Thursday, March 31, 2011

34 Years Old + 206 Days

Tuesday...

Ah yes... the glory of poverty. Not real poverty of course.... don't even really know why I said that.

We drove over to Ros A Mhil this morning to get water, lots of water in containers. 5ltr containers X 8. So we got 40ltrs of water. In Carraroe a large enough tank of home heating oil, Kerosane, leaked into the soil and from there into our local supply of drinking water... ahh.

All of that is bad enough, and an accident, I am sure no one wanted that to happen. Problem is that this began and was reported first a few weeks ago. Why wasn't anything done?

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

34 Years Old + 205 Days

Yeah, Monday...

... I was doing a kind of training course every Monday for the last two months and now it is finished, which is cool becasue I have my Monday mornings back.

We found out today that the water is contaminated with something and we were all told not to drink it, not to wash our hands with it, not to even use it to wash clothes or anything with it.

At karate, it was really good as usual, I would advise anyone to take it up.

We had a class game of counter strike... go here to see the CS:S page http://cupantae.ie/cstrike/
It is not finished yet but I am working on it. I found it very difficult to actually get website that contain a description of the original Counter-Strike: Source maps and a picture to go with it, so we have had to do it ourselves.

34 Years Old + 204 Days

Sunday...

What a gloriuos day! It was so nice that when the fleet of kids woke up we had breakfast outside the house in the fresh morning air. We moved out the table and all had french bread. Mmmm mmmm.

That was pretty much followed be tea when mom and dad came up followed by dinner at mom and dads when they went home!

In the evening when the kids were asleep we had a game of settlers and that french board game, what is the name of it again.... Carcasane.. forgive the spelling. It was a good day, like when the weather is so good, as it was today it is hard to complain about much :)

34 Years Old + 203 Days

Saturday....

The day was cool enough actually. I actually managed to do some more work on my little potatoe patch I have in the field at my parents house. I am actually learning loads about growing my own food. This is my aim, I wanted Sophie to be learning it too, but I think that she is simply not interested at the moment.

In the evening we had our nephue and niece over to stay the night on a sleep over. In preperation for this we got a single bed for one of them to sleep on and put it into Sophies room. Soon our little Lucy will be leaving the cot and going into a huge big open single bed....

It was a slightly hectic day... but a good one.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

34 Years Old + 202 Days

Friday....

Linda went into Galway and I was going to either go in with her or stay at home and have the day for myself while all of the girls were in town, but what did happen is that Lucy got sick and I ended up keeping an eye on Lucy all day.

So not a whole lot happened to me really. That was it pretty much. I looked at a youtube tutorial by thenewboston.com about how to use Blender. Blender is a 3D gaphics program. Like, you know on Jurassic Park when loads of Dinosaurs walk around the place, a 3D graphics program does that. Now, not Blender, but if you wanted to get into the whole 3D graphics and animation scene then a program like blender is what you are looking for becuase blender is free!!!! 3d graphics programs are used alot too in making animation and models in games.

A program like 3d Studio Max could cost a few grand I believe. A few years ago it cost $3,500 around. 3d Studio being one of the industry standards.

blender is free... goto thenewboston.com

34 Years Old + 201 Days

Thursday....

Today there was the board game club on but I could not go to it. Bummer, I have not been to the club now for ages, I have missed the last 2 or 3.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

34 Years Old + 200 Days

Wednesday...

Wow... day 200!!!!!!!

Two Hundred! All of a sudden I have realised that I have gone more than half way in my one year project of doing a page a day of my blog! Class. I am happy.

I am also sad and lonely. Linda is away for the night doing visiting family in Mayo. So, alone, I looked at the

The Bourne Identity

It is such a brilliant film. They all are. I took Sophie to her art class in Spideal and went for a walk up to the two peers. It was a good day but stressful because I was trying to do about my future education. I am wondering if I should go back to college. Finish off properly my computer education. Of course it will mean I am knocking at the door of my 40th birthday. So trying to figure out alot basically.

So 200 days. I have moved an old school clock radio from Sony. The model number is ICF-C212 and it uses up 5W. In computers we talk so much about the models type of the laptops and base units, but we never talk about it with other things. I will make more of an effort to observe the small details. I sound crazy now, so I think I will go off to sleep. It is emblazened on the face of my ICF-C212 that it is 12:26AM, I really should hit the hay.

