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2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 before

books ¦ films ¦ music ¦ todo ¦ walks ¦ trips ¦ web ¦ food

Dec 31

Mon 31 bkfst with D, then busy, no TV D hoovers ice green football rubbish with D gucamole & pasta pesto, nice wine, Clare valley white home phones, lots of others, pingu fionn cooks pizza scrapheap tv

Dec 30

Sun 30 f glues with D bkfst calm wsurf fingers painfully chilly film Truman Show, Jim Carey. I bring D to bed again, lucky to convince him F did it last night. Read long snow white story.

dream remember just getting in bath. Type on palm, bad idea? Dropped palm in water in dream. Picked up quick but b4 check okay distracted & then forgot what was doing with niggling feeling that I had forgotten.

Dec 29

sat 29 D comes in. I get up with him. After brgakfast I cut out pictures from toy magazine & D glues them onto a collage. I put dark varnish on airer sticks in between. Later Fionn making fish with him but he's not helping & being quite cross & I loose the rag when he smirks at Fionn when Fionn tells me to give in to him. I bring him up to get dressed. Fionnuala makes apple+walnut muffins & we help. Tv on & D glued to it for ages. Fionn makes soup for dinner.

long baby book for D

I join F in bath after tidytidy.

Dec 28

fri 28 Up early all of us. D cries as he didn't see bin lorry. Breakfast & Pooh bear film on tv. Finally feeling rested. I cut D's hair while he builds lego and the midwife visits with a trainee. I make cappuchinos & hot choc for D.

Drive to Blackrock shops, meet Lucia. D & I go collect coat from car & go to playground. Watch trains. Sunny & cold. D says his tummy is rumbly hunqry. We call Fionnuala & go to restaurant in shopping restaurant. D minds tably while I get food. Lots of older people having dinner. I have chicken & veg & masu potatoes & gravy. D gets nuggets & chips. Fionn arrives & gets dinner and coffee/hot choc for us. Loo visit, drive home.

Play racing cars downstairs, smaller track. Tidy tidy and hanging hooks and airer+pulleys in kitchen. Varnishing wood with accidental green tinge goes on long time. Then up terribly late in front of TV.

Dec 27

thur 27 wsurf, head late windier but flatter & easieh more fun practicing carve turns aroud waves and manage 1 gybe last off water with a kitesurfer just nearly dark as gear in/on car.

move furniture, stuff into attic

Dec 26

(? Eventually get round to making mince pies. Much work in rolling out pastry, cutting, trying to stick lids on. Elves are much better at it. D helps a bit at end and makes his own shapes but too tired & frustrated/crying with putting currants on, taking them out of oven.) I make turkey curry soup. (lasts for 3 days, nice, feeds me only though)

Marlay park with D's bike. Feed bucks/gulls, playground, cold. D cross going up final hill. (or thur?)

D has cough & is tired so that makes him cranky & then that makes me cranky & I think Fionn is too a bit. Going to bed made to have shower. Wet cold hair. Better in morning.

Dec 25

tue 25 Everyone up with D. Fionn first. We open presents. Fionn has gotten me ball projecting stars onto roof. & more. We put together scalextric track & D & I play loads on it. At first he crashes from going too fast on corners lots but does learn to go slow. Fionn heads back to bed till 1ish. I start turkey & rest of dinner in between car racing. Phone calls from home. Everything cooked by 3.

Visit Stan & Assumpta for cheese & wine. Emma playing. Play lego subbueto with Keith. Lisa tries blue cheese.

Dec 24

mon 24 Wsurf in afternoon, last only a while. I start 2nd, soon 5 others. Tide more than half in so no big board carry. A bit wavy, very windy. Some good guy trying out new gear. Comes back with torn sail once. Most trickey when taking board on/off car. Someone helps me. presents

Dec 23

up breakfast. We see a pile of freshly baked mince pies from Fionn's early morning restless & I tell D the elves must have come & made them. Shopping to Stillorgan. Computer making html of photos. Wrapping & decorating with Daire's creche-made decorations. Lunch. Sheila visits. Daire a bit cranky. Possibly up in night. D tells Sheila full nativity play story in great detail.

Daire gets quite cross over bodhran playing. He tells me he was up in the night. He looked in the kitchen & saw the elves. They were thumb-size and fifteen of them each made a mince pie. Their legs were black and they wore white t-shirts. Santa Claus was there helping them. When they were finished they all climbed into a balloon bubble and flew away. He won't wake us up if he sees them again as we might scare them away.

Dec 22

First day off. :)

Dec 21

Breakfast. D to creche Breakfast in work. With Artur naturalchildbirth.org on induction Sex Nipple stimulation (probably myths: warm bath, spicy meals) Rasp leaf for good contractions. pregnancytips.com book motherbliss on induction Uk Midwifery archive on induction and natural induction Mail from home Fionn phones just goung swimming, was at physio, in Dun Laoighre. Rudyard Kipling, Into THe Neolithic Age

Very busy all day - finish off Artur's task in morning Easy enough to create LogicalIface table in PortManager

Late lunch, Simon 30 tomorrow, wine too! My task in afternoon Add PacketBufferIface.PacketBuffer okay Horrors implementing receivePacket in LogicalPortIface.EthernetLogicalPortIface.EthernetLogicalPort Template not quite complete on when two abstract classes inherit.

Dec 20

D creche nativity play. Pauline# Lord of The Rings.

Dec 19

Up 9:00. Down for breakfast. D is slow eating until I say "eat up". I get bike out. Fionnuala feeds him a bit then. He lazes on couch then. I go up & get his clothes and help him into them. I rescue my curry from rubbish and head to work. Dry and a bit cold.

Lots of diary typeup.

Dec 18

I wake 9:20ish, Fionnuala calls me. D & F are down finished breakfast. I get up, dressed, breakfasted, bike out. Cycle to work ... little damp/mucky from building earth movers underfoot.

I update ProjectConventions.htm with info on tkdiff, cvs, project aliases for testing. Others are paired programming, Slawek & Artur are increasing test coverage. They have a nasty desequenced merge but another head makes 5 doesn't help. Probably there's a simple way to express something like this: ExtremeProgramming leads to ContinuousIntegration and CollectiveCodeOwnership so RelentlessTesting is needed. And as part of RelentlessTesting, you need to do small updates and keep checking in to reduce merge problems.

I play with cvsplot (cvs statistics) (it uses wc -l)

  cvsplot.pl -cvsdir ~/checkedout/source -linedata linedata.txt -filedata filedata.txt
  cvsplot.pl -cvsdir ~/checkedout/source/ -linedata linedata.txt -filedata filedata.txt -gnuplotfiledata filedata.png -gnuplotlinedata linedata.png
  cd cvsdir; cvsplot.pl -cvsdir . -linedata linedata.txt -filedata filedata.txt
  cd cvsdir; /proj/npapi/users/jamesco/cvsplot-1.3/cvsplot.pl -cvsdir . -include "test.*[ch]" -linedata linedatatest.txt -filedata filedatatest.txt -gnuplotfiledata filedatatest.gif -gnuplotlinedata linedatatest.gif -gnuplotcommand "set title 'Tests `pwd`'"

Later I tidy lots of mail, clear out Inbox and archive some folders removing from imap server. We all have coffee together. I talk lots :-7 anyway. The others are all working but we've only two tasks this week so I'm left "idle" :).

What's this guy Larry talking about?

Home. Spagetti bolognese for dinner. D & I play guitar a little first. Then FIonnuala brings D up to bed. I print lots of things from computer. Fionnuala brings me tea and checks her mail. I print lots more and order photo paper from dabs.com. Eek! It's 2am. Bed. Quite disturbed night. Fionnuala disturbed first has some indigestion. Painful with baby in tummy. Then later Daire is crying. I go in and he wants Gunther. Gunther is nowhere to be found by bed or behind it. Then I find him on shelf. Later on again Daire is crying. He says he's scared of dark. I leave door open a bit more.

Dec 17

D singing ringing the bells to wake us up. EEk! It's 9:30. Up, dressed, breakfasted, child seat off bike. Head to work. Cold, dry. The big hole just before westwood has been flattened leaving a little mound. No problem to cycle over. They've made a road from over the fields to there with gravel. There is more earth in field on left but they've not reached my path to work yet.

319 mails ... unrgh ... filters fail as mail quota exceeded :-7 Waider sends on interesting joelonsoftware.com article. Shlemiel the Painter and why parsing (unknown length strings/records) or mallocing same often has n2 performance hit problems. Back to Basics, Shlemiel the painter, XML, malloc, .... About the effect implementation has on performance. Relates to DontCreateGarbage. Also very important: FirstRuleOfOptimisation, we definately needed this on MyrIAD.

So my daffcounter is going on good philosophy already (although does need to be more flexible reading in file records). Philosophy: constrain strings entered by user and other records of var length to a fixed length. Thereby won't ever exceed memory available and accessing record is fast.

Looking up cvs and trying to persuade remote connection (using rsh) to work. Possibly version of rsh is at fault. Get new one with inetutils? They've already solved it just using local cvs directory mounted.

James Curran asks a sockets question (and later joins the XP team). Beej's Guide to Sockets still works. I play and make a server which servs up file kindof like http "GET filename".

Slawek comes along 4:00ish and asks if I want to do something. He's adding tests to increadse test coverage. It's already over 90% for functions called and 86ish% for paths. Procedure reasonably simple. Decide test needed, new test name, register it with test register function. Add the function for the test (often copied from most similar test). Some of them get convoluted testing forced malloc failure cases (call Class_ForceNewFail(n) first). Next new calls fail, clear error with ClearNewFail(). Anyway, coverage goes up. I call Fionnuala 6:00ish and she's happy for me to stay a bit late. We finish at nearly 7:00, very late for me. I zoom home on bike in dark and Fionnuala has curry ready. Daire in a bad temper and kicks his quips. I bring him up and put on pyjamas and then bring him back down and he cheers up. Later I bring him to bed, read story ... and then collect clothes for washing. He likes when someone fusters around upstairs after he's gone to bed.

Mostly printing from different packages with different settings to printer. I think first netscrape/internet exploder can't print with good quality. Change printer driver (back to Nederlands one). (Next day I discover it prints nicely on any paper if you tell it it has photopaper in).

Dec 16

Mum rings and we spend an hour or so trying to see if we could start to reinstall windows. No joy. Their virus cleaner has deleted 3 files (don't know what), can't delete wsockxxx.dll. Badtrans.B worm. Infects, uses IE vunerability to auto-install. Keyboard hooker trojan.

Dec 15

Dec 14

Dec 13

thur Fionn difficulty sleeping comfortably. Gone 4?6? Dreams at night.

At table in pub, I'm messing with my watch taking it off & on. We move to different table and I leave my watch lying there. I turn back to see a girl look at it and put it in her bag. First reaction is to grab her by her arm and accuse but I realise that's very unpolite/unpc/not-right so leave go. People come and take her away. I get my watch back. No other hassle. I'm surprised I was treated so nicely & she wasn't.

D comes in first. Brings bible stories & looks at pictures. F brings me coffee. I'm dehydrated from alcohol and my sniffles are gone. :)

Up, shower, diary in Palm. D giggling at pink panther in gym on tv. Very funny. Then Moomins & aliens. Then high five robot & great idea, caterpillar track shoes, fishing rod crane hook, demolition ball. I eat breakfast, then lasagne for lunch. D has ham sandwiches cut into small squares. Zonked at tv the whole time. F & I talk, presents for people, pod Hugh's bongo drums. Headfor town 1:30. Park. Get pjs for Fionns Dad, cuordroy for John, pick out 4/5 size 12 maternity trousers for F to try out. More diary in palm!

Dec 12

wed I get up late again. Fionn was out at 4, couldn't roll over. Read Maria Kelleher's Cobh book. D up and was out already watching grandad feeding cows. I get breakfast and F takes a rest. D plays with game of life board and cars. D & I going to visit greatGran by ourselves. He wants to go on tractor and there is great trouble taking off his hoodie top he has taken to chewing the strings of. He tells me bluntly visiting gg is horribce. Stasia rings looking for our address, F awakes & settles D. We all go together to visit greatGran.

Dinner. D off with grandad cleaning yard in Bourkes. I saw & chisel & drill. Attach daffodil counter switch to saw housing over conveyor belt. Drive to Lim. One v bad overtake. Talk, food, wwtbam on tv, D plays with cars & Grandad. Then yoghurt & turkey sandwich for D. F puts D to bed. We drive to Unicorn. Just barely down road. Bulmers for me. Ballygowan for Fionnuala. Maueeen & later Elaine mri work & course in Trinity. Lots of travel in Ireland. Last year snow+ice+twocarstoAchill.

Dec 11

tue Drive to Cobh. Immediately Daire out and I head with Dad to visit bank, then collect fixed motor, buy fertiliser spreader, visit Maria Kelleher. In Ballyrichard Daire sees swings but it's across fresh concrete. Watch concrete being poured but then it's too cold for him. It's dark by the time we get to Carrigtoohil. Maria gives D some chocolate!

Tea at home, then Mum brings us to choir practice to show off D. We stay a little and then drop in to Frances to visit. Jarry leaves to go play music somewhere in Cork. Sheila Bourke calls with mum and I make tea. Daire impresses Sheila by pouring milk skilfully.

Dec 10

Dec 9

Sun 9 I wake & F gone. Later she tells me she woke 7ish thinking of jobs & got up. She comes back in 10?ish and I get up with D who has more breakfast. TV for D, after we retune reducing noise we flip channels and when we flip back ads have come on instead of cartoons. He's very cross & crying so I bring him up to bed. Fionn's mom finds the cartoons again but not allowing D to be so cross even though tired. I stay with him and after a while we read Calvin&Hoddes together and he laughs alot. Fionn comes in to us after a good while.

Everyone up 12ish. Lunch. Drive to Maureen's house 14ish. She gives D a present and she has Christmas tree and crib in hall. Drive to Bunratty & meet Ruth. Through shop then upstairs to restaurant. Ruth gets D chips, I bring him to loo. F gets us spicey chicken sandwich. Ritva arrives with guiet new baby Rose? Much talk. Meet 2 Maureen's friends + their baby. I get round of coffees.

Ruth heads. After while out. Short walk over to castle, D told Maureen's Grandad lives there. But he's asleep. Drive back. Beer/juice/mince pies, photos/digital tv in Maureen's.

In Dooradoyle potato+broccoli+roast beef+wine. Stuffed. D plays upstairs with Eimear. 7ish. Space hopper clean in bath & D ready for bed while F on phone. Brush teeth. Read Italian story. Up after nother while to off light. Check F's s3 email. She brings Eimear home. I do diary in palm.

Dec 8

Sat 8 Up 11, F back to bed. D has more breakfast.Collect Ds clothes & get him dressed. Plant some rocket out, pot basil into bigger pot. Pack pack pack. Cook tomato+mushroom+garlic bruschette & fried eggs and bring veg to Lmk.

Leave 2ish. Drive into sun all way. After Nenagh motorbike behind for good while. Just over 60 mostly. Small roads to Childers road then big road to Dooradoyle.

Talk & TV, then help peel then dinner. D plays lots makes lovely structure with his wooden blocks. Later we build towers and array animals on top. Lateh he builds race track. Very late to bed 22:30. After 11 he is still reading to himself, just finished Italian Scarry book. F tells M&D about thinking about leaving S3.

Dec 7

I roll over in night and my hand touches Fionnuala and she jumps. In the morning she tells me she was dreaming. She was in Nepal or Afghanistan or somewhere and there was a Nomad tent and a group of people. She was sneaking in the tent. The tent was nice and round and inside there was a cooking room and another room. In the cooking room there was a beautifully coloured dead cock being kept for dinner in a fold of the tent wall. She was relieved when a blanket fell dividing the rooms and hiding the cock from her. Then she got a big fright when something under the tent moved. It was my hand.

I get up after 8 and I'm uneasy about bin lorry coming and us not hearing it till last moment so I go down and put it out. I get breakfast while I'm down. Then after a bit I go into D. He's sitting on wrapping paper and has ... something? ... We get his slippers downstairs and he has foirst weetabix and then sticks (all-bran) while I get bike out and then play guitar a little. Then we go up, get D dressed. THen down, get coats & helmet & gloves on. Then up say goodbye to dripping Fionnuala who has just had shower. Grand warmish day out, less cars in Qs around than earlier (it's 9:00 now). At creche Daire notices lots of Christmas decorations. Other kids that had chickenpox are back too. He's going to practice nativity play today ... his last day for another week as we're going to visit Limerick and Cobh.

O'Reilly weblog, cheap wireless Antenna nm and objdump talking with Paul. slirp starts compiling but nios is lacking in posix. syslog.h? nios directory more cleanup talk with Orla when getting coffee, chickenpox & Fionnuala.

In afternoon in work with Artur bitserial::equal implementation hung up on if len==0 or obj==null but get through. Then confusion Slawek has renamed file and we're not familiar with cvs and checkin requires merge. "C" files -> merge needed, kickoff tkdiff -r?

cvs update -ng
cvs update -whatForDirUp?
cvs ci 
cvs log
cvs who & when script would be good
Jan 2 2002  cvs log | egrep "RCS file|author\: artur" | awk '/RCS file.*/ { fooname=$0; } /date\: 2001\/12\/2.*/ {print $2,$3,fooname; }' | sort

Home 18:15. After dinner D sings nativity play songs Away in a Manger & Little Donkey and tells us everyone's lines from start knocking on doors to end.

Dec 6

geeksrv mails, Sklyarov, Sokolov? Sarkolov? Encounter pages about Russian prisons and also homelessness in general. Homelessness, Russia Sokolov, dodgy Russian imprisonment, from Left Russia zdnet Sklyarov slashdot Sklyarov Free Sklyarov! Elcomsoft Cool t-shirts, Adobe evil empire.

Very amusing string of mails in work. First only one person down for Christmas swim and Michael O'Regan is very worried about him. Following on loads of emails giving out about the vicious car ramps (for cyclists and for cars).

At home dinner. Midwife visits. Finish dirnner. Fionnuala heads to work. I'm a bit impatient with D today. We do various things. Play with lego bionicle CD that came with Cheerios. Very slow intervals between playing game, hard disk access loading up quicktime movies. We also play carmadeggon which is has bad language and we try to avoid hitting people & cows etc....

Tangy strawberry-apple sorbet

• 430g tin strawberries (more than half is syrup)
• 2tbsp caster sugar
• Eating Apple (sharper the better)
• Orange
• sultanas
• -------
• mint
• yoghurt
• honey or jam syrup for drizzling decoration
• method:
  1. peel strips of orange zest and chop them small. (we did big chunks) Peel over whole of orange for really tangy sorbet. Get as little white stuff as possible.
  2. Add peel and sugar to strawberry syrup and boil for a good bit.
  3. Peel apple (eat peel) and juice orange. Whizz them in food processor.
  4. Mix everything in plastic container and leave to cool.
  5. Once cool put in freezer and whizz or chop up again every hour or so.
• serving method:
  1. Take some glasses, wine or other.
  2. Spoon chopped sorbet into bottom.
  3. Spoon yoghurt over top, drizzle honey, decorate with mint.
Fionnuala brings Daire up for a bath. He has fun for a while but at the end he has trouble ... . I read him his story for bed. We watch TV and talk about what if Fionnuala took redundancy. What could she do, etc..... I bring out the sorbet as a surprise and FIonnuala loves it. We have 3 each. Mouth is mmmm tangy afterwards. Bed before 11.

Dec 5

Up & dress, down for breakfast with Daire. After Daire dresses we go flying kites. Wind is very very strong and Daire's sledge goes in fast low circles and spends half time on ground. I get stunt kite up once ... it zips around. Eventually stalls. We wrap up and head in home. We've scared the seagulls and crows away. We have tea and ham+cheese+relish+black pudding sandwiches. Daire gives me much grief about not drinking apple juice (he has water).

Baking cookies & bread with Daire. First from Anna? cooking for Children book:

Brown sugary otmeal cookies

• 100g dessicated coconut
• 100g flour (we used wholemeal)
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g/75g ? of rolled oats (oatmeal) (porridge)
• was there more? I think quantities are okay ... might be 75g of each though?)
• -------
• 100g butter
• 2tbsp gloden syrup (we used black treacle!)
• -------
• 1tsp baking soda (we used baking powder, are they the same?
• 2tbsp boiling water
• method:
  1. Mix dry ingredients.
  2. Melt butter and syrup in big saucepan.
  3. Spoon boiling water onto baking soda (it foams!).
  4. Quickly mix soda into the butter and syrup. It adds lots of airy body.
  5. Messy bit: Throw flour into syrup. Mix. Grab a fistful, squash it, make a ball and squash to cookie shape.
  6. Cookies onto greased tray.
• Cook in pre-heated oven 180degrees C, 15/20 mins. After cooking they will be floppy, gently tip out onto wire tray and leave them cool & harden.

Crank's cheese cookies

• 100g grated cheddar
• 100g flour (we used wholemeal)
• 100g butter (warm)
• salt? no.
• method:
  1. Mix ingredients, chop in butter.
  2. Work together with hands making dough.
  3. Roll out on floured surface, 3mm thick, cut shapes out.
  4. cookies onto ungreased trays.
• Cook in pre-heated oven 180degrees C, 5/8 mins. Cool on wire tray.

Jamie Oliver's (The Naked Chef) Bread

Saw Jamie on TV last night going to Cornwall surfing with his 3 Aussie friends/workmates/minions. Cooked gorgeous bread for breakfast. Also (piped yoghurt+jam+cordial & chill).
Also smoked salmon, salt & pepper, wrap & stuff with fennel seeds, loads of herbs, garlic, sliced lemon. Wrap in newspaper, tie, soak in water, throw on BBQ.
Also cooked new spuds in tin foil with garlic, rosemary, .. lemon?
Also Steamed pak choy or bok choy veg spinach? cabbage? greens? then grated chilli, garlic, ginger and salt&pepper in soy sauce (120ml/8tbsp), juice of lime/lemon and 2tbsp olive oil on top of chopped beef on top of veg.
Oh my *&^%! what a weekend! :) Naked Chef Fanclub Bread recipie (this one!) BBC Naked Chef site Jamie Oliver.net
• 1kg flour (we used wholemeal + a bit of cream flour)
• 1 handful sugar (we used demarara)
• 1 handful salt
• 3 sachets dried yeast
• 1 pint of water
• method:
  1. Mix all together in big bowl/pot.
  2. Work together with hands making dough.
  3. Roll out and work lots more, divide in two. [optionally leave flour rest to make rolling easier]
  4. Roll out (it goes very big, finally stretchon floured surface, 3mm thick, cut shapes out.
• more ingredients:
• 6/7/8 slices parma ham
• 6 boiled eggs (trick: smash & roll under hand to get shell off)
• loads of basil ripped up
• more breakfasty stuff
• OR nutella+banana+nuts
• brush with oil
• more method:
  1. Arrange in a line on rolled out dough.
  2. Roll dough sealing side. Tuck one end into the other and squeeze to seal.
  3. Brush with olive oil.
• Cook in pre-heated oven ?180degrees? C, 30 mins.
Tracey arrives. Tea and cookies & Fionnuala comes home. Zoom cycle to work wind with me most of way, side on for a bit, sweat. Brian Callan's web hosting & servers. wo.rldwi.de Insilico Tech intl R Huebner's Parens slirp and cygwin and libdes Extreme programming npapi project meeting. xp gentle wiki?ExtremeProgramming New Methodologies Software Engineering, from Nothing, to Monumental, to Agile.

I type up diary, remembering Jamie's recipies

Dec 4

Daire outside cold in t-shirt playing with water on top of sandpit. I persuade him to put on a jumper and his wolly hat. We have busy morning again. We reheat Nut roast and Orange pork pie for dinner. Call Fionnuala & I expected same as yesterday but she's busy and home at 1:30. I'm a bit disappointed :( she's working very hard. Daire & I have dinner, Daire doesn't eat too much ... also has not had juice all morning as Fionnuala want's him just drinking water/milk. He takes water. I've a glass of wine too. Fionnuala comes home and I stay a little before heading to work.

Move desk. Just bring pc up first. Use monitor and phone already on desk. Compile by hand libdes for cygwin (makefiles not agreeable for version of make which nios version of cygwin uses). Then miraculously slirp compiles for cygwin (again by hand) when I link it with libdes. must lookup PPP + SLIRP ? I go down and get messy paper and some books. Gradually moving in. Manuel is taking apart partitions and moving desks for pair programming. I help. Much crawling under desks, unscrewing attachments, then hauling partitions out and stacking them. Eventually carrying them all round the corner out of the way and then rotate all desks and getting cables to right length.

Home. After dinner Fionnuala interrogates me about taking redundancy from S3 or staying. I thought we had decided last Friday but obviously I had just more or less decided myself once I stasrted work on Monday. Later movie: Leon, reading Philip K Dick book (just started).

Dec 3

When I wake Fionnuala has headed to work. My palm goes off and Daire comes in for a visit. It's still dark so he goes back to bed easily enough. HE has difficulty in kitchen so I get up, yell I'm coming, dress and then head down. Sun is struggling to break through clouds in distance. Very yellow. The clouds win. I heat his milk and weetabix and have cerial myself.

Once we're finished breakfast D dresses and we go and deliver letter to 37 Mount Eagle Grove. It's very windy and a bit cold out. We see about 3/5 people. Coming back is easier. We pick up rubbish and crane truck arrives. Daire stays out in cold to watch it. He sits on ground so I bring him his blue chair. When he comes in we make tea for me and hot chocolate for him. I read newspaper and he reads lego brochure. Then we do "spelling". Daire starts off with "BAG". We use foam letter shapes. I'm not so sure how this would work, Daire suggests words and can spell some but others he just invents likely spelling. e.g. "SIX" Sammy Snake, Fireman Fred, Ellie Elephant, Wicked Witch. Difficulty with D/A and G as I think they use small letters in creche. We do PEN, (not NINE) SIX, LOG (have to persuade him to put it connected to BAG). And finally I suggest CUT before we read through each of them. Poor guy ... then we put numbers together and connect them with words and D plays with truck on letter raft. I start cooking some dinner. Nut roast from Crank's. Using peanuts that taste a bit bland. We ring Fionnuala, she gets home before 1. Cheese & tomato & tomato sauce on top of nutroast. F likes it. Before I head cycling superquinn shopping man arrives.

Very windy on way to work. Not too busy in work, doing nios stuff, reading for NPcomplete and extremeProg. Bob doesn't appear for nios resource meeting.

Home, lashing rain, not so windy. Fionnuala has cooked delicious Fish & potato pie. We have it with white wine (I think Bill & Susan brought - Chilian Chardonnay Tarapaca 2000) yummy. Later I try more getting modem & minicom in linux to talk. Has it disappeared?

Dec 2

I wake very late. F and D make me lovely bagel+cheese+black pudding + relish and cafe latte and juice. Daire likes the bagel too. He thinks it's a burger. I dress and hang wet clothes on horse just before they arrive up. Fionnuala goes back to bed for a rest. Assumpta calls and I remember D has chockenpox so he can't go visiting. D and I downstairs were going to make him a bagel but he plays very happily while I read? or palm? Later we are upstairs for something (thread, hanging mirror ball) Fionnuala gets up and Daire remembers bagel and we all have lunch of bagels + egg too.

After a bit more palm Fionnuala suggests a walk and I'm reluctant but think it's a good plan after a while. We get all the bikes out and I pump Fionnuala's. Stan and Assumpta and kids are out. We cycle, Fionnuala first, then D and I. We go on path after Lamb's crossroads and lock bikes to lamp pole in estate opposite gap in hedge. Daire leads the way first through the gorse. We stop at the pond for a little. Then he nominates me as leader and we go through field and over ditch into Fitzsimmons woods. I take a smaller path right and we're soon going under lowish but thin branches. We pick up some rubbish, put it in a plastic bag we pick up. Then we come on a clearing with loads of rubbish drink cans. We collect them all in a heap and put them in the bag we have. Then we go scouting for more plastic bags and find a few. There is a stream and wall close by with the gorse beyond it. Great place for soldiers.

I fry pork, chop veg & fry, also orange juice and zest. Fionn & D roll out pastry and we transfer mixture in and set it baking. Then F & D cut out star and little man shapes and decorate with a sultana each. Rubik cube, Fionn play with real cube, me with sim in palm. Fionnuala brings D up for a bath. Her family calls. D still happy in bath so I play with palm on landing. Fionnuala comes up and gets D ready for bed. I read him Gary Larson's "THere's a hair in my dirt" worm story. Finally debug rubik cube sim fully with help of drawing out all numbers on paper. Also then figuring simple moves on paper and with palm. Bed later than intentioned again ... but not too bad.

Dec 1

Up late :-7 D has only a couple of spots. Shopping ... to Blackrock, park in underground car park. Then to Chemist and on the Blackrock market. We spend longish time there ... fine but torture after a bit. Fionnuala doesn't realise. We get a kaliedoscope, a mirror ball and incense in one shop. Then to a cafe where I have daycent avocado+feta+olive salad and tomato bread (bit too much salad dressing mine own fault not wanting to leave food). Fionnuala has bagel and Daire has croissant with jam. We have juice and okay (wateryish) smoothies. Shopping in superquinn for fruit and milk. Then home.

D and I go to shop. Daire cycles and I walk. We buy newspaper. Fionnuala visits Andrea and new baby. Daire very tired after being up late last night visiting Sheila. Rubik cube sim in palm? TV?

Nov 30

After reboot turboC and daffodil count project all open and run fine. I make a backup. Tidying up (read rming) & docushare.

imc, THe image compiler (perl generate png) imc needs GD.pm and neither co-operate. Setanta is looking for plotting tools to go along with his new perl knowledge. waider recommends TGD. BEautiful, no configure, just gunzip, tar, make. Works easily for me.

#stockimage foo 2 only bigger
create foo 71 71
colorallocate foo grey 192 192 192
colorallocate foo white 255 255 255
colorallocate foo black 0 0 0
colorallocate foo red 255 0 0
colorallocate foo orange 255 127 0
colorallocate foo yellow 255 255 0
colorallocate foo green 0 255 0
colorallocate foo blue 0 0 255
colorallocate foo indigo 127 0 255
colorallocate foo violet 255 0 255
colortransparent foo grey
interlace foo 1
  # yellow body
  arc foo 36 36 70 70 0 360 yellow
  fill foo 36 36 yellow
  #eyes
  filledrectangle foo 20 15 25 20 blue
  filledrectangle foo 50 0 55 15 blue
  #mouth
  arc foo 36 36 50 50 30 150 red
  arc foo 36 36 49 49 30 150 red
  arc foo 36 36 48 48 30 150 red
  # write gif
  gif foo smile.gif

I play with it a bit more and make perl to make it plot stuff.

Home. Just after 6. Dinner. D has chickenpox. We go and visit Sheila and hang up curtain rails, drill slips in wall and difficult to get hole where wanted but looks okay once it's up. Then tea & biscuits and chat. D plays with cars on sheepskin rug. TV films and also Graham Norton, sci-fi film. Bed very very late and then reading. I finish Ian M Banks book Use of Weapons at 4/5am. Fionnuala wakes and reads a bit too.

