UCD’s egg lightly dusted in snow – February 2009

Anyway, onto some trivia. According to Wikipedia, and a few other sites, National Geographic included, cats have a non-fatal terminal velocity. Thanks to their body shapes, cats, once they’ve righted themselves, fall at approximately 60km/h, at which speed it is possible to survive impact with the ground. Highly flexible spines and their padded paws help in dissipating the forces involved. To give a point of reference, a human reaches around 240km/h. Now, I’m not going to cite references on this, because, for one, I don’t want to, and two, you know how to use fucking Google, eh?

I think this is a pretty cool fact. It’d be very cool, except that guys have used it as a rationale in order to dump cats out the back of Cessnas at a couple hundred metres, and from the higher floors of US skyscrapers. It’s still a nice-to-know, and it’d fantastic if we lowly humans had the same property, although a bipedal creature with a terminal velocity of 60km/h would probably look retarded. Ah well. You can’t win ‘em all.

Onto other news. I haven’t updated this blog in a long time. I could make excuses, but I won’t. I’m in my final year in University, working on a large enough project, which you can look at TheAdmirableAdmiral.com. I set up a very simple webpage in December, BackToTheThemeTune.com. I’m still trying to work out what to put on it. Maybe I’ll write a Web 2.9 site. It’s like Web 2.0 social networking, except I decide who your friends are. Maybe a Michael J. Fox themed porn site. Who knows?

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been playing in a six-a-side football competition in University. It’s called ToePeg, and we have to have at least two girls on team, and one on the pitch at any given time. Each goal they score counts as three. Equality, eh? Here’s one  of the publicity shots. I’m the Irish dancer in the black T-Shirt (If you’re in the tournament, you’ll know me as the excessively angry guy).

Irish Dancing or Football?

I took the photo from the ToePeg page. We’ve lost one game and drawn another. Ah, well. You can’t win ‘em all. Oh, wait, I’ve said that before. Ehhhhhh, you can’t play a player? That’ll do.

In January, I spent 5 days hiking in awful weather. I didn’t bring a camera, and it’s probably a good thing, as it would have been destroyed. Some of my gear, like a new saw and my sleeping system, turned up trumps, and some of it, including, sadly, my raingear, turned out to be worse than useless. Ah, well. You live and learn.

In October, I ran the Dublin Marathon, and knocked 51 minutes from last year’s time. For my troubles, I was rewarded with this lovely image.

A Recurring Theme?

It healed after a few weeks, but the outline is still visible. The other foot was worse. My investment in quality running footwear has increased dramatically. This coming year, I may even manage a respectable time.

Last summer had it’s highs and lows, mostly in temperature. I spent a week cycling (and drinking) along the banks of the Loire River in Loire-et-Atlantique and Loire-et-Indre, in France. I fell in love with the place, and a few girls, but I also spent an un-Godly amount of money. Ah, well. It was worth it.

At some point, a friend and I had a barbeque, while simultaeneously recycling. The Dell box was tougher than I thought it would be, but it most certainly doesn’t run anymore. Ah, well. It was running hot, anyway.

A Dell Machine Finally Finds It’s Calling

I’m afraid I probably won’t be updating this blog too regularly. I like blogging, but it does take time, and my life isn’t all that interesting. My opinions are even less so. You can work out my political views by reading Starship Troopers like a newspaper, or, alternatively, by reading a newspaper like it’s fiction. I suppose I will update as necessary, or when I’m bored, or more probably, like now, as a way to relieve stress.

Ignoring leap years, this pc hasn’t been booted in 140 years!

However, I’ve recently started to experience a new annoyance: spam. Not the “enlarge your penis” e-mails that Gmail is so adept at filtering, or the processed food I have thankfully never had to rely on, but real-world, in-through-the-Goddamned-letterbox unsolicited mail. For God’s sake, it’s even in an envelope.

Who’s it from, one might ask. Well, today, and not for the first time, I might add, I have been the lucky recipient of a friendly notice from the Domain Registry of America, letting me know that my domain names are to expire in the coming months. Just to be clear, my domains aren’t register with the Domain Registry of America, nor, apart from this unsolicited mail, have I ever heard of them. I’ve taken some pictures of the letters below. Two things I should explain: the first is that I’ve blurred one of the domain names since I registered it for a friend, and it’s not mine; the second is that I don’t have a scanner, so the picture quality is pretty poor (they were taken on my mobile phone).

The header of the letter sent to me by the “Domain Registry of America”.

