JonathanByrne.net

What the hell is the deal with hotels that still have smoking rooms!  Why would you allow anyone to smoke in a hotel, shouldn’t it be banned under the ban that was brought into Ireland a few years ago?  I’m bitching and moaning because 20 minutes ago I asked for a none smoking room and I opened the door to a cloud of smoke.  It’s disgraceful and tomorrow morning someone is getting an earful about this shit.

My hotel room.......kinda

I loved ducks as a kid, I would go over to my grandparents most Sundays for dinner and from these days with my grand parents I learnt a lot and its definitely moulded me in certain areas.  For example, I used to watch the snooker with my Nanny and Grandad when it was on.  The World Championship was just fantastic.  Watching Jimmy White run riot on the table was just great but more importantly I became very good at maths and mental arithmetic from watching snooker.  I tried to add up how many points were left on the table half way through a frame.  Sounds boring but I really enjoyed it.

Another great thing my grand parents did with me was take me to the duck pond.  I fucking love ducks.  My favourite has to be the Mallard as that was basically the only duck in the Arklow duck pond that would not attack me (damn swans).  I still to this day won’t eat duck or even consider it because said duck could be a Mallard.  I’m not having that, I mean that could be the descendant of some duck I used to visit as a kid.

So this leads me nicely on to the feel good story involving ducks aka the quack quacks.

That chap is a hero, the catches are amazing and I love that he took the day off to make sure they got across city to the pond.  He didn’t even take them in his car or use public transport he walked them down the street.  Its just beautiful, if only everyone could have one day like that!

I Love Dublin Buskers…the good type not those idiots pretnding to be a statue or a leprachan but the genuinely talented buskers.  It’s been a while since I’ve been on Grafton street but I cam across a few of my favourite buskers on youtube so I thought its time I pimp them a bit.

GuitarDan666

I saw this guy late one night outside Bruxelles playing Pantera, when I say late I’m talking at least 1am, I don’t know many buskers that busk at night and during the day but this guy does.  He’s an amazing guitarist too anyone that can jam ‘For the Love of God’ is in a class of their own.

Cowboy

I don’t know this guy but he’s very impressive, nice and bluesy and really original.

The Mad Lads

I’ve seen these a few times they are just mental and a good laugh.

Its now an ambition of mine to someday busk on Grafton street with and without a band…gotta practice more though…

Thats the funniest youtube video featuring a cat I have ever seen

Amazing…truly amazing

I do enjoy a good auld fashioned technology rant and I feel the need to dispense one right now.

For the last 2 weeks I have been looking to buy another domain name so I can give this blog some kind of meaning other than linking it to my name.  I had a good few ideas all revolving around technology and music but every single domain name I came up with is either taken by a squatter or costs more than a date with Patrick Stewart discussing the famous four lights scenes from Star Trek the Next Generation.

Its so frustrating when you see someone squatting on a domain, it goes against the principles of the Internet and I think its a worse crime than SPAM (which is a crime in the UK)  I imagine these squatters spend weeks trolling through the tubes of the interweb trying to come up with domains to pilfer from their rightful owners, its a sad existence.  I remember the domain pizza.com being sold for 2.6 million and the original owner bought it for 20 dollars.  Now I admire this guy cause he made alot of money but still I don’t like his style…

These same people are starting to diversify into twitter squatting now too!!!  People need to get a life which is why I implore new episodes of Star Trek the next generation to be made so the nerds can go back to their natural habitat.

Anyway if anyone can help me with naming this blog and finding a suitable dot com domain name I would appreciate it.

In return I offer you this amazing piece of Star Trek history…enjoy!

…and this better piece of Star Trek history

I should really attend some class to curtail my impulse buying for my riduculous guitar fetish.  I find myself with a few extra quid this month after being abroad in the UK for a while and the first thing I can think of is “Hmmmm I should go check Thomann and see what guitars they have”.

Its the greatest feeling in the world owning a brand new guitar even buying second hand guitars its amazing.  I can remember buying every guitar I own……..and unfortunetly thats alot.  I remember the very first electric guitar I bought it had to be black and cheap that was the only requirements.  I got an Epiphone Special II which  is not the greatest but i was so happy.

Its got to the stage where I’m embarressed to confess how many guitars I have but in my defense 2 or 3 have been canibalised so I could make a guitar for the leaving cert.  Now that was the greatest 6 months I had in school.  A class where you could make a guitar was my type of class and at the end of all the hard work I had an original guitar.  I’m afraid to pick it up and play it in case I damage it!

I use one guitar in particular for playing at gigs, I got it for christmas a few years ago definetly the best christmas present ever.  Its getting alot of sweat and blood on it at recent gigs which has me thinking about getting a new guitar for gigs so the wear and tear is not so severe on this beauty.
I was recently reading the excellent White Rabbit Blog and seen this post on photograpghy.  I’ve been looking to buy a DSLR camera for a while now and with the advent of the Nikon D5000 I think I may have the camera I want.  Better yet I think I can combine my love for guitars and photography, I could take pictures of guitars I come across or play instead of buying them!!! Its a great solution and I’m really excited about it.  I have one picture that I want to set up already its abit gross but I think its really cool but I need to find a blue guitar and some blood…..I told ya it was gross.  Its not Load gross but equally cool.

By the way anyone who wants to read my report on the construction of my guitar just send me an email and I’ll gladly forward it to you.

