Ring, originally uploaded by gavinzac.

By request of Trina’s friends currently touring in Australia, here’s her engagement ring.

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I’m testing out Ubuntu 9.04, and last night on a whim I decided to install XFCE and KDE to try them out, see how they’ve progressed compared to vanilla Ubuntu’s Gnome (I have Xubuntu on my father’s creaking old PC and the last time I seriously used KDE was in Knoppix a few years ago). Here, then, are my impressions from that brief session of messing about; if something catches my eye, I’ll probably write a more detailed account at a later date.
After all the hype I’d read on UbuntuForums KDE4 is atrocious and made me feel like it wanted me to see everything on my computer, all at once. Konquerer is ugy as hell. If Kubuntu looks like this out-of-the-box, I can’t imagine it leaves a good impression to new users when it even overwhelms someone who has been using Linux quite a while now.

On the other hand, XFCE was beautiful, incredibly snappy and very smooth, actions becoming instantaneous when compositing was off. I mean, anyone choosing Xubuntu most likely is doing so for speed, so I’m not sure how popular the compositing is; but with it turned on, it was very pretty, very modern. I would even go so far as to say it was almost a more purposeful kind of compositing, giving definition and usability to the desktop – which is interesting because when I use Compiz in Ubuntu, I always feel like it is needless, resource-hogging eye candy.

I installed Midori to fully enjoy speed (Firefox is nice in XFCE, but it does often have that familiar half-a-second lag that makes it stand out in XFCE) and I was very much impressed. There seemed to be a few javascript bugs, but it’s an early build. Overall, XFCE on a modern, powerful PC is not something I had experienced before, and as result my opinion of it hass gone from a tool to give life to older PCs to possibly the best way to get the most from your existing one.

I’m back in the familiar surroundings of Ubuntu’s Gnome for the moment, but I will definitely consider switching to XFCE full time by 9.04.1

To try out XFCE and KDE on your Ubuntu laptop without any CD-installs and keeping all your preferences across all 3 (which is fantastic), you can click their names to install xubuntu-desktop and/or kubuntu-desktop, install them from Synaptic, or even quicker, throw these commands into a terminal (don’t be afraid, it’s copy and paste!).

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

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I awoke one morning this month confronted with a large, red, black and white poster, clearly designed to alert me to some hysterical cause. Little did I know at that point that it was only one of 4 on my street alone; with 60 others dotted across Cork and Munster – I’ve seen them with my own eyes in Fermoy and Rathcormac. €60,000 has been spent on these posters, apparently; though whose money paid for them remains uncertain.

To evoke an immediate emotive response, the billboards prominently feature large images of foetuses in utero, despite UCC’s stem cells looking more like microscopic grey rice. They make a claim of ‘lethal research in UCC’, strong words indeed, more akin to Nazi human experiments than poking needles into lifeless goo. As the stem cells in UCC’s research are imported from abroad, this ‘lethal research’ claim is incorrect and misleading – the stem cells are gathered from situations where ‘the life/death decision has already been made’ – that is, the same criteria for cadaver research. As you can imagine, claims that medical research on donated bodies by UCC students and research partners was ‘lethal’ would be thoroughly misleading. This is, of course, exactly the purpose of the campaign.

The billboards are being funded by ‘Youth Defense’, and carry their message and website. This is a hardline religious group which promote a homophobic, sexist ideal of celibate youth, home-bound women and re-enabled criminalisaton of ’sodomy’. The often violent and always insensitive tactics of ‘Youth Defence’ are quite famous, though they have been dormant recently in deference to Cóir, who themselves have quietened after negative public reaction during the Lisbon campaign.

Other posters claim ‘73 treatments from adult cells/0 from embryonic cells’. This is, again, misleading. Embryonic cell research has only been legalised in the United States, where these figures are taken from, for 4 years, less than the length of your average PhD, and was passed as legitimate in UCC only this academic year. The majority of embryonic stem cell research done so far has been to determine their suitability for usage in treatments and acceptance by host bodies, rather than towards treatments themselves – to use another analogy, testing if a telescope would work in certain conditions, day, night and so on. The world’s first clinical trial of an embryonic stem cell-based treatment was approved by America’s FDA on January 23rd, 2009, and the early results seem positive toward curing a crippling spinal disease. In contrast, Adult stem cell research stretches back to the 90s. To mislead as such would be like saying ‘1000 stars discovered by sight/0 by telescope’ during the invention of the telescopic lens. The posters also mislead by omitting the problems with adult stem cell treatments – they are applicable very rarely and can lead to host-rejection; the manipulation of adult stem cells has also revealed that these potent cells are a large contributor to several cancers.