The letter looks fairly impressive. It has a nice header, and, if you weren’t on the ball, you could easily mistake it for an invoice. There is one sentence in bold, which I forgot to photograph, but reads “This notice is not a bill“. I feel this is pretty sneaky, to be honest. It’s the kind of tactics that would put me off a company for good. Even the fact they harvested my whois info is bad enough.

They have the gall to request a reply by a certain date!

They’re also pretty pushy, with this Reply Requested By date, which reinforces the sense that this letter is from your registrar. There are a few more photos below:

They wouldn’t even pay for the postage!

Here, the company has the neck to not only ask me to renew my domains with them, but to pay my own postage. I’m not going to jot down my credit card info on their form and then send it off, anyway, but if I was stupid enough, I’d have hoped that the Domain Registry of America would pay the cost of the stamp. That way I could tape their envelope to a cinderblock and send it off. Notice also that the Domain Registry of America is based in London.

Of course, those frienly folks couldn’t just let me renew my online presence, they are offering my the chance to expand it.

They also suggest other domains I might want to register, which is nice, because I would never have thought of registering my domain with a different tld. On top of the fact that these guys are physically spamming me, their rates are terrible. €43 for 2 years is almost 3 times what I currently pay. For any yanks reading, that’s just over $66 at today’s rates, or $33 a year for a domain. What a rip-off!

I’m hoping this kind of marketing, real world junk mail originating from data gleamed from the internet, doesn’t become prevalent. Unlike e-mail spam, there is real cost to the recipient associated with real-world junk mail, in that I have to physically recycle it.

</rant>

]]> http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?feed=rss2&p=61 0 http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?p=60 http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?p=60#comments Fri, 30 May 2008 00:11:40 +0000 donal http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?p=60 I’m a fairly harsh critic of films: I get bored easily, I get annoyed with unrealistic happenings and I have a near non-existent tolerance for cartoon violence in live-action films. There are certain things which really annoy me, such as characters hiding from automatic gunfire behind a plywood wall. I can assure you that two and a half inches of plaster and wood will not stop a five five six bullet that left the barrel at a kilometer a second.

Scenes like this could be avoided with a little bit of forethought…

Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to warble on about inconsistent ballistics in movies (and I would – have you ever seen the shots Will Smith makes with a pistol in Bad Boys!), my major grievance at the minute is to due with vampyres. I’ve just watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie with Kristy Swanson, not the series. The movie is pretty bad, but it has a certain nineties charm and it doesn’t take itself seriously. I even laughed out loud a few times, but really, I spent the last half of the film wondering why the fuck the vampires, who have been practising their trade for literally lifetimes, don’t invest in some bloody body armour. I’m just sitting there, watching undead after undead being dispatched by their only terminal weak spot, and all I can think of is, Why didn’t you take some Goddamn chain-mail from one of the presumably dozens of medieval knights you neck-raped in your n-hundred years of farting about, you dozy, heliophobic eejit!.

An Artist’s Impression of an Up-Armoured Vampyre.

Admittedly, Kevlar by itself isn’t great against blades (Just one more reason not to get rid of bayonets!), but should be sufficient against wooden stakes. For that extra peace-of-mind, the upmarket undead could splash out on ceramic plates. All in all, this is a classic case of where a little proper prior planning would have prevented a piss-poor performance.

Full Disclosure: The stills from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are from www.slayermovie.com. I couldn’t find any contact details on the site, but it the owner wants me to take them down, e-mail me or leave a comment.

]]> http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?feed=rss2&p=60 0 http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?p=59 http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?p=59#comments Mon, 26 May 2008 22:41:35 +0000 donal http://blog.fivefivesix.net/?p=59 Tuesday last, I ran, eh… hobbled, maybe, is a better term, the Dublin Docklands Fun Run. As the name suggests, it’s around the Dublin Docklands. 8km in total, not too far. I hadn’t been doing too much running lately, with pre-exam stress (yeah, I know – a cop-out), exam stress, post-exam stress (ahem… hangover) and then some general lazing. That said, 8km isn’t far, and I was hoping for 36 mins, which I figured was reasonable – 4.5 minutes a kilometer. Of course, to qoute Robert Burns, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”.

It’s prettier in person. How it happened is after the break…

Now, I’ve been running in the same trainers for a fair while now, over a year. I must have put in close to a thousand kilometers in them, including a marathon. So they were pretty worn, coming apart at the seams and with a sole as thin as the last pancake in a batch. I figured I’d buy a new pair, a nice pair of asics, since I’ve been hearing good things about that brand. Being the internet junky that I am, I decided to buy online. Yeah, I know, not a good choice for running shoes, but I bought them from Elvery’s through buy4now anyway. I ordered them weeks ago, thinking I’d have tons of time to break them in, but they were late to be sent out, so I thought they’d never arrive and I’d just have to run in the old knackered ones and live with sore knees. As it happened, a fellow from An Post delivered them at 1300 the day of the race. I tried them on, walked around in them and they were magical. I couldn’t resist.

