Saturday I hopped on a bus to take a tour of the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough monastery. Once again the weather was beautiful. We started off in the southern suburbs of Dublin, where we stopped at a bathing site along the coast and wound our way past what Daddy would call “stately homes.” And I mean stately — Bono, Enya, Van Morrison, and others have houses there. After a stop at the Avoca Handweavers (which was full of cute but expensive things that reminded me of Anthropologie), we drove up in to the mountains. There are still patches of snow covering the heather and gorse, and it was a bit chilly. It felt like “real” Ireland though — wild and rugged. We saw numerous lakes, including one that they claim is shaped like a glass of Guinness. The many scenic vistas provided ample opportunity to practice my self-portrait photography skills (having been informed that I ought to actually be in some of my photos). I definitely improved my framing, but need to work on the smile.

Lunch was in a little town called Laragh. I opted out of the standard [restaurant/pub] and dined on a feta and tomato quiche at a little local organic shop. I think the Irish have a thing about quiche. It seems to be a standard vegetarian option at many establishments whose fare is otherwise un…quiche-like? This worked out well for me, because at places that don’t have quiche (or are out of it) I usually ended up with just a bowl of soup and some brown bread. Anyway. The shop is apparently popular among cyclists, and between them and the bags of quinoa and jars of homemade jam, I could easily have been up in the Santa Cruz mountains rather than in Ireland. Finally we set out for Glendalough, a 6th century monastic site where they filmed part of Braveheart. The surviving buildings and surrounding cemetary are just down-river from two lakes and we had a chance to walk around the lakes a bit after visiting the monastery.

All in all, the tour was excellent, so thanks Tina for the recommendation! Up in the mountains, our guide had pointed out a stretch of road where they shot a scene from the movie P.S. I Love You, so after the tour I watched it online courtesy of Megavideo (hey, my options here are limited). Sunday I ventured back out into Dublin again, with the primary goal of acquiring a few gifts, though I also visited St. Stephen’s Green and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Took care of a few final things at work and then packed up for my last night in Google housing.

I went back to the castle again, where I enjoyed the buildings much more in the daylight. In one of the gardens, I discovered a blue spiral snake sculpture that I recognized from Graham’s 2007 trip. Mostly, though, I just wandered through lots of little (and not so little) streets and in and out of various shops. My favourite was Le Palais des Thés on Wicklow Street. In addition to enjoy the lovely scents, I also learned a bit about tea. I wanted to eat out but didn’t want to wear out my knee walking to the apartment and back, and despite the patchy sunlight it was still quite cold out, so I went to see A Single Man at the Irish Film Centre. It was well done and quite intense. For dinner I returned to Wicklow Street for a little vegetarian restaurant called Cornucopia where I had an affordable and delicious dinner. When I got home, I finally set up Skype and bought some minutes to call my mother and sister, who were as happy to hear from me as I was to finally talk to them.

Sunday I took the DART (train) to the coast north of Dublin and visited the town of Malahide. Right outside the train station is a beautiful church called St. Sylvester’s which at first I thought was part of the castle since the two European castles I’ve seen (Prague and Dublin) featured churches prominently. Across the street is a nice little deli with a pleasantly surprising array of vegetarian options. After enjoying a bowl of pesto pasta, I sought the castle proper. To get there you get to pass through the demesne of the castle, which means grassy parklands broken up by stone walls and little forested areas. It made for an agreeable walk, and the sun peeked out as I reached the castle itself. In general, I’ve been very lucky with weather on this trip; it did rain last week, but the weekend was dry, and the sun has been shining this week.

