Conall’s Blog

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And so I begin another trip around the photosphere…

Random Mutterings

The last couple of weeks have been busy, both in work and personally. There’s nothing specifically newsworthy, there has just been a lot going on and not quite enough time to fit it all in. Things are starting to settle down now, so I’ve more time to do random things like (re)watch my West Wing DVD collection while the WGA strike continues.

I’ve also started to look at getting down to doing things I’ve always intended to do, but never had the time to do, such as setup Nagios monitoring of my servers, complete with SMS alerts through Clickatell, using a simple python script I’ve knocked together. I’ll post more details at another time, after I’ve actually got Nagios up and running…

I’ve also been occasionally dabbling with assorted software.

OmniFocus is the natural successor to kGTD, so I tried it out for a while. It’s very nice, but doesn’t suit my needs yet, mainly the ability to sync a single To Do list between 2+ Macs, without resorting to using a USB stick to store it on. According to the online forums, the next release will be aimed more at this use case. \o/

RTM is also nice, particular with the numerous ways in which one can interact with it. I might look at learning AppleScript and trying to make a script to sync certain tasks from kGTD/OmniFocus with RTM. Finally, I’ve been playing with last.fm through iScrobbler. iusethis.com is also a useful site for keeping track of the various OS X apps I use, it even has an RSS feed so I can see when there are new releases.

On the travel front, I haven’t really gone anywhere since Venice, which was 2 months ago. So, Ciara and I are off to explore Copenhagen this weekend, which I’m really looking forward to, since I’ve never been to any of the Nordic countries before.

Oh, and the new 32GB iPod Touch is rather tempting, perhaps I’ll get it the next time I’m in the US…

2008

So, Christmas the annual arbitrary numerical rollover day have been and gone. This week, I’ve been off work finally (I was oncall over Christmas week) for a full week for the first time in quite a while. I’ve been spending it lazying round, trying to recover from a cold I caught last week and working on little, annoying tasks I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but never got around to doing them until now.

I’ve never really been one for new years resolutions, but this year, I’m going to be more active and get more exercise. I’ve never really been a big fan of athletics, and I gave up swimming regularly a long time ago. :-/ I’m also going to try and get around to watching some of the classic movies I’ve always wanted to watch, but never actually did anything about it. Dr Strangelove is top of my list, especially since I bought it on DVD ages ago and I still haven’t watched it.

2007 was a busy year, both work wise and travel wise. I realised I took 21 flights, visited 4 different countries (many of them a few times over the year) and wandered around 13 cities and saw 7 US states during the year (and I had only been to California before). 2008 doesn’t look like with will be any quieter, Ciara and I are off to Copenhagen in early February. After that, who knows where I’ll end up.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been tinkering with a few techy things which I am planning on posting about here, but not now. Sometime soon, when it’s not 01:00

Photos

One thing I’ve been meaning to do for months is to organise and publish photos from various trips and outings that have been gathering since last February. Last week, I finally stopped putting it off and started sorteding and uploading the photos to flickr. This week, I’ll sort through my photos from New England, New York and San Francisco and try to publish them shortly. 

My photos from New York are particularly interesting, since I upgraded my camera kit with the purchase of an EOS 40D, which is immense fun to use, especially with my Sigma 10 - 20mm lens. :) 

General news: Work as usual. Ciara and I are off to Galway for a long weekend this weekend, since I’ve never had more than an hour there, so we’re going to properly explore it.

Earthquake

So, I’ve been in the US for almost 2 weeks now, so my trip is coming slowly winding up and I’ll be back home in Dublin by this time next week. Apart from work, I’ve been up to quite a few things:

I explored NYC for the first time, taking in numerous sights such as Central Park, the Guggenheim, 5th Ave, the Rockerfeller Centre, Empire State Buildings, Staten Island (and the ferry ride there and back) and many other things. I did regret foolishly walking the 71 blocks from the Guggenheim museum all the way back to my apartment on the Saturday, then I walked around the waterfront to Battery Park the very next day. My feet were sore for almost a week :-/ Thanks to a colleague, I was brough to a very interesting, themed bar, the Beauty Bar, which had wonderful decor inside.

In San Francisco, there are a few things I still haven’t done, so I try to do one or two more things each time I’m back. This visit, I plan on finally going to on a tour of Alcatraz and crossing over to see (and photograph) the views of the city from the Golden Gate Recreational Area. I’ve already managed to get to JapanTown on Sunday, where I had lots of fun wandering around shops and having some very good sushi for dinner.

