Monday, February 28, 2011

34 Years Old + 176 Days

Sunday...

My rest day. I was cranky as a silver back gorilla that had just been waxed.

I really should have gotten more sleep. More than the 4 and a half hours that I did get. I could have slept in more possibly but I have this thing, I might have said it before, that if I sleep in too much past 9:30am I risk getting an over sleep headache. Sometimes, if Linda and the kids are not around I could sleep in till 11am.

heh heh... just imagine a totally bald gorilla...

I am trying to get a new website address for myself, I am trying to think of a cool new name, by cool I mean a name that suits me, suits what I like and who I am. I do not mean cool like "radskateboards.com". I think of some names, then go to blacknight.com and try out the name and I realise that it is taken. Douh.

In sadder news, Trevor is officially out of the running for the campaign. Who is voted in? Well, like a woman who invites in her drunken wife beating husband so he can kick the shit out of her for a few more years, the good people of Carraroe and Galway have voted in O Cuiv of Fianna Fail. Nice one people....

                            N
                            I
                            C
                            E                                                               

34 Years Old + 175 Days

This Saturday I went into Galway with Linda and the kids. Our brother in law Trevor had run for the general election in Ireland and it is in Salthill in Galway city that they were counting the votes. So we were all in there. Waiting for the count. And waiting. It is a slow process in many cases, and this was one of those cases, after a while we had to leave because we had the kids but it was interesting to see the whole process again.

While we were in town we picked up Lindas mom off the bus from Castlebar, she was down to babysit for us because we were going to a friends house for a murder mystery dinner. The murder mystery dinner was cool. It does take a while to settle into what you are doing, and you are given a persona so you have to settle into that persona too. It is cool. The whole thing was in fact very cool, because when the murderer was revealed (Marielle) we were like "What!". But then the evidence is given that lead to that conclusion and we were all like.... "ooohhhhh yyyeeeaaahhhhhhhh....". So if we were clued in properly we might indeed have gotten the suspect. It was really cool actually....

Then we had a game of Settlers, afterwards. Not the best idea... I was we were asleep at 5:30am...

But at least we got the killer!

Friday, February 25, 2011

34 Years Old + 174 Days

Friday....

Election Day!

Today the people of Ireland are going to vote for a new government. The last time that the people voted at an election we got our previous government. It lead me squarely to the believe that people do NOT want to change. Oh sure every individual wants change... they want it, but in general when the people as a whole, as a nation can change, they do not.

Democracy keeps us free to a certain extent, but in general... it is the chain that keeps us fettered to the fear we have of asking for something different.

Today we could have changed the country... I wonder what "the people" have chosen, the frying pan or the oven? 

34 Years Old + 173 Days

Thursday...

It was really cool today. Today we had our first Board Games Club in Galway in 091labs. Ryan, if you are reading this, or anyone that is reading this that does not know what 091labs are, I have to say that it is one of the best things to happen to Galway. It is a venue that is open to new ideas, new people or all ages and all types... visit http://091labs.com/ for more information on this fantastic place.

However, back the point. At the labs we had our first Galway based Board Games Club and it was great. Marielle and a few people played Settlers and Carcasonne (or however you spell it). Mart and I and a few others played Battle Star Galactica. It was a great night.

We would love, and in the members of the Board Game Club if we could get more people liking the Facebook Board Game Club. Please click here to go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Board-Games-Club-Galway/153555844700722

We need a few people to Like to page to be able to get a proper facebook name for the club.

34 Years Old + 172 Days

Wednesday


There is an event know as a singularity. For all you out there that do know what it means, then forgive my rough discription, in the center of a black hole in space is a singularity. This is the point within a black hole that the super sun, or suns, have collapsed into each other and have a gravitational pull so stong and mighty that even light cannot escape out of... therefore it looks like a black hole.

But this is not the singularity I am talking about... this is a concept that I believe in, and other people believe in too and the singularity is the name for it. Basically it is the following. There will come a time when computers become so fast at computing data, and so complex that they can emulate brains with such accuracy that they will become intelligent.

