New Iron Man Trailer

// February 29th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

I always found Iron Man and Tony Stark to be a bit on the dull side, but Robert Downey makes it look like this could be a real hoot. Com’on the Merchant of Death!

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

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And I agree it’s not the worst thing any of us have been caught doing….

Who will win – you predict.

// February 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Massive Hat tip to Electoral Vote for this complete time sucker for the political nerd in all of us. Basically you can predict how you think the remaining primaries will work out for Clinton and Obama and it calculates the delegates they will get.

Blood Transfusion data loss

// February 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // blood transfusion, data loss, Ireland

Amongst other things, I’m an irregular blood donor. Though I think they must have an out of date address as I’ve yet to get my own version of the letter telling me they lost all my details.

I’ve played around with large data sets from time to time in the line of work and if you were doing involving altering the format of the data presentation or storage you don’t actually need access to all the existing records all of the time. So, it is highly likely that it was completely unnecessary to give all 170,000 records over to the person doing whatever work was being done in New York. You could just have taken the records of just 170 people*, blown the entries up 170,000 by automated replication and then performed whatever work to be done on that. Then when it was finally ready to make the port or transfer or whatever the changes were, get the person to come over, do it and send them back. All without putting such a large in the Irish context data set at risk. There again look at the care the BTS took with people’s actual lives and should we really be surprised?

* Why not say 170 people who worked or had worked for the Blood Transfusion service?

Who am I

// February 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I’m a great many things. Anything you read here or that I post as a comment anywhere is done in my capacity as an individual unless I state otherwise. For the record – I’m, male, an engineer and member of Engineers Ireland, currently chairperson of the An Taisce Local Association for Limerick (City and County), a member of Fine Gael, a Kerryman by rearing and heritage though a Croydonian by birth, not as old as the dirt that Senator McCain claims to be as old as but neither a spring chicken, worked in the States and Japan in the 90s, with some summer jobbing in London in the 80s, a semi-regular blood donor, a Puck Fair steward doing two tours, a semi-lapsed member of the Catholic Church and a citizen of the Republic (Irish 1949). Not exactly Maximus Decimus Meridius I know but attacking any of the above because of something I’ve said is saying more about you than it does about me.

It could so have happened.

// February 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // carlsberg, dreams, Ireland, soccer

While poking around doing some work on my “secret project” (all to be revealed this weekend!) I came across this.

Still brings a tickle to the tummy.