Get The Party Started

My Christmas party is tonight and then I'm finished work for 2007. Actually, there are a plethora of little jobs that need doing around the embassy so I should say "I'm finished working for financial reward for 2007".

I would assume therefore that there will be no more blog posts until 2008 - presumably by which stage the en-suite will be a dust filled crater, I will have abandoned any refurbishment attempts and will be desperately in need of some respite. (Grand Designs it won't be - I have all the artistic ability of a 3 legged Peruvian mountain goat.)

So.... I would like to wish everybody who has ever read this blog a Merry End of December and a Happy New Year. Thanks for reading, thanks especially if you've left comments or if, being masochistic by nature, you come back on some semi regular basis.

Slip sliding away

Travelling by motorbike is a risky pursuit at the best of times. When travelling upright the combined area of contact between the road and your tyres, the source of all grip, is roughly the size of the palm of one hand.

Although a little reckless when younger, I would like to think that I have developed into a mature sensible biker who doesn't put himself directly in harms way. For the most part this is more down to bike-preservation instincts rather than ones of a self-preservation variety.

This does not mean that my heart doesn't leap out of my chest at least twice a day. Sometimes its because a driver decides to changes lanes without checking their blind spot. Sometimes its because the guy pulling out of the side street simply doesn't see the man in a dayglo vest on top of a quarter ton lump of moving metal with a great big headlight. Sometimes its because I goof and misjudge the situation. Then sometimes, like this morning, its nobody's fault...

Thanks to the current M50 works at the N7 junction, just beyond the red cow roundabout there is a short stretch of road that dips and turns sharply. It is immense fun to negotiate on a motorbike when traffic is light - you flick the handlebars causing the bike to flip over sharply onto its right hand side as you turn, drop and accelerate out of the bend. It strikes me as being not unlike the Corkscrew corner at the Laguna Seca circuit.




This morning, traffic being quite heavy, I approached it in a sensible manner - so sensible it may have warranted wearing slippers. I was in the middle of 3 lanes travelling at about 50kmh and, when it came to flipping the bike down into the right hand bend nothing happened. Sure the bike was leaning over slightly but I was still going straight - I couldn't brake and I certainly wasn't in a position to accelerate.

Thankfully easing off the throttle slightly allowed the wheels to grip and pull the bike back onto my intended course... but not before convincing me that I would soon be more acquainted than I would normally like with the side of the Ford Focus in the lane beside me.

Still a little bit shaken but thankfully the bike (and me I suppose) are in one piece.

Good morning!

I'm going under cover...

According to the breaking news section on ireland.com, Fabio Capello is expected to be officially "unveiled" as England manager later today.

I find the misleading nature of this statement mildly irritating - he will not be unveiled, he will simply walk into a press conference, sit down and field a short Q&A session. He should be unveiled in a much more literal sense.

Capello should be sat at the table in the press room, covered from head to toe in an expensive red, velvet cloth. The journalists sill arrive and nudge each other, whispering frantic speculation as to who could be beneath it. Eventually the press conference would start and after a short statement an FA suit would whisk the cloth off (in the same manner you might attempt to pull a tablecloth from under a number of plates, cups and glasses) while enthusiastically announcing "Ta Da!"

It reminds me of how the Spire was "unveiled" with great fanfare - despite the fact that we all knew it was there and what it looked like. Unable to find a cloth big enough to cover all 120m of it, they simply left the bottom 20 feet covered in clear plastic. The unveiling involved removing this plastic.

If something more opaque had been used we could have enjoyed weeks of speculation about what would be unveiled - maybe the 3rd secret of Fatima in braille or a caricature of deValera on a moped racing a badger in a Model-T Ford - I dunno.

If removing the plastic from something is now considered unveiling I feel it only fair to announce that I unveiled 3 Easi-Singles this morning.

I'm here all week, try the beef..

No matter how good or bad a gig goes, there is generally something to take from it. A witty, off the cuff ad-lib that can be permanently written into the material for future use or a note-to-self that, no matter how clever you think it is, the stuff about excommunication and augmented 4th chords doesn't really work and should either be dropped or re-written.