A quick word on intelligent.... within the field of computers, there is currently artificial intelligence. So for example, with one specific thing a robot/computer is intelligent enough to be able to do one thing brilliantly. It might be printing patterns onto a wooden board... but it is intelligent enough to be able to tell if there is a mistake and disgard the piece of wood and then continue on with its work.. that is not the type of intelligence that I mean. The term I am looking for you to understand is artificial general intelligence. That is what we mean when we think of sci-fi robots or HAL or Data off Star Trek. A computer that can talk to you about your feelings, you can converse with. It can help you with your home work, give you a back massage. In other words, the computer is smart enough to talk to you as if it were a person.

This type of computer would pass the Turing Test... if you were able to chat with it over a screen, like any instant message chat program that you would not know if you were talking to a perons or a computer... then the comuter passes the turing test.

So to get back on track... talking about artifical general intelligence.... when will we have it? I have read a really internesting article in Time magazine that said that with 4 years we will have a computer with the brain power to that equavliant to that of a mouse. Now before you stand in front of your laptop or xbox 360 and point and laugh at its "not even mouse powered brain strength", the article then got scary... scary for me anyway becasue I believe this.

It said that by the year 2023, 12 years in other words... that a computers will be able to surpass the brain power of a human brain. Take a second... what age are you now... add 12 to it. You are not old... and within your life time a computer will appear that is equal to your intelligence... this is not science fiction.... this is a prediction made by very smart and intelligent people. The same type of poeple that make Google, Facebook, Microsoft... you believe in those don't you.

But the most interest/scary thing is that, this article says, that by the year 2045, in other words 34 years in the future... only 34 years in the future - like if you are reading this, the odds are you will still be alive in that time, that computers will surpass the brainpower equivalent to that of all human brains combined.

Think about that for a second.

This is the Singularity... the point at which we cannot step back from technology... it is the point where technology can step back from us. I am not a one man army of concerned parents agains't technology. I love computers.. I love technology. I am speaking of this like prophets did of Jesus before he was born. I am telling you because it is such a huge, huge thing that I think all people should be thinking about it.

Read up on Raymond Kurzweil for more information on this, and Time (Feburary 21, 2011) magazine is where I have gotten this informaiton from. Today you can look at the laptop that you are reading this on and when you are finished you can throw the laptop in the bin when you are finished. It is YOUR laptop. But, in the future, when an intelligence exists that is smarter than us... we will not be able to figure out what it is thinking. We will be the mice then, well not really, but you get what I am saying.

It is really interesting. I remember when my sister Brid was taken home from hospital when she was born. I actually remember is so clearly. I remember where her cot was in the kitchen.. I remember everyone standing around her, looking at her. It is a cloudy memory and strange becuase I was no longer the baby in the family. I actually remember thinking that.

If I can remember 30 years ago from today, will I remember today in 30years time? What will the world be like? What will you be like... what will children you know be like. One thing is for sure... humanity as we know it will end. The human race will finish and we will be in a time when humans and machine will live side by side, peacefully.

Hopefully :)

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

34 Years Old + 171 Days

Tuesday....

Well, this weird... I have totally lost out on what happened to Tuesday. It was brought to my attention by my loyal and intelligent readers that I missed out on the real 34 Years Old + 171 Days... I had it assigned to Wednesday.

My Tuesday was cool enough really, Linda and the girls went up to Castlebar in the morning and basically in the evening I played some xbox. Nothing great... but why I missed out on this day, I do not know. I am writing this on Friday....

I really am trying my make more or an effort!

Love you all,
HH

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

34 Years Old + 170 Days

Monday...

And a good monday it was too, I did some work down at my sisters place... there was loads of medium size gravel and small stones all over her driveway so i cleared alot of them away... it was good to do osme physical work done. But that lead up to my doing Karate at 7pm, so at least i was more warmed up than i was last week.