Nov 29

Fionnuala gets up very early & heads to work, meeting Ian up from Galway. Daire wakes me and we get breakfast, dressed, he eats toast on bike on way into creche.

Loads of browsing for volunteer links (see yesterday) & email to Fionnuala. Turbo C prj files get corrupted and after I figure that out an rxvt dies and Turbo C won't run anymore ... I'll reboot later. Very entertaining time making makefile and port code to cygwin. I get all the way there (taking vtcodes.c I had worked on before) to fill in some conio.h differences. BUT strange linker errors (missing symbols that I can see with nm). Also work out and not fully work out slightly funny time routine behaviour.

Looking at Escher's picture of house with staircases where figures have 3 different gravity centres. No perspective tricks. It would be nice to make a simulation or game.

• First cube with balls, can treat all directions as up/down, configurable per ball.
• Then just 3 90degree seperated directions as for escher
• Then bouncy balls (momentum & elasticity)
• Figures made up from balls, model walking, climbing, reacting to being hit by ball (part hit react, arms out, step fwd or back, maybe fall, get up)
• pumpkin bounce/smiley/animal/human figures
• Add blocks and stairs and walls to cube
• Game1 Try and walk bouncy pumpkin or smiley or figure out of door. Verious numbers of other figures/balls making them slow or fall. Timed.
• Game2 gravity-less snooker, cube filled with gas or water, various levels of friction 3-d snooker. (also 2-D snooker of course and 3d faster ball games (blockout/arkanoid))

Home after 6 due to cygwin and daffodil counter compiling fun. Windy and I zoom home, out of breath. We eat scraps for tea (potatoes and apple sauce are yum. Daire visits Conor. Fionnuala brings him to bed. I try to work out some rubik's cube moves on paper and then also in palm. I realise rubik's cube model has no orientation info. Probably also bugs (prints 88888888888...) Move on to plotting y=4x-x2+1. All with PocketC. Politicians on TV. Adding axes and co-ord print with pen touch. Still plotting in bed late.

Nov 28

F gets up with D. A bit later he comes in and wants to go to creche to get rice crispies (as we don't have any left). So I fire clothes on, he does too, I grab small bowl of breakfast, get bike out, put shoes on D, & coats and head. Windy against us on way there. Cars blocking road crossing. In creche (we're just about on time, Rebecca is still having a bowl). He is a bit shy so I ask for rice-crispies for him.

Zoom into work, then talking with Habib & Mike Flynn about Afghanistan, oil & Americans, mountains in Afghanistan. Some geeksrv mail. Loads of diary entry.

A bit more date&time in reports of daffcount. Funny time problem in TC. The current time is: -28708:14:14.38 Too many calls to localtime and gmtime => pointers interfering with one another or deallocating ... ahhh must memcpy to store results from some time routines. Grand.

Looking up web, volunteering PabloNeruda cinema

Pauline visits. Conor visits briefly. I cook pork steak (+sugar/vinegar marinade), curried veggies, apple sauce(+pepper+orange+tomato+sugar) and buzz, potatoes. I get flustered and give out to D. Then dinner is okay. We call Mum back on phone. Guitar howling/singing Ohhhh Mary by The 4 of Us

Later installed stuck in front of LEathal Weapon 3 on TV. Then bed, read a bit.

Nov 27

I get up with D in morning (for once!) and he has ready-brek. Wanted rice-crispies but we're out of them. Fionnuala brings D to creche. Wet and splishy underfoot cycling. I'm wearing just my shoes and mostly don't dismount from bike even over big bumps thus avoiding mud. I collect D from creche in evening. Bumps in dark I'm thinking could be dangerous some day if anyone ever throws a stick or something hard into the bottom of them.

Very mysterious hardware/fpga problems with nios board. Takes us a while to figure out the UART has clocked down to 57600 baud. UART driver must gen baud somehow from internal core which HW guys slowed down because of long path in 3des block. Then behaviour is just weird, we can't load software and run it. Ross comes down and a much older image behaves normally. Changing clock probably the problem.

I do count logging and a bit of report generation for daff counter. Some chats about work situation but nothing very revealling. I'm thinking a bit it would be so nice to stay with S3 ... it's really comfortable, cushy even. But then again ... Also I was thinking you could apply for contracts or whatever, internally in S3. If accepted, work on them, S3 gets paid. Complete body-shopping of course ... but it could work for some people. Anyway.

Setanta is learning perl. He gets Neige cat story and slag about scientist programming being equivalent to school programming. (BASIC) GNU helloworld joke google?q=cobol+hello+world First thing google throws up. cobol atariBasic is mad cpm painful bash rant
James: The waidersrv solves any problems that get too sticky.
Setanta: I know but I have to learn tonns first cos otherwise I'll ask a really
Setanta: dumb question and he'll call me a weak kitten!

Weakest kitten I ever knew story:
We'd a terrible white cat in Cobh ... she just finally disappeared last year. She was white (kindof) usually with mud or worse (lots of substance x around dairy farmyard). We think she was born a bit brain damaged and she always looked very sick & sniffly. (cat flu) She was called neige by my two little sisters (and neige jaune by the rest of us). She was very slow to move when danger threatened.

She was stood on by a cow ... & eventually healed.
Rolled over by wheel of tractor ... must have only half rolled over as she again seemed to heal back to normal.
Sheepdog pup who made sure moggies lives were confined to inside of cat-shed had no effect on her. She'd just look at him a bit stupidly and sometimes he'd try scare her ... but it never worked. I think he was a bit hesitant about chewing on the cat as she didn't look at all healthy.
Right. Now if he ever calls you weak kitten it'll mean something entirely more awful.

Setanta: There are a great many more ways to skin a cat in Perl.
waidersrv: $cat =~ s/skin//; # for example
... and here's the educational example:

$cat="fooskinfooskin";
$dog="barskinbarskin";
$cat =~ s/skin//; # for example
$dog =~ s/skin/thickhide/g;
print $cat; print "\n";
print $dog;

output:
foofooskin
barthickhidebarthickhide

nyah! he didn't manage to completely skin the cat :)

The Tao of Programming c2.com/wiki wiki web ExtremeProgramming ProgrammersStone AlistairCockburn RealPRogrammer

I head 17:30 after getting nice bit of daff count report working. Meet girl trying to get into bikeshed. Zoom cycle. A bit windy & hilly against. Mary Bradley and Paul and all kids are in creche. Daire is playing basketball with new inflatable hoop and ball with other toddlers. Mary asks after Fionnuala and also offers for Daire to visit any evening. D & I go and buy milk in shop before cycling home.

Fionnuala is there before us cooking fast-food-findus-pancakes. I make smash. D has yoghurt, some smash/pancake, then we all have custard and plum/raspberries. Yum.

We all head to Sheila's 19:00ish with drill & bits & masking tape & extension lead. Upstairs first and tile drilling. Masking tape, tile drill bit (remember mortar grinding noise mode!). Neat 3 thingies up, two need to put in another bit and drill a bit more and also cut off wall plug bits that stick out. Daire reluctantly draws a picture of a face on blackboard. Then down in newly painted & tidied sitting room looking at curtain patterns. Eventually open curtain rail but no wall plugs and getting very late so quick tea & biscuit, then race home. I bring D up to bed. Brush teeth, then Bronagh arrives so D heads down to say "Hi" and then back up for pyjamas and story. I put CD on for Daire. Much talk with Bronagh and tea and biscuits. She leaves 11ish.

4 songs on guitar before bed. Fionnuala likes the way we give D independance and confidence and don't belittle him. (from article in Irish Times). Would like child psychology book. What's going on in there: : How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life by Lise Eliot neuroscientist and Mom. Looks quite interesting. Also bit more talk about lots.

Read a bit more, Ian Banks. Sleep.

Nov 26

Yeow ... no water in building, no coffee, no toilets & ominous mails from important people. There goes any concentration I had whee ... out onto the new green grass outside the window. Was there ever a company that switched off the water supply before removing user accounts? :) I'm all nervous but really I wouldn't mind a change so I don't know why I get so nervous.

I work on Daffodil counter and get it reading and using config file. Also help Fred with nios env setup.

Meeting at 2 o'clock, everyone is standing in the meeting room. I stay close to the front with Ruairi, Mike, Rachel, ... Presentation by John is very good, lays out expected results, actual results, predictions and measures. Last Q expected again was optimistic so they're going to have to cut cost base. Voluntary redundancies, salary reduction. Looks very sensible. Back at desk and read redundancy proposal and calc monies. I would be interested I think, I wonder what Fionnuala would think and if lots of people will go for it of if too few people will go for it.

Browse web a bit looking at contracting & other.


WaspTech Wireless Applications Solutions Provider e.g. cv So you want to be a contractor? contractoruk.co.uk planetrecruit.com Ireland IT & Telecomms embedded C++/Unix GSM sw dev Lucent? Java C++ rdbms? COM? nt unix SQL dbase infos why not mySQL monster.ie VB and C for 1 month

Setanta on geeksrv and funny telnet terminal behaviour. Experiments with ctrl-M, ctrl-J and ctrl-L. I mistakenly think ctrl-L is linefeed. Theory: The telnet server diagnoses capabilities of telnet client incorrectly. I think setting var TERM to vt100 before telnetting to the box fixed my problem before. OR On box you telnet into could cheat and put a proper CR/LF pair into your prompt that would be understood by the terminal? Try the following in bash:

export PS1="${PS1}
"
export PS1="foo"
export PS1="foo
"
export PS1="foo
"
export PS1="${PS1}

"
export PS1="foo>"
foo>stty -a
speed 38400 baud; 
rows = 62; columns = 123; ypixels = 0; xpixels = 0;
eucw 1:0:0:0, scrw 1:0:0:0
intr = ^c; quit = ^\; erase = ; kill = ;
eof = ^d; eol = d; eol2 = d; swtch = ^a;
start = ^q; stop = ^s; susp = ^z; dsusp = ^y;
rprnt = ^r; flush = ^o; werase = ^w; lnext = ^v;
-parenb -parodd cs8 -cstopb -hupcl cread -clocal -loblk -crtscts -crtsxoff -parext 
-ignbrk brkint ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr icrnl -iuclc 
ixon -ixany -ixoff imaxbel 
isig icanon -xcase echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh 
-tostop echoctl -echoprt echoke -defecho -flusho -pendin iexten 
opost -olcuc onlcr -ocrnl onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel 
foo>stty -onlcr l
foo>
    foo>
        foo>
            foo>stty onlcr
                          foo>
foo>

Various chat with people around. It doesn't really seem that many would be interested in taking voluntary redundancy. I head home, Fionnuala collects Daire? We chop veggies and eat them with salad dressing dip. (garlic, ginger, tomato puree, onion) Daire has some apple, jam sandwich.

Much talk later about futures.

Career change, giving up job & doing something different can be good experience. Fionnuala does think it would be a good thing & would be happy with me doing it. Possibly at home stay for a few months, set up PC at home for more business. Linux (mostly alreasdy there), cygwin development, palm development, printer, cd burning. Discipline and spend at least 4-6 hrs a day @ work. Also possibility of completely different work - garden, shop. Look at contracting and other permanent work in software or IT systems. Smaller company or division of large company with full used product.
Of course grass is ALWAYS greener. I'd be quite foolish in a way to give up lovely comfortable job with not too bad work really. Advantages of S3: flexible, hours & place of work, suit family. Good work mates, environment, feeling. Good money of course, fair dealings with employees. Contracting or other company may be much different: more inflexible with regards hours, distance from house, not friendly or good environment.
On the other hand again S3's new more pessimistic expectations for revenue and cost could again be optimistic and more measures would be needed to fix things? Fionnuala's quite happy with S3 & enjoys it very much (& works real hard for them too).

Nov 25

Up in morning with D. We get breakfast. Windsurf gear on car. Food collected. Windsurf in DunLaoghire (via garage - petrol and pump tyres (one was at 10psi!!!!)). Tide nearly in. Putting together gear it's almost dangerous with such wind. Other windsurfer arrives just when I'm going out. Wind good for 40+ mins. Very gusty. Other surfer out. I fly a long way over towards poolbeg and back. Loads of sea-birds out. Way out on water smallish guys, white body, black end winds, tail, some brown. Dive and fly low with difficulty up against strong wind when I go past. Lots of birds on shore too. Wind drops off a good bit, also Ben's harness breaks (was getting more & more frayed. I go in and it takes a good while to fix but my freezing fingers go HOT-pins&needles and after that when I go out they stay REALLY warm. Wind down for rest of session. Other surfer with 4.2 sail stays in after I first came in. OTher arriving surfers head away but one youngish-lesson gang waiting around for wind. Bottles & cans in recycling bins. I head home 12:00.

Cooking garlic bread, big pot of water. John arrives and has a garlic bread and plays lots with Daire. Spaghetti on when Bill phones. Wine, food, coffee. Fionnuala heads out with Martin and Spanish girl to Blanchardstown Scealta Samhna gala. Daire gets out his markers and does more drawing and decorating of his Santa letter. He's teased very much by Uncles stealing Markers. Bill & Susan head to Dundrum first. John heads after another bit. Daire very excited in Jail behind couch, cushions everywhere.

TV, guitar sesiun. Learning notes. I find I must say notes letter, also play it and look at note. Drive them into brain, especially for notes below low C, which start to get visually confusing too far below bottom note line.

Nov 24

Nutgrove shopping. Fruit & Veg first. Then cushions. Then butcher. I put stuff in car while D plays on bob-the-builder machine. We all eat mandarins. Shopping for clothes presents for Fionnuala's Mum. Then up to toy section doing research. Daire plays with lots of things. We look and find Scalectric set that was in argos (for good bit more money). I have headache and we go for dinner (fish&chips&veg for me), And coffee, to restuarant/cafe place. Headache (caffeine widthdrawal) doesn't quite leave me.

In Argos we buy shelves, sportsbag, sportswatch, scalectrix beetles. Fionn brings things to car first. Then D & I carry heavy shelves. Home. Food? Upstairs and build shelves. Daire & Conor help. Later D & I write his letter to Santa Claus. He decorates it. After Daire heads to bed: Try out scalextric. It is fantastic. Cars fly around with lights. Fionn is right, it is a present for me. ;-7 I put track together badly at first, Fionnuala figures out how it is done properly.

Nov 23

D in wakes us up. After a while he's cross as we're not getting up. I get up after .... We get breakfast, then D goes for rest on couch. I head to work.

Much destest-nios work, implementing des_encrypt with des block on nios. Test crashes of course by end of day (actually hardware does - prbly as des block gets confused (double read hw error)

Waider emails & JOhn phones

Nov 22

Looning up stuff: astro

I want to make a 19Hz (inaudible) sound. cygwin => linuxplay.o or ntplay.o? lookup sound tools

Met Paolo during dinner who is back from a month holiday with girlfriend in Australia. Went out for an orange (he had a cigarette) and we met MArtin/Gregory/Jacinto and Robbie Colbert. Quite cold after a wee talk.

I help setup viewcvs using python with Colm. S3 cadenv/tool wrsapping environment not friendly to cgi scripts. csh -vf useful (in http error_log can see errors!! must set environment and CVS stuff in script before calling python.

Blood. Bus with Sebastian/Hakiem. Form filling. Interview. Iron. Blood. Drink & choc/crisps. I see a Fox on the cycle home I call & get D after opening house. Fionnuala has left pasta+tuna ... I eat that, D has yoghurt and bread. We watch flood footage on TV. D is fascinated and asks lots of questions. I watch TV and am just getting out telescope when Fionnuala arrives home early at 11. Lots of talk, read, sleep.

Nov 21

I bring D to creche (up 9:10, earliest for me for the last 3 days! Very windy. Daire's very bouncy. Runs outside with me when I get bike from shed. Finds magnifying glass and I show him some insects and he goes hunting them.

No browsing web for motherboard prices and other satellite board/box infos. Finish order for FIonnuala on fireandwater.com after some worrying server errors, hope it's shiped postal and not courier! VERY confused over srec 2 mif 2 hex conversions. Do a Portability vs Performance review and commentary for James Curran's Quality/Design doc. Write up in my tmn notes. 2 good examples TCP/IP versus OSI/CMIP, linux MIPS memory management. Tied to hardware where appropriate ... but STILL made portable. Design must allocate & estimate, break up Quality more, define what factors of quality important for different parts of design. Very late dinner. Meeting for Nios development team, Silicon nearly finished.

KidsGardening.com

Ormonde Cinema Stillorgan Harry Potter maybe ... or Robbie Colbert might visit? Pauline is coming to babysit. I cook tagliatelli & hollandaise veg+prawns. Conor visits and has some tagliatelli. Fionnuala & I go see Moulin Rouge in Dun Laoighre. One parkhouse shut, other packed so I park on Street, Fionnuala buys tickets. Mad musical Ewan McGregor & ..... Good fun.

Nov 20

Very late into work. Grepping for Satellite receiver/routers all morning and most of afternoon. A bit of online shopping and send my wishlist to Fionnuala. In general I have too many toys and not enough time to play with them all!
• spawn.com spawntoys.com action figures for me, KORN video?, SPawn comic ( spiderman/futurama figures for D samuraiSpawn from Series #19 Spawn Comics Shrek video?
• old computers C64/Amstrad6128
• maps, GPS on palm, palm decorations
• windsurf video would be good, (for learning gybing techniquesa and other) Ken mentioned one but I can't remember? windsurfing holiday? sailing holiday? I have links.
• big kite (too much for this year!!) e.g. wipika sailworld.com wipika kitesurftheearth but I would kite to practice on land ... I'm guessing 3 meters would be good but they're all fierce expensive
• capo (for guitar)
• Amazon.com wishlist The Sandman : The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman, Yoshitaka Amano (Illustrator); Round Ireland With a Fridge by Tony Hawks; Paperback Song of Kali by Dan Simmons; Paperback Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons; Mass Market Paperback Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson; Hardcover Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman; Mass Market Paperback The King of Elfland's Daughter by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany, et al; Paperback Preludes and Nocturnes (Sandman, Book 1) by Neil Gaiman, et al; Paperback The Mind's I by Douglas R. Hofstadter, et al; Paperback Mathematics : From the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg, Peter Hilton; Hardcover Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Barry Moser (Illustrator); Kim by Rudyard Kipling; Paperback Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny (Introduction); Perl Cookbook by Tom Christiansen, et al; Paperback
I head and collect Daire. We eat scraps from fridge at home and watch the Simpsons. When Fionnuala gets home we have soup and bread and Daire sits with us and has more food. He really wants a biscuit though! He has a very cross & frustrated game of draughts with Fionnuala. Then Fionnuala brings him to bed and when he's finished reading he cries a good bit as he says he's scared unless one of us is upstairs. He settles for hearing TV for Fionnuala.

Mad science shack building manually driven bikes, rocket & compressed air on BBC. I love it. Then Jamie Oliver, the naked chef teaching "Food Technology" class in his old school. Great fun. Stars have come out for first night in a good few.

Fionnuala & I make banoffi .... the caramel doesn't really change colour. We keep stirring it for ages and we make VERY sticky toffee. It doesn't spread at all easily over the top. I spread it with a finger and it STICKS hard and it's HOT scalding, YEOW, so I chew it off finger and rinse it in cold water. Very educational indeed. We need more info on caramel ... need to caramelise some sugar first? With water? To make it brown. Maybe? Very chewy licking spoon/saucepan after. Fionnuala heads to bed and I get trapped by TV with Anime films (and hotreels animation Grand Prix) on channel 4. Excellent stuff but bed after 2.

Nov 19

Monday - loads more browsing web for satellite router/receivers. I collect Daire and he helps me cook soup. potato + leek sauteed in go sweetcorn (as we have 3/4 tins of it!), frozen green beans 600ml+ a bit of stock boil Then chop up small. Fionnuala likes this one a good bit. We have bread with it. I put Daire to bed and give him a bath as he has glue in his hair. Drying line in creche with paintings with glitter fell down on top of him and he thought it was hilarious! I get him to lie down in bath for washing hair and he really doesn't like it and goes all stiff but once he is dry he tells Fionnuala proudly that he lay down in bath. After hair wash he plays in water, then bed. I stay up reading as he's a bit scared.

Nov 18

Partially planning Christmas shopping, also shelf wall in our bedroom. We drive to town (thinking of bus, ... but there seems to be lots of people waiting on the busstop. Park near leeson street, walk through the green. TkMaxx, buy some things, look at loads, also look at toys for Daire. Brown Thomas have very adult window displays this year ... D likes them still though. Other shops don't have much. We get a nice quiet coffee shop in Temple bar and have coffee and some food. When walking back Christmas lights are on. Daire in buggy likes them.

Nov 17

Shopping comes in morning, after a few false alarms. Due to come between 10 and 12. F had gotten up and gotten Daire his breakfast. Then back to bed. Daire looking out window a bit. Announces there is a van ... I leap up but it's just builders next door. Later Daire just looks out and says shopping man is here. I leap out again and throw on clothes and answer door with Daire. Daire is very good helping to unpack. We get breakfast then, cook a fry.

We go to Collins Barracks Museum. Park and walk completely wrong way round block by Arbour Hill prison. Then into inflatable planetarium. Patter is a bit miscellaneous and fan makes tend coldish but D enjoys it. Then we look at museum a bit - old clothes and furniture, old clock. Closing time. We get fish & chips (salmon) from Leo Burdock's and eat in car. We park, I go and queue for a good bit before I get food. Worth it though.

Leonid asteroid storm peak 17/18/19 Nov. Temple-tuttle & leonids, Nov 17th every year Very cloudy, not a hope for any asteroids/stars/satellites.

Nov 16

Ruairai and Ken and MikeM are all looking at a bare PC system for a satellite router and I help a bit and grep web ALL day. Motherboards + CPU+FAN + memory + Power/Case. Celeron or AMD-K6 CPU maybe (cheapest?) or Pentium. => Socket 7 or Socket370 mobo.

Nov 15

More mails helping 2 ppl with cygwin and eCos. Looking at eCos packages for MIPS too: Parthus ecos ftp repository atlas mips hal

Looking up Spike Island and transportation Irish history for someone links here.

People have gone upstairs to watch match so it's quiet. This is nice: sports.com live match commentary

Leonids will peak just after sunrise and before night next Sunday.; links here, searching for satellites.

Nov 14

Up late after D & Fionnuala leave. Into work. Firedrill in work.

Reply to some cygwin help messages after reading some.
Q: ARM or Xscale dev with cygwin me: use eCos, read docs
Q: emacs & cygwin and ssh & tramp me: emacs on winNT shell
Q: LoadLibrary("dllname"); RegisterService me: #include windows.h ?

8bit PC parallel port LogicAnalyser & sw more par port stuff

stelnet things FictionalDaemon ... not great but okay. more list winTD works a bit better with rxvt, not xterm better list

online shop

Nov 13

I get up with Daire and we head to work. Fionnuala has obviously had some bread in night sometime.

Using lynx to try and fashion shop for Fionnuala. Much struggling with international clothes sizes.

DJGPP Allegro - A game programming library Vivace allegro and graphics tutorial

Fionnuala collects Daire from creche, I get home before them. Daire gets some ham sandwiches and works on washing rocks for his lighthouse. I cook nice pancotto at home out of my easy beer bread. Saute dried chilli, garlic and onion in oil. Add chopped bread 400g and mix in oil. Pour in stock 2l (and tomato juice later). It cookes up lovely & thick, nice with cheese.

Fionnuala doesn't like it's origins. I have beer with soup too, it's too spicey for Daire. Play some guitar then (new songs, Marc Cohn, Paul Simon). Fionnuala brings D to bed, he hurries up a bit when I threaten to bring him.

I sew my shirt elbow, TV & tea, shave & wash before bed. Late in night Fionnuala wakes with cramps, I rub lower part of tummy gently and also lower back for a while.

Nov 12

Monday I remember a dream, half awake in morning. I dream I'm woken up by telephone, Fionnuala gone to work. I answer and it's someone from work. Can't hear them ... they ask loads of stuff ... something about Lucent ISM? And they keep on going very fast. I can't hear and can't stop them. Eventually I do manage to interrupt, tell them I can't hear, line is quite bad and what do they want to know. They sound a bit cross, say you did work with Lucent. Anyway but I don't know what they want now so I say maybe someone else can help. Just as they hang up either they say or I realise that it's Pierre Ottenheim!!! Strange.

Daire and Fionnuala get up, get breakfast and in a bit say goodbye. I get up late, nice bright sunny & warm day. Breakfast, get bike out, cycle to work over all mounds without getting off bike. whee! Lock of bike shed has been smashed over weekend.

Banoffi

by Hungry Monk More Irish more American

Ingredients:

• 6.5oz digestive biscuits (crushed) (approx. 184g)
• 1.5oz dessicated coconut (approx. 42g)
• 1 (generous) tablespoon sugar
• 4oz unsalted butter (melted) (approx. 113g)
• 14oz tin of full cream sweetened condensed milk (approx. 400g)
• 2-3 bananas (finely sliced)
• cream (whipped)

Method:

• Mixed the crushed digestive biscuits, dessicated coconut, sugar and melted butter and spread evenly in a well-greased flan dish or on a gateau plate using the ring off a loose bottomed cake tin (with about a 12" diameter) to surround the banoffi. Using the gateau plate makes serving the banoffi a LOT easier!
• Pierce the top of the tin of sweetened condensed milk a few times and place in a pot of boiling water. Simmer for an hour keeping the water level to around half the height of the tin. Open the tin fully and stir contents (Be careful it's hot!). Simmer for another quarter of an hour. OR Pour condensed milk into a non-stick saucepan with butter and sugar. Stir over a low heat until the sugar dissolves, then boil for about five minutes, stirring constantly, to make a light golden caramel. Wait until the colour changes, but do not over-boil! Pour into the crumb crust and leave to cool. (If you didn't boil for long enough, the mixture will stay rather runny, and will be messy to eat but still delicious!)
• Cover the base (in the flan dish) with sliced bananas and then cover the bananas with the contents of the tin (of sweetened condensed milk). Leave to cool. OR Slice bananas and sprinkle slices with lemon juice, so they won't go brown in the air. Arrange over the caramel. Decorate with whipped cream if liked. Refrigerate before serving.
• When cool place in the fridge.
• Serve at fridge temperature. This should give 8 good slices but note that this seems to be sufficient for only 4 people!

Easy Beer Bread

I go to dinner with James & Ronan's gang. Unusually early for me as I usually miss them these days. Then heading back a walk is suggested. Big chat with Sarah about baseball, weather, whatever.

On Friday Dave G told me he d9id the 4 peaks challenge Irish Permanent 4 peaks challenge Working in same place as Kieran. Company with own reconfigurable CPU IP just about ready to go to market. Silaria Embedded fpgas & stuff fpgacpu.org, oct2001 news

At home Fionnuala cooks lovely lentils + sausage&mustard + tomato + cheese dinner. I play with Daire, we are very busy making lighthouse. I bring Daire to bed when it's bedtime too, after he has story he reads by himself. I make easy beer bread using murphies (300ml), 3 cups flour and 3tsp sugar. cook 40 mins 180/190degrees. (remember to try more raising agent next time) It finishes late and I have a couple of slices. Delicious hot ... dunno how it will keep though.

Nov 11

Sunday Daire visits us for a good long time in morning. He plays computer a bit before I get up and go with him for breakfast. Grandparents get up and I make cappuchinos & toast. Fionnuala up after a bit. Lots of talk. Daire and myself plant a few rosemary clippings, put thyme in bigger pots, plant tarragon. Daire waters.

Pauline stays in bed the whole morning. Fionnuala's Mum & Dad head around 12:00. Clean egg off front door. Fionn & D & I rearrange our room upstairs, move bookshelf, move computer out, stretch modem cable, then move bed. Pauline appears too and we've a big planning discussion about maybe open wardrobes, japanese screen/curtain in front, location of computer.

We walk to lil Piza restaurant for lunch. Mmmmm, Daire colours and then eats ALL of his spagetti bolognese, eats some icecream. I have garlic mush and caesar salad and some of Pauline's pizza. House red wine. Then to shop for milk, bread and paper.

Fixing, trying out light bulbs in Fionnualas lamp, hang coat rail using dogwood wall plugs. Bit tired. Making sea and rocks (for lighthouse) with Daire. Daire paints it. Bring Pauline home to town, then call to Gardaí in stepaside. Watch TV with Fionnuala. Film: Das Boot imdb comes on and I spend the rest of the night in front of that. Excellent stuff. Fionn not that interested. Ends at 1 in morning though ... directors restoration cut. U96, submarine life at end of 2nd world war, Echo sounding has been invented.

Nov 10

Fionnuala gets up with Daire first. My head isn't great. Otherwise okay. I get up and breakfast very late, 12 or 2? Daire visited Conors for a while and was watching Predator. Definately a bit violent for small kids really. Fionnuala suspected but didn't know until I said.

Fionnuala's Mum & Dad call around 3/4 and after cappuchinos and chat they head on to Sheila's. I cook pizza plus roast veggies (teeney potatoes, green beans, onion, tomatoes, chicken stock fat baste). Daire watches Anastasia film on TV. Pauline arrives 6:45ish (after seeing Harry Potter movie. We all eat and then F & I head. We get in and Aedin's car appears in front of us through small streets and into Irish Life car park.

We stand around in lobby of Abbey Theatre for a good bit talking before we head in. I get a wee bit stressed, Play A Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy opens loudly & violently. book ei Don Wycherley (also from Bachelor's Walk on TV) is playing Harry, lead thug of the Carney family. Betty is Cathy Belton from Glenroe. I dunno do I like it at first but it is amazing to watch. At end funny woman in red at front is chatty during quiet tense ending scenes and speech. Harry/Henry isn't happy at all during bows. Talk seems quite silly to me and queue for paying tickets is a wee bit stressful. Then drive follow Aedin's car a little, call to bank, meet at her house after they drop Sheila home. Tea & choc. Eventally home to our place, Pauline eventually gets to sleep in sitting room.

Nov 9

Daire visits in morning, urgh. Fionnuala gets up and gets him milk (he got rest of breakfast himself). She rushes up then a bit later and puts out bin. Eventually I struggle up, help D dress, get breakfast and F gives me a smoothie. My stomach doesn't like the idea but it's tasty. Very rich eating!

Bike out, bring thyme clips and radish seed heads to work, collect Fionn's bag & carrot cake tin. Writing diary. MikeM & Fergus and Linux port doc meeting.

building reloc dlls in cygwin cygwin FAQx I get a bit of a way with this. dlltool BUT it seems to have a usable dll you need to build it from scratch or the defs and other files you make aren't quite good. gcc cygwin tools don't handle the VisualC++ built DLL I have I think. I get a demo to crash PC a few times but also set video mode to a mad 100 by 100 (or something like that) display before dumping core.

Fergus sends mail about going out tonight. ivenus.com/family Pub called SoSueMe. A series of Lovely smiley mails go around.