Regardless of this, the idea that research by an individual university should be stopped because it has so far remained fruitless is against the purpose of scientific research; as long as work is not illegal, a third-party religious group has no more right to tell the University it can not research this area than an Amish group would have to tell them not to use computers. No-one has told anyone to stop researching adult stem cells, either for the treatments they can provide or for the problems it can cause. That a religious organisation is manipulating half-truths and using accusing, misleading, emotive language towards one of Ireland’s best respected state funded institutions for the purposes of opposing a legal, potentially life saving technology should not be tolerated.

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I’m a bit late updating this, so apologies to those for whom this is not news. After months of nervousness and considerable poverty, I surprised Trina with a white gold diamond engagement ring. I’ll try to get a photo here soon! I guess there are no excuses for not going into harrowing detail, so here goes…

It was absolutely nerve wracking. I had resolved to ask her at midnight on New Year’s Eve – a gesture toward the future. However, because of the cost, I was counting it as a Christmas present, which meant I had to provide ‘fake’ presents on Christmas, and bluff my way until New Year’s. To my shock, Trina had booked me a week in New York for New Year’s – or more accurately, to celebrate my friend Leagh’s birthday with her in New York, with Anna and Sarah attending also, since it has become sort of a tradition to combine her party with New Year’s.

This meant I was provided with ample opportunities to pull off a romantic, cheesy proposal; I considered delaying the proposal until some moment in the trip, perhaps skating in Rockerfeller Centre or aboard a helicopter. I’m glad I didn’t! We didn’t get to skate and the chopper guys had us strapped in extremely well (read: tightly) – and fitted with noise-canceling, question-preventing ear muffs.

Instead, some quick planning with my wonderful girls – and a brief foray into the well-below-freezing night with Leagh’s housemate Martin – and I had cooked up the plan; to propose on the roof-top of Leagh’s apartment building in Queens. The view extended from Downtown to Central Park, with all the landmarks resplendently lit for the occasion; the buzz of the crowd from Time Square was audible across the East River. Right then, nothing could go wrong! Well, after the planning was done, the nerves set in. No pressure, just a moment to be recalled for the rest of your life! I’m not sure if the girls helped or not by making me perform my party pieces – which on the night amounted to mumbled, frightened renditions of Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ and The Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’ in UltraStar

As midnight approached, I asked Trina if I could show her something; This question was almost as hard as the question, since she almost invariably responds to such requests with ‘no’ or ‘why?’ or a brief chuckle. To my relief she agreed, and within a minute or so we found ourselves in the biting cold, overlooking a borough full of 3 million revellers, almost none of which as desperate for the moment to come than I. Aware of the time, I pointed out the landmarks I recognised to tick away a few seconds… Empire State Building, the UN, Chrysler Building, Central Park, the eerie glow of Time Square. Trina was impressed, as awestruck by the glittering of ‘the capital of the world’ as I had been, but clearly confused as to the purpose of being frostbitten whilst awestruck. Before I knew it, the previously unseen gang on the roof of a building down the block began roaring the count down, 10, 9…

At the stroke of midnight, I endured the briefest of celebratory kisses before assuming that subservient, pleading position, and blurted out a few words of pure emotion that were I think lost to the cold air – with me on one knee, ring extended like a religious offering, I think Trina might have suspected now what was coming next and simply ceased to function, and myself, I honestly can’t recall them, brief as they seemed before…

‘Will you marry me?’

There are a few times in ones life where eternity is distilled into a second, and a dozen thoughts race through your mind before a breath is taken. ‘Yes’? ‘No’? ‘What’? Whatever delay there was in reality, it seemed like minutes for me, and I was for the first time certain of a refusal.

‘Yes’.

Yes? Yes! Kisses, blurs, hugs, speechlessness interspersed with rambling monologues – the rest of the night seemed to play at fast forward, in contrast with that second. We re-entered the party to an unnerving uneasy silence; Martin had decided to give the girls a miniature heart attack by telling them the proposal didn’t go well – but the ring was spotted, shrieking ensued and champagne was popped, tea was made, and the year began like a blurry metro train. Mind you, I suspect that simile might have something to do with it involving an actual blurry metro train to Verdant Avenue, all of us in Sarah’s 2009 glasses and hats listening to a Dominican singing en Espanol.

The night slowed, and we found ourselves beside a fireplace, warming our icicle hands. I bade farewell to my co-conspirators, before racing away across the the Queensboro Bridge to collapse into bed like a wilted balloon with my wonderful, beautiful, shell-shocked fiancee.

