Tent of Blue

I hosted a poker night with some of the boys a couple of nights ago. I’m not much of a player and some of these guys are sharks. So myself and Kites end up on a very evenly matched head to head that went on til about three in the morning. This hand drew us both all in before the flop so we had our cards out when I got dealt the following straight, which I thought had it sewn up for me.

From test

But then the river gave him all he needed with a queen to complete his flush. BASTARD!

From test

Looking at the pix now I see that I was only a king shy of the best hand in poker.

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Learn through face recognition which celebrities you resemble:

From test

I was very saddened this morning to learn of the passing of Leslie Harpold; blog pioneer and creator of the best annual Advent Calendar going. This year’s calendar tragically ends on December 7th.

When I was just discovering what the Internet could do for me, shaping my online identity and dipping my toe into the blogosphere, one of the hands that reached out and pulled me right in was Leslie Harpold’s. Her writing and her style were so beautiful and honest. Her open fanmail to her friends probably best illustrates, in my opinion, what her attitude was all about.

It’s a bit of a long clip but it’ll get your spine tingling like only Damo can:

You’ll never kill our will to be free………..

I’ve had a good run of gigs this year; highlights include The Flaming Lips supporting Dylan, Bray Vista in Castlepalooza, and Neosupervital, Radiohead in Marlay Park (emotional) Leccy Picnic highlights like Basement Jaxx and Hot Chip. But tonight I saw a show again. A proper show. Sufjan Stevens entertained; with great music, a great show, and a really modest feel to it like ‘a nativity play’, as my friends hinted at.

I just had to create my own to see how long it works. I was at a friend’s house on Saturday and I was enlightened as to the powerful Googlewhack. I was simply gobsmacked at the tomfoolishness of such an endeavour so I had to join the race.

My little girl has known for a while now that she wants to be a singer (and a movie maker now as well). Recently, she’s even started writing her own songs. The first two she sprung on me one day recently; Voices and Glowing Eyes. The words seemed to be semi- made up but semi- thought out also and the melodies were pretty ok as well. So today, when she told me she’d got a new one, I told her to slow up while I typed it out.

I give you Wondering by Bella, age five and three quarters; my very own little Mozart:

i wonder what life is
i wonder what they do
i wonder how cheetahs go so fast
i wonder what the speed is
i wonder how they do it
and why do i wonder so oftenly
that i like wondering
and that i wonder all the time
it seems like thinking
but it is too fun
to think more or twice

So, the massage / scuba day was pretty awesome. I can honestly say it won’t be topped for a while yet. I’d been dying to do a dive and I wasn’t remotely nervous about it until our instructor sat us down for an hour long chat about lungs exploding, ear drums bursting, eye balls popping out. Nice! But I’ll start as the day did; with an eighty minute deep tissue massage from the lovely Emmanuel. Mind you, there’s not much you can say about that. It was in the Golden Door Spa, the resort’s top rate pampering establishment. It was a crazy good massage; I’ve never had deep tissue before and it did good things for my previous water injury which, incidentally, turned out to be a little more severe than I had first thought and was the reason I had to abort my triathlon aspirations for now. The other awesome thing about the massage was the price. I was in awe that anyone could charge that much for a massage; $198.

So, totally relaxed and with my daughter safely deposited in the similarly crazily priced kid’s club, I headed for the dive. There was just four of us and we all knew each other, which was great. I really hadn’t thought about the seriousness of it all until Tito (who really does look like King Triton with his flippers on) began to go into detail about the various ways we could harm ourselves. But he simultaneously inspired calm in us all, I think, and we went ahead with a great dive. I was pre-warned that my ears would hurt like hell. They’re sensitive at the best of times and I’ve been told I should even wear earplugs in the shower to avoid irritation. So submerging myself in thirty feet of Carribbean Sea was never going to be kind.

