet.

Also I have become emersed off-world in the universe of Eve Online. Finally, a game that I get that Frontier: Elite vibe from again only this time online AND OH SO PRETTY! I shall probably be extending my two week trial despite the following tragic tale:

I have completed a major series of quests and gained an implant worth 1.5million IKS. To put that into perspective my previous jobs had netted about 80k max including bonus and my ship was worth about 160k. So I am utterly delighted and it’s off to the shops for a spanking new ship with all the coolest weapons and shields etc. I also spent all of the rest on training stuff, which I put in the hold of the new ship. I then warp to the nearest stargate where I am instantly blown up and killed. I thought the insurance I had bought would cover new ships but it doesn’t and so I not only lost the entire 1.5k but the 300k I had previous to the job.

Now that I’ve thought back it’s an obvious place to hang around if your a pirate. Outside a place that gives you 1.5million. Tons of newbies like me must pass through that system. Ah well, live and learn I guess.

I love it lots and it provides a break from when Azeroth seems like work. It’s very polished, has some amazing depth to it but yet is fairly easy to pick up. I’ve already used a mining drone, a thing which I found almost impossible to do in Frontier. And the universe looks huge. I’ve only gone about 8 jumps away from my setup base but the universe map told me that was nothing at all. A blip. Space iz hUGE.

P.s The world cup final was rigged ;)

My fanbase is crumbling June 23, 2006

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Ok just to annoy myself I’m not only not taking my watch off but I’ve already written the title! For once I know what I’m going to write about and I’m doing it on my main pc which is working. At the moment. In fairness it’s heatsink is attached to the cpu using lego, coathanger wire and a used lighter, so I may end up taking my watch off anyway.

So a day in the life of amp eh? Where to begin..

Well I mostly don’t sleep at night, today for example I went to sleep at 10:00am and woke up at two o’clock. For some bizarre reason I always wake at two in the afternoon (/me looks up at ceiling). Normally I’d probably go back to sleep but today I decided it was time to sort out Optimus, my main workstation. The last thing it said to me before I shut it down was “SYSTEM OVERHEATING!” in an annoying american accent which I have been unable to haxor out of it due to the oddness of it’s current beta bios. Soon though it will say things that amuse me. On boot it may say something from Optimus Primes own voice like “TRANSFORMERS! ROLL OUT!” or “DAMN YOU CYBERTRON”… I am easily amused :)
Anyway, I get up, perform the trinity (shower shave shite) and walked into town. Yes. We’re that close to town now that even I with my general dislike for primitive forms of preambulation, I strolled into Parnell St unaided. My goal was to try and figure out a way to permanently fix my humungus Zalman heatsink onto it’s broken base. Secondary goals included seeing if Peats had that damn logitech G15 keyboard in stock yet. Teritioriy goals included feeding myself and seeing if there were any runners around that a: were not silver/gold/had flashing led’s in them and b: cost less than a car.

My primary mission was something of a failure given that I had forgotten that it wasn’t just the clips of the Zalman that had gone missing but that in my attempts to fabricate a kludge using the aforementioned ingredients I had broken one of the thingies. Thus a new fan base was required…. fanbase… hmmm… Anyway. I used the clips from the new fan and it seems to be working but at about 20 degree’s higher than it should. A medium term solution will probably require the replacement of the motherboard which I’ll probably try and get secondhand. Longterm I really want to retire my current fullsize case as, despite it’s many cool stickers is oppressively loud and annoying.

Secondary mission also failed due to peats STILL NOT HAVING THE BLOODY THING IN STOCK! I want this keyboard. It has many many cool things about it and my current keyboard is so old that it actually squeaks when typing. It doesn’t help that WoW patch 1.11 has now got support for the G15.

I also bought a cheapo shaver with three heads. I need to shave for work as I am cursed to forever work with the public, but it’s nice and quick and has an lcd display which, as far as I’m concerned, every single piece of machinary should have as standard.

I popped into work, but the satellites I wanted to play weren’t on until later so I decided to instead go home, after changing into my new BAD MONKEY t-shirt. Sunday to Wednesday I would be heading in for about eight o’clock. I usually deal or run the tournaments until around 2:00am when I either deal cash games or go home. It’s been fairly quiet of late due to the good weather and the world cup.

After work, if I haven’t managed to blag a lift off someone (thanks Richie, Dennis ;) ) I’ll either jump into a taxi or walk home. It’s a long walk for a man with short legs and flat feet but it’s usually interesting. Dublin at 3 on a monday morning can be quite beautiful. Today at three in the afternoon, I did get a bit bewildered because of the sheer amount of people. It’s like Christmas shopping just never stopped one year.

So after walking into Dame street I got onto a 70 which deposited me right beside were we live and I played with my new toys, rekludged aul Optimus and decided to go asleep at about 19:00. I woke and spent a bit of time with the lads before doing some data transfer from Sideswipe (my new underpowered tablet pc).

Right now I’m going to watch King Kong which I haven’t seen before (at least not in it’s new CGI clothes) and then I’ll go to sleep. Tommorow I will have to investigate alternate methods of bolting that stupid Zalman on to it’s base.

So there you go, a typical day for me, I generally sleep when I’m tired and eat when I’m hungry. I smoke too much and don’t drink enough (I have recently given up whiskey as it’s murder on the teef). All in all, not a bad life.

P.s The title was originally “A day in the life” but “My fanbase is crumbling” was too good a pun to ignore :)

Once upon a pint or two June 17, 2006

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I never write the title of a blog until I’m finished, because usually I don’t really know how it’s going to turn out. I am getting into the habit of taking my watch off, mostly to prevent scratching on my laptop, but now that I think about it maybe it has an other more deeper meaning.

Maybe it doesn’t. Who knows. Who cares.

I just wrote the start of a fairytale. I used to write these a lot. They were filled with wonderful castles set in sunny valleys. I may finish it another time but I know I would just weave a story into it that is not right for a fairy tales. After all fairy tales have to have a happy ending.

Writing is something I love, I have no idea how much I’ve written since I started. Most of it has been non-fiction but I have dabbled in creative writing. I can start easily enough but I usually get stuck. In trying to get unstuck I re-read what I’ve written until I see how flawed it is and then I get sick of it and give up. I know I should develop a structure first a guiding outline but there’s still the rebel within me that laughs in the face of order. Another part of me thinks I haven’t experienced enough of life to be able to describe it in prose.

That said, I have a had an interesting life so far. Sometimes too interesting. I will probably draw on parts of it when I finally do write the book I have in my head. And I will write a book but I have no idea what it’ll be about or when I’ll write it but it’s as certain to me as the sun rising.

Wether it’s published or not is not something I care about, the most important thing to me is to write it and like it. Currently I cannot write it, I am still stuck in a trap of my brains own devising.

It’s not so much a trap as a stubborn resolution, a decision I thought I made at the start of the year but I now realise I made it long ago. It involved asking a question that I made under the disguise of being drunk. I now know that I will live the rest of my life with that question in my mind.

I am stubborn but I can also be a coward, especially in the face of great beauty.

My life is no fairytale, and I don’t care if contains a happy ending anymore.

Moronity can be eliminated June 11, 2006

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I do my best to like humanity. I really do. I tell myself that there are people like me who base there beliefs in rationality and science and that the rest will catch up. But there are times when I find an outlet for my frustration and anger.
I love history. History contains clues to the future. I’ve studied the 17th Century intensely because that’s when science started to show us that the world was not made up of earth, wind, water and fire but something else. Newton, Leibniz and Darwin were people who were not happy with the concensus, they were so curious about the nature of the universe that they decided that enlightening humanity was more important than keeping the status quo.

They are my hero’s, they are the real revolutionaries. The built the foundation for which many other brilliant scientists change humanties world view.

Of course not everybody likes change, in fact there are people who are so opposed to it that they will attack their fellow human beings verbally and physically. Take the emancipation of women. There was a time when no woman had a vote and women in general were treated as property. This is now unacceptable, at least in most places. Unfortunately this was not due to a sudden realisation that women are as intelligent as men, it was the industrial revolution and the subsequent world wars that required women to provide at first labour and then in the last century, required their brains as well.

It’s not perfect, women are still often treated unfairly, but there’s definite progress, there is change.

There are those that believe that humanity will always be unfair, that the struggle for equal rights for all people is naive, that it is stupid.

I disagree. I believe in equal rights for all. I believe that humanity can evolve. I believe that if society can change to stop child labour and slavery then eventually we can change to finally achieve equal rights for everybody. There is a balance between individuality and social responsiblity. It’s not an easy thing to balance and it’ll take more scientific breakthroughs and people fighting for it.

Fighting ignorance, fighting lies, that’s the real battle between good and evil.

Voiceless May 30, 2006

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My voice is gone. Well not quite gone, I can still talk but it’s more like a spastic Marlon Brando than a voice per say. And thus I’ve had to take time off work during one of our busier periods. Pain in the neck, litterally.

It sort of brings home to me the fact that pretty much any job I’ve had involves lot’s of verbal communication. And when you can’t it’s incredibly frustrating. So thank god for the internet. I can communicate here without saying a thing.

I generally only write a blog if I have something to say. At least I used to. Trouble is, I generally always have something to say, so in the interests of my own standards of quality I limit what I write.

My perception of time is somewhat different to most peoples. Your morning is my night, so I’ve no problem getting drunk while watching Spongebob Squarepants. I generally avoid that though as I’m mad enough already.

So I have to use cues from those living in the real world about when to write a blog. Usually it’s someone in who’s life I played a very minor role but still means a great deal to me. Other times it’s when something happens and it sticks in my head and therefore requires ventage.
Last journal I suggested that there’s was a lot of momentum for change going on in the world. I still think that’s true but I might also have been expressing the fact I’m sensing big changes in my own life. Or maybe it’s a wish for change. I’m doing well at the moment, got a lot of things under control that I hadn’t got before. This Thursday or Wednesday I’m going to have a holiday and depending on how the dice roll I may actually leave the country for a couple of days. I haven’t done that in twelve years for various reasons and I still may not but it’s time off nonetheless.
Holidays are important. I have realised that stress is my biggest enemy. When I was in Field Service Engineering I was too stressed. I had too much stuff to look after. And when I added in things like bills, my own projects and womenfolk I can see now that I took far too much on.

So these days I don’t do IT stuff unless it’s for myself, mates or people I respect. And I vet them very carefully. I get asked to do big IT jobs fairly regularly but I know that the people asking me don’t really see how big a job it is. I don’t like disapointing these people but I need to keep myself away from becoming mired in something that will cause me too much grief. And the fact that I have a non-it job means I can turn them down without consequence.

Stress Management is something we all need to take care of. All work and no play makes Homer a something something. :)

Rebel News Round Up May 21, 2006

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Huh? Is this thing on?

Oh, ok, so I can post here again. I’ll not ask why but merely post until the next big shake up in the irish blogging scene sweeps through.

There’s a lot been happening lately that makes me think that the world maybe heading towards a lot of change. I think people are getting seriously pissed off with being lied to constantly by different figures of authourity and we’re starting to see shoots of rebellion sprouting through.

Take Lordi winning the Eurovision. They weren’t particularly great musically but the landslide really sent a message, Europeans are sick of crappy ancient formula’s being used. And Finland sent the message, the mad bastards.

I’ve been a Eurovision fan for many years now and that was the best ever. I generally make fun of the entries and try and predict who will do well and who’s going to tank while sipping on a beverage or four until the grand points giving takes place. This is when Eurovision gets good. We get to see which countries like each other and which ones don’t. We usually give the UK a reasonable score and they usually give us one better. But this year Lordi came in and countries that don’t even know were Finland is, were giving them points.

This is a great thing. God only knows what mayhem will occur next year. Will real bands start entering? Will the music become better? Will Lithuania take the piss again? I don’t know but here’s hoping.

Munster finally won the Heiniken Cup. Deserved it too, and so Ireland with it’s tiny population and diverse interests in sports manages to beat the rest of Europe. This also shows that culchies while generally annoying, have their uses ;)

I may have mentioned in previous writings somewhere about Jon Stewarts Daily Show. I believe this show and the people behind it are becoming more popular because despite being a fake news show they tell more of the truth than the mainstream news media. Of course their success is causing ripples as they shame “real” journalists into actually asking the real questions that need to be asked. When Steve Colber laid into the cowed, tame White House journalists, he didn’t hold back. He shamed them. And on national television too.

At the moment, the world is largly controlled by conservatives. They were voted in because they appealled to peoples fear of terrorists. People are getting tired of this, they may not understand why but mistrust of the standard soundbites about different alert levels and the occupation of Iraq build up and cause them to seek out the truth in whatever way they can.

And as Gilmore’s law states:

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

That’s all for this entry. I am going to try and do at least one thing that’s subversive in some way every day. I suggest you do to. It’ll be fun.

[insert journal title here] April 8, 2005

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Hello fellow [insert closest kinship here] it is I [insert name here] come to free you from [insert something nasty here] and elevate you to [insert high-falutin higher plane of existence here].

I don’t know why I keep going on about reality, it all seems quite simple right now……..

"Intuition is no proof" March 20, 2005

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Reality eh? It’s a bit odd isn’t it? When you think about it. I mean, what exactly is reality?

There’s a film called Dark Star which was made in the same year I was born and it had a profound effect on me when I saw it. In it a sophisticated bomb malfunctions and a crew member tries to convince it that the order to arm cannot be trusted because any external data it receives could be false.

The bomb accepts this premise and as a result comes to the conclusion that the only thing that exists is itself and therefore it must execute it’s primary function – blowing up. Just before it does it paraphrases Genesis and says \"Let there be light\".

Boom.

It’s an old philosophical tool to be sure, but it was my first encounter with that level of seeing the world.

Reality is based on what we receive through our senses. We all change reality on different levels depending on what we do. If you do web design you add to reality, if you blow up buildings you subtract from that reality. A simple conversation can change reality.

So we live in a shared reality, we gather together to share it. And reality is what ever we believe it to be. It doesn’t necessarily need to exist for it to be real. When you talk to someone about a book, you’re sharing a fictional reality but in your head, it’s as real as going down to the shops to get a pepsi max.

Belief causes reality. If you believe in something hard enough, you will get it.

I shared a reality once and it felt like the most unreal thing I’d ever experienced. I kept wondering when I’d wake up and curse that the dream was over. In the end I made myself wake up. I often wonder what would have happened if I’d believed harder.

RETURN OF THE BLOG! March 1, 2005

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Aha the big white box where the writing goes. I remember this. Sorry it’s been so long since last I wrote but no hot chick has pm’d me prodding me to write one of these so I guess there’s no point in waiting much longer.

I am dashing rogue and have a plan to write a large blog on my alternative life in Azeroth. This is just filler. The only other reason I’m writing this is so that I’ll be too tired to go home to Goldshire just so I can run past level 4’s and slash crappy level 3 beasties with a single blow just for fun.

It is a thing of exquisite bueaty, the World Of Warcraft. It’s exactly like zooming into Warcraft 3 and finding a living breathing universe full of adventure and candy. By candy I do of course mean those rich veins of copper tin iron silver and soon, soon sweet delicous gold.