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It’s that time of the year again when I cocoon myself away from the real world and tell little dots on the screen what to do, and whether I’m proud of them or not. Yes, Football Manager 09 from Sports Interactive and SEGA is out, I’ve been playing it for a week and I’ve got to say I’m beginning to enjoy it. It is much tougher than previous years, and honestly there are quite a few bugs in the match engine. However, everything else is practically flawless, and you really are sucked into this alternate universe. Thankfully SI release Football Manager just when Cork City FC’s season is over, giving me something to do for a few months!

I started a game with French Ligue 2 academy side En Avant de Guingamp, origin of players like Didier Drogba and Florent Malouda before they moved on to bigger and better things. I’m continuing in a similar vein, trying to sign the best youth players and as a result dominating the U18s league… at the detriment of my senior team who have for 2 seasons now flirted with the relegation zone, dragging themselves out at the last minute like the teases they are. And by teases, I mean bastards. It must look bizarre to see someone literally biting their nails and shaking while tiny imaginary men kick a tiny imaginary ball around a tiny imaginary field because they might get pretend-relegated; but this year’s new 3D view of the game seems to have at least given Trina some enjoyment of watching my failures in a much more realistic way.

So why bother, if it’s just stressful? Well…

EAG beat PSG 5-3 on Penalties!

Guingamp through on penalties to the Coupe de France Final

Yes, signing Toldo at 38 Years old was inspired!

Only in football (manager) can fairy tales can come true!

I’ve gotten the game working almost flawlessly in Wine on Ubuntu, there’s some instructions over on WineHQ, its essentially just a case of installing DirectX and running an activation program by command line instead of double clicking it. Hopefully SI will work next year on having it 100% Wine Platinum!

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“I’ve never yet met an atheist with a sense of joie-de-vivre… most of them seem to be miserable buggers… I am convinced that (atheism) … is directly responsible for the increase in drug abuse, in crime, and most specifically, in the five-fold increase in suicide that we have seen in these islands over the last 25 years.”

The Irish Independent, usually a fairly sane publication with pretty good economic analysis (and more importantly for my Monday mornings, an awareness of Irish football), saw fit to give two-thirds of a page to a focused attack by ‘journalist’ Mary Kenny on ‘atheism’. While she seems partially inclined to bore readers with some jabs at the UK’s Guardian newspaper (she writes for a rival paper in England), the majority of the piece is a scathing attack on what she sees as the root of all our problems.

I am an atheist – I don’t believe there is a God. I usually borrow an analogy and say that “I’m an atheist like you – I don’t believe in Vishnu, in Allah, in Yahweh, in Zeus nor in Thor; I just believe in one less God than you”. Unfortunately this is not always tolerated. My ‘coming out’ to my family out as an atheist happened to occur at my graduation, that celebration of years of shared endeavour which is a moment of pride both for the graduate and their loyal parents. During mine, my parents implored me to attend a non-denominational church service at the Honan Chapel after my acceptance into the University alumnus. I said I didn’t want to, but I did so for the sake of peace.

The ceremony involved giving thanks to God for helping me to come this far. Frankly, and with the sincerest of humility, I did just enough work to get by and some sleepless nights during the exams were what I should be thanking (the title of this blog is not just a witty rhyme). Afterwards, my unwillingness to go along came up, and a quite heated debate ensued that ended with me giving in and calling myself a Buddhist (I sort of am; the atheistic school of Buddhism anyway) and this being accepted as at least having some sort of label.

Mary Kenny, herself a former militant feminist who spent her youth importing condoms from the North with (presumably hell-bound) Nell McCafferty, is both intolerant and ill informed. Akin to describing ‘the gays’ as sexual and moral perverts, she venomously spits at ‘the atheists’, convinced not only that we are a miserable bunch who’d rather discuss Nihilism than have Christmas dinner – she is appalled by “this kind of dreary and austere puritan” – but that we are responsible for everything from drug abuse to the disgusting “Baby P” case in the UK.