So I turned up to Grand Canal Square as directed, at half past six, sporting my new Made In Vietnam Interceptors (As an aside, on the Dart and during the walk in, you could tell all the entrants by their shoes). Cue an hour of farting around in less than flattering shorts waiting for the race to begin. I’m feeling pretty confident, lots of people for whom this 8km is the pinnacle of their training, and they’re nervous, thinking about whether they’ll really be able to do it after all. As I’m an arrogant bastard at the best of times, I’m swaggering about like I was just passing to get some milk from the newsagents and thought I’d do the eight on the way. Ever hear the proverbial saying that pride comes before a fall? It’s true, and if I was religious, supersticious or spiritual, I’d say someone was trying to tell me something.

The report of the starting pistol and… nothing. I don’t know how many people are ahead of me, but it’s a lot. A few thousand, since I’m close to the back of the pack. Maybe a minute later I’m moving. The race is a fun run, so timing’s not that imporatant. Apart from the top three male and female finishers, I don’t think they even take your line time. Certainly by the time I got to the end, no-one was. You just glance up and take your own time. It’s not a high-tech affair, so your time is from the starting pistol, unlike, say, the Dublin Marathon, where a chip in your bib notes when you actually cross the start and finish lines. So naturally, from starting at the back, I want to move my way up through the pack pretty quickly. I start weaving up, leaping small obstacles, running pretty fast. A much faster pace than I can maintain for the entire distance, so I’m just showboating. I know I’m going to be overtaken again by some of the guys and girls I’m passing, but I didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly.

Five or six hundred meters in, at the second corner, trying to sprint around the outside of the turn in oreder to overtake even more people, I went over on my ankle. I’m not sure of the technical term the doc used, but you do know what I mean. It happens when you’re walking or running along, and for no apparent reason, the ball joint in your ankle decides it’s had too easy a day and spices it up by folding inwards, right when you put your weight on it. Like a Grade-A wanker, I went from passing out folks to flailing about like an eejit on meth, sporting a grimace a low-quality porn star would be proud of. I stood there looking at the passing runners and thought, feck it, I’m not stopping now. Probably as bad a descision as the time I decided to work out how many shots there are in a bottle of whiskey by drinking it dry.

I hobbled on, and the pain subsided by the 1km mark. Now, I know now that the pain was gone because of adrenaline or whatever allowing me to ignore it. That, and I suddenly had more pressing concerns. You might have wondered why I wasted a paragraph describing the purchase of a pair of runners earlier, but now is where it’s relevant. The new shoes that felt so comfortable walking the dogs around the block were now proving the age-old adage about breaking in shoes. By the halfway point, I felt like I was running on bubbles. Not the air bubbles of fancy basketball-player-branded Nikes, but rapidly growing blisters of blood. At the 6km mark, or thereabouts, they both burst. It was a sweet, sweet relief of agony.

When the race was over, and I had finished with a woeful time of just under 44 minutes, I was sitting on a stone bench opposite two more serious runners. One of them asked me in lightly accented English about my pained looks. I told him about the blisters and their cause, the new runners now lying on the ground at my feet, insteps crimson with blood. His response: “They’re not new anymore!”

It was really only that night, after getting home from celebratory pints in town, with a friend who kindly brought me band-aids and undiluted dettol for the blisters, that I realised my real problem wasn’t the blisters, but my ankle. I was really worried after a trip to the hospital, where the very young, very beautiful doctor (female, in case you’re wondering) told me it could take six weeks to heal. I’m still waiting for an appointment with a Physiotherapist (who won’t like the Physio-The-Rapist pun I can’t wait to use), but it looks like I’ll be good to go for my first summer engagement this Saturday.

A 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive – Confused? Explained after the break.

I have decided, in light of this new bandwidth glut, that the heretofore trustworthy unit of bandwidth, the Kb/s, is now as obsolete as the one cent coin (the €uro one cent, the U$ Dollar’s smallest unit of currency). My favoured replacement (and possible new S.I. unit, if they have any sense) is the Floppy Per Second. You see, 12 Megabits is 1.5 Megabytes (as there are eight bits to a byte, as I’m sure you know), and a floppy disk is 1.44 Mebabytes, so therefore, I’m currently the grateful recipient of up to 1.04 Floppy Disks per Second!

I have crossed the next boundary into the next technological era, a new paradigm of data transfer: the FPS era of the Internet.