It was breathtaking down there. The plant life blew me away more than anything; as we started off after the descent the first massive piece of reef we came across was like a mushroom cloud from the base of the sea. We saw lots of fish; sargeant majors a plenty and yellow tailed snapper all over the place. And the detail on the reef was amazing - these massive flat wafer-thin, or skin-thin really, leaves with their veins all on show, just wafting in the water, and the harder plants that looked like designer hand-carved table ware. Just breathtaking. I wasn’t too nervous down there although I did wish I’d asked him more questions about the ascent. That was the one thing that freaked me out in theory; that if I did freak out, that all I would want to do would be to go up. And that’s the one thing you can’t do. But it was all good; I couldn’t hear that well for a couple of days after and I felt a little nauseous for a couple of hours but it was all good.

So next was the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and it was great to catch up with all the NYC rellies. Really great actually, it was somehow nicer seeing them all when they were also on holidays; and we were all able to spend lots of time together over the few days. So Saturday then was the wedding, which went beautifully and which you can check out here and here.

It was really lovely event; the couple both looked very gorgeous and very happy and in love. And my relatives are all as crazy on that side of the pond as they are on this side. The cultural differences are always interesting as well; the cocktail hour was, once again, a shock to the system, as you’re plied with food before the meal even starts; the wedding dance before the meal, etc.

So we finished up in El Conquistador and after all our luxuriating, got a little rustic in the beautiful island of Culebra, home to the world famous Flamenco Beach, varying species of turtles and many ex-pats from the Southern United States. This place was gorgeous; we stayed in Villa Fulladoza, which was lovely; cheap and ideal for what we wanted. The manager was lovely and picked us up from an early flight to the island in one of the many little eight seater planes that carry people to the island. This journey was reason in itself to go to Culebra; I’d been saying since I arrived in PR that the perfect way to see it would be from the air so that you could truly appreciate the blue of the waters, the whites of the sands and the luscious greens of the forests.

We had a lovely few days there, and the newlyweds joined us for our final day, which we spent in Culebrita, an even more stunning, isolated island off Culebra.

So I’m home a couple of weeks and I’m glad I’ve got this all down before it slips from my mind. I managed to delete all 150 of my photos from the two week trip on the second last night we were there. I mourned and I’m over it. I’ll post some from the last day when I get my hands on them again.

That’s really all that this post is for; to make sure that I don’t ever forget what a wonderful trip it was. I can’t see that anyone will be interested in reading about someone else’s holiday of a lifetime. I want to make sure as well that I remember all the wonderful peeps who made it such a great trip; all the second cousins; Kevin, Sal, Katie, Dennis, Jen, Katrina, John, Justin; and all the once-removed ones; Jack, Anna, Peggy, Carol; and all of the Bishop clan. Other wedding guests like PJ and Victoria, Jeff and Beverly, Mike and Gina, to name a few, all made it an exceptional few days for Bella and myself, and the lovely Linda, of course. And, for making it all happen, Maritza and Mike. Wow, I feel like I’m writing an Oscar speech so I’ll stop now.

One piece of advice; if you’re thinking of going to Puerto Rico. Do it. GO.

I fell in love with the amazing city of San Juan. It’s so beautiful, just full of character, very romantic and relaxed. Puerto Ricans are amazing people, so friendly and relaxed and cheerful. I never once felt in danger and more often, felt that I could behave as I would in my own home; leave my bag on a outdoor restaurant table without fear of thievery, and saunter along with a smile in my face that few people failed to return.

It was also a novelty to be mistaken for an American. Many people haven’t heard of Ireland, it’s easier to differentiate from the predominantly US tourists by answering that you’re from Europe.

We stayed at Hotel El Convento, which I also fell in love with. It’s a converted sixteenth century convent with many original features. Five floors face onto a courtyard full of tropical trees and plants. One fruit tree attracts bats at a fierce rate (they’re everywhere here) and Bella had a lot of fun watching them fly in and out of the terraces from the courtyard. Who’d have thought that such a girlie girl would have such a penchant for bats; they’ve even overtaken the cheetah as her favourite animal.

In San Juan we did many of the sights and attractions - El Morro, the massive fort that sits at the top of old San Juan, the children’s museum, a ferry to Catano, a surfing lesson in Isla Verde. But most of the time was spent in the lovely rooftop pool that Bella got such a kick out of, or wandering around the gorgeous cobbled streets, that I got such a kick out of.