It used to be homosexuality, that deviance from scripture which brought the ire of Christians seeking a minority to point the blame at. They were perverts and could hardly be left alone with children let alone given custody of one – mind you, while this view has disappeared from the broadsheets, it hasn’t gone away – and if you put your mind to it, you could blame them for anything. Even today, clergy men are able to launch acidic tirades even on the basis of a gay kiss in a Boyzone music video. Like gay pride 50 years ago, atheism has no such guaranteed platform, no united group to speak on behalf of all atheists; indeed, it is a strange sort of a demographic, one whose only combining factor is being defined by something they don’t do. Indeed, say ‘atheist’ and a lot of people will probably imagine either Nietzsche, Marx or Dawkins; and while Dawkins’ biological books are wondrously well written, and his atheistic books are full of marvellously caustic wit, it is akin to equating every homosexual with the flamboyance of a young on-stage Elton John. But now that ‘the homosexual agenda’ has rendered such vitriol journalistic suicide, it is increasingly the Godless heathens that are attacked, from the UK to Wall Street.

For those who might not know me very well, I am quite outgoing these days, and enjoy such austere pastimes as (live Irish) football, reading, having a few drinks with friends, the cinema and CouchSurfing. At one point however, I was not so joyful and when I was 17 I contemplated suicide. At that time in my life, I would probably have called myself a Catholic; but I felt as if I was more alone than anyone in the world. I am not the picture of beauty, I’ve got a funny voice and had all the grace with the opposite sex of a rhinoceros doing Mecxano. I pulled through this time in my life, and since then have been relatively happy. I once helped run a website for teenagers who had been like me; it aimed to provide them with a forum to talk with others who had or were going through the same thing. On a daily basis I heard the type of things which were making kids from all over the world, from California to Clydebank to Canberra, feel alone.

In her article, Kenny tells us confidently that it is the UK’s growing lack of faith that is responsible for all of life’s ills, this 64-year old international journalist explaining why the youth of today lack morals. However, she could not be further from the target. She states that suicide rates are much higher now than 25 years ago; this is true, and suicide is a dark spectre that all too often is swept under the rug. However, how exactly is she helping by singling out an already maligned minority for the blame? Suicide rates have increased mostly because of increased reporting; 25 years ago, there was the threat of social ostracism for the families of hell-bound suicidal children. Teenagers, apart from the chemical imbalances which medicine is still researching, become depressed and suicidal not because of some existential ennui, but because of peer pressure, the constant need to fit in, the influence of television perfection and media hounding of celebrities. Girls becoming bulimic vegans because they need to stay thin without the social faux-pas of smoking; Boys becoming binge drinking misogynists  because any admittance of emotion or weakness is jumped upon by the machismo of the group.

At this, Kenny implies that with the guiding compass of faith, these kids would never be alone; Jesus would walk beside them. If someone does find solace through faith, that is better than nothing – but frankly these children should not be alone in the first place. It is society that has isolated them, their parents unable to relate to them, the media feeding them Jade Goodys and Kate Mosses, children growing up in a world where a celebrity falling out of a bar in SoCal is beamed immediately to their retinas. Where once they would merely have worried that perhaps they weren’t as aesthetically blessed as the belle of the ball, there are now cults of worship of the Victoria’s Secret models on Bebo. Unable to keep pace, parents either ignore the problem or deny responsibility; and what better way to avoid responsibility in these times of published abuse than to find a scapegoat?

Factually, Kenny is flying in the face of the evidence – extra-Christian America is doing worse than Britain, and much, much worse than atheistic Scandanavia.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Now, I’m not going to say that religious belief causes these problems. At most, it probably provides something to cover your eyes, pretend that these problems don’t exist. Instead, I would say that it doesn’t do a whole lot to stop these problems, and that instead the cause is society’s irresponsible handling of the new global village. The US is the worst affected, not because they are intensely Christian, but because they are closest to the source. The UK is a runner-up, because of the Americanisation of the UK and Ireland’s media. Countries with less exposure and different languages to Hollywood horrors do best, because they still have some sense of distance from the media.

Yet Kenny explains how without religion, we have no moral compass and describes todays world in a tirade of sensationalism more at home in The Daily Mail.

“Fathers walk away from their children because the state provides all welfare; relationships are casual and a variety of boyfriends and serial stepfathers move in, mothers spend the day smoking dope, drinking vodka and cruising for sex on the nternet while their children die with broken backs among filth and excrement, dead mice and snakes.”

No really, she’s serious – should one day people embrace the message of John Lennon’s Imagine, we’ll all end up with pet snakes or something.

Look, Mary, or any other Christians reading: frankly, this kind of message scares me. Are you suggesting that your own morals are only kept in line because you believe that someone is watching you? Are you telling us that if you had a day, one day where His back was turned, you could do anything you pleased with nobody to judge you or sentence you – that you would fly off the deep end on in a rampage of sex, murder and drug abuse? No, I don’t think you would. Deep down, regardless of faith we of sound mind all know wrong from right, and while the inspirational messages of Jesus, of Buddha, of Confucius, Ghandi or John Paul II are full of wonderful value and are indeed often great guides to dealing with the challenges life gives us, some of us just don’t need the magic or miracles to find the meaning of their words beautiful. It is the message, love one another, don’t judge each other, support each other, that we need to adopt and if we did, that would go much further to solving societies ills than to spread fear that somewhere out there someone is reading our minds.