          Fergus and Diarmuid on friday night...
           
          .17.00        ...20:00         ...03:00    ..... saturday   

openssh.org PuTTY: A Free Win32 Telnet/SSH Client google disgusting xlation of good openssh doing too much with presentation CuteFTP and ssh & firewalls, maybe. TeraTerm TTSSH

I head home over the bumps. Dark. Tie on rear red light with string. No bike seat on bike, feels lighter. Fionnuala has cooked lovely chicken. They give me a lift out down to 46A bus. Get the 84 after a small wait.

Walk across city to SoSueMe. Easy to find people already. Mark Craven, MikeM & Stella. I drink bulmers and stick with it, we move upstaies (with coars & jumpers a bit awkward. Pile them behind a likely looking Dragon. Ski people head past - Tony Tehan and others. I meet Dave Gogarty and chat, also Ken Mcullagh, others. Loads of people there. Pauline turns up after a bit. We talk with Seb and Fred for a good bit near the end of the night and I head walking with them looking for taxi. Taxi's are busy and we get to "Gig's place" very small entrance, fish&chip (well, no fish), lovely food quite basic. I have prawn curry ... the two French guys have Irish breakfasts. It's comfortable, feels like we were there a while. When we get out we get taxi no problem. Drop lads first then we head home. Friendly taxi driver and cost is 8 pounds ... very reasonable.

Nov 8

Freezing cold in the morning. Daire doesn't mind at all. Clear sky. Clouds over in afternoon.

ARM link fishing, ARM reading. Mail to Dara, awkward to go to Shannon for a while but positive. Later he mails back with negative.

Hi James,

Thanks for the email and the enthusiasm. I haven't put your name forward,because I
have a number of IC candidates (admitedly without the particular assembler/sw skills
that you have). My best guess is this will probably drag on for more than 1 month
(that seems to be the way these kind of things go.) and I don't want to mess
you/Fionnuala around.

Thanks,

Dara

James Coleman wrote:

> Hi Dara,
>
>  We talked it over last night and in general I'd like to go.
>
>  It does come at rather an awkward time and if you've any young free & single
>  people it would be better to put them forward more?
>  We could manage fine if I was in Shannon for a month but it does mean that
>  Fionnuala gets a real runaround between Daire and work. Also from about 16
>  December new baby could be arriving at any time and I wouldn't like to be
>  seperated from Fionnuala. We're having baby at home in Dublin and we wouldn't
>  want to get stuck somewhere and have to go to a hospital.
>
>  If there is really only a month's work and perhaps the customer would know
>  that I could be quite busy at home coming up to Christmas (i.e. working weekends
>  is definately out) then the work could suit quite well.  If I was on the project
>  and there was carry on work I would want to get back to Dublin.
>
>  Sorry for all thgese restrictions especially under the current climate.
>  I do want to be flexible but the arrival of new baby for us is a time which does
>  tie us down a bit more.
>
>  As I say ....
>
>    Do put my name forward and I am interested in working with Intel in Shannon.
>    I'm sure if there is good work I could help with initially arrangements
>     could be worked out to suit everyone if needs be at a later stage.
>
>  Okay, well, hope that wasn't too confusing a read.
>   I can really write incomprehensibly at times!
>
>  Talk to you later today prbly,
>
>  JAmes.

Herbal Infusion recipies

COOL! Tempest, Broadcast AM using PC monitor paper SDL Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library libsdl docs Trying to link dll with gcc (under cygwin) ... could do it in TC but messy all filenames must change to 8 chars.

S3 web connection packs up (ESAT fibre break problem).

SNOW! Lasts for about 10 minutes, then skys clear, nice bright sun.

DaffCount mysteriously refuses to read in files :( Out of memory error .... have to exit tc and go back in before build for "LArge" or "Compact" rather than "small" works.

I head home (dark, REALLY cold, wind against me). Daire gets his pictures from his box and shows them to me. We head home, D funny pulls his arms in from his coat. Pick flesh off chicken, Daire helps ... puts pasta and chicken in bowl, then D does lots of washing up. Fionnuala home a little late. Chicken+pasta+greenBeans+tomatoJuice for dinner ... tasty enough. Beer for me. I bring Daire up to bed & read him longish story. He goes to sleep without reading himself.

Martin calls over, talk, herbal tea all round. Tidy up outside - Daire's sandpit's water is frozen! Yeow! Cold. Stars are brilliant. I take a look with telescope. Orion and orion nebula. Point towards Taurus, head has loads of stars, also Saturn in Taurus. Plaeides beyond. Across form ORion Jupiter is in Gemini. Trying to look for visible galaxy in Andromeda (out of view) or Cetus (a bit too faint too).

Nov 7

gobbo caves nice hack

Pinnacle PCTV PCI linux info bt848 chip, driver, user reports Review: No problems, but it took me a while to look for good software and XawTV works o.k., but KwinTV NOT! I installed the drivers video4linux, bttv and tuner. options I use: bttv card=0 and tuner type=7. It works but X crashes when fullscreen is attempted. linux drivers locations pinnacle.de drivers FAQ

• Latest driver, wayy too big
• PPE, PCI PErformance Enhancer (says required)
• DeviceMgr->DiskDrives->GenericIDE->Enable DMA
  DeviceMgr->Computer->IRQ&devices
• Lots of advice on moving PCI slots (assoc with IRQ), free up resources, disabling unused stuff troubleshooting steps
• System hangs up

  Some motherboard PCI chipset will not allow the Pinnacle product to send bus-mastering data
  to the graphic board (VGA) and this will cause the system to hang. This generally does not
  happen on motherboards using INTEL PCI chipset
  
      o  Check on the Website of the motherboard manufacturer if a BIOS update is not available
         which will fix the problem. 
  
  The problem might also come from incompatibility with some graphic boards who are not
  handling busmastering correctly or which are not able to share IRQ with any other device on
  the system.
  
      o  Try to move the Pinnacle product to a different PCI slot using a different IRQ. Some
         BIOS also permits to change IRQ settings for PCI slots. 
      o  Be sure that the color depth setting of your VGA card is set to more than 256 colors (16
         bits - 65000 colors is recommended) and with a standard resolution (eg. 800x600 or
         1024x768). 
      o  Be sure that DirectX is correctly installed. Eventually install the latest version, or reinstall
         the Pinnacle Product with DirectX installation (Custom installation). 
      o  Check that no other device capture is installed in the system and getting in conflict with
         Pinnacle product. 
      o  Try with a different graphic board. 
     

webboard system hang I add a post.

I have what sounds like similar problem.  With Windows98se.
I have a Celeron 200Mhz processor, have to look up what motherboard I have 
 (but it has built in Sis graphics controller?? ... I can't quite get my bog-standard S3 gfx card to co-operate with it (yet))
This setup may be slightly strange and could be my problem as the PCTV stuff seems to depend on a lot of trickey lowerlevel interactions.

Install PCTV PCI card, software install goes fine.
Restart gets BSOD when detecting graphics part of PCTV card, next restart figures out audio part of PCTV okay.
(1st install automatically disables PCTV Graphics ... can do this manually from a safe mode boot).
Playing with settings can get device to be enabled ... but get BSOD on start of PCTV Vision.
I haven't tried video capture at all ... PCTV Studio software runs fine.

From reading mostly on this site it sounds like I have some hardware incompatibility or 
failure on PCI bus.   Some of the easier things to try for me are: 
  o moving the PCTV card to a different PCI slot (and thus different IRQ). 
  o disabling other (parts of) (less used) PCI devices
  o try out different graphics card (not that easy)
  o try out PCTV card under linux (have to get linux drivers and application software though so this will take a while)
  o buy a new (well, 2nd hand PC) just for video editing??????  

I am hesitant to update driver as the base download is 30MB!!! of what seems to be the whole bundle of
software (with no specific mention of hardware problems in driver release notes).
I must check my BIOS for bus-mastering. Again will do later as I've to check exactly what I have.

If anyone from Pinnacle is listening:
It would be really nice if there was diagnostic software which could check requirements on the system.
At the moment the install goes something like:
  do something - BSOD - restart - do something else - BSOD - restart - more - BSOD - restart - dig for info -
    do something - BSOD - restart
This is torture! And it takes ages to find the right solution (I haven't yet but I'm optomistic).
You have to have something internally .... that would point at the real problem perhaps?
It would be encouraging to know the next thing you're trying may have a hope of fixing the
problem as opposed to being just something that is recommended that is one of maybe 20 things
you might try  (one of those 20 things may include sacrificing computer components to Eris).
 
I have to say thanks for the website, it's a good resource.

Motherboards: ASUS Socket7 at home???? ASUS look for SiS chipset list Socket 7 Tom's HW guide Tom's HW Video guide motherboards.org The Elusive Zen of Motherboard Identification ASUS list Old motherboard was Chaintech 5TDM2, I killed VT82885N cmos/clock chip New has Sis gfx, Celeron? not Cyrix, .....

google ASUS+socket+7+via+bios socket 7 mobos ASUS motherboards list

name         chipset      max cap
P5-99B       SiS530 AGP   768MB/3 PC100
P5-99VM      SiS530 AGP   768MB/3 PC100
P5S-B        SiS530 AGP   768MB/3 PC100
P5S-VM       SiS530 AGP   768MB/3 PC100
SP98AGP-X    SIS5591
SP98-N       SIS5598      256MB/2
SP97-XV      SIS5598
SP97-V       SIS5598
P/I-P55SP4V  SIS5596
P55SP3AV     SIS551X
P/I-P55SP4   SIS551X

award bios chipsets ASUS bios manual socket 7 p5-99b.pdf asus bios SiS530 BIOS SiS620 BIOS

Kiting in Ireland kitetv.com buy&sell kites or computers? windsurf kite Home Computers buy&sell Computer. 300MHz PC, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD, Voodoo 3 3d graphics card, soundcard, 56k modem, Win 95, Internet Explorer 4.0, Office 97, 15" monitor, £ 200, msalomoni@hotmail.com Conn and Leinster, Web buy&sell buy&sell Bargain Hp 1.2G. 1200Mhz, 256mb ram, Geforce2 mx, 56k modem, ethernet port, 40Gb HD, Dvd-rom, Hp Cd RW, 4 usb ports, soundcard, winme, exclude monitor, £ 750. 087-9077593 Dell PC. P II, 450 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 17 GB HD, 17" monitor, DVD, 16MB video, 56k modem, 3D sound, WIN ME, office XP, latest games & software, £ 450 ono. 087-9902599

Dara has a talk with me about going bodyshopping maybe to Intel in Shannon. I make quick CV before home, Fionnuala collects D.

sep 2001 - present Broadband security software on Altera NIOS platform.
Unix simulation test, WinNT/cygwin development and Altera FPGA target test.
Application sw, TCP/IP(with IPSEC) stack/library, block drivers and tests.

june 2001 - aug 2001 Embedded linux on MIPS
Linux PC build environment, Galileo Tech MIPS board target.
Linux kernel, memory management, low level drivers. 

2000 - june 2001 System test and drivers for IAD with MIPS core.
Solaris development and test environment (using NC Verilog sim, C and BFD tests).
Environment scripting, silicon database, compiler/linker, low-level interrupt handling, processor init. 
Drivers: Interrupts, DMA, Ethernet, UART, SPI.
System Testing: CPU+memory+cache+interrupts+UART+Ethernet+VPS+Utopia
   (VPS = Jazz Voice Processors System)
VxWorks development of drivers & tests for prototype target. 

1998 - 2000 GSM OMC development and test.
HP unix server development and target platform.
Network communications, CMIP Vertel toolkit, MIB database. 

1997 - 1998 OC192 Wavestar Optical Switch, Network Element CMISE Agent.
Solaris unix development, Chorus OS, powerPC, DSET toolkit, Information Model & ASN.1.

1994 - 1996 RBS900 and LME GSM basestation management software. 
Development & test (host and integration). C & SDL design. VAX & DOS script/tools. 
VAX host environment, Philips DEXE embedded OS, 680xx CPU.

Graduated 1994, Uni. of Limerick, Computer Engineering, 1.1
Co-op in Analog devices (Applications Dept.)

Fionnuala doesn't like the idea of me being away for a month, I quite fancy some ARM work and especially as I know some of the lads and we could stay in Limerick with Fionnuala for a while. Talk over dinner and bedtime. We decide it's okay to say yes but I must tell Dara about all our reservations.

Nov 6

dry in morning, raining lightly all day, collect picture from Appletons and have lunch with Fionnuala in Cafe Atticus over Apriles? in Stillorgan. Yummy canneloni, lasagne, chips.

daffodil count getting input safely, struggle with pointer to array!!!! basic pointer tutorial ACTUALLY it was the missing return value (int) not the pointer to array guhhh! Also remember to be careful of switching code gen from Tiny-Small-Medium-Large-Huge TC can't manage a complete clean build. obj files & exe delete solves funny problems

Nov 5

turbo C++, daffodil count program,

Fionnuala collects D, I get home 6ish. It's dark, I almost fall over with bike at top of big mound (after cycling up). I manage to make it over two small mounds okay.

Fionnuala and D are cooking Ravioli and steak with onion & tomato sauce. Finish white wine. TV & Harry potter book. Daire paints in evening: Maureen, Me, Him, Haloween (bet+pumpkin+spiders+web+lion+guitar) He draws Maureen sideways with a pencil first.

Nov 4

Windsurf in Dun Laoighre, D & Fionnuala come and see tai-chi people with swords in park, have coffee. I meet a good few people I know out surfing. Talk a bit. Tide in high. Wind a bit up at first, rig 5m sail. Drops off a bit and I come in and rig up 6.8m sail. I send SMS to Fionn and she sends one back with love from coffee shop. D is colouring. AFter I get out the wind really picks up and I scream along and head up a bit towards blackrock. I head back and try some waterstasrting ... kindof unintentianally. It's tiring. Uphaul also schwicks out of hole shooting me backwards under. All this messing is close to Sandypoint tower. Back in eventually, grab kite for kitesurfer, D and Fionnuala are waiting. Derig, pack up, head home.

At top of Newtownparkavenue I overtake cars going for right turning lane and get stopped by Gardai. Augh! Very silly & stressing. Daire is very good. A bit worried about the robbers though. Home, food, ....

Nov 3

F up with D then back to bed 11ish. I shower, then cuddles . D is very quiet so I go down expecting something interesting. He's not made a huge mess at all, playing Barney play by self. Had some halloween chocs.

Eat cerial, then D helps cook & eats yoghurts. Chop & fry lots of veg, toast, coffee. D sets table. Make cappuchinos, D gets Fionnuala.

Clean dishes, halloween bowls, pumpkin soup saucepan. Garden, pull a weed, collect fennel & coriandsr seeds, plant onions, prune rose, prune willow. Eventually go shopping to Stillorgan then on to Indian near Yellow House. D sleeps. Yummy yellow rice & orange chickpea/chicken/veg sauce. Wine.

F heads to theatre. D & I paint picture of frog (viking splash amphibious vehicle) for Maureen. (thanks for Bob the Builder jigsaw) Picture of dolphin too. I have to hide pictures fhoh F. End of Pinnochio film then teeth pyjamas story bed for D. Harry potter & Street Fighter for me.

Nov 2

Dell Optiplex GXa (nomos S3 pc) spec

Nov 1

Appropriately chilly for winter. Bright sun. Less wind. F gets up with D who was in earlier and disappeared when we told him his sweet bag was in kitchen in tin. He was very quiet for a good while then. I get up, get breakfast (Fionn likes dspsrv cookbook). I bring bike out, meet Assumpta going off to creche with Conor and Emma. D waves goodbye to them ... get his shoes on, then he chenges mind and wants to go to creche with Fionnuala.

Flame warrior #64, Eagle Scout

Viking Network Ireland regia.org Living English history The Village of Wichamstow games Viking forging story Interesting (in games) riddling important to Vikings (Middle Earth connection again).

Histroy for Homeschool Lesson plans Kindergarden

Oct 31

Wake and see Venus and Mercury 6:45ish. Back to bed. D comes in at 7:50 and wakes me, Fionnuala is gone. We get up and get breakfast, dress, head to creche. In work at 8:45.

Loads of messing with diary, astro pages & links, javascript.

Meet with Waider for lunch. He was visiting Clarkey in Ballina the weekend. Doing loads of nasty stuff with Oracle. Sun shining, windy, a little chilly.

Halloween

Looking up Vikings for Daire runes game of hnefatafel Tolkien (new movie influence) Norse legends lots of myths and legends map of viking world
Viking info, 4th class, Portmarnock

Looking up Spiderman for Daire Spidey pics poster face adven pose threads

Home a bit after five, meet F & D at shop, buy beer, milk, ham, yoghurts for D. Start getting ready, chocolate and nuts in bowl, make popcorn, move dead body to hall, put red shirt around lamp. First few trick or treaters call early and loads call over the next while. Small kids were very entertaining, different costumes. There seemed to be an even split of witches and screams in the older kids by gender. 2 cool undead mobsters.

Conor comes in and Fionnuala (spectacular scary witch) takes Daire & himself round. Pauline arrives with a huge (slightly bruised) pumpkin. We all snack on nuts and stuff. I carve out pumpkin in between bowl fills. I have bloody Mary (only with a bit of vodka). Light many candles.

pumpkin Crunch, Crunch … Enjoy Those Seeds!: Save and clean the seeds. Mix with a small amount of cooking oil and place on a cookie sheet. Roast in the oven at 250 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Stir. Cook slightly longer until a golden brown. Place on paper towels to absorb excess oil. Enjoy!
I actually fried them on medium heat in oil, kept turning, nearly forgot to turn them off!

Loads of fireworks outside, close and over city, and everyone is outside houses looking at them. Bonfire on green. We visit Stan and Assumpta and they have wine and fireworks. I grab the phone as we're expecting waider to call but we miss him anyway :(. I call Dermot and Christopher comes with David and Joey comes with me to see. After a bit all the small kids go inside and play. Then adult talk, then home.

Fionnuala fell asleep on couch, Pauline fell asleep on chair. I spend the night cooking the !!4(ish)!kg!! of pumpkin pulp we got from the bigger pumpkin (and that's only the scrapings ... apparently you're meant to chop up the whole lad when he's done, bake, then scrape off the rest of the flesh. I make soup first (500g pumpkin) and add chilli making it spicey. I look up the web for recipies and bake the rest for an hour.

Pauline goes up to bed and Fionnuala after that. I turn off PC. While tidying I find Waider has left a note and the dspsrv cookbook! Nice surprise but very bad bummer to miss him :(. I have Pauline's untouched beer with soup while reading dspsrv cookbook and Harry Potter. Baked pumpkin tastes quite good.

I check stars (clouds have cleared but stars are very hazy/dim). Orion Perseus Cassiopeia Taurus .... Bed.

Oct 30

VERY windy Dublin wind Oct 30 2001 Luckily S/SW so behind me mostly on way into work. Lovely and sunny but at 4ish lashing rain (wind is turning West). Loads of web (Cobh, music, stars, Dublin tourist links) in work. Emails.

SKYLIGHTS Full moon on Halloween Mercury & Venus very close, Mercury nearing furthest point from sun.

Looking for pictures of HAulbowline for a Carl Smith from Birmingham who has found an old picture of HMS Collingwood in his attic. links for haulbowline, Irish navy, Spike, Cork Dockyard here.

Oct 29

Up in morning, D heads down for breakfast. Colm sleeping in living room. D plays with computer :- hedgehog, then quake!, then GTA. D heads downstairs and I get up again. This time John is downstairs doing jigsaws with Daire.

Everyone gets up. Cappuchino's all round. Fionnuala makes pancakes after a while. They're quite stubborn and sticking to pans alot and frustrating Fionnuala. I hover for a while and she gives me the last few to do ... I'm at least happy and calm when my pancake is looking ugly has to be prised from pan. Savoury first, then pear raspberry chocolate sauce ice-cream. I get a good few (ugly ones).

Wind is tempting me and I unravel kite.

We go to Kildare in the afternoon. Daire sleeps in car. I go 60ish a lot of the way, slower than most traffic. Maureen&Ruth following and John behind on bike.

We visit graveyard first. I carry Daire and it's windy. He's cold and we go back to car but he wants me to go back to others so I go outside and stay close. D opens door and car goes past and dog barks loudly so he closes it again.

Then we visit National stud and gardens. National Stud Japanese Garden St. Fiachra's Garden Buggy a bit difficult in Japanese gardens. Daire tired at first but loved the steps and winding paths and water and bridges. We showed him the elves houses and where they get on their boats. Met some horses. One liked the flowers of dandelions.

In St. Fiachra's gardens find some mushrooms.

• white flesh then pink inside + pink on gills, black under gills, bigish 3/4in, nearly closed tall to bottom, skin split & curled on surface
• Others in big clusters on base of tree, orange all over, dark big pimple on top, fluted gill cover on stem underneath

Drive back, lots of traffic but it moves okay. Very low on petrol.

We call to visit Sheila and Orla. Tour of newly tiled bathroom. Daire gets a teddy and a fan and a bottle and cards and cars to play with. Fionnuala and ORla and Sheila hold a big conference on redecorating sitting room. I'm feeling wrecked tired and I'm glad to sit in chair with Daire and not think too much. Get petrol on way home.

At home I chop up egg & cheese and Daire eats it. I make cheese on toast with worchester sauce, Fionn has tea, I have coke. D gets dressed for bed, gives F kiss goodnight, upstairs, brush teeth. Then he wants poem & Viking story. I tell him a messy Viking story with history and legend all mixed up. Then for poem I pick out Fairies "Up the airy mountain, down the rushing glen, ..." and there are no illustrations so he's not pleased. So after that we read Jabberwocky. Then he says we shouldn't have read it as it is scary. But he's alright so we say goodnight. I go read book in our room (Clive Barker still) so I'll be close. Fionnuala on phone below. I doze and Fionnuala comes to bed so I undress and sleep pretty quick.

Oct 28

Sunday more visits to Dublin. Tante Zoe's (jazz musicianless) very tasty jazz brunch. Waddled over and then did Viking splash tour. That's where you drive round Dublin in an amphibious vehicle and take a trip in the canal at the end. Great fun. Daire loved it. They trained everyone to howl and growl on the count of three. Anyone likely looking was given a growl. Daire was hilarious ... two eyes looking over the side, one hand holding on to viking helmet (way too big with one horn a bit loose), saying "raaarrrr!" at any pedestrian he could see.

We meet John Mullin in Temple Bar and head back out to LEopardstown. MORE food in nice Little Pisa restaurant near our house. Then back home for jigsaws for Daire before bed & coffee & dessert & charades & pictionary.

Oct 27

More tidying (up & down to attic) and cooking (tiramisu) and also me camera on PC and some lazy Quake.

People arrived up from Limerick 12ish. Creperie near Trinity closed. We have sandwiches next door. We visit the Jameson whiskey tourist thing in Smithfield. Guinness brewery was too packed. Lots of short drives in city ... fast, no problems parking. Jameson tour It was very interesting but I definately still don't like the taste of whiskey.

We ate in a lovely Nepalese restaurant in Temple bar then. Monty's. Very tasty. Quite like indian. That Jyogi Bhat stuff (Sage's rice) that Fionnuala had was ultra-yummy. I had tame food, pappadums with dips for everyone, deep-fried veg for start, buttered chicken main. D wolfs down his chicken, tries mine, doesn't eat much of a ham sandwich.

Then D & myself headed home by bus/taxi and Fionnuala took the others to Laughter Lounge (Daragh O'Broin and some others). I go to bed before 12 and get up again when others home and F checks on me. Guitar playing and loads of talk. Wine. (Colm has a white which tastes terrible).

Oct 26

Daire has an accident in his pyjamas so I get out of bed 8:10ish (very earl for me) and clean him up. Then we dress him. D has his underpants on when we hear bin men ... good bit earlier than usual. Rush down but it looks like Stan or Assumpta put our bin out already. Finish dressing D and we go get breakfast.

I remember some dreams recently ..... farm with FIonnuala, interrupted by .. tractor? Other things. Very vague. Silly. didn';t write them down right then.

Just when we're started I ask him if he knows where Fionnuala's glasses are ... and he DOES! We head up but they're not in drawer of mirror on dresser but then he remembers he put them on his bedroom floor. I think he found them on our bedroom floor and meant to tidy them. Back to breakfast, get bike out and then upstairs to kiss goodbye to Fionnuala. Fionnuala is lovely and naked under a towell after a shower. Mmmmmm.

Meet Abij and R... French guy walking into work. I'm very pleased with myself cycling over humps. coffee des test try out on new fpga image for Ross & Ken. Now can't write top registers at all. Work on BSP Porting guide document. Stupid Windows can't open doc from network drive??? Newspaper and 0xdeadbeef urlotd news.

starmap for tonight

To Waider: We're meeting a gang tomorrow & heading to Guinness brewry. You know how long it takes? An hour? And can you stay up top indefinately? You hardly want to do it for the nth time ... but of course if you were feeling thirsty ... :)

Tidying (up & down to attic) and cooking and lookup web in night, David Gray on TV interviewed and singing. lookup chords & lyrics and other guitar stuff

Oct 25

In work lots of talking with des block and swapping hex numbers cak & forth. Ross & Bob got jtag & instrumentation into nios core and logic analyser hooked up and we all saw exactly what we expected. Ross hadn't been actually loading the updated core permanently to flash.

Thinking about making more effort to hack Irish data into tidetool database file. I have tidetool's database code compiled (with a couple of trickey code changes). It's flaky but does generate something. Must play more if I get time.

I cycle home and arrive before Fionnuala and Daire. Put bin out, bike in. Then Daire visits Conor briefly and Conor comes in to visit us. Daire is in a very bas mood (tired?) cross over food & everything but happy to play with Conor. Playing on Fionnuala's big excercise ball.

We're all still alive & quite well though baby #2 seems to have lots more space than Daire to play with and is making good use of it practicing (it seems) all manner of acrobatics quite visibly on occasion.

Stuffed some old clothes into trousers and jacket and dungarees so now we've got quite a convincing headless (& handless & footless) corpse we can leave lying around somewhere for haloween. Then Daire & myself got all messy covering a cardboard box with papier mache. Pretty weird shape for a head but that's not a problem for out headless corpse.

Fionnuala again put D to bed and read him long story.

I think I saw Aurorea Borealis. I was looking from 7, sky to bright first and clouds earlier. Cleared up more by 10-11. Watching cliffhanger on TV and freedom music program. I thought a particularily annoying & persistant cloud was hovering overhead until I noticed it didn't exactly move away with the wind like other clouds. Further examination (i.e. staring) revealed it got bigger or smaller, sometimes disappearing completely. It looked very hazy & high up. Alaska Science Aurorea substorm I think I should have stayed up and see if it evolved into more lights. About.com aurorea FAQ about.com Aurorea Borealis ireland aurora pictures

I shave, Fionnuala's about asleep, I read more of Clive Barker's The Great & Secret Show. Quite an epic but now all is tied together and opening to Quiddity is made so we're abolut to start .... something else in next chapter.

Oct 24

Fionnuala drives to work today. We leave money for Tracey. I cycle with Daire to creche.

Painting Dado rail again.

Oct 23

Fionn goes to see "The Fabulous Destiny of Ameile Poulain" with Andrea. I play quake loads. Then tidy kitchen a bit later.

Oct 22

Monday. Fionnuala walks to creche with Daire. sinv32.exe causing continuous disk-swap on my machine. x86 smm sw inv notes sinv32.exe is the file used on the client that starts software inventory. Services->SMS client->Disable sinv32.exe is the file used on the client that starts software inventory. c:\winnt\Ms\Sms\Logs\sinv32.log also insinv32.log

desdrvc test code, met.ie, ski time_t tm_gmtoff and gmtime google

Sawing and hammering skirting board and dado rail. Painting it white. Brush solid with varnish at start but loosens.

Oct 21

cycle butcher with Daire visit Aedin drill shelves paint Fionnuala cooks lentils and sausages. Yum.

Oct 20

up late, F gone to Dun Laoighre shopping. D watching batman. D & I do breakfast & gardening (lovely sunny day).

Oct 19

destest and des driver, test before home F crossish Andrea babysit D Fillies, talk, food (Orla & Tom?, neighbours of Margaret (& Rosie & Lily))

Oct 18

thur D doesn't get up with me I get bike out & put windsurf gear in car not quite decided to go. D up & breakfast. Finish making Hummus. Board on car. Bye to F, D cycles to creche with yellow sunglasses. Pass indian guy, bumps, Jintendra. Get cut down destest from libdes working on nios. Big intro for Ken to nios build & sockets & ...

Check weather & tides, half day surfing. WINDSURF big waves big wind

Oct 17

Conor visits. Lucia visits. Up playing Quake. Do a bit more with genhtmlF.bat. D not settling nights scared of dark? Wind? F up l8r tea chat future work teacher/lecture/ed sw? Finish "full tilt" Dervla.

Oct 16

I sort photos on PC at home and write neat bat file to generate html. genhtmlF.bat

Oct 15

foo bar today bit windy boards cycle mail lucia alek dinner talking to seb about windsurf Kitesurf FAQ More ARM reading.

Oct 14

TV off in morning, D plays around rest of day. Quake. Attic visits. Brian Trin Aedin for dinner.

Oct 13

Gardening, cut grass. Shopping arrives, then to Stillorgan. EBS special savings acct

Oct 12

Clean up Trabolgan, fry up omlette, out by 11. Swimming pool, I play lots with D this time. Then in jacussi with Fionnuala. Drive back to Dub in afternoon, no breaks from driving. Freezer is completely defrosted. Clean up.

Oct 11

F plays lots with D, I take photos, they start a beachball game with 2 kids, later others join in too.

Oct 10

We meet up with Mary & Mum & Dad. We walk around Trabolgan a bit visiting playground, indoor gym and beach. Then to Cloyne lovely dinner. F drives us beck home.

Oct 9

F gets up with D, D plays, 9ish I get up & get bkfst, make toast & tea when F gets up. We go exploring. Up hill outside houses, lots of bees & butterflys & wasps on ivy. Apples in the ditch. Walk over a load of briars. Take photos. Over golf course, attacking castle, over barbed wire into Tommy Morisseys field to castle. Run down hill, playground, then D cross.

Home for tomato soup(+chop spaghetti, onion, wine), D play, collect stuff, walk to indoor Jungle play. Diary in palm.

Oct 8

bkfst, carpet up a bit more

leave 12. Trabolgan, park, lunch in little house in playground in shower of rain. Swim. Shopping in co-op in Midleton. Find house & unload shopping. Bolognese for tea. Walk in dark before bed.

tv, tea, bed with massage for F up & down & .

Oct 7

up a bit late puddle on carpet goes under couch. Move couch & it's coming from leaking radiator. Move books/notes, other furniture, iron carpet, hoover it then drain hoover. Breakfast. John gets electric heater. I get chicken, F & M help make stuffing & potatoes, veg, Mum home & makes gravy. D eats mashed potato 1st, likes custard afters.