Comments On Comments!
Mart Asks:
About Day 171 - Who Is HH... Sorry, HH is me, hammerhead!
About Day 173 - "Ryan, to answer your question (3 weeks later!), cylons won, i.e. me and donal. I was an unrevealed cylon for most of the game, Donal was a revealed cylon for most of the game, and he basically won it while I was busy hiding. It was great fun though and brought Wallace back from the trauma of the 6 hour game that gave him nightmares and left him steering clear of BSG for 6 months! "
About Day 175 - "Ryan - the way the murder mystery worked was great, each person is drip-fed information about their character at certain points throughout the night, so right up until the end, even marielle didn't know she was the killer. I would highly recommend a murder mystery night, it was totally class and great fun"
About Day 183 - I cannot say who I had a fight with, was it really a fight... eh, not really. It wasn't Linda though, don't worry!
About Day 184 - Had to laugh at this one. "Donal you know my opinion on the Irish language so i wont go into it here, but i have a great way of preserving the language and making loads of people pro-actively adopt it and start speaking it ... ban it immediately. Even better if you could somehow make the ban come from England."

34 Years Old + 199 Days

Tuesday...

Today I started properly this really cool thing... farming! Well that is not really true. I have started to grow my own food to learn how it works. I want the kids to learn to. But it is really cool. My aim is to plant potatoes, carrots, lettuce... other stuff I guess too. Dad is helping me. But it is funny when you think about it, how little we know about gardening, about plants, about animals, about our own food. A person came up to me a few weeks ago and she told me that she is never going to eat marshmallows again because she found out that some part of the stomach of a cow is used in it production. I was like, what! Think about it... what is a steak? It is flesh of an animal that we killed and chopped up! It is silly the whole thing... People love steak, but imagen if after a fine dinner I told my guests that the mine meat that they had was dog, or horse, alot of people would turn green at the thought of it.

My point is, if your going to eat something, either know where it comes from, or accept that you do not know where it comes from and accept that the source of the food is reliable and within safety standards. So from a point of view of knowing where your food comes from, that is why I am growing my own veg... let the girls know what food is grown, it takes time.

Monday, March 21, 2011

34 Years Old + 198 Days

Monday

Or Karate Day as it soon shall be know to me, by me. Not because karate is that brilliant - it is brilliant - but the reason I am writing this is to ask the universe "what did I do to deserve this, why are so many things always clashing with Monday night?" It seems there are alot of external forces lobbying agains't me doing karate. Seriously, I have a list. Today for example there was a networking getting to know people meeting on exactly the same time as karate... i went to karate, Linda went to the networking thing and told them all how she is a Web and graphic designer.

But then the rest of the day was good, I did a bit of work. I judge how good my work was not based on the time that I am working, because Linda give me loads of time to do the work, but how well I spend that time. I could have 2 hours to do some work but doss around, check mail, facebook, play some games for an hour and a half, so thats like a 25% work success rate. Well, that an interesting gauge actually, I must use that again. I wonder what a good success rate is? 100% is a robot. I guess, 90-95%. Well today I say I'd had maybe 88% success rate.

What was I even talking about. Basically good day. We had a tasty dinner too, pork chops from Spar in Carraroe, mmmmmm.

34 Years Old + 197 Days

Sunday...

It was kinda different to the usual waking up, brekkie, dinner, tea, sleep (a format which I like alot). This morning I slept in a bit and when we were all ready I headed to a birthday party with the kids. When the party was over we all (4 of us) went down to Dads for dinner which was as usual lovely. I wonder if he knows how much we all like it.

When the kids were home and asleep we had some Counter Strike Source... it was as usual fun but the scope of the fun has multiplied (I realise that sentence is meaningless!) in we were talking to Ryan in the US and playing as well. It really makes you realise how great CS:S is and how brilliant it is to be able to download something like Skype for free! Anyway for all my talk, I only played a little bit.

Myself and Rick attempted to do some comic work but for some reason he wasn't feeling 100% :)

And that was my day.... regular.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

34 Years Old + 196 Days

Saturday...

In an effort to spend more time with the kids, I spent more time with the kids. We went into Galway, Linda, the kids and I. While Linda was away working, I went to Monkey Business with the kids. Now there is funny thing about Lucy, other kids seem to latch onto her. We were in Monkey Business and this other kid that was 2 or 3 came up and started playing with her. Thing is he was playing real "hard core". He was first staring at her. Then he started following her everywhere she went. She went into the ball pool and he followed then he got some of the colored balls and started hitting her on the head with them. I was like, What! Where the hell is this kids parent. So I called Lucy towards me and she left the ball pool. But he followed. When she realised that she has an obvious little stalker she began to pay attention to him and attempted to play with him. But now he started getting pushy and shoving. It was so bad that I had to tell one of the staff who gave a concerned "oh.. mmm... oh ok" but did nothing. So I called in big sister... I told Sophie to stay with Lucy. She did a sterling job of this and I was impress with her.