Karate was a killer. Damn it was tough and very very good and enjoyable. Then myself and Rick worked on the comic! That too was cool....

My day was really cool... oh yeah

Sunday, February 20, 2011

34 Years Old + 169 Days

Sunday,

There was alot of catching up to do on the blog. I was a whole week behind, which kinda goes agains't the whole idea of the blog, but my mind has been all over the place. And for some reason Monday and Tuesday got mixed up in this week gone! I entered them in the correct order I am sure... like how could I do them incorrectly? So now it goes Sunday, Tuesday, Monday, Wednesday... and it is correct for Wednesday onwards. I don't know? Also, I realised today that I had renamed the same day number back in day 155 or something... so I had to go over all the days after that and add one day to them all! Alot of housework but it is now done and the site is better for it. Phew, I am feeling better for that too.

34 Years Old + 168 Days

Saturday 19th Feb...

So, today I went down to Mart and Marielles and we (Mart, Finbar, Wallace and I) had an xbox day. We played Halo Reach. I tried to scare people off by telling them that myself and PJ had just finished of Halo Reach on Tuesday after playing for just 2 nights. However after they played me in Reach they realised that it was in fact PJ that carried me through the Reach campaign, I still sucked as much as ever playing agains't other humans.

34 Years Old + 167 Days

Friday...

Linda went to the mother and toddler today and went into town to get some head space. I stayed with the kids and went visiting, its what I do when I have them and Linda is not here, they get too much for me!!!! So I visit and spead out my respondsibility :)

34 Years Old + 166 Days

Thusday...

I had an interview today for a computer place in Galway. Like, when I say computer place it is so random and bad a description I know, but I never like to tell people too much about stuff that I am doing, like depending on the "stuff". Anyway, this place in town is looking for a PHP programmer and I applied for the job, I will know on Monday if I have gotten it or not. While I was in town I met Mark (Ahern) and he showed me the cool new game that he is working on. It is a 3D game set in space! Yep, it is pretty much as cool as it gets from a single person programming a space game on their own point of view.

34 Years Old + 165 Days

Wednesday, today I helped out in a class teach folks how to use Facebook. It was really cool and I really loved it. People were listening to me! :)

34 Years Old + 163 Days

Monday....

I am writing this entery a week after the time that I should be writing it. Today is really Sunday the 20th Feburary, whereas I should be writing it on 14th Feb! I am bad, I know, and I want to apolagise to my readers... it will not happen again. You can always check when the blog was entered anyway because you can see the entery date on the top of that blog entery.

But basically, today is, was, Valentines day. Now once when money was no issue I would call up the most expensive restaurants in Galway, or where ever and booked a place and not have batted much of an eye at the cost, but now with kids, and needing a babysitter and basically money being an issue we had a lovely night in. And it was really nice.... it was simple. I look back at the other times I went out to places where we had to wait for tables, wait for waiters, wait for our food, wait for our bill... was it better, I really do not think so...

34 Years Old + 164 Days

Tuesday....

Today was class, well this night was class in particular, PJ came over and we played Halo Reach on the xbox360. It did rock alot, and it was cool because I was like a passenger on a safari I the wild animals that we were hunting was the covenant (that's the enemy in the Reach). So we finished the game, and now when I play the multi player of Reach I will understand better the levels because they are the levels from the campaign!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

34 Years Old + 162 Days

Sunday,

Went down to dad and had a dinner but all day I had this sucky headache, this thing I call over sleep. Basically my body want to wake up at nine in the morning at the latest. If I sleep in past that time the odds are that I am going to have a strange head ache that usually even medicine cannot fix. I know that the solution is going to sleep earlier and getting up earlier but today the solution came in the form of a bit of ice cream that I had that totally eased the pain and made my headache disolve away. It feels to good when that happens, because usually when you are sick, by the time you are better you forget what it felt like exactly to be the kind of sick you just were (this count for little tummy bugs and headaches by the way not any serious illness). But with my headache it went away so quickly I was like, oh yeah that feels great, I think it left me really in around 30 - 40 seconds.