More carpet, then D F & I in with Mum to flower show. Meet multiple grannies as promised. Interesting flowers. Home, in Tractor fetch cows w D, more talk w Dad looking at field. In to town with trailer & D. Pack up crates & flowers. Home, unload, look at Daff chopper with Dad. Tea.

John recommends The Cross of Cloyne. Mum recommends Browns in Killa eq ctr/book/tv. near Youghal?

Oct 6

up bkfst 101Dalmations for D on tv. He's scared at lots of it. Clean inside of car out. Lots of sand from windsurfing. D helps me with brush & hoover. Then loads of packing. D plays & helps. John phones. Eat scraps from fridge. Drive, onto M50, windy, mostly sunny, odd shower. No delays. Phone Cobh @ nearly Mitchelstown. Bill just in Cobh.

Get to Cobh 5. I shave & get ready. Bill drives myself+John+Susan to viaduct inn. Steak & football match. Then onto wedding. Lots of talk, some dancing, drink food. Mary has just done 1st week of 1st yr. Leave 1ish, V tired, sleep for bits in car. Wake Ballymore.

Oct 5

RAINING.

mail saying lookup intel Xscale & NP. Loads of printing & looking up web before home. Linux proj status mtg superceded by:

Free sandwiches. Cycle home, bike in, F on floor tired after sawing. D visiting Dervala & Joey & David & Chris. I saw skirting boards, then TV, then saw more & F wakes up

Aedín brings ToyStory video for D. We drive 30min to Dub. Surprise restaurat Tante Zoes. Not too hungry, enjoy punch + prawn&salad + spicy fish + coffee. Big talk start dessert children& social systems, F do hdip, moving to Cork.

Walk in Temple bar. International bar fri blues porter house thur/fri woodsie for fri when lads up. Home, bed.

Oct 4

Putting in & out printks of my own flavour, also find bugs I put in there and in cache blasts. Loading image with VxWorks, then hopping over to PMON to look at my print buffer. vsprintf and varargs. Images funny cause the hang seems to occur after cache flush (with mistakenly interrupts on). And the hang doesn't write EX using print.

For Fionn: grep "0901september" /proj/intranet/leop.s3group.com/server/logs/access_log |sort | cut -f1 -d" " |uniq -c |wc -l

Wind looks calm but euroseek looks very promising in afternoon, from South. Forecast for coasts from : Malin Head to Howth Head to Roches Point and for the Irish sea. Wind : Southwest Force 4 or 5 backing Southerly. Increasing Force 6 to gale force 8 this afternoon and evening.

Get Fionn on phone 1:30, get car, stuff bike inside (handlebars bent, 1 seat out, middle seat up, back shelf&buggy on top). Home, Bike out into shed, windsurf gear in, drive via Foxrock, N11, Tollbridge, Dollymount. 15:15 on water. Wind From S, tide all way in going out. See seal in real close and meet him a few times. Wind low at start but I get going through waves more easily. 1 kitesurfer out at start, 2 more later. Wind & waves pick up, I sail way out past yellow/black marker pipes with cormorants standing on them. Wondering what they're marking .... there is also a barrel which ends up in V shallow water, other barrel down by beach seperatoirs marking rocks. Cormorant flies low towards me later and adjusts his course a bit close. Flocks of other birds and also single seabirds around. Uphaul breaks at top in deep water ... interesting tyeing it on ... very bad loop knot to bit of rope left on mast grip ... but it holdsa the rest of the day. Loads of zoom and nearly jump sideways over waves on tack out. Surfing with waves on tack in, sideways, being caught by them or flying over. Some really spectacular (just get sail up and then catch big breaking wave ZOOOOOM) starts. Terrible turns, half carve gybes and struggle tacks. Tide goes wayy out and I scrape fin through sand on way in and then on way out in troughs of waves. Getting real good at balance with big waves coming in I am :).

Quite tired and it's getting dark when I head in, 1st tie footstrap to uphaul and hold sail by bottom of mast. Sail flies itself and also lifts board fin and carries it with each wave. Then tie board closer and walk a bit withj sail flying board ... but that's hard to balance. Next tie all gear together (derig sail, roll up, but that's very heavy and after a biot of a drag I go for car. Quite dusky and it was difficult to see what I thought was car anyway quite far away. As I get closer I know I'm right, ... meet windsurfer with gear all on car and have a great chat. He's curious about myh buoyancy aid as he has a girlfriend too ... :) I recommend it (blocks wind for warmth, better colour than black, doesn't get in way). He sailed early 90s, getting back in now. Dark when I say "bye". I leg it to car & drive to my gear .... difficult to find through sandy/salty/wet/wiper windscreen. Find it I do, stuff in boot fine but it's VERY difficuly getting board on roof. Foam blows off straight away so I leave that. Get board on roof and hold while bringing strap over it ... but it FLIPS and I just hold it & get strap holding it. Then on other side wonder whether to just tie it there ... but that would not be good! So I struggle, get strap all way on, then loosen it & get foam underneath. Drive back up beach splashing through water. Phone home 19:45ish. Then chomp biscuit, chocolate, drink 7up, out of wet gear brrrrrrr! Drive home via docks then in past town centre, out N11, up Brewry road.

vi arch/mips/ld.script . = (. | 0xa0000000); .jamesdebug : { *(.jamesdebug) } /* in uncacheable area */ } [projects@kilkea linux.working]$ objdump -t vmlinux |grep james 801da000 l d jamesdebug 00000000 801c76d8 l O .data 00000004 jamesPrintkCounter.532 801c76dc l O .data 00000004 jamesPrintkWrapCounter.533 801e2400 g O STACK 00004000 jamesArrayRec 801e2000 g O *ABS* 00000000 __stop_jamesdebug 801da000 g O *ABS* 00000000 __start_jamesdebug 8011c73c g F .text 0000029c james_printk 8010cc3c g F .text 00000134 james_debug 8010cb2c g F .text 00000110 james_debug_1 801e2000 g O STACK 00000400 jamesArray 801da000 g O jamesdebug 00008000 jamesPrintkArray 8010cd70 g F .text 00000078 james_memrec

Oct 3

Windy, D & I cycle to creche after breakfast. F got up early with palm alarm to try and dodge traffic. D saying goodbye gives kiss and very nice hug. Lots of cars on roads. Some digger has dug wall so I almost cycle all way to S3 getting off only at mound.

Hacking at the mips linux build, type up notes in one place too ready to document stuff. With linux implement printk and very satisfying to see linux print strings (partially) in the buffer in memory after the hang. At end of day put print in Exception handler at 0x180 and see it fill print buffer with "EX"0180.

D & I get home and meet Conor. We call in and Conor & Emma come visit. Lisa is going out too. Emma is a bit sad so slight clown mode and we all get hats. Fionn comes home and D & Conor get more boisterous and eventually Emma cries. D helps me cook sausages (but they spit at him until he puts on oven gloves). Pasta. Lentils & tiny potatoes & onion & leek & garlic and then curry. Everyone has juice.

D & Conor & Emma play/watch telly more quietly and get bars from shark. Stan calls, then F does most of work putting D to bed. I read story.

I read Harry Potter. Also Arctic and Antartic on telly. Bike in later. Fionnuala heads to residents meeting with lots of subs money.

Oct 2

head down in work hack hack linux

Oct 1

Pauline twists ankle walking to bus & gets a lift back. Rings doorbell, I leap up, wake, throw on trousers, then get frozen green beans, light candles, etc.. F up too, gets D up a bit later.

brunching shuttlecocks lore irelandwave

sizeof doesn't work in #if directives gcc docs cpp gcc manual attributes, __func__, __LINE__, __FILE__ #if

Dinner curry (mild) with chicken + veg + coconut milk looks greenish.

Sep 30

sun 30 D plays, then up+bkfst. Cycle shop for milk. F bkfst

All cycle to Lamb's cross 10:30/11ish grassland, woods(birch) grass thistle clover napweed heads purple like thistle blue holly butterfly sunny spring day stonechats thrush robin hawthorn=whitethorn blackthorn=sloe wild dogrose

butcher roast chicken dinner relax stiffish, D plays.

Pauline comes out for visit in evening. I cook ?

Sep 29

D wakes us up, F reads, D plays with computer. I fail to persuade F to have sex :). I go and get breakfast with D & load wsurf gear on car. Going to Dollymount as wind is S, F & D hear & park near so they come too. Collect food toys bags coats ...

On road go via RDS & toll-bridge. Talk British woman living in Dublin show on radio. Get to beach b4 12ish. I rig up while D plays, F traces "Daddy" & "James" in sand with him. He traces big line. Agree in @ 3.

4/5 kitesurfers out when I start. I tack port stbd port and get creamed by waves. Wind not great. Go further out and sailing is easier. Bigish waves all the way out, surf on them on the way in. Slog up&down an hour, then wind picks up, still gusty but good strong mostly. Much easier creaming over waves fully in harness.

@ nearly 3 I'm having 1 last go (of 2/3) furthest out of all kites/sails. I see a person swimming! Looking again it looks more like a crazy dog? I sail on & turn & fall in. Just as I get sail up I see funny swirl with beack thing in water. Then a seal's head pops up quite close looking at me. I "ruarr" seal hello & sail on, then regret not staying to talk more. Back out & in but don't meet them again.

Get in after 3, tide half out now longish trip to car carrying sail then board. Wsurf 8 kite 17 land 1 out. I eat melted choc & orange & drink water. Mobile doesn't work 1st, then does. Arrange to meet F @ park w car. Long time & lots of sand packing up gear & undressing.

Drive & meet F&D & we tell each other's stories. D&F explored big grass, played football with boy on beach, walked in St Anne's Pk, found model racing cars, playground & kid Brian who got punched by bigger kid!? :(

5 now, ring Bill then visit. Kids, lovely house, tea, D & I go looking for shop which turns into a little adventure when we go the wronq way. After shop run back. Then drive. Park Irish Life centre, walk 101 Talbot St.

Dinner talk red Rawsons ? Yum. D has bread, pasta. Later choc cake. Sites at home in Cobh. John getting outline planning permission. Hmmmm.

To pub Long Stone, back to carpark @ jog to rescue F&D. Keys. Warm night, white shirt on. Bus 44C 11:25ish home.

Sep 28

cokelore and Coke spermicide!?!? Richard Dawkins science

***** Dump of jamescoWorkBAckup Starts 	@ Fri Sep 28 11:23:24 2001
	Dump jamescoWorkBAckup to /tmp/burncd
***** Dump of jamescoWorkBAckup Finished	@ Fri Sep 28 11:29:55 2001

***** Burn of jamescoWorkBAckup Starts 	@ Fri Sep 28 11:48:14 2001
	Burn jamescoWorkBAckup to /dev/rcdr0c
***** Burn of jamescoWorkBAckup Finished	@ Fri Sep 28 12:46:29 2001

/usr/local/bin/cdcreation -> /appli/tools/systems/kpar/cdwrite/cdcreation setenv PATH ${PATH}:/opt/KPAR/bin cdverify doesn't work BUT the cd did ... YAyyyyy! :) Loads of stuff (from 1991 to now) backed up there.

Sep 27

Fixing up out of date links on webpages. Philips share price ss
Edit bugle picture for S3 Bugle magasine. (gimp)

PMON z85c30
Linux driver for Z8530 based HDLC cards for AX.25: html doc SCC.C doc scc.c

Dossing
The Onion: God Clarifies Don't Kill Apple NOT Thinking Different Hilarious, very irreverent.
Mike Kelly, empire and other stuff. Gary Pigott tycho Real Programmers

Home, collect D on bike, Conor & Lisa invite him in, cook funny dinner.

Sound out campfire songs on recorder to get notes.

Fionnuala still very happy about the massage.

Sep 26

Take half day, bike on car, go home (Tracey is there), load gear on car. Traffic. Where to go? Dun Laoihgre. Wind from East difficult direction, good strength then weaker. In at 5, drive home, some traffic, D & F walk.

Conor visits.

Lots of candles. Music. Pillows Massage for fionnuala.

forhead, back of neck
Back: up spine with thumbs, then efflurage up spine & down sides rythmically, then circles (roughly same macro movement)
Tummy: from back/sides up and back down from sternum down and back up, rythmically
Legs: up shins & down calves rythmically, circles at ankles
film: There's Something about Mary. Fionnuala sleeps at first.

Sep 25

Internet Exploder only :( maps: St. John O'Gods Mount Eagle Way Mount Eagle Green Zoom in: Sandyford Business Park map Surprise! S3, Microsoft & LEopardstown Race COurse Gates S3 buildings aerial view

Messing the whole day. The Register, news & BOFH rxvt.org rxvt ftp Mail geeksrv, writing tetris in c add colours, my old fractal/uni programs, waider GPS & map perl.

Sep 24

Up just as Fionnuala leaves, then D gets up, I shower & he turns on TV. He eats breakfast slowly in front of Teletubbies & Bear in Big Blue house. It rains just after I drop him to creche.

In work, mail BEn, diary. Blanchardstown Institute rg Ben, workingin Blanchardstown, living Castleknock: fingalcoco map.

linux ev-64115 rm5200 user manual

  /home/projects/mips/linux.working/arch/mips/kernel/head.S
       /home/projects/mips/linux.working/arch/mips/kernel/traps.S/s
        memcpy((void *)(KSEG0 + 0x80), &except_vec1_generic, 0x80);
        mike_val = read_32bit_cp0_register(CP0_STATUS);
        memcpy((void *)(KSEG0 + 0x100), &except_vec2_generic, 0x80);
        //flush_icache_range(KSEG0 + 0x80, KSEG0 + 0x200);

algor pmon Lots in Algor about Galileo and RM5320 so ... sde-mips might support our config? SDE-MIPS user guide pmon e.g.?

Wind might be good Wednesday, 2001-09-26 8:20 PM IST 3.42 meters High Tide Aslan Mike Rachel hst

Sep 23

Gardening: Collecting seeds: sweetpea, marigold, radish, rocket. Rake leaves from lawn, cut grass, dig ivy from herb bed and move to front fence.

D visits Conor. Cabbage burgers & salsa + greek yoghurt. Mmmmmm.

Marlay park walled gardens, loads of herbs, HUGE veg, chucks everywhere. D cycles his bike. We walk around the wall before & F & I bump into each other ... ow!

Sep 22

Into Dublin by bus. Meet MAry & Mags (her sister) in Temple bar food market, meet Aedin too). Walk to Guinness Hopstore & go in but doin't do tour. (F too tired) Shopping augh! Walk up O'Conell St, Maternity t-shirts. Back via camping shop. An Tain brochure, Mournes map. Home again by bus.

Curried cabbage burgers!!! Very sticky. V late up watching TV. Interesting films ... Apex, sci-fi timetravel & robots.

Sep 21

Sep 20

Sep 19

shareware (t.b ppl)

Sep 18

Visit www.fourmilab.ch again. Download & play base64 and md5 tools. Useful for work. I should get homeplannet again.
From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne

ba-moi-ba Vietnamese beer "33" (Tiger Piss) from viet-vet-glossary
mot=1 hai=2 ba=3 bon=4 nam=5 sal=6 bai=7 tam=8 chin=9 moui=10 tram=100 e.g. hai moui tram dong = 2000 dong

Sep 17

misc: stepaside residents m50 step inn dun Laoighre news
windsurf rules cygwin manual

Head from work shortly after 5. Meet F&D at home, drive to Stillorgan. Buy heater in Did electric, put in car, meet Aedin, then Hugh & Michelle. Cioppoto ??? Fish, mussles in tomato sauce and bread. Yum. Daire has bbq ribs & chips. Orange juice first. I have becks. Look at stars, cassiopeia & andromeda mostly.

Sep 16

Sunday we all go to town together & visit Waterways visitor centre which is deserted except for us. Drive to Blackrock (v bad traffic at Blackrock) and stop and have windy picnic. F & D stay to visit playground and shops and get DART later. I go surfing to Dun Laoighre. Arrive, talk, rig up ... looks VERY windy. Carry board out good long way, then scream out. Huge wind for my sail, good fun though. Wind does drop a bit after being out a good bit -- others off water. One left on end with homemade board and ancient jeep. I see D & F and head in, derig, chat, home.

Sep 15

F up with D. D wakes me @ 10ish. F gone to hairdresser. D plays with computer. I do diary. f back from hairdresser. TV off. D crossish about lots, ok playing. F on couch talking asking what writing/thinking.

brownbread (homemade) & tv windsurfstuff off car

I'm reluctant to go into town to visit new food market, seems far to go. But anyway. Traffic extremely bad backed up Leop roundabout. We go left instead to Dundrum. My mood gets crashes & I'm thinking vegging @ home would be more fun definately. Probably mistake? Traffic from M50? Town would've been fine? We go to Nutgrove SC. Parking terrible, we park on road. I'm horribly sulky, shoes for D, bank, Harry Potter 2nd book, tupperware shape sorter. Playground. Back home. Eat. Nap. Mood better. Talk F. Eat. Tea.

Sep 14

D comes in & I get up with him after a while. Breakfast then we check the weather. Force 7ish to gale 9. Meant to drop later, but didn't. Make coffee & hot choc for more bkfst when Fionn gets up. D helps load wsurf gear on car & plays football.

guitar & D too noisy for Fionnuala. She heads to bed & I go windsurfing 11:00.

No other surfers there. Wind looks gusty, not v strong so I rig up 6.8m. Tide is in. Into water & find wind more W than expected. Sail towards shore, then tack & out towards Poolbeg. Wind halfinhalf enough to plane. I make my way up to Blackrock and Ringsend towers. Shallow both sides, keep away from dredgers. 3 kitesurfers sail from Blackrock. Wind increasing and I get really bounced off chop a couple of times. Sail through chop steering & managing waves fun. Go downwind a bit towards DunL then. Sailboat comes up. Wind howls & I loose ctrl and big splash. By now a few other windsurfers out. I go back & sail & get whacked in water again. Patrick helping kitesurfer. In for rest. Can't carry board/sail over gunge. Bar, water, its 3:xx! Meet Aussie ?mark?jamessfriend with his batteredtodeath283. Few old boards there being resurrected. One guy says not been out for 4 yrs just got £4000 equip. Out again. Wind howling & waves battering my arms. Fall in once more at speed, then in. Board, sail carry trickey. Derig. Patrick in 7.x sail too big. Dress, board on top, bottles/cans recycle, home.

Everyone on couch reading Annie ? poems. Emily a bit teary. F says D got jealous & went all quiet & cried earlier. Kids are a bit cross, have petit filous. I collect scraps & combine with dinner for me & microwave it. Andrea calls. Tea & talk. Emily & D happy running around. I eat dinner after Andrea qoes home. Some tv.

D & I go and play football, traffic cones, then D leads over to tennis courts volleyball. Then rock climbing. We find big rubbish bag & pick up lots more cans, bottles & plastic. Work our way through thorny bushes to corner. Also find full beer. 1st we leave it there, take rubbish home. Then we go back & unguiltily steal it: kids could easily find it so our messags is: hide it better! We put it in Jay's bag which looks like it is used for it. It spits rain so D & I speed home.

tv on all night with attackonamerica.

Bring D to bed, make herb tea & eat yummy sticky bun F brought me from work. Sort out rubbish, crush cans, gets icky lower down. cans: 1 yel box crushed + a likkle 3 bud btl 1 coors 1 mgd 1 rigo 2? 2nagans, 1 vodka count rostov 1 chardonnay Can hear shouts from where we got beer.

long shower, hair detangle, F cuts hair after. I say just trim but she cuts good bit off again. Munch bread+choriso+cheese+mustard, bed. Baby kicks me a good bit from Fs tummy.

Sep 13

success playing with gt64115 serial settings Find hyperterm doesn't change settings (mostly!) until disconnect & reconnect. So changing settings, disconnect & reconnect brings up a PMON interface. Lovely ASCII barfic PMON. I leave out a pleased whoop that luckily nobody hears & go find Mike. pmon commands

Coffee then
No luck with about 1 hr trying to configure & make & get gcc/libs working for tix with Emanuel. They've a cool configurrable ReedSolomon block which can do stuff (CRC/whatever) for DVB, ... star

serial port playing use select for non-blocking read ? dfdfdf Intro Serial Prog and now binary mode ? to mayny fffffs because of slowness on nios side maybe? fcntl write open stopb configuring the serial port

gales last 2 days remember to change read back tu 20 chars per go and ((int)t[x])&0xff finished Harry Potter book D to bed late.

Feel different to people. I can't do anything about America so I don't really care and all the news is just annoying & worrying.

Sep 12

Headline screams "Huge neglect of diary!!!"!!

Finished a Makefile for building altera-nios software + srec + mif + hex files. Finished perl mif2mif+80.pl and mif2hex.pl scripts.
Mum & Dad coming around tonight.

The controller: Galileo GT64115 ev-64115 board GT-64115
QED RM523x and NEC VR4300 CPUs QED RM5231 manual NEC VR43xx QEDmpu (we're trying to put linux on this).

Sep 11

Very busy hacking Makefiles & perl. RTFM is useful. I now understand implicit rules. GNU make manual Howto write a Makefile

Aircraft hijacked and crash into World Trade Centre in New York. Quite shocking ... very nasty indeed. Also crash into pentagon and another in the country, car bomb somewhere too. Pauline mails Billy & Barry Drummy who saw 2nd plane but they're ok. Heart jumps when I hear a jet overhead.
World Trade Centre America Attack Osama Bin Laden ? esr

Buried in Makefiles & perl again busy for rest of day.

Fionnuala cycles off home & we arrange ...

Sep 8

Lookup web in Limerick (out to restaurant ?fri? Chinese on Sunday with Colm. http://www.ecosolutions.com/s-4.htm http://www.greenpeace.org/pressreleases/toxics/2001apr25.html http://www.greenpeace.org/%7Etoxics/reports/euincin.pdf http://www.greenpeace.org/ http://www.no-burn.org/default.html http://www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/html/content/incineration/alternatives.html http://www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/students/clas_act/haz-ed/analysis.htm http://www.epa.gov/ http://www.epa.gov/ebtpages/wastes.html http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/combust.htm Hazardous Waste Combustion On May 19,1993, EPA announced the release of its Draft Hazardous Waste Minimization and Combustion Strategy. The goals of the Strategy were to, first, achieve reductions in the amount of hazardous waste generated in this country and, second, to further improve the safety and reliability of hazardous waste combustion in incinerators and boilers and industrial furnaces (BIFs). http://www1.buyandsell.net/classifieds/index-2.php?mfcisapicommand=search&Query=boat&Location=0-15 http://www.alanigroup.com/seakers/sail_listU15.htm http://www.dayskipper.com/blue_pages/clubs.htm http://www.dayskipper.com/blue_pages/charts.htm http://www.dayskipper.com/training_zone/index.htm http://www.sailing.ie

AugSep ?

Bill has mangled floppies, I recover one & grab text from other. dos FAT/dir/other formats

dd if=3D/dev/fd0 of=3Dfloppy.img bs=3D18k
r
rrr
//j/install/RWFLOPPY.EXE /RA /T144 /FD:\FOO.TXT

rwfloppy cmech78 fdimage Fussy crippled utilities ... there was a trick to running them! (must have exe in current directory?)

Aug 21

Aug 20

wsurf half day??? OPM Heaven is a half pipe If I die b4 I wake E-G-AbGEB chords eae

Aug 19

I suffer much from the beer. We go visit poolbeg pier & lighthouse, sun wind rain in distance, walk with D in buggy, bring binoculars. Bring windsurfer & nice wind but don't surf. phantom film

Aug 18

Tom Petty song chords c f q!=g?a c
Trouble Blew in on a cold dark wind
notes start?
FG A BB C Bb- A G Fx2
singA Bb A G AorF  A Bb A G Fx2
ohC F C- D C G A A Bb A G A
ohC F C- D C G A A Bb A G F

We're at home and Rachel & Wulf visit, back from France, a bit chilly as their jackets were stolen, they collect some bags. We feed them nice pasta-fish and wine and D heads to bed. Then F & I leave them babysitting!! We go to Fillies and meet up with all creche girls for Helen's going away. Loads of chat and much too many rounds are bought. Loads of them are smokers. I'm struggling through pints of Guinness, others are struggling through bright red things.

Aug 14

Aug 13

Monday - back to work.

Aug 12

Back to Dublin from Spanish Point?Limerick? Drive is grand and quick, while all Ireland hurling Tip vs Galway on. (Tip wins). First time on new M50 open to Dundrum. Have to go practically to Dundrum and then back towards Sandyford though at the end.

Rachel & Wulf did actually stay, they've gone to France on holidays.

Aug 11

Aug 10

Aug 9

Aug 8

Aug 7

Aug 6

From Aug x to aug x+n we visit Spanish point, Lahinch (surf), Galway. spawn.com figures cool! Spiderman/futurama figures D write a fantasy in Jabberwock land tetris in forth forth in perl? c spiderman/batman book/video/.

Aug 5

Sunday, drive to Limerick

Aug 4

Mum & D bake Around Ireland with a Fridge Lookup Edward Lear The time has come the Walrus said ... Cabbages & Kings.

Aug 3

bkfst, walk James's Fort, rock climb. Houss shop, dinner in the white horse. Drive Cobh, daffodil picking, cleaning mackerel, Patricia from Spain

Aug 2

D plays w kids, we pack. drive to Kinsale sail rain Chips & fish picnic. Walk, playground B&B

Aug 1

Mizen head. D gets F to drive. Heron's cove restaurant Goleen. Picnic

Jul 31

cycle Skull, courtyard restaurant. Playground, wind against us, country roads Toomovara, hayfield. I zoö cycle. 20to6, 20 mins to BarleyCove thru Goleen

Jul 30

mon pack, drive S Glengarrif woods, picnic & play/paddle in river & walk. Drive Barleycove.

Jul 29

gap of Dunloe drive Beautiful seafood sandwich & brown bread. Killarney money gear taxi tent walk town meet F&D Italian restaurant

Jul 28

up early Carrauntoohil lovely day up quick but not zoom swim corrie lots pictures down Declan's tent, up mine Stonechat restaurant review
Killarney town street map tour good map

Jul 27

up, call garage, breakfast with D. Drop D to creche & visit garage on way with keys. V busy work. New bldg, table football/tennis again. Pack desk into red boxes. Car works, F brings my gear in, takes bike home. Meet @ 4 Niamh, Renaud, Nathalie. Declan comes, off to Lmk, fast car eek. Stop Lmk, ring, others in front. Renaud & Declan get caught by the gardaí. Adare steak. Killarney slower. Shop. Campsite, up tents, wine.
Flesk Muckross Camping Flesk Muckross Camping

Jul 26

thur
garden, pack
water in car oil. Oops. Cough whine.
Mechanic.

YEs, well, not the proudest moment of my car servicing history. After work I had come home and was out front. Weeding & doing stuff. Car needs service quite soon and Fionnuala will be driving it so I top up water etc... The oil sump is definately not openable by a mere mortal like me. I have a "moment", ... I look for the radiator (car doesn't have water cooling!), ... I look at the oil cap (not of course realising it's the oil cap), looks remarkably like the radiator cap on the toyota. Off she comes and in go the dregs of the jug of water I'm holding.
Then ensue a few panic striken (but calm) moments. Oh shit! Look up manual to make sure sure. Yes oil. This will not be good given that the water will sink to the most vital parts? I start engine very briefly and yep, horrendous noise.
In I go and tell Fionnuala and ring up garage close by and arrange for him to collect and fix it and also admit that I did actually start it but very briefly (definately confirmed that you shouldn't start your car afer pouring water into the oil sump).

Jul 20

Jul 19

Jul 18

Jul 17

Jul 16

Fionns alarm goes off and she turns it off. BAck to sleep. F awake 9:20. I bounce up & dressed.

Arrive in 10:10, check mail, find where status mtg is & go. PocketGammon hack works g` => g` myriad16 dbase hack script/env until stuck with ncesim ld.so.1 lib error. Beer Write 0x42 to SLICs => E0 thingy set, not as with hardware diags, not as with sstelcom code

Jul 15

Urgh ... D up early, F gets up. I get up 9:30ish after everyone else is up & breakfasted. F brings Ines & Ewa home after a bit. D visits Conor for ages. Loads of gardening, cut lawn, tidy chop, plant things out front. kites ...

Jul 14

Sat, Dublin w D & F & Hugh&Brian&Mark&Jason. Camping shop. Meet Ewa and Ines. S3 BBQ. Food. Salsa.

Jul 13

D up real early, into us 7. Persuade him back to bed but he cries. In again 8ish, into my side. All asleep & wake up before 10. D & I get breakfast, rubbish out, I cycle to work, clouds, not too cold.

Mail from Doug & Ricardo about running our tests in Tempe. This is a bit awkward. Mtgs w Karel, Fergus, Ruairi

• 1 setup good db in Tempe. Get our db w Karels mods (find . -newer file fun). Explain why need updates, Doug doesn't like it. More l8r.
• get s3 code/test struct to Tempe
• setup env, scripts in s3_systest
• tar stuff, big mail, Ricardo phones
• pray?
Kens test, check for initial reset. Krzys sister Ewa might bbq babysit?

Home after 6. Fionn on phone, Hugh & friends miss flight. D & I eat potato & pork (& tomato, pepper, mayo, cheese for me). D gulps. F away to dinner with soccer team.

D & I call to Conor with ball & persuade him to come out & play. D & then Conor are goalies. Then we wander into burnt gorse and pick up some rubbish. Play hide & go seek too. Wee lads love it when I run slowly away & eventually get caught. Pick up more plastic, cans mostly, 2 burnt golf balls, 1 tennis ball, 1 racket, 1 boing ball, several full tins. C to loo, then D to loo in our house & we get big plastic bag. Out, more rubbish & hide under trees from rain. Then into our house. Ewa's number doesn't work. Lads squirt water at each other.

Conor home. Emma wants to come out again. Visit Mark, D brings gun. Back home. Pjs, teeth, story & bed. Diary in palm, lots of clothes folding. GET HOUSE READY FOR HUGH & friends. They arrive, tea & tv.

Jul 12

loads of MPI driver coding, sending lots of bytes, some read fails at end. Lash rain going home. Meet F & D outside creche, follow them home.

Fionn doesn't go to soccer. D quite tired, a bit cross. I snack, sardine sandwich, milk. D & I go shopping. To bank 1st, then get groceries. At checkout clickclack box falls full & explodes. Oops. Ccard slow so waiting anyway even after picking up everything. Daire v concerned about box. "why?"

D falls asleep in car, F asleep on couch. I unpack groceries. Tv. Xfer D upstairs, he wakes a bit, coughs and gets sick a bit. Very sleepy & unhappy. Can't do much so he heads off to sleep.

benny & joon, other tv, sex course, bed, magic army

Jul 11

wed windy cycle creche photos, mails walk James Curran MPI driver, des doc & coding lots

home, cook spicey veg stir fry + prawns. Rice & sauce for D.

windsurf 7:30. Last on water, gusty fast, crossshoreish, last off water. Glorious yellow sunset thru one cloud.