Then a woman stood up, blonde, kind of attractive - the marrow dried from her bones - and the kid ran with her. There was another older blonde woman with her too. Kids grandmother I guess. They probably saw nothing of what was happening because they were nattering about how men treat them so badly while their own little ignorant lump of meat was simmering away slowly in the pot right in from of them and they noticed nothing.

It made me realise, that kid wasn't good. He wasn't bad - like I don't think he's going to take the 3 Year course in Evil at Trinity in Dublin... but he certainly wasn't normal. If your reading this and thinking "whats all the fuss - they are only kids" then you have missed the point and if you have kids yourself they are pretty much definately going to be up to know good at day and night while you whilst away your life in front of TV looking at crappy lowest common denominator programming. But if your still reading this, you probably do get my point which is - keep an eye on your kids or keep your legs together...

34 Years Old + 195 Days

Friday...

Linda was at the mother and toddler with both the kids so I stayed and fixed computers for as much of the day as I was able to. That was too, pretty much my day. When the kids come home hours disolve into each other and you find yourself looking at the clock at 7pm and thinking, where did the day go?

In the evening, well night I guess, Mart came over to babysit for us and we went into the cinema, we saw "The Fighter" with Christian Bail and Mark Walberg and of course Amy Adams. It really was a brilliant film but I was cringing through alot of it. Alot of the film is based around this family that think they know everything but really they are just a normal family I guess, that like normal families know nothing really. The way that all the sisters were portrayed was brilliant, they came across as an ignorant pack of morons... but again, I can think of alot of families that are like that... they are a normal family. Thats why I think the film hit a nerve with me so much. It was like, we are sometimes that stupid.

Brilliant film, see it!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

34 Years Old + 194 Days

Thursday... St Patricks Day!

It was really cool actually. I didn't actually have anything in particular to do. I don't have the cafe anymore. I was able to walk with Sophie, I was able to take photos. I took a few photos, then we all went down to mom and dads and had dinner. I looked them over yet becaue I was simply verty very tired.


"This head movie makes my eyes rain....." Tropic Thunder

34 Years Old + 193 Days

Wednesday...

34 Years Old + 192 Days

Tuesday....

I began playinh Halo 3 today, co-op with PJ. It is more like going on Safari with some kind of tribal chief that can kill tigers and lions with a stare. I am going through the game, and I am dying, and so is PJ... but he knows the way through the maps ssooooooo well that it takes all of the single player aspect out of it. It is like looking at an interactive film actually is probably my best description, but am i complaining, it might sound like I am but I am not, there are so many great games out there and Halo 3 is one of them. Difference is that if I do not play Halo 3 like this, I might never get to see it.

At least when the sun is setting on this game and PJ passes the finishing line, for the hundreth time probably, and I walk behind him in his shadow, at least I can honestly say.... "yeah - I finished Halo 3!"

Monday, March 14, 2011

34 Years Old + 191 Days

Monday....

You know what I had a crap Monday. I had karate too and the crapness of my day was reflected in my class. I was weak and slow and I even had to sit down because I thought I was going to faint :(

On a brighter side for Linda see went up to Castlebar to see The Commitments, thats a capital T at the beginning of that The. Any fan of the film will know what that means. But Linda and Finola who went there too know alot about the band. Finola knows Glen Hansard from doing a music class with him, Linda know about nearly all of the band members and has seen a few of them in seperate concerts throughout the years. So she had a good night.

Onto my new feature now that will pop up every now and again to answer questions that have piled up. First thing is, my dad is ok. He is often feeling crap but he really is, in general fine. That day I was writing my blog beside his bed in hospital, I guess the whole hospital concept is very daunting.

Next I have to greet any new reader I have to my blog. I know Mart has begun reading it today. When you eventually catch up to this point, well, Hello.

And I love all the comments that people send to me. I do not comment on hardly any of them but I do think that they help me with my blog. So again, thanks for all the comments and opinions.

34 Years Old + 190 Days

Sunday...

