Heatwaves always take the entire Irish population by complete surprise! I mean, we’d consider a good day to be one that involves, at most, 15 minutes of sustained sunshine before it fucks back behind grey clouds and proceeds to piss on us for the rest of the day. Although in these past few days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Ireland was undergoing an accelerated process of continental drift and was now located somewhere beside Africa.
So with the sun shining down on us, we excitedly root around in our wardrobes for that pair of shorts that we all know is there somewhere. We then look for the suncream that we’ve probably had in the house since 1996, although trying to get anything out of the bottle sounds like some unfortunate soul whose just had a curry that’s been spiked with industrial strength laxatives!
We then feel as if we’re ready to strut our stuff and show our faces in public, complete with the Factor 50 still very visible on our noses! Sure we need factor 50… and lots of it, otherwise the mere talk of sunshine would be enough to bring out the freckles in us. Not only are we proudly showing off our white noses, but we all brandish legs that look more like milk bottles than limbs. All our foreign friends may be sniggering at us but we can at the very least boast that it takes us less time to get dressed in the morning as they’re still wearing about 17 layers of clothes!
The question of what we can do in this glorious weather soon pops up. After all, Ireland isn’t exactly known for its vast array of sunshine activities. This does make it relatively easy for us to make up our mind though and soon enough half the country is flocking to the nearest beach with plastic bags full of beer and snacks - everything we could possibly need to enjoy the day (and what’s left of our suncream of course!). We might be at the beach, but there isn’t a hope in hell that we’ll be going swimming. Oh no, no, no. Swimming is only meant to be done in temperature controlled pools that are laced with chlorine. Although in fairness, swimming in the Irish sea isn’t all that pleasant as there’s this ever-present fear that you’ll swallow some nuclear waste from Sellafield or at the very least get a mouthful of sewage that was just released from that well thought out drain that’s placed at the end of the strand.
The next morning we wake up at like 7am because it’s so fucking bright in the room. By some kind of miracle, the sun is still shining! Never in a million years would we have entertained the suggestion of the possibility of two days of sunshine. We’re not prepared though. We look onto the floor and we can make out the sweat patches on our only pair of shorts from across the room. A trip into the shops is on the cards after it becomes all too apparent that we don’t even have enough suncream left to protect our beloved noses! Of course shopping for suncream is pretty much alien to us. We know we can buy it in Boots because we’ve seen ad’s for it on British Television, but we don’t have a clue where exactly it is. So we carefully walk around the nearest store, going down every aisle and meticulously look at everything to be sure you don’t miss it. After a while you notice not the suncream, but the weird looks you’re getting from the old women around you. You’re a bit miffed at first but soon realise that you’ve accidently wandered down the Pregnancy test aisle.
It’s only after you leave the store having found and paid an extortionate amount of money for the suncream that you start to wonder what the fuck were 60 year olds doing down the Pregnancy Test aisles!
Once again we go to the beach, because after all there’s fuck all else to do. Actually, let me rephrase that. There’s fuck all else you can justify doing. You can justify playing the Xbox for the better part of the day when it’s pissing raining outside, but it’s harder to convince yourself that you’re making the best use of your time doing that when the sun is splitting the rocks.
This time when we get to the beach, all of our jaws drop. The beach is in a state. Instead of treading on sand, we’re tripping over beer cans! Immediately we call the radio stations and complain. “Why can’t the City Council clean all this up?” we all wonder. We point out that when we last went to the beach it was perfectly clean. We fail to mention that we last went to the beach a year a go and even then we left behind all of our rubbish. It wasn’t Liam in the luminous green City Council jacket that cleaned up our mess on that occasion though, it was the ocean.
Heatwaves. In Africa they kill people. In Ireland they just make us realise that we’re filthy animals who expect someone else to clean our mess.
That heading almost makes me quake in my boots. I’ve now reached the tender age of 20. For some it’s a milestone, a time when they reflect on what they’ve already achieved in life and look forward to what the future has in store for them. For me though, turning 20 is nothing short of most pronounced and unmistakeable wake up call I’ve ever experienced.