Yes playing World of Warcraft is much like eating a Ron and Jeremies Chocolate Choo Choo icecream. The icecream itself is the main meat of the of the game, the questing and the fighting and exploring; the caramel is the joy of obtaining new shoulder pads and the like and the chocolate bits with caramel inside is the sheer orgasm of finding a silver vein. I both wish and fear reaching level 155 in mining because then I will be able to mine gold but only in places where life insurance is very very expensive.

World of Warcraft is my first Mmporg. I feared Everquest and didn’t like what I perceived as primarily a jogging and sitting simulator with occasional fights where basically a lot of names get closer and something happens which was hard to see because then the lag kicks in.

Oh the lag, that terrible reminder that this isn’t real, that the world isn’t really populated with things above there heads telling you if you’ve a reasonable chance of stabbing them in the back and getting away with it. Ohh the precious gold soon you will be mine, sweet gold.

But it doesn’t really matter, when lag kicks in I normally just go on a courier job or go exploring. Do something where lag doesn’t matter. I use Cosmos and bless their +15 silken socks for making such a wonderful add-on. I don’t feel it’s cheating to mark on the map where I saw some guy who I just have a gut feeling I’ll have to find on some future quest.

World of Warcraft is also like seducing a beautiful woman. More often or not it’s the woman doing the seducing using clever manipulitive techniques and WoW is no different. I started off as a complete newb in Northshire, bouncing around running into boar and just seeing what all the cool stuff did. When I was ready they gave me a quest that made me leave my homeland. I didn’t realise it at the time, but the game has layers of that shit. It encourages you to keep probing areas you really shouldn’t be going into just yet, and when you are ready you’re just gagging to kill every last bastard thing that killed you in there. Just like foreplay. Um.

In other words it’s a game that engages the emotions, makes you want to go back for Van Cleef, not for the money, not even for precious XP but just to finally kill the damned bastard for every god damned time you’ve died at the hand of one of his filthy minions or the fact that you and four other human beings couldn’t defeat his AI.

WoW got me by a two pronged assault. Tycho and Gabes constant rantings about it just brainwashed me and secondly the fact that it uses both familar screen graphics and interface which I found not just easy to pick up (I wrote a macro for dancing on my second day) but it didn’t feel I needed to pick anything up. It just seemed obvious because it uses a lot of Warcrafts conventions. It also must be said that it helped I had Tom as a mentor to teach me some of the basics of pulling. Is there no end to that mans talents? (that’s got to get me an Adminship surely, eh Boston ;) ). Memo to self: get pic of me pulling some condors for \"comedy\".

I’m level 24 now, it’s a been a slow couple of days due to the not having much energy to do much other say \"bleh\" and sneeze but taking breaks is good and in Warcraft the resting system allows for a little of it, but it always wants more from you. Go here kill this is largely the order of the day but there’s also certain storylines which appear and get you interested. Who are the defias, what’s the shizzle with Van Cleef and who’s this big fucker in Duskwood that everybody keeps shouting about?

The other thing that worried me about WoW was the fact that there were so many scare stories about Everquest and people getting addicted to it. Would this be me a man escaping into another world? And then I realised that I do this all the time, on boards, watching movies and reading books. And as a motivational aid it can be very handy. In fact as a game it does a good job of teaching manage techiques, do this, do this, then do this before you do this. So if tell myself I have to write a long meandering blog about a game you probably already are playing by giving myself the candy of playing it then well the results speak for themselves. Or something.

This journal is dedicated to the little level 6 gnome warrior I bodyguarded through a cave of those yeti things and who logged out right in the middle where I sure as hell couldn’t be arsed waiting for them to come back. Hope you made it out little buddy USE THE STONE!

So if you’re getting on board the Wow train then I suggest the following:

1. Plan ahead. In otherwords don’t make any plans for the next 9 hours, this includes sleeping.
2. Buy lots of ciggarettes. Sure they’ll give you +4 rolls on getting cancer but they’re ability to supress hunger and last time I checked I get no XP from taking a dump.
3. Always go for whatever armour is the strongest. It’ll generally look trendy anyway.
4. If you love me and the people of Spain then join spinebreaker. If you’re from boards I may look on you kindly and kill for you.
5. Read boards’ very own World of Warcraft forum. It’s a subforum in Massively Multiplayer. I imagine it will fuck everquest 2 in the ass in terms of the future but I was wrong about Atari. Twice.

Memo to future self reading this in journalistic critic mode:
I’ve got the flu, it’s 4:10 in the morning and I haven’t levelled up in two days.

Happy Christmas! December 25, 2004

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The Real-World(TM) December 22, 2004

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I’ve often used the phrase real-world(tm) but it occurs to me that some places are getting a lot realler than the real-world(tm).

Take internet forums for instance. On boards we tend to supress anti-social talk based on what society can sometimes dubiously deem taboo. That means no talking about drugs, warez and other illegal stuff.

Also giving sass to those in positions of power tends to end up with a ban but in a lot of ways Boards can be a lot realler than the world we live in.

\"Yeah sure Pam\" I hear you say \"Keep smoking the gange man!\"

Nonsense I say before sending my team of crack lawyers on your ass. I speak of the lack of real coming at us from all sides. We are now subjected to incredible amounts of advertising on a daily basis. It’s incredibly hard to go about your day and not see at least one advert. And the advertising industry is getting much, much clever. They now imploy slight of hand pychological tricks to make their products more appealing.

Take Sprite Zero. This product proudly shouts of it’s ZERO CARBS as well as the more familar ZERO SUGAR. When I first saw this I immediately thought of the barking mad Atkins diet fad that had the worlds fat (and people who think they’re fat) going insane for.

Zero carbs? In a soft drink? With no sugar? No shit sherlock?

Also having a look at those family bags what used to be called mini-size versions of stalwart confectionary icons. They’ve been renamed to treat-size and the bit that tells you this is dressed in the same garb as something that would normally say \"50% extra free!\". They’re turning the worst part of the product into it’s key selling point. Altering reality. Also what size is a treat?

I reread George Orwells 1984 the other day, partly because I hadn’t read it in ages but partly to see how different 2004 was to it. My telly doesn’t watch me, but pretty soon things like eyetoy and console connections to the net will make that possible on a mass scale.

Of course the idea that it would be used by governments to monitor sedicious behaviour is laughable. Or is it? We’ve already got cameras all over our towns as they try and reduce the amount of expensive garda on the beat.

The government of Big Brother is an advanced type of totalitarian dictatorship. It goes one step further by controlling the past, and vast archives of the past are either destroyed or revised to meet make the Ingsoc leader look infalliable. Control the present and you control the past. Control the past and you control the future.

It also controls language, invents new words, that have two contradicting meanings. Oxymorons. By limiting the vocabulary they hope to remove even the ability to think of revolt.

And by keeping the populance in a constant state of fear by being constantly at war, they are able to enforce harsh living conditions and keep the people down.

Now, even the most paranoid delusional would try and equate the world as it is today with that of 1984 but there are some things that worry me.

The UK Government wants to introduce National Identity cards. Voluntary at first, but there are ways round that. Want to get the dole? You’ll need to get an identity card first. Self-employed? Well we’ll need a photocopy of your indentity card with your tax forms. Prisoners would get them issued on release when on bail.

In other words you don’t have to get one but if you need anything done with a government department then you’d have to get one. It would be manditory in all but name.

The gas part about this is the reasoning behind it. It’s being done to stop terrorism, cut down on crime and illegal immigration. Terrorism? The IRA were blowing all sorts of things up in the UK but it’s only now that Al Qaeda are threatening to blow up things in the UK that this idea has sprung up.

It’s pretty obvious to any rational person that the reasons for invading Iraq given to the public were lies. Iraq was no more capable of attacking the UK with ballistic weapons of mass destruction than say, Ireland is, certainly not in 45 minutes.

And if the media aren’t helping change reality enough, I was astonished when I found that Time had presented they’re coveted Man of the Year to George W Bush. Despite the overwhelming evidence that he’s probably the worst president in the United States history. One wonders what strings were pulled for that one.

We rely on the media, the news is the truth. If you hear about something major happening you don’t really believe it until it’s on the news. But if the media isn’t impartial then you’re not hearing the truth. You’re hearing a distorted version of the truth designed to make you believe something else.

And that’s what’s happening in the states. The land of the free. The mainstream news organisations fear criticising their leader. That’s fucking scary.

As the world gets smaller and smaller with more and more people trying to use ever dwindling resources is it a matter of time before democracy itself becomes obsolete and slowly but surely Orwell belated vision of the future becomes our altered reality?

1984 was first published in 1949 yet he predicted that helicopters and \"wireless wave controlled rocket bombs\" (or tomahawks) would become the main tools of warfare. The floating fortress may not have arrived just yet but if he saw todays modern superclass aircraft carriers he’d probably shrug and go \"looks fortressy to me, 2.5 out of 3 aint bad\".

Hopefully, I’m just being paranoid. What gives me hope are enclaves like boards and Something Awful. Things in these places can be very unreal. Because there are no limits except imagination, reality can be anything you want. But it’s here that you also hear real people talking about real things, passing their truth around until eventually a shared reality is produced. And sometimes that reality is truer than what real-life(tm) can muster.

Enter… The Thunderdome December 10, 2004

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Climbatization December 2, 2004

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A have an mp3 of the Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls. The only reason I have it is because it reminds me that it was the first song I ever taped off the radio. I thought it was cool but when I look back it was the intro bass beat that hooked me into it.

I’m not a musician. Possibly being forced to play the recorder in school turned me off the creation of music. The recorder is a foul instrument which when I played it sounded like I was strangling a swan with a cold.

But Jesus H Tap dancing Christ do I love listening to music. I’ve often thought about devoting an entire journal entry to The Prodigy’s – Climbatize. One of the main reasons is because I’ve been listening to it since it came out seven years ago.

It starts off with a soaring synthoscape with a trembling treble beat hinting at things to come, then it starts to fly and a jagged keyboard slowly purifies itself before the bass arrives with hostile intentions. Hostile like the engine of an Aston Martin DB7 revving up. It is quite simply the best driving song I have ever heard. It made driving a VW Caddy feel like I was behind the hood of a throbbing V8 engine. The probing horns strobing deep into parts of my brain where music is not susposed to go as the beat pounds relentlessly into my skull. Occasionally the intense beat backs off to allow perfectly timed rythmic waves to crash down on my already weakened mind.

In my youth I was something of a musical nazi. To be fair, when I was a teenager, the cast of Neighbours ruled the charts with such ugly bile which I cannot even call \"music\". And being a teenager it was n’t hard to find the hormonal fuel to want to do nasty and Geneva Convention breaking things to Msser’s Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

True, the years have brought home the fact that these guys simply found a fairly easy way to make cash and lots of it, but I hated them for unleashing their turged spawn upon the world.

Fortunately bands like U2, Dire Straits, Simple Minds and INXS got me through those tough times but I looked with heavy suspicion on anything that was even vaguely manufactured pop. These days I’m a bit more relaxed about it. Probably because I understand that the charts are controlled by teenage girls who tend to think more about image then actual musical expertise. Occasionally the music manfacturing industry dumps something which actually sounds ok and has a catchy beat.

I’ll hold up my hand and admit that some of the Spice Girls songs were pretty good. Most were crap, but you’d have to have a heart made of lead-lined concrete not to feel some slight stirrings of emotion to \"2 become 1\", even if they are just a slight moistening in the crotch area. Maybe because it actually acknowledges that yes, teenagers get horny even if there not susposed to be until they’re 18 or something. A smidgeon of honesty going against the old established taboo’s. And isn’t that one of musics functions? To break the old rules?

Sure didn’t I have a picture of Belinda Carlisle on my wall back in the day? :)

My collection of music is pretty big and contains pretty much everything from Madonna to Metallica, from EMF to Elastica. I can’t box myself into a particular genre. I was never a rocker, metalhead, Curehead, dance freak or any other of these clan like institutions. Over the years I’ve been able to find a few common things about all the music I like.

Bass is very important to me. I realised this when I first listened to Fat of The Land on crappy creative labs speakers and then got some better speakers with a bass unit. Turned out I had only been listening to half the album and not the better half. The bass guitar is a vitally important tool and one you sometimes have to concentrate to hear. But it is the meat to the lead guitars sauce. Done right it provides a subconcious rythme which connects with a primal part of the brain.

Right now I’m listening to the twelve and a half minute remix of the two and half original of U2’s – Desire. This song can only be played loud (thank you Sony In-Ear headphones) thanks to it’s tribal like drums and kung foo guitar riffs which scratch lovingly along with random inserts of US news clips.

Good music makes me want to move. It causes me to tap my feet and nod my head. It takes me along for a ride and causes me pleasure that sometimes nothing else can. It can change my mood and inspire me.

Right, journal spasms over. Bed now. Well maybe after Much Against Everyone’s Advice is finished….. I’m tryyyying to comphrehend the things I wrrriiiiiite!

I’m going straight to hell for this. December 2, 2004

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Right, for some reason I’m full of crap, and by god I’m going to get it out of my head even though I only just wrote a journal.

I was reading the Scientology website. There is a section on it which reads:

\"Despite its many successes, science has not provided answers to questions man has been asking himself since time immemorial: Who are we? What do we consist of? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we doing? These questions have always been the province of philosophy and religion, but traditional answers became inadequate in the face of the H-bomb. Scientology, drawing on the same advances in knowledge that led to the understanding of nuclear physics, provides modern answers to these questions.\"

Personally I don’t need to create a religion to answer these questions. I certainly don’t need to give a percentage of what I earn to learn the answers.

Let’s go through those questions, shall we?

Who are we?
We’re human beings, evolved from monkeys, which evolved from amoeba. There is scientific evidence of this laid down by God as a test of our faith.

What do we consist of?
This is a remarkably stupid question and not one people regularly think about. Why? because the answer is \"mostly water\".

Where do we come from?
Personally I entered the world in the Coombe Hosipital. Most anthropologists think homo sapiens evolved in Africa and then spread out across the planet. Possibly the question really asks \"Where did life come from?\" but it’s entirely possible that life spontaneously came into existence on Earth or another planet in the solar system.

What are we doing?
I’m writing a journal. Most people are sleeping. In a more general sense, we are all part of a society of humans to which most contribute in some way. Why? To earn money for food, warmth and for some reproducing other humans. Pretty much the same shit we’ve always been doing for millions of years.

Scientology doesn’t bring up the big questions involving death. Not sure why. Maybe I’d have to get to a certain level of theta or something to find out. I won’t though because I already know the answer.

When I die, it’s like turning a pc off. I’m dead, therefore my brain will not be able to function. My neurons will decompose and disseminate.

But what of my soul? My spirit? Will that not ascend to the sky or another dimension or some nirvana somewhere? Well that’d be nice, but to be honest it smells like a fairy story to me.

Life after death makes the sadness of death more palitable, easier to digest. Loved ones are not gone, but in a happy place full of fun. Their spirit looks down on us from above guiding us somehow.

