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I’m moving into my new house for the year today. It’s in college court, sharing with one of the guys from last year. Up until now I’ve been sleeping on the floor or mels office and his couch. Many thanks to the guys for putting me up in a tight fix (the landlady pushed our move in date back by three weeks!).

Since I’ve come back I’ve bumped into a load of poeple; asuran, braz, daren, davem, davisc, dobrien, doneagain, filofax, froodie, hyper, joej, kev_ofla, livies, maddenj, madduck, mel, mixie2me, polarice, swamptin, terran, old housemates (from 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd year), all the SU heads, loads of C&S people (OPC and Journo Soc people mostly) and a fair whack of staff, to name a few. It’s nice to randomly bump into people without a pre-arranged meeting, something that never happens in NYC.

Doneagain was passing through Limerick two weeks ago. After a night of drinking in the Hurlers mel made the comment that the t-shirt I was wearing (an XL volunteer shirt from H.O.P.E.) was large enough to fit at least two people. Shirtly Shortly later 2men1shirt.com was born (mirror).

I attended the graduation ceremony for the College of Engineering, to see the guys and gals a year ahead of me in Mech&Aero Eng get their degrees. davisc also got his PhD. With any luck I’ll be on that stage next year. I also went to the grad ball to wish all the 4^th years well and stayed in the residents bar until the sun came up.

I’ve been watch and playing a bit of Call of Duty 4 on the PlayStation 3 over the last few weeks. It’s been ages since I’ve played an FPS (I think UT2003 was the last) and I’ve never played an FPS without a mouse before (the controls take quite a bit of getting used to). The challenges give the game much more depth but some things still need fixing, such as the ability to never hear what people are spouting into their microphones. There is no signal, user generated audio from microphones (speech) is entirely noise.

I got to see Spore in action for the first time yesterday. I’m glad I don’t have access to a gaming rig at the moment or numerous hours would be lost to that game.

I’ve been poking around with pyS60. I’m working on a POV script that may not be possible to realistically complete with the hardware I’m working with (N70). I’m not sure if I can get the screen to refresh faster than 30fps. If so then the script might actually be useful.

I quickly slapped up a Timetable site for 4th year Mech Eng students here in UL last night. It includes links to Daniel Heffernan’s Timetable Tool and a Google Calendar Class Timetable.

Finally, I’ve discovered Notepad++. I like it because the search/replace options work the way I think they should (compared to gedit, Notepad2, Notepad, Word or phpDesigner). The Task Manager in Google Chrome is nice too.

Looking back, nothing remarkable happened on the Week of the 21st. I worked a lot. That’s about it. I settled into a groove. Got frustrated with a tourist (he was taking way too long to order… over 20 seconds *grin*) and gave some more directions.

On the Weekend of the 25th artemis’ brother came down to NY again. On the Friday night we hit the Mars Bar (which ended with me sleeping on the couch again) and on Saturday we went to a very expensive nightclub, Marquee. It was the first time I’ve seen a $9,000 bottle of champagne on sale.

Was also at Ignite NYC on the 29th where I met up with Gus again. Unfortunately it was held in a club and so artemis was turned away for not having ID. The worthwhile talks were:

• Jessica Bruder (author, journalist-at-large) – How to be an Undercover Hooker (reprising her talk on taking an NYPD course)
• Rose White (Yarnivore) – Weird and wonderful knitting — graffiti and science and art combined!
• Audacia Ray (Village Voice’s Naked City) – Porn as a front runner in technology innovations
• Natalie Jeremijenko (NYU XDesign) – A bomb shelter for the climate crisis
• Dustyn Roberts (NYU’s ITP, Honeybee Robotics) – Flying High with Engineers Without Borders (on building a Kite Aerial Photography rig for mapping in Kenya)
• Limor Fried (ladyada) & Phillip Torrone (Make & Citizen Engineer) – Open source hardware, hacking SIM cards, modding a payphone for fun and for profit.
• Nick Bilton (NY Times, NYC Resistor) – The Future of News

I took a trip up to Toronto to visit sith on the 1st of August. I went up the CN tower with its scary glass floor, explored the brewery region, had two very nice meals and saw the Farmers Market. I also had lunch a few weeks later with sith in the Wild Onion on his trip around Ireland.

The following week I prepared myself for a trip to Las Vegas for DEFCON 16. I had an awesome time at DEFCON, met loads of interesting people and had a great time. If I had to choose between DEFCON and H.O.P.E. I’d pick DEFCON. While H.O.P.E. may have had better talks/speakers, DEFCON was amazing socially. The parties were awesome and the after parties back in hotel rooms were full of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in years. I also went to see Penn&Teller and The Blue Man Group.

Billy arrived in NY the week after DEFCON. The same week my family had their passports stolen in Spain, within hours of landing in the country. They were in my Dads Laptop bag, his laptop, my sisters phone and camera and all the families passports were stolen from the rental car at a motorway service station while they were inside getting something to eat. They eventually got temporary single use passports from a consulate and were able to get home.

I went to see Regina Spektor in McCarren Pool, supported by Albert Hammond Junior. There are several videos of the Gig up on Youtube. I heard a bunch of new songs and songs I hadn’t heard before. The highlight for me were Poor Little Rich Boy, Ghost of Corporate Future and a beatbox version of Hotel Song.

I came back to Limerick the following week. Overall I feel that my time in New York was very worthwhile. With 24hour public transport and food available almost as regularly the city feels like an extension of a college campus. As a knock on effect it is possible that offices don’t have closing times, and so often all-nighters were pulled as deadlines approached. People in New York live so they can work, not work so they can live.

I helped polarice pack Skynet flyers into Orientation packs. I showed three groups around the college durring Orientation week, Woodwork, Law & Accounting and Ethnochoreology students. All groups were great and I wish them the best of luck in UL.