Well enough about that... basically, Sunday = Good.

34 Years Old + 161 Days

Saturday

It was cool that we did not actually go anywhere today. We just sayed in the house and let the world twirl on around us. When the kids were asleep however we did go into town and we met Dervela (?!? - incorrect spelling I am sure) and loads of Lindas other friends. We had a nice meal in Cavas in Galway in what is now a yearly thing, the meeting up that is, however I am sure that we did meet in Cavas last year too. I think it was fair to say that I good night was had by all, whatever good could have been done by having lots and lots of food, well i don't know where I am going with that sentence, basically, we had lots to eat and it was really delicious!

34 Years Old + 160 Days

Friday

I was in town at 2pm, but barely in at that time, and worse still my interview was at 2pm. But the interview was actually really interesting and it was testing on me. I will of course say no more.

However, after that and after I had a failed attempt to go to the bank and a failed attempt to go to the accountants place, I head out to 091labs.com ( a hacker space) in Galway. one of my friends was setting up a lanning event there where everyone took their own PCs and played for hours into the night and into the next day. I help do some netwok cabling but I didn't actually play any games because I knew I would just get my ass handed to me. It was really cool though and the bunch of people there are the nicest that you will find at any event anywhere.

34 Years Old + 159 Days

I tried today to do as much preperation for an interview that I have tomorrow but Linda was busy and the kids were getting to me and it was all getting way too much, I ended up in the end not doing a whole lot of anything really.

34 Years Old + 158 Days

Wednesday....

I was in Galway to drop off cables into 091labs for this Friday coming. I had to meet Mark there at around 3pm but I had the Photo club at 8pm so I was in Galway for 5 hours, cool. I visited Nadia and I taught poker to her house mates, that was cool but if I was doing it again it would be cooler with poker chips. Then I read some of the A+ book and eventually I was acutally rushing out to Spideal somehow.
I was at the Spideal Photo club. It was really good actually, however it did show me how little I actually know about my camera. The idea was on the night that we would take a picture of a subject for a studio style shoot and I could not even set the F stop on my camera!

So on its first day for me I learn loads about my camera.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

34 Years Old + 157 Days

Tuesday...

Ah it was a good day today, and why would it not be. I am in good health and good spirits. It is one of the things that I have thought about alot since Cupantae closed. I have the choice to be down in the dumps or be happy about stuff everyday. Alot of people are alot worse off than I am, than we are. We'll be ok.

I was in town today, Linda was looking into job stuff, and we meet Louise. I got a call for an interview for a place on Friday. I would love, love if something came from it, but we will see.

Myself and Mart and some of "the gang" played a new board game called Carcassonne. Well new to us, game was invented in 2000... here is a link to some information about it from BoardGameGeek...

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne

When you have played the game, even once, you will see how amazing this picture is....

GuinnessWorldRecord-try (BoardGameMarathon) 2004 in Germany

34 Years Old + 156 Days

Yeah Monday...

I was at the brilliant Karate club in Carraroe!!! I love it.

Monday, February 7, 2011

34 Years Old + 155 Days

Really didn't do much today, this SUNDAY....

It was not a SUN day. More like rainy, damp, cold, unconfortable day. Guess Sun rolls of the tounge better thought? Thought about Black Swan alot today. I don;t know really what I did, the day passed fairly quickly. Well, Lindas parents were down so I slept in as much as I could without getting a headache. I did some streching and I felt great afterwards. I want to be able to throw proper kicks at karate tomorrow, and I realised that I need to strech slowly for around 15 mins before I can move like the other in the class, who are basically, younger than me. Yep, I love and will keep with my karate.

34 Years Old + 154 Days

Saturday....

Lets start my day backwards...