Well in a way that’s true. My grandparents still guide me through the genes they passed on to me. They also taught me a lot of things. My moms father in particular was a mine of useful information. Every single time I wire a plug, or tighten a screw I think of him and smile. I find that gives me more comfort than imagining his spirit wandering around watching me.

To me all religions offer a quick and easy way of answering the tough questions.

Why are we here? Well my answer of \"It was an accident\" just doesn’t cut it for a lot of people. But if we look at the universe and how mind-stompingly big it is, then life was bound to happen.

The human mind has trouble fitting the size of the universe into context. It’s just so bloody big. Our own galaxy is just one of trillions and it’s been around for billions of years.

In poker, the odds of hitting a Royal Flush is remarkably high. For those not into poker a royal flush is the name given to getting a sequence of cards, all the same suit, from the 10 to the ace. If you’ve got one then you win, no hand can beat you, the end. In the many, many hands of poker I’ve watched, I’ve seen about three or four. But it still happens. People play the lotto every week hoping that their one in over four million chance of winning comes good.

Basically if you wait long enough in a place as big as the universe anything can happen and it often does.

My problem with religion is that it is an opiate for the for the masses. I, like Scientology, want to explore my own brain, understand the universe in greater depth. But I have my own way of doing that, developing my own systems and tools for understanding things. A religion seeks to find a generic template which it tries to apply to unique individuals. It’s like reading the back of a quiz book for the answers. You might agree that the answer is correct, but you don’t know why and as a wise man once said on these very boards, it’s not the destination, but the journey that’s important.

I don’t expect sudden enlightment. I expect the universe to become clearer and easier to understand as I get older. It already has.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. December 1, 2004

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There was some rumour going round that Minister McDowell was going to ban violent games in Ireland. Here’s the actual story.

I imagine any review of irish law will make the games shops a bit more responsible for selling games to kids. Just like newsagents are more responsible about selling smokes to kids *cough*.

Here’s the list of evil:

(1) Doom 3; (2) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; (3) Gunslinger Girls 2; (4) Half Life 2; (5) Halo 2; (6) Hitman: Blood Money (releases in 2005); (7) Manhunt; (8) Mortal Kombat: Deception; (9) Postal 2; and (10) Shadow Heart

Bear in mind of course that this list was drawn up by the Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsiblity (ICCR). This is a coalition of American religious organisations. I think the Examiners description of them as a "think-tank" is probably just lazy reporting.

Personally I think it’s a bit rich for the ICCR calling for restrictions on these games, religion not being known for it’s peace enhancing aspects. If you add up the people who’ve been imprisoned, tortured and killed in the name of religion against those imprisoned, tortured and killed by kids who’ve played violent video games then I think just possibly religion is in the lead.

Not really a fair comparison I suspose as religions’ been around for a lot longer, but I really do think that there should be stricter controls on religion. I think an age limit should be imposed. Strictly over 18’s. There’s no telling what all that talk of damnation and suffering can do to children.

Of course the real problem religious coalitions like this have with video games is that they’re much more interesting than going to church on a Sunday morning. I know I’d much prefer blowing demons away than being preached to about what is good for me and what isn’t by some guy who claims to be the voice of some imaginary being nobodies ever seen.

But I’m not here to attack beliefs in God/Gods/Whatever. The only reason these people even made the news is because they’ve pooled their collected monetary wealth (and you’ve gotta wonder how they got all that cash in the first place) and use it to get attention.

I’m sure they do good stuff or at least did good stuff, in the past. The ICCR was originally created as an offshoot of those opposing the Vietnam War.

In a statement released by them they say the following:


We are speaking today to corporations in the video game industry, and to adults who will be purchasing video games as holiday gifts for children. We believe that corporations in the video game industry, who may pride themselves as good corporate citizens, must assume greater responsibility in ensuring that violent interactive entertainment is not accessible to children and youth …

Well you’ve got to presume then that they’re going to be talking to McDonalds about it’s promotions of food proven, without any doubt whatsover, to be very bad for children, yet marketed directly at children. I’m no doctor but I’d fear a kid jacked up on a sugar buzz much more than one engrossed in ridding Mars of demons.

They’ll obviously also be talking to all those corporations that make action figures that realisticly punch and fire weapons, because surely they’re going to incite violence.

What about sports?! Good god, children under the age of 18 running towards each other at high speeds, sometimes armed with sticks!

Tell you what ICCR, let he who is without sin fire the first shot.

Boards banners, poker dealing and cheese and it’s alternate uses November 25, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
6 comments

Logic1 made the above. I don’t know if that’s me, photoshopped on the right, but it gives me hope that I’ll still look sexy this Saturday night. Sometimes, it’s hard, to be a woman.

Poker dealing
Hyzepher wants me to talk about \"poker dealing and the fear within\". I admit I’m not the greatest dealer in the world as just like playing poker, dealing gets more complicated the more you know. I think the main reason I find it hard is that over the years I have abdicated my mental maths in favour of computers.

Dealing cards requires a great deal of concentration. It requires holding various variables in memory while processing numbers at a table whose occupants are very likely to be more experienced at poker than I. This can lead to panic, but you can’t run away from a table; a dealer deals until s/he is relieved.

Despite this I do enjoy dealing. I’m slowly but surely getting better at it, I’m learning all the time and my brain is reviving old methods for calculating which I find has positive benifits for other parts of my life.

Cheese and it’s alternative uses – as requested by mr_angry
Many people eat cheese. And why not, it’s got taste, texture and works with just about any type of food. But for too long we have restricted it’s use to the kitchen.

Cheese can be used to make candles. Just melt it and pour it into a cylinder (pre buttered of course) and add a wick, presto – there is light!

Take two lumps of cheese, stick them in your ears, presto – you can’t hear Rick Astley or Gene Pitney when dealing cards!

Drafty windows? Use cheese as a putty. Not only will it stop drafts but it will attract all sorts of wildllife for your viewing pleasure.

Locked in prison? \"Borrow\" a guards key using your criminal talents and squash it into a lump of cheese. Return the key before it’s noticed missing and you now have an imprint which can be used to make another key. Cheese can bring you freedom!

Cheese it!

By your command November 25, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
7 comments

I’m due a journal entry but I can’t think of anything to write about. So I’m taking requests. Please use the comment feature or pm me and I will write about anything you want. I will write poetry, short stories, or rants about politics, music, movies, elephants, etc etc. I will even write about things about myself (although I will not reveal anything about anybody else without their explicit permission).

I promise each and every suggestion will get into a journal, even if it’s just a one line gag. My team of comedy scientists are waiting to hear your call.

Confessions of a boards superstar November 7, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
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Hi, my name is Pam and the following is a true account of a tightly held secret I can no longer hide. I’ve been pulling off the greatest troll that boards has ever seen. The truth is, I’ve never been male.

Being a girl I was afraid at first of entering what still seems to be a fairly male dominated website. I adopted a male persona so that people would read what I say and not pm me asking me for my used underwear. Strangely they still did, so I mailed out a few semen stained boxers for there masterbatory pleasures.

Boards beers were the hardest as I had to hire this gimp called Adam Jewell to go and make a fool out of himself. Fortunately he was cheap to hire as his requests were for cake, cheap whiskey and my used underwear. That he didn’t complain about his shipment of stained y-fronts I exchanged for a cup of meths off a homeless person remains a mystery I don’t care to solve.

In order to keep the front of being male going I had to resort to letting him post his testosterone fuelled blatherings on boards. I gave him the Deathgiver2003 account for a while and then he went off and hijacked the Mysterio account and got himself banned. This was intensely annoying as I had further plans for Mysterio.

So why now? Why confess when nobody has the slightest idea who I am? Why risk getting sweaty pm’s from hormone fuelled drunk teenagers sending me the electronic equivilant of snapping my bra-strap?

Well Santa Strike Force did me in when The Muppet revealed my true identity to the public. I paniced at first but then I had a moment of clarity. Adam certainly wouldn’t dress up in drag being so immensely insecure that he was worried that it would turn him gay. All I had to do was put some make up on badly, wear some clothes that where about 5 years out of fashion, drink too much and shout \"I like cake\" a lot. Being a lesbian I would have no problem if \"amp\" got lucky ;)

The public took the bait and to my horror they started flooding money into the fund. Over two thousand three hundred quid. I laughed it off at first but then I started thinking about those kids in hospital having crap christmas’s stuck in a boring hosipital. That money would mean a lot to them, give them warm childhood memories. It reminded me of when the orphanage got a donation of a Sinclair Spectrum 48k and the new world it opened up for me.

So guilt crept into my soul. I tried to shut it out by posting less and concentrating on shopping, chocolate and serial one night stands. But as any girl reading this knows, those are merely distractions which avoid but not solve problems. They sometimes even make those problems more complex, especially when you combine them while wearing an elephant suit (don’t ask).

I thank all those involved with raising the money. I forgive The Muppet for revealing the real me to you. Maybe that one night stand was for the best.

Think not unkindly of me, people of boards. Forgive me. I merely hid for equality, not for evil. Well parts were evil. Ok I’m evil. But I’ve got boobies.


Lunacy Abounds! GLm! What’s your Ethos?. pamcam contains scenes of extreme peril.
<- The Official Mascot for and Archangel of Boards.ie 2002. Idle Pc? Join Boards.ie’s Folding Team
[ PAM'S JOURNAL: PAY THE NICE MAN! ][ Pictures! ][ Par lives ][ Boards STATS! ][ Boards' Wikipedia entry ]
\\:eek:- Bid to make me look silly in aid of SSF! Me dressing up in as pam: €2305 /3000

PAY THE NICE MAN! October 1, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
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Dear United States of America September 17, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
8 comments

The Batflat,
Dublin,
Ireland.

17 September 2004.

Dear United States of America,

You probably haven’t heard of me as there are lots of you and only one of me. I am amp, a minor celebrity superstar on Irelands biggest and best bulletin board – boards.ie.

Currently you are going through a pretty tough time in your life. The whole world seems to be against you, even the weather. You took a bit of a body blow with the senseless deaths on Sept 11th 2001. My sincere condolances.

Let me begin by just thanking you so much for Pepsi Max. I know it’s probably evil in some chemical or corporate way but hot damn it tastes good. I’d also like to thank you for producing most of the greatest films mankind has ever seen. It would be rude of me not to give kudos to that whole landing on the moon thing. Wasn’t actually around at the time but fair play, took some balls.

Creds to your technological innovation and development. Most of my most precious things were designed by you. Well apart from my monitor.

/me takes a little time out to hug monitor.

Well done on creating the internet. Turned out to be pretty handy and in indirect ways has given me much pleasure. Thanks to it I’ve been able to experience the genius of people like Bill Hicks, Mel Blanc and Woody Allen to name but a few.

Going back a few decades, cheers for helping sort out that whole World War fad that was going on. I for one don’t want to live in a fascist state (no we’re not there yet ;) ). I don’t want to live in a communist state either, at least not the type the Soviet union would have imposed so thanks for making the prospect of invading the rest of Europe somewhat distasteful to them.

Of course our own economic development would be non-existent without the help of your and the EU’s investments. And your help in getting the politicians up north to stop shooting and start talking is much appreciated.

However of late I’m finding you to be a bit more distant, more introverted. You use to be one of the guys, hanging out, getting on with others and at least trying to make the world a better place for all of us.

You used be really respected, but lately, well, people are starting to talk. I know it was tough to make a decision between two morons but at least one of them knew a little about the world outside of your good self.

Now I know what you’re going to say, what business is it of mine to start lecturing you about who governs you? Well our leaders influence the rest of the world about as much as they influence us. In other words your government is indirectly my government. For example your invasion of Iraq has resulted in oil prices going up which in turn, adds to our already high inflation. Your government has much more of an effect on my life than my own one.

Now I think it’s fair to say that Bush was a mistake. He’s an embarressment really. After all, he was voted in when there wasn’t much going on and everything was hunky dory so it didn’t really matter who ran the country.

But things have changed, the terrorists are everywhere and used as an excuse to errode your basic civil liberties. Bush is forced to listen to the people who put him power (all the really nasty industries) and as such he’s going to want to destroy the enviroment in Alaska. He’s not interested in anything that would weaken the petrol-chemical industry. You know as well as I do that we’re going to have to give up the internal combustion engine at some stage, but there are some who don’t care as long as the money keeps rolling in.

The storms will get worse. There will be more flooding. All because a few elephant badged wankers want to be richer than each other.

You will soon have an opportunity to stop all this nonsense. You can vote in the election of what will be the most powerful puppe^H^H^H^H^Hman in the world. I do not. But if I did, I’d vote for Kerry. From what I’ve read of him so far, I think he’d do a far better job than Wubya. You know it makes sense.

Anyway, we miss you USA, come on back and start being the country we respect and admire again.

Regards,

amp

I’m no quitter September 15, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
2 comments

God it’s a hard thing to miss someone. Songs have been written many times about this madness, but you only hear it, feel it when you’re in that sorry place. It’s like a drug addiction. If you’re a smoker you’ll know what I mean. You give up and pretty soon all you can think about is ciggarettes. You’re at the zoo looking at the elephants and you’re thinking \"Jesus, he could smoke two cigars at once\"

But you have to just not let it get to you. You have to be strong. Not beat yourself up about the things you should’ve done or said. You just keep going, finding things to do to occupy your mind and not let yourself get stuck in a loop. You just keep going, finding things to do to occupy your mind and not let yourself get stuck in a loop.

Sometimes something will trigger an intense memory, akin to a flashback, and you’ll be stuck as all the feelings and emotions flood back and then pain kicks in as the sensible part of your brain cuts it off and starts demanding distractions like whiskey, banging your head off a wall, listening to ABBA or some other painkiller.

That’s the stupid way out. What I do is take the piss out of myself. Laugh at my weakness. This is the insane way out. But it works for me. Get’s me through the day and allows me to once again see the universal joke.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some photoshopping to do, involving some historical costume photos ;)

P.s Holy shee-ite! I just dropped a blog!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM 3 September 10, 2004

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2 comments

I had a plan a while ago, a simple one and it was to upgrade my graphics card at the same time Doom 3 came out, or Half-Life 2 or Duke Nuke Forever* one of those three. That way I would jump both in hardware and software into the glorious world of DirectX9 and all it’s funky chicanary.

What a good idea that was and I now am running a games pc that isn’t a piece of shít in least one key area. My chunky Radeon 9800XT with 256mb of ram arrived recently and I installed it, made sure I had the latest drivers and then fed it my copy of Doom 3 which had been waiting patiently on the mantelpiece since I’d bought it in Software Zone (<-cheap).

I didn’t have the latest, latest drivers, so one swift download of 4.9 catalysts later Doom 3 appeared on my screen with it’s dandruff problem cured. It took me a while to progress at the start. Not that it was hard, it’s just that I kept stopping at say, a computer console and going OOOOOOOOH SO PREEETTTY…

Doom 3 is just gorgeous. It is art. Every last detail is perfect. And the graphics and physics engine work in total harmony. Shoot a zombie in the face and their head jerks back as blood spurts out. Their face shows the damage as they continue to shuffle towards you groaning.