So after five days soaking up the flavour of this wonderful old town, we took a cab to the luxury resort of El Conquistador near Fajardo. This place is out of this world; all the trimmings that you would expect of a luxury resort - lots of pools, including an infinity one, a private island (Palomino) with the most quintessential tropical beach you could conjour in your mind, with the leaning palm trees, white sand and turquoise clear waters, a casino, spa, golf course, and on and on.

Many of the other wedding guests are staying in the Casitas villas at the top of the the resort, but we’re down here at sea level, at the marina. We’ve been mainly hanging out at the beach, on Palomino, and we had an amazing night kayaking through a mangrove channel to the bioluminescent bay here in Fajardo, Laguna Grande. This evening, I’m off for a flutter at the casino, and tomorrow I’m packing in an eighty minute deep tissue massage in the morning and an afternoon of scuba diving. After that, the wedding festivities begin with the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night and then the main event on Saturday. So little time………

I’ll add in some links and pix when I’ve time. For now, the casino tables are calling me.

So, I did the second scariest thing of my life by jumping off this rock forty feet into the water:

It’s called the Crow’s Nest, it’s out in Howth, and it was such a buzz. I managed to land all wrong in the water though and have damaged my back and bruised my heiny pretty badly. But I’d do it again. And get better at it next time.

It’s a mad sensation. I expected that when my feet left the ground, as I fell through the air, that the fear would dissipate, that I’d just enjoy the rush of falling. But it didn’t, it intensified once I was airborne. It’s so utterly terrifying, it fascinates me how our bodies and minds react to fear. I think it’s really healthy to push the boundaries when we can. The first most scariest thing I did was a few years ago and is a little too personal to blog about. But it has changed my life because it has allowed me to realise that if I can do that, then I can pretty much do anything. Standing on the top of that cliff, all I could think was that the consequences of jumping were so less terrifying than that other thing, so I knew inside that I had the balls to do it. Which is very re-assuring, and maybe a little bit of a deathwish at the same time.

I recommend trying the jump if you get the chance, followed by some lovely Irish coffees made by the friendly staff at the Station House, Raheny and a rake of pints.

So, I’m writing from my brand spanking new, bootiful piece of technology, possibly the nicest machine I’ve ever owned, my very own (kinda) MacBook Pro. Woohoo!

I’m a total Mac newbie. Well, not totally - my college laptop (and laptops were not standard when I was an undergrad), was a Mac, which I despised as it was old, decrepid, incompatible, and because I just hadn’t, at that stage of my life, flowered into my geekness.

And I’m not having difficulty getting used to any of the niggly little differences so far - no right click, no full size windows, that old placement of the @ symbol on the 2 key. It’s just such a wonderul user experience, how could anyone bitch about such trivia? I do fear that my machine is one of the whining ones. It just makes a funny scratchy noise when I’m connected that disappear when I launch another app. But I’ll run it for another week or so and then take a decision on it then.

So I feel like I’ve just unwrapped Santa’s most generous gift ever, but that the manual is missing; any advice is welcome - I don’t know how to create tunes in GarageBand, I don’t yet know how to use the webcam to video-conference, but I’m going to have sooooo much fun figuring it all out. And I have taken many very humorous pix already of people aghast at the sheer beauty of the machine, with their faces in all types of distortion with Photo Booth and my lovely built-in webcam. So. Much. Fun.

You can expect to see more action on the blog now that I’ve got such a great excuse to spend more time online. Although my triathlon training will continue to take precedence for a couple of weeks yet.

I’ve come across links to this piece a couple of times in the last few days, since the South Dakota ban on abortion bill was passed. It deals with teaching women in detail how to perform abortions themselves, where to buy the equipment, and how simple the procedure really is.

I can’t believe it’s come to this. I come from a country where abortion has never been legal and it sickens me to see a state in America taking the impetus to turn the clock backwards and return to days when abortion was also unavailable there. This is what’s going to happen, women will take things into their own hands and perform abortions which, as educated as they are (and I do laud the effort of bloggers like Molly and Bitch to educate as many people as possible), will never be as safe as those carried out in a clinical setting.