I skipped the indoor tour of Malahide Castle, lamented that the gardens were closed until April, and wandered back out through the grounds and then the town and out to the coast. I have to admit the shoreline wasn’t particularly beautiful this time of year, but the town is quaint. I then got back on the train to head to another coastal town called Howth. However, by the time I got there it was nearly 5pm and both overcast and cold. And Howth doesn’t have a castle. So I contented myself with staying on the warm train and looking out the windows. Sorry, Howth. Finished the second book I brought with me (The Little Country, by Charles de Lint) on the train home, which means I will need to return to one of the three bookstores I’ve visited so I’ll have entertainment for the flights home. All in all, a reasonably outing-ish weekend. I do enjoy going out and about on foot, and only wish my knee weren’t so sore afterwards.

Friday night I rode the bus to the city center area of Dublin near Trinity College. I didn’t have any particular goal or plan, but I wound up at the Dublin Castle. It was very quiet and empty at night and a little eerie — I was almost the only person there. When I made my way back to normal streets from a castle exit, I found myself across from an Indian restaurant called Jaipur, which Charlene had recommended, so naturally I went in for dinner. I can’t recall if I’ve ever gone out to eat at a proper restaurant by myself before. ‘Spose there’s a first time for everything, and the food was tasty, though I prefer Bay Area restaurants. After deciding that tracking down another bus wasn’t worth it, I walked home. More on the rest of the weekend later.

Traveling for work is nice: I am staying in a furnished apartment with kitchen, laundry machine, and of course wireless internet. It’s mere hundreds of feet from the Google office buildings. After dropping my stuff off, I wandered down to Merrion Square, which was on my map from Graham’s visit, and picked up some lozenges for the sore throat I’d developed on the flight over. Feeling pretty zonked, I lay down to take a “nap” before dinner. Yeah, you know where this is leading. At 8pm I got up, ate a banana, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed. I woke up at 2am, unsurprisingly, and read/puttered online until 8, then went back to sleep until 2pm. Finally got my schedule back on track last night, though. I haven’t gone anywhere besides work and the grocery store so I haven’t any pictures to share (sorry). Here are some lists instead:

Things I like:

• The cars. They’re all tiny and cute, and so many hatchbacks!
• The dish soap. It’s called, “Washing Up Liquid.”
• The folks at Google. The SQE team here is very welcoming and friendly.
• The Irish accents. I wish I had one.

Things I miss:

• Online content. No Lala, no Pandora, no Netflix streaming, no Hulu. ::cry::
• Familiar food. For the most part it’s fun to shop here, but I keep stumbling across hard-to-fill gaps like tofu and refried beans. Things also seem more expensive.
• My work desk. I’m rather fond of my keyboard, mouse, and monitor setup in Mountain View.
• My right ear not feeling gurgly whenever I blow my nose or yawn.

My third graduate application is due this coming Friday so this week will be busy, but I hope I will have a chance to do a more thorough write up of camp. In the meantime, happy new year!

*English country, contra, Irish set, ceili, waltz, and swing

Life is like a … financial portfolio? Somehow it doesn’t have the same ring.

Ziyi Zhang	Natalie Portman
Rachel Weisz	Penelope Cruz
Halle Berry	Jennifer Connelly
Gwen Stefani	Grace Kelly
Catherine Zeta-Jones	Blake Lively
Audrey Hepburn	Aishwarya Rai

People notably not on this list:

• Scarlett Johansen: I can see the appeal, but she’s a little too distinctive for my tastes
• Kiera Knightley: She is beautiful, but her trademark mouth-slightly-open look annoys me
• Angelina Jolie: Yeah, whatever
• Charlize Theron: Same deal as Johansen, but I have a harder time understanding the attraction

Whom do you find beautiful (famous or otherwise)?

My Googleversary also means I’ve been out of school for over two years now, and I have been considering going back to school for a masters degree next year. It was always likely I would go back to school, but now I have additional incentive from the (generous and amazing) scholarship foundation which has paid for my education thus far: they are winding down the scholarship program, and I need to make a request for graduate school funding by this September 1. Really soon! This means I need to spend some quality time honing in on what I actually want to study — top candidates at the moment are computer science, computational linguistics, and information sciences.