Oh, and this evening I experienced my first (noticeable) earthquake, 5.6 Mw shake which only lasted 10 seconds. I didn’t even manage to get all the way to a doorway before it ended. :-/

Back, but for how long?

Arrived back from my holiday Sunday afternoon. Trip to New England was really, really good. I’ve lots of photos to prove it, they may even appear online soon. However, I’m almost out of time back in Dublin. I’m off on a business trip to New York and then San Francisco for almost 3 weeks on Wednesday.

I acquired a few toys in New England, primarily a handheld GPS (I tagged waypoints of the trip highlights, I’ll find something to do with them later) and another camera lens, the ultra wide-angle Sigma 10-20mm (which is so much fun to use :).

One interesting thing I’m doing for work on Monday is giving a 10 min talk to students in 3rd and 4th year CS in TCD about a career in IT, particularly in Google. It’s somewhat ironic, since I would never consider myself to have been a model student in college.

Proof Of Life

In case anyone is using posts over here to check if I’m alive, yes I’m alive. I’ve simply been neglecting this part of the internet.

So, what have I been up to over the last 2+ months? (yikes, it has been a while!). Mainly working, a little bit of travel to London for a few days back in early August, and not a whole lot else. I was over in London for a few days, mainly a visit to finally visit Mark in Oxford, and to visit Ikea and a decent Mexican restaurant.

Apartment is going very well. Essential household items such as dishes, bookcases, a clothes horse, a proper DVD player and of course a Budda Bag have all been acquired and thoroughly tested. I had to survive on a 3G modem for a few weeks while my Magnet DSL was setup, which is now powered by a shiny Soekris net5501. I’ve even gotten used to the challenging 5 minute commute to the office in the mornings…

I’ve slowly been working up uploading my vast collection of outstanding photos to flickr. I plan to upload them all before the end of this week, since I’m off with Ciara on a 2 week vacation, exploring New England by car and train. A Garmin GPS is on my list to acquire as I arrive, so I should have a detailed itinerary and accompanying photos after I return.

Now all I have to do is resist temptations such as Core 2 Duo Mac Mini, an iPod Touch, and of course, an EOS 40D while the US dollar is so low. *sigh*

Apartment

So, news on the personal front, I now have an apartment. I’ve just moved into a 2 bedroom apartment right here, sharing with Emma.

Now I have the incredibly taxing 5 minute commute to the office and all sorts of new and exciting ethnic food choices nearby.

New Server

Over the last few months, my dedicated server from Sagonet has been showing it’s age (I’ve had it since June 2005), mainly with it’s single 80GB hard disk, not to mention the task of upgrading from Debian sarge to etch was sounding like a little too much effot. So, after recommendations from Liam and Gareth, I’ve gotten a new server from hetzner.de and so far, things are going pretty well.

I’ve christened the new server Daedalus and it’s much, much beefier than Icarus - 2x the RAM, a second hard disk, an AMD64 CPU and all sorts of other shiny features, plus I now have a lot more experience running FreeBSD that when I first got Icarus. After a few weeks of setup and careful after hours migratations, Daedalus is now running all the services Icarus was (as confirmed by the facty that you can read this blog post) and even a few more, is under Icarus’ full load and things are looking good.

(Nerdy) Family Reunion…

So, I’m currently on a 5 day training course in work on the Internals of BSD by none other than Kirk McKusick (one of the original 1970s BSD hackers, in case you don’t know your computer history). The course is very, verg good (imagine a CS Operating System course, merged with a hardware couse; but taught by a knowledgeable lecturer because they pioneered this stuff!!!).

I’m finding it quite amusing that many people are hearing interesting features in FreeBSD that is (finally) making them interested in playing with BSD, they all keep downloading the isos to play with on test systems or under a VM system. This made me smile while I continued to setup my new FreeBSD 6.2 server in Germany (more to follow on that), in addition to other machines, such as my FreeBSD 6.2 router at home and other random machines here and there…

This evening was particularly interesting, when I got Kirk, Eric, a few colleagues and quite a few members of “the family” (well, at least the majority of us still in Ireland - Dave, Ian, Niall, Ian and myself) together for drinks. Drinks and nerdy conversations ensued, which was definitely good fun.