If we rewind a few years back in time, I can see myself as this enthusiastic and promising teenager. Sure, I spent more time off the rails than I did on them, but I always had potential. And dreams of splendour. If I didn’t make it as a professional footballer, then I’d always have a prolific writing career to fall back on. I felt that the world was indeed my oyster. But fast forward past those all too brief moments of teenage adolescence and as well as wondering where the hell the time went, I can’t help but think bluntly to myself; “Right Adam. That plan didn’t work out so well. Fuck…”
On the other hand, so what?! I’m sure that no one emerges from their teenage years smelling of roses and free of regret. Although suffice to say, my proudest achievement is surviving my turbulent years of adolescence without getting my face kicked in! If I can keep that up for another 20 years I’d be very impressed with myself!
No really, I am. Wednesday saw the start of the madness with the M.A.D Ball taking place in the Forum, Waterford. Where most college societies have black-tie balls in hotels, the Media and Design society elect to have a giant fancy dress party instead. I’m not in the Media and Design society, in fact I’m not sure if there even is such a society but when the words fancy dress, not optional and forum are all in the one sentence you can be pretty certain that I’ll be there somewhere.
I had decided to go as a Gorilla, the Cadbury’s Gorilla at that. I collected the costume on the day and bought a few fistfuls of Cadbury’s chocolate to stick into an mountaineers satchel that I found in the house. I found my Guitar Hero drum sticks and the look wad complete. I wasn’t able to try it on before the ball because I was meant to be in work. I really wish I did though. Actually, I really wish I thought the whole thing through!
It really only dawned on me when I got there that I was going to be like a lobster in a pot for the entire night! The suit itself was made out of 100% acrylic, which isn’t exactly the best fabric to allow for air to flow around. I only realised just how dire my situation was when I started drinking as I’m pretty sure I was sweating out the alcohol on the spot. I had about 6 drinks and nothing but sweat pouring out of me to show for it and even that was concealed under layers of synthetic fur! Being able to actually drink was an achievement in itself though as I struggled for a good 5 minutes trying to maneuver the glass into my mouth without snagging my mask and having it spill all over me. I then remembered that there’s such things called straws. I was Method acting. Obviously….
People soon caught onto the fact that I was like a portable patio heater and if they were cold after coming up from the smoking area they’d just latch onto me for a minute to warm up. I didn’t mind though because after all, you don’t dress up as a gorilla to go unnoticed! With alcohol sweating out of me at a ridiculous rate, I decided to really go for it and get some doubles in the hope that at least some of it would be absorbed into my body and not my costume! Also, the possibility (however slight) of actually being able to say I had Drunken Monkey sex was something I had to shoot for! I had just bought another drink when someone comes up behind me and wraps their arms around me. Gorilla hands aren’t the best at holding onto glasses. The girl apologised, but that honestly didn’t stop me from wanting to go all gorilla on her ass!
I took that as a sign that alcohol just wasn’t going to work for me for the rest of the night so from then on I just drank water which I suppose did ensure that I wasn’t going to collapse in a dehydrated mess on some street corner on my walk home.
I did get some free bananas in Centra though. That makes it all worth it!
Cadburys Gorilla
On the subject of being mad, I spoke to my course leader during the week about the possibility of repeating second year of Marketing in September. I’ve been all over the place with college this year and put simply am in dire need of divine intervention so to speak! I have two realistic options available to me. I can either go hell for leather between now and the repeats in August in an attempt to try pass the 10 or so subjects I’ll have to do. I can fail up to 2 of those and carry them over to third year. The advantage of doing this is that if I am successful, I can go into 3rd year and not waste a year. The downside is that in order to give myself any chance of passing them, I’d have to sacrifice working for a good chunk of the Summer.
Unfortunately work equals money, money that I’d need to be able to pay to repeat should I fail more than 2 exams. My other option is to just write off this year and focus on September. Major downside to that is it’ll cost the bones of €5k to repeat and I’d also lose my grant for the year. Now if the prospect of a degree and a job aren’t enough to motivate me then surely having my entire net worth invested in my education should be enough to make me put in the work second time around!