Dun Laoghaire’s one-mile-long West Pier, perfect for jogging .

Also, while reading my e-mail today, Google also served up an ad for the Dublin Docklands Fun Run, which I clicked on. Despite being on the evening of Tuesday the 20th of May, 2008, which is right in the middle of my exams (I think so, anyway. UCD’s timetable page is down, and has been for days. I e-mailed them to no avail.), I signed up. It’s only ten euros for students, and for a good cause. Seems like a great way to start the summer, too.

The fitness test involves a 3.2km (or 2 mile, if you’re an imperialist) run, which I must finish in under 16:30, but preferably should finish it in under 12:35. Whenever I’m looking at a 2 mile run, I tend to train on the West Pier in Dun Laoghaire. It’s almost exactly 1 mile out, it’s usually quiet, traffic-free and has clean air. Perfect for running. It’s also about 1 km from where I live, which serves as a nice warm up. The only real problem is the wind. Being a pier, it’s fairly exposed, which means that you’re usually fighting the gusts on either the way out or way back. Usually back in, it seems, and it’s been very windy here lately.

That fact, I’m hoping, will help to explain my performance, or lack thereof, as I have finished both my most recent attempts in just under or over (a margin of only 3 or 4 seconds, unbelievably) 15:30. Both have been into a stiff wind on the last mile, which really seems to have tempered me. Whereas on the way out, with the winds assistance, of course, I feel great, and well able to keep a fast pace, reaching the lighthouse (which is the halfway point) in about 6 minutes. From then on, however, the next sixteen hundred meters has been damn hard. Almost as soon as I turn into the wind, I’ve slowed down, not just in real terms as the winds retards my progress with each stride, but my pace has slowed too.

I’ll have to sort out this, and fast. Not just for the fitness test, either, I hate having lost my fitness. It was fucking difficult getting it in the first place – ask anyone who was on the track when I tried my first four hundred meters four years ago (Yes, I was so bad that one lap was a challenge). Last November, when I was probably at my fittest, I was clocking up 50km or more a week, mostly because some bastard stole my racing bike, so I started running to college.

I must rember to start that again…

Full Disclosure: Thanks to Google’s image search for the picture of Dun Laoghaire’s West Pier.

This Monday past, I endured possibly the least engaging day I have spent in university since I began my degree 2 plus years ago. I was tired, but that wasn’t the cause of my apathy. The intricacies of a MIPS32 processor or a shaded sphere simply didn’t hold my attention, for from the previous Friday evening until Sunday, I, along with 400-odd other soldiers, took part in Exercise Slaney, a Company-In-Attack assault on dug-in positions in a well-known training area in County Wicklow. Reservist soldiers from almost every unit in the Eastern Brigade spent Saturday readying, and Sunday executing, the assault.

I had the good fortune to be I/C of the lead section on the assault, and led the assault on quite a few enemy trenches. Although Reserve Defence Force training is generally kept low-key, the sheer scale of this exercise drew media attention, in the form of a number of photographers and an RTÉ camera crew. This led to both a short piece on Sunday’s Six-One news and the surreal experience of aggressively taking positions alongside a ‘ghost’ cameraman wearing jeans. If I had less restraint, he may well have become a POW.

That, however, is an aside from the point of this post. I’m finding it more and more difficult to engage in college work. It seems almost silly at times, and quite often senseless. It might be that occasional periods spent in a far less ambiguous and direct environment, especially where goals are clear and feedback instant, has soured me against the University experience. Disorganised and occasionally obselete teaching styles sometimes makes me question the methods potential lecturers are taught before being thrown in front of a class. That said, the system does seem to work in the most part, and maybe my expectations have been raised too high. For an answer to that question, only time and experience will tell, if I can just get on with it.

You can see the read RTÉ’s article and watch the video here.

Full Disclosure: The headline image for this article is from the RTÉ news story. It is not my own.

For more information on the RDF, contact your local unit, which can be found at the Defence Forces’ Reserve Unit Locator. If you are in South County Dublin, contact B Company of the 62 Infantry Battalion.

.

Very misty:

Luckily, there was a flag along the route:

The first night’s sleeping spot:

That’s all, folks, unless there are any questions from the audience. As to how the hike ended, well, sure, you’ll have to come along for one to see the real fun!

I can now give a final kit-list. I know it’s a bit pedantic, and if you find yourself bored, just skip to the next section.