I was lucky enough to be working in London recently and it is a stunning city.  The London Eye is just one of the greatest ideas anyone has ever had.  Just the sheer size and the logistics behind raising the wheel across a river is amazing to me.

Thames from the top of the London Eye

London Eye

I also got to saw the beautiful Hyde Park and came across the big JC and his stunt double chatting up women whilst rollar blading.  Now thats damn cool, he could have turned water into wine brought people back from the dead or go all Neo like and fly around the place but NO Jesus knows the way to a womans heart is through……a rollar blade egg and spoon race.

Jebas

OOOOOHHH its on!!!

After all this excitement I’m now back in Ireland and should be working in Waterford IT soon, I’m getting great travel and work recently and if I’m very lucky I might be heading to North Eastern Europe….more to follow…

Valentines day!!!

So many miserable people on Reddit and facebook saying they are lonely…  Its a terrible holiday that reminds single people how alone they are and reminds every boyfriend or husband that they have to get something or they are in alot of trouble.  To quote a good friend “women are crazy” and in this case he’s right (99% of the time he is the crazy one).  I had a great Valentines day this year, I bought my gf some flowers and chocolates and everyone was happy.  Contrast this to 5/6 years ago on the same day…

I was accused of sending a friend a Valentines card.  This girl turned out to be 100% crazy but little did I know at the time.  She had a bf at the time and he was not happy because I was talking to his gf.  He suggested I had wrote an anonymous valentines card to my friend and hence the accusations were thrown my way.  Oh I was not happy but its a prime example of why single people should be happy.  Clearly a large majority of women are crazy even if you are not involved with them!  Be happy!  Celebrate being single and stop flooding Reddit and facebook with your woes, its ruined my Saturday inter-webing god damn it!!!

A Lot of good vibes have been coming from the websites engadget and gizmodo over how good the Windows 7 Beta is, but at the end of the day its only what Vista should have been.  Don’t get me wrong I also love it but I want more.  Have Microsoft really pushed the boundaries since Windows 95?  Think of the jump they took going from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, the concept of a “Desktop” that’s a big step.  I want the same from Microsoft now, I want a Windows platform that you carry around in your skin literally.  That’s a leap!

Windows 3.1 Screenshot

Windows 95 Screenshot

Another few Operating systems to consider over Windows 7.

Open Suse 11 -- Potentially my favourite Linux operating system but damn do they make it hard to get in to.  There’s not the greatest support for open suse, so although its powerful and reliable its hard to get use to.
Ubuntu -- Easier to use than Suse and has a huge support structure.  Its the best OS for beginner Linux users or for those that find suse unnecessarily hard.  One problem is the superuser usage. There is none and pretty much every command needs sudo before hand.  Adding su would be nice but it takes away the easy use Ubuntu focuses on.
Windows XP -- Wasn’t the finest Operating system but it has flourished into the fastest OS to date.  With SP3 Windows XP is faster than Vista, Microsoft are really stupid if they expect people to change with this being the way it is.-
MAC OS X -- brilliant operating system but sometimes its focusing more on the “oooooo thats nice looking” rather than the practibility and usability.  A good example is the jumping icon when you start a program.
Windows Vista -- Don’t go for this option no matter what.  I have to use this in work and its nothing but trouble.  On Thursday my work laptop could not but Windows after some update.  Even when the OS works you have to constantly remind the system about stupid things for instance, you want to copy a file to the C drive you get 4 warnings saying are you sure you want to do this you need admin rights, of course I want to do it why the fuck wouldn’t I I’m the god damn admin!

Anyway enough OS talking….

I have found the commercial that Mark and myself fell about the place laughing at whilst in America.  In Florida there is a channel focused purely on adverts (seems that way anyway) and there was one advertising to sell your scrap gold for money.  Its a weird ad and idea but as soon as it got to this auld one we broke our sides laughing.

Also heres an article on Cash 4 Gold.

And finally…Le Nord has been added to my links, I believe this to be Emma or Carland, I’m not sure to be honest but lets address the one thing that matters.

How Come I’m link number 5 and Gaff (who doesn’t blog) is number 1.  I’m outraged.

Its a new year and with all new years for college students it brings the depressing prospect of exams.  I had two exams and I experienced a rare phenomenon with both exams.  When I’m studying I usually say I’ll skip that section “that will never come up”.  Its the equivalent of Jeremy Clarkson saying “How hard can it be” before revving up a V8 engine connected to a rocking chair with wooden Granny attached and destroying the prop Granny.  On both exams something came up I thought would never come up, I had other questions to pick from so I was okay but I hate when that happens.
I now have 2 weeks off from study (apart from CCNA study that work want me to do) and hopefully I can get around to some apartment cleaning.  I live out of my bag of clothes most weeks so clearing out some space is top priority.  Then I gotta get my server up and running, thats a good 3 months behind schedule.

More exciting news…

The band I’m in had our first gig on New Years Eve, heres a few pictures to gawk at.  It was amazing going up to the bar and ordering a pint and when the barman asks for the money I got to say “I’m with the Band, its cool”.  Thats right I had free drink all night!  Great times!!!

Even more exciting news…

UFC 93 in Dublin and a few friends and myself got to go to it.  We were in the 12th row it was amazing!!  The O2 is an amazing venue the sound in the place is great and I can see some great gigs being held there in the future.  UFC fights were good, nothing too gruesome but real interesting.  Coleman and Rich Franklin should have won though.