In the early stages I was freaking out all the time, because I wasn’t used to getting enemy beasties spawn from behind me. Then I remembered that the old Dooms use to do this all the time which in itself made me realise that there are a lot of things aside from the weapons that Doom 3 holds true to it’s legacy. Things like becoming fearful everytime a health pack appears around a corner. I now reload all weapons and do a quick save when I spot a cache of goodies.

Sometimes nothing happens, others the lights go out and my speakers boom with demonic hoimcidal rage as I frantically spin around trying to locate the bastards. You have to learn quickly to see in the dark in Doom 3. Getting a good idea of the layout, keeping an eye on well let areas in case you need to get somewhere where you can actually see the bastards.

And bastards they are. It’s not that they’re hard to kill, no beastie can suffer the amount of firepower you get given, it’s that they look bloody realistic, at close quarters they claw you and your view gets thrown back as red slash marks blur the screen and you howl in pain.

When three of them are surrounding you in the dark doing this as you shoot shell after shell while desperatly trying to be anywhere else and you can hear your heartbeat going up, well let’s just say I’m taking breaks and changing my pants a lot.

The weapons are marvelous. The pistol I generally use for playing with zombies. I know it’s cruel but they’re dead and I’m a soldier so fúck it. Couple of shots to the head and then go for a leg. This makes them fall over more comedically especially if you time it right. If there’s a lot of zombies I’ll just freak out with the chainsaw. It’s worth a hit or two of damage just for the sheer fun of it.
The shotgun adopts it’s central role in my arsenal just as it did in the previous games. Perfect for shortrange enagements, most baddies evapourate (deliciously) in one or two shots.
I love the submachine gun for fast moving beasties like the BASTARD spiders and the STOP HEAD BUTTING ME FLAMING HEADS and for those wonderful shoot out moments where a zombie trooper keeps popping in and out of cover to take a shot at me.
Plasma gun fúcking owns me. I loved it in doom and quake 2/3 and if anything it’s even better. Feels more like a submachine gun but blasts like a shotgun. It’s one of those ones that I try not to use too much in case I come across some giant demon elephant or something.
I can’t quite take the chaingun seriously. It’s absolutely insane once it winds up. If there’s a lot of gerry I’ll switch to it and fire in their general direction and hope I hit them which I normally do.
Grenades are fun and I’ve had to start using them more, chucking them at places I reckon there’s going to be trouble. The visual ripple effect is outlandish.
The rocket launcher is sweet looking and is the first rocket launcher I actually believe could work in real-life. The way the rockets blow a monster cartwheeling away is incredible.
I can’t say much about the BFG as I’ve only used it once and blew myself up. I laughed so much I had to quit which I why I’m writing this now instead of playing.

If there’s one word that sums up Doom 3, it’s quality. The game is polished, every room lovelingly crafted, every console designed to perfection. The physics is shockingly good and the sound is beautifully but horrifically done. I often find myself looking back and forth as I think I hear shuffling or a distant blood-curdling scream.

A lot of whingers have complained about it’s lack of innovation in terms of gameplay. True it’s the usual push button here to open door there affair but so what?
Doom is a shoot em up not an RPG. It’s a game designed around clearing out rooms of baddies in various different ways. It takes that idea to the highest possible level. I’d love to know what people actually expected of Doom 3 other than this. I hear them in my head going \"wah wah Serious Sam already did this\". No. Doom did this and then Serious Sam copied that idea. And Doom 3 does it much, much better, more convincingly, making you sweat and take a breather after a particularly nasty battle.

And yes id will make boatloads of cash from licensing the engine. But that’s a good thing. It means we’ll get new games with a thoroughly high quality engine.

I’d write more but Mars is still infested with Satans minions and by god I’m going to kill every last one of them.

Eek will stay here and respond to your comments:

:eek:

* only joking

Bonus WANKS at PartyWANKERor PokerINTHEASS for $100 September 10, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
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Well I do love poker but by god I hate spammers. :eek:

POKE THIS LINK IN THE ASS TO SEE WHAT THE HELL I’M ON ABOUT!

Come eek. Though you look indentical to Mercs you are mine and completely different.

/me hugs :eek:

Viva La Revolution September 1, 2004

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Microsoft is right. Yes, Bill Gates is spot on. Once you start using GPL stuff then you find yourself slowing but surely slipping into the terrifying world of open source software. It started with Firefox (see previous entry) and then when I had to re-install XP after changing my motherboard I couldn’t be arsed re-installing Office XP. Sure I can’t read my old mail, but it’s archived and backed up and I pretty much just use webmail these days with notifiers.

So the other day I installed Openoffice.org 1.1.2 as I wanted to spruce up the aul cv. Took me about five minutes to understand the different icons and general feel of it, and then another 5 to get to grips with how it handles tables. My CV has an annoying amount of cells. Long story short: job done.

I felt an upwelling of smugness within me. A sort of self-righteous fight the powerism. Little cogs in my brain turned and it occurred to me that if I was using Firefox and now Openoffice, was it time for me to try Linux again? I keep myself informed about Mr Torvalds babies through the wonderful Slashdot and there was some story involved SuSE. This led me to their site and for once there wasn’t some mad downloading chicanary involved. Just download an iso, burn to cd and reboot. It promised not to **** up my windows xp install (which I’m still going to need for games for the time being), The screenshots of X looked sexy. So I slurped it down (gotta love broadband) and after piss easy install I write this now from within Konquerer.

Man I’m impressed. Hardware detection in this is excellent. All my stuff was found first go. Graphics card, built in network card, even my memory stick reader were all detected. In fact I’m playing tracks directly off that through the winamp clone XMMS.

Having a little trouble getting back into my Win2k server but I expected that. Samba’s a lot easier to configure these days. Linux purists might look down their nose at me for having to rely on GUI’s to configure things, but they’re worse than the Gates fanboys. **** you, I don’t want to re-invent the wheel everytime I want to change a bloody setting.

SuSE installs the KDE desktop environment (like windows explorer) which reminds me a little of OS X. Everythings all shiney and colourful but nicely organised, and I can change it later if I want.

Getting back to the games thing, I feel this will start to annoy me. Already I feel the superiority of this O/s when compared with XP, but with the majority of PC games being released only on windows I’m probably going to have to leave XP as is. All two bloody gigs of it. Hopefully this will change as more people get penguinised.

All in all though, after many years of trying various flavours of Linux (ah I still remember having to figure out hex address’s for my scsi card back in the days of Redhat v3.0) I think Linux’s user friendliness has met my limited nerdiness and eventually I’ll be able to free up 2gigs on hda1 ;)

ho ho ho, nearly lost entire entry thanks to not being logged into boards

OMG ZE CRAZYINESS! July 30, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
5 comments

So VB3 is finally here with all it’s bells and whistles and harps. It reminds me of the last time this happened. UBB was dumped in favour of vB2. There was a brief period of mayhem but eventually everything settled down.

This transition is even tougher as boards is so much bigger. More users, more forums, more hacks and more features all of which have to be moved and made working.

That this was done in a day is pretty incredible. Sure, there’s some minor things that need fixing but the fact that I can post a journal so soon after the upgrade cannot fail to impress.

There’s a couple of things that surprised me. Firstly, I have completely changed my mind about Quick Reply. It’s really handy. I had thought it would just encourage crappy spamming, but I’m not so sure now and it might actually help more people who aren’t as comp lit as others participate in conversations they normally wouldn’t have. And sure isn’t that what boards is about essentially, making communication easier.

I’ve switched from my old minimalist scheme to Clouds one. I used minimalist mostly because I used to access boards while waiting for something to install at a customers site and it looked just like a server admin control panel.

But the new Cloud one is gorgeous, with really funky looking buttons that just look brilliant on black. I’m not sure what all the icons mean yet but they sure look purty.

Of course, once normality is reached and everything works, I’ve a feeling the changes won’t stop there. Because vB3 is more advanced there’s going to be extra stuff that can be done with it. My nerd side is salivating at the gadgets and gizmos that might be implimented.

Lastly, the one feature that already has me CRAZY LIKE ZE OUTLANDISH ANIMAL ON FIRE is the probably the most simple. We can now just highlight some text and click on a button and by jingo it just chucks the tags around.

In the old days I’d be going [siz[b][/b]e] all over the place. Manually typing up a url link in ubb used to make my brane sweat, especially in the cramped confines of the signature editing box.

It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the boards population as a whole. If the culture changes and what new fads develop.

So thanks to all the Admins (even ecksor ;) ) and presumably others who worked (and are still working) on this momentus change. It’s going to be interesting for the next while.

Bring out the nerd.. but he’s sleeping… June 16, 2004

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I see all these signatures on boards that describe the innards of peoples pc and it creates a divide in my brane. One half of me drools at the specs as it highlights words like SATA raid and ATI Radeon 9800 pro XT SUPERMOTHER****NING FAST edition, and the other half cyncially laughs at this "my pc is better than yours" crap.

But I must listen to my nerdy self, he’s done a lot for over the years such as feed and cloth me. While I will not let my venerable old signature be tainted with such things I do have this journal to record the current specs of my pc’s and to warble on about them.

As a fan of cartoons and naming schemes that use silly computer descriptions I decided that my domain name would have to be Transformers. That meant that the pc I use most would have to be called Optimus and because Optimus was always superior to Megatron I named my server, with it’s lower specs, after the Decepticon leader.

Most people have the one pc which they keep up to date by selling off their relatively high spec older hardware to pay for the latest stuff. I’ve always had a problem with that. Probably some sort of hoarding instinct. So when I upgraded Optimus to a 1 ghz p3 system about 3 years ago, Megatron was born with an old case I got from a company my then employer bought out. It’s not a very good case apart from being very heavy to the point where I suspect it could probably take a bullet.

Since then both pc’s have remained relatively stagnent, getting minor upgrades when I either get some bargain that comes my way or when I actually have money and I happen to visit the For Sale board.

Foreplay over, let’s get down and dirty:

Optimus
Os: Windows XP pro sp 1
CPU: P4 2.4ghz Northwood
Motherboard: Asustek P4b-533
Ram: 2x 512 PC2700u DDR-SDRAM
HD1: 13gb 7200rpm IBM Deskstar
HD2: 20gb 5400rpm Seagate
DVD-ROM: Some generic brand 16x thing which has trouble sometimes due to the fact that I spilt tea on the front bezel.
CDR-RW+++—: Sony 52x burner. Can burn a whole cd in about 2 mins. Sweet
Network card: Built in Intel Pro 100/Ve
Primary Graphics card: Gainward Geforce 3 Ti200 with 128 mbs of ram.
Primary Monitor: Dell rebadged Sony P991 Triniton 19" and flatter than some plastacine that’s been sat on by an elephant.
Secondary graphics card: Some S3 2 meg piece of crap
Secondary monitor: Dell rebadged Nokia 17" goldfish bowl
Case: Full tower case modded with stickers and a couple of old psu cooling fans. I AM NOT L33T?
CPU cooling system: The Zalman one that’s like a book opening and an 80mm fan that while is very quiet is a pain when I want to change any pci cards mounted underneath it.
PSU: 350 watt P4 capable overpriced yoke that is my only ever purchase from Compustore. Those guys don’t sell toasters and that’s for the best. Imagine the carnage.
Speakers: Sony RXD6AV 5:1 surround sound hi-fi with something like 500watts of woofer bass. Or something.
Cigarette lighter: 5.25 " Car type ciggarette lighter. Plugs into an ordinary 12v molex connector and fits into a cd-rom bay. The ultimate in piece of mind for the dedicated smoker. Always a lighter to hand and never any is-it-out-of-gas worries.

I have the two monitors with an extended desktop that allows me to place clutter stuff like the palletes and stuff from Photoshop on to the 17" nokia so that my workspace increases on the 19". This pleases me greatly.

My two favourite components (19" and fag lighter) were supplied by RogueDotc and as such I am eternally grateful.

To any games nerd it’s obvious where the weakness is in this system . The Geforce 3 is a little weak for the new games coming out and certainly wouldn’t do the mythical three (HL2, Doom3 and that thing 3d Realms are working on) any good but there’s no way in hell I’m paying 500 eurobabies for a single component. Hell the base unit itself probably wouldn’t get me 500.

That said it’s something that always annoys me like doing those tests in 3d Mark 2003 when it says "OH YOUR CARD IS TOO **** TO DO THIS TEST, SO LETS JUST MOVE ON TO THE NEXT ONE SHALL WE?" It’d be nice to buy a new game and be able to set everything to ultra maximum. Ah the tortures of being a gamer.

You might notice also the piddly small amount of storage space. Well that’s one of Megatrons jobs. What of you mighty *ahem* Megatron?

OS: Windows 2000 server SP4
CPU: Intel P3 1ghz
Motherboard: Jetway something or other
RAM: 589mb SD-RAM
HD1: Western Digital 5400 20gb ide
HD2: Seagate 5400 80gb ide
HD3: Maxtor 5400 120gb ide
DVD-ROM: Pioneer 6x
Graphics card: 3dfx Voodoo 3500tv 16mb
Network card 1: 3com 3c905c
Network card 1: Realtek 8139
PSU: 300watt generic
Case: Midi-tower with armour plating

Megatron’s roles before I moved into the Bat flat were mostly for video/music playback on the tv and stereo and of course as a file server. It’s role as a test server that I can play with has been invaluable for my career. These days it’s also very handy as a web terminal for my fellow flatmates and guests.

We will eventually replace the router with a small linux box. It’ll do DNS, DHCP like the router but with additional stuff like a firewall we can configure and web proxy/caching. It’s a bit of a challenge as I have never set up a semi-production linux box before but I think it’s only possible to learn how an os works by putting it to work. Plus linuxs lower running specs means that it should be ok on whatever outdated piece of crap I install it to. (By the way I’d appreciate any distro recommendations any one has for the above role.)

Right that’s enough from my nerd side for a while. Back in your box!

Election Spesh June 8, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
9 comments

Anybody commutes to work in Dublin cannot fail to notice all the faces being plastered up on any available erection (I thank you). Those beaming happy faces wishing for our precious votes in exchange for promises of change and greatness.

A few have caught my roving eye and I’d like to share my thoughts on them.

First off the wonderful Ivana Blackhead (I’m not sure that’s spelt right, but it’s a fairly foreign sounding name for a right wing Labour hopeful). She says that Europe should be working for us and not the other way round. I saw one of these posters gazing across at one of those huge blue signs that says "THIS BIG ASS MOTORWAY RECIEVED 85% FUNDING FROM THE EU AS PART OF THE DRAG IRELAND INTO THE ****ING 21ST CENTURY ALREADY PROGRAM".

Ironic no?

It doesn’t help at all that an infinite amount of highly trained monkeys with a infinite amount of high end workstations running Photoshop couldn’t make her look even vaguely attractive on that poster. And if the photo that we’re susposed to fall in love with and thus vote for her is that bad, looking at her passport photo could be classed as an extreme sport.