Jul 10

if you get the feeling that everything is under control then (the wind is/you are) probably not going fast enough Spi tests, looking at, silicon ppl mips alignment testing, int hdl struct packing, lwl/lwr weirdness big wind out, hail + thunder lunch bit cycle home shirt David birthday party D stays, F soccer, I tidy D home yoghurt pjs TV bed

Jul 9

Talk Waider & Clarkey & Pauline.

Running SPI tests again on updated database, looking more at verilog and trying to find testbench & responder parts of spi.

Jul 8

Cerial at campsite, pack up. Drive and then breakfast (fry for me) in Laragh. On to Clara-Lara funpark.

Fantastic fun! We're there very early and climb and swing all around the lakes before going paddling in a boat. Paddles are pretty small and I want to paddle a bit too fast. We get snack of chips & sausage & blue stuff for D, coke for me. 12ish. Then over to different paddly boats (with proper canoe paddles, but wetter. Huge scary slide ... real stomach moving drop, F goes, D & I observe, then me, then F & D, me again, ... Nice atmosphere hanging round top/bottom with some scared kids, others not. Crazy golf, more climbingh and swinging, picnic, more paddling for D & me.

Drive back. Watered our own garden. Unpacked a bit. Called over to Aedin and after apple tart dig away and get half grass dug before F comes back and takes us away but doesn't make it to soccer practice. D to bed but he gets up once. TV. Film "The Quick & The Dead".

Jul 7

Up real early ... 9? :) Certainly made sure we made the absolute most of each day ... must be getting old myself though as I'm a bit sleepy after it. We toured the countryside, visited Avoca, walked around. D a bit cross and hungry but F doesn't want to get snack. We buy bread & ham and drinks and looptheloop for D at petrol station. Then drive to meeting of waters and had picnic beside river. D & I play throwing sticks (boats) into water.

Went to Brittas bay. F & D asleep in car. I walk on beach, chatted to & walked with by girl with baby. Hmmmm! Looked at the dunes, back to car, looked at maps. Eventually D wakes and F too. We made a huge hole in the beach. Dug down through blacker layers. Puddle of water in bottom. We made a sandcastle out of the contents of the hole.

Back to campsite. Play in playground with Daire, F gets takeaway. Food, Bob the Builder, bed. Bed quite early ... lots of people talking passing by tent. I think it rained & talk finished & I slept.

Jul 6

less SPI work, looking at mixed hw/sw problem causing bus lockup Robbie & Maeve's photos. Bill, CRC floppy errors + melissa

Home, dinner, packing. Drive down to Wicklow and camp in Redcross River Valley Camping&Caravans. Played in playground, pitched tent ("augh - no pegs" - Fionnuala got them in shop). Daire stayed awake for ages talking to himself in the tent. I finished "Reading in ther Dark" (in the dark) outside before bed.

Jul 5

SPI work

Home, D sits on wall, eats small amount of a few things - yoghurt mullerRice waffle bean I fry spicy celery+onion+rocket+parsely+soysauce+pepper+chilli+rasher. D stirs a bit. We cycle to Balally, D remembers Ballyshan. Arrive just as gang is heading away/chatting. Martina. Play football, D & F & me in goals. Then cycle with F back to car, (by Ace tyres), cycle over weeds out onto road. Home before car. We spot Chris + David + Joey playing football & join them. Then indoors, D gets juice and is cross so I bring him up for pyjamas. Down again, D dawdles over juice, then up to bed, loo, teeth, book. Loads of flick flick flick TV, no snails/slugs, Robbie/Maeve photos till very late.

Jul 4

SPI work

Jul 3

tue huge drive to dub F to football unpack car ontangling kites& get D noodles, thsn D bed. Loads untangling, clothes washing, snail/slug kill, plant water(some dried out marigolds in tent) misty/raining, diary 2:35 bed

Jul 2

mon compu Cobh bookmark fix, Dairy Management News by John Donworth (internet exploder only (or View Source)) Kagou/Kak OutlookExpress worm fix. F to train to work. Bally shan, bulbs. D in tractor with Grandad tossing hay. Me & mum explore ditch. Dad bday cake after tsa.

Jul 1

Diary sun 1 Jul 2001 urgh. Hangover not bad really. To Cobh 4, LmkvsTip hurling match. Fota golf. D sleeps. Chair falls over. Cooking tea, tell mum. J bday. D really happy

Jun 30

Sat R&M wedding. Church. Loads friends. To hotel. Drinks in sun. Photos. Dinner. Disco. I get cross 1ce again. F doesn't want to do any dance steps with me. Okay after a bit. Very good day/night. Home 2/3ish.

Jun 29

Fri Pack clothes for me & D. Suit. Pack other stuff. Run out of packing. We go play kites. Ds small sled up 1st. Big kite zooms. Conor & Lisa & gf & Emma & Assumpta join us. L&g try fly Ds kite. D&C try fly Conors. Sled in tree, F wants us to go D&C tangle 2 big kites horrendously while I'm trying to detangle sled with L&g. Dump kites inside. F impatient & I get cross. She drives to Dundrum carpet all way long bypass Dundrum.

better after, she's not cross. Drive to Lk, country roads around Kildare, petrol & snack Roscrea. D gets coleslaw - oops. Roadworks not too bad. Lmk LOADs of traffic. We go double back, country roads.

put together bed - fun. Computer(fri/sat/sun) - open, look at vid card & sound card. Find drivers - eek 3M & 4Mish. They work.

Jun 28

Diary thur 28 Jun 2001 I drop D to creche. In late for war mtg Marks test finds SPI code error, fix & retest. Check mail, send "coffee morn now!" mail, spill biscuits & make coffee & have biscuit. Then back to rest of SPI tests. Iterating: adding new func, fixing test error, tidying, adding selfcheck, diag error on occasion. PIC code scary! 2 tests left: read, interrupt

Zoom home. F gets D. Fs parents arrive 9ish. Loads of Tuscany/Florence/carpet talk. I get bored, fix watch, stuff.

Jun 27

Wed work b4 9 war mtg SPI loads more tests written, Mark starts on 2 ena/dis int tests. Code fixes as well as buckets of test code.

F collects D. P visits. Dinner, D & I shop fr smarties & biscuits, TV.

Jun 26

tue26or mon? into work, mail, MyrIAD war mtg. Look @ spi, 4 tests there, not self checking, 12 defined. Clear up PM slic/slac change & go at spi. Get loads done. Self checking on some tests.

F football, I head & collect D.

Jun 24

Sun24 wind surprising good Wsurf Dollymount, 1st time in a week! Drop F&D to Marlay.

Jun 23

sat23 bday prez from F. Hamper. Noice! Town, books, prez Robbie & Maeve. D walks. Call into Sheila, Grandad, garden.

Jun 19

Jun 18

Jun 17

Jun 16

http://www.flugtag.ie/ http://www.thecraic.net/flugtag1.html http://edscape2001.homestead.com/flugtag.html http://www.brewcrew.ie/brewcrew/ ?

Jun 15

Jun 14

Kick-ups game VALLAURIS, between Cannes & Nice. Right between Cannes and Antibes. Picasso country. provenceweb.fr Vallauris

Windsurf maillist, water quality.

Andrew Sarratt:
On the water – I was sailing at Seapoint - Monday evening about two weeks ago before the bank holiday weekend. As usual we ended up chasing the gust
around – but had some good blasts on my AHD 70 – WHAT A BOARD – ALAN WHAY ARE YOU NOT SELLING MORE OF THESE.. The water looked
dirty and I end up catching a bug and had it over the bank holiday - 6 days to shake off.

Me:
I think my immune system must have built up some resistance to Dun Laoighre bugs!
No illness this year yet.
It's been built up though by part of a youth spent in Cork harbour.
  (where the natural bacteria are enhanced by all the pharmesuticals).
Last year I did get sore throat & cough that lasted a good while and I think
it was definately Dun Laoighre water.

Ciaran Timlin: 
> I have often felt ill after swallowing water from Seapoint.
> Sometimes just a not-quite-well feeling for a few days and often a
> particluar type of sore throat and cough that I can definatly identify as
> comming from there (sort of a meaty feeling at the back of my throat).
> Not every time though, often there no ill effects.

Seapoint, Blue flag beach, Dublin 2001. "A sandy beach with a promenade situated close to Dublin City and accessible by DART train and bus."

FEEE blueflag.org criteria short list Salthill definately falls down on a good number of those. EPA Ireland charge for reports. Suspicious?

EU Bathing Water Quality Report 2000 Ireland Looks like we've lovely quality ... which is reasonably believable ... but not entirely. I dunno if I'd trust the EPA!

Pollution protection from rec.windsurfing
In our otorhinolaryngology office we suggest a home brew of 1/3 white vinegar and 2/3 rubbing alcohol. This dries and acidifies the ear canal, which it likes, and the bugs, (both bacterial and fungal) don't.

rain, home, heat dinner, D v cross over babminton racket. Distract with superman on TV. 2 yoghurts. Doesn't want dinner but comes after while when John & I sit down. D bed, tidy up, Sung dynasty bridge tv. John heads. Lots of tidy attic, cupboard, clothes, Fionn home. Presents, kite, Chinese outfit, D & P. Tired, F bed, I tidy, kill slugs, then book, sleep.

Jun 13

D comes in real early. We both sleep. I'm awake 1st 8:15ish. D dresses enthusiastically & we breakfast & head. More traffic left on road these days. D is excited about zoo.

V busy work. Slic/slac mtg + work. PM code spagetti headerfile syndrome. Tricky to take one thing without three more which each need two-five more etc... Mark, Krzy, Mark about various things. John heads to work! SPI Ben. Big political debate on dspsrv.

A film to see: The fabulous destiny of Ameile Poulain imdb

Mail from a sailor on USS Arctic (AOE8 details o) asking for gun and country&western bar. Yikes!

5:45 leg it to creche through race traffic. Lovely sunny evening. D hangs out of me & climbs like a baby gorilla.

Cook roast potatoes, Fionn phones us, bells in bkgnd again, roast veg+chicken. Put on wash. D plays talk game by self with click-clack box. Diary palm. D gets me away from Palm, we play, eat dinner, then bring him to bed. Some TV, wash clothes, John back later. Hang clothes on line, look at Mars. Bed.

Jun 12

Fionnuala up 5:30, I sleep again. D comes to get me up. I take too long & he wants breakfast before clothes. We both get cross but make up when we get food. I have strawberry with mine.

work big dspsrv vote thread

Home, D visits Conor, I cook pasta, rasher+veg+stock+salmon at end. John 3 job offers. Pleased. Mix pasta. Assumpta calls. C & D on bikes tennis court. D crying going downhill a little. Cheers up when I chase them with pulled weeds. football home D to bed Fionn water plants computer & transformer tidy photo scan& manipulate bed l8r than intended

Jun 11

F brings D to creche.

Busy work, baseAddr, macros, pointers, loads of SLIC/SLAC iface. Also palm hack.

I collect D. Potatoes, celery+onion+tomato +chilli-salsa-veg, bbq pork chop. D has sardine sandwich. Cross after I turn off hose. Slugs die later.

maporama.com yeowk yeowk2

Address
Country:
Austria Belgium France Ireland Italy Netherlands Poland Portugal Spain Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom USA
Address, station, points of interest:
Post code:
City: (mandatory)

Jun 10

Sun Suffering a bit with hangover. Not too bad. city centre. Clown Dutch guy. Chess. Shop.

Jun 9

Sat F up early with Daire 10:20 wants to shop in Dun Laoighre. I want to windsurf. Get snack & load gear. F grr about P coming out w/o asking :-(. Also cross about wasting morning.

Okay though. Park near ferry entrance. Walk to shops, I take Daire, go to Art&Hobby shop, find Conor a present for birthday. F meets us, D plays on cars, we browse shops. Get triangle foldy floor cushions for Pauline. Get lunch in little cafe place. Nice. D minds table. They bring food. I go back up with D for ketchup.

After I drive D & F to bus & go to water. Wind looks iffy, I rig up 6.8 sail and it looks like it could be too much ... but it's fine. Sail back & forward, wind cross-shore - ish. Wind changes direction, now sailing to Monkstown and back. Wind completely drops. I try hold up sail buit fall in a few times. Wait a while, then swim in to shore.
Wind picks up after a little wait in water at shore. Learners gone, more experinced ppl (looking inexperienced) back sailing. In after a little while. Wind really blows after I dismantle sail. Very tempting to go out. One guy goes (Paul - discover later) and I put sail back, can't downhaul. Wind drops. Pack up gear & head home 6ish.

I go to shop & get bread, make salad and we have tea. Pauline arrives and F & I head (after shower). Pauline & John babysit Daire.

Ken's BBQ is great ... Ken cooks real hard and looks after people. I'm a cheeky chappie over "they did it on the Shannon". Nice garlic mushrooms, burgers, salsa, salad, ... I drink red wine. Meet ?Conor? Ken's friend who was windsurfing in Dun Laoighre. Paul arrives later. After food & bit of football/frizbee, outside chat BBQs stoked with waste wood. Nice warm flames cosy. Little biits of Apple schnaps, goldschlager, vodka jellies ..... Fionn brings me home.

Jun 8

Up after D comes in & F wants me to go get him breakfast. He plays cloks & rockets & .... Of course when I get up eventually he doesn't come, want's Mommy. After my breakfast I go back up, get him dressed and then he comes down and has ready-brek. We blow up big baloon & put popcorn in it and bring it to show Fionnuala. I head to work ... lovely sunny day but a bit bitter cold & windy.

Unix servers die in morning. Painful. Work on baseAddr.c, make it, check in, mail. Big intro to MyrIAD talk with James Curran. PC woefully dieing so I shut it down & restart. I have a go at hacking pool Palm game in work. Edit with PC causes fatal reset on reset augh! Hold down up arrow on reset >;). Good trick. Pool hack works after I find second appearance of unreg popup.

Jun 7

Lots of MPI/SLIC/SLAC API stuff ion work.

Collect Daire. It's raining a little so I put my jumper on him for the cycle. At home John's clothes on line are a bit damp. D plays after yoghurt, I cook chops + potatoes + veg mixed with hummus. Fionnuala home, dinner. Veg pronounced lovely. D doesn't eat much.

Myself and Daire go play tennis. We walk across hitting ball. Fionnuala heads to vote. On court D chases ball when I over-hit it. He can hit ball on ground anyway, he tries hitting ball standing facing target with racket. The racket I use suffers and cracks. D says I was never in these bushes with him so we become soldiers with tennis racket guns. Foliage is quite thick and it takes us a while and a small struggle to get all the way round. We remember Fionnuala should be babysitting as well as voting so we run back. We watch Yojimbo on video until 8:30. Then PJs for D, teeth (Sheila rings).

John back in evening.

Jun 6

Pauline visits & John arrives at same time as her.

Jun 5

John back in evening after up at 5am, train to Dub, 2 interviews in day.

Jun 4

Monday bankholiday. Up 10ish? D & GPs have had breakfast already. We all go visiting Aedin later. Her half-dug heap is too tempting and I give a middle section a good dig + break up lumps. We go home, Aedin & GPs go to Airfield.

Jun 3

D in 8, plays, F dn 9, me up 11. Bkfst, coffee, pot on marigolds, D digs. Shopping Stillorgan. Home unpack. Snack. Chinese. D getting a bit cross.

To Dun Laoighre with D. Talk about driving on the way. Wellies on. Walk on beach in scummy watery stuff. D holding hand. Climb rocks & walk by railway to more rocks. We play bus drivers on 2 different rocks. Then climb rocke. Tide out more. Walk back looking for bit of harness carrying D. We find a fin.

D falls asleep on drive back. F in bed too? She's cut some grass. I tidy edges with shears & cut the front. D still asleep, F awake. She cooks & G&G arrive. D groggy. Icecream. Cross. Dinner, potato, salad & puffed omlette.

Sheila & ... Mary & D & Orla quips. Little party, apple juice, biscuits, maltesers. Tea & cracker/cheese/chutney.

Jun 2

F up & into town. D comes in & gets me roused. He heads "race" downstairs. Plays with cars. I manage to get up & head down for breakfast.

Kids tv, hot choc, play cars/boat/ball. Digi camera pics. Windy out. Cracker snack. D cross about cheese & lack of butter. Croissants + ham + cheese. Yum. Rhudarb + Angelica.

Fionn home, has secret! Also wedding present wine glasses Ronan. Tea. Talk. Decide windsurf. D plays JumpAheadToddlers on PC. Pack gear in car. No traffic. A few surfers out too, zooming. Rig up after wetsuit on. Careful of wind. Sail down 1st. Tide out but doesn't seem too far. Coming in.

Good tide out. Shallow enough for dry starts everywhere almost. My deeper dry starts get bettey. N/NEish wind direct onshore. Cross bay sailing. To E over waves coming in, quite rough bumps. Harness goes sometimes & arms tire v quickly then. To W gentler. Into sun, sparkly water, catching waves from behind. Real fast at times. Wave gives big accelerating push. I fall mostly gently but one speed crunch, bit of harness pops off. Augh! I manage to tie it up. Towards end tide higher. More deeper water & I don't manage water starts at all. Also rocks in way.

In 3:30-7:30, pack up, foam home, drive. Chinese for dinner. D has little but tired. Yum. Tv, no hot choc but last of milk for D. I pj him, bit frustrated there. Then teeth & story (tho he'd insisted on F for story b4).

Tv, tea, unpack car, water garden, cold niqht moon. Diary. Bed.

Jun 1

Fergus web photo FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION harness Da Kine F brings D to creche by car & heads shopping to town. I cycle with rain gear. Kryz PIC driver morn. Big long email. Mark ClkGen driver. Notes.

Collect D. D has apple + cheese. Me too. I'm starved. Cook sausage+broc+mush+onion+pepper sauce pasta. D pepper mouth. Not happy. Bed latish. Fs parents visiting Aedin. Fionn palm funny. Take apart. Togetheter. Battery fixes it. Beam a few apps. F bath & then I join her. Clean!

May 31

Cork Dub Take morn off. F drives to creche then work. I take car home. John helps load gear. I grab snack & go to Dun Laoighre. Nobody else around at first. Tide half out. 5m sail. Wind low at 1st 10:30ish, but gusty & picks up. Lovely runs out toward Howth & back in. NWish. 2 other wsurfers. English father + son going to wedding. Kitesurfer. Very comfy & warm.

In, augh! 2:20. Derig, dress, pack car. Stop Deans Grange. Roll, bar, apple. Eat lunch @ desk. V short work day. Mpi, drv opt mtg, time to collect D.

D plays in jimbo plans & I get milk. F doesn't go to soccer. Fish + mushy peas + beans + potatoes. John makes tea (lots). Has interviews. I finish Pauline McGlynn's Something for the Weekend.

May 30

Parkes & NASA Apollo11 Sausage & tomato, onion & broccoli ragu. P, J, F, D, I. D has two hot chocs after pjs. Much slower with the 2nd. The Dish w F. Park in sc oflo park.

May 29

Home, Fionnuala playing soccer. Cook tuna + hollandaise sauce + spagetti. Pronounced tasty :).

May 28

D still asleep when I get up. Phone call for John that we miss gets us out of bed. Fionnuala gets him up after bathroom, I do something downstairs? I get his clothes out, F helps him dress, then we all go down together. D gets ready brek. Moira calls for John and I wake him up. I get out bike, F heads to work, D plays a bit then coat + helmet (Paddy style) + cycle 9:30. D holds my leg a bit in creche. Helen was in Dundalk too.

Work, drivers status meeting. BEn is leaving again. Divide work a little (but not a huge bit as we'll be off drivers soon again. SLIC/SLAC API for me?

eircom scummy session dependant stuff. Call Answering SPI stuff

Home, cycle & collect Daire.

May 27

D in late, talks about visiting Sheila & getting bkfast. F up with him. I'm stiff , hmmm, yes, that stiff too & sleepy. I get up 11ish. Down to everyone. Have bite of bkfast. Ds cold weetabix+banana. Urgh! Fizzy orange. Bread & jam.

Then with GrGrD to church, I look at car manual b4 & discon battery b4 rem -ve term is chassis. Gs car fine at mass. On way home my alarm goes off. Only way to stop it is by discon battery. No keyhole where manual says so. Painful drive back with it. F bit upset, me too, D wants to play but does amuse himself while we worry. Find we can reach down beside lights & find empty connector. No use. Phone.

GGDs friend knows * in Dundalk. Paddy Clarke. Puts us onto finding keyhole on passenger side of engine. Use alarm key. Turn to on. Texaco. Petrol. Brockville Service Stn, Ardee Rd. Sandwiches & crisps & yop. Air.

Drive scenic route. Rocky beach stop. We play Bus, rocks are tickets & money. On to south side of headland, N of Cloghersomething. Travellers. Beach. D asleep. F goes too. I rig up & windsurf. Whee. Nice breese. Some low rolling waves. Half crossshore wind. Out toward point to S. Back in to spot on beach. I find myself watching water & scared of what's underneath sometimes. Vivid imag. I think what part of rig would provide a tourniquet best should shark take my leg. Uphaul. Right! :) Gusty enuf to really zoom for some bits. Try gybing a bit. F away & back.

In & D goes surfing. A bit scared. Wave catches board well & he really does surf in.

Skerries. Drive drive. Harbour packed. Pasta booked out. Chips + curry + cod + burger, milkshake + coke + tea. I get money. Loo scummy accord to F & I believe her.

Drive back

play D, Conor, unpack a bit, F does most work getting D to bed. Then to bed herself. Mmmm, skimpy pjs beside me. We talk a bit. New baby.

Downstairs. Tea, ER, D down scared of dino book (the hobbit). I garden (kill slugs, water) John home. Tea talk tv. I unload surf gear from car. "garden" one last time. Diary. Bed.

May 26

Morn, mmmmm. We're both sleepy after. D too. He doesn't come in until 11ish. Shower. Breakfast, F back to bed for a nap. John up. We garden a little. Coffee. Hammock. John heads to meet Shorty. Then collect food (salad + potatoes) for Dundalk BBQ. We make herb flwr arrangements. D likes furry tickly fennel. Parsely. Thyme. Marigolds. 1 for J, F & D.

F tired. Not sure about staying the night. Hypothetically pack clothes & collect wsurf gear. Then all in & on car. D helps lots. F makes snack. Noodles & leftovers. Yum.

Driving. Traffic busy. Lep road all full. We go via Ballinteer, Dundrum, Marlay, M50 ... exit Dundalk different.

Arrive 5. BBQ start. Make salad & potatoes. Eat. Yum. Lots of games. Stickle weed chase. Tip the can. Lots of running. Small guys really like the games too. Later tea D bed tv tea diary in palm.

May 25

John down with D. Not much milk. It's 9:30 yoiks! I head to work eating an apple.

Workshop prep in work, dinner, more codeex, then give workshop. Tools, then compiler eg & optimisation. Going all afternoon. Ben & Fergus fallout. Fiona sick. Home after 6. Bit zonked. D is visiting Conor.

Fionn heads out, I brinq her to 46A. D home when I get back. We have lads night. Eat roast pork+apple with garlic bread, beer + oj. Watch tv. Friends/similar, D a bit late to bed, late late, music. Wettish, some slugs & snails reappear. F home.

May 24

Music in work. Run my tests with new scripts. Get Jardas tests mostly running. Release for checkin to db. Lots of workshop prep. Tools & compiler examples.

Fionn at soccer. I collect D, we cook & water garden. John arrives home in suit. Chilli bean con carne. Only mince turns out to be steak. I shave, it's been a few days.

May 23

Fionnuala gives Estimation course, I barely see her. Big talk about controlling versions of init code/drivers/.... Jabberwocky Lewis Carroll T.S. Eliot T.S.Eliot TSE Brian Forde has had a paragliding accident in India. Real audio which pissed me off a while ago for being huge & bloat & also very dictator-esque taking over stuff after installing nicely gets a ccdb entry thereby redeeming itself slightly.

P visits, dinner, I cook pasta and funny chilli beans. F & I play tennis till it is too dark. John arrives later at 9. Do lots of planting out. Marigolds on front, rocket, pumpkins, tomato ... all things with too small containers for roots. Maybe thur?

May 22

Running Jarda's tests ... some take ages, one doesn't compile, others hang. Lots of prep for workshop.

Fionnuala's playing football this evening. I head and collect Daire. He stays out front and plays with his cars. I cook some dinner and we eat ... Daire doesn't sit. D heads back out front and eventually Conor comes out & plays with D in front. I play guitar a bit too, small guys running in & out until D hits his head.

After another bit, D does wee in trousers and is getting tired so after Conor heads home we get changed, get pyjamas, bathroom, D very cross at start. Bed, story (I find Mega Poussin on shelf after search downstairs).

F home later. I tidied a bit ... but not too much. We have tea & Fionnuala gives me her Estimation course. Seems V good, new est standard & template. F comes to bed much later than me (for once).

May 21

Monday Making env for tests to run in full database. busy busy busy busy busy in work.

I collect D, at home D visits Conor & I attack the bit of lawn out front which had beaten me. It's tough (longish) but I get through all of it. Neighbours come home while I'm right by their drive.

Ally McBeal, sliding doors film, bed early enough.

May 20

Drive to Wicklow, walk & picnic, drive back, vroom, narrow roads.

May 19

Drive in town, dodge but get stuck in traffic. Park in Dawson St. park. Meet Maureen and John in O'Neills. Temple bar food market. Paddy fest. Street entment. BBQ. Music, game.

May 18

running tests, playing dbase, serious emails, din, wrapup, cvs checkins, dbase hack scripts, test report.

Home Ruth, F salmon dinner. Ruth doesn't like salmon. Andrea. Light march, meet @ river, burn straw men. Messers.

May 17

v late to work. 10:30 vps test finally fix workshop afternoon

get D from creche, home. We cook pasta & eat. Then pack lunch for F, connect bike carrier to car. Drive to Clonskeagh, miss uni entrance 1st. Uie. Park & myself & D walk over. D has his bag of sweets. Fergus, Fergal, girls, Claire, Martina, F, Mary.

I walk through uni to bus. Mark O'Donohoe. 46A. Tgi Friday guinness. Then Shanahans. Brian & Fergus there. Beaut carpaccio, veg, steak.

11:30 Walk out a bit. Nice warm so continue. Across to Clon by river. Imagining hiding & ambush & exciting stuff while walking. Thru school, Dark & back of Sandyford. Home 1:30. Drink, play KyleQuest, bed.

May 16

Mail to Waider/Adele/Clarkey: Mobile change me to 086 3360419, Fionn 086 3360477 ... but not setup yet as we just got the sims yesterday. ESAT quite slow sending them out. My own phone works fine still.

My likkle brudder is staying with us (just back from Oz) when he's in Dub doin interviews & meeting ppl & the like these days. We'd the whole gang up this weekend ... Granny & nother brother & sister. We'd TWO BBQs and stuffed ourselves. One BBQ was in the rain on Sunday :)

There's a continuous massacre of snails & slugs going on these days too. ... did you know that .... snails/slugs eat their dead!! There's some garden rubbish over the wall behind a hedge in a neighbors garden and at about 8ish you can see armies of snails heading over various walls to chew every other neighbours gardens. I think they must be pretty habitual as after the last few days there's only the odd one/two left invafding our garden while I can still see loads of them heading in their usual directions to the other gardens.

James. If I ever get into botany it'll be heralded as the most graphically violent & disturbing text ever in the field (I hope!) :)

Kyle's Quest Making level to play with, think about making a level with Daire in the garden. Weapons: sticks, ... Spiders, slugs, snails, beetles House. Road. Miskatonic Uni Arkham

Pauline comes out, home b4 us. Dinner. F & I hsad out. Ha'penny bar. Upstairs we meet trad music pub crawl. Later on comedy guys are not too bad at all. Raining outside. car home, Fionn drives.

May 15

Daire gets us up. Fionnuala is hot & tired . I help D with loo & dressing, brush hair, breakfast. D is insistent on being leader & doing stuff himself and knocks Ribena off top of fridge. I'm cross & Daire says he's sorry. He's happier when John comes & helps him get cerial. I hang up clothes from wash machine on clothes horse. F must've been up and put on another wash. The day is a bit rainy. I cycle to work with rain gear on and it's cold on face/hands.

Mail, diary in work. Kyle's Quest, get killed, finish bones level. Good fun. Good potential ... for games, explore real areas, tutorial/history as with applewars thing.

echo cancellation primer G.168 echo cancel G.726 ADPCM

May 14

Fionnuala cycles to work, comes back to pump bike. Daire gives a running commentary. I bring Daire to creche on bike after dressing, breakfast. Lovely sunny day. Kids are going to be playing out front, Helen's car blocking gatgeway.

Work. Status mtg. VPS test. Dinner, walk. Kyle's Quest Jane's KQ page QWizard

I head home 5:30. Collect Daire who's out front. We get milk in the shop, Daire plays in the Jumbo Jet/Space craft out front. He climbs half onto bike by himself. Home, out back, then we eat various leftovers. Daire has yoghurts then burger. I have casserole, wehen Fionnuala comes home sweetcorn. We go over and play some tennis. Daire can't really hit ball in air so after a bit he gets frustrated. First D plays with either one of us. Then we take turns being ball boy. Eventually when we head Daire gets really cross. I bring him up to bed and Fionnuala reads him a story. He doesn't settle until I go up again wait a bit (KQ).

Ally McBEal (funny one, John & Richard go to LA & meet Ross's gf) & other stuff on TV. I phone home and talk to Dad and Mary. I kill snails while talking. After I eat sandwich & actimel and watch JEan Claude Van Damme in some film & John comes home. Maura, weekend. Clothes out wash machine. Bed.

May 13

Casserole for lunch. Pauline a bit sick. John arrives, Airfield Mulberry market. It rains a bit while we BBQ. Bill & Susan.

May 12

Daire gets up and visits Mum first (she's been already up earlier & breakfasted & snail killing!) They read loads together on futon. I get up adfter a while. Breakfast cerial, then toast & cappuchinos. Lovely sunny day, morning in garden. Pauline comes out in morning for visit while we're at Woodies. We buy cement + elec cables + plants + canopy. Back home and F & I make various salads for lunch. Yum. Latish, about 2/3. Daire has a little bit of a rest, plays by himself upstairs.

BBQ. Burn twigs & P toasts marshmallows after food is eaten. D too tired for BBQ, has his chicken burger & F brings him to bed.

May 11

In work cshrc and footprints and emails and lots of other messing to get simulation running. Talk to Simon at lunch and he's seen it before. Quota problems if directories in proj area don't have s bit set.
# find . -type d -user $user -print -exec chmod g+s {} \;
By afternoon able to run simulations.

Mum arrives in evening. Slightly late, Pauline didn't meet up with her. Fionnuala makes dinner. Daire heads up to bed late. Garden tour. Snail killing. There's a huge army of snails over the wall living under some rubbish. They invade the next garden each evening.

Shave, wash, .

