Where I've been, and where I'm going.

Like a lot of blogs, this one has been abandoned for a very long time. As I move on from this current place in life (Texas) I decided to go through the wide internet and find these old blogs and hopefully breath new life into them. I've been blogging since 2003. I started on a blogspot account, which turned into a blogger account. Holy crap that was 12 years ago. That blog was closed down in 2007. I then started up another blog ("A bit more professional" was the first post) which I used until the end of 2011. Since moving to Texas from Dublin I've dropped personal blogging, but in the last few months I've been feeling the need to write more. With that, I hope to start getting more out in the world, but probably not at this URL. I'll post the new site when it's done.

Reading List

Neil deGrasse Tyson, full-time astrophysicist and part-time actor (usually playing himself) recently held an interview on the news aggregator website Reddit.com starting with “I am Neil deGrasse Tyson -- AMA [Ask Me Anything]”. Responding to the questions “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet?” he answered:

The Bible, The System of the World (Newton), On the Origin of Species (Darwin), Gulliver's Travels (Swift), The Age of Reason (Paine), The Wealth of Nations (Smith), The Art of War (Sun Tsu), The Prince (Machiavelli). If read all of the works above, you will have profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.

Any additions? Subtractions? Comments? I would also recommend reading the entire interview, and his previous interview here, if only for the comments about education and his very simple debunking of the "Ancient Aliens" myth.

Percolating thoughts

An idea occurred to me this morning concerning CEO wages. An odd subject to dwell on, but one that is timely and currently important. Since the start of the great recession the media has been reporting on the multimillion dollar “Golden Parachutes” that are given to outgoing CEOs of spiraling companies. The ongoing #Occupy protests point to them as signs of corruption on Wall Street. This little blurb on Daring Fireball about Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, references some past speculation on why Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs. And finally, the obituaries of Steve Jobs brought up his $1 yearly salary (plus stock options).

All this made me think that companies would be much better served by their CEOs if they were paid these high-end, 1% salaries, primarily in company stock. Their worth would be directly tied to the company they run. Their retirement packages (and golden parachutes) are predetermined and paid in not a dollar amount, but a set amount of stock. They run the company into the ground they don’t get to walk away with more of the companies money. Would HP, one of the largest PC makers in the world, have had to deal with a CEO who tried to dismantle a money-making arm of the company after 11 months in office if that loss in revenue affected his ability to make ends meet?

This, of course, would not happen in most companies. After booting out a bad CEO a board would pay almost anything for one with a proven track record, and those can be very costly. But even a high five-figure salary, augmented by heavy stock options, can pay off more in the long run for a good CEO.

It would take some backbone for a board to insist on paying primarily in stock, and most won’t do it. Boards of directors seem to have short memories, thinking their new CEO will always be better than their last one. Of course, if the new CEO was better than the old one they would want to get mostly stock.

Oh, and as I was writing this, Sony posted a 1.2 Billion dollar loss for the year, mostly caused by their TV business, which hasn’t been profitable in eight years. How does Sony CEO Howard Stringer still have a job?

Riots in london

I'm not in london, but some friends are, and some more are moving there at the end of the month. As the riots start to spread from london to the midlands and scotland there is a chance they could spread further, however it's very doubtful that they will spread it Ireland. The Irish had several good opportunities to rise up over the past year and since they haven't already I doubt they ever will.

The Guardian has had wonderful accounts of the nights and days of riots, much better than the BBC. From today's liveblog:

At the 8:32am marker:  Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington — an area that has seen a lot of the trouble — has told BBC Breakfast a curfew should be imposed.

"I have not heard of a curfew on mainland Britain in the past century. [It's] very difficult to impose. I'm not saying that it is definitely the way forward but it is something we have to consider. These young people, who seem to have no stake in society, are trashing their own communities. We cannot continue to have increasing numbers of looters on the streets night after night."

I understand the need to first put the fire out before investigating what started it, but it's quotes like this, wherein they show that they know what started the riots, how it's been that way for years and no one has tried to fix it, really grinds my gears.