Next up is some Sinn Fein child. I swear on the grave of Charlie Haughey (die already mother****er!) that I saw a Sinn Poster with this schoolgirl on it looking like she’s having a laugh with unseen pals about Jacintas new hair weave or something. Just now I have been to Sinn Feins website and it’s true. A 20 year old going for councillor. Wow. I say vote no lest Westlife get special priviliges in the district of Pembroke.

A recent visit to my old stomping grounds of Dun Laoghaire and a poster with a scary yet vaguely stoic looking man on a red, black and white background. I dunno, maybe the recent D-Day orgy on Sky’s various documentary channels is starting to colour my thinking but the poster is a little to aryan for my liking.

Speaking of blondes, the PD’s have some fairly attractive blonde who, while on the border of milfdom, isn’t half bad. Maybe that’s why I noticed that almost all of her posters are fixed in place using black cable ties as opposed to the usual white affair. This lends to an optical illusion that she’s wearing a gothy black choker and seems to give her an air of deeply hidden teenage angst. Nice try Mary Harney, but you’ll it’d take two herds of rabid elephants rampaging in opposite directions while attached to each of my balls to make me vote for any of your drones, you fat ugly bitch. About the only good thing you’ve brought this country is more off-licenses.

Next up there’s one of Eugene Regan a Fine Gael candidate running for the Local Elections or the european ones. I dunno which but I don’t care because I won’t be voting for him. Sorry Eugene but you just look too much like Ian Beale from Eastenders. How could I possibly vote for a man who looks like Ian Beale? Can I take the risk that looking like a character from the most depressing* soap in all of christendom might actually share some of his personality traits?

Fianna Fáil have taken a slightly different route this time and have decided to blend their ugly mugs with proud, chesting beating LOOK AT ALL THE COOL **** WE DID! posters. They shout M1! QBC! LUAS! Woah there Bertie, me aul mucker**, did you just shout LUAS!? The project that has ****ed up traffic in Dublin since, well ok, Dublin traffics been ****ed up since the first Model T Ford arrived here but for the love of god hang on till it’s finished before you start bragging about it. Included in this propaganda is a lovely picture of the new Dundrum Bridge. This bridge is most famous for the fact that it was too short (just like the port tunnel) for those hefty Euro trucks and thus more ground underneath had to be removed delaying it’s construction. Which reminds me, no sign of their old chant "A lot done, a lot more to do" this year.

Of course, I don’t base my actual voting based on posters, that would put me in the same herd as those who vote on Big Brother. I actually read their filthy phamplets and listen to them being interviewed on Today FM (Hey Royston! BRAWK BRAWK! YOU ****ING CHICKEN!) and then I vote based on the people I think will improve this country.

I think I’m in a minority of people in my demographic that actually vote. I’ll take a slightly different route home on the election, pop in, tick my preferences and leave. It’s a remarkably simple thing to do and so incredibly important, and yet most people my age and younger can’t be arsed. The excuses vary from "All politicians are scumbags" to "one vote can’t change anything". Bollox to that ****.

Here’s some reasons to vote:

1. You can moan about the state of the country safe in the knowledge that you voted for the other ****heads.
2. It’s a piece of piss to do.
3. ****loads of people sacraficed a hell of a lot for a bloody long time so that we could vote.
4. Takes very little time.
5. Voting can change things. For example the rise in populatory for the various Green parties has forced the bigger parties to pay attention to the enviroment.
6. If you don’t vote, you’re not making a protest, you’re simply handing your vote to somebody else. Like me. You’re giving me your vote. Are you sure you trust me with it?

So this Friday, if you can vote, do vote. You can do it in the morning before work, or on the way home. There’s no scary easily hackable voting machines waiting for you (this time). It’ll only take a couple minutes and that’s worth that fleeting moment of civic pride in the enjoyment of excercising your right to vote.

* Sorry ladies I don’t really hate Eastenders. Thanks to nearly 10 years of not watching I have no idea if Ian Beale is even still in the show or if it’s now about a troupe of gay sheep.
** Bertie once gave me something special in a very public place

P.s I’d just like to include a pre-emptive STFU! to Victor who will no doubt have the urge to correct some of the above facts, grammar, spelling and possibly even my maths.

Shit Happens May 20, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
3 comments

I was walking around today feeling vaguely unsettled and the most annoying part was not understanding why. When I got home I flicked through some old log files and then started laughing. You see today is an anniversary of sorts for me. Interesting timing too.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the joy in the little things life throws at me. Y’know what I mean. Odd coincidences, little hypocracies, connections between things that shouldn’t really be connected. I tend to discard these things afterwards as my rational side comes up with some vaguely valid explanation for them. Other times I let myself focus on them and try and find a pattern as if to find some new breakthrough in the way I view the world.

Invariably I resign myself to the simple fact that the phrase "**** happens" is probably the best philosophical explanation for the meaning of life. However there are certain things which I will always believe in but will never understand. One of those things is love.

So while my little aniversary means nothing to you, it still means a great deal to me. :)


Lunacy Abounds! GLm! What’s your Ethos?. ampcam
<- The Official Mascot for and Archangel of Boards.ie 2002. Fight Cancer! Join Team Boards.ie
OMG! ITZ TEH FUNKY JOURNAL! Pictures! Par lives BINK! KIC-BOT! BAN AMP! The Boardsies JAHBULON!
"If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then amp’s probably in the toilet" – MrPudding

Women and men and BRANES May 3, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
5 comments

There was a thread on After hours there that inspired me to write this meandering twaddle and seeing as I’m at a bit of a loose end due in part to the fact that Mercury_Tilt is supressing my fun in the Prison forum I thought I’d not post it there but post it here where I can stretch my legs and y’know babble incoherently. I don’t think Karlin Lillington would approve of Mysterio’s disapearence :( . Speaking of which, how you doing Karlin? If you ever need a hand with that pesky Windows XP give me a pm sometime. I’ll come over with a bottle of wine and you know… sort it out ;)

Anyway I digress, as you all know I have nothing but love for the little scamp; he does a wonderful job taking care of those pesky muppets in For Sale and it’s environs.

I think the easiest answer to the above wonderful debate (which disserves a mention itself for it’s high wit content) is that both genders are equally unsure what they actually want and are in fact insane.

I used to think that only women were insane but then I talked to them and they told me about men and yes, we’re insane too.

Having brains that think is probably the downside of what biology had thought was a pretty simple concept ie: reproduction. Before brains were evolved it wasn’t really a problem. Angst hadn’t been invented yet. However todays human has to deal with the myriad of social etiquette, other humans concepts of that structure and all against the background of the massive flow of information we swim in everyday.

In summary, we’re still animals, it’s just that we’ve got this incredibly large, stupenduously complex computer bolted onto the top of a very simple program that reads:

00000001 Eat
00000011 ****
00000010 Protect Young
00000110 Die

Compare this to our higher functions:

10 Learn to eat
20 Learn to walk
….

4054 Learn that glass of cold water is better than warm water in the summer.
….

31020 Hear that screwing has more than one meaning.
31030 Discover you got the two meanings mixed up.
GOSUB OMG_JENNY_HAS_BUMPS_ON_HER_CHEST
….
If Rainforest = getting cut down then if Angst = X and Hormones = "Critical" then for REBELTEENAGEYEARS
GOSUB JOIN_GREENPEACE
ENDIF
….

WELCOME TO WONDERING WHAT THE HELL THE OTHER GENDER OR THE SAME GENDER IS ALL ABOUT OS

Please wait…This program will load for the rest of your life….

To summarize the summary: it’s a data missmatch

To summarize the summary in such a way were I don’t sound like a beardy: people all mad.

Include {small **** you to anal retentive programmers out there that want to dis the above PSEUDOcode}
ENDSUB GOTO END
END

P.s European = Your a peon. I bet those ten new EU countries didn’t think of THAT!!! :D (I didn’t either, it was Morgan I think)

P.s.s Mind you that’s not as bad as finding out that somebody I know can fix shoes and then saying "THAT’S A LOAD OF COBBLERS!"

P.s.s.p.s Ok you can go know, I’ll just post my sig to make sure it’s over (and just to back it up, again. Just in case):


Lunacy Abounds! GLm! What’s your Ethos?. ampcam
<- The Official Mascot for and Archangel of Boards.ie 2002. Fight Cancer! Join Team Boards.ie
MY JOURNAL IS FABZ! Pictures! Par lives BINK! KIC-BOT! BAN AMP! The Boardsies JAHBULON!
"If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then amp’s probably in the toilet" – MrPudding

Like OMG I like totally need to like get this off my like chest and st March 31, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
9 comments

So like today was like so wierd and stuff and like I’m sitting at home like and surfing the web for like y’know stuff and I get a call where this lady says that she’s got bad news and says how like bummed she is but then gives me even better news that completly negates the like bads news like and I’m so freaky happy that I bounce and joy!

*ahem*

In other news a dear friend indeed has been injured but is in perfect health. He’s alright and will be back soon. I thought a femur was a cat?

And so the above two thoughts alternately hit my brane every ten minutes or so. Good news, bad news. Ying yang.

Sorry, the condition of these last few entries is dire, I’ve let myself down, I’ve let you down. I love you all. And you and… you… and you and OI YOU AT THE BACK! ****!

Jailhouse Rant March 26, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
16 comments

Somebody had the idea years ago of having Big Brother type forum where only certain people can post but can’t post anywhere else. That’s what Prison turned out to be and it’s fair to say it was more entertaining than Big Brother ever was.

Of course, Mysterio had to go ruin it all by mentioning the "L" word, but by then the gimmick had gotten old anyway.

It has helped me realise what’s being going on in boards over the last couple of years. A lot of people have left boards either quietly or in a blaze of glory and it seems to be due to the fact that flaming has had to be actually acted upon by mods.

In the early days of boards.ie that was how muppets were controlled. They were flamed off the website. Back then boards could be classed as a large gang of people and that’s how the system worked. You dared not post muppety type crap lest you be jumped on by others.

Flamewars can be hilarious and it’s unfortunate that boards has lost that element but leaving flamewars unchecked with boards’ growing population just isn’t possible anymore. This left a lot of users pissed off because I think they felt they earned their standing by the standard of their flames.

However the tide is too big. There’s too many new users coming to boards to flame them all. There’s no possibility of running them all out of town so boards has become less elitest and more mainstream as a result. We have to ignore dickheads or wait for them to get themselves banned. The more impatient users who either remember the old days or have heard about them don’t seem to realise this and are quiet suprised when they get in trouble.

I’m glad Mysterio got a good run around though. Getting himself banned was the best way for him to go out in the end. It’s a funny aul boards. :)

Firefox Force Five March 22, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
15 comments

Well 0.8 to be exact but I’m a sucker for illiteration. In my line of work I find it much easier to learn about new technology by actually using it and so from time to time I have tried various browsers to get a non-microsoft view of the world.

Around 95% of the internet populace use Internet Explorer and right up till a couple of weeks ago I was ~.000000000000001% of that populace.

I surf the web a lot. I use the internet for a wide range of things some of which even have nothing to do with pr0n and so my web browser is a very important thing to me. I installed Mozilla Firefox to see if it had the same problem that IE has on my system (something to do with cookies). It didn’t and I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it do pretty much everything IE does but has additional things that I wasn’t even aware browsers had up until this time.

It’s fast, it’s got a built-in download manager, built in Search Engine support (like Googles optional seach bar in IE but integrated) and while there’s a few pages that occasionally come out wrongly formatted it’s not common enough for me to consider it a problem.

I’ve been surfing the web since before Netscape released version 1 of their browser. I remember the big blue N as clear as day and I used Netscape all the way to version 3 or 4 of Netscape Gold. By then Internet Explorer had caught up from being really, really, **** to being better. And of course with it being integrated with the OS I found myself using IE more and more.

And now, since Microsoft have been forced to include a program to change the default web browser I’ve switched my default browser to Firefox.

I’ve never really been that interested in browser/OS wars. I generally try and use software that works. Despite my initial reservations about Windows XP and the fact that it’s basically a tarted up version of Windows 2000, after ripping out it’s more patronizing aspects (**** off you stupid dog, I know you need a home since Microsoft Bob failed but that’s no excuse for you to ask me stupid questions when all I wanted to do is to a global search for ALL files including the ones Microsoft presumes I’m too stupid to look at) it’s actually quite stable and has polished a few things that Windows 2000 didn’t do very well.

Besides, it doesn’t look likely that a significant new version of Windows is going to appear soon. Sure service pack 2 will do some fancy upgrading and consolidation of security features but I already use a seperate firewall behind another firewall and have a better than Joe User knowledge of such things for whom that update will apply to.

Longhorn looks interesting. The now dead Be (and probably others) beat Microsoft to the idea of using a database for the file system but given that the majority of people use Windows it’s probably the biggest development to Windows since the transition from the hateful Wfw/Win3.1 to Win95.

Getting back from my software wanderings, I’m going to stick with Firefox. Sure I’ll check out new versions of IE and if it’s better then I’ll switch back. Switching between browsers is getting easier. Took me about five minutes to configure Firefox to have my Quick Link bar the same as it was in IE. I did have to get a plug-in for Flash and I already was using Sun’s Java engine but apart from that it’s been plain sailing.

It’s also comforting to know that if and when I do switch over to some brand of Linux that I’ll be comfortable with the browser. And tabs are handy and it’s very stable.

So if your sick of IE and want to try something a little different then I’d recommend giving Firefox a lash. It won’t destroy IE and you can switch your default browser in seconds.

More info

Fuck you! it’s Paddys day. It’s _allowed_ March 18, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
9 comments

A wise man once told me that the internet was the vanity mirror of the land of the barbies or something. I don’t remember exactly as this was a long time ago and many braincells have died since then.

This made me laugh. In fact it’s my favourite post of mine this week. Arn’t I special?

So yeah… the internet…. it’s really big.

Vanity mirror of the masses?

Damn it this is a stupid journal. It’s need more sex or something. Sex eh? Sex is a great thing indeed. mmmm

Indeed..

So come here often then? Don’t worry. THOUSANDS have! How I love that of all you peons my name stands tall at number 5 or something. I’m sure Mercury_tilts is higher though ;)

Man can I just say how much I loved the last boards beer. It was great and in the strangest ways. Made me feel that the spirit is still there though.

Paddys day was great. Nice warm sunny day. Didn’t even watch the parade on telly. Just watched some britpop channels and the amp which was vaguely odd. Dotc made me a bike, which made me feel special but I can’t ride it till tomorow because Dotc said so.

*sulk*

AND THAT ONE GOES OUT TO ALL YOU ****ERS WHO THINK I’M ****ING PETULANT! TRY AGAIN SUCKERS! I LAUGH AT YOUR FACE!
:D :p :D :p :D :p :D :p :D :p :D :p :D :p :D :p :D :p

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOL
:D :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

MARCH ON ARMY OF SMILIES! I SEE FORTUNE IN YOUR DESTINY!

oh dear, I can’t post this PEOPLE WILL THINK I;VE BEEN DRINKING?!? WHAT OF MY GRAND REPUTAMTPION! What of it? I think it be a fiendish device, devilish in it’s construiction!

You know something. It’s the little things. Example. Well take fingers for example. And sounds.