I think it’s worth mentioning that I can avoid the fees altogether if I register for exams only. Say if I give it welly between now and August and manage to fail 3 subjects then that means I have to repeat just those 3 subjects next year. If I go that route it means I can’t officially attend any lectures which would effectively mean I’d spend a second year running without going to classes. I don’t really want to do that because I feel that if I’m off the wagon for too long, I’ll never get back on.
Am I crazy, mad even, for preferring to repeat the entire year over every other option available to me? Am I crazy, mad even, for thinking that this option is the only one that allows me to finally do things right and not stumble and struggle forward having to carry subjects and repeat exams every semester? Is paying €5k my only chance at a clean slate?
One sure fire way of knowing for certain that Summer has arrived, or at least when mother nature thinks it has, is when you see me running down the street with my head darting in all directions and my arms flailing. No, I’m not on fire - I’ve seen a bee. Or a wasp. Or pretty much anything that can fly and sting me! I can’t fly, or sting people for that matter and that’s why bees - but especially wasps - terrify me to the point that I’m comfortable running down the street looking like a mental home escapee.
It all started when I was 5. I had used all my smarts that I’d developed at the time to craftily trap a wasp behind some curtains. I was still at the age (or at least at the mental age) where you find the sound of bugs being squashed to be hugely entertaining, so I wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity. I didn’t know it at the time, but the wasp had material science on its side and my planned attack had an Achilles heel that would scar me for life!
I carefully lined up the wasp with my thumb and bit down on my tongue to improve my concentration and ensure I wouldn’t miss and give my prey the opportunity to flee… or attack and kill me. Just at the right moment, I pounced.
I’ll never forget the pain.
It was as if my thumb was being dropped in and out of a bed of nettles whilst simultaneously being hit with a hammer! As I mentioned though, my plan was doomed to failure. The curtains were net curtains which are about as thick as a single sheet of rationed World War II toilet paper and as I found out on that fateful day, are no good at stopping small needles with sacs of venom from finding their way through and into my beloved thumb!
The sting only took a few days to clear up but from that moment on I felt as if every wasp I saw was planning on avenging their distant cousins death. I wasn’t so scared of bees though and I think it’s easy to explain why when I compare the two creatures to minority groups. The bees are the Jews - hard working and if they’re targeted for something they generally don’t retaliate and move out to some desert somewhere and at worst whimper about being a cursed, persecuted race or some nonsense like that. The wasps on the other hand are the Italian-Americans - feisty and aggressive and if you hurt one of them you can be sure that his family and friends will be after you like flies on shit and sooner or later you’ll find yourself tied up in the back of a car that belongs to someone called Antonio who happens to be involved in “Waste Disposal”. In other words, you don’t fuck with wasps… or Italians!
I haven’t been stung by a wasp since. Once bitten, twice shy and all that jazz. The fear is still omni-present though and once a wasp gets into my “personal space”, I freak out and bolt down the road. If a wasp gets in my face, I see no possible way of getting it to fuck off without being reminded of the nettle-hammer combo all those years a go!
So while many people are donning shorts in this spell of good weather, I’m holed up, praying for rain, sleet and snow so all those flying, venomous freaks will freeze and starve. Maybe then I can actually enjoy a Summer for once without spending it running through streets!
I admit that I don’t exactly have the best track record with my phones. Well, up until last month I’d been using the same phone for the past 2 years until I managed to break 3 phones in as many weeks and amazingly only one of which happened when drunk! On paper it would seem as if we could write down a very simple equation: “iphone + adam = recipe for disaster” but even with that very likely possibility in mind, the iPhone has sliding menus. It’s pretty much calling out my name!!! I do want to make a somewhat educated purchase though so I’ve decided to do some research online because the last time I went to do find out more about something from a sales rep, I came away with a membership to a gym!
On the iPhone page on O2.ie, they describe and give an outline of what they call the “O2 Experience Plus” tariff.
Regarding data, they say that it’s 99c per day for data usage (1c per KB up to a max charge of 99c). If I so much as breathe on the 3G network, I’ll be pretty much up to the maximum charge. Do O2 offer any data plans similar to Three’s offering? The apparent “stealth” charge of €30 a month doesn’t really appeal to me.