It was my sisters birthday so we had a nice little party up at her house. That took up most of the day really. Before the party, or get together, we had dinner at mom and dads place. Cool thing was that mom had Sky Movies so any time that I am in the house for a few moments I look for some movie that is pretty good. This time it was "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs". It was actually quite good!

34 Years Old + 189 Days

Saturday...

Saturday, March 12, 2011

34 Years Old + 188 Days

Friday...

Hmmm, I am writing this in hospital. Dad is lying on a bed beside me and we are talking. He has some strange breathing problem. It is funny, times like these I realise how old we both are. I am 34... he's 65. But with that said, I have never been beside a funnier patient. He has more of a sense of humor than a normal person would that is trying to be funny.

It is funny and sad. But that is what it is like at best when you have a family member in hospital. Not trying to be dramatic or anything.. it is just one of those things. In case, being in hospital for anything breathing related is at least kinda serious. But you can't get all stressed out about it, its like, I could have been home having tea, with dad... instead I am in hospital, having tea with dad.

As it turned out at the end of the day, he was allowed to go home after a good few hours, nine I think and when he was leaving he had his doctor, his consultant, and all the nurses in stitches.

34 Years Old + 187 Days

Thursday...

Today was one of those nothing days. No work done I mean. We had an exercise review class for Sophie, she was not there it was just for the parents of the kids that were present at the initial testing where they tested kids dexderity, balance and strenght. Sophie did well in some of them and it is cool to think that there are services available to help bring kids up to a certain standard. It is cool too that amazing people are help in this. So while I did not get much done, it was a good day.
Mark took over the Board Games Club in Galway. I was in town earlier giving Michelle a driving lesson around town. She was brilliant, we did 7 round abouts and she flew around the the multi story car park. I was proud of her!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

34 Years Old + 186 Days

Wednesday...
I have realised that I have a virus somewhere on my network in some form or another. It send out a mail to all the poeple in my gmail address book and told them, in very poor English, to go to a link. Problem is when I am cleaning computers belonging to other people I use my own laptop. So if the other computer has a problem and it usually does, my computer is directly linked up to it. Interesting times. So sorry to all the people that have gotten junk mail from me... but, it wasn't me :(
First day of lent today too. I am giving up a miriad of stuff, but another thing we are doing it "taking up" stuff. I am going to look for a new thing to begin. Heaven knows I already have enough things on already but this is a passtime of hobby that you should start if only for lent and stick and try to perfect. So you might take up juggling, guitar, something along the lines of a party trick concept, but for it to be a thing that you have always wanted to do. Something that will benefit only you. So it will be a thing that at the end of lent you can say, hey, look what I can do!
And now, maybe what I should do is practice what I preach and get to doing some of the millions of things I am meant to be doing now.

34 Years Old + 185 Days

Tuesday...

We had pancakes today. But today was a strange day too. A pet died that we all know and it was indeed very sad. It makes you question the whole life and death thing. When you hear of someone dying that you are not close too, but you might have known, it's it strange that you can be more upset if a pet dies too and you will be really upset about that. I guess that if you are close to your pet that you care more for your pet than alot of poeple that you know. People will say that you should not hold pets more valuable than people but we do. If I have a dog or a cat and I go out to the shop to buy food for them, that is kinda what I am doing. I could send away the money to the poor to help them not starve, but instead I am feeding my nice plump animal. And rightly so. I guess that my point here is, when you are really upset about a pet and if someone implies that you are too upset or that there are other people dying around the world right now and that things should be put in perspective, well, they are not correct. It is a fact, that most pet owners care primarily for their pets that they do for most of the population of humans on the world...

Interesting... is it?

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

34 Years Old + 184 Days

Monday.. I was at Karate and it was brilliant... it was the first time I was able to keep up with the amount of press-ups that the instructor wanted. If you are in Carraroe in Ireland, why are you not doing karate! It is simply the best thing ever... I am aware of course that other people play football, basketball, etc. but I never did those, and I know that they are probably as good for you as karate. Another excellent thing in Carraroe is the excercise classes that are held in the hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Again, as with the karate, I have no vested interest in those classes, it is just that I have attended the Tuesday and Thursday exercise classes and they were brilliant for me and the karate is also good for me.

However, after the karate class I was at a meeting in the Primary school that my daughter attends and they were discussing methods of keeping Irish alive via the kids speaking it. Or to re-phrase, how can we make sure that the kids keep speaking Irish in the school. Well there were a few things discussed and they were things like a support group would be put in place for parents whose Irish is not as strong as native Irish speakers. Can't argue with that. Also, it was suggested that inside the school gates ONLY Irish would be spoken to show to the kids that in school.. you speak Irish! This too cannot really be argued with.