Apparently, “life… without the Ten Commandments is a living hell”. No, a lonely life whose value is measured by materialism and one’s place in the social pecking order is hell, and Mary Kenny would like nothing better than to place my “ilk” at the very bottom.

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Yeah, I sometimes go off the deep end and a quick comment on a facebook note turns into a diatribe about embryos and ethics. The comment didn’t fit on facebook (literally) and didn’t fit here (metaphorically) so I posted it over on a buddy’s blog, the ever interesting Zoological Ontological (catchy name!).

An extract:

So what happens if we begin manipulating genes and gene instructions to benefit mankind? If we can stop muscular distrophy, why can’t we stop genetic obesity? If we can stop genetic obesity, why not genetic susceptibility to depression? Or maybe some day, predisposition to sub par intellegence? In my opinion, these ‘ifs’ are simply a matter of time; They depend on scientific advancements to make them possible, not upon whether or not they would be used. Like drug abuse, prostituton or abortion, they will happen regardless of their legal status, and much more benefit would be had to control their usage rather than essentially assigning them to the kind of people willing to break the rules.

Heavy stuff given that I usually struggle to add a witty comment to the end of the webcomic I’m linking to on any given day.

Read the rest of the article

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Right, some may blame simply the infrequency of my updates for the coincidence of what seems to be a running theme, others won’t.

From Digg:
“We just received word from a reliable source that Rick Astley, the absolute god of the Internet, will be performing at this years MTV European Music Awards being held on November 6th.”

Hurray! It’ll be the first time I watch Music Television since they stopped playing music.

read more | digg story

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Football Manager is fantastic, in part for the ‘open’ nature of its graphics in that real or imagined images can be substituted or introduced into the game to give it that more authentic and engaging feel. The good lads responsible for the SS kits have set a standard with their designs; I’ve been a bit creative today so here’s my take on a few plausible-but-unlikely kits for the 2010 season for Cork City FC.

Click to Enlarge

Astute City fans may spot with interest the Heineken logo – Heineken’s imminent purchase of Beamish, our currently sponsors, providing some artistic license.

To use the individual kit files for in Football Manager or as avatars or whatever, download them here.

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Will Wright’s burgeoning masterpiece Spore may have been in development for what feels like an eternity, but we finally got to mess with the toys he had teased us with all those years ago, today. The Spore Creature Creator is available to download as a trial or buy with a full set of creature features (the price is refundable against the full game, due in September… around my birthday… *cough*). You take an amorphous blob, fiddle with the spine, add a mouth (or two), a few legs (or a dozen) and virtually anything else you can think of, then watch as your Noodley Appendage sculpts a brand new creature. I tried to run it on Ubuntu with Wine, but there were some graphical glitches. Oh well, on to Trina’s Vista laptop, at least the Creature Creator gives the awesome guys at Wine 3 months to get everything running smooth!

Of course, as a dino-geek (you know you’re one, when your daily reading includes Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology) most of my creations have been of a decidedly ancient variety.

This is my “Ankylothera” and a humanoid family. The dino is obviously fictional – I wanted to play with the spikes but the trial comes only with carnivore mouths – hence the less-than-dexterous predator. The monkey-human was surprisingly easy to do and used up the least DNA, and wobbled about like an unsure toddler. Oh, you can’t edit the brain power yet – perhaps thats why he looked so perplexed by being unable to run very far! Silly monkey – invent a car.

This is my Deinonychus. Obviously, again, it is a little bit fictionalised, within the constraints of the trial editor. However, it was very pleasing to see it stalking about like it wanted to rip my guts out but couldn’t find adequate ambush cover. Clever girl!

Of course, no set would be complete without the top predator. My T-Rex was actually quite tough to make – there simply isn’t enough vertebrae to go around, to deal with the real giants! But the end result was again very satisfying. Sniffing the air, wiggling his little arms (I had initially made them a bit too big; its easy to forget how comically stunted Rex’s graspers are. Trina pointed this out!) before bellowing a mighty roar into the dawn air. It was all a bit much for me; Spore’s release date suddenly seemed very far away, again.

Spore Creature Creator is available free or for the price of a pint from EA’s Spore Store

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