Conall’s Blog

I’ve bounced around a lot of places in the last few weeks.

In early April, I was in the Zurich office for a few days (and yes, they really do have a fireman’s pole, no I didn’t go down it), before going to Innsbrook, Austria for an internal work conference and finally Soelden, Austria for our annual ski trip. Thankfully, we left Soelden just in time.

After that trip, I was around Ireland for three weeks and doing various things, including a 24 hour trip to Kilkenny for Andrew’s Stag Night (mischief and mayhem was appropriately documented) and a few weeks later, Ciara and I were in Barberstown, Kildare for Andrew’s wedding over the May bank holiday weekend.

A week later, I was on a plane again, this time to (sunny) San Francisco. I was back in the mothership for meetings and a well deserved top up of the company koolaid. Apart from working, I got up to many things such as taking a San Francisco Bay ferry tour in dense fog, catching up with people, and slowing resenting the 60 - 90 min commute each way from San Francisco to Silicon Valley (like the locals do).

I was also caught unprepared for one of SF’s biggest events, Bay to Breakers, which can only be described as a St Patricks Day Parade (floats, mass drinking, etc) colliding with Halloween (fancy dress costumes), but SF style fancy dress (think Rocky Horror) which masquerades as a 12km run across the city. Very strange and surreal, but quite entertaining.

I’m now back in Dublin since last weekend, with no plans to travel again (just) yet. Photos from my various recent travels should end up on Flickr soon, I just need to sit down and publish the good ones.

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.

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. :-/

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.

Now that life, particularly work is getting more and more stable and less frantic, I’m going to try and post here more frequently.

Recent things I’ve gotten up to, in no particular order:

• Occasional cinema trips to see things like Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End. I recommend both, certainly for the fight scenes. (Yes, the originals were the best, but I’m still a bit of a sucker regarding the story lines of each francise.)
• I’ve very recently acquired another lens for my SLR collection, this time a very, very fast Canon lens, which I’m looking forward to playing with.
• Voted in the Dail Elections (second time voting in an election, since I conveniently “fell off the register” in 2004). If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the government.
• Nearly went geocaching in Wexford, which didn’t happen in the end, since I hadn’t properly planned it and the registration page on geocaching.org isn’t exactly mobile internet friendly. :-/

Man, the last few weeks have been hectic. In my last few days in California, I managed to squeeze in a trip to Cupertino, to visit The Apple Store (for shwag) and I managed to get a quick Apple campus tour while I was there.

After arriving back from San Francisco, my jetlag was prolonged with a small case of insomnia. At the same time, nomad was in Dublin for a few days, after I first suggested he drop by when we met at LISA in DC, last December. Hanging around with Lee, even playing tourist and doing a tour of Dublin Castle was good fun. Before Lee left, he gave a very well received talk to SAGE-IE. Just after Lee left town, an old friend of Ciara’s from Canada came to visit, so tourist activities such as attending the St Patrick’s Day Parade continued for another few days.

Last week was one long blur, predominently of work stuff. Then came the weekend, when I was expecting to have a quiet meal out with Ciara, until we arrived at Chai-Yo on Baggot St, where I found 7 friends waiting to surprise me and wish me happy birthday. It seems I underestimated the lengths and just how sneaky the female gender is…

Today is my birthday. I turned 0×18 (or 24 if you’re unable to read hexidecimal ) and I received messages from all over, including Hong Kong airport (Hi Mark!) and even a colleague in Zurich (who noticed the unsubtle, yet tasteful way one’s birthday is shown on the internal phonebook ) People have also given me some wonderful gifts, in particular, Ciara gave me a Canon SELPHY CP510 photo printer. Now all I have to do is continue to resist my current “lens lust” for a fast shuttered, wide angle lens.

So, I’ve been over here in San Francisco for a week and the weather is quite like being at home in Ireland - chilly gusts of wind, unpredictable rain showers, etc - the only difference is when it’s sunny, it’s slightly warmer (and by slightly I mean twice as warm).

So far, my work trip here is going well, I’ve done many things and I still have lots to do. I’ve started to feel a bit jaded in the last few days which is probably due to the combination of jetlag and work. Last weekend was spent vegetating and doing very little. I didn’t actually venture further than a few blocks from Union Square (which is a block from my hotel). This weekend, I plan on being a bit more of a tourist, probably with a trip to Alcatraz and spending some time trying to take scenic or interesting photos.

