Last week I got back from spending a week in Dublin. While it was a work-related trip, I was able to sneak away over the weekend and visit some other locations on the east coast, namely Wicklow and Belfast. Here are some photos showing the contrast between the three locations:
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
Considering how much I enjoyed Dublin two years ago, I felt quite disillusioned with the city this time. The last time I was here, I stuck to the tourist spots, a terminal window, and bar-hopping with coworkers. This time I spent my week exploring the underbelly of the city, taking photos of the dingy grey skin of Dublin. One thing that really struck me was just how crass and rude the youth are to each other, and how little I could actually understand native Dubliners.
On Saturday, I found a welcome reprieve from the endless concrete slab of the city, and headed down South to the outskirts of Wicklow for a bit of hiking. Niall and Cian led this fast-paced hike up and down a gorgeous valley. Simon (my boss) and I followed slowly, snapping photos wherever we could, and desperately running to catch up afterwards. While my feet felt sore from all of the walking I had done over the week, the sense of exertion was welcome.
For Sunday, I headed up to Belfast to photograph the famous murals. Similar to Dublin, I spent most of my time in the lower-class areas of the city, but here I actually felt more comfortable doing so. I’m still surprised by just how many murals there were spread around, from the amateur to pro. It was also interesting that the Loyalist (UK) murals were much more violent and geared toward the conflict than the Unionist (pro-Ireland) murals. I suspect most of the Unionist murals have been painted over with more tourist-friendly subjects, however.
One very “Irish” moment I had was on the train journey from Belfast back to Dublin. While we were about 20 minutes south of Belfast, a man in the next car was shouting louder than anyone I have ever heard before. “How dare you tell me who my mother is. I don’t even know who my mother is!”. He then continued ranting for over 5 minutes. Then there was silence, quickly followed by another tirade and the train coming to a quick halt. People whispered up and down the car, the gist of their conversation was that the guy had slapped someone so hard they fell down, and someone pulled the emergency brake in response. A woman ran down the aisle toward the front of the train asking if anyone had seen the conductor. The lady and several annoyed looking employees of Northern Ireland Railways headed back with her. As they escorted the assailant to the front of the train, the man kept repeating “Sorry everyone”, with his head bowed down.
Here are links to the photo albums, and one more unofficial mural for the road (since I love street art so much):
I hope you enjoy them!
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Unknown to many of my friends, I’ve been running Windows at home for the last month. It’s actually the first time in 7 years, since Windows 2000 was released. I enjoy operating-system diversity, and am always curious to see what the other guys are up to. Windows ME, XP and Vista did not impress me much, but I think Windows 7 is on the right track. I’m not sure that all Windows XP users will ever be convinced that there is something better enough out there, but I think most Vista users will jump ship as soon as they can to Windows 7. It’s really that much better than Vista, not to mention faster.
Things I liked about Windows 7 (build 7057):
- A great selection of mature software. I really enjoyed being able to use Google Chrome, Spore, Adobe Lightroom, and Paint.NET, all without having to run early beta versions or hack anything.
- MP3 and MP4 (AAC) files play out of the box
- I like the new translucent task bar. It takes a lot of the best features from the Mac OS X dock and the classic Windows task bar.
- Everything in control panel is very fast. If you load the Add/Remove software page up under Vista and Windows 7, you would be amazed by the difference.
- Searching for files by name is nearly instantaneous, faster than Vista.
- You can choose not to install Internet Explorer!
- Snipping Tool is a great way to take screenshots.
- Once Internet Explorer is uninstalled, it’s easy to feel relatively secure with the Internet again. Microsoft has done a lot to make Windows more secure over the years, and Windows 7 reflects this.
Things I liked not so much:
- Like Vista, a Windows 7 user still feels prompted to death. Most software installations have 4+ prompts. Are you sure you want to enable autocomplete?
- In the installer, once you select a hard disk to install onto, you cannot go back to change your mind.
- You can’t create a .bat file using Notepad without changing your Explorer preferences to show file extensions.
- When you drag a Window toward the top of the screen, it wants to automatically maximize it for you.
- Changing some file sharing options requires a logout. WTF?
