Ken Guest’s online diary

I was at the Slope Side Ski Tour operators business launch yesterday in the Odeon here in Dublin.

They offer tailor made packages to the world’s largest linked ski resort, Portes du Soleil [more specifically Morzine where their chalets are], in the heart of the French and Swiss Alps. You get picked up from the airport, which is only a two hour drive from the resort so you don’t have too much of your trip wasted on travelling and you even get a live-in Chef for the duration of your stay so you can be sure the meals are spot-on delicious and to your own liking!

The guys gave such an ebullient, professional and energetic presentation that I can’t but believe they’ll do well in their new business.

It’s also nice to spot they’re using OpenSource for their website

(small disclaimer/note of interest: one of the business partners is my Fiancée’s brother).

Taking a cue from Braz and ultimately Moonbeam, here’s a little map of the countries I have been to.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Just a reminder to all DBAs, developers etc – have you made the required changes for the ComReg numberchange?
The newly expanded area codes are 044, 053 and 057.

went to the Jack L concert at the Olymia last night. Very enjoyable.
Bought a ‘Live CD’ of the gig immediately afterwards, which really is a very good thing – blast the bootleggers out of the market
I wonder, how long will it be before we can download MP3s and OGGs from kiosks at venues immediately afterwards? Now that would be cool.

Have you added your photo to the WWF photo mosaic that they are creating as a photo-petition against the on-going destruction of natural forests and to promote the sustainable use of forests instead?

It seems that every year over 13 million hectares of natural forest are lost forever – approximitely 25 hectares a minute – or 36 football fields if that help you picture how much is being destroyed.
It’s time we did something about it.

Last Wednesday, I asked Aisling to marry me…and she said yes!
I couldn’t be happier if I tried. Thanks sweetheart!

Very suprised/please to notice a full page feature on The Village which is based in Cloughjordan, where I hail from, on page fifteen of today’s Metro. All in all, it’s going to be very good for the local economy and the community as a whole.

In case you haven’t noticed the posters at most bus stops, there is a fast tomorrow in aid of raising funds for Concern which I am participating in.
If you want to sponsor me, you can either do so online (search by my ken /at/ guest.ie email address) or just get in contact with me.

A while back I signed up on the passport.panda.org which is a website of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF International) organisation.

If you sign up you can “travel” around the world and participate in nature preserving campaigns – you then have a chance to add your voice to campaigns for the environment, no matter where you are in the world, all over the world.

I think I may have left a twenty-something year old woman feeling a bit embarrassed on the train to Greystones from Connolly station yesterday.
She got on the train a few minutes after I did, sat down beside me and promptly fell asleep.
She kinda cuddled in to me after five minutes or so and I didn’t have the heart to move or wake her, but had to when the train arrived in greystones – if I hadn’t I might have found myself out in Gorey!
I think I may have said: “sorry gorgeous but I need to leave”.

Think I might be getting quietly addicted to adding contributions to wikipedia.org. Relax, I’m only joking. I’ve contributed more than my usual amount more recently is all….

Sure, over the past year or so I’ve been adding pertinent links to linux.ie articles for the Samba, JUnit, Vim and Leafnode entries on wikipedia.org. There are probably a few more I’ve forgotten and won’t be able to determine what they were, unless I go looking at linux.ie access logs, as I’d revised those entries anonymously as I wasn’t all that bothered to get a wikipedia account.

I changed my mind on Tuesday because I wanted to write an entry on Cloughjordan, which is where I’m from, basing my decision on wanting any other Cloughjordan natives that might read the entry to know that it was written by a local. I then quickly updated the relevant entries too.
After a while I decided to update some Clive Sinclair entries, as the ZX Spectrum which he brought out in 1982 is pretty much responsible for my interest in computers and Information Technology in general – I can’t believe that people are actually working on an extended version of Sinclair Basic at the moment!

I added information on SimpleTest which is a very useful unit/regression testing tool for PHP, much like JUnit is for Java.

That’s what I’ve been up to in my spare time while looking for work and accommodation in Dublin, along with working on the linux.ie site.

A few weeks ago iRiver released firmware v1.28 for the iRiver H300 series player, giving the player the ability to playback WAV files, display the current time, support subdirectories of the TEXT folder and adds a miscellany of minor bug fixes.

The bar histogram as regards the volume setting is now visible when changing the loudness of the player, afterwards the current time is displayed in its place.

It would be lovely to see support for RTF or HTML formatted eBooks, in addition to support for plain text files, but I have to say I’m more than pleased with the new firmware.

Last Thursday was the hottest day in Sydney for this time of year since around 1875! Now though the weather is such that it reminds me of winter in Tralee; it’s cold wet and damp.

Picked up a few packets of Peanut Ginger Chews last friday; these are sweets made of chewey ginger. Lovely hot aftertaste!
I think it’s safe to say I’m addicted!

Clearing out bookmarks on my 6310i, I was reminded of a very useful
Grocery List midlet which I use quite a bit.
I’ve been using it for the past month and have no gripes with it; in fact its ease of use makes it very recommendable.

Told the guys in the Sydney PHP Users’ Group that I’d update my CV and post it somewhere, so took some time out from Coogee Beach, where all nearby Internet Cafes haven’t heard of OpenOffice. Here it is, in Word format.

I know I haven’t mentioned anything about being in Oz prior to now – blame it on the jetlag. It sucks. Hard.
To summarise: we landed in Sydney at 5:20 am on Friday and got through customs, immigration and the the visa label desk just fine. Had to wait quite a while for a shuttle bus to come and bring us out to Coogee; we got there around 7am then waited until 8 o’clock for the hostel to open.
Not a biggie as they say over here.
In a vain effort to beat some of the jetlag we got up considerably earlier today and walked along the beach, which according to an enscribed stone was the first beach made shark-safe in Oz.
Well, that’s good to know.

Not much else to report, except that yeah, jetlag sucks; chatting with some of the lads in the hostel who are also over from Ireland it’ll take us a full week to recover!

Seeing as we got our WHVs (visas) in record time (55 minutes after applying for them, thanks to immi.gov.au ) a few weeks ago, we shopped around and got tickets for Sydney; leaving on June 16th at 16:00 and arriving in Sydney at 05:15 on June 18th.
As one good friend said:
“Exciting times ahead!”

And we just can’t wait, though yeah I am going to miss home and seeing my nephews and niece grow up.