In the way of texts, the tariff boasts free texts and calls to the O2 Network if I top up by €20 per month. The only problem there is that myself and everyone else I knew on O2 jumped off that ship years a go when the other operators introduced great offers while O2 continued to do nothing but screw us as if we were 12 year old virgins. So this tariff is pretty much useless to me given it’s 13c to send texts to other networks and I’m pretty sure that’s more expensive than it was to send texts back when I was on this sorry excuse for a network a whole two years a go and it’s also 5 times dearer than what I’m currently paying!
Now if I navigate outside of the iPhone subsection of the O2 site, I can see information about the O2 Experience More plan which offers Free texts to all Irish networks if I top up by €20 or more per month. Now they mention nothing about this tariff on the iPhone subsection, is this because it isn’t available for iPhone customers or because they don’t really want to us advertise this superior tariff to us gullible and naive interested buyers? Or perhaps the folks at O2 don’t know their arse from their elbow when it comes to designing informative and usable websites?
They also mention nothing about Text Bundles in the iPhone subsection. I’d hope they’re available but working on the assumption that they aren’t and based off a realistic guess that I’d send 600 texts a month, I’d be liable to spend €78 on texts alone every month. I’ll take a conservative approach with phone calls and say that I’d spend 3 minutes talking every day which adds up to €27 a month. This is all on top of the €30 I’d be charged for data usage and all of a sudden I see I’m paying €135 a month which is over 4 times what I’m currently paying on Three with my INQ1.
If I include the cost of buying the phone itself, it works out as costing €2190 over a twelve month period to use the phone without restricting myself. Yet despite this ****ing astronomical cost, the iPhone’s beautiful interface and massive array of apps still appeal to me but then again I just can’t get that 4 figure cost out of my head and it’s there that this entire journey grinds to a halt.
I’m a student and simply can’t justify spending that much money in a year on anything other than alcohol. Am I a mile off with my estimates or am I on the right track? Does Bill Pay offer any notable benefits over Speakeasy other than the lower cost of the phone? Finally, given that I’m currently on Three, is there any possibility of unlocking an iPhone and being able to use it on Three without features being crippled?
There. I’ve said it. Yesterday I went out to the Grand Hotel in Tramore to play the Pro Nutz €120 game. I’ll confess right now that €100 is up there with the most I’ve ever paid into a poker tournament and it really didn’t help that I was still fighting what seemed to be a losing battle against the latest cold that my lovely American guests decided to pass on to me in work! From the moment I sat down at the table, I just felt like spewing away my chips and heading back into Waterford so I could partake in Jamie’s birthday celebrations - Part Deux.
Did I really want to go out though? I mean I had just handed over two weeks rent to play a poker tournament - a feat that some would already describe as borderline insane - and I also felt like a lukewarm Death sitting at the table so it pained me (even more) to think about how I’d feel if I was making shapes on the dance floor. I still had a gigantic hickey on my neck which I wasn’t all to pushed about displaying for all to see and even at the poker tables, despite my best efforts to cover it up, the players were asking did I get hit by a sliotar in the neck. How I wondered if anyone would have believed me earlier on in the week if I had told them that rather than the by now tired excuse of an allergic reaction to aftershave. Anyway, I’m kind of going off on a tangent. This post is about the homosexuality of poker and that’s what I intend on talking about!
The tournament itself got off to a duck arse start. We got a 20k starting stack and 30 minute blinds with all the levels included which meant that nobody was in any rush to go anywhere. I lost 2k at my first table when I missed a few combo draws but changed gears on my next table to build up to close to 30k. This was without getting any massive hands but I was able to value bet effectively and managed to induce the odd bluff here and there. My first big hand of note came when I had just been moved back to my initial table after a few levels. We had just sat down after a break and the table was half empty. I called a raise with A8 and flopped two pair. I called a bet on the flop and raised the turn and river with the river falling another ace, giving me a house. I seemed to have a very rocky image at this table which was proven when I had someone fold Kings to me preflop for the very first time ever! Half of me is still in disbelief that someone could possibly fold Kings preflop but when Dave Tutty raised to 1600 and had another player push in for 4.8, I grabbed my bundle of green 5k chips and reraised to 24k. Dave thought about it for seemingly an age before folding what I assumed to be something like TT or JJ. The guy who pushed had been tilting with a bag of spanners, all I remember is that I hit my set on the flop and he was drawing dead by the turn! Even just thinking back on this hand has me shaking my head in either disgust or disappointment - I can’t quite figure out which and at whom it’s directed! Maybe Dave can shed some light on this sometime?