May 10

D gets me up. F already gone. We rush dress, D is quite helpful. Breakfast, then cycle to creche, bye kiss/hug. Fast cycle to work. 9:20 looks like 9mtg just started. Sneak in back. Fionnuala is up the front. Sit on book on windowsill beside Mark Hayden. Eimear & Emmanuel Digital Design. Doozer builders outside. Until 10:30 bored. Coffee. Then synthesis & layout timing issues & more interesting. Dinner Rosie table outside Alek Kryzs Trish Radek. Sunny.

Email, faff, then do big TDM setup analysis, change code & b4 leaving discover dbase won't run sim.

Meet F at creche after 6. Home. D & I water garden. F makes us all fried rice & grilled mushrooms/chicken. TV, D to bed, I head shopping to Stillorgan. Back, unpack, tea, TV, slug collect whole jamjar w chopsticks & bury them. Looks like snails eat dead snails! Tidy. Diary. Bed.

Found leak in bathroom, F was rearranging furniture mon. Are we nesting?

May 9

not enthusiastic in work. collect D. P out. Babysit for A abit. F home. Treacy. No dancing. Food. TV. Talk. Later can't find book, browse Clive Barker.

May 8

Up late. D crossish. Won't wear shorts. F brings him in car. Email in work, home accts move. Quota on disc+mail&link/cshrc fixing. Ken has good test log wait for TDM ints. Status mtg. Sunny.

I collect D & we go home & garden water/.. Eat. F at mtg w Sheila. D&I have nice evening.

May 7

mon bhol@ home F up first bkfst w D, then back to bed. D & I do garden, water, cut grass D helps bumps head, weeding, v sunny. Dinner shep pie by G&G. Bring D&Conor over to tennis courts & they cycle for good while. Back for dinner 2ish. Hammock, D & I varnish it & hang it later with rope & swing ourselves. Pregnancy test blue. I congrat Fionn & she congrats me. D & I have bath. Water goes cold so I don't shower. Fun dumping big vase of water over heads to rinse. Splutter. D gets cold fast @ end.

May 6

Up, , breakfast of oj+weetabix+coffee+toast. Pack. Walk to Paddington collect pastry for picnic in shop on way. Check in for flight & leave in heavy bag. Buy tickets, walk long way to p13/14, train to Oxford? Other leaving in 30 min. Walk long way back thru underground gates to circle line. Wait. Go back + get other train. Ealing Broadway. Walk to Eoghan & Mary's house.

Wait for M&D to come back from shops. D was v good last night & morning (we quiz Eoghan) Pack up picnic. Walk to Ealing & get bus 65 to Kew Gardens. Usual bit awkward with buggy & D on bus.

Bit expensive to get in. Walk paths, D hungry complains a bit. Find picnic bench underneath trees. Yum. Salmon + bread, cheese, pasties, sausage rolls, wine, oj+ribena for D. D & I explore under a big rhodadendron jungle. D a bit timid first, scared & nearly runs away but I bring him in & he gets quite enthusiastic. We scramble over & under branches avoiding hanging brambles. Great fun exiting through hanging leaves. Badger holes all over mound under rhodadendron. We sneak over across grass behind picnic tidiers. I chase D & E & we all walk kicking & throwing ball & catching with buggy. D a bit hyper. Walk ducks pagoda evolution.

Head catch bus to South Ealing. Bus goes without Fionnuala&D getting off. D "oh no!". Through station. Train quick. D falls asleep, we're tiredish too. Checkin D + buggy. Loads of time in airport. D sleeps. Shop, coffee, diary. Window D F me on plane. D a bit impatient.

Dub easy. D goes ahead holding arms out to stop people passing. Get buggy, toilet, exit, bus, car. Drive old airport road & misc to Aedín's house then home. F's mum&dad there. TV, photos, Aedín, cd Paul Simon, diary, wash, bed.

May 5

Bkfst @ hotel. Takes long time to train & meet Eoghan. Trains. Parade in Windsor. Bus. Legoland. Mad fun for D. We skip Qs at first few things. Ride gentle nursery story boat. Eat sandwich. My favourite was watching the incredibly slow action on baby learner driver school or muscle maker or the rat trap assault course/climbing frame. Learner driver D wears orangs hat & glasses. Doesn't get accelorator & jerks along a bit. Stuck lots. Loads of kids stuck. Looks back & lifts glasses & gives kid behind a mega "LOOK" when bumped. D doesn't make height for pirate ride. Scared of jungle house but comes through. Scared for me too. Loves the stationary cars/motorbikes.

Burgerking in Windsor & money, train. D sleeps. We leave him with Eoghan in Ealing.

F&I to theatre. Stones in his Pockets. Meet Ronan&Gwen. 2 Irish guys on stage, 8ish characters. ?ext ?ext Mickeyoldext Finnext ?drug GlennDirector ?irishMgr ?actress ?girlMgr

Afterwards F calls E&M&D. D is having great fun. We walk and go to Indian. Anjums Indian, Shaftsbury Ave. Vindaloo for me, chicken sag, water, yum! £28.40 Then go to underground, change for Estn closed circle. Hotel walk F tired.

May 4

D extremely cross when we miss bkfst. Me cross too. Coffee Republic saves us. Sit & have sandwiches + croissant + buns + cappuchino. D has hot choc + marshmallow.

Open bus, London eye, bit of Q, after walk w D cross, no playground :( McDonalds. Rest. D sleeps, Harrods, Sci Museum.

Tube and meet Eoghan & Mary & walk in soho. A bit late to be wheeling buggy. Cafe Espana. Upstairs in restaurant. Spanish tapas yummy. D gets kindof chips + sauce. Choriso Mussels Bacaloo Jauvon sevvano Bravas Champinones PolloA GambasP Boguevones QuesoM Chips GobueaL BHW milk 4caffees £64.45. Smallish place w ppl to squeez past on stairs when we leave. Walk around a little Lecister Sq. Icecream. Tube home. Quik change to circle line.

May 3

D up a bit, F first D has nightmare. Me at 5/6. Up 6:20, leave 6:5x, drop J&P in town. Fly, me, F, D, win. Train hotel, F&D sleep. Walk down E St. Opentop bus to centre. Walk lots, soho, can't get money. F does. 3:00 Dinner Bella Pasta. Oxford St. Cds.

We get bus after bookshop but overshoot and then tube to Ealing, run late & arrive 8ish. Eoghan comes & walks us back. Dinner with E&M. Mary has made smoked salmon & fish pie. Taxi hotel. Wrecked. D stays asleep into hotel.

May 2

D comes in between us in bed. F up 1st, then me, then John. I get bike, check massacred slugs, lovely weather again, in & help D dress (impatiently). F heads to work & D asks can he come on bike with me. At creche there is one toddler finishing his breakfast.

Zoom cycle fast to work. @ work find out we're all going to kickoff. Rachel, coffee. 20eng+some others. Presentation Rusty, Steve, Greg. IAD pres again. IAD usb device connections? E.g. Digicam! Busy with test, dinner w Doug, Greg, Ruairi, walk. Show Doug gui with Ken + talk about training ppl. Big talk with ro+ma+ru too later. Then cycle (warm), get D, home, water garden, D visits next door, F cooks, I plant onion sets & Keith watches. Pauline arrives, no dancing, dinner, alarm: b2 01798A... Doesn.t stop ringing after while did stop ring 01798 bt3 times u (Ew/o up segment=t) 01911=>c (disable) packing/tv/attic. John back later.

May 1

Tue I get up with D. Breakfast, John. I head to work and leave F in bed, John minds D a bit. Cold air, clear blue sky + bright sun.

Apr 30

Story setting/situation: Modern time West/South/North/? Ireland Swan Manann, son of Lir legend. Mannan sea god. Magical/fantasy (not so outrageous) happenings in modern world give suspense/scary feel. Water movements, sea/magic mixed e.g. book with crows/rooks ... author/title? Magick in 2000AD Clive Barker magik classes Take some magick classes, Inca Celtic Aztec China India .... Tir na Nog Tir na nOg

Undines faeiries of sea Undines. Appearance and Temperament: These Manx sea guardians are very small faeries, only a few inches high, who guard the stormy Irish sea and are beloved of the Sea God Manann. They are both male and female and are beautiful to see. A green-blue aura of light is said to dance around them. They are fierce guardians but are still disposed to help all living creatures in need on the sea if they are specifically asked to do so. Lore: Irish Sea Water Guardians merit their own entry because their lore differs significantly from other Sea Sprites and Undines. They are quite definitively the guardians of the Irish Seas and not merely its elemental creatures. When not playing in the water they are in the service of the Sea God Manann. The Water Guardians sail on broken eggshells through the Irish Seas and surf on seashells during storms. Sailors in the Irish Sea often feared nearing Man for all the faeries in the waters. Irish Sea Water Guardians enjoy the company of playful maritine life such as dolphins and groupers and will readily assist ailing fish. They have been known to come to aid humans, but they must first be asked for their assistance in clear and precise terms.

Kelpies Land of Origin: Scotland. Other Origins: None known. Other Names: Irish Kelpies are called Uisges (Ech-ooshk-ya) or Fuath) (Foo-ah), and they are also part of northern Ireish faery lore, suggesting their migration from Scotland. A Cornish Kelpie is called a Shoney, a name derived from the Norse name Sjofn, a Goddess of the Sea. In Iceland they are called Nickers, which are similar to the Nix, the water sprites of Germany. In the Shetland and Orkney Islands they are called Nuggies. Element: Water. Appearance and Temperament: Kelpies are rarely seen anymore, and it is just as well. these small, bulbous-shaped faeries with huge teeth and pointed ears are sly, stupid, and extremely foul-tempered. Irish lore says they are web-footed water spirits with manes and tails of horses, and the girdled bodies of women. Time Most Active: Unknown. Lore: These cannibalistic faeries once densely populated the North Sea and all the lochs of Scotland. Deer who wandered too close to the lochs, other faeries, and humans were their favorite meals. In northern Scotland there are stories of Kelpies who appear as friendly seahorses and allow passing humans to mount them so that they may be drowned. Kelpies have limited shapeshifting powers and can appear as handsome young men to lure young girls to them. However, they can be detected because they are unable to keep their hair from appearing like seaweed. Kelpies once made their principal home under the murky waters of the infamous Loch Ness, which was thought to be sacred to them. They were probably the forerunners of our current belief in the Loch Ness monster.

Children of Lir: Children of Lir lir legends Manann: Mannan Manannan/ Manann/ Manannan Mac Lir - Ler's son; "God of the headlands"; patron of sailors and merchants; his famed possessions include the yellow shaft, the red javelin, the boat, the wave-sweeper, a horse called Splendid Mane, and three swords named retaliator, great fury, and little fury; he has the gift of inexhaustable life. He is a sea God. The Isle of Man is named after him. He is the one that said the world of humans and the world of faeries should remain separated. He can aide you in astral projection, protection, and environmental magick. Shapeshifter. God of storms at sea, navigators.

Deities Correspondences: Irish Moss, seahorses, cloaks, the trident, conch shells, the Chariot Tarot card, the sea, the Isle of Mann. Mythology: Manann is son of the sea God Llyr. He is the one who separated the world of the faery from the world of man. He did so when he wife (one of many) Fand, a faery woman, fell in love with Cuchculain. Manann owned many wondrous objects. He had a self-propelled ship called the Wind Sweeper, a seahorse mount named Splendorous Mane, and a sword known as Retaliator which never missed its mark. The Isle of Man was given to him by Fionn MacCumhal, but he also owned the Isle of Ablach and the Firth of Clyde, where it is said he kept his conch shell throne in an apple orchid called Emain Ablach. He had a yellow and a red spear, a breast plate and chain mail that could not be penetrated by any weapon, and two magic jewels in his helm. He also owned a mantle which allowed him to be invisible at will. Some legends claim he hosts the Feast of Age every 32 years and that those who eat there will never grow old. Other legends set him as the ruler of Elysium, the faery realm. It is said that he never left the sea to help his fellow Tuatha De Danann's in battle. He was also called the God of the Headland and remained a patron to sailors even after Christianity took hold. In Magic: Manann has many powers. Call on him to help you forget unpleasant memories, to learn astral projection, for environmental and elemental magic, for protection when at sea or when faeries are concerned. Work with him for water spells and weather magic in particular. He is the keeper of the Gate between this world and the world of the Faery, so always request his assistance when establishing the Grove. Manannan: Irish. (Manannan Mac Lir) A sea-God and master of magic, his Name is the root for the Isle of Man, and for the district of Manannan in Scotland. Son of Ler. He was believed to have been Cannonized with the name of Michael by Christian Mythology. He has several titles: Lord of Mists, Lord of the Land of Women, and as Lord of the Land beneaththe Waves. FRP Old world religion google?Mannan+llyr+Fionn

Apr 29

Drop book in to Ruth's house. Drive back detour country roads doesn't really gain much.

Apr 28

to Limerick? No. ????? Yes I think. Examine computer saturday and find IDE ports are bad. Dinner in Maureen's house. We bring a plant. Talk, tidy & washup. Back home late, only 2 glasses of wine ... could have been lots.

Apr 27

Friday http://games.sohu.com/fightgame/fight3.htm http://games.sohu.com/fightgame/fight2.htm

Apr 26

John

Apr 25

Apr 24

Updating diary. Feels like monday, get BSOD.

Apr 23

Monday. I mail Daffodil Counting Project status report to lots of people. Family, Lucia/Kirean/DaveG/Darren/ConorP, Waider/Adele/Sheila, Bronagh/Fergus/Ben/.... Get lots of replies & reply back a bit.

Apr 22

We told Daire we're going to London and as Eoghan lived in Dublin before he thought we were going to pop over in the afternoon. He's grand now though with explaining those confusions. Before we could have to survive a good while with him remembering every so often that we were going somewhere ... but not there yet!

I mess with computer doing Daffodil Counting Project. FIonnuala asleep/awake

Apr 21

Sat They're doing something in Poolbeg with wires & cables & boats & JCBs and sewage pipes so it's kindof off limits for a while (a couple of months they said). When we arrived there was a grand light breese going.

I headed out and drifted with the tide a bit in Sandycove. Interesting contours in the sand .... it is a wee bit far to carry board though once tide goes out. The others were slightly more sensible and went to drift in Malahide (though Alek said he got up on a plane once!)

Daire's getting quite ... er ... hmmm, how could "mature" possibly apply to a 3yrold? Anyway ... he's pretty independent and he'll play by himself for good spells. Very entertaining as it's all out loud and he's got a great variety (from parents bossing about kids, repairing imaginary engines, running races, shooting criminals or tigers, feeding various animals, .... ) He's not at all impressed with Windows ... but he's even less impressed with Linux! I think we need an operating system specially for small kids.

Apr 20

fri bike fix, I pump up my bike & tighten brakes. Daire is pleased that Fionnuala's wheel is fixed. In work vps test getting into big mem dunps to try & figure out what is happening, mail pics home & to P, wsurf mails arranging to meet on Saturday.

Apr 19

thur computer, F bike fixing before bed. Put in new tube and pump it (awkward with new pump).

Apr 18

wed pauline & dancing, garlic

Apr 17

tue busy vps testing all week, also colh

Apr 16

mon Leave before dinner, after computer messing. On way back to Dublin we stop off and visit Birr Castle/Museum/Telescope/Gardens, nice. V hungry after a bit, walk to town. D&I crossish. Eventually food after delay. Back to see telescope, talk to John, walk in gardens. Drive back to Dub, traffic ok.

Apr 15

sun out to shannon estuary. D & I fly kites, play w dog. F reads. grepping web for London b&b b4 bed

Apr 14

sat out with F, Nestors, lift in Aedin. Maureen & sister & Ruth & Gordon turn up after awhile.

Apr 13

fri F up with D, I don't notice. Later D is playing in our room, then out meeting GPs. I go in with Fionnuala. D tells. Up, bkfst, tune TV, drive to Lahinch. I go bodyboarding, others go swimming in pool 12:00. 14:00 out, find note, fingers numb taking off wetsuit, on clothes. Find others, have a couple of chips, chop D's chips, they're too hot but he eats one anyway before they're cool. He's tired. I go to chipper, get v decent portion of garlic chips + fish. Eat in car. Coffee & choc cake with D&F. We go for a walk, visit surf shop, t-shirt and Daire really struts around in a wetsuit. Climb on rocks on beach. Back to Spanish Point, D sleeps, F cleans, I help a bit. To Shannon, arrive 19:44, meet Brian, home to Limerick, dinner, I feed D a little, his humour improves after loo. I clean kitchen, F gets D to bed, TV, D cries a bit when light is off.

Apr 12

thur Lmk in morning. Shower 10:30. Bkfst. Read/daire lunch, F fyp & school/Peter photos. Drive to Spanish Point. Snack, D cross so TV. G&G arrive, later walk on beach fun. Walk on rocks, shellfish, waves, dam stream, down & up road. F cooks, I dress D 2wice & amuse him. Dinner + wine, talk, get D to bed, book/diary. Seperate beds, book but too tired to read.

Apr 11

Wed work VPS test advancing well. Bit of clkgen fuff. Ken. Waider sends on the terrible pictures I took with his camera. I get caught in conf call in eve just as I'm about to leave. Doug goes ON about addSymInfo scripts.

drive to Lmk getting tired on way D wakes for petrol in Roscrea & makes happy noises from then. D extremely late to bed by F I'm v tired going to bed.

Apr 10

Fierce busy in work, morning javascript date, VPS full endian swap works. After dinner get money & mocha with Mark. Interrupt by clkgen thing (davek prblm uart related). Code booting and going on to address error exception by evening. Cycle against wind to get Daire. He's having biscuit with Helen. We go get milk, D tells me to stay at biscuits but I follow & help carry milk. D Qs up very nicely with me waiting for disorganised woman buying alcohol&junk&cigarettes. F cooking, has opened gates for us. D & I outside watering plants & chopping sticks. Burgers for tea & talk going to London. Daire says "Don't talk.". F brings him into Conor. I chop & weed. TV, F collects D, he bursts in running by himself red cheeked. F gets him to bed 9:00. Book tv diary bed.

Apr 9

Mon F up w D, I bring him to creche. Meet Roland outside creche. Lots of VPS test work, status mtg, work on computer till late, put tree in skip extremely late (or was that sun?)

Apr 8

Sun Morning @ home gardening a bit, D & I make capucchino & toast & bring it up to Fionnuala. Wind is good, F&D come with me to Dun Laoighre. It isn't as mad windy as Fri. A good few surfers out. Rig up carry gear out. There is a fantastic wind. I try start but fin sticks in sand. Walk out further & I dry-start & zoom out towards pier. Can't get into harness @ start & arms fatigue quickly. Choppy waves interesting but not as difficult as I imagined. A few times I try starting in deep water but always have to come in closer. Dry starting on stbd tack more difficult too. Zooming in I meet other surfers & stop quickly. Get into harness always, a little long, wider good. Other times fin touches sand. Loads of surfing, no turns, tide long way out especially @ end 6:00ish. Can't hold both together. Bring board in 1st. Drops and rumble hops with wind fast away, I run & dive & get it. Then get sail. Phone F&D. Derig. Dress. Meetup, home. Surfstuff in & F makes tea. I'm quite tired.

Apr 7

Sat Home, computer All day. Give up on recovering old win dir. Reinstalling all drivers. Stuck with corrupt half-install sound driver. Linux saves me. Moving software lots. Netscrape hard. F's bike puncture in morning.

Apr 6

fri Up & dreakfast with D. In work busy doing vps test, looking at PI bus lockup Jarda has with uart sys test. Ben has other bus lockup read from uninit SDRAM.

Apr 5

Fionnuala gets up with Daire. I get up and turn on PC. Using linux cp -r /mnt/dos1/windows /mnt/dos1/dos and bootfiles to new hdd /mnt/dos4/oldwindows. Reinstall win98 on HDD, overwriting lilo. Hacked registry key works. Have breakfast with Daire and get him dressed while minding PC. Must recover linux boot to try old windows with new vmm32.vxd file. We dress up in wet gear and it's lashing rain & windy. We get wet.

In work working on vps test with Ken and looking at Jarda's init and uart tests. F in Leop training this week. We leg it home cramming bike in back. I load surfgear onto car. Very windy.

Other surfers in Dun L. We drive thru traffic. V windy rigging. Look around 1st at wind and windsurfers going "ulp!". Outhauling my sail catches wind & I get lifted & thrown off feet. I'm a bit amazed. Even more cautious about gear then. I forget my gloves. Ben launches from beach. I go from slip/drain outlet place. Constant big wind makes uphaul difficult, waves make it moreso. I get out twice (port tack) find uphaul easier outside (smaller waves). Hold board high into wind mostly. Speed "wsurf eekers!". Lots of board swimming, Ben doing same, gets tireder/colder. Great fun though.

In tired, bit sore, phone, derig. Nope, fins down but 2 boards too high for barrier. Drop Ben home. Pauline helps get gear off car.

Apr 4

We go dancing in eve. Latin as CD for ballroom faulty. Pauline babysits.

Apr 3

Fionnuala heads to work by bike. Get up and breakfasted and haul all windsurf gear onto & into car. Daire says that Fionnuala will collect him on bike. I bring D to creche in car.

Windsurfing mails, s3windsurfing, weather.

5:00 Ben & myself head windsurfing to Poolbeg, collect Ben's mast and sail on the way. Went back across a couple of times at the start with lovely wind. Hard to keep board from jumping on waves. ... :) I try Ben's board, it's quite nice, much floatier than mine. I think wind should've been South-West but maybe it was a bit more south/east as it was very on-shore. Suited the spot well. Wind really died back on us after a bit though, still sailed until late. Tide goes from out a bit to in full by the end. See here what happened: wind-plot 03/04/2001 Getting dark, quite safe low wind, shallow, waves onshore. We both do some wave surfing. Then I collect car, call Fionnuala, then pack up, dress. Drive home bringing Ben for tea. I snack.

Poolbeg is a great spot though .... the rest of this week should be windier! :) euroseek intellicase wind Dublin
To get to Poolbeg head for the East-link toll-bridge (follow airport signs), you want to head towards the ESB generating station so at the roundabout where you go left for the East-link take a right towards the pair of big red/white chimneys. Drive out there until you're past the chimneys. Pick one of the beaches closest to water ... if you keep driving there are several small beaches to launch from.
The seafront is a series of L shaped beaches ... handy as every so often there's a bit of sand to land or launch from at high tide. At low tide we carried gear down rocks closer to water and drove car a little bit down the road to the beach afterwards. The tide was half-way in when we arrived and full when we were packing up. You wouldn't want to either launch or come in with the tide full out ... there's quite a lot of beach to cover. The beach is quite flat so we were able to go quite far and still stand up when falling off.

Apr 2

D comes in early ... Fionnuala is a little cross with him over babyish things. I get up & shower & then get myself & D dressed. We go to shop for milk in the car. F heads to work & D & I clean a little & then district nurse comes. Whispering to Daire. He does most shapes quite quickly but doesn't respond at all on one or two. I can see what Fionnuala means about the nurse making you worried! Anyway, he's fine. We head on the bike to creche/work. It's quite windy and a bit sunny.

Looking up PC problem vmm32.vxd too large. Mailserver/pc flaky in work.
I telnet headyin 143 and play with imap server. foo LIST ~/.imap-mail#/ % foo SELECT ~/.imap-mail#/dspsrv %
I use mutt to purge deleted messages. Netscrape just not doing it? c {headyin}Sent c {headyin}.imap-mail#/dspsrv

Apr 1

Sun 1 Apr 2001 D in wriggly 7:30ish urgh. He plays a bit by himself & F teaches him howto get breakfast & more by himself while I sleep.

I rush up 9:20ish, dress me, dress D. D & myself head off and F waits for others at Gallops. Then we tag along on the cycle with some people with work. Paddy catches us up when I'm putting coat on back of bike, bike unbalances & Daire takes a half dive towards the hedge. We catch up and go to petrol station. They sent Fionnuala home because of us! :( We cycle to Enniskerry and then head back. Paddy & others catch up with us and fastish cycle home.

Pasta & tomato-veg for dinner. We did MORE gardening in the afternoon & Daire & myself visited woodies & compustore on the bike. F weeded loads and D & I set up green-house/tent and plant 4 pumpkins. I make shepherds pie for dinner. After dinner Daire flopped asleep at the table. He was wrecked! F gets D up after a while, Assumpta had called & after pepping D with talk and chocolate drink he heads in to Conor. I turn on PC and copy all of F: (was E; to D:, ... of course not much use). Anyway. After D comes back I bring pyjamas and bring him up to bed and read him a story. TV with Fionnuala - Wives submitting to men and then Glenroe. . I add in USB card (no win98 cd so hard to install driver). I add in TV/Video card and between new drivers win98 stops booting. Except in command mode. *feck*!

Mar 31

up d 9:? Weeding compulsive, sunny. Snack outside, garden shopping Coleman's & Woodies. Daire really likes running around garden centre mazes. Weeding becomes a compulsion when you own a wee bit of garden!

I slaughter wine cork. We're v low on wine. Pasta & veg mix + tomato sauce. Cut lawn, planting, digging, compost. F fixes her bike a bit. Cook pizza (+grn beans +onion +cheese) for tea w salad & garlic mushrooms, D has noodles & apple juice & fishfinger on tray on couch. We eat in front of The Secret Garden. D has icecream, then dressed for bed.

Tk computer man Tim comes & board goes in no problem. Use gfx on board, I put in our soundcard later. £60 for motherboard + Cyrix233. I play games Wolfenstein3D GTA Carmadeggon & later plug in big HDD & fdisk & format 8G win95 partition. I regard it with suspicion but it works. Big ramp up time for HD access. 4am. Bed on wrong side. Fionns feet showing under blanket my side.

Mar 30

We wait for D's visit from health board nurse but she's a noshow. We cycle to creche after she calls.

Looking quite a lot at a new error msg/bug Ben has in code. Eventually turns out to be uninitialised part of a structure. Beware ... reading from SDRAM before writing doesn't just return garbage. It causes bus errors and locks chip up. .... sometimes!

Myself and Ben went windsurfing after work. The wind was quite gusty so when I managed to cope with no wind suddenly turning into a howl I had some screaming runs across the water at huge speeds barely holding on which was great fun. When I didn't manage to cope so well I got a little bit more wet. Water was quite flat with wind offshore coming down over the hill. Difficult to get into harness at first but once got there got both sides adjusted nicely (needs to go a bit shorter now though). Uphaul got a bit more difficult with strong wind. Getting in was tricky, tide had gone out but spent a few minutes in quite close not making any progress upwind so I hop-walked backwards from about tummy deep. Packing up everything on car, get dressed, just missing creaming the surfboards on the roof off the low bar took a while.

Ben comes back with me, offers to babysit a little. Daire is still up when we get back 8:40ish an hour late. We made Fionnuala really late for pub quiz. AND before she left for quiz she cooked us soup and made bread+cheese+tomato. Is she too good to me or what huh? Computer man tk Tim is a noshow again ... (I get his message next evening).

D quite late 2 bed but in great form chatting to Ben. Talk Ben & a bit of TV. Ben's board we leave in our garden, take sails etc home once Fionnuala gets back.

Mar 29

F in leop training tue-fri, calls up a bit to check mail. Longish mail home about gran, money, farm, some of our news too. They're going to rent out Granny's house but Michael has said no money. I talk with Fionnuala and we offer £100 per month just between ourselves.

Mar 28

Pauline babysits for us and myself & Fionnuala go with Sheila (Fionnuala's aunt) and her Grandad to a show in the Tivoli. Certified Male

Mar 27

Mar 26

In work I doss a bit on Sierpinski in java. Figure out running java on PC again, unset env things.

Mar 25

Daire & myself bring Fionnuala breakfast in bed. Cerial and juice first. Then Capucchino and toast + nutella and honey.

We head windsurfing to Dun Laoighre. Fionnuala has a go first while Daire and me climbed on rocks and threw stones into the water and shouted some advice. She's pulling sail up no problem but can't go from stable position to sailing. Sail unbalanced & needs to be brought forward over board. Then I had a go. Rigged bigger sail after a bit. Not too much wind and a bit wavey. Quite tippy when going about. Daire wants us to buy him a little wetsuit with a little board and a little sail and a little boom to hold on to!

Mar 24

We met Pauline on Saturday and went to food market in Dublin and went to Dvblinia museum. Leave car in Merrion Square & reticket it in middle of day.

Mar 23

It's Fionnuala's birthday and we've not got anything for her yet :( Daire wakes us up at 7:30 and is quite upset wanting us to read Stuart Little. I get dressed and bring him back to bed. It actually works and I fall asleep. I wake when Daire comes in with windsurfing glove. I can hear him playing surfing with something surfing on a book quite happily. He's amused himself for a bit.

I head downstairs and we get breakfast. Weetabix for both of us. D hiding behind cerial boxes (doors). I have to be two kids playing outside (D inside) ... I make voices pretending to play risk. D helps putting on dishwasher and he brings the upstairs bin all the way down by himself. We put out bins and head up to say bye to F.

Loads and loads of init code & interrupt handler & interrupt work. A bit confused over boot sequence of vps ... but getting there.

Mar 22

Looking on web for stuff for Fionnuala. Argos, Basic Instincts, Utopia, Ann Summers.

vps test, getting into interrupt handlers & dirty stuff. parseTrace script needs more features added.

I collect D at 6 a bit late. Pauline is waiting outside for us. I make tomato soup + potato + onion for tea. Daire has noodles. We leave Pauline playing colour-picture-card game with Daire.

S3 pub quiz. Guinness. Waider is looking for us calling my mobile but I discover that tomorrow via email. Martin Fionnuala & myself. We do okay, solve matchstick puzzle at end.

Mar 21

I do loads of script work, get it all working & released & mail to Ricardo. Head 4:45ish & collect D. We make nice tagliatelli + hollandaise sauce + rasher + prawn + onion + pea stuff. We have wine and a starter and Pauline arrives 6:30ish. D cross initially about us leaving.

We drive to bray and go to ballroom dancing lesson. Beginners class is easy great to get back into it ... then advanced is scary. We manage most steps but ....

Mar 20

Mar 19

Bank holiday Monday. I put together new sail with Daire in sitting room. He likes it. F gets some extra sleep. I head off windsurfing leaving Fionnuala to go with D & Sheila & Orla to Bray. Excellent day ... Malahide drive via toll bridge. Gear together, meet Alek & Polish guys. HEad out for 1:30ish, come in eventually fingers sore from cold. I snack on chocolate and nuts. Get gloves and head out again for good while. Kindof difficult to get planing the whole time. Using harness alot. Sail loads, feet get colder & colder & have real sore cold sensation eventually when packing up after 5. I dress first, warm feet, eat, then pack & stow gear. By the time I get home (after an hour) feet still aren't quite right.

Mar 18

Computer printer. Dinner yum Daire likes yorkshire puds. Roast beef + potatoes + veg + wine. Cobh until 4:30ish. Pick daffodils with Mum. Drive to Dublin. Up main road. We stop in Kildare for dinner. Daire likes CHIPS! We call in to Sheila. D up really late playing in Sheila's house.