Finally went to bed...
Drove home from the cinema...
Went to see Black Swan. It was absolutely brilliant brilliant but I had to remind myself that it was going to be over soon a few time through it, such was my level of freaked out about it!
Drove to cinema, happy, expecting a "nice" film!
Had a birthday party for Lucy - she was 2 today! Family was at it, she didn't really know what was happening!
Put up campaign posters up for Trevor (vote Trevor!)
Got up, day was raining, figured we would not be putting up any posters, afterall, it was raining and the weather sucked alot.
Woke up - there is a good day ahead of me 8)

34 Years Old + 153 Days

Friday!

No crunchies :( Still though I had a good day, when Sophie came out from school we went into Galway and went food shopping and Sophie bought a Hello Kitty radio. It is so cute. The fact that Sophie got her own radio with a CD player is cute btw not the radio all that much. But she was so happy switching on the radio and finding out what all the buttons did... do you remember that? Do you remember being young?

Friday, February 4, 2011

34 Years Old + 152 Days

yippee... I made Caca Brown and it was actually nice... it was kinda crumbly... well not crumbly, but when you were cutting it with the knife like little pieces could fall easily off the crust. So structurally it could have been sounder, but it tasted yum and the consistancy was nice... phew!

We ran out of oil last night... today we were plundged into the cold like this guy.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Isa6Ew9Og&NR=1 (crap video sorry - i tried to get one that would make my point but all the videos on youtube were of people falling a foot deep into ice)

Of course we ordered oil...got oil same day! Now thats service.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

34 Years Old + 151 Days

Well really, Linda wasn't feeling so good so I did not do a whole lot more than keeping an eye on things and people in the morning and then one of Sophies little friends came home after school and they hung out together. It is so funny, Sophie has a radio now with a CD player in her room and she blasts out music like there is no tomorrow. I remember we used to do that too, but of course, with tapes.

I wonder how many people do not know what tapes are now days? How many people, when you think about it, have loads of music, either bought off iTunes, or downloaded illegally, and who never actually bought an actual physical media to play that music off, like a CD, or a cassatte tape, or a vinal! Funny when you think about. In a way it makes you think that some day kids might grow up and wonder what we talk about when we mention "petrol" or "diesel" for cars instead of the battery powered electric car they are used to, or what we talk about when we mention reading the "paper". Or a CRT television, that is one of the TVs with the big huge back on it. Will all TV's be 3D? In fact, will we even have TVs, will we have a digital implant where we see the TV project directly into our retina? I'm waiting for hologram television or holodecks like on Startrek!

There are many many crap things in my life that I hope my kids or any other kids will have to experience and I hope the never will. But I also hope they do experience some of the kind of things we were able to do as kids, I remember building forts back at the lake in Carraroe, being carefree and walking out the door and being uncontactable (with no mobile phone), and a day when computer equated directly to fun - not the pornhub and bane of social peer pressure that it is today.

Opps, listen to me going on like an old man (like the old man that I am really I guess). Some things never change!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

34 Years Old + 150 Days

Ooooo what a social Tuesday I had. I did some work on computers then around 4 Sheila and her gang came around and when they left PJ came and I play reach for 3 hours!

Also, I made Caca Brown. It only turned out 50% as good as thought it would be... my sister makes it to and she has it down to an art form so i have to learn it directly off her I think.

34 Years Old + 149 Days

Monday...

It was cool going back to Karate class again. I wore my white suit. One of the kids laughed at me because I was only wearing my white belt and he informed me that he had an orange suit. Note to self, get orange belt asap. But that was it really for the day, Linda was working alot and I was taking care of Lucy. Sophie had a good day, I think, it is really hard to get any actual real answer from her about anything... well, that is not true. But she definately is going through a time of quickly coming up with - I will not say a lie - but definately an "alternative truth" about alot of situations. But it is all part of growing up, as kids you only really learn that lying is bad when you actually lie, get busted for it, and have to face the concequenses of it.

Hasta.

The Reality Of The News

There have been a few times where I have clicked on a news article only to realise that I have been hit with a paywall. I don't mean thi...