Bleh.

No. Moving on swiftly and surely. Ciggerettes! Love them. Can’t give up. Love them too much. Ads on telly showing brain ejecting tumerous gore screaming DON’T SMOKE OR THIS IS YOU! make me think about smoking and enivitably that makes me remember the sweet sweet taste and before I know it I’m already exhaling burnt Marlboro light.

Which is annoying really. They cost a bloody fortune and coughing up buckets of flem isn’t my idea of a good time although I’m sure there’s some ****ed up fetish site about it on the internet.

Something Awful keeps me informed of these things you see with it’s Awful Link of the day feature. There’s a lot of ****ed up people in the world. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’m a little perverted because I don’t like the idea of hanging from my nipples while several people in bunny suits do things that shouldn’t be…

o kay

that was one joke which I originally hoped an ending would develope towards the… um… end but instead probably warped some fragile minds instead. And yes Angelwhore. I know, your fragile little mind was warped loooong ago.

What was I talking about? Who are you? What are you doing in my bedroom?

I WANT TO RIDE MY BI CY CLE! I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE!

I wish to ride it.

Where I like. ;)

Bill Hicks : "Bear with me while I plaster on a fake smile…" March 7, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
23 comments

"…and plough through this **** one more time"

You know what I do when I’m angry? I listen to angry music or sometimes I watch other angry people. People like Bill Hicks.

Let’s face it, Bill Hicks wasn’t just a controversial comedian, he was, he is, a prophet. Another great man who died before his time. One of the greatest philosophers of the last century.

For some reason when I was growing up I didn’t listen to Bill Hicks. Maybe it was because he was classed as dangerous or needlessly controversial, maybe it was because back then the Irish media wouldn’t have anything to do with him and his blasphemous talk. ****ers.

Even now, Hicks isn’t mainstream, and this is a good thing. The mainstream is for people like Britney Spears or Westlife (or as Hicks would call them: "ball-less, soul-less suckers of Satan’s cock") or whoever the **** is in the charts these days. I wouldn’t know because I stopped watching Top of the Pops when Stock Aitken and Waterman started up their putrid syntho-pop factory. This factories only lasting cultural achievement was Kylie Minogues arse.

And in the last few years, thanks to the power of the internet, I have had the chance to hear what he had to say. There’s one routine he did about the Gulf War and manufactured pop music. He went on about Bush and how ****ed up the world was with him in charge. This wasn’t about the recent Gulf War, this was the original one, yet it’s even more relevant in today’s world where governments are blatantly lying to people in order to go to war.

Hicks had the courage to back up his beliefs, he gigged intensively around the US and later here and the UK. He had his leg broken and a gun pulled on him by outraged hecklers. He wasn’t seeking to make millions, he wasn’t even trying to become world famous, he was trying to get a message out and he used the power of his intensely hilarious comedy to deliver it.

The message was simple;"wake the **** up". He tried to make people think about the world see what was going on. He attacked Republicans, pro-lifers, drug legislation and any other group who’s goal was to restrict freedom or enforce their own ****ed up ideology on the rest of us. He fought the power for a good reason, he didn’t just sit there and accept the hypocritical bull**** that everybody else seemed to accept. He wanted to think for himself and he wanted as many people as possible to think for themselves. Sounds like a cliché but far too many people still allow other people to think for them. "Oh well, if that’s what Bertie/Bush/Blair thinks is a good idea then that’s the idea for me".

And that’s just wrong. That’s not democracy, that’s fascism. People get the government they want or think they want. If less people in Germany had thought "Hitlers a great man, he turned the economy around so he must be right about all that other stuff" then maybe less innocent people would have been murdered. An extreme example but true nonetheless.

And that’s why the US media’s coverage of Gulf War 2 frightens the **** out of me. If the largest, most powerful country in the world has news channels that toe the "patriotic" line and dare not question the actions of their leaders (and the people who finance these leaders) then the future for this planet is bleak.

Boards itself could be going down this dangerous path. Martial law has been enacted on Feedback/Suggestions in the name of order. People don’t seem to understand why I attack ecksor. They put it down to a clash of egos. That I have something personal against him. They don’t seem to hear what I’m actually saying. The fifth item on my last journal was an actual real thing that ecskor wants. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s the kind of base moronity I attack.

Quote:

originally by DeVore
Hang on… there are NO NEW RULES on forum suggestion threads. AFAIK things progress as they ever did. Or did everyone just forget that I’m hanging around here too

Really? I thought ecksor was boards.ie’s chief spokesman? Oh and ecksors rules while aren’t stickied are still in effect. Mercury_tilt was banned as well, which I totally disagree with. I don’t care if he attacked me, it’s the fact that he was banned for it that goads me.

Quote:

I would have banned amp too to be blunt. He brought his personal argument with another user bluntly and blatantly into a thread that was 2 posts old. Sorry but amp is a long time moderator and knows that that’s not on. He/you recently banned people (quite rightly and I supported it) from Humanities for continuing a discussion after he told them to drop it and that was in the same thread. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

When I ban people I ask them to take up the discussion in Admin or F/s. People still have the ability to question my actions on what essentially is a forum originally created by you to host discussions about boards. I can’t do that for the duration of my temporary ban, I have no ability to reply to what I regard as yet another overreaction other than this journal. That ecksor feigns ignorance that it was a parody of him makes no sense at all as I couldn’t possibly have been attacking the original poster as that poster has no powers to make "sweeping changes to boards.ie", yet I was banned by him for abuse.

Also it’s long been the tradition that posters who are moderators are treated like normal users outside of forums they moderate. Am I suppose to toe the Admin line because I’m a moderator?

Quote:

If he wanted to do it properly he could have started a "I’m not happy with Ecksors adminning because: " thread, thats "feedback". Parachuting this personal argument into a perfectly reasonable thread like some sort of fist-fight brawl roaming from bar to bar in the The Quiet Man is not the way.

Perfectly reasonable thread? Really? You’ve compared me to a caveman and now a fist-fighter. I’ll have to try and become more sophisticated with my needling. The reasons I’ve been banned vary from personal abuse to going off-topic. Fair enough I did go off-topic but countless people go off-topic even in the very thread that discuss my and Mercury_Tilts banning. And I wasn’t even "abusing" the original poster. If attacking ecksors style of administrating is classed as personal abuse then why have you never banned me or others for doing so before?

Quote:

Sorry, I dont doubt that Ecksor shot you as soon as you put a toe over the line because you two seem to have some sort of píssing contest going. Maybe he laughed and sang songs while he did it too…. I dunno. But I think you knew that that was a "needle" the size of The Spire and decided your (plural) little war was too much fun to have end so soon.

I love this new needle word. Is it different from flaming? I keep insisting that this isn’t personal and you keep saying it is. ecksor has, in the last year or so decided to give himself the role of chief spokesman for boards.ie. He’s the one making these ridiculous announcements and changes to boards. If you were the one doing this then I would be attacking you instead. And if I still could reply to F/S this post would have been there instead of this journal.

Quote:

Come on amp, dont tell me you are "shocked and sickened" that you got banned, you knew you would when you wrote that

Never said I was, in fact I changed my tag to "Needle and Spoon" to poke fun at your new favourite word. My signature contains the phrase "BAN AMP!". Both changes done before my ban. ecksor built yet another wall based on overreaction. I attacked him because he has the power to change boards and thus I drove into that wall. I don’t regard parodying Captain Overreaction as personal abuse in the same way that Bull Island don’t get sent to jail for parodying the government. I agree and support the admins of boards.ie when changes are made that I think make sense. I attack and make fun of changes that don’t make sense. I’ve done this throughout my entire time on boards.ie and you’ll have to permanently ban me from F/s if my style of posting is no longer acceptable there.

But no doubt people will think this is just amp trying to increase marketshare and boost his ego. No doubt this "war" will be continued to be seen as myself and ecksor measuring each others cocks. It’s a lot easier to think that than actually doing something about ecksor isn’t it?

"I don’t mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that’s how it comes out." – Bill Hicks

Oh dear. I’m being to serious again. And after all this is just a website and not real-life(tm). I’ll leave you with a few Bill Hicks quotes to lighten the mood. I also recommend to anybody who hasn’t seen, heard or read Bill Hicks to do so immediately.

This is a good start:
http://www.billhicks.com/

[Quotes from various sites on the net. Without their or Bill Hicks permission, but I don't think he'd mind ;) ]

"People say "Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world". Yeah, maybe, but you know what, after the first 3 largest armies, there’s a REAL big ****ing drop-off. The Hare Krishnas are the 5th largest army in the world, and they’ve already got all our airports."

"If you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, then go home and burn all your records, all your tapes, and all your CDs because every one of those artists who have made brilliant music and enhanced your lives? RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrEAL ****ing high on drugs. The Beatles were so ****ing high they let Ringo sing a few songs."

"You know what Bill’s doing now, he’s going for the righteous indignation dollar, that’s a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we’ve done research, huge market. He’s doing a good thing." Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every ****ing thing on this planet!"

Stupid ****ing cancer.

The Future? March 2, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
23 comments

My first ever Boards.ie ban was made by ecksor when he banned me for parodying him in this thread

Why do I think that? Well, others posted sarcastic parodies in the same thread but they were not banned. My temporary ban will become permanent when I post in exactly the same way I’ve posted to Feedback/Suggestions for years.

And so, restricted from posting parodies in F/S I will now go completely overboard and do it here:

The year is 2010. Boards.ie has changed in many ways. Here’s some of the highlights:

01: Following a coup de tat, ecksor finally establishes full control over boards.ie.

02: Moderators are demoted to user level. All moderation and any interaction with users personally identifiable information is done by ecksor either directly or by using special scripts that identify bannable offences.

03: Users are renamed in the following fashion:

00000001
00000002
00000003

04: All signatures are banned. All user level customisation is banned. Avatars are banned. Post counts are removed as is Date Registered. This is done as ecksor joined in April 2000. Themes are banned. Any attempt at individuality is stamped out. This is done in the holy name of Security.

05: Only pictures that have been approved by a script are allowed to be uploaded to the boards.ie server cluster. External links to other sites are automatically banned.

06: Feedback/Suggestions merges with Admin/Support. You can post but only ecksor and you can reply. If your opinion is different to ecksors then you will be banned.

07: Boards.ie history is re-written to state that ecksor created boards in his own image. All references to DeVore, Cloud and the other admins are removed.

08: Humour board is shutdown. Any attempts to be humourous will be punished with a ban. ecksor posts new sticky on Admin/Support/Feedback/Suggestions redefining "Freedom of Expression"

09: The registration form for creating an account on boards is expanded to include the following things:

Gender
Breast size
Phone number
A test measuring the ability to make people laugh
A biometric dna test

Also a program must be downloaded to scan your pc for possible security flaws or tools that could be used to penetrate boards.ie’s formidable security. If it identifies any illegal files it automatically pm’s the Garda.

10: The Prison forum gets a server of it’s own. By 2011 it’s population outnumbers the whole of boards.ie. ecksor develops AI scripts to simulate users and closes down the Prison forum. By 2012 ecksor is the only human on boards.ie.
——————————

Now that’s my parody bit over. Here’s the serious bit. In my opinion ecksor is an incompetent administrator. He’s by far the biggest danger, boards.ie currently faces and causes far more trouble than he fixes. I request that his Adminstrator powers be removed.

I’m not snotty because I got banned. I’m snotty about the reason I got banned.

Long serious entry. Jokes towards the end but they’re not very good. February 20, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
7 comments

As a young teenager I went to West Germany with the scouts on a 2 week camping trip. We camped near a town called Waldkraiburg. We got there by train and boat and were totally exhausted by the time we got there.

When you’re a scout they make you hike all over the bloody place, and I’m not the greatest fan of walking in the world. My legs are short and my feet don’t seem designed for the task. Thank god for artificial transport methods. Also that part of Bavaria is mostly maize fields. Very well organised and efficient maize fields.

The strangest thing we saw were these big blue and white maypoles in each village. They include the history of the village with important events indicated with symbols. I was initially shocked to see a swastika on a couple of them. When I asked a local about this he replied that it was there because the town had been through the Nazi era and there was no point in hiding it. He also said that it was there to remind people in the village that although it was something a lot of Germans are intensely uncomfortable about, they shouldn’t let themselves forget about it completely.

He’s right of course. Later we visited the Auschwitz Concentration camp which is now a museum. What I saw there shocked and horrified me. Pictures of people who had been subjected to lmost complete vacuum until their heads exploded. Pictures of walking skeletons. We saw the pictures of the ovens were German soldiers had hurriedly tried to burn some of the inmates in a vain attempt to try and hide what they’d done when the Allies were getting close.

What shocked me most was that people could let this sort of ****ed up **** happen in the first place. I couldn’t understand how no one tried to stop it. Germany is a big country and these camps were all over the place. So not knowing about it is not even a vaguely realistic defence. Most Germans don’t try.

The Nazi party brought the spin into politics. They got into power by giving people someone to blame. Germanys economy was in bits. A loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow full of money. They gave people a way out. It’s not our fault the country’s in bits they said, it’s the stupid War Reparations, it’s the Jews, it’s the communists, it’s not us.

After the war, when the figures were done about 11 million innocent people were murdered because the Nazi party. About 6 million were Jewish or part-Jewish, 2.5 million were Roma or Gypsies (or knackers to use the colloquial) and the rest were "Others". Others included Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles and Catholics. The Nazi party had a system of grading human beings and classing them as human, subhuman and anti-human.

It’s a good thing that the Nazis never invaded Ireland. God only knows what classification we would have got. The Irish know all about persecution. Almost every Irish person has heard the phrase "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish". During this countries long economic struggle people left the country to try and earn money to send back home. They weren’t quite rounded up and put into camps and gassed but they were discriminated just the same. Stories were told about us. English newspapers printed cartoons depicting us as subhuman morons. And who then, was in the position to tell them differently?

Times have changed. Ireland’s economy is strong, we have very low unemployment rates and the tide has turned. People are coming to Ireland to seek work and they’re getting it. There was a time when seeing a black man walking down the street was extremely rare. These days, it’s nothing special.

The downside to this new found wealth is that we can now at last look down on people we perceive as inferior. Those blacks/Chinese/Romanian/Poles are taking our jobs/social welfare/housing/whatever. Of course when an Irish person comes back home from the US or elsewhere, that’s perfectly acceptable. Yet aren’t they doing the same thing? What about an English guy coming over here for work?

I’m Irish, my family has been in Ireland since Cromwell decided to pop over and eh.. say hello. But we’re not originally from Ireland; we’re probably from Cornwall or thereabouts. My long distant relative Ensign William Jewell came over for, you guessed it; the work.

Humans didn’t just suddenly magically appear on Ireland, our ancestors came across in boats to seek new land or escape some mad tribe or whatever. Same goes for the UK and the same goes for the US. We’re all the ancestors of emigrants, only time makes the difference.