Mar 17

Limerick in morning, I sleep in & get breakfast & then dinner. Travel to Cobh. Out with D, milking cows & feeding calves. After dinner we leave Daire (he's quite happy about this) and head to Cork. Bit of parking trouble :-( Pub, loud music, screechy distortion troubles at start. Hugh. I drive, F on ritz a little.

Mar 16

Fri up bkfst w D, hang clothes, F is really bitchy about mess, shirt elbow, late for work. I head off cross, D asks me why.

Ruairi nobbles me in wodk & we spend whole morning debugging cvsweb.cgi at his pc, paths & env wrong. Servers shutting down @ 4.

Drive to Limerick,D sleeps at start, dodge Kill & meet up with N7 again at Nass. Fianna stories on radio, steak + chips in Roscrea. Petrol with D. Traffic okay.

D stays up & chats & gets yoghurts. F brings him to bed late. We get tea. Late late show on tv, Trudy from film, Munster rugby, biographer of badguy Gilligan

Thinking Sierpinski triangle l-system & in shower + going to sleep. Trans prob list (3 points), one pt on attractor, pick random point, go halfway to it, repeat. F+F+F, F->F+F+F+FF

Mar 15

Thur Read slashdot & get sucked into everything, remember old account, add stuff on mips, windsurfing, fractal, origami dodecahedron. Conf call in work parseTrace. Burdling & distracted, can't contact F, leave late for home, look @ creche on way.

F gets D at 18:05 and he's quite demanding. Fry for dinner. I finish book about the Priest & the Andean Indians ("A Beggar in Paradise, living among the Incas"). Shave ...:-)

Mar 14

Wed vps test running, parseTrace, addSymInfo

P waiting when D & I arrive. D heads in to visit Conor. Lisa hospital Stan ligament in toe. I transform boiled chicksn bits + leftovers (potatoes + veg) into guite nice soup. P has a cold. D comes back with Keith and Conor. Play farm & puppy racers with me. P babysits, we're late for Chocolat, race down road, sold out, we go to "When Brendan met Trudy" & it's excellent. Very nice & funny. Pint in Orchard. Home "When Brendan met Trudy".

Mar 13

test monitor updates

Mar 12

Jigsaw with Daire. Sew coat. Back to work. (Monday) cvs stuff, database organisation, cvsweb.cgi The Scattering present for Granny?

Aedin & Martin visit. Much chat. Tea & chocolate. Violent N dub prog on tv.

Mar 11

Mar 10

Saturday, wander round town, digital camera, sony digital http://64.14.40.97:80/explore_products/productinfo.jsp http://www.dixons.co.uk/product.asp?pf%5Fid=152333&dept%5Fname=Digital+Cameras&dept%5Fid=1011&mscsShopperID=H050BF3U2ES92J2X00A3HC9AVQ605E4F

Mar 9

up, bkfst, ready for ski. Taxi for F & D. I walk to get snowboard. Sit in snow & wrestle with bindings - awkward. Slide down then gondola up. Start off guite steeply on bum but soon improve. Snowy & raining. Lovely long run down ... But I miss a turn. examine wet map & board off & quick march back up piste and road to chairlift. High chairlift, this time I go the right way. Meet F & D after break. Inside hot choc & later dinner. D + outrun. After D & I head for bus & I end up sprinting last bit with snowboard&skis on right, bag&helmet on back, D under left arm. Whew!

Off @ bus station, saunter over to max bar dropping back Ds skis & visiting closed creche on the way. And telling lots of Dermot stories and jokes "I never saw a mushroom eating a fish!". Glüwein & apple juice, lots of stories, meet one of the girls. 2:45 & no sign of F so D & I head up gondola. With snowboard >;-). We toboggan from mid station to chair. Whee! Get even wetter. Snow spouting up everywhere. D gets cold & covered in snow & cries so I carry him the last bit. 2 chairs down, Walk over, drop off board, meet F, dry clothes, all of us almost sleep. D & I shop for snacks. D cries over smartiss just before dinner but funny shoe polish + spit. After eating all his soup & some of chips+msat arm on table & fast asleep.

transfer to bed, dect, beer talk

Mar 8

"Heeeeyyy baeebyyy...
 you oughta know...dah dee dah dah"
 "PAUL!!!!..."
 "Hey! We live here too."
 "FIONNUALA!"
 "PAUL!!!

I wrestle briefly with t-shirt but Paul leaves them in. It's 4:30ish.

Bkfst, D & i collect skis & wait for bus. Doesn't come for a while & F calls us a taxi. We get to Eichenhof with a little D skiing time to spare. He is the pociceman & I am the robber. Lesson is on rope this day, harder for D but we do see him holding onto the rope by himself. F comes & we ski together & watch D on occasion. He's tired before 12. In same place for dinner, wurst + pommes frites, gulashsuppe, hamburger + pommes. Wafer + coffees after. D plays with car video game. We attempt ski but D has had enough after a couple of runs. F brings him back on bus. I ski & ski & ski. T-bars still feel awkward, snow slushy all over but fun. I go to top & do some of black but can't turn right from a standstill. Better when keep going. Snow melted from parts of mountain too. On way down I fall gently a couple of times.

"ski better, boy morninq" i.e. No snowboard for me this eve. Back hotel @5, head for swim & D&I slide loads until we're both overheating. Going backwards on back makes me fast. D gets on only after I go. We catch others & others catch us on occasion. 4 kids doing tangle. Sing to D, then F chanqes, I've a short swim, then out & meet them having apple juice.

D & I go in first for dinner. D heads off & asks the lady for butter. He likes soup & chicken & chips and asks the man for ketchup. The girls get really slagged by a Dutch woman. "Heeeeyyy baeebyyy..." "PAUL!!!!...". D starts singing it even.

Play Ds game with two Dutch kids. D gets hang of rules better with the others. F brings D to bed & I do diary. Upstairs

Mar 7

bkfst, collect skis, then bus hassle. Wait at gondola, bus arrives line C, I ask but get a no. After it's gone F says we should have got it. We get a big blue bus which qoes way out into the countryside before back into the main station. We get on line A, big red bus. Wait, it heads way out country too before coming back to station & then on to Eichenhof.

D way late, but looks great in class. I'm v pleased that he fits in & goes at it with his usual stoicism & serene contemplation of life. He's overtaken lots, serious demanour. F & I mix camcording, paranoid T-bar rides, ski. 11:00 kids skis off drinks, more ski later till 12. F&I go for long ski.

Dinner in restaurant, D gets my sausage, I get drinks only I like, D cross over us eating his chips, play slide + swings. F goes on see-saw with us first. Then I help D up slope & down slide a few times. I slide bum in snow but little girl copies me so blocking tactics are used. Then other girl gives D a go on the swings so we help her up & give her a push.

ski F + rope +D skis a little, is carried moreso when I ski over. Rope fun with D. See Isobel (has dog home) & Jennifer (computers? Goats veg). F heads off & skis. D & I ski down & book in ski school, dawdle in with toys. Visit loo, organise bag a few times. Catch bus. Drop boots. Catch other bus in St. Johann. After loop away we get home 3:30. Tidy & going to shop but F arrives. D playing but quite hyper in room + on street + in shops. Lovely sports climbing wall + kid net with blocking balls.

Dinner, I&J. F puts D to bed & I get her 830. Dect beer ski read talk lots about moving, what happsn to farm in Cobh. Bed diary

Mar 6

D to creche in morning, F & I ski over to Eichenhof & enquire & book lesson for D. Up T-bars, bit paranoid, goes ok excspt F holds on to one & gets dragged on barrier. Nice to ski with her, we go generally fast.

F trusts me & we go down 5a & across & we collect D a bit before 12. We all go up gondola & get wurst & pommes frites & chicken & beer/applesaft. D a bit agxey as usual about dinner.

I ski lots of day until I meet snowploughs 5ish, meet D&F watching ski display. Then beer/apple/glüwein & meet Mary, Catherine & ? See Pauline & Erik later. Dinner @ hotel after guik shower/shave. I'm tired but get D to bed once he's there. Sleep. F has beer, w Paul I think. A little awake/dream in night after .

Mar 5

We wake before D. All up, dress, bkfst. Loads of ppl on start slope. Too many for D & I. F skis a little & D wants her. F back & then heads over to meet for guide tour. I bring D to creche. We take off ski gear & he's guiet to start with. I come back with mobile no & he is sitting at a table with a game.

I head up gondola, no chat 3 locals? Strange thick German?. Off at top & ski down through whiteout a bit. Little disorientating. Long easy run down. I go over to bottom of chairs. My edging & skiing feels awkward, I lean far fwd+down to edge. No falling. Up chair, meet older Nederlander from Baarn. Down to gondola. 11ish lots of time, meet Amsterdammer in hotel Moser. Off at top and down long way following5a, nice, few people. Despite much map check I go down too far. On chair up meet guide. At top Race to collect D 12:30 D asleep on my lap in pool. Postcards.

Mar 4

palm alarm wakes us 7:30, D sleeps on. F opens curtains. We all get up & dressed, bit undecided what we should do, we were warned that the ski shop would be Very busy. We have bkfst. Cerial & cheese + cold meat + bread + juice (apple for F&D, orange me) + coffee.

Off out, up the road, D walk a bit slow,over railway, ski shop on L. Q on stairs, D amazed & quiet watching all the ski gear walking past him. Boots, I'm 42? F is 38? D is 24 and gets nice blue ones. Weigh, D skis, he carries them, then me, then F. We put on boots & head up. D too small for ski school group. We push him a little, then pull with pole, hands on knees. creche, distracted by all the ski-ers. Then to creche, lovely place. Sonnetag is schoentag. Open tomorrow. We split, I go skiing, F goes with D to find swimming pool.

I head up, put skis on, go down & across flat bit. When I see ski lift I realise !no skipass! Screeee! Skis off, onto road, stomp to main road, across path I see F coming back for me. Whew! Back up same way, skis on, over flat bit & onto chair. Few ppl on chair. I ski down red & do that chair again. Skiing feels guite awkward after so long (or my memories are just kind), I go slowish, going sideways, lift inside ski, not so bad. Then up & ski down to gondola station. Skis off, two locals, I get off midway then ski down long greens. chair up, chair up higher then down, skis off. I get to hotel 1:00ish way too early.

Up to room, then walk in town, find ski maps in tourist office, past langlaufers & glüwein stalls, station. Find map, see you go to swimpool on schwembadweg, hotel, walk to swimpool & meet F with D on back. D cross, F too. They had a lovely time until getting dressed. It's 2:00, we look for food & D sees cakeshop & cries lots, street, hall, back out, in, table, order food, F goes with D & they buy a cake. D stops crying. Dinner comes beer, wienerschnitzel k chips, gulash soup, st johann frankfurter, appel juice. D doesn't like cake but does eat lots of chips+meat. Sleeps on Fionnuala. We get coffies, D wakes & cries. He taket a triangular napkin & chews each end. A bit zonked. F exits & it takes ages to pay. 380ish £22ish. Cafe Renard?

hotel, D to bed & he cries lots, it's nearly 4:00, lifts close when? F heads off. Ds crying makes him cough more, I give D ipesil & he's a little happier. I fuss, fusther & tidy hang up things. D eyes open for a while but he eventually sleeps. I do diary in palm, read brochures, take shower & shave. Sit around in towell. D wakes for a minute but amazingly sleeps again. F back b4 6. Got to gondola & got 2 good runs in, second from very top. We talk, get dreesed, F wakes D eventually & dinner @6:30. Meet Erik&Dad, 2 of Catherines friends arrive too. Also no17 ppl Engl accent but from Killarney. Beginner& traveler, Jennifer & ?, arrived in last night 3am. Starters, D eats a bit, main courses 3 different. D makes sure he gets another order of aj in. Waves glass.

Beer Erik&Dad, Patricia gin rummy game. F to bed w D. Talk lots beer. Erik colours, then pokemon gameboy. TV. Irl politics, Nederlands, tax, UK bse & f&m scape ... I get beer, big too big? F & also girls don't reappear? Drunker than I, I think to bed.

A liddle bit drunk doing diary.

Mar 3

Off ski! (or snowboard ... whatever) St Johann in Tirol ski resort
St Johan town webcam epinions resort review goski St Johann goski Kitzbeuhl

D comes in my side. Up after while & gets cross cos we're lazy. He gets clothes & dresses with prompting, then F gets up & they get bkfst. I get up, dress, cerial then fry fridge leftovers. Packing all done but we still manage to spend rest of morning packing. Shave. Phone home, Russians, Foot&Mouth, Maryexams, Pauline. Tidy up, fry beef & D shares it & milk. Chocolate pear for F. Prunes for me.

Drive thru Dub, we go via toll bridge, D sleeps. Long-term park. Unload bags + F. Drive all around blocked entrances and in exit close. F1 by road. D in bush baby. Over to F. Bus, upstairs, 1:30checkin, don't get in Q for money, bookshop, security, tea, loo, EI6952 b23 2:20board 3fly, but delay till 4. We sit in hot sun window looking at planes & trucks & men. Toilet again (big poo, er, yay), D plays with wire loopy bead thing. Quiet. Diary. Move over b25, board, D by window, a bit restless but good. Dinner+wine, magasine, airport bags bustrip steve catherine hotel room food bier bed.

Mar 2

D comes in a little bit later than past week. F&D head for breakfast, after F heads into shower & D is very sad. I get up & dressed & become a doggy. After fetching & worrying clothes & shoes D is happy. F dresses D. Then I slide downstairs, D thinks it's hilarious. We play with his farm and after I become human again I eat breakfast.

Bike out, defrost car, F brings D to creche & I cycle. Snow is clearing where walked & driven on. It's cold, everything frozen. Still biggest heap on our road, footpaths slippy.

Busy in work, dbase update works, dbase tested, cvs dirs prepped & tested, talk&mail people. Walk with Ruairi & Mark @ dinner.

Home lateish, still bright sky @ 6:30, slushy/mud/wet thaw in places. F was @ dentist with D. Got enema stuff for D & used it. D in quite a reasonable mood. Thin beef steak dinner, I cook veg. F heads babysitting, D crys & we watch TV. Then he goes to bed happily enough, we find BobTheBuilder pjs, D puts them on, brush teeth, Mega Poussin again.

TV Late-late foot&mouth, F home, diary palm. Eventually packing. Most done by F. Read b4 bed.

Mar 1

Daire comes in 7:00ish, we're up by 7:30. Daire is okay until we have a bit of a struggle over his shirt. It is colder this morning. Daire gets cross when there is no rice krispies. He goes okay again after a bit. F drives D to work, I walk over crunchy icy with light dusting of snow.

Mail Karel/Mark, not address at 7fsomething causing trouble. Addr for buf descs 1fa00000 is CS0 bootrom. SDRAM bank0 goes from 10000000 to 11fefffc V busy in work, rush emailing people at end. Dbase errors. Ricardo phone + mail.

Walk home, crunchy snow, D is cross, doesn't like pasta/veg/fish bake. F brings D to bath, I bring pc downstairs & dismantle it. In with D a little. TV, I iron lots, pc guy doesn't call. Bed, read a bit.

Feb 28

wed morn, D in as usual. All up after while. I unload dishwasher & get bkfst for D. D cross over things once F comes. Doesn't want us to dress him.

We all head out on snow, 3 boys admiring igloo, they all fit inside. They attack snowmen so I attack them. Too easy. Keith comes too to get snow thrown at him. Daire stood in the middle lots but everything missed him. F videos & photographs.

Daire is still coughing and a little sick. And in foul humour often enough too! But at the same time happy enough mostly. F wants me to bring D to doc. I don't see what good it'll do. F stays. I walk to work. Nice over snow all the way.

A bit stiff in work, mail snow report home, diary, mark emac test, small time for dinner. Krzysg env & sim setup, cvs&dbase use mail.

Walk home 5:30ish. Snow is melting a bit from where it is walked/driven upon. Snowmen & igloo gone. Kids playing w igloo lots earlier. Hollowed out inside lots & made 3 more windows. Pushed snowman body over & climbed on top of igloo, hollowed body out for entrance tunnell. F caved roof of igloo when it got thin.

Conor is visiting. D & himself playing very happily. F is cooking, I beat butter+sugar+egg, diary in Palm. I'm stiff from previous snow exersion. D howls over bun cases. Conor takes some home. He also is quite cross, won't eat dinner, does eat buns F gives him. Quiet for a bit but very cross and bold about dressing for bed so I take him upstairs. He crys until teeth are brushed but then he's fine. I read him lots of french from his Mega poussin book. I stay as usual a little bit after tuck in and he orders me to "go away"! As usual :-7

Downstairs we watch TV a bit, snow has scotched BBC1/BBC2/CH4/UTV. Fionnuala writes letter to John and makes me tea. I watch junk on TV (british 60s secret agent pop-star guy Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, Dr Evil). I'm tired & stiffish. We head to bed, read a bit, ... sleep & dream a bit.

Feb 27

Buckets of SNOW! Daire comes in to our room quite early, after cuddling for a while D & I get up and dressed and breakfasted. Looking out at the snow in amazement. I get boots & coat & get bike from shed. When Daire finished his cheerios we wrap a scarf on his head (he wants to put it on the snowman), put on his coat, his hat and his gloves. We head out ... it's a bit windy and driving a little amount of snow. Rolling snow balls isn't as easy as last night, we wipe off the car, roll snow around, throw snow at Fionnuala's window. Daire doesn't do too much, the wind is blowing in his face. He laughs lots at me climbing over our new gate. We head in and Fionnuala is putting on her lovely new boots. She has breakfast, I dawdle a bit then head away.

It's REAL slippy on the bike, especially so in the car tracks. All the traffic is pretty slow, ... I go on the quiet path where there are only some footprints, then across the field, wind at about 8 o'clock. Over hump, then fall off going up hill where bike hits tarmac edge. Knee bruised slightly. Walk bike up past steep bit, then back on. Quiet in work, big chat with Eimear, Stephen Bond, Keith, Jarda. A few people out.

Jarda & Mark, Interrupts & UART tests. Diary.

It's was REAL slippy coming from work on the bike.

Fionnuala walked/carried Daire home from creche yesterday and Aedin visited and we made loads of pancakes: savoury with cheese and rasher, pineapple+butter+sugar+pastis, stewed apple+rasin+cinnamon+cloves+pear and pear with chocolate.

After D was in bed and Aedin had headed home we rolled some balls of snow so big we couldn't move them any more, ... then we rolled more balls and made two huge snowmen. Then Fionnuala became eskimo architecht and layed the foundations for our igloo and we rolled and built loads until we had a lovely beehive snow igloo. Great fun.

In we go, off with wet things, I tidy up kitchen & then we have a bath together. After I wash hair & shave. Read a bit before sleep.

Feb 26

Updating dbase from Prague is slow, painful & doesn't work. Clean out HUGE dumpfiles. Status mtg, mail lots of people, BSOD >:-(. Phone around, some guy in Wexford has a motherboard that might do me, deliver Thur maybe. One of the Czech guys is a windsurfer. local.ie windsurfing looks good, windsurfireland.com guide good too.

I collect D from creche, we get milk & apple juice from shop. D is very good, queues up with me carrying milk. We get in home and Fionnuala arrives as we're excitedly trying to lug a big bottle of water. Cook pasta, fish fresh pasta from dry. Peas+rasher+prawn+tomato. Quite yummy. Daire crys loads and ends up really cross, settles & eats a bit when I'm a little nice. Then he has a real hard time going to toilet. Screaming crying before.

F brings him up to bath, I examine our CPU ... it's an IBMPR200MX v2.0 75MHz. Daire cries lots in the bath again and does another poo. I fish it out & he pulls the stopper to drain the water. We clean up & refill the bath & then I make lots of waves and we squirt & splash water a good bit. After, F settles Daire in bed and we watch some TV together, Ally McBeal. Then big making will discussion, I get caught up reading that horrible book a bit and then watching more TV.

Off TV a bit past 12:00, I go to the kitchen and I'm amazed by the bright orange light outside. The place is covered in snow and the city light is reflected really brightly. I walk out the back making tracks looking around. WOW! I head out the front, clear snow from window of car making some snowballs. Hands get cold real fast so I get gloves. Then I roll up snow from car on grass, collect big balls and make snowman. Great fun! Real easy to roll big balls. I throw some snowballs at Fionnuala's window, last I lock our new gate, jump over the fence, collect a big ball and put it in the freezer.

Up to bed F is a tiny bit awake. D crys a bit after I'm in bed. I head in to him & he's quite uncomfortable. He's not hot but has a horrible cough so I give him some Ipesil. He settles to sleep after that.

Feb 25

Sunday in Limerick. Up after a bit 11ish I think. I bring D for a walk, we meet dogs and some old ladies. Daire's feet get sore but we go on to Fionnuala's school and on further to the shop where we don't buy anything. Back home I carry Daire a bit. We meet an unfriendly small dog. Dinner, a little wine, Daire hardly eats anything again, ... a little of the beef when F & I feed him. He really polishes off the icecream and a few biscuits afterwards though! F teaches mobile phone & computer to Granny & Grandad. I juggle a little ... I'm getting better! I find a book on

Feb 24

Sat D comes in, toilet, then rest a little, up & wander room. Bkfst weetabix, toast+honey, tea. Wildlife babies on Tv some get eaten. Then painting, tellybingo, digicamera prog universalimage.com. Diary in palm. unblocking drains. Daire "I'm NOT smart!" "I'm NOT telligent!" to sleep after dinner. I go w F to city, park, F goes gets hair done. I walk around lmk city. Sunny day. Get buy&sell. Easons Compustore motherboard Chaintech 5TDM2 at or atx? Pentium I? Mmd or ? Compustore can order. Back in Dooradoyle Daire is STILL sleeping.

F puts D to bed, seperate beds

Feb 23

Fri work vps code compiles & runs ftp dbase VERY slow & stalling addSymInfo work With Ken work thru all code compile errors. Cryptic error msgs. 's not allowed in comments, $2 <-> $v0 xlation, linking trickey, pic setup too big ytwsen bfc00000 & bfc00180. Eventually compile. Sim & env setup for Ken & Czech guy. Ken code into dbase, compiles & runs. Ken X server problems?

Home, noodles+ hoover fruit + scraps. I pack & push F to pack up & we drive. Jacob's music competition for long while on radio. Traffic in Kildare & busy but fast enough. Get a bit tired w driving, petrol(eco oops) +sandwich +coke break. On arrival F xfers D to bed, I bring stuff in. Tv tea+sandwiches talk bed sepa.

Feb 22

Thur silicon ppl can't share cadenv :-7 tcsh! addSymInfo work work finally fix piping & getopts open(stdio,"-"); while () not while (<>) addu add same, reg dump.

Home after 6, new fence. Pasta. F heads out to poker eve. D crys but we put on TV. Doesn't want pjs. Bed just after 8. Stories & rhymes. Tv, reading Terry Pratchett's carpet ppl. I take shower+shave. Tired can't read more. Start sleep. F back quite late & smoky. Clean :) .

Feb 21

Wed work .cshrc cadenv addSymInfo look kens code, compile errors, help cshrc setup silicon ppl zoom late to get D Pauline comes out. Gets home just as I & D & then F does. I cook quickly spiced chicken curry w carrot & onion & pilau rice. D tells us lots that he doesn't want us to go dancing. D to bed & we go see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Park in Orchard car park tightly. Small cinema downstairs. Lovely movie, choreographed fights, flying jumping on rooftops a bit fantastical but cool. Beautiful scenery. Straight out, skip car jam after.

Back home, sexinthecity, P bed.

Feb 20

Tue F gets up, D yells at top of stairs while F has breakfast, D comes down w me, has breakfast, dodgy moment over addn of rice-crispies. F brings D to work. I cycle. Cloudy, breezy.

uart sim, trace mon still off, index.html, Brian gpio par port code & pi bus ctrl sigs & 0xdeadabba. Ronan myr tasks & work distrib. Dinner Slawek stat rep fierce concentration on mips trace parse (working, add labels, try w uart, track reg values lui ori sw)

F collects D, I get home 6:10, cook garlic broccoli tomato tagliatelli. Play balloon with D. Diary. F puts D to bed.

Feb 19

Mon F brings D to work. In work, finish move to new desk. Huge vps sim hadn't stopped. Pile cabinet & PC on top. Plug all in & loqon. Uart & vps tests run. Power failure. Warm lunch. __asm__ for mips code. void print_sp(void){int i,*p=(int *)0x19ffff04; p=(int)&i;} lots of misc work, get some games for palm.

Me home 6:15. F collects D, cooks nice tomato+ cheese croissants. D quite cross. Wrong apple juice. F to bed, I get D dressed & to bed. Ans phone to Sheila, finish rhymes for D. F gets up, TV Ally McBeal. Bed, F undresses me, nice, leads to ;-)

Feb 18

sun F up w D 1st, then back to bed & I take over. Good for while, playing, surf gear in, water in car, but D shouts at me for about a sustained minute, playing guitar. I loose it & shout back. We bring F bread & cheese & honey & grapes in bed. Crumbs! F gets ready, I phone Bill. We drive, Phips-Drumcondra, dinner in Fagans, Susan & Bill. Nice food+lots. Walk to Botanic gardens, then park. D walks & plays even tho obviously tired & sick. Home, we cook F tagliatelli + bacon + ? & brinq it up to bed. I think. D eats on couch. I finish "Do Anadroids Dream of Electric Sheep".

Feb 17

saturday to town 11ish, park Drury St. On roof. Great outdoors, F boots while D & I play, helmet try on, read snowboard mag, try on sunglasses. Temple bar food market, more ppl, Q for nice food, buy veg & cheese. Asian mkt. Surfdock 2-3pm, Randall, put 5m sail+boom+mast together, buy it £430. To Stillorgan through rugby crowd. Lots of cars but park easily. Grocery shopping, I take D & trolley.

Home, groceries in, food. I collapse & sleep on couch. Bit of TV w F, latelate, then bed. . :)

Feb 16

Moving desk today ... to window seat. Scripting, setenv, ln -s getting run scripts to pick up correct ncvlog wraspper script Whee! gui works. Lots of fixing, big howto setup+run sim mail.
MS Exploder error in perl & html meta in inprojectaudit.cgi, insert . and all is okay.
F & D sickish, a bit of a fever, snuffly.

Feb 15

Sun SKI! Photos here Fionn to Cork & then funeral in Kildare.

Feb 14

Valentine's day, Fionnuala puts present & card for me at door to bedroom. babel

Ciao ciao principessa,
 
  Siete la principessa piu bella nel mondo intero!
  E cosi molto amiable e buoni me, per me.
  Sono il tipo piu felice di tutto il tempo.

 Il vostro principe, 

Feb 13

Verilog training, from Esperan, instructor Milan. Knows loads about Verilog/VHDL, likes tcl/tk, quite cold but friendly at same time.

module ALREG(NEW_ALARM_TIME,LOAD_NEW_A,CLK,RESET,ALARM_TIME);

input [3:0] NEW_ALARM_TIME;
input LOAD_NEW_A,CLK,RESET;

output [3:0] ALARM_TIME;

reg [3:0] ALARM_TIME;

always @ (posedge RESET or posedge CLK)
    if (RESET == 1)
        ALARM_TIME <= 4'b0000;
    else
    	  if(LOAD_NEW_A == 1) 
    	      ALARM_TIME <= NEW_ALARM_TIME;

endmodule

Go to see Bill sing in Doyles. wheresthecraicThe Ruby Sessions. Every Tuesday there are four acts playing their own material for twenty minutes each. The Ruby Sessions take place up stairs in Doyle's of College Street, Dublin 2 at 9pm Tuesdays, £3 adm. cluas.com

Feb 12

Mon Daire hot, calpol. F dreses him, I finally get last sock on him. We get bkfst & tidy dislwasher & get out bike. Into work.

Rush pc on Verilog training coffee del mail latches & D-type flip-flops & logic gates. Cycle to Fillies, lunch, parse script discussion with Doug, walk back with him, late to course. More gates. Coffee del mail, train env setup, write block compile, elaborate, simulate, synthesise.

Zoom to creche, still bright, YAY! Daire good had fever eairlier, calpol fixed it. Home & we cook spagetti + aubergine raqu. Daire tired, has some pasta & we watch Yojimbo (The Bodyguard - Akira Kurosawa - Toshiro Mifune). Fionn home, we eat & after a while D up to bed. Protests but I read story.
Diary in palm, tea, TV Ally McBeal, Wanderlust in Paris.

Feb 11

home really tidy pick up rubbish outside, wash car, load wsurf gear on. Daire tired, watches TV. fish potatoes green beans wsurf Dun Laoighre kite dinner, some wine, Daire bed 12 monkeys bed

Feb 10

Flying back from Tempe, AZ. Wake w bkfst, eyes stiff too, diary in palm. Land Gatwick after while, unload, meet Alek & Dave. Head slowly towards terminal S. Text Fionnuala. Wait for wrong bus, then thru customs & speed up leaving Dave&Alek. Train, walk, checkin, walk, sit, board thru back in wind/driz. Hungry, tomato juice. Phone Fionnuala. Get bags fast.

Daire runs out & I almost don't recognise him. 3 balloons, haircut, red cheeks, squeaky voice. He hugs me Very tightly. Kus Fionnuala. Then goto carpark, Mark/F push trolley. F drives, then we fail to get restaurant in Stillorgan much to Daire's dismay & consternation. We get chips + cod + burger +springroll. Eat, D to bed, us to bed but we only make it as far as couch! More upstairs. Sleep.

Feb 9

Fri swim, shower. Friday dinner, pay by Philips, drive w Ricardo & Rachel & 2mericans. Rib-eye salad chips. Power goes a few times in work. Ric half heart rev of my test spec. Distract finally w compile of VxWorks PR3930 BSP & load into sim. I just about get a few chances to mail stuff back. Get badly lost on way to bar in Arizona Mills. Forgot completely it's on Baseline, not Eliot. Drive nsew, stop & get map & dirs. Bye R&R. Get directed on smaller road S b4 r10 to airport. Drop car back ok, then walk far& back for bue, same doh at BA checkin. Walk to terminal fine. Girl in front really jumpy, on drugs? Dinner, film in-law-Robert-De-Niro. I do manage to sleep (or at least be unconscious) 6+ hours. V uncomfy in seat tho. Neck stiff.

Feb 8

Thur no swim, no bkfst, shave, my sleep has adj finally. Work, running UART & Ronan vps tests, they each stall the chip after a certain stage. U after enabling DMA xfer, initially garbage writtento DMA buf adpr. VPS runs out of stack? Dinner in Motorola. Ronan heads, mail back stuff after netscrape proxy hack + srvr conf. Head w Mark Craven to airport & then to Arizona Mills AGAIN! Get cute pendant, lots of tax off, from quite a gay Jeweller. MarkH doesn't notice. Back @ hotel beam stuff to Alek, hi to Dave, msgs for Ricardo & Rachel. M&I head by car, walk, chilly, Mongolian BBQ. Pack up, one heavy bag.