There was one point though that did not sit comfortably with me. It was suggested that the first two classes, Junior Infants and Senior Infants (Naionáin Bheaga and Naionáin Mhóra) be put into one group and now you would have one big class. Now, that big class would be broken into two again, but this time the division would be based on how good the kids Irish would be. Interesting experiment, isn't it.

However, I did not send my daughter to school to be a spore on a petri dish. I do not want any experiments tried out on my daughter. I have her in this school because it is my right. We still have rights, right? What I want for my daughter is that she gets a good education and I personally do not care all that much what language her education is in. There are millions more things I can say about this but there is not much point here. But I will say this much. She has a right to education - and I believe in that right. I believe in that right for all children. Education... education is not a language... education is what you recieve IN some language. I see language as a tool. Much like any other tool. If a hammer is needed to nail some wood together, does it matter what the hammer looks like, or what color it is. No, it is a tool to get a job done. Irish is a language that is used to get a job done, in this case the job is for our children to learn about nature, counting, as well as speaking Irish and English... and in this regard that is why I thing that the language should be spoken exclusively in the school. We are in a Gaeltacht part of the country....

But do not let the tail wag the dog. Do not put our kids in the front line of fire in the war for the survival of the Irish culture. My daughter is not a bullet to be loaded into a cannon aimed at the tide of foreign culture sweeping over us. The irish language is beautiful, I love irish and I think that it should be kept alive and I do think that lots and lots of money should be spent on it by educating people on why irish is so important. All I am saying here, all I am saying is not to use our kids in the process by dividing classes. I believe that it will create a social class difference. The bad kind. We have enough of that in the world already...

34 Years Old + 183 Days

Sunday!

Sunday... another day, another fight!

34 Years Old + 182 Days

Saturday!

What the hell happened today... We played settlers in the evening... not the most event full day though.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

34 Years Old + 181 Days

Friday.

It was a good day today, but ended up, also very cool but strange because at around 6pm we made up our minds that we would go into the cinema after visiting Lindas friend in town. We went into this nice and cool pub in Salthill and I would definately go there again. Afterwards we went to the cinema and saw the "The Adjustment Beurau" The media hypes it as Inception meets Bourne... definately I would not agree with that. It is simply good, and only so if judged on it own merrits and not compared to other films.

Friday, March 4, 2011

34 Years Old + 180 Days

Thursday....

I stayed up late last night working on my new website that I love having - lonelyatoms.com. It was 3:30am when I was asleep though which might explain why today was totally CRAP for me for some reason. That and a business deal we were hoping for went south. A few things basically... Just not a good day. Tomorrow is Friday though, and everything will be all right tomorrow, I was meant to go into the board games club in Galway but I could not go in and that ticked me off too... ahhh thankfully today is over.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

34 Years Old + 179 Days

Wednesday...

Check out this youtube video for Battlefield 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsfTksi_kHs&feature=player_embedded

It shows how good the engine is at making people more realistically, all this is in game footage too I believe. It is something else, I am sure that there are more intense action sequences in the game, so, again, remember this is just to show how real the people move.

Quote of the day: "I don't like tops with long heads" (Sophie on her dislike of Polo Neck tops)

34 Years Old + 178 Days

I spent a significant part of day thinking to myself, what is a good name for my new website, and as I was told, choose carefully becaue it is hard to change when people learn it.

Finally, at midnight, or close to it, I figured out what name I want - my figuring out being based on weather the domain name was available or not - I found a name I was happy with, lonlyatoms.com. I like it because I can do alot with that name... logo wise, it means alot. It is kinda silly, but I wanted it kinda silly - donalodomhnaill.com was available, is still actually I believe, but my name is hardly the biggest bundle of laughs. So now that I have the domain, I am going to begin to populate it with pictures, pictures, pictures!!!!

34 Years Old + 177 Days

Monday...

I had a class in the morning, it was a training class. It was good and it went on until 1pm. It made my day feel like a proper working day. I got up in the morning, did some work and came home and we had dinner around 4pm-ish.

We had karate and Sophie was there with me. She liked it alot becuase the class was kinda different to the usual routine. There was alot of fun running around and while still doing proper karate. Again, looking for something to do that will give you focus... karate is your thing (maybe).

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...