Also, if you read it line by line it almost starts to steer into the philosophical with "These young people, who seem to have no stake in society, are trashing their own communities.." I kinda wish she went on to say "When this is over we need to take a look at ourselves to find the causes of these horrible symptoms..." but she jumps right back into the safe political rhetoric.

Also interestingly, there was a similar incident that sparked riots in Tottenham in the late 70s, where a mother, after the police busted down her door, died of a heart attack.

Lockdown Dublin

To prep for the arrival this morning of Queen Elizabeth II the city of Dublin has pulled out all the stops, but with good reason. Before she landed the Gardai had found two pipe bombs, which were disposed of safely.

They blocked off O'Connell Street, the main north/south road in town, and have blocked off street-side parking everywhere in city centre. According to one of the papers there are over 8,ooo uniformed police around for the visit, the first time the sitting monarch has come to the Republic. There was apparently a near riot (with only a couple of arrests) near the Garden of Remembrance, the park north of the river that serves as a memorial to those that died in the rebellion and civil war. The pictures that have come out have not helped out the protesters, who were, apparently, just the normal sweatpants and tracksuit wearing thugs that populate the north Dublin scene.

The Guardai also spent the last week going around and sealing every manhole, water main, and hole in the sidewalk. They actually went around twice. The first pair went around with a can of spray paint and a wrench, saw an opening to the sewers, dropped the wrench on top of the cover, sprayed the wrench with paint, picked it up and moved on. The second pair followed up in a couple of days and actually sealed them.

Note that it's not even the end of the first day, and there are two more days of this. And then we do it all over again with Obama, which should be a comparatively easy time.

Year in Pictures Day 2

, originally uploaded by morndry.

Vampire fang ice cubes, one of Meg's Christmas presents.

Year in Pictures Day 1

, originally uploaded by morndry.

Trying this year in pictures again, hopefully this time I'll stick with it. This was taken early, early this morning at a pub.

Thing to do before you come visit

Meg and I have been talking to some of you who are planning to come visit sometime in the next year. We're really looking forward to seeing you and can't wait for you to get here. That being said, I've come up with a list of things you need to do before you get here to make your stay easier.

1. Call your credit card/bank and tell them you're coming.
Let them know when you are coming over so they won't put a hold on your card when it's suddenly used on the other side of the world.

2. Unlock your phone.
If you have an AT&T or T-Mobile phone, go into the store and ask them to unlock it for you. I think they will do this with every phone except the iPhone. When you get here we'll give you a local SIM card that you can use while you're here so you won't have to pay the crazy international fees.
If you have verizon or sprint then your phone will probably not work here, and if it does it will be crazy expensive. Let us know if you need to borrow a phone and we'll see if we can work something out. It might not be the most fashionable of phones, but we'll make sure it works.

3. TBD
I'm sure we'll come up with other things, and we'll let each of you know closer to when you're coming.

Routines and Work Space

I've been having a difficult time getting into a routine here, and I think the biggest problem is that I have no designated "work space" like I did in the states. Hopefully that will change soon, as we are finally settled in with internet.
Of course I also haven't had to actually DO anything yet, so work space has not been at the top of my to-do list. That will change pretty soon as school is ramping up (my professors took last week, the third week of class, off to go to a conference in Hamburg) and I'm applying for some jobs. If I do get some work-at-home type jobs then I'll have to reconsider my work area.

I've thought at length about what my favorite work area would be, and luckily Meg and I both agree it would be more a library than a study. I would like it to have chairs for reading, and possibly a partner's desk so two people can work at once. Meg and I found a very nice antique partner's desk in Paducah before we left, but where we found one we can find another.

Flowers and Slow cookers

Meg and I spent the day planting bulbs at the Sunshine Childern's Home with the Dublin Central Rotary club. It was nice to get out of town, and when we were done we traveled to the end of the Luas green line to have a look around. I hope we can go back some weekend to hike around the hills.

When I lived out at the lake I became a big fan of slow cookers. I figured out how to make a pretty good mexican chicken and rice with some frozen chicken breast, rice, hot sauce and taco seasoning. Meg, on the other hand, can make some really good pot roast in one. This is why the first thing we got for our kitchen here was, yep, a slow cooker.