Feb 7

wed, v tired stiff, no swim, head to bkfst & work. Eat in Motorola canteen. After work (EliotonMclintock) head to Arizona Mills Eliot-PriestonBaseline. Shop & bring Fergus to airport for 8:30. Get lost on way back heading N. Eventually recover. Out to chinese, Ricardo joins us. Yum Kung Po prawns with chillies. Tsingtao beer. Hotel, bed.

Feb 6

Ricardo is mehican, real nice accent. Up 7:40, in for quick swim. Lovely. Bkfst, drive work. Run sim eventually in morn, too few wkstns, too many distract. Phone F&D. HUGE dinner. Stuffed. Stiff. Painful to sneeze. Mexican. Sim work distracted for ages adding waveforms views in gui. Ronan test compile, stdio used - eek, main, Karel print, vps weird hex blocks ref memset.. Ronan doesn't like idea of not using stdio. Outlet drive traffic car-pool lane shop, get clothes & things for F&D. Get sunglasses for me. I drive back. Hooters oyster roast.

The Bandersnatch Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky. Good Guinness, horrible watery molasses they call Sweet Stout. I was a bit brave & tried their sweet stout .... watery molasses (taste almost exactly that of the stuff we put on the silage!) URGH!

Feb 5

Monday wake 6am, silly brain. Doze till 7:20ish. Shop list, ready clothes, hop over fence of balcony swim&jacuzzi lovely warm. Bkfst, drive work. Meet Ricardo & Hung. Cubicle w Ronan. Sun beginning to split things outside. Meeting & I organise my current project tasks in book. Ricardo shows us around, v interesting in lab, MyrIAD pci eval&demo boards. Big fridge too! Ricardo mtgs & demos. I call F&D brief. Mtgs, mail, lunch, mtgs 6ish bye. Stiffer. Frys electronics Pinnacle Studio $89, motherboards mostly DIMM only. Mest 8 din dins. Japanese dinner? Lovely, green mussles+wasabi potato mash, some tempura from Rachel, chicken yakisobe. wine Cheesecake Soooo stiff+tired. 6incar hotelbed

Feb 4

Sun SKI! Photos here up 8, try phone fionn hotel + shop, ccard not work? Up shower dress, I drive to mcDs, bkfst. Drive n flagstaff to ski, hire boots sz11, me 140lb?=10st, 55cm board. on slopes 10:30 Fall top chairlift of course, simple grn 1st, then up halfway, longish flat bit, meet Fergus, nice wide blue. Evbdy V friendly. Meet guy with skiing 3yr old, bringing 1.5yr old soon! Down blacks @ top & onto blues. Fingers shaky from lack of sugar. body getting soke. Do 1 last slow but jolting fall at dottom. Soup+burger+fries+lovely Gatorade. Feeling sore, glad of break, blues/jazz band. Phone, no collect for intl calls :( Lots more boarding till 1600, lifts closed, almost last down, long run w Rachel. Get some gentle turns at end, be confident, turn board w feet & lean in. Hand boots+board back.

Ferg drives, we get Gatorade in Flagstaff & fail to phone again! :( at petrol stop I take over driving 80m& 60ish closer. Loads of traffic. Flowing fast.

Back hotel Holiday Inn, Rachel home, checkin rm 142, diary, unpack, shower. Mark rm 251 Ferg? Meet up in bar w Marks. 1 beer, lots talk.

I send Fionnuala a mail. 00 1 480 9683451 In Tempe, AZ (3pm Irish time is 8am in Phoenix)

Hello Fionnuala,

 I'm really sad I haven't been calling you on the phone .... I've actually tried & tried
 but we travelled up to ski place almost straight away and I'm completely
 moithered between public phone carriers not allowing collect international calls
 OR accepting my various credit cards.

 Anyway ... this should hopefully get to you Monday morning when you check your
 mail ... I'm pretty sure I CAN call you from this hotel (Holiday Inn, Tempe)
 but it's 11pm here and so I think 6am over in Irl .... nearly acceptable  (I tried to call you
  at midnight earlier today!!!)

 Having a great time!

 Met Mark & Fergus in Dublin airport after a slight misadventure with taxis ( I saw a suspicious car leaving
 Mark's estate just as we arrived, the taxi co had sent two cabs ... either intentionally or whatever.
 Taxi driver was quite chatty. Anyway, checked in, flew to Gatwick, waited there for a while .... bought
 some sci-fi books :)  Do Anadroids Dream of Electric Sheep
   Philip K Dick.
 Fergus bought a really cool digital camera .... 700 pounds!! eek
  but it records sound too, also I think he now has an mp3 (movie) clip of Rachel turning elegantly and me
  falling over on my back in the snow.

 Eventually we got on the plane, it was grand really, the air was lovely and cool throughout which I was
 surprised at. Tried to doze off a bit but failed really ... my imagination forced into strange thinking and
 listening to music mixed with natural sounds (stream flowing, birds,
...) didn't even work The in-flight
 movies were quite good ... ? and theoneabouttheboywhothoughtofanideatohelpotherpeopleandtogetthemtopayitforward

  ... er :)  they were really good actually.

 OH!  I remember!  Charlie's Angels and
  Pay it Forward
  I must've been really tired as the last one almost had me crying
  at the ending.

  The flight was quite long ... got some air food, ate it, talked, dozed ... eventually we arrived in Phoenix,
  got through immigration quite quick really, waited ages for baggage, then I stupidly toold a customs person
  I still had a sandwich. DOH!  US customs confiscated my orange and my beef sandwiches (though I had
  had some in London & on plane, so I did manage to smuggle European farm produce in in my tummy.
  They should fire the little dog in the airport ... he didn't find my fruit at all!   We're going to put a bit about
  how to smuggle sandwiches in through US customs in our Software Project Reference Manual. :)

 ANYWAY .... once we escaped that we carried our bags a wee bit ... which then turned into a very long bit
 out side (it seemed really warm ... of with jumpers & jackets). Finding eventually a bus stop. The Hertz bus
 arrived eventually and we piled in .... it drove for a while ... somewhere around & away from the airport to hired
  car ... which proved a bit trickey to find in car park.  Fergus drove us all ... 1st following Ronan's directions (but
  between them they'd missed a vital (turn on to Rural road at exit 7) so we ended up way South & East ....
  we backtracked using my mapquest map :-) and my dot was in the right place.

  Got to hotel 6:30ish, met Rachel shortly after ... that would've been 1:30ish in the morning for youi so I'd already
  missed the call for the first day away :(. Fergus & I didn't check in as we were heading
  up N in the direction of skiing that night.  Off we headed, in Rachel's car. 3hrs later (ish) we found
  Flagstaff.
  We drove up & down a bit and eventually found a nice enough place to stay (snow ploughed into heaps all around
   Flagstaff). Then drove up & down a bit trying to find an open restaurant that wasn't called McDonalds!
   A good few places were shut at that stage but we found a Roma's Pizzareia. I had one pizza & F&R shared another.
 At this stage I was getting over my amazement at the real friendliness of all the Americans.
 Not just in hotel/airport/restuarants/bars but everyone else too was nice to talk to and very helpful.
 Arizona's a pretty cool place I'm thinking.  Arizona

  The restaurant guys told us where we should've gone so after that we headed & found lots of bars in downtown Flagstaff
  just a bit along further from where we had looked. So of course after parking we went and had a beer.
  After practically all falling asleep over our beers we headed to hotel (before 12, before 7 your time so I didn't try
  to call) and slept till 8am.   At that stage I discovered that hotel's telephone carrier didn't take my credit card and also
  didn't do intl collect calls.  We succumbed to the dreaded McDonalds for breakfast ( a bit smallish for me). I drove
  there and up to the snowbowl (a few miles N of Flagstaff).  Easy enough drive.
  Arizona Snow Bowl

  We hired snowboards & bought liftpasses & headed straight out. All chairlifts so the only bad thing was the
  practically enevitable fall at the top (followed by the high speed inelegant crab crawl away from danger). I did
  manage to get hit by Rachel's boot just once. We started going down a big wide green. That was lovely ... I
  was surprised enough that I could stay upright and fall without bruising myself.   .... this was to change shortly.
  Next we went up a bit further ... both Rachel & myself were a bit dubious about leaping into a black at this
  stage so we got off at a halfway station on the highest chairlift. Fergus met us after his black bit .... managed
 the narrow blue fine really. A bit more falling for me on that though. My calves were getting stiffer & stiffer
 from constantly edging sharply on the steep slopes to keep to a reasonable speed whereupon falling off I wouldn't
 crack every single bone in my body.

  Next chairlift up we went all the way to the top ... to the black. Fast graduation!   I was actually reasonably
  pleasantly surprised to find that the black wasn't THAT steep. Just a bit narrow.  I could get down (with a bit
  more bruising)  but definately easier than doing a black on skis on day 2 of skiing! At this stage I met another
 friendly American & he was telling me how well his 3yr old was skiing ... I was a bit flabbergasted when he
  told me he was starting his 1.5 yr old too!!!  (he's taught all his 5 kids).  There were a good few small people
  on the slopes alright. Anyway ... nice to know some small people can have snow fun! :)  I saw him much later in
  the day on the last run when I was quite sore and I groaned a bit after falling a bit painfully ... I think that entertained
  him a bit ... he'd done snowboarding a bit himself & knew it was my day 2.  Anyway .... back to morning.
  After another run my body was battered and I was shaking a bit from lack of sugars.
  Two Gatorades + burger + soup + chips and a rest (listening
  to quite a good blues/jazz live band) later we were ... er ... not quite raring to go but eager to get the last part
  of the torture ... er, I mean fun over with.  (At this dinner I discovered another public phone company that didn't do
  collect international calls, didn't accept my credit card .... but would have given me three minuted if I could restle up
  $14 worthe of quarters ... AAAGGGHHH!!!!   I had gotten $5 of quarters (20).   Anyway .... time was pressing
  (ski lifts closing at 4) so we went up & down about 3 more long run times.   Rachel & myself were practically the
  last people to come down.  The snowpatrol passed me coming down at the bottom & I saw 1 skier after.  (I was
  feeling quite fragile and reluctant to fall much for the last while ... so that slowed me a bit more)  I did have great fun
  though ... up the top on wide runs had gone off piste slightly and befriended a v small tree.
  We were also last in the ski rental place & they were asking what kept us!

  Anyway ... fantastic fun. Brialliant sun .... lovely surface on all the runs & on the very last run I actually managed to do
  some proper turns where it wasn't horrenduously steep.

  Fergus drove back to Flagstaff & we all got more colours of Gatorade type things in the
  shop.  Parched all day I was. We ate a bit of snow on occasion.

  My palm has just told me it's Eimear's birthday on Tue (6th)!

  Anyway, Fergus drove a good bit & I took over after we got petrol. The roads had loads of traffic ... especially in Phoenix.
  Driving fine but fast & have to concentrate quite a bit.  In Phoenix road goes between 4 and 8/more lanes with cars
  overtaking & undertaking all over.  Whee!

  Ronan's just got here ... from flying ... so I might get a snadwich with him in 5 mins (it's 12:10 here ... might be able to
  call you after all ... 1am here is 8am over for you ... I think ... though my brain's getting a wee bit fuzzy.

  Anyway, got here, checked in finally, unpacked, cleaned up & caught up with Marks Hayden & Craven over a beer in bar.
  Hotel room lovely .... wee kitchenette, filtered coffee.  Marks say pool is v nice.  Might attempt to use jacuzzi to ease
  stiffness tomorrow.

  Right ... in case you're wondering there's a lovely PC in the hotel for our use.
  Fantastic!!!!

  Don't reply to hotel address I guess. Mail jamesco@s3group.com and I should be able to grab my mail from the net.

 Hope you enjoy the mail .....

 I should definately be able to call you much easier from work ...

 I'll definatrely try & get organised & try to talk to Daire tomorrow,

 Sorry I've been out of touch so long,

 I love you!  Hope your eye is gradually getting a bit better?
  Send me some news ....   You should see my eyes at this stage actually.  My face matches as do my elbows and
  a bruise on my rear (LHS).

 James.

Feb 3

Flying to Tempe, AZ. Urgh 6am checkin. Tempe ski Arizona Snowbowl ArizonaGuide bye fionn, taxi mixup, meet, london, buy books, read, Fergus buys digital camera £700. Loooong flight, movies good, try & doze w forced imagination, tired, sandwiches & orange & customs meet others rachel beer car hotel Crystal inn. foodpizza beer bed 12:20

Feb 2

Loads of tidying - mail.

telnet lusk 25
HELO jamesco
RCPT TO: ecos-discuss-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com
MAIL FROM: jamesco@s3group.com
RCPT TO: ecos-discuss-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com
HELP
214-This is Sendmail version 8.8.8+Sun
214-Topics:
214-    HELO    EHLO    MAIL    RCPT    DATA
214-    RSET    NOOP    QUIT    HELP    VRFY
214-    EXPN    VERB    ETRN    DSN
DATA
.

home late, D cross bath, eat, D bed, F nap, TV, pack

Feb 1

THUR F up w D, they bkfst, I get up & bkfst & ready, then F brings D to creche. Windy cycle to work.

inProjectAudit.cgi read in from results file & store button values in assoc array store text(ncr/...) in assoc array pass in new link (enabled after form filled) "review checklist" processChecklist.cgi disable submit populate button+text fields (perl writes html/javascript) possible to disable edits?
next we'll be asked for save/restore/del/redo

Busy in work. Ricardo mail, I'm to "switch priority", I look a bit, compose mail, then Karel mails explaining no cache instr problem& old linking prblm solved. Ru wants us to do more so I grab new init code & compile it with gnu binutils 2.10 as & also alqorithmics as (qnu 2.9.1). Look at diffs, send a few mails saying everything is ok.

Late dinner, talk windsurf Mick Parle.

Afternoon I try run tests with gui & get error. I get MarkHs uart.c to compile&link. Get air tickets. Send mails.

Head home, cook stirfry, Pauline arrives, D back from next door rsally crying. Put on little rascals for him. Eat, telly, I shower etc, F nap, D yog then pyjamas +kisses +teeth +story +bed.

F & I head out to town in car. Brian Forde off to india, buy bike & travel back to Irl. Zybeck Ian Brid Hubert in Mulligans Poolebeg St. Nobody in Messrs, meet Aedín & friends in Cafe Gertrude, 2 cappuchino. Walk around, spicyhot lamb in Na? Indian. Yum. Home, diary in palm.

Jan 31

WED up together & downstairs, get bkfst then introduce D to hobby horse, which he names Felix. He consoles Felix the bear by giving him some rides on the horse. Then we give him cowboy suit. He puts it on & he loves it. Then we get ready to go to work. The postman drops in a parcel from G&G in Lmk. Jeans+top+Action orange man windcheater. Fionn wants me to drive but I don't. We cycle to creche bringing cake+buns.

Examining various things in work. Looking a good bit at parse script in perl. How to fix it up. Looks okay. alqorithmics as from Karel. I glance in disdain at the binary but enjoy MIPS stuff on website.

Mark heading to states. I look up Tempe + Arizona on web. Looks great. Indian reservations, parks, mountains, desert. Look up Philips+hotel +maps of Tempe.

Head home 4:30, collect D early. A while talking in creche. Then home 5:05. F cleaning & preparing. I chop loads of veg, make hummus, cook stuff in oven. Keith+Lisa arrive, Pauline, Conor(shy) +Emma+Assumpta later. F does party games, we have food eventually, veg dips, wine, Aedín arrives, kids leave, Orla & Sheila arrive. Tea. D bed eventually. OS home. Bit of tidy then me&F too.

Jan 30

Up, F dresses D, we get breakfast & all head together in car to creche/work. Parse script & nm & objdump & makefiles.

Stillorgan at lunch time with Fionnuala. Cowboy outfit & hobby horse for Daire birthday present. Stuff faces in Eddie Rockets. Burger+ChilliCheeseDog+Nachos+Malts.

Jan 29

Visit to opthalamist with Fionnuala at lunchtime. Roast beef sandwiches for me before & after. We take some pictures with Waider's camera! Call to Waider to drop his camera back, Fionnuala gets party stuff in Cornelscourt. Hacking of Brainforest using just palm, must get time to disasm & edit hex & try it out.

Jan 28

I get up & dressed for D. We get him breakfast & I do crossword. Listen radio, dishwasher on, bkfst for me.

I get cross&anxious. :( We call doctors then shopping in Stillorgan. Groceries+party things. Find Waider's camera in car. BobtheBuilder. Home.

D heads in to visit Conor. I cook pasta, garlic+oil+broccoli then tomato sauce. Mush+butter+tomatosauce microwave. Tasty. Tea + bun.

Fionnuala does some gardening and makes skis for D when he comes back. I spread some compost & mix it a bit. Two mice leg it from behind heap to shed. I put on roast for dinner, sear joint first, rosemary+nutmeg+pepper on outside. Chop carrots + parsnips + onion + some cooking apple + lemon on roast + bit of OJ + tin tomatoes. Roast potatoes on top. I chop more apple & Fionnuala makes apple tart (without sugar!). And cheese scones too. Dinner is good + wine. Cook roast <1:30 next time? Also cover it sooner. Veg v nice chopped coarsely.

Diary in palm. tired, try to watch Bladerunner but too sleepy.

Jan 27

Mum might be coming for a visit to Dublin. Nope. Too busy with calves & daffs soon.

up w D bkfst for him then back up to warm bed. He gets lonely in kitchen.

We get up & head to Dub. Park Merrion Sq, Temple bar yum food mkt, saus roll quiche sushi. Head N to shops Peats, meet Louise, food McDs for D, sushi for us. We split & I walk fast+reticket car. Meet Conor Bob, meet Sheila Great Outdoors, Fs phone dead. Walk Trinity&back & find F&D. D tries ski-pants, great fun trying fluffy hat+sunglasset, doesn't like gloves. Yellow gloves for me. Hotchocespressos in café Mocha. 0Sheila phone, I move car, avoid traffic except @ carpark entrance. Meet Sheila for coffee in Powerscourt ctr. Ride in lifts, home.

Tired TV free Willy. D scared 1st. I make cheese+chutney on toast. Yummy goats cheese. F gets D to bed. Sore eyes, sunglasses for candles. Me v late 2 bed. Lots of sci-fi on. Flicking.

Jan 26

See Pauline momentarily in morning, Daire has gotten up and is doing the rounds. Trip to Tempe, AZ postponed.

Home from work, D already asleep. Nice sandwich from F, talk, drive. Park quays. Messrs packed. Diarmuid bday Louise, Diarm+gf. Louise work w Waider, computers, cafe, Gateway, Stepstone. Waider arrives, Bob the Builder & Natalia, drummer/builder + barperson(ex?). Natalia likes Waiders camera. Talk, Conor, Sheila&Angela arrive later, Angela accounting London hols here. Walkcar, backpark, pub, carnomap, pub, plastered couple. Louise cross kicks some random pusher in shins getting drinks. I get 1full round eventually. Drive home. Loads of orange.

Jan 25

Daire cries when Eimear puts out light briefly. Sometime in morning he cries & I'm very muggy & slow & Fionnuala heads in to him. Later on he comes in and gets in to bed beside Fionnuala. I find it hard enough to crawl from bed. We all get breakfast, then have some coffee + cheese on toast. Sheila arrives, Daire has great fun reading his French mega-poussin book to her. I cycle and Daire comes with me - windy & dry, blue skys & sun.

Mails, enum & cstyle disc, looking at Surrealist & Dali & etc... sites. Poster for Fionnuala for Valentines maybe. cp database slow Simon comes over & goes through & tidies. setenv for LICENCE, for TCL, link tests Phone Fionnuala - Pauline visiting, I tell Daire I won't be home and he says "Oh ohhhh" Phone Pauline.

MyrIAD project meal in FXBs Pembroke St, lift in Mark w Ivan, slow traffic. O'Donoghues, Guinness, Brian, Hana, Czech. FXBs, Jim, Ruairi, Mark, Fergus, Ronan, Fiona. Wine, garlic mush, chilli fish, cheesecake, drunk stuffed. Walk to the Odeon, coke, much nicer (quieter for us old fogies). Fiona+Louise+?+Mark+Krystof head to club 92, I get taxi home with Ivan later.

Jan 24

Fionnuala brings D to creche again, she's back before I leave. Loads of telling people things - sending emails on /proj/myriad setup, test env setup. How to compile. Also getting all scripts working & test env, reconfig, poke, retest, looking at other silicon projs. Fionnuala getting eye operation done. I call her as she's just out of the place going to meet Eimear. Conf call disorganised, people not at phones, find room, then wait, back to desk, hold conf at Ronan's desk. Ricardo, has some stuff for me.

Jan 23

Jan 22

Mon: lashing rain+gales, sneezy & stiff back/legs from walk. Fionnuala is taking holidays all this week. Cycle in sticking by trees as much as possible. Wind/rain driving in face. Cobh.net, mail home, diary, .....

Jan 21

Up 10:30ish, bkfst, P up, darning socks. Brunch, hurry. Drive ziqzag Sally Gap, walk. D buggy walk stone throw lake back run dark drive pasta+bolognese cook cross wine Daire bath, bed, P home. Unicycle bed book.

Jan 20

sat F back to bed, D&I make carnosaur head, we all head out & fly kites, F&D in soon, Keith visits, balloon blowing, PC battery hack, format 46G hdd linux fdisk, D plays PC, I make yummy cheese on toast + goats cheese & mango chutney, D has some with ham, F shoping present, make her toasties. P arrives 18:30ish, D to bed & drive to town. Parkhouse, Sheehans, Pasta Fresca, pub, drive ppl home. Raining & cold. 2am, eat? Tidy? Bed book A History of Danish Dreams, Peter Høeg.

Jan 19

Very very very busy all week hacking gradually getting test env running. No diary writing until today (Fri)

Looked up vc-mode vc-mode for clearcase vc http://intranet.leop.s3group.com/~jamesco/install/emacs-20.2.97.1.zip http://intranet.leop.s3group.com/~jamesco/install/vc-cc.zip extracted in ~jamesco/emacs on unix (load "~jamesco/emacs/vc-custom") (load "~jamesco/emacs/vc-hooks")

Final error about licencing?

fri night TV tidy papers/bank/money late, F excercising on one foot.

Jan 18

Do a bit more of work for Fionnuala on InProjectAudit tool, javascript & perl. She's releasing it to S3-wide use & has added other checklists. Test env hacking has gotten very slow, errors getting more difficult to resolve, discover versions of perl. Pauline out, dinner steak & potatoes & vegmix+pepper sauce, Granny is still in hospitals. Film Castaway, Stillorgan Orchard. Have some food after pub, finish Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson.

Jan 17

Quick fix up of a wee enhancement to InProjectAuditTool for Fionnuala. A bit of explaining how it works. Big meeting with Ken, much mips assembly & registers & init. test env hacking. Moved beds around upstairs.

Jan 16

Jan 15

Jan 14

Walk in the woods. We head late as when we're about to go Conor comes in for a visit. I read Snow Crash. Fionnuala drives, I read map. We don't park in car park as it says it will be shut at 16:00. We go down down path, Daire in buggy. Daire constantly asks where the Teddy bear's picnic is as Fionnuala has told him we're going to it. After a good while he's quite disappointed. We go down down paths zig zagging emerging onto beautifully tarred road. We go at the end and come to the back of a private sign. We head back up path to woods, then back up to original junction & head along other way. Then up steeply left on a small path through the woods ... we meet other people after a while and find a carpark on the top of the hill. It gets very dusky dark in the woods and the paths aren't great so we hop out onto the road for the last bit.

Jan 13

We head out in evening to Escape. Gang of French, Polish, German, Czech people. Wine. Assumpta & her babysitter babysit Daire. He's very pleased and zooms in next door. I stay on & head to Playwright after, Fionnuala heads home. No Scrumpy, just Bulmers. I bring wine home.

Jan 12

Jan 11

Jan 10

Daire comes in & reads Fs books & eBook & turns on computer (won't boot - low CMOS battery :( ). I get up 8:50 and we dress, get breakfast, dress D, lock up, motorbike to creche. Daire works the brakes a bit. Daire heads in happy, on to work over muddy fields ... not frosty as yesterday, windy.

Kamilla moved out of desk, Krystof & Ben in. Pascal's girlfriend Anna working in canteen iin S3. Small mail & eclipse lookup in morning. Serious work on test spec.

Jan 9

F up real early, taxi ringing bell wakes me. I wake up later, head into shower. Daire gets up then (quite late). We breakfast & then dress him ... it goes slowly enough, he poures a big bowl of cheerios. I get the kitchen tidy & worktops cleaned. Into creche late.

gcc binutils bunzip2, ... Applied MathPad hack successfully, emacs edit. Looked up the Chiropracty stuff, spine diagrams & link with illness and made a page. How to kill an eel on dspsrv.

hack Insider, find it trickey, multiple searching disabled/buggy. Code section crashes pildis on PC, start looking further into that problem. Broke up code segment (split -b 1000 code0001.bin; ../PILDIS.EXE *.bin; etc...).

Headed home, rush again after looking at hacking Insider. D legs it out to me when I get to creche, he seems in quite good form (sleep in this morn could be good). We cycle home, D pretends bike is motorbile these days, holds as close to my hands on handlebars & really leans out around corners. VRMMMMMMmmmmm!

We look at moon & a L driver car that Daire is interested in (because of lights on top) drives past. We wait till it goes past again & I hold Daire up to see it. Then we see Keith & Conor & they come in and visit. Everyone troops upstairs to get cop car & puppy racers & jigsaws ... Then down. The gang play merrily ... I reheat spicy+potatoes for my dinner & pasta+beans for Daire. Eircom person calls to door & Daire legs it to loo for sore poo. Then phone rings & we call Fionnuala back. She tells me about eclipse ( & russian satellite?). D & myself eat dinner in living room. TV on. Gang playing.

Ahhh yes, the old wolf moon, moon when the cold is strongest. It was lovely and bright (early on). Was too *&%%$Ng cloudy over us to see the eclipse. Did see the moon through small gap in clouds about 10 mins after start (18:50ish) and I think there was a bit of the bottom left missing. nasa eclipse info
Next one visible from here is in 2002, Jun 24.

Then everyone to next door, we leave door wide open. Emma running around, D plays, Conor & Keith watch TV. Eventually I head back with D. F is home, on TV: that 70s show. D dresses for bed & Martin calls with Christmas cookies. I bring D up for teeth & story after tea & cookies. Much talk with Martin, F & book about living styles ... consumer society bad. I'm not so sure it's so simple ... I know pretty much everything F mentioned as a problem but I don't see how it is solved. TV on in background, young guns. Cheese & ham toasties before bed with OJ.

Finish A.C.Clarkes 3001 Space Oddesy. Long epilog & acknowledgements.

Jan 8

I bring D to creche after F gets up and heads on bike for 9:00 meeting. F in Leop in morning, diary & pilot hack typeup. MyrIAD SystemVerification env demo in afternoon. Status meeting later, work on Test spec ongoing during day.

Rush fast cycle, collect D & home, D & I cook dinner, D eats pasta, then we do jigsaws until F comes back from soccer. During dinner D goes very clingy and eventually cries (he zipped up Fionnuala's fleece and caught her neck. She yelped a bit loudly.) I get Ds PJs on, he doesn't like it. F brings him up to bed. I follow and read him story.

Hack MathPad using just Palm progs ... I find what to change ... but can't edit memory. Seems PalmVx or the new OS uses more of the protected memory functions. Get fatal reset when trying to edit PRC. Pilot hack can only see the first few k of memory.

Daire's cough wakes him up a bit but he stays in bed. F & myself also have a bit.

Jan 7

Sun, F up with D. Bkfst, dinner, tuneTV, play D, TV D. Eoin arrives. Drive after dinner tidy. Drive home from Dundalk, F & Daire sleep. Through Dublin city. Take Christmas decorations down at home. Do jigsaw with Daire ... I get a bit impatient ... but survive. Then we cook dinner, Daire gets out pasta wheels. Pasta quatro-formaggi-pepper-carbonara. D remembers being a cow. Play football. F no 2, me no 7, D no 1. Good imagination, over christmas too. Shark catch/cook/eat game. F puts D in bath & tidies, I go up later & take him out & put on pyjamas.

diary on palm ER, The Killing Fields, Playing with musicPlay prog (PocketSynth-like) & diagnosing PocketC anachronisims again. Up to bed, read bittle, then don't sleep straight away, F looking at me :)

Jan 6

Sat, D finds us, trail of toys, F gets up with him. Me up later. Bit tired, cough+late. Decorations down step-ladder, dinner, talk&play. Tuning Grundig struggle, fuses.

Tuning Grundig TV: (start mess w tuned channels)
      br    col   ctr
                  vol
Tun   sea   p-	   p+
nor   t-	   t+    M

1 Choose channel using p-/p+
2 Tun knob to filled o
3 Press sea, TV auto searches
3.1 Press sea again until right chan
4 Tun knob to o
5 Store with M

@2-4 display shows freq
t-/t+ fine tune

Other Grundig has U btn for manual tune. Set vid clk, set vid prg, not good UIs. Play D, visit Michelle, D hogs toys a bit. Fry for tea. D to bed & story & palmhack.

MurderMystery. Red wine, cheese&crackers&grapes. Bed late drunk Hugh.

Jan 5

Fri, sleepy then hit by alarm clock. Flare cross, up, bkfst, rubbish, cycle.

Mtg/demo on Verilog C/BFM tests. Links & mail & ... Palm No DTMF?

A wee bit of hacking on the pilot Got prc2bin & disasm & pilothack & insider. Combo=>have most. Need better search & edit. Emacs hexl mode screwed by cshrc? Edit by changing gs (in beq 67) to fs & 's (bne bra 66 60). Make mistake 1st. Home after successful PocketC hack.

Home, dinner, F pack, D & I collect food. Arrive Dundalk in night, D sleep car, straight to bed by F. Talk. Hugh palm eartrainer/fretboard. Bed. 3001 Arthur C Clarke, read lots.

Jan 4

Today was the first day Daire woke up before me ... I think. He was still tired though ... putting on clothes was a struggle ... he weakly attempted to remove his pyjamas top ... got as far as getting his fingers inside the sleeves before giving up :(. He also dissolved into tears when I poured the last of the milk into my cerial. Poor wee fella. We sorted it out after a bit. ... I'm not invited to his party though :'( ... maybe he'll forgive me before then.

Anyway, ... it's nice to get back home and just be lazy for a bit. Daire's enjoying all his new stuff.

Pauline certainly does know how to show appreciation for her present!!!! Seemed to exist on diet of waffles since present was opened. "Of course we know it's really all feigned ... but you're REALLY good at pretending to like waffles! >:)"

Jan 3

Fixin up diary (search-forward-regexp "") ;backslashitis :( (replace-regexp "" "" ) ; with \ (replace-regexp "" "" ) ;no quotes

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Jan 2

Back in work :(

Jan 1 2001

Drive Limerick-Dublin

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