I continued to accumulate over the next two hours until I lost half my stack by calling a river bet on a straightened board in the hope of chopping it only to be shown a gutshot that had got there. Suddenly I was below average and the possibility of going out in Waterford was once again reignited. I really did feel like shit though. I was shivering like mad in a room that everyone else was complaining was a sweat box and my eyes felt like needles were being probed into them when I looked at anything that resembled light. Even in my lethargic, nigh-on comatosed state, it didn’t take me long to surmise that strobe lights and pints wouldn’t be the solution to all of my problems. Although in saying that, it hasn’t stopped me in the past! I realised that even if I did get knocked out and got the last bus into town, I’d probably just collapse onto a bed, sofa or any surface that could possibly support my weight and not stir for a good twelve hours. So, given that I had now got it into my head that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the Forum, I decided to dig deep and try bring what little A-game I have to the table.
I went relatively card dead for a while, and managed to keep my head afloat by raising anything remotely connected from late position as I tried to use my tight image to pilfer the blinds. It was working quite well until Colm Reville was moved into my buttons big blind. His blind is stubborn enough to attack on a normal day but it gets even trickier when there’s 20 pints thrown into the mix and when he has the perfect reshove stack of 15BB’s. So I practically postponed the pillaging of the blinds exclusively from late position and started stealing from other areas of the table, targeting some of the other tighter blinds sitting at the table. A big hand for me came when I found QQ under the gun and raised it up to 3.5 times the big blind only to have Ray Kent reshove from late position for what was about 15BB’s. I made the call and he had JJ which didn’t improve meaning I was now up to 97k, just above average!
Not long later, Billy Fitz opened in early position to 14k and I found AK and reraised to 40k. Action went back to him and he shoved for not a whole lot more. Even if he had enough to make an effective 4bet shove, I’m always snap calling Billy in this spot as I’m always a run and jump ahead of his range. He had A8, which (I hope) is the very lower part of his range here. My AK held and I was now one of the chipleaders as we approached the bubble for the final table. The Fox really came into his own here and subtly played up this fact. He was hovering below average himself but urged everyone not to go crazy on the bubble - while stealing left, right and centre of course :). He was directly to my right so I was really losing out as he was always getting into the pots first and my small blind also found its way over to him on a few occasions. I did manage to get most of them back though when I got two streets of value from second pair against him.
Fast forward 15 minutes and we were on the final table with 5 players going to get paid. I was third in chips. We lose a player on the very first hand with blind on blind action. AQ for the small blind and AA the big blind who was about to become a monstrous chipleader. I steal a few hands with Ace-rag before picking up AK and having a shortstacked big blind shove over my raise. I call and am racing against 22 but I never get off the line as the flop falls 2-3-3. I build my stack up once again over the next hour as the entire table seems to have died until my good mate Ollie St John limps his button, even though he’s shortstacked. The small blind, who’d been playing very well, decides to pounce on this and shoves. I’m lucky enough to look down at KK and snap it. Ollie passes Ace-8 face up and the small blind sheepishly turns over T-4o. It’s all about timing in this game and he was just extremely unlucky to run into the card rack that I was becoming! I hold and knock him out.
Play continues at a snails pace until I pick up QQ in mid position and make my standard raise which is just under 3 times the big blind. The Big Blind is the same player who shoved with the deuces earlier and he once again shoves. He’s even shorter than the last time we tangled after losing a big pot a few hands earlier and his shove doesn’t even cover my raise! He has A4 and once again my big hands hold. We’re now down to 7 players and I have around 200k. Two hands later and I look down at AA for the first time in the tournament. The chipleader raises from early position to 20k. I reraise to 80k and then the small blind shoves for 128k! I nearly jizzed in my pants Lonely Island style when the chipleader announces that he too is all-in! I fist-pump-jizz call but little do I realise that absolute carnage is lurking around the corner!