I’m not sure why people are racist. I don’t understand it myself. I knew a guy who listened to nothing but rap music. He’d got a picture of Dr. Dre as his wallpaper at one stage. Yet he boasted about how he and his mates chased a black guy down the road by threatening to beat him up. Turns out he was a racist of apartheid South Africa class. :boggle:

Maybe that’s what his parents thought, and that’s what his friends thought and when you grow up and all the people around you think it’s ok to be bigoted then you treat that as the norm.

I have a theory. Humans are all born equal. Humans are born with a brain that has some simple programming installed but the rest has to be installed over time. I have a few other ideas why people become racist:

Firstly economics is a factor. Generally speaking if a country is relatively poorer then the people coming from that country are trying to steal our money. Fear is another factor. Fear of the unknown, fear of difference. If a particular grouping of people doesn’t do what every body else does then they are feared. Take Travellers for example. They choose a different path to the norm. In Ireland it’s expected that you go to school, then go to college, then get a job, then get married, get a house, have babies and they do the same. Travellers don’t do that. They chose a different lifestyle. As a result they are often treated with mistrust. Why don’t they just settle down into a house and behave like the rest of us? Why can’t they be normal?

**** normal. If I was normal I’d be married, with kids and have a mortgage. Not that there’s anything wrong with people who do, but it’s nice to have a choice. It’s good to have the ability to choose an alternate lifestyle.
Now my attitude could be described as politically correct. It’s the latest buzzword on boards. I’m PC. I don’t even understand what politically correct is suppose to mean. Actually I’ve been looking up the meaning of words a lot lately so let’s see what it has on “politically correct”:

Main Entry: politically correct
Function: adjective
: conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated

“Political sensibilities”? I’m not sure I know what that means either. But I get the gist of it. Well I guess I am. Is it politically correct to be anti-racist? If it is then I’m politically correct. Is it politically correct to be against sexism? If it is then I’m guilty of that too.

I don’t think I’m too politically correct though. Take jokes for example. While I don’t think Paddy Irishman jokes are the best jokes I love a good one. Or those Ethiopian jokes that went round after Live Aid (What’s the best paid job in the Ethiopia? Guard on a bread van. How do you save an Ethiopian from drowning? Take your foot off his head and throw him a polo mint.)

They’re nasty and they’re racist but the intention is to make people laugh. It’s surreal comedy. Where I have a problem is when people seriously discuss the inferiority of other people, that they can describe an entire race or group of people by their own limited experiences with them. All Irish people aren’t alcoholics. All English people don’t drink tea. All Americans aren’t fat. It’s not that simple.

If it was that simple this would be a very boring world.

No Journal Today February 12, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
add a comment

Sorry. Water damage. However, there is this:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/jour…mp;entryid=1546

Giant hairy erotic spiders January 28, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
4 comments

Yes, there is more to the interweb than boards.ie. In fact there’s a whole world out there. Today I want to discuss Something Awful.

Something Awful by Amp(instein) – aged 29 and a half
Something Awful had been hovering on my radar since the days when I used to visit PlanetQuake and read the insane but usually hilarious musings of SA’s now Ubermench Lowtax. I became a regular addict of Photoshop Phridays and would laugh my ass off at the sheer quality of the contributions. Last year I registered and I slowly but surely infiltrated their masses. And when I say masses I mean around 2000 people online at the same time (the best boards has done so far is about 450).
Yet SA only has about 20 forums compared to our 220+. And that’s just the first culture shock. You can post something and refresh an hour later to find that your thread has disapeared already into page 2 or 3. But good threads survive, get replied to and then get swept away by the tide of new threads and new replies.
In order to make navigation a little easier there is the ability to filter posts based on how it was flagged. This is like our abiltiy to put a smiley or something when creating a new thread, only they changed the pics to words like "**** Post" or "Question". This actually works quite well.
That’s about the only feature you get if you register for the default amount. You don’t get an avatar, you can’t pm, you can’t search, you can’t post attachments etc etc. To get these things you have to pay more money. You even have to pay 10 dollars to read the archives.
When it comes to opressiveness then SA makes Boards look like the Playboy Mansion. Swearing is uncensored (SA is based in the US where they have that First Amendment thing). People will get banned for pretty much any reason. There are no exceptions. I was banned for image leeching, yet I’d made a few pics that made it into Photoshop Phriday and Comedy Goldmine. They don’t care. Break the rules = banned from the site. Not just the fourm, the whole thing. No such thing as a temporary ban either, when you’re gone your gone. And believe me getting banned from SA is a traumatic experience. Seeing a big hairy spider sitting on a flaccid dick that’s just ejaculated while some looney (probably Lowtax) screams GET OFF MY FORUMS!! is not something I wish to experience again.
I got no warning, no explanation, but I found the rules and realised I’d been a moron for breaking a rule that they’d put in bold caps. Lesson learned.

The sheer quality and quantity of humour on SA is incredible. Avatars are bigger and are allowed to be animated but obviously are still restricted by size. Some of the avatars alone have made me **** myself with laughter. Because of this most people don’t bother with signatures which leads to a more streamlined page.

Users are banned with ferocity. Consistent flaming, abuse, trolling or any kind of backchat towards moderators/admins results in a ban. And when you’re banned you’ve got to sign up again from scratch, you lose your post count, you lose any extras you bought not to mention the trauma I mentioned above.

Something Awful survives through membership fees mostly. It doesn’t advertise itself anywhere I’ve seen except through the frontpage. They have paid staff that write articles (some bad, most good). This gets people interested in the site and through natural curiousity people want to see what happens behind the scenes, to find out who exactly these goons (as SA’s population are called) are.

Running in-jokes saturate the main forum GBS (General Bull****) and every now and then when a joke has ceased to be funny, the moderators can make it a banning offence. Using a simple catchphrase can get you banned but usually the phrase is changed by a filter to something else eg: yams yams yams yams.

So as a newbie on SA I lurked for fear of my life. It was hard enough to sign up without a credit card (it’s paypal only) so I lurked furiously, read the rules intimately (and then forgot one) and started off posting in FYAD (**** You And Die)

Fyad is a remarkable place. It’s almost complete anarchy. Sure posting child porn or being a complete twat will get you banned but after that pretty much anything goes. Animated signatures tower after each post and staying on topic or being in any way serious will earn redicule and the phrase GB2GBS (work it out).

FYAD is what any forum would be if it was popular and unmoderated. Flaming, trolling and spamming are all fair game and in a wierd way this seems to help the rest of the forums. It acts as a kind of pressure release valve, so people can just go nuts there if they want to and not worry about the fairly opressive rules elsewhere.

I wouldn’t consider myself a goon despite one of my pictures making it on to the front page, but I will be signing up again. I think there are certain elements to how SA works that could be useful on boards.

Pix n Mix, our equivilant of their Photoshop Phriday (PP) needs a reason for people to slog over a hot photoshop. They reward some users with the honour of being displayed on the front page. A huge amount of people just visit SA to read PP, and because of this getting your work displayed makes it worth the effort. Pixiemix doesn’t have this carrot. Hopefully changes to our own front page will make this possible and create a boards team capable of competing with SA or Fark or even Worth1k.com in the competitions that are occasionally run.

And when your actually in the forums, there’s a very friendly atmosphere. There’s flaming alright but bullying isn’t tolerated. Generally a thread stays on topic through the sheer weight of people posting to it. There’s a small fight the power element but even that is tame compared to boards whingers. On SA moderators are truly feared, Lowtax especially. One of the funniest threads I saw him post was one which simply stated that anyone replied to the thread that he’d ban them unless they guessed the right number between 1 and 100,000. About 20 people got banned.

SA regularly culls it’s population. Morons don’t last long there. If you happen to get a moderators attention then your probably going to banned quickly. This results in a higher turnover for the population and enforces discipline with less actually moderating.

There is no real equivilant to our Feedback/Suggestions forum other than GBS and in the couple of months I was there I didn’t see any posts demanding change or suggesting a new forum. The vibe is that Lowtax and co run the site and if you don’t like it or want to change something well you can pretty much go and **** yourself.

When I joined SA, it was refreshing to be a newb again. It reminded me of my early days on Boards. Nobody knew who I was and cared even less. And that was nice back then because, at the time, I was a little fed up with boards. Getting a fresh perspective made me love boards even more. Boards is very different from SA. In some ways it’s far superior. There’s a forum for pretty much anything you can think of (and some you can’t) on boards. It’s free to join boards and you get a lot more when you subscribe. Boards is less restrictive and normally you have to work pretty hard to get banned. Ultimately I think boards has scaled better than SA has done and therefore I think that boards will outlast SA.

That said there’s a lot to be learned from SA and other bulletin boards around the world. Sometimes you can see the trees in your own forest better when you visit another.

(Incidentally if anyone knows how to get 40 eurons into my paypal account without me having a credit card please let me know)

The problems with the Games forum January 5, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
8 comments

Constantly the future of the Games forum is discussed in Feedback/Suggestions. My opinions are pretty clear on this matter but I don’t feel I can post to Feedback/Suggestions about it anymore given DeVore’s attitude towards debating there about it.

The problems facing the Games forum at the momen..

Wait a second, back that up a bit. What problems? It’s one of the easiest forum I mod. There’s a friendly attitude there. Games are discussed and threads rarely get out of control. Even warez monkeys don’t bother posting there anymore.

Ah! But it’s really busy! That’s it! It’s a maelstrom of posts and people can’t go away for a couple of days and come back and catch up on that thread about Metroid Prime.

Well that’s arse too, After Hours is far far far busier. Yet there’s no posts to feedback suggestions demanding a split. True it’s a very general forum and there’s no obvious way to split it. However with Games there is! Happy days!

So what about following Sci/Techs example and split Games up that way. We could have PC Games, Console Games, Online Gaming etc etc. It would make the menu look lovely and everything.

Well lets pick up a few threads from Games at the moment and see how that would work:

Games in the sale!
The poster is looking for games to get in the sales. He specifies a list of consoles and PC and doesn’t mind which. With a Sci/Tech type split this would require multiple posts.

Game of the Year.
Mostly this thread contains references to games that appear solely on consoles. But there’s a reference to Battlefield 1942 which is probably the PC version. Some appear on both consoles and PC like Max Payne II and Vice City. It’s hard to tell though as most posters haven’t actually specified the platform. And that’s my point. There’s no segregation, no flame wars between different platform fan-boys.

Prince of Persia, on PC and Xbox
Just not possible if the Sci/Tech plan is followed. Sure you could post it to the imaginary Pc Games or Console forum but then you’d possibly get a biased opinion either way. The poster in question wanted to know an opinion from other posters that had either played it on either or possibly both platforms. He was looking for an opinion from gamers.

what is up with Max payne 2!!!!
This thread starts up with a poster complaining about Max Payne 2’s shortness on the X-box. Later in the thread posters chip in with some differences in the game on the PC version. With a console/pc split in Games posters may not find out about these differences. And if you think that’s a trivial reason not to split the forum then your just not a gamer ;)

The above are just examples from this weekend.

Now, recently the X-box has gained a bit of momentum thanks to games like Halo and Kotor and others. Also X-box live is driving it’s growth. This is a new thing to the gaming world. A console that can connect to other users around the world to play games. The pc has had this for years obviously. Strangely there’s hasn’t been much call for an Online PC Games forum. Mostly this is due to the fact that most of the PC’s popular online games got their own separate forums.

Ultimately these forums will die. There will come a time when even Counter-Strike will fade away. Sure with each new version of Half-Life (if those nasty hackers stay away, bold hackers, bold) there will be a new version of Counterstrike. But games don’t last forever. Quake didn’t. Pong didn’t.

Games evolve, they get new features. Some features, like an online aspect, change the game beyond all recognition. There are many, many different types of games that harness the power of the internet. Windows XP users can play Hearts against pretty much anyone in the world.

The internet is changing a lot of things, including Gaming. If Games get’s split along the lines of Offline/Online gaming then what happens when all games have some sort of internet feature? It’s inevitable that all households will gain access to the highspeed internet, even in Ireland. Just like electricity and telephones before it. Online gaming is just the latest revolution in gaming. Should Games have been split into 2D and 3D during the transition from 2D to 3D? No. Just because gaming changes doesn’t mean the Games forum needs to change.

Ah but what about organising clans and arranging online games? While I have no problem with people discussing this in Games I just don’t think it’ll happen. Why? Because you don’t post on a forum at all if you want to arrange a few games against people. You do it in IRC or phone them or some other communication method that’s more instant than a forum. If you have problems connecting to a server it’s more than likely a technical problem that has nothing to do with the game in question.

Consoles have the benefit of being a fixed platform, where the developers can test it and be pretty sure that it’ll work. The vast majority of problems with games happen with PC games because almost every pc is unique with different hardware/software combinations.

These are the reasons I argue against splitting the Games forum. I don’t fear Games losing market share if it’s split. I fear that we will lose the people who make the Games such a popular forum. I fear that people won’t have a place that they can discuss any game they like and get a response from other gamers. And I just don’t see the problems that others seem so eager to fix.

I don’t make the Games forum what it is, I just keep the peace there. It’s the posters that make it what it is. I contribute when I find something of interest and I enjoy a lot of posts. I found out about Final Fantasy X in Games which, thanks to my mostly PC gaming past I had never heard of. And I’m grateful to the posters who raved about it. There’s a culture in Games that yeah, I do want to protect. ****ing right I do and I’m pissed off that I have to resort to using my journal as a place to express my viewpoint.

There are those on Boards that like to fix problems that don’t exist. Me I like to think that it’s best to fix problems when they actually exist. Maybe that’s madness but it makes sense in my world.

So show me the problems in the Games forum. Highlight them. Give examples like I’ve done and then we can get down to the task of fixing them.

DEATHGIVER2003 vs The Amp Test January 3, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
7 comments

As an old veteran and superstar of boards, sometimes my memory isn’t what it used to. The decades of whiskey and gambling have squeezed out some of my more treasured memories such as this little test I once requested be integrated into the sign up form.

The Admins, jealous of my powers of humour, declined my gracious offer and told me to get out of the boardroom as their cocaine and hookers were about to arrive.

Curse them. Curse them all.

And now, thanks to the miracle of modern science and a pm from the delectable Walls I present to you, my public, an epic struggle betwix DEATHGIVER2003 and the fearsome and indeed legendary amp test.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin:

DEATHGIVER2003: WAT? NO WAIT! I HAV TO MOVE TEH BEANY BAG!

1. Are you a twat?

DEATHGIVER2003: NOE! I R TEH L33T!

2. Are you sure?

DEATHGIVER2003: YUS!

3. Ah but no, seriously your a twat right?

DEATHGIVER2003: UM NOE! IS DIS TING BROK?

4. So that settled then, you’re a twat.

DEATHGIVER2003: FUK U! U R TEH TWAT!

5. What’s your name?

DEATHGIVER2003: UM… ACHTUALY I N33D 2 CHANG IT PLEEZ. MAYBE SOMETING FROM TEH MATRIX RELOADALOTIONZ?!

6. I’m sorry Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are already taken. We do have a lovely selection from the film "Hackers" though. Alternatively why not just use the handle "twat69"?

twat69: WFT!!!! WFT!!!!

