After spending the last couple of weeks investigating fictious cults, the time has come to enjoy the sun, emmmm sorry clouds. On Saturday we went to Brittas bay to celebrate J's birthday. We walked along the beach for about 2 hours, just in time to avoid the heavy downpour.

On the way back home, we passed through Wicklow village to visit Wicklow Goal (historic prison), but we missed the last tour by 10 minutes. We strolled around the village for a while and discovered the pearl of Wicklow village - Carlos the Clipper! The Miss was also here for the weekend, which might explain my less than cheerful mood. Withdrawal symptoms!

With a bit more than a month to go for the Japan holiday, there’s a lot of planning to be made. Expect to see at least a couple of posts on the subject very soon.

I'm supposed to be writing a bit more here, but I'm kind of doing things instead. The biggest news I've got is that last Thursday I got our tickets to Japan. Yes, at last I'm going to Japan. That's by far the highlight of the month till now, probably until next weekend in Helsinki. It's Tuska time!

On a less positive note, yesterday Italy got knocked out of Euro 2008. No big surprise but still a bit disappointed considering that they lost on penalties. So now all my investment hopes are on Spain as Netherlands, Croatia and Romania are out too.

I had almost forgot what a weekend at work was like. Well, I refreshed my memory this weekend as I worked two full days. I had to work up my days off as June is quite a hectic travel month. Going to Lux next weekend and then to Helsinki for the mighty Tuska after a fortnight. Anything new? Not really. Well actually there is something new - but that's classified information :)

Just came back from an important/eventful weekend in Slovakia. The miss had her 30th birthday, and I prepared a small surprise for her. All went very well and according to plan, so at least the 3 months of planning for the event weren't for nothing.

As usual, the pictures are in the pipeline :)

At last I've managed to upload some pictures of the Poland trip. The pictures have nothing to do with Poland or Warsaw at all because they're the pictures of the wedding after party. Like all the parties hosted by polish I've been to, this is a good excuse as any to drink Vodka and dance.

I've decided to give Twitter another try. For those unfamiliar with the service, twitter is a website where you can post (or send) a small message to people who are interested in hearing it. For people to see your messages they have to subscribe to your posts by following you on twitter. These messages can be viewed either from the twitter website, or using special twitter clients, or even getting them on the phone by SMS.

Originally the service was intended to let your friends know what you're up to. It was something similar to setting you status in facebook, or your personal message in MSN Messenger. Now apart from it's original use, twitter is used to send all sort of messages, like for example links to interesting sites, or asking questions to people who are following you. It's a sort of cross between instant messaging, chatting and mini-blogging.

I tried twitter a couple of months ago, way before it got all the hype. I used it mainly for posting my status to friends, but since there weren't many of my friends using it yet it was pretty useless. Now I'm giving it another go, hoping to make some new friends. If you want to follow me on twitter to see what I'm up to this is my profile. I still have to figure out how to find interesting twitters though.

Now with twitter I have to decide what should get blogged and what should get twitted :) Well, for posts more than a sentence long I'll have to blog them, but I might start posting less general appealing links (like computing links) on twitter more than on the blog.

I know the blog is turning a bit into ...off to [here] and back from [there], but who cares. Well this long weekend I'll be off to the west of Ireland in Westport. Hopefully I'll be able to bring back some good pictures to show off.

In the mean time keep well.

Just got back from a wedding weekend break in Warsaw. All the hype that I heard about Polish weddings was well justified, and even though my expectations were high they were completely satisfied. Warsaw itself wasn't the major attraction though, the place is rather dull and the weather didn't help make it any better. I will write a bit more about the Warsaw trip when I upload the pictures.

In the mean time I'm rather busy writing a literature review on Social Network Visualization, interesting but quite time consuming. Hopefully I'll be back to normal in a week's time.

It's that time of the year when I get the urge to buy a new gadget. This time (like always) it's a gadget that I need - a new camera. I'm torn again on whether to get an SLR or not. Will I carry an SLR around as much as I would a smaller camera, and would it be worth the investment? Any suggestions?

Update (13-Apr-2008)
After UNcareful consideration and a rush of impulsive judgement, I got the Canon S5 IS hoping that it'll arrive before going to Warsaw next Wednesday. I had a Canon S2 before it mysteriously stopped working and was very happy with it, so I thought I'd give the newer model a try. Getting a new camera was the same price as fixing the broken one. Thanks to R I managed to get a very good price for it on ebay from DigitalRev. I guess the DSLR has to wait. Btw, thanks for your suggestions.

After 3 days of packing I finally moved house last Tuesday. I reached that point where things could no longer fit in the matchbox sized room so I had to expand. The amount of stuff I managed to collect in these two years here is staggering.

Everything doubled, the bed, the bathroom, desks and cupboards too. I even managed to place my TV which I never previously used into the room. Not that I watch loads of telly but now I've got a place where my little Latvian gargoyle can stand (need a name for him - any suggestions?)

