iBlog

My first post on my new 1.5GHz Powerbook G4. 
I’m liking it a lot; I was a bit concerned that I’d find the fairly low
resolution to be an issue (1280×854 doesn’t exactly maximise the potential of its 128Mb graphics
card– even the 3-year old Inspiron 8100 it’s replacing
managed 1400×1050 with a 32Mb card), but I’m getting used to it pretty quickly.

Am dual-booting OSX with Mandrake 10.1 PPC for now (and even running them simultaneously, thanks to the impressive Mac on Linux),
as I was used to Mandrake 10.1 on my Dell anyway.  The only real bummer
is the well-documented lack of any Airport Extreme drivers for Linux as
yet– I’m sure the guys will get there eventually though.

Twelve Days of Christmas

Back at work again today after an extended holiday break.

Tuesday 21st: Christmas Lunch for the Desktop Group at Sun
Ireland. Normally this would have developed into an all-nighter,
but this time I had to scoot off early to get to a gig– The Thrills were playing at The Point.

Christmas Eve: We consumed the mulled wine that I’d bought in Lidl because
it was easier to buy something than find a security guard to let me out
through the alarmed “I haven’t shoplifted anything honest” gate.

Christmas Day: Breakfast in bed, opened some pressies, coffee,
opened some more pressies, dinner, opened the rest of our
pressies. Remarkably (given that I’ve never really seen it snow
properly in Dublin in the four years I’ve lived here), we had what
would have qualified as a white Christmas in the UK, by dint of three
fairly heavy snow showers. Apparently though, there has to be
half an inch lying at Dublin Airport or something before you can
collect your winnings from the bookies over here– good job I’m not a betting
man.

Boxing Day: Still trying to get used to it being called St.Stephen’s Day here.

Monday: Scooted off to the shops to buy a network adapter for our PS2,
for which I’d specifically been given some dosh by Julie’s parents. Got one for the requisite amount in Game, with a copy of TM:B Online right there in the box– no namby-pamby coupon-sending for me!

Hogmanay: We saw in the New Year at the Portmarnock Hotel,
who were doing a dinner (or masked ball, but that sounded too scary)
and accommodation package. While I’m not sure the price tag was
entirely justified, it wasn’t any more over the odds than any other
(mostly mankier) hotels were charging, the food was
excellent, and it’s always nice to get a night off the washing-up.

New Year’s Day: Drove back home down the coast road, at exactly the same time as a mini-tornado hit land. We had to pull off the road momentarily, but almost as soon as we did it had passed again.

Last night: My first real blast at online gaming, with a few sessions of SSX 3, TOCA 2 and Burnout 3. Have a stunning 100% online win record (2/2) at SSX, but am going to need rather more practice at the others…

Drookit

Went to see ageing Clydeside crooners Wet Wet Wet on Friday night. Rattled out all the old favourites expertly enough (even though Marti needed a crib sheet for some of them), but I think it was probably the first gig where I’ve had to sit down, and it’s just not the same really. This was more than adequately compensated by also being the first gig I’ve been to where you’ve been able to buy a CD of that night’s performance right after the show, though… bye bye bootleggers!

Knowing me, knowing you – Praha!

Old Town Square market from astronomical clock tower

Finally got a few
minutes to blog about our trip to Prague a couple of weeks ago, mostly to visit the Christmas
markets.
Didn’t actually do a lot of Christmas shopping– Julie bullied me into
finishing most of that months ago– but we hadn’t been before and it’s
always come highly recommended. We were staying at the Hotel Josef,
which aside from not having a restaurant (although the bar food was an
adequate alternative) pretty much lived up to its 4-star status.

We arrived on the early evening of Mikuláš
Day, so the Old Town Square (left,
a 5 minute stroll from the hotel) was packed with angels, devils, and
coach parties from Yorkshire waiting on the Christmas tree to be
illuminated. Wary of another tree-collapsing
incident, this year’s was by all accounts a shorter affair, but impressive enough nonetheless.

We took the plunge on our first full day by doing a six-hour
tour1 of the city, which included a boat trip on the Vltava River (whose name, apparently, is derived from the Celtic words vlt, meaing “wild”, and va, meaning water– we were everywhere in those days), a tram ride up to the castle
(right), and a leisurely walk back down across the Charles
Bridge
and into the city again. Anyone who lasted the full
six hours also got free tickets to their ghost walk later in the
evening (rounded off with a free beer). Needless to say we partook of
that too, before heading back to the hotel via a very satisfying dinner
at Lary Fary. If
we ever go back there, we might be brave enough to try the kebabs,
served as they are on something that looks like it was borrowed
from the Museum
of Medieval Torture up the road.

1 Not actually this one, but pretty
similar.

St Vitus Catherdral and castle by night
Just hanging out in town...

Our second full day saw us wandering up to the other main Christmas market on Wenceslas
Square, stopping to reminisce in C&A on the way there (they closed down in the UK a few years ago), and to wonder why we don’t get Tesco
stores this big over here on the way back. Having been thwarted in our
attempt the previous day, this time we managed to visit the obscenely
baroque St Nicholas’ Church on Lesser Town Square, en route back to the hotel to scrub up for dinner.

Tonight we plumped for the Hotel Černý Slon
(Black Elephant), where we got huge portions for ridiculously little
money, spoiled only slightly by some loud English git on the table next
to us who was apparently a world expert on everything from wine-making
to internal physiology.
(Unfortunately, that’s not him above).

On our last morning we headed up the astronomical clock tower for a bird’s eye view of the Old Town Square, followed by some
obligatory souvenir shopping, more svařene vino
and a pastry from the market. A couple of hot chocolates in a café on
the way back to the hotel, and that was the end of our trip.

Never did quite make it into Caffrey’s
(right) to sample their Irn Bru though…
Astronomical clock, Old Town Square
Caffrey's - the only pub in Prague selling Irn Bru

Disney matter, so it disnae

Julie’s parents were over at the weekend, one consequence of which was a trip to see Disney On Ice – Toy Story 2 at The Point. Was certainly well staged, although it was just a re-telling of the movie, and given the high standards you’d generally expect from a Disney production, for me there was just a bit too much falling on backsides to make it quite the belief-suspending experience it might have been. (After all, you don’t see the guys doing the stunt shows at Disneyworld crashing into the other cars through lack of practice when they’re doing their now-obligatory extreme parking…)

gcalctool colours

Spent a little time towards the end of last week working with Rich on bug #157962, to get some colour back into gcalctool. We haven’t yet come up with a complete solution, which would involve an option that picked colours from the theme by default (I’m still thinking about that one), but in the meantime you can now copy the cvs-supplied .gcacltoolrc file to your homedir to change this boring old look into something slightly more sexy. (Or, of course, you can invent your own colour scheme to match your GNOME theme du jour.)