Walking:

1. Boot Socks x 3
2. Jocks x 3
3. OG walking gear
4. Hanwag SOF Boots

Personal Effects:

1. Wallet
2. Mobile Phone
3. Dog Tags (just in case)
4. Watch

Navigation:

1. Map
2. Compass

Cooking:

1. Pocket Rocket
2. Gas (for above)
3. Hexis (WCS)
4. Mess Tin
5. KFS
6. Water Bottles x 2

Bivvi Kit:

1. P oncho x2
2. Bivvi Kit
   1. Para Cord
   2. Bungees x 4
   3. Tent Pegs x 9

Sleeping:

1. Bivvi Bag
2. Roll Mat
3. Sleeping Bag
4. Pillow (Gucci, I know)
5. Thermals

Dry Kit:

1. Norgie
2. Spare Trousers
3. Woolly Hat
4. Gloves
5. Neck Warmer

Wet Gear:

1. Trousers
2. Jacket

Night Kit:

1. Torch x 2
2. Cyalumes

Other:

1. Knife x 2
2. Wash Kit
3. First Aid kit
4. Lighters x 3
5. Baby Wipes

That’s everything. I know there’s a lot of repetition, but gotta finish the list! Add to that 4L of water, and about 3Kg of food, and the bag weighed in at over 20Kgs. After a couple of hours in the rain, that weight was of any use.increased as my gear got waterlogged. Thank Fuck for drybags, the only reason my Sleeping and Dry gear was of any use at all.

Day 1:

The first problem was time. Due to “unforeseen circumstances”, we didn’t get going until 15:00pm, which is very late to start anytime, let alone in January, when it gets dark just after 1700. We have to adjust the route to almost half it’s original length to ensure safe passage over the terrain The next problem was the weather. Mist covered the mountain, cutting visibility to 10 or 20 meters. It was honestly the worst fog I’ve ever walked through, making navigation almost impossible. Luckily I knew the route, so nav wasn’t really an issue.

To add to the mist, we were walking into the wind, taking a step to our left every two paces to offset the wind. Recent rains, which were continuing unabated, had turned the already boggy route to a barely passable river of muck. I ended up on my arse more than once. Although the ascent wasn’t fun, the descent was much longer, and far more challenging. The track was a stream, and the stream was a torrent. Rain made it’s way though the hook-and-pile fasteners and zips of my wet gear, down my neck and under my collar, soaking my trousers, shirt, hat, neckwarmer, jocks, balls. My scrotum felt like a Klingon forehead. The wetgear failed miserably and has since been slated for replacement. Within an hour of walking, all it was doing was keeping off the wind. I don’t mind saying I was miserable, and damn knackered. I’ve walked in rain, hail, even snow, but never have I been hurting so bad after 2 hours moving. The weather certainly didn’t encourage any breaks.

By the time we arrived at the bivvi site, I was feeling better. The last couple of K were on forest roads, which were flat and profferred some protection, which was very welcome. As always, the Hike giveth, and the Hike taketh away. After the very soft terrain of the previous kilometers, the rocks of the forest roads really hurt my feet. Thank the holy Fuck for my Hanwags, which always keep my feet dry.

After setting up the bivvi, and using the second poncho mentioned in the list to make a “living area”, I got changed into my dry gear and thermals, cooked up a few high-carb, heavily spiced meals and enjoyed some “internal insulation”. That is to say, Vat 69. The forest we were in saved us from the wind and the worst of the rain. Still, it would have been a miserable night without Scotch.

More on this soon…

Still, each and every time I go for a hike, the relevant bergen comes down from the attic two days in advance, is emptied, inventoried and packed again. Just like a maniacal shampoo advertisement: pack, unpack, repeat. Feckng OCD…

Still, as a practice, it has some worth. At least when you’re setting up your home from home two hours after dusk (in the rain, naturally) you know where everything is: Bivvi kit, external top pocket; mess kit, right rocket pouch; shitter paper…. Fuck, I always forget something!

As an aside, never rely on baby wipes to do the shitter roll’s job, it just doesn’t have the friction necessary for the job at hand.

So, first things first, time for a list:

Walking:

1. Socks x 2
2. Jocks x 2
3. Thermals
4. Wet Gear
5. Boonie
6. Woolly hat
7. Gloves
8. Neckwarmer
9. Norgie

Sleeping:

1. Poncho
2. Bivvi Kit
3. Bivvi bag
4. Sleeping bag
5. Rollmat

Hygiene/First Aid:

1. First Aid Kit
2. Baby Wipes
3. Wash Kit
4. Steriliser
5. Nearly forgot, shitter paper…

Cooking

1. Pocket Rocket
2. Gas for above
3. Mess tins
4. KFS
5. Water bottles
6. Camelbak

You’ll note food isn’t included here, that, along with water is decided last.

More on this soon. I actually have to go and finish packing for the real thing!