7. When posting to the boards, will you assume that that they’ve all been waiting for your nuggets of wisdom for eons or will they in fact think you’re a twat?

TWAT69!: WATS AN E0NS? R DEY THE PEEPLE WHO MAID DAIKATANA? ALSO PLEEZE STOP CALLING ME A TWAT R I WILL BREAK URE FACE1!

8. Will you avoid answering rational points put towards you during your deliberately controversial posts and instead make even more intensely stupid remarks?

TWAT69!@: I LoIKED DAIKATANA! JON ROMERO IS TEH RAWK!

9. 2+2?

TWAT69![: /NICK DEATHGIVER2004

10. When you join the boards will you insert a minimum of four smilies (with a mandatory :p ) in every single post you make (when you learn how)?

TWAT69: AMP SEZ SMILIES R FOR RETARDZ! :) I'M NOT A RETARD! :mad: R A TWAT! :p :cool:

11. Will you create a huge masterpiece of art containing your name and a Photoshop lens flare and insert it in your sig?

TWAT69: AMP WONT LET ME USE PHOTOSHOP! HE KEEPZ KALING IT "HIS PRECIOUS!"

12. Have you ever broken a rib so you could give yourself oral self-pleasures?

TWAT69: HOW DID.. UM.. FUK OFF YOU SIKKO! I BROK THAT RIB WHEN I WAS.. BEETING UP DIS GUY!

13. Are you the product of two close relatives sexual relations?

TWAT69: LOL! U SED SEXUALK RELATIONS!

14. Are you pent up with rage against authority and have a massive desire to bring it down?

TWAT69: FUK TEH PO LEESE! FUK TEH PO LEESE!

14a. Are you a firm believer in the concepts of communism as a viable form of government?

TWAT69: DE WAT? COMMONIzM? r U KALLING ME A KNACKER?

14a1. Are you a firm believer in the concepts of anarchy and wish to try and organise yourself to creating a structure by which you can recruit a number of followers dedicated to the cause of anarchy?

TWAT69: IM FIRM ALRIGJT!

14b. Do you feel it's ok to talk on a public forum about stuff that's illegal?

TWAT79: C TEH ANSW0R I GAIVE FOR 14. LOLOLOLOLOL

14c. Are you prone to feelings of oppression?

TWAT69: NOE! I BE ON SUDAFUD! HARDC0RE BABY!

15. Are in fact very shy in real-life(tm) and feel that boards.ie is the ideal place to reveal "the real you"?

TWAT69: /NAME DEATHGIVER3004

16. Do you have nothing else to do all day but go to each and every forum and reply to posts with virtually nothing intelligent? Do you think that if you post enough people will actually start to like you?

TWAT69: NOE! I TINK GIRLZ WIL WHANT ME SEXY BODI IF I DO! (PM ME PLEEZ FOR CYBAR! NO FUGLIES!)

17. Grammar. Foreign land or the system of inflections, syntax, and word formation of a language?

TWAT69: HAAAA.. DIS IZ A TRICK QUESCHUN! I PIK NUN!

18. Punctuation. Genre of anarchic rock music or the use of standard marks and signs in writing and printing to separate words into sentences, clauses, and phrases in order to clarify meaning?

TWAT69: I R TEH ANARKISSED! I R TEH ANTISATIN!

19. Spelling. Tori's second name or putting letters in the correct order to make a word?

TWAT69: IM STIL FIRM!

20. Does annoying people stimulate you sexually?

TWAT69: HEHEHEEHEHHEHEHEHEHEH

21. After being banned for the first time, will you not get the message and reregister under a different nick?

TWAT69: HOW DO I DO DAT? I CANT CHAINGE IT NOW! U KOCKBITE!

22. Will you respond to this post with the words "amp test" cos you think it's the most originally unpredictable and hilarious thing you could possibly say?

TWAT69: AMP TEST! LOLOLOOLOLOOL!

23. Will you regret the fact that years from now, people will long memories will still think you are a muppet even though you grown out of those testosterone fuelled teenage years and finally copped on?

TWAT69: AMP TEST!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

24. Are you void of any sense of humour whatsoever?

TWAT69: FUK U FAG! AMP TEST!

25. Will you constantly not understand the concept of trolling and be baited into every single thread containing controversy?

TWAT69: I THINK YOU R A MEEN TEST!

26. Are you an authority on absolutely everything?

TWAT69: ****IN' A!

27. Do you even understand the concept of a civil debate?

TWAT69: IZ DAT LIKE MASTER DEBATING? LOLOLOLO!

28. Do you often make outrageously stupid arguments without backing them up with evidence or even understanding what the topic is about?

TWAT69: I AM KEWL! DIS IS HARDCORE EVIDENCE REPRASENT!

29. Do you have the urge to tell people all about yourself and assume that everybody’s really really interested?

TWAT69: OV COORSE DEY R!

30. Do you assume that because boards.ie is on the intarwab it is therefore not real and you can say whatever you like?

TWAT69: ITZ JUST A STUPID WEBSITE RUN BY FAGZ WHO R OLD ENUFF TO BUY HOOKERZ!

31. Are you under the impression that if people don't agree with you, they are automatically entered on to your list of enemies and therefore deserve to be told that they are a dumbass?

TWAT69: URE ON MY LIST RITE NOW MUTHER****ER!1! KHANGE MEH NIK!

32. Does having a large post count stimulate you sexually? Does it? Does it make you all hard and moist? Do you want to whip it out right now and shout "UNNNFF! UNFFF! 100 POSTS11!" as you climax?

TWAT69: HAHAHA! VICTOR HAD PREMATUOR POSTCOONT EJAKULATION!! HAHAHAHA!

Thank you for testing twat69. Your results will be available once we decipher your l33tsp3&k.

[end amp test]

Time passes. DEATHGIVER2003 paces about his bedroom, lined as it is with posters of Linkin Park, Busted and his memorial to Tupac. Suddenly his Aol lady says those magic words.

DEATHGIVER2003: I’VE GOT MALE!

Dear TWAT69,

Having collated your responses, and tabulating the results we regret that we cannot process your application to join boards.ie at the present time. However, as you forgot to tick the box next to "Do not sell all the information you give to us to really dodgy companies" we are pleased to inform you that you have been automatically entered into Channel 4’s "2004 exTREEEM Teen Big Brother". We thank you for your application but please do not reply to this automated message as we are too busy with vital boardroom… um.. business.

Dev and the Admins.

DEATHGIVER2003: KEWWWWWLLLL!!!!!!!!

Journal idea by Walls, Dev and the Admins originally an idea by bubbles. I made them real(tm) though, so **** you!

A year in review January 1, 2004

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
2 comments

2003 sucked. Apart from the ending :)

Lend me an RJ11 socket, I am your neighbour! December 29, 2003

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
8 comments

Ah the festive season. I call this bit the festive season because it’s only after Xmas Eve that I can relax and enjoy it. And I have. I may suck at mini table pool, chase the ace and indeed my old favourite Newmarket but at christmas especially it’s not the winning that counts.

And it turns out that some of my relatives actually read this very strange part of the internet, so I guess I’ll have to stop going on about my wildly immoral tales of debauchery and scandal. Ah well, the price of fame I guess.

Tv has returned to the Batloft thanks to Dotc’s skillz at both telephone cables and getting our neighbours to stick cables in their flat. So far I’ve watched 3 episodes of Robbie Coltranes: Planes and Automobiles, Late night Poker and Man u beating Middlesborough. My on going quest to regain Hollyoaks seems to be in vain though, C4 is not on the menu :(

What about you Deathgiver2003? How was your xmas?

DG2K3: OMG! I GOT A COOL LAMP AND A DEDLY JUMPAR AND LOADZ OF SWEETS AND WHISKEY AND LOADZ OV UDDER KOOL ****!!!!1

Indeed. :)

DG2K3: NEGGS TOIME ON DIS!: 2003 ROWEND UP!

amp presents – FUTURE PANTS! THEY SEE THE FUTURE! NOW! December 19, 2003

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
4 comments

Me n’ Lg December 12, 2003

Posted by amp in Uncategorized.
7 comments

Session Start: Fri Dec 12 21:50:38 2003
Session Ident: lgs
[21:50] Session Ident: lgs (~lgs@p210-93.as1.csy.castleblaney.eircom.net)
[21:50] (lgs) yo
[21:50] (lgs) u a moderator in boards.ie?
[21:50] (amp_pr0n) yeah
[21:50] * Looking up lgs user info…
[21:51] (lgs) well… a while ago i was banned, and i sure did deserve it..
[21:51] (lgs) can ya unban me please?
[21:51] (amp_pr0n) sure
[21:51] (lgs) ill be good
[21:51] (amp_pr0n) k
[21:51] (amp_pr0n) done
[21:51] (lgs) ?
[21:51] (amp_pr0n) you are unbanned
[21:51] (lgs) on the site.. www.boards.ie?
[21:52] (amp_pr0n) yeah
[21:52] (lgs) ok.. whats my username?
[21:53] (amp_pr0n) eh… i dunno. howabout I’MALAMEASSDORKNEWBIEWHOHASN’TGOTA****INGCLUE?
[21:53] (lgs) that aint it
[21:53] (amp_pr0n) are you sure?
[21:54] (lgs) kinda…
[21:54] (amp_pr0n) nice
[21:54] (lgs) username = lgs^
[21:54] (amp_pr0n) checking database…
[21:54] (amp_pr0n) please hold…
[21:54] (lgs) no bodger rodger!
[21:55] (lgs) so.. u find me?
[21:55] (amp_pr0n) having trouble finding you
[21:55] (amp_pr0n) what did you do?
[21:56] (amp_pr0n) the database also has a "crime" field
[21:56] (lgs) ?
[21:56] (amp_pr0n) *sigh* why were you banned?
[21:56] (lgs) i signed up, kinda made bout 5 posts about my site and then i gave a bit of cheek
[21:56] (amp_pr0n) what site?
[21:56] (lgs) www.boards.ie
[21:57] (amp_pr0n) are you giving me cheek?
[21:57] (lgs) nope
[21:57] (lgs) ?
[21:57] (amp_pr0n) WHAT
[21:57] (amp_pr0n) IS
[21:57] (amp_pr0n) YOUR
[21:57] (amp_pr0n) SITE
[21:57] (amp_pr0n) ?
[21:57] (lgs) ohh…
[21:57] (lgs) http://www.arcadeplus.netfirms.com
[21:57] (lgs) but its closed
[21:58] (lgs) not updatin it no more..
[21:58] (amp_pr0n) ok
[21:58] (amp_pr0n) what was your password?
[21:58] (lgs) i think it was ColdMail
[21:58] (lgs) lol
[21:58] (lgs) i got loads of passes
[21:58] (amp_pr0n) lol indeed
[21:59] (amp_pr0n) hang on a second
[21:59] (lgs) k
[21:59] (amp_pr0n) ok done
[21:59] (amp_pr0n) your new password will be mailed to you
[21:59] (lgs) so im unbanned..
[22:00] (lgs) thank you!
[22:00] (amp_pr0n) it’ll take about 2 hours
[22:00] (amp_pr0n) no prob
[22:00] (lgs) k, thanks
[22:01] (lgs) y would it take so long?
[22:01] (amp_pr0n) database is backing up
[22:01] (lgs) kk……………….
[22:01] (amp_pr0n) user accounts are locked
[22:01] (amp_pr0n) until it’s finished
[22:02] (lgs) k
[22:04] (lgs) cant u just tell me my pass?
[22:04] (amp_pr0n) I can’t access the database until the back up is finished
[22:05] (lgs) well…
[22:05] (amp_pr0n) besides I won’t ever see it
[22:05] (lgs) k
[22:05] (amp_pr0n) vbulletin sends it
[22:05] (lgs) k
[22:06] (amp_pr0n) via sslwarp encryption actually
[22:06] (amp_pr0n) it’s pretty cool :)
[22:06] (lgs) WHOA!
[22:06] (lgs) but.. are ya sure lgs^ was my username, and ColdMail the pass… cause i got tonnes of usernames and passes
[22:06] (amp_pr0n) no
[22:06] (amp_pr0n) I’m not sure
[22:06] (lgs) sslwarp encryption.. i have no idea
[22:06] (lgs) crap..
[22:07] (amp_pr0n) because I CAN’T ****ING ACCESS THE ****ING DATABASE UNTIL THE BACK IS FINISHED!!?!
[22:07] (lgs) erm…
[22:07] (amp_pr0n) I’m sorry
[22:07] (amp_pr0n) I’ve had a long day
[22:07] (lgs) ok, is there a page where i can search all the users?
[22:08] (lgs) so hav i
[22:08] (amp_pr0n) My roommate keeps hassling me
[22:08] (lgs) lol…
[22:08] (lgs) give him a box in the jaw
[22:09] (amp_pr0n) I tried that but he just hit me back
[22:09] (amp_pr0n) I’m thinking of posioning him
[22:09] (lgs) hit him again, ang again, and again
[22:09] (lgs) yea, poision him..#
[22:09] (amp_pr0n) know any good poisons?
[22:10] (lgs) cat tranquiliser… dunno where you’ll get it tho…
[22:10] (lgs) maybe in the vets
[22:10] (lgs) say your cats gone crazy and ya need to tranquilise it
[22:10] (amp_pr0n) I hardly think a substance that merely puts cats to sleep would work on him
[22:11] (lgs) well, it can kill people… if ya use enough of it..
[22:11] (lgs) dont use too much tho, ya dont wanna kill him!
[22:11] (lgs) ya wanna brain damage him for the rest of his life!
[22:11] (lgs) so use a good bit, not enough to kill him
[22:12] (amp_pr0n) yeah I suspose, and besides if I get arrested again I’ll go down for a long time
[22:12] (lgs) again?
[22:12] (amp_pr0n) ah it’s a long story
[22:12] (lgs) lol
[22:12] (amp_pr0n) are you laughing at me?
[22:13] (lgs) nah..
[22:13] (lgs) lol, a term people use WAY too often
[22:13] (lgs) even in stupit situations.. lol
[22:13] (amp_pr0n) your laughing at me
[22:13] (lgs) no im not
[22:13] (amp_pr0n) maybe I should poison you
[22:14] (lgs) ahh..
[22:14] (lgs) but then you’d go down again for a LONG time
[22:15] (amp_pr0n) yeah, maybe I should take my pills
[22:15] (amp_pr0n) I get a bit angry if I don’t take them
[22:15] (lgs) lol (im not really laughing)
[22:15] (amp_pr0n) YOUR DOING IT AGAIN!
[22:15] (amp_pr0n) FOR ****S SAKE!
[22:16] (amp_pr0n) I’M ****ING SERIOUS HERE
[22:16] (lgs) ok…
[22:17] (lgs) maybe you should take your bills
[22:17] (lgs) i g2g nehow
[22:17] (amp_pr0n) k
[22:17] (lgs) goodluck
[22:17] (amp_pr0n) cya
[22:18] (amp_pr0n) sorry I shouted
[22:18] (amp_pr0n) friends?
[22:22] (amp_pr0n) hello ;) ?
[22:22] No such nick