So I’m all-in, in a three way pot that makes up over 60% of all the chips in play, with aces! The small blind has JJ, the chipleader has KK. Paul Warren then says that he folded KJ! It’s then that I make the mistake of thinking about the money - €2.2k for the winner, €1500 for second. With 60% of the chips, I could comfortably blind out to second and still ought to be castrated as punishment for not taking it down. I’d been running extremely well all day and apart from the one brainfart where I called off half my stack over three streets in the hope of chopping a pot, I’d also been playing well. I honestly can’t remember the flop. What I will remember though, and I swear I’ll have it with me for life, is the pre-pubescent screeches of delight and the pounding of the table from Vinny as it came down Jack-shit-shit fuckity fuck fuck! FUUUUUUUCCCCCCK!!!! If there was any consolation to be had from this it’s that of the only two fucking outs in the deck, it was the one that didn’t force me to run down Main St and dive off the pier that did indeed fall. So I suppose I can be thankful for that at least. This hand just encapsulated Poker’s homosexuality for me. No game should be allowed to be so gay. It’s just wrong.
I was still left with 120k in chips though and with blinds at 5k/10k, I still had room to play. As a tournament blogger, I witness bad beats for a living so at this stage I just shrug them off and comment on their sickness before getting back to business. I chipped back up to 220k without much difficulty as play had slowed to a complete crawl. It was then that it was suggested that we just break the bubble there and then. There were 7 players left and only 5 due to get paid. We were playing for 10 hours at this stage so we agreed on taking a total of €400 off 1st and 2nd and giving €200 to 6th and 7th. The game was suddenly on steroids and two players were eliminated in quick succession. I then knocked out Ollie in 5th when he shoved from the small blind into my big blind. I saw an Ace which made the call easy and a Ten along with it which made it even easier. Ollie had actually picked up 77 so was unlucky for me to actually have a legitimate hand as I was probably calling there with a whole lot worse. Needless to say I hit my Ace and Ollie exited in 5th.
When we were four handed, Fox was in an ideal position. He had a complete weak-tight nit to his left who was opting to play Mafia Wars on a laptop across the room instead of playing hands and he also had direct position on me and Fox isn’t afraid of the resteal if he smells a rat. Despite Fox being to my direct left or right for the entire tournament, we had avoided a clash thus far. That was until he raised the 5th hand in a row. He raises to 35k under the gun with blinds at 6k/12k and I make it 105k with A7 in the big blind. Fox’s raising range was incredibly wide at this point of the tournament and I hadn’t defended my big blind in a long time. I’m playing a stack of just over 215k so I realise that I’ve committed myself to this pot. And I’m not very happy about it. I also realise that I’m behind in this hand when he starts asking for counts. I try talking Fox out of it saying that I think I’m ahead and point out that I’ve already committed myself to the hand. After thinking for a while he just flat calls. I shove the flop in the dark for a half pot bet and it comes Q58 with a flush draw. He isn’t all that happy but calls with AQ and I fail to improve. I’m not sure if I’m happy with how I played this hand or not. I’m pretty sure he folds out all his better aces on the flop (AT+) and I think I did just enough preflop to make him think I held a pair. I’m not sure if he folds underpairs on the flop though or even if he just flat calls with them preflop. I finish 4th anyway for €520. I tip the €20 and am offered a lift back into town which I jump at.
It’s 3am and I’m hoping that I can meet up with people from The Forum who I assume are meandering back towards town at this time. They’re nowhere to be found though and the forum is deserted with the exception of some poor soul who’s slouched over a railing getting sick all over themselves, something which isn’t all that distant of a memory for me! I make my way back into town and find a few people but the majority are already gone. If only I had a phone that worked. I think I may as well put that €520 into my yearly phone fund just to be safe!
Trips to Cork are always fun. In this case however, calling it fun might be pushing it just a bit! It was Jamie’s birthday so I felt obliged to make the €20 trip down to the Peoples Republic to take part in a special blend of session - Guitar Hero combined with copious amounts of alcohol. I can’t think of a single downside to that type of session which is probably why the more conservative among you think I have a problem!
