As some of you might know, my dad lives on the west coast of Ireland. He has a small sail boat that he was planning on launching this weekend so he can use it this summer. So that he doesn’t have to bring the boat in every day he has a mooring a few hundred metres out. Today a fishing boat had the gaul to pull up to the mooring and casually take it up and rob £600 worth of chain and the drive off. My dad and a buddy of his saw all of this and managed to get the boats reg number and has informed the police and the coast guard. I will post the reg no when I get it so anybody who sees it can hurl abuse at the sick bastards.

While living in Australia and more so while traveling, I read a good few books. I am definitely not a fast reader but still managed to get through about one every 3 weeks or so (more when i wasn’t working)[ I reckon that’s good with only about an hours reading time a day]. The books I like to read are usually gangster/mafia related, spy stories or true crime stories. I can drift away into a world of total concentration when reading these types of books. Since coming back to Ireland/Uk, I have not been able to get time to read that many non-technical books. When I get home from work , I am usually too tired to do more than an hour or so on the PC, a few chores and then flake in front of the TV. I do try to read a good few technical books, they are interesting but by no means do I love reading them.

I’ve started a policy of one technical book/ one non-technical/ one technical and so on. This seems like a good compromise but I wish I could drop the technical books altogether (not an option really considering the amount of stuff I want to learn). I was wondering what other people do when it come to reading and what you do to get a good balance between the two.

Book I am reading now (technical): “The cathedral and the bazaar” – Eric S. Raymond – discussing open sourse development.
Last non-technical book read: “A man in full” – Tom Wolfe.

@media was super, I met tons of really interesting people, famous (within the world I live in anyway) and some not so famous but just as interesting. I managed to hand out a few of the 500 business cards malarkey gave me (I think about 10). On the night before, I met up with Malarkey and he introduced me to all the speakers which was amazing. On the night of the first day of the conference there was a party. This resulted in alot of beer, no dinner (not a good idea when combined with the beer just mentioned), drunkenness, a great night out and one hell of a hangover the morning after. It ended up as just me and Chris Ward so biggup Chris.

After the conference was another party called the wind down. I planned to go to this. After the final lecture, I went back to the hostel to get some dinner and a couple of hours kip, I never really woke up. I wish I had gone though as some of the images on flickr show it being one hell of a night. 🙁

The conference was very thought provoking and I hope to have a few good blog posts from it. If I spoke to you at all during the conference, please email me (or comment here) as I’m shit with names. 🙂

Update – I’ve added some photos on Philckr and on my local server gallery/folder/@media (I seem to think that a flash is not needed after a few drinks)

Update #2 – Faruk Ateş has a comprehensive list of post @media posts.

Oh Yeah!!!!!!!!!! Drooooool

I am now on the train on the way to my first ever conference …. @media 2005. Most of the topics being discussed are to do with web standards and accessibility, something which interests me hugely. I had originally booked my ticket to go months ago paid my many hours of blood sweat and tears (maybe just tears then — bastard mac ie). But Karova has generously offered to pay for my trip and accommodation (glamour). I had my accommodation sorted as well, I will be staying in a single room in the city of London YHA, a bargain at £36 a night for non-members. That my friends is a fraction of what it costs to stay in any of the Hotels that are anywhere near the conference venue.

Andy is one of the speakers, giving a talk on the web standards on high profile sites. His talk and all the others look very interesting and I plan to catch them all, especially the accessibility talks. I have so often heard the word “accessibility” thrown around just as all the other web buzz words, but after having read a couple of books on the subject and going to these talks I reckon I’ll start to understand exactly what all the fuss is all about (besides the obvious steps).

As I’m going down on my own (as Andy will be off with all the speakers), I hope to meet plenty of interesting people and get a few contacts too in the process. The evening events (beer) should help with this. I’ll try and take a few notes on the various speeches and post a brief summary. If I don’t , it’s because I’m having too much fun. If you see me about be sure to say hello.