Lord Hiisi really liked the new room. He spent the whole day exploring the new surroundings when we move in. He also had a clean vivarium which he shortly after popped in.

The only thing that degraded was the speed of the internet connection. Moved from 2Mbs to 1Mbs. the state of the ISP's here in Ireland is far from optimal. Even the dot is introducing 10Mbs connections and here the norm is still 1-4 Mbs. This is supposed to be one of the most developed countries for christsake.

(I'm writing this here as a reminder of the events that happened this year.) Last weekend was election weekend in the dot. The government provides very cheap flights to encourage dottians living abroad, to travel to the dot to vote (there was a 93% turnover this year, the lowest turnover since 1971). I went to vote and thank God now it's all over. That's all my election blogging.

On a very sad note my miss’s dad died unexpectedly on Thursday night. He was having dinner with his friends and had a severe heart attack. I took the first flight to her house to attend the funeral.

Brief blogging pause for the Valentine’s Day weekend break. Went to Luxembourg to visit the miss and relax a bit, before another burst of work and study. I'm now also expanding my mobile working horizons to work from different countries etc. The only drawback is that I have to carry Madot around and he's not exactly the most mobile of laptops. I didn't foresee that I was going to travel with him much, otherwise I would have got a lighter laptop. I know this is cruel and heartless but if anybody is interested in buying him off me, I'll give you a good price (Specs).

This week there's no "in the inbox quotes" section but today I got this pic in a mail. Not difficult to guess who sent it (cats + food). Too good not to share.

Hi Sir! Reporting back on the spying assignment on the enemy - completed Sunday 2am Zulu Time. First of all their destination is still unknown, and after all these years, they still can't get no sleep. Sir their inspiration is running low; our forces have nothing to fear. Although their soldiers are still in good numbers, some of the new recruits need severe aesthetic therapy. The only worthy addition was the redhead that just joined their ranks. Sir I also think I deserve a raise, yesterday they hired someone to throw nuclear gases in the trench where I was posted. Btw, rhythm is still a dancer.

It's been a bit of a hectic week which is why I had to sacrifice blogging a bit. Last weekend the Miss was over. We had a nice relaxing weekend with an extensive shopping therapy tour, in Dundrum. Last Sunday’s weather will probably turn out to be the best of the whole winter, so we took advantage and went for a walk in the Phoenix Park (like the rest of Dublin’s population). At last this week I got a new leather faced chair for home to replace the old concrete chair that was flattening my ass big time. The rest of the week was work, work and a class at uni.

On a completely different note, the magic of Ryanair’s marketing struck again. Nicolas Sarkozy the French president is threatening to sue the airline (via Jaunted) over an advertisement featuring a photograph of the president with Carla Bruni.

Iny Galway has another pearl by Mr O'Leary's marketting team.

It's that time of the year, time to start planning a nice holiday escape out of Europe. As soon as I realized that the Russia/China plan fizzled, my mind started racing and exploring alternatives. Also, I haven’t really had the opportunity to choose a place for holiday in quite a while, so this is also part of it (the Venezuela trip wasn’t entirely 100% my choice).

At the moment I'm looking for interesting destinations and still open for suggestions. I had to park Japan and Madagascar options but they’re just slightly postponed to a later date. South America and Australia are also parked because of the recent visits and that leaves options in Africa and Asia. These are the options under consideration (in no particular order):-

China - For the cultural heritage and loads of other interesting stuff. Was already thinking of going there last year but again that didn’t happen. This year there are the Olympics so there’s a hope that road signs and the like will be translated in English. The Olympics period is not a runner but because it will be busy, but just after the Olympics should be good. China is cheap and there may also be some discounts after the Olympics.

South Africa:- This is a very good choice too, relatively safe and quite a popular tourist destination. The definite must visit places here are Kruger Park and Cape town, which happen to be on different sides of the country but that’s ok. I already have some planning done her because I was going last year with my travel mentor.

Namibia: This is probably the safest spot you can visit in Africa. I know 3 different groups of people who went there. All of them said it’s very cheap and very easy to get by. Like South Africa we can go on a safari, but in Namibia there’s the desert and some very unique scenery.

India: Again a good destination with loads to see and explore. The only thing is that I don’t know much about the place and planning might be a bit tricky with all the options available.

Cambodia/Loas/Vietnam: The Cambodia/Vietnam thing is also very interesting. This area is getting quite a lot of attention from tourists supposedly being beautiful and cheap. Vietnam is probably the most interesting of the 3. Probably might end up choosing 1 of the places to see it properly depending on the time available.

So basically there are spots in Asia and Africa. The Asian part is more concentrated on culture (especially China and India) and the Africa is more concentrated on nature. All of the countries are cheap to visit. Probably the most expensive option from the lot would be South Africa.

If anybody has been to any of these countries or has any alternative suggestions please feel free to comment.

Update: NY Times list of places to visit in 2008