I’ve watched in disgust as US pharmacists began a ‘Right of Conscience’ campaign to refuse filling prescriptions for, firstly emergency contraceptive, then standard contraceptive pills (because it went against their moral principles). And I guess it was only a matter of time before someone took on abortion. And you might wonder why, all the way over this side of the pond, I could give a shit what they do in the US.

It scares me; that’s why. It scares me that now, after such progressive steps in women’s rights in the last few decades, that civilisation can start pedalling backwards. It terrifies me that there are still so many men, and women, out there who believe that a mind other than the one attached to a particular body, has the right to decide what to do with that body. It frightens me that these people have so little respect for a woman that they suppose that they can offer a more educated decision on what is the best course of action for her to take at that particular time.

I’m just so enraged by this turn of events. Ultimately, it looks like it’s not going to have any effect on the Roe v Wade decision anyway. Bush has just come out as opposing the bill as it doesn’t allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. He even took the time to point out when asked that he also supports exception in the case of the ‘life of the mother’, but not, of course, the health of the mother’. And it was quickly pointed out that such a harsh ban would not overturn Roe v Wade anyway, even with the newly right-wing Supreme Court appointments of Roberts and Alito.

But the process has begun, and will no doubt gather momentum until it is added to the list of atrocities achievements of the current potus.

My friend, Jean, was praising that great Douglas Adams piece I previously linked to and how he so brilliantly comes at the whole issue from a perspective that’s not obviously open to the rest of us. I recently came across another very refreshing piece on atheism from Penn of Penn & Teller. It’s short, but very good at expressing the frustration I feel as a parent at having to justify atheism when, to me, it seems that it’s the believers that should really be proving their case. For example, my daughter punched one at me the other morning on the way to school:

Mammy, when you go to heaven, does your stomach close up?

Well, honey, first off, there’s no such thing as heaven.

The logic of the question came from a friend of hers whose uncle, according to her, ate too much crisps and his stomach opened up, then he died, and obviously when he went to heaven it should open up again.

But what kills me is the criticism that I come under for being so open with my child. I’ve previously been criticised for telling her that there is no heaven. I don’t lie to her, I tell her that some people choose to believe that there is, and these are the same people that believe there is a god. But I also tell her, as is true, that this is something that people choose to believe, rather than something factual.

Children shed a tear when they try and conceive that death means no more life, dreams, breath, heartbeat. But that doesn’t mean we should shield them from it. It just makes it all the harder when they do finally have to confront it. And it makes it all the easier for them to treat life as a practice ground rather than the one-off shot at happiness that it is. And the tear that they shed is so short lived that if you do choose to challenge your children, you’ll realise that they get over it, and accept it, and will qualify their decisions in a far more productive way as a result.

It’s not an easy path to choose, passing on atheism to your offspring, but I feel optimism from the current burst of intelligent dialogue on the subject, which is now more considerably wieghted in favour of the positives of atheism rather than the negatives of theism.

Also, I came across the best blonde joke ever recently. I’m a big fan of blonde jokes but this one takes the biscuit.

My friend Al (mini-me Proclaimer) meets Craig (Proclaimer).

Speaking of radio, I forgot to say on that last post that following a search of Metafilter, I discovered that similar services are offered by Last, Launchcast and Musicplasma (which also does movies).

And other than customised stuff, I’ve been bugging out recently to some great tunes on WWOZ, which I looked up when I saw it mentioned in Dylan’s Chronichles, and KEXP, which I heard mentioned on Thomas Dunning’s fabulous show, Hoot Radio on PowerFM, another great station. I think it was Sean Twomey, Thomas’ regular guest DJ, that quoted KEXP as one of his first introductions into digital radio.

I’ve also been having some fun listenting to David Byrne’s latest offering on his streamed radio station. I saw today via Boingboing though that it seems he’s got into some trouble for playing too many tracks of the same artist, Missy Elliott. I like his response.