Not much else has happened during my trip. The dollar is still rediciliously valued, so shopping still feels like I’m pillaging. US online stores are still stupid, they initially take and then ultimately refuse non US credit cards, since they’re baltently fraudulant. I guess I need to find someone to go visit a Fry’s with. The food, particularly sushi and Mexican food, as expected is fantastic, particularly compared to what’s available in Europe.

I’ve also getting annoyed with US TV networks again. I became a big fan of Studio 60 after only a few epsiodes, but it’s now been put on hiatus mid season, which is never a good thing. Maybe it’s because Amanda Peet popped last weekend, but I’m probably being too much of an optimist. It’s a shame if it doesn’t return, too many TV shows I’ve enjoyed watching - The West Wing, Alias, etc - have all ended, leaving not a huge amount on TV. Sure, CSI is entertaining, but they are formulaic.

Maybe I’ll find something else to watch, now that I’ve become a Joost beta tester. Early impressions are that Joost is quite shiny. The UI is very nice and from my initial glances, there is a lot of content available. I’m looking forward to playing with it when I’ve more time.

I’m currently back in Dublin after my week in Zurich (photos will appear on Flickr soon) and 2 days in Courmayeur and Italy for free snowboarding trial (photos are up here).

Zurich was very nice, good food (particularly bread and molten cheese) and I had fun wandering around. I didn’t get much time to explore Courmayeur given the 2 days I was there and the tight schedule of activities, etc. I did enjoy the party on the Wednesday night (the majority of the photos I have) and snowboarding was good fun, even though my body promptly told me I’m not designed for winter sports.

My next trip starts the day after Valentines Day, when Ciara and I head to London Town. I’m there for work, while Ciara’s coming for pleasure. After a few days in the London office and a weekend away with Ciara in between, I’m returning home via a 2 week stop over in California, since I need to spend some time with people I’m trying to work with remotely.

Well, there’s no rest for the wicked, but at least my life is far from boring…

So, it’s been a long time since I put anything up here. The last 6 weeks or so have been busy.

First, I was at LISA, which was quite an experience. I went to interesting talks, hung out with lots and lots of interesting people (including some who’s books I own) and after the conference, I got 2 days to explore DC. Although I spent a few hours trying to try my best to pillage what I could, what with the USD< ->EUR exchange rate tanking as it did that week. Macy’s was particularly lucrative, given the weekend sale and the complete disregard for sales tax. After shopping, I went to see some of the sights in DC, the photographs of which are up on Flickr (Man, I really need a better lens than my 18-55mm!!)

When I got back from DC, I was back in work for a few days, before disappearing off to Edinburgh with Ciara for 2 days to go christmas shopping. It was a nice trip, particularly since we knew our way around a little and knew which restaurants we wanted to go back to.

When we returned, there were only a few days until Christmas. Christmas week was nice and quiet. I caught up with family members I haven’t seen in a while and generally took it easy. There was also the usual Christmas gift thing, which resulted in a compact digital camera from Ciara, a canvas painting from my brother (he’s an art student, who knew) and The Complete Calvin and Hobbes from my parents. For myself, I ordered a new lens for my DSLR camera, a Sigma 28-200mm Macro lens.

New Years was non existant, since I was working from an early (and borderline ungodly) hour on New Years Day. Now I’m back into the work routine again. I’m off (yet) again travelling for work in less than 2 weeks. I get to visit the office in Zurich and work there for a few days before I attempt snow sports for the very first time at Courmayeur on the work ski trip. I’ll also get the weekend after next to explore Zurich, so I’m hoping my new camera lens will arrive before then, so I can have some fun.

I meant to post an update here, but I’ve been busy since I returned from the US. Soon after I returned, I discovered that jet lag from travelling 11 timezones is not the most pleasant of experiences.

The last two weeks have been pretty busy, mainly just with work. Last weekend, Ciara and I went to Paris for the weekend, it was nice to explore another European city we had never been to propely before. I even have a few photos of the Eiffel Tower at night and the view from the top of the Arc de Triumph, which I’ll put on Flickr soon (after I also get around to uploading the last of my Maui photos)

On a nerdy side, I’ve mainly just done 2 things. I’m now officially a Debian Maintainer. In a few months, when I’ve done a bit more and actively followed my Debian mailing list traffic again (I’m not a good as I once was in recent times), I’ll look into starting the NM process to become a Debian Developer.

After hearing Colin talk about Amazon’s S3 service last week, I’ve started playing with the service, primarily as a backup of my iPhoto library. So far, I’m impressed.