Category: Mindless Talk

So, I finally got the piano I’ve been chasing for months. Total cost: free.

I had trawled through the buy and sell with no real joy (budget was 200 Euro and no more), checked out a few second hand piano shops (who had advised me I’d be looking at 1800 quid upwards) but as fluke luck would have it, in the music listings on Gumtree.ie after breakfast Monday appeared “free piano”.

The piano itself is exactly the style I’m after, manufactured by TG Payne in London (must get an exact date on it) and it weighs a pure ton and more. Honest to God, heaviest thing I think I’ve ever had to lift!

The travel and getting it into the house likely knocked it out of tune a bit (middle two octaves seem fine, outside of that is questionable) but I also picked up the piano to challenge myself, first to get back into playing and second to learn about piano tuning.

So I get to chalk off a goal in life, didn’t think I’d get the piano itself for free but there you goo! My thanks to Maureen O’Brien in Drogheda for the piano and Shane Walsh of On Route Transport in Kilkenny for making the trip to pick it up and deliver to Kilkenny at 11pm last night 🙂

Just a quick unrelated post to say “Happy Birthday” to my younger brother, Gary, who finally turns 21 today!

And also to mon pére whose birthday it was midweek.

Might I say… its about bloody time!

There was always bound to be a danger when you spend your life chasing crocodiles, wrestling them, popping your head inside theirs etc., but Australia’s favourite son – Steve Irwin aka The Crocodile Hunter – has met his maker.

Was a bit mad listening to it in the van on the way to work – ‘Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin has been killed while filming in Australia’. The chap had become an absolute icon in Oz for his work in the outback, his films, his TV series and his Australia Zoo which “brought millions into the Australian economy through tourism”.

Reports say that he had been diving as part of filming and underwater documentary when he was hit by a stingray barb in the heart.

Mad.

(via BreakingNews and Today FM’s morning news)

Chalk down a 29th All Ireland hurling title for Kilkenny. Some craic and a great game. Delighted to see Cork stopped in their tracks for the three-in-a-row – pain in the arse, isn’t it Corkonians?

Great game of hurling too. Even in the pub people weren’t giving Kilkenny much of a shot but going into the break with a slim lead seemed to calm a few nerves about the place. Hairy moments when that Cork goal went in but the lads on the field gave it their all and there’s a great win in the bag.

Not too much interest in hurling to be honest (soccer and NFL being my sporting loves) but having had Brian Cody as a primary school teacher for a few years as well as being in school (primary and secondary) with some of the lads on the current panel, there’s always some sort of an interest there.

Plus, you have to support your county, right?

Anyway, fair play to the lads…. go on the Cats!

So, I’m on a week off, on my second day into the week in fact. Left the office at 4pm on Friday to take my first break away from work since Christmas. Before that we didn’t take any time off either. Just feel like I should be there for the week doing something, hard to get out of the mindset.

But in saying that, its nice to get the time out! Series one and two of ‘Spaced‘ arrived yesterday so that should keep me occupied in the afternoons and I’m doing a theatre production all this week, starting tonight in fact, in Kilkenny. The show, Heart Shaped Vinyl, is an original comedy about five unrelated couples in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and present day, looking at how their relationships change over the years and how music impacts and dictates their lives. Twelve of us in the cast with the show in rehearsal for the last 5-6 weeks (5 individual weeks and one intensive group week). Fingers crossed and all that.

For anyone interested, tickets are €10 with the show 8pm nightly until Thursday of this week and it runs in Cleere’s Theatre in Kilkenny. Check DeviousTheatre.com or the Devious Theatre MySpace site for details.

Agus sin é!

Now… to recharge those batteries….

Given the lovely weekend I had doing pretty much nothing except for Sunday night, I decided to discontinue any personal musings on Creative Imagination and ship them over to my.kenmc. From the outset, Creative Imagination intends to be intenet and technology focussed and has been moreso of late. If anyone is interested in some more personal ramblings in general you’re most welcome to pop along to my.kenmc.

Rock on for technology…

One of the British national daily newspapers is asking readers “what it means to be British?”. Some of the emails are hilarious but this is one from a chap in Switzerland …

“Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign “.

Just a little humour to brighten up your Friday evening if its moving slowly!

It’s either that, or you can watch David Hasselhoff’s best ever music video… errr… yeah…. Happy Friday!

Anyone who has ever seen Eddie Murphy raw will know of his Richard Pryor impressions. The man that most black comedians aspire to, the man who racial satire often went pure off the charts when it came to his standup routines.

Pryor won Grammy Awards for his comedy albums and starred in such films as ‘Hear No Evil See No Evil’, ‘Stir Crazy’ and ‘Superman III’. He had been in declining health for years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986 but died this weekend of a heart attack.

Check IMDB for Richard Pryor information

Booked myself on a flight for an hour or so over Kilkenny City & County yesterday. Should provide an amazing photo opportunity. Haven’t flown anywhere in almost ten years, and at that I was among hundreds of other people on a very comfortable Boeing.

This time around its gonna be me up in a small plane taking photos. Reckon we’ll be waiting for a picture-perfect day, most likely very early in the new year but no going back now!

So when it comes down to my blog, one question that has been asked of me is “why the title?”.

Surely, everyone has a little bit of a creative imagination? Wild stories? Design abilities? Something that makes you tick…?

Well, for anyone who is interested, please regard this quote from the man with all the brains…. Einstein himself.

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.

Food for thought….

The joys of winter sickness…

Hot during the night..

Cold during the day…

Can’t breathe….

Constant sniffing, sneezing, coughing…

You just know December is around the corner!

More indepth reading and programming at 2:30am makes for a great night I tell you! But it has its rewards when you get it right.

Reading back over some notes and bundled material, I came across this little quote, never having seen it or heard it before, and so I present my thought for the day…. stolen from someone else, of course 😉

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results

If thats the case, I think I broke the insanity barrier safely last night. Frustration is the number one single cause of programmer blindness! Get around that frustration, you’re rockin!

Cheers to Kerry Watson for that….

So this morning I was talking to the wife of the president of Togo who unforunately, as it happens, passed away a few short months ago and only went and left his wife with the horrible task of shifting $21,000,000 out of the country to invest in a business. So she hits me up… you can imagine the conversation…

“Ken, hows it goin, Marie here!” (thats her name)

“Ah Marie, Jesus, long time no see… hows himself keeping?”

“Ah sure you know, kinda died and stuff, so now I need your bank account details to help me move $21 million out of the country. I know you’ve recently started a new business, is there any chance of an investment?”

“$21,000,000…. God Marie, I dunno, it’s normally a $30 million buy-in but for you – no problem”

And so the conversation went on…

Yeah right. In fairness folks, when will people learn. Its the oldest trick in the book. The 4 F’s of conflict – find the enemy (or victim), fix them (keep them occupied), flank them (take them by surprise if you can…) and finish them off. The forgot to add a fifth – fishing. Or more precisely, ‘phishing’ – the technique of getting information out of someone under a guise. Working for a previous internet technologies company I had experience in dealing with people who had lost out financially in this situation, or in the simplest of cases just given up their password on the ruse of a ‘security check’ only to have their credit card details lifted, massive bills… you know the rest.

If someone offers you twenty million dollars as soon as you walk into the office, its bound to be too good to be true…..

When will people learn….