And from a great live act that I recently saw, Bad Plus Trio, you can check out a brilliant list of bands linked to corresponding authors. The linkage is offered for lots of different reasons but mostly it’s quite obvious. You can see further down their blog the reader explanations for some of the choices. My favourites are:

Madness — Enid Blyton

The Pixies — Paul Auster

The Divine Comedy — Oscar Wilde

The Beatles — Roald Dahl

I’m aboslutely blown away by this new discovery called Pandora (thanks El). It has sprung from the Music Genome Project and basically it’s a customised radio station that selects similar songs or artists to ones that you input based on the structure of the music, rather than genre.

It’s predominantly US music, and indeed, you have to have a US Zip code to register due to differing streaming regulations in various countries. If you’re looking for a random zip code, you’ll find some here.

Besides throwing Richard Marx at me, which I’m still getting over as a personal insult, it’s been completely on the money. The flash interface is very nice aswell and registration is free but they promise to ‘ramp up’ the ads over the coming while, which of course you can dispel by subscribing.

It just struck me that we’re only a couple of days away from advent and the return of Leslie Harpold’s advent calendar. It seems this year, she’s all out of treats so she’s looking for quirky Christmas stories from people to populate the calendar - if anybody has any, head on over.

But then I remembered posting about the calendar last year and it struck me that I’ve had this blog going for longer than a year now. And I never even celebrated. Not that I deserve to celebrate as I’ve not been giving it any attention in the last while. I’ve been doing lost of surfing, reading, learning online, but I’ve lost the impetus to share. Maybe because of the massive amount of spam traffic that I get, and the fact that I don’t have time to deal with it, or update and categorise my links, or start naming my posts properly, or do the makeover that I’ve been promising tentofblue since I started. But heh, I’ve just spent time moaning about it so I guess I’ve no more excuses but to start writing again.

Boingboing and Silicon Republic have both covered the new organisation being set up to defend Irish civil liberties in the digital age. Digital Rights Ireland will deal with data protection and other such crucial issues and you can subscribe to their email list here.

Also, a blogger’s dinner is being held on the 30th November down in the People’s Republic, at the Annual IT Conference.

Back soon.

OK, I’ve been meaning to get down to a review of my summer reading for ages so here goes. I finished the MSc in June and I think (besides getting more time with my little princess) the thing that I was most looking forward to getting back to was reading.

Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

So I dove straight in to the HHGTTG. I intended to read just the first book of the trilogy but ended up getting through four of them. It was just as the film was launched, which I haven’t yet seen, but the TV show was also broadcast this summer and I caught a couple of bits of episodes. I remembered it well from my childhood in Southampton, the blonde chick who plays Trillian is so familiar to me from way back.

I didn’t expect to like them as much as I did. I became interested in Douglas Adams because of an amazing speech that I came across online that he had made in Cambridge. There’s also a webcast of a talk from UC Santa Barbara over here which touches on some of the similar issues of atheism. The Guide is a great book, and it is like one really, rather than four. The reason I kept reading the next book was because I figured I’d probably forget the plot and characters if I left it a while, and because the story just went straight through. I have a friend who reckons that it’s actually a computer code, the whole book, which I can’t quite figure out myself. One of the things that I loved about it was that it made sense of a whole world of references that I’ve come across in my years – like the ‘don’t panic’ that comes with some software installations. I can’t think of any others now but I did spend the book going ‘ah, now I get it’. I think my fvaourite was the last one, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish - I was glad to see Arthur get back to earth. Oops, that’s a bit of a spoiler. And it’s the only one that was written as an original, without being an adaptation of the radio shows. I think you can tell. Or maybe the second one though, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Ah, they’re all great.

Code Book

Ok, not dwindling too long on any books, I’ve a few to get through. Next up was The Code Book, by Simon Singh, the first of two of his books I’ve tackled this summer. I enjoyed HHG, but I do still have the feeling that I’m wasting my time reading fiction when there’s so much to learn from non-fiction. Douglas Adams is slightly different because his writing is more satire through the medium of science fiction.