Friday night threatened to be an exception to the rule. The room was less than half full and this was in no way helped by the fact that everybody decided to sit towards the back of the room creating some kind of comedy moat. The MC, who had something of an off-night, and was unable to coax people to move forward which was unfortunate for all involved as laughter, although infectious by nature, tends to have problems bridging gaps of more than a few feet. One of the hardest things on nights like that is motivating yourself to put the requisite amount of energy into the material and its delivery when you know that, no matter what you do, the energy returned will be vastly disproportionate as your audience don't enjoy the comfortable anonymity of a large crowd.

Oh and there was the spotlight! The last time I played this particular club they used 2 desk lamps to illuminate the stage (this gives you an idea as to the size of the venue). It was quaint and charming and made it seem like the club was part of an underground comedy movement. On Friday, I discovered they had invested in a great big spotlight to shine in my eyes making it impossible to see any further than the first 3 rows - which happened to be empty. I have no idea what they were expecting me to do - but I confessed to 3 counts of murder, 1 of extortion and and 6 of aggravated assault. I also broke down and explained how the corpse of Lord Lucan was rotting in the boot of my car.

So, on to the set...

In a bold move, I opened with the new Katy French material. It had been hastily reworked because there were so few Irish people present and I'd added a new gag to it. It went down very well which I was naturally delighted with - my only grievance is that this material has a limited lifespan but there is nothing I can do about that.

From that point, given the odd dynamic in the room, I decided that tried and tested material was the only way to go so out came the material about traffic infringements, social faux pas and strange compliments. It proved as reliable as ever and allowed me to close with a string of one liners that I love but rarely include about entrepreneurial ideas, my father playing Yahtzee! with the grim reaper and the passing of Grandad Ambassador earlier this year (I know he would have loved these).

At the beginning of the gig I felt that, like a man who makes coupons for a living, I would have my work cut out. Overall though I was very happy with it - the laughs came at the right places and although they may not have been riotous, when taken in context were more than acceptable.

I also managed to bag the MC slot for a gig after Christmas which I'm excited and nervous about in equal measure. Must remember to wear dark glasses.

Life's Little Mysteries #4

Will we ever see a newspaper article about Cecelia Ahern which does not have a headline that starts with the letters P and S?

It might have been a little clever the first time - but still?

Mark Thomas MP3 found...

Here is a link to the Mark Thomas MP3 i mentioned yesterday...

Download it (just shy of 22MB), listen to it and let me know what you think.

Decisions, decisions

Warning: this post contains content of a dull IT nature. If easily bored look away now. Although it does contain an endearing wee anecdote about Grandad Ambassador.

I'm a software developer by trade and today I find myself with the unenviable task of making a number of complicated changes to a piece of already very complicated code (which was originally implemented by A.N. Other).

With the new functionality being sufficiently similar to what already exists it would be foolish to add completely new code to handle the requirements, however, it is also sufficiently different to ensure that new and old will not play together nicely - or not as things currently stand anyway.

This leaves me with two options.

1. I can be a diligent developer, print out the existing code, then tear the whole lot down and implement both pieces of functionality from scratch in a clear, logical , concise way that will allow them to cohabit peacefully. This approach also ensures that the next poor sod to find themselves looking at this code will be greeted with code that is easy to understand and follow. There is a real danger however, that in rebuilding the original code, I will find myself shouldered with the responsibility of supporting code I had nothing to do with first time around.

2. I can hack the bejaysus out of of the existing code to make the new features fit. This will ensure that I don't change the original code and as such, will not be stuck supporting it. However, it would be akin to sticking the aforementioned new features on with blu-tack, sticky tape and chewing gum. Needless to say, it is generally considered bad practice.

Right now a little voice in my head is chanting "Hack it! Hack it! Hack it!". Unfortunately the bigger voice - the one which takes pride in its work and believes that, as Grandad Ambassador used to say, "if something is worth doing, its worth doing right" - has told the little voice to shut the hell up unless it wants its ass kicked.

Mind you, Grandad Ambassador was the type of man who would say "Its all fun and games until somebody loses an eye... unless its some type of eye gouging competition, in which case you continue until you find a winner" - so maybe his advice isn't all its cracked up to be.

What fantastic grandparents I have.