Apparently they are not as well known here as they are in the states, as none of the department stores carried them, and the first ones we saw were in a family-owned store. The Blacks ended up ordering one for us on Amazon.uk, and I think it is bigger than the ones we had stateside.

Waiting for a collapse?

The State of Ireland seems to be in a sharp decline, as this week they bought up another failing bank and upped the expected bill of the other financial entities they bought in the past year to over €50 BILLION. Of course this is an insane amount of money that the government does not have, and, since they are taking out so much in loans, the interest rates on those loans are getting higher and higher.
There is even speculation that they will have to go to the IMF to get some cash, and those loans come with strings attached.
Here in Ireland people are calling for the heads of Dáil members to be put on pikes around the city, as a warring for those who will fill their seats next.
Wednesday of this week a man driving a cement truck with the phrase "Toxic Bank Anglo" painted on the side ran up to the gates of the parliament. Many people that day called him a hero.

Settling in.

It’s the first day of our third week in Ireland, and we have settled in as much as we can. Everything we need is either here now or on order (internet gets hooked up Monday, my mobile sometime next week too) and Tuesday we both start classes. We both have class on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, meaning we both have four day weekends. We’ve already started planning trips out of the city. We get pretty good deals on bus tickets with the “Student Travel Card”, and con go pretty much anywhere in the country in an afternoon.
Meg is at a Rotary function at a four star hotel this weekend, so I have the apartment to myself. The more I re-arrange and find places for things the more I realize how big it is. We still have some things to buy (like a wifi router, a slow cooker, and a mixing bowl) but those are not too big of deals, the problem is finding them cheap. I might have to start looking on amazon if I can’t find a router or slow cooker in any of the stores here.
Also, I should have the first (and maybe second) videos up sometime Monday afternoon, once we get the internet hooked up. Starbucks (where we are getting internet currently) has a very slow upload link, and it will take around 6 hours to upload a 4 minute video.

Dublin days 1 and 2

Today is our third day in Dublin, and we got off to a late start. Luckily the last two days have been full days.
We were picked up from the airport by Kelley, a MSU alum that is getting her doctorate at University College Dublin and a friend of Megs.


Her car is very small.
She has an extra room she is letting us use for a few days until we find a place of our own.

Yesterday, Friday, we started looking at apartments. The first two, one in Temple Bar and another north of Trinity, were very nice, while the other two, on Bachelor's Walk, were more run-down. Luckily we had some free time to spend looking at Trinity and Grafton Street.
I rather like the main gates of Trinity, and in fact much of the older architecture in the college. The newer buildings are much more utilitarian in design, which is a shame as they clash with the old style.
I also like this globe, if only because when you run up and push on it, it spins! We got a lot done, including getting a Starbucks MyRewards card, which gets us wifi at any Starbucks so we can check email and apartment listings throughout the day.



We also go to see this busker, who had pigions landing on him all day long.

Gadgets Abroad

I am a firm believer in the use of technology to make our lives simpler. Digital cameras are smaller and don't require you to carry around film. iPods let you have your entire music and video library in your hand. To that effect, I have chosen the gadgets to take to Ireland very carefully. Some of these gadgets overlap in function, but my excuse for bringing so many is that I will be gone an entire year, and may not be able to afford a replacement if one should break.
Also, as part of the MSU Study Abroad Office Video Blog scholarship, I will have to produce a certain number of videos throughout the first semester, meaning I will need a primary video camera and a backup. So the list is as of now:

Panasonic HDD video camera: As part of the video blog scholarship they gave me a video camera! Standard definition video that can record to the built in hard drive (for around 55 hours) or directly to an SD card, for around an hour a GB. One quirk of the camera is that it must be plugged in to an external power source (like a wall plug) to show up as a drive, meaning it has to be plugged in to get anything off of it. The easy way around this is to just put everything on the SD card and transfer it to the computer through a card reader.

Samsung point and shoot camera: a pretty decent still camera I've had for a few years, sadly it has a proprietary USB/power connection so I have to take those cords too.

iPods: a 30GB video and Meg's old 40GB clickwheel are loaded with videos and music, in fact I only have a gig or two of music on my computer now.