Anyway, Code Book was brilliant, really really great. He has a fantastic style of writing which makes it easy to digest material that I would otherwise be daunted by. The Code Book is about the history of cryptography – code-making and code-breaking, touching on the areas of history that have been affected by this art: Mary Queen of Scots and her execution; the Rosetta Stone; Enigma; the contributions of Navajo Indians in world war two as a human form of indecipherable code; the evolution of the computer, and then a fascinating chapter on the future of cryptography, in the shape of a quantum leap. Mindbending stuff. And the introduction into cryptography and how codes are compiled and broken from the very basics, is fascinating. It really makes you want to tackle one yourself.

Tipping Point

I was looking forward more to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s second book, Blink, but I was advised that he builds on some of the concepts from the first book so I decided to give the very popular The Tipping Point a whirl. It started well, I really liked the first ‘law’ he describes - the law of the few. The people he describes are in all of our lives; the connectors, mavens and salespeople that help to start and crucially spread these epidemics are people we know from work, from social circles, from our families - the character of each of them is so well described that it is hard not to believe his thesis.

But as the book went on, it became more and more about sheer marketing. He continues to use examples from different areas - sociological situations as well as corporate, but the ideas of the book seem to lean more toward sales and markets. Which I’ve no time for. He says in his site that he wants people to learn how to start their own positive epidemics, but the only people that I would recommend this to for that purpose are friends of mine in marketing and advertising.

I’m Not Scared

I was scared. Very scared. Of Niccolo Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared. I didn’t like this book at all, finding it only disturbing and not at all enjoyable. I’m intolerant of fiction at the best of times but I also hate horror / thriller type movies or books. And this is just not a nice story. My Dad used to say when we were kids:

Why would you make a story that is so horrible, about such horrible things? There’s enough horror in the world without making more up.

When you create fiction, you have the chance to make it something that can touch people positively. So why would anyone choose to dream up and write such a horrible message. I know that’s not a very popular opinion, but it’s mine.

I did manage to get one positive thing out of it. The little boy in the book is having nightmares and he has a coping mechanism to deal with them. All the bad witches and ghouls and monsters are loaded on to a bus in his dream and once he sees them drive over the hill he knows they’re gone. The only reason he tells us about it is because it no longer works after the trauma he’s gone through. But anyway, my own little darling has nightmares regularly and I introduced the bus concept to her. I made it pink and purple, her favourite colours, and I told her to use it at night. And lo and behold, it worked. She even reckoned it worked before she went to sleep, when she was just thinking about the bad lady, who she’s never been able to forget, and the monsters.

Big Bang

The Big Bang is about a topic that I’ve always wanted to know about but I’ve never had the energy to try and get my head around the massive numbers that people use to describe the universe. I understand that they kind of have to but I had faith that somehow, Simon Singh would be able to explain it to me without dazzling me with zeroes. Many people enjoyed Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything but I found that it was far too much. I may try and read it now that I have a basis of understanding, but I just think the way Singh can explain a concept without dumbing it down or patronizing, is a unique gift. I didn’t understand all of it. And I don’t remember a lot of it even though I’m just finished, because, I assume, there was so much new information. But I can definitely get my head around it now, and appreciate things like the recent news of a massive jump in the record of the most distant exploding star from earth, just approximately 1 billion years after the big bang. See, a few weeks ago, that sentence would have made fustratingly little sense to me, but now I actually can understand what it means.

One concept I found fascinating, but that I really can’t get my head around is the anthropic principle. It seems to be a bit of a Descartesian concept:

I think, therefore I am

But using it somehow enabled Fred Hoyle to make the massive leap that was needed in discovering how the excited form of the carbon nucleus could bridge the gap from the lighter elements such as helium and hydrogen to the heavier iron and platinum ones. Wow, even writing that sentence gives me a buzz to think that I can grasp the concept of the creation of our universe. I’m definitely adding a telescope to my wish list.

So top of the list were the two Simon Singh books, I really don’t know which one. And then the Guide, followed by Tipping Point, and my token piece of fiction last. Perhaps my book club ladies can get me back into some decent literature again?