- I never got file sharing to work with another computer. I always gave me file permission errors trying to list the directory =(
- Some applications have menus, some don’t. Windows Media Player in particularly confuses and annoys the hell out of me.
- It can’t read photos from my Nikon D300 without installing software.
- Doesn’t ship with a Flash plugin or Java support.
- Still no clever way to insert accent characters without memorizing 3-digit codes. Mac OS figured this out decades ago.
- No spell checking — in 2009? That’s just uncanny.
- No way to run my favorite Mac OS X applications without a substantial amount of hacking
- No built-in way tools to communicate with UNIX or Linux machines: no SSH or SFTP client.
- Programs are now installed in two directories: C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files (x86) for 32-bit applications.
- No equivalent to the iPhone App Store for finding, installing, and updating software. Apple doesn’t do this either yet, but UNIX distributions have done this for a long time. Why the hell not?
So why am I getting rid of it? Now that my 30 day trial is up, I don’t think it’s worth the $225 or so it would cost for me to buy it (assuming it is priced similarly to Windows Vista). Overall, I had a great experience with it, and am ready to support my wife when she upgrades her Vista laptop. For me, I think it’s time to give Arch Linux a try. It costs nothing to do so.
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Yesterday Dallas and I hosted a boardgames party, which was the first time we had a large group come over to our apartment. We had 10 people come over, mostly friends of Dallas’s, and played Apples-to-Apples, Balderdash, and Blokus. It was a good playful crowd, but I think I am ready for some more serious strategy boardgames:
The most exciting part for me was the beer selection. Most people who came by brought yummy food, but Rick and Shannon outdid themselves by bringing some hard to find Belgian beers. This is what we consumed during the party:
Here is a brief tour of what we had:
I didn’t enjoy drinking beer until I learned to enjoy Guinness while visiting Dublin two years ago. Previous to that, I had only tried Carlsberg, Foster’s, and an assortment of other junk available on the US market. To me, they all tasted like piss, acquired taste or not. Now that I live in the land of the best beer, I’ve felt free to experiment, without worry of finding something I don’t like. It’s quite easy to drop by any random bar or restaurant here, and find a beer that I’ve never heard of before.
Anyone have a favorite beer they want to share?
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Contrary to my April Fool’s joke, I did not bring home a ’97 Chevy Suburban this week. Instead, I brought this home:
It’s a 2001 BMW R1150GS. At only 85hp, it’s no racebike, but instead more closely resembles a two-wheeled tractor. I chose this bike because the bike that I liked best as a rider and my wife liked best as a passenger was the more-modern and sportier BMW R1200GS. The only thing I didn’t like was it’s price =)
Those of you who know my gear may say.. “That photo doesn’t look like you, Thomas”. That’s because it’s not, it’s my friend Cedric. In Belgium, you cannot buy insurance unless you bring in the title for the vehicle. Cedric has insurance coverage already for his motorcycle, so he rode my bike home for me. I drove his car, which is a 10-year old Opel manual.
Other than a few sad attempts with my wife’s Volkswagen Bus, I’ve never driven a stick-shift before. At first I was revving Cedric’s Opel quite high in 1st gear from a stop, thinking it would stall out early like my F650GS did. I was also shifting too quickly, and sometimes ending up pushing the gas pedal while I was in neutral rather than 3rd. By the end of the day, I got the hang of everything except for over-revving the engine coming from a stop. It was nice having a manual transmission to be honest, and given another hour or two I could get quite used to it. Given how the car smelled after the first 40km think I may owe Cedric a new clutch however.
I’m not sure Cedric fared that much better with the R1150GS. He is used to his Honda CB600F Hornet, a smaller bike with more horsepower. Cedric was quite nervous about the height of the bike, even with the lowest seat position. He looked good while riding it, but at stops it looked a bit weird because he was trying to put both feet on the ground rather than just the left foot. The bike is now sitting in the corner of the garage until I get my insurance and license plate next week:
As you can kind of see in the photo, it comes with two side-cases, a top case, and a tank bag. It’s all setup for a 2 week trip around Europe. The only thing missing is a comfort pad on the top-case, and a beautiful passenger. I’m very eager to go wandering around France or Spain with this bike =)
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