Dé Luain (Mon), Bealtaine (May) 30th

Volle Deckung! Grenade!
What do you think of this picture ... grenade? [opens new window] Would you describe it as "photorealistic"? I just did it this morning, it's a very simple model but my best render yet, imho. I could probably use a bump map, especially on the wood for extra effect, might just do that tonight. more..
maca @ 04:55.

Déardaoin (Thu), Bealtaine (May) 26th

End of an era for Defence Forces
The Irish Defence Forces finished their United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cyprus yesterday after 41-years on the island. "The Irish flag was lowered in a sunset ceremony in the United Nations protected area, Nicosia in Cyprus, to commemorate the 9,540 Irish Defence Force troops who served on the island over the years." Well done to all the lads who did Ireland proud over the years. more..
maca @ 01:08.

Notch one up for the Gardaí
There was yet another armed raid in Ireland today, on a post office in Lusk, N.Dublin. But this time the Gardaí were lying in wait. One of the 5 raiders was killed and another injured. It's good to see the Gardaí hitting back, there has been far too many raids in recent times, it almost seems like there is one a week. At least this is one armed gang off the streets.
Update: The raider who was injured in the raid has died in Beaumont. more..
maca @ 12:41.

Dé Máirt (Tue), Bealtaine (May) 24th

Meath bus crash
Shocking crash this afternoon in Meath. 5 teenage girls killed and a further 46 injured (6 critically) when their school bus overturned following a crash involving two other cars. Great response from the emergency services though who had plenty of fire brigades, ambulances and even 3 Air Corps helicopters on site. Sincerest condolances to the families of the deceased. more..
maca @ 12:23.

Dé Luain (Mon), Bealtaine (May) 23rd

Irish postcodes
This new postcode system they are planning for Ireland, to be implemented by 2008, is it really needed? How much is it going to cost? I don't see any problem with the current system though perhaps from An Posts point of view it might make mail management a tad easier, from the mailers point of view it's a pain in the ass trying to remember someones postcode. Even though they are needed in Finland you can still reach me by mail without one, just mail me at Maca c/o No.1 Finland Street, Finland. more..
maca @ 02:37.

Belfast soccer riots
There were riots in North Belfast today following the Rangers & Celtic games [Rangers won the Scottish title, or rather Celtic threw it away conceding two goals in the last 2 minutes against Motherwell]. These sort of people [the rioters] are thick on so many levels. A couple of points for you uneducated fools: 1. Rangers & Celtic are Scottish teams; 2. It's only football. Sad gits.

Here's a related article I just happened across ... "Soldiers, sashes and shamrocks: Football and social identity in Scotland and Northern Ireland" more..
maca @ 01:52.

Back online
Back from my trip out forrin'. Well I was back on Thursday night last but between been busy helping a friend move house, tiredness from the trip, a wee head cold and normal laziness I didn't feel like blogging until now. 'Twas a good trip, we visited a wee town in Hungary, in the north west of the country about an hour from Budapest. [no more specific details available, no doubt you've heard some of the "sacked for blogging" stories, blogsecution I believe they call it, and in the business I work in I wouldn't like to risk someone finding out any link between me and the real me ... am I being over cautions?]
Anyway, there's one place with a shit load of potential ... Hungary. They can do so much with that place, although prices are already rising there and in some areas are as expensive as Finland. I picked up some fine wines there, I wouldn't be a big wine drinker but I like a wee red once in a while, and at around €2 for a pretty decent bottle i'd have been mad not to buy a few. The women are stunners, the people in general are friendly, the food and drink is excellent, the only drawbacks are the lack of Euro and a reluctance to take credit cards, even in the hotel we stayed in.
We also crossed a few times into Slovakia, a cheaper version of Hungary. Dirt cheap actually, some friends were telling us they go to Slovakia every weekend as they only pay around €0.25 for a beer. The trip back involved a quick spin into Austria, we were flying via Vienna, unfortunately due to time limits we didn't get to spend any time in the city, pity. Anyway, that's a further three countries to mark off my 'to visit' list. more..
maca @ 01:34.

Dé Máirt (Tue), Bealtaine (May) 17th

Minogue has breast cancer
Shock of the day for me. Kylie Minogue (36) has been diagnosed with breast cancer ... sad news, I like Kylie, hope she pulls through ok. According to 'Action Breast Cancer' around 250 women under 45 years of age are diagnosed with breat cancer each year in Ireland. Awful all together.

I'm off on my travels shortly, katchya layher. more..
maca @ 12:43.

Dé Luain (Mon), Bealtaine (May) 16th

0000 AT
Yes, it's the first day of the year 0000 AT - Anno-Teabags. I ran out of teabags yesterday. The may not seem like a big deal to you, lives-close-to-shop-which-sells-teabags-er, but the closest source of Irish teabags for me is about 1600 miles in a west-south westerly direction. Nasty. I need my teabags. more..
maca @ 06:24.