Computer: Unibody macbook, the old powerbook is incapable of doing video editing at any reasonable pace.

iPhone: I don't use this as a phone, but have been using it as an ipod touch with a video camera and microphone (for Skype). I won't be using it over there either, as we are getting some phones through 3 (three.ie) since Skype to Skype calls are free on their network. This way we can get the cheap-o free on contract phones and still be able to call friends and family back home.

Backup drive: a Time Machine backup drive that should hold complete backups of both our computers.

Miscellaneous -
7-in-1 card reader: For the SD card from the video camera and for whatever else comes around.
Plug adaptors: three US to UK/Ireland plug adaptors and one "universal" plug for when we travel.
Headphones: travel and studio
Gorrillapods: Bendy tripods for the cameras.



Of course this seems like a lot, but in total all this weighs around 20lbs pounds in a pack, and some of these things (like the tripods) are going over in a suitcase.

Meg's gadget list is a lot shorter, consisting of laptop, kindle, ipod touch and a camera. Lucky her.

Ireland in 3 days.

Packing for a year is not all that difficult. we will be there through all four seasons, so winter, spring summer and fall clothes are all going to be packed anyway. According to this chart at wikipedia the record high for the city is 83˚F, so I’m not even worried about taking shorts. It looks like it’s going to be light jacket weather for most of the year, and then either heavy coats or jeans and t-shirts.

So far both bags are packed, each at around 45lbs. Sadly, I still have another 7-10lbs to pack, meaning I must be very careful with the weight distribution. Or I could just not pack everything I have out.

Study abroad

In 7 days I am boarding a plane with my wife and traveling to Dublin, Ireland, where over the next 13 months she will be getting her Master’s degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
I, likewise, will be taking classes to finish my Master’s degree, but from Dublin City University.
I will be regularly updating this blog with videos I will create as part of a scholarship from the MSU study abroad office, but for the next week I’ll focus on what I’m taking, and what I’m leaving behind.

Wedding Photobooth

Here are all the pictures taken in the wedding photobooth!



The software came from this website, and it worked out great. Thank you all for coming to the wedding, we had a blast!

Short film shot and edited on an iphone

Pretty good, of course this guy is also a professional. I'm just glad that people can finally create content on phones, and not just consume it.
Apple of My Eye- an iPhone 4 film on Vimeo

Online defamation and Murray State

I’ve spent the last few weeks staring at back issues of the Murray State News, (not for fun, honestly, I need them for my master’s project so I can graduate). In the more recent issues, particularly the one from April 16, 2010, there is an article “Online defamation of professors questioned” which raises some very good points that students may not realize, including the fact that posts on facebook and twitter, if public, are considered publishing.

I got rather uneasy when I first read the article back in April and I’m still uneasy when I read it. I got downright queasy when I read the News staff editorial that week, “Carelessness of student body can cripple University's reputation”. It seems to be more than anything trying to drum up support for a new university policy concerning online defamation, which is (a.) not needed and (b.) has a high potential for abuse.

The university does not need a policy regarding defamation because we already have laws protecting people from defamatory remarks. Professors (and in fact, students) are protected from slander by law. If anyone says something defamatory about anyone, they have legal recourse. Likewise, students (and, also, professors) can then use the truth as a defense in court and against SLAPP suites.
SLAPP suites bring me to my next concern, which is that, since the university will be circumventing the courts in this matter, due process may be lost in the move. Depending on how this new policy is written (and at this point I’m sure it’s going to be written sooner rather than later) it may demand that any professor can demand any post be taken down until it’s reviewed.
Will first amendment protections be included in the policy? Will Murray State just go ahead and block RateMyProfessor.Com?

There was a third, smaller rumbling in my gullet while I was reading the words of professors interviewed for the story, one I couldn’t quite place until later. After reading through it again I realized that these were not men cowering in fear of the power these faceless students have over their online popularity, these were the words of men sharpening their swords, bracing for the coming battle. But whom would they be fighting? Hopefully not the very students that take their classes! Oh, well, then... good luck with that.

Thoughts on USA/England match

I wonder how many news stories will lead off with "It's not easy being Green"?
Also, Howard should get a statue made of him. Not a giant statue, something more life sized. Maybe one of those butter statues they have at the Iowa state fair.