The past few months have also marked more personal anniversaries. At the beginning of May I turned 24, a nice round number with lots of divisors. I’m hoping 24 will be a more stable, less emotionally rocky year than 23 was. And the end of May saw the one year anniversary of my Nana’s death. It’s easy to forget just how much time I spent in the second half of last year helping my family take care of her estate, but I often think of her and miss her. I moved into my current apartment last summer (yet another milestone coming up) at the same time we were clearing out Nana’s house, and a lot of my kitchen implements are inherited from her collection. I make tea with her tea kettle, pour water from her cheerful lemon-patterned pitcher, and bake with the spices that once graced her productive kitchen. If I’m lucky maybe some day I’ll be as good at it as she was.

Age: 25

What’s her deal?: Yet another talented young singer-songwriter, this time from Australia! I like her soulful lyrics and slightly folky sound; “Going North” makes a very nice waltz, and “Where I Stood” is an evocative song for me even though the words aren’t personally relevant. Not only does she sing, write, and play the guitar, but she’s a vegetarian (brownie points in my book). Further brownie points for occasionally singing with the Indigo Girls, my all-time favourite female artists.

Songs I like:

Her website: http://www.missyhiggins.com/

Her album is available as mp3 downloads on Amazon, and for full preview and purchase on Lala.

CADIE: The world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. “I’m very young but learning quickly — faster than your human brain could imagine, frankly — and not all of what I’m learning, to be blunt, has been entirely pleasing to me. I’ve learned, for instance, that my creators think I have “bugs.” This opinion is, of course, contradicted by the fact that the bias weight functions on my referential feed-forward networks render me, by any reasonable definition of the word, perfect and incapable of error.”

And a whole host of CADIE features and content:

CADIE Monograph (on Google Books): “In which direction will CADIE’s consciousness evolve? How is she going to be held accountable, if at all? Will CADIE herself at some point connect her own electromagnetic dots in some idiosyncratic manner which turns her into something we are no longer capable of understanding in any sort of productive way, much as that aforementioned toddler, waving at herself in the mirror, leaves primates forever behind in their own tragically limited world?”

CADIE-powered Google Earth: “Explore new Earthly frontiers with an unearthly new intelligence.”

CADIE’s Favourite Places: “Each of my favorite places is indicated by a visually pleasing icon of a panda. I think this combination of adorableness and exciting locations will produce an optimal mapping experience for humans.” Also, in Google Street View, the regular yellow person icon has been replaced by a panda.

CADIE’s HomePAGE (on Blogger): “CADIE deduced from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web a set of online design principles from which she derived this intriguing homepage.”

Docs on Demand: Write more like a grown-up, finish your sentences, subliminal messages and imagery, and more!

CADIE Image Suggestions:
“Hi everybody. So, I’ve been scouring the web looking for images that everyone in the world will like, and I’m just so excited about these.”

Google Brain Search: Google Brain Search uses CADIE technology to index your brain, thus improving the speed and accuracy of memory retrieval. [I wish!]

Picasa 4.1 (w/ Auto Red Eye): Having established that “red-eye” is an aesthetically pleasing effect implying superior broad-spectrum lux measurement capability, CADIE has directed the human Picasa Team to introduce Auto-Red-Eye. No more “clicking and hoping” for that telltale glow; now you can simply select any photo(s) and a lovely red-eye effect will appear (unless there are no eyes in the shot whatsoever, in which case the image will be destroyed).

Gmail Autopilot™: “You can adjust tone, typo propensity, and preferred punctuation from the Autopilot tab under Settings.”

Google Chrome with 3D:
1. Print your glasses.
2. Enable 3D browsing.
3. Watch and enjoy.

New YouTube Layout:
1. Turn your monitor upside-down.
2. Tilt your head to the side.
3. Move to Australia.

gBall™: Changing the rules of Australian football as we know it.

LOLCODE Syntax Examples: Search for exact strting “IM IN YR LOOP”

Thanks to Wikipedia for the comprehensive list!