Guitar Hero makes time fly by and it’s an entertaining side game in itself to see who can reach for their bottle the most times during their brief moments of respite during the RSI-inducing songs while still trying to keep their combo’s going! There were a few close shaves which saw me revisit my toddler years with dribble running down my chin followed by an innocent giggle. Only I assume that those times of bliss all those years a go didn’t involve Miller Genuine Draft. Time flew so quickly that it felt like one minute we were being told that a taxi was going to take 15 minutes to arrive and the next we were being hurried outside to an impatient driver. I was later to discover that this wasn’t actually Guitar Hero warping time and in fact it did only take a minute for the taxi to arrive! This posed quite a few problems for the people still getting ready but more importantly I was left with a full bottle of Buckfast to chug off in record time. It was probably for the best that I didn’t quite finish it!
I had €40 in my wallet and was worried that it might not be enough. I mean in Waterford that gets you into a club, 3 drinks and some food. In Cork though, €40 gets you 13 drinks with some change left over for a Rubber Patty Hamburger at the end of the night. Forgetting about Cork’s drinks offers until the very last minute proved to be a very pleasant surprise at the time but wreaked havoc given my dirty habit of longing to spend every penny in my wallet on a night out!
I would describe the night as being “messy”, a word I’ve noticed myself attach to a lot of nights out as of late, and this is where my blog starts jumping back and forth between the realms of fact and fiction as I struggle to piece together my night after about 1 am. I originally thought that only about 5 minutes of the night were “hazy” but I now realise that I’m being particularly ambitious with the 5 minutes of “haziness” and it’s more like a blank canvas with the occassionally blob of indeterminable paint thrown on every once in a while. Translation: I was absolutely rat-arsed!
I remember buying drinks. I remember dancing. I remember getting my coat. I remember talking about whores to Patrick. I remember buying chicken. I remember trying to eat a chicken wing whole. I remember coughing up chicken bones. I remember getting a taxi. I remember a mug of tea. I remember a burnt hand. Mine :(.
My phone started going crazy at this stage and I was going crazy too because I can’t answer the thing since I dropped it in a puddle last week. That’s 3 phones in as many weeks for me, but that’s a story for another day! I was no longer with the birthday boy and the group I was out with and instead found myself having my neck attacked. I knew it was going to be bad as my entire left side of my neck felt as if it was set on fire with jet fuel or something. I naturally repaid the favour (although I could have the order of events mixed up there :)).
A quick look in the mirror when I woke up those morning confirmed my fears. It’s fucking big! In the past I’ve been able to write them off as being shaving rashes but in this case I’ll probably have to stop short of saying that it’s malaria! Or I could tell work the truth……….
So for the next 4-12 days, I’m a redneck :(. Great night though!
Last week I absolutely butchered my phone. What started out as a small problem with the slider, ended in lots of bits and pieces after all attempts to fix it had failed quite miserably. Perhaps I subconsciously broke it on purpose because I had been eying up Three’s latest addition to the mobile market, the INQ1, for quite some time.
I was going to write a rather lengthy review of it. But put simply, there’s no need to write a review about a phone which has already picked up numerous awards and won over the hearts and souls of anyone who has been brave enough to take a leap of fate with a companies very first phone to the market! It really is that damn good!
Three have made a big deal out of the Facebook integration. It’s hard to fault it really, as it allows one touch access to all the functions of the fastest growing social network. There is one thing better than “one touch access” though and that’s “no touch access”! And through the INQs handy widget feature, this is possible.
As it stands, there’s no widgets available for download on the INQ. At least not in Ireland anyway. We can add up to 3 RSS feeds to be included on the Home screen though, and this is where we’re given the opportunity to add a Facebook related widget. Facebook might not advertise their RSS feeds very well, but they are there, at least in some sections of their site. By adding them, we can have up to the minute (well, up the hour) updates about our friends statuses and our own notifications. It all sounds good, doesn’t it? Now lets find those feeds.