Continued slow blogging...
As per usual blogging is a tad slow, to be honest i've had nothing to say in the past week and the couple of postings during that period were a struggle. And it'll get worse [if blogging gets much slower they'll be calling in the state pathologist to see if it's still alive at all] for the rest of the week as i'm off on business travels for the next 3 days, I can add another country to my list and maybe i'll have something to talk about then, though it'll be Friday before i'm online again.
Just had my daily scan through the online papers and saw nothing worth reporting apart from maybe the story about single parents paying up to 200% interest to moneylenders, which sounds very worrying, or maybe the German sham who flaked it across Australia in 43 days for charity, or the scary story about why kids are starting puberty at the age of 7 or 8. But none of those interest me too much, instead i've been enjoying having a good whinge on Slugger or moping about some other net forums I frequent. Some of the Irish blogs are worth a browse, and have gotten me through periods of boredom in the past few weeks. Sin é. more..
maca @ 01:03.

Dé Céadaoin (Wed), Bealtaine (May) 11th

Feeling retro...
Me back & shoulders are in bits today, I was playing handball last night, first time since my grand final defeat to a sham from Galway in the "Päijät-Häme Regional Championship" 5 weeks ago. Said Galway-man took home the 'Eulich McGee Memorial Cup'. It felt good to be back handling balls again.
Anywayz, i'm feeling very 'retro' at the moment. As you probably don't know, since I don't think I have ever mentioned it, I am doing 3D modelling as a hobby and decided to express this retro feeling through modelling. I was going to model the Flash Gordon rocket [what a classic! You don't get much more retro than that] but opted instead to do a less-detailed quickie model, current status is below, bear in mind i've only just started. more..
maca @ 01:27.

Dé Luain (Mon), Bealtaine (May) 9th

Happy Orgasm Day!
It's Orgasm Day today in the Brazilian town of Espertantina. "Mayor Santolia said the remote town of 38,000 people has been unofficially celebrating orgasm day for years, but that the town’s former mayor had vetoed a bill making it an official municipal holiday." "We’re celebrating orgasm in all its senses." God-damn I'm in the wrong place!! more..
maca @ 10:12.

Grenade attack in Limerick
It's a friggin warzone. Some gang members from one of the main criminal gangs in Limerick launched a grenade attack on a house in the city yesterday. It's like fecking Beirut. And they say serious crime is down ... arse! Get the finger out McDowell. more..
maca @ 09:34.

Speaking of Firefox...
... and in particular the Irish translation of ... did you notice that Firefox has passed the 50 million user mark? Plus that's 50 million of only Windows, Mac OSX and the generic Linux i686 install. According to 'someone in the know' if you were to add, for example, optimised G4 OSX builds, BeOS installations, and all the customised Linux distributions the real figure could be closer to 60-70 million. I wonder how many Irish localizations among those?
I don't know if Mozilla keep those sort of stats but a French company Xiti Monitor have taken an interesting look at Firefox usage in Europe and have come up with some cool stats. According to their research an amazing 30.91% of people in Finland are now using Firefox. Germans have also taken to the browser with 22.89% of them using it while in Hungary 19.42% use it. Ireland's usage is 10%. All the stats are in the site linked above. more..
maca @ 01:38.

How the Welsh do it...
The Irish language has often been compared with Welsh. While Welsh is still a threatened language it's in way better shape than Irish, for quite many reasons, too many to go into tonight. One thing I noticed during my tiny involvement with the Irish localization of Firefox was just how active the Welsh folk are with software localizations. On Firefox those lads were way ahead of the 'Irish team' and had the browser translated yonks before the first Irish builds ever came out.
One ongoing localization I have some interest in now is Open Office. OO, for those that don't know, is much like MS Office, only better (imo), is open source and therefore free. Now here's a comparison: a team at the University of Wales is getting GB£320,000 over 26 months [old news, Sept '04] to localize Open Office ... while the Irish localization is being carried out by basically one guy [with some very recent support], a volunteer, who so far, has translated about 15,000 of the 20,000 or so strings.
I don't know how 'organised' the Welsh really are or if there is any 'coordination' for all the translation projects but certainly they are very very active particularly in the open source scene. In the case of Irish it looks as if teams just fall together and translate some piece of software, there's certainly no coordination to it. What I would really like to see for Irish is a comprehensive modern on-line dictionary [current dictionaries don't cut it IMO] and a full database of terms which translators can use for reference. There should also be some sort of central location where ongoing projects can be registered and perhaps could apply for financial or other support. Software in Irish is needed, the are a lot of departments in colleges and even in the government who have started using Firefox in Irish and who will, I have heard, use Open Office when it is finished so there is some demand. It's about time we had proper organisation in place to get more good software translated into Irish. Maybe Foras na Gaeilge should be taking care of this ?? more..
maca @ 01:23.

Slow blogging...
Yep, it's been slow. I've just been completely lazy in the past week or so. And work, where I usually manage to blog at least once per day, has been damn busy. It's hard to believe it's May already (this would have been more appropriate last week, when I intended to post it, but anyway...).
We were half thinking of moving back to Ireland next summer and I had been planning to start checking the work situation back home around February or March but it's already bloody May and i've done didley squat! The c.v is updated but needs a rewrite, so I guess i'd better get it done and send it out to a few agencies. You don't know anyone looking to hire a plastics engineer with experience in mobile phone part tooling? more..
maca @ 12:52.