Author: Rory

I like the cut of this man’s jib. Give him a promotion.

Beginning to think that buying an umbrella would be a smart move, if only to protect myself from the other umbrella-wielders.

(from Twitter, by web)

Hopefully my Tweets will now appear on SoylentRed.net automatically.

(from Twitter)

I’ve hastily refitted Soylent Red with a brand new visual layout and design that’s far better looking than anything you’ve seen here before. That’s because it was designed by someone who actually has an ounce (or more) of design talent. I took the design, “zenlike”, from a site called Open Source Web Design. It’s by a company called NodeThirtyThree Design, and is covered by a very free, attribution-only Creative Commons licence.

It was surprisingly easy to change the markup of the site to match what the stylesheet expects, though there may still be some rough edges which, let’s be honest here, are likely to remain rough for some time. On the plus side I fixed the site search function which had apparently been broken without my knowledge for months. I get the feeling I should be paying a tiny bit more attention to this site than I have been recently.

Just saw Beowulf. The Norse were f–ing hardcore.

(from Twitter)

I’m currently sporting a rather fetching accessory in the form of a stylish forehead lump. I acquired it as the runner-up prize in an embarrassingly brief tiff with what turned out to be a strategically more adept opponent.

Let me set the scene. I was innocently strolling the back straight of an until-then refreshing late night walk in the city. It was dark and mostly empty of people, but it’s a nice enough area and I feel I cut an intimidating enough figure to discourage most potential aggressors. In my arrogance I flouted the darkness.

Seeking to score my walk with the appropriate soundtrack I took out my iPod and flicked through the available music. In retrospect I think this may have been what provoked the attack. I spotted a sudden movement in the shadows and then WHAM!

I was set upon by an ornery lamppost.

It hit me only once, landing a precision shot just above my left eye. Thankfully it didn’t follow when I fled the scene. Perhaps it was just defending its territory, I don’t know.

In any case I’ll have to go to the Garda station tomorrow to file a report about the items I lost in the mugging. Luckily I recovered the iPod but my dignity was damaged at the scene.

Ok, so everyone knows it doesn’t, but most people still behave as if it did. Daniel Gilbert makes a very good case for why this is in Stumbling on Happiness—incidentally, the best book I’ve read so far this year. It boils down to a basic human inability to accurately remember what made us happy in the past and to predict what will make us happy in the future. We convince ourselves that money will provide us more options (true) and that the more choice we have the happier we’ll be (surprisingly untrue). Says Gilbert:

Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter.

This is all expanded on in a Newsweek piece, “Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness“.

I love living in the future.

I plan to take part in Matthew Baldwin’s NaNoReMo, so after work today I went to Eason’s to pick up a copy of Catch-22. When I got there, to the despair of my inner quiz enthusiast, I couldn’t remember who wrote the book. “Begins with a ‘J’,” I thought. Too bad the books are arranged alphabetically by author’s surname.

Did I face the dreadful prospect of searching the entire fiction section of one of the city’s biggest bookshops? Or, worse, admitting to the cute shop assistant that I didn’t know who wrote one of last century’s most influential novels?

Like hell I did. I whipped out my shiny new iPod—note that it’s not possible to simply take out this device; it must be whipped out for proper effect—and let it sniff about for open wifi networks. With the satisfying tap of a few keys I was heading to ‘H’ to grab a copy of Joseph Heller’s masterpiece.

Or more accurately—and putting the Transformers soundtrack to the side for just a moment—I’ve got the touch. The iPod Touch that is. It arrived this morning. It’s the greatest thing ever. Sample dialog from my phone conversation with the delivery man:

Him

Are you at home?

Me

No, but I can be there in five minutes. I’m just around the corner, on Barrow Street.

Him

Oh, are you in Google?

Me

Erm… yes.

Him

Great, I’ll drop it off there then. I have some other things to deliver there too.

When I went to collect it from reception there was a big pile of identical little brown boxes sitting there. I’m not the only one playing with a new toy today.