First we’ll add find the “Notifications” feed. This feed lets you know of any changes to your profile, such as new friend requests, new profile comments and application related messages. To find it, go to the Notifications page. You won’t be able to access it unless you’re logged in, so make sure you are before clicking! Once we’re there, you’ll see a heading in one of the sidebars called “Subscribe to Notifications”. Right click the link that’s directly below this and copy the address and paste it somewhere where you can see it later (a Word or Notepad document for example)
Now we have to find the Status Updates feed. Click on the “Friends” link at the top of the page which will bring you to the Status Updates page. Look for the header “Subscribe” and once again right click the link that’s directly below this and copy the address and paste it to the same place as you did the first feed. You now have everything to need to start feeding this all this data onto your phone.
There are two ways you can proceed from here. You can either follow this guide which will show you how to set up two seperate widgets that will update every hour, or you can be inventive and use what’s known as a feed merging service such as Yahoo! Pipes. The advantage of using a feed mixer is that you’ll only have one feed for all notifications and status updates which will free up space on the screen. The disadvantage is that many of websites that provide these services go down often meaning you’ll be finding yourself constantly looking for alternatives. Yahoo! Pipes is probably the most reliable of them all, but it’s not the most user friendly piece of kit and would take twice the length of this guide to explain properly!
Anyway, we’ll carry on. Assuming you have the addresses of the two feeds pasted into a window somewhere, we can now add the feeds to the phone. Hit the “Menu” button of the phone and scroll to “Feeds”. Hit “options” and select “Add a feed”. In the screen that appears, manually enter in the Feed address, making sure you don’t make any mistakes. Once the feed is added, update it when prompted. Now we’ll set it to update every hour. Go into “Options” once again and select “Auto Update”. Select “Once an Hour” from the options. This ensures that the feed is kept as up to date as possible. To add the other feed, simply repeat the steps of creating a new feed and entering it’s address.
Once both feeds are added, go back into the main menu and select “Tools”. From here we select “manage widgets”. Mark the boxes “RSS Widget 1″ and “RSS Widget 2″ (if you intend on adding both feeds) and hit “Done”. Go back into the Home screen (this is the desktop of the phone) and select the newly added widgets that are prompting you to “Add a Feed”. Select one of the feeds from the list and click done. If you want to add the second feed, simply select the other widget and add the remaining feed to it.
If everything has worked properly, you’ll now find yourself with 2 widgets on the Home screen, both relating to Facebook. One of them lists your friends 10 most recent status changes (eg: Adam is tired), while the other one is solely for notifications (eg: Adam has wrote on your wall). They’ll both be set to update every hour which should be regularly enough to keep you informed of everything Facebook related - unless you’re completely addicted.
If you want a little bit more from them, then I’d recommend you check out Yahoo! Pipes to really have fun with the feeds! If you’re having any problems, leave me a comment and I’ll try help!
Just a little word of warning to finish this piece off. Unless you’re on a Data plan, you’ll probably be charged through the teeth for refreshing these feeds every hour. If ever there was a phone that needed a data package, this is it!
The beginning of my night started in a not so pleasant manner. My appointment with the good old Dr. Jameson lasted longer than I had originally expected. Before I knew it, I had an empty bottle beside me and a phone that was buzzing like it was some kind of sex toy. Not an ideal situation when I was expected to be on my merry way up to the Forum whilst finding myself wearing nothing but a gown and still in dire need of a shower. I anticipated a quick dash into the shower and to be on the road within minutes. That was before I picked up the menthol shampoo!
In the mad rush that I was in, I managed to get the shampoo not only in my hair but also into every part of my eyes! Now had I been using a normal shampoo, it would have hurt somewhat, but when you introduce menthol shampoo into the equation, it changes the situation. To say the least. Menthol shampoo boasts the unique characteristic of leaving this warm and fuzzy feeling wherever it goes. It feels great and it leaves you feeling as if you’re full of energy. Until you get it in the eyes!
One second I was singing along to the brilliant Modest Mouse (I’ve included a song below), the next I was pretty much blind! Talk about being reminded about how fast things can change!! From absolute bliss, to absolute agony. Just like that! My natural reaction was to just turn the shower head towards me. Usually this would be fine, but I just happened to have it on full power and for a brief few seconds I felt as if I was trying to knock my eye socket back in time!
Am I being melodramatic? How about you get some mentol shampoo in your eyes and see how YOU react! “But I’m not that retarded” I hear you say.
Comments