Depeche Mode

I never put up a post about Depeche Mode! Stellar gig, picked up a gorgeous Violator t-shirt beforehand (wish I got a tour one too). Myself, Tasha, Arthur and Catherine stood near the back right but had an ok view of the stage.

This was the full set list taken from setlist.fm

In Chains
Wrong
Hole to Feed
Walking in My Shoes
It's No Good
A Question of Time
Precious
World In My Eyes
Insight
Home
Miles Away/The Truth Is
Policy of Truth
In Your Room
I Feel You
Enjoy the Silence
Never Let Me Down Again

Encore:
One Caress
Stripped
Behind the Wheel
Personal Jesus

Home by Martin on his own was fantastic. I loved the visual on the stage screen for Walking in My Shoes, it was a great big crow! All the classics went down a storm of course and the tracks from Sounds of the Universe blended in well. Can’t believe I forgot to pick it up in London.

Resurrection Records CDs

While we were in London, I popped into Resurrection Records (of course) and picked up the following:

C-Drone-Defect - Dystopia
Combichrist - Today We Are All Demons
Grendel - Chemicals + Circuitry
Helalyn Flowers - Stitches Of Eden
Rotersand - Random Is Resistance
Scary Bitches - The Island of the Damned
Seabound - Double-Crosser
The Cure - Bloodflowers
The Cure - Wish

Placebo

Tasha and I went to Placebo in the Olympia last night. Placebo was the first gig we went to see together many years ago. We had standing tickets then but now, being old and a bit senile :) we got seated tickets. Still we had a good view.

Silversun Pickups were a great support band. I noticed on Last.fm they got to 68 in their Best of 2009, so well gone to them. Placebo got to 19 so even bigger congrats to them.

Placebo were fantastic of course and played mostly stuff from their newer albums.

Here’s their set list from setlist.fm.

For What It's Worth
Ashtray Heart
Battle For The Sun
Soulmates
Speak In Tongues
Follow The Cops Back Home
Every You Every Me
Special Needs
Breathe Underwater
Julien
The Never-Ending Why
Blind
Devil In The Details
Meds
Song To Say Goodbye

Encore:
Bright Lights
Special K
The Bitter End

Encore 2:
Infra-red
Taste In Men

Fixing My Notebook

I successfully replaced my broken LCD in my Studio 17 with a new one from Rolta. Their screen cost €200 versus Dell’s €400 and they had it out to me in 2 days, so well done to them.

This time things were a bit trickier reassembling the unit as I had to move a cable strip from the old LCD to the new one (I had disassembled the unit previously to get the part number). In fairness to Dell, they have the full instructions here but it was just a placement issue on my part. The cable strip had a padded section to protect the wires and I couldn’t press the screen bezel back together, so I moved it about and that sorted that.

Then there was not enough length to make the connection to the motherboard so I had to disassemble again and move the cable along more.

Finally got it all together and it successfully booted up, with screen, sound, keyboard, wireless, etc. all working.

My advice to people:

1) use a proper laptop bag with good padding, slip cases on larger laptops force pressure on the unit

2) if you have a slip case, carry with the bottom of the notebook in your palm

3) maybe get accidental damage insurance

4) don’t bother with Dell, try Rolta or LCDs 4 Less

Notebook Screen

Unfortunately my Dell Studio 17’s screen got cracked while we were in Whitby. It’s still functioning but there’s nasty cracks though it.

Dell were charging €500 to have it replaced by a technician but I’ve finally managed to source the screen via a third party (after carefully dismantling it last night, wanted exact part number)

It’s actually an LG screen and is approximately €180 (less shipping) from LCDs 4 Less.

http://www.lcds4less.co.uk/LG_Philips-laptop-lcd-screens/LP171WU1_(TL)(A7).shtml

http://www.lcds4less.co.uk/DellLaptop__Dell_Studio_1737__laptop-screens.html

Shame on you Dell!

House and Whitby

Well it’s a month since myself and Tasha got married. Hasn’t time flown? The house is falling into place now as we have electricity in the shed so the freezer could get moved out of the house. We also finally have the bin collection sorted too.

One of the events in Whitby, which I neglected to mention was the Nights of Victorian Gothic. Organised by English Heritage over Halloween, it highlighted some of the grim professions of Victorian times such as hangman, surgeon and grave robber but also featured storytelling and alchemy. However, there were two key events which were the centrepiece of the night.

The first, about halfway through, was a live performance in the abbey cloisters to The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes featuring authentic costume, horse riding, rifle shooting and special effects. I felt this was the best part of the night and would love to have had a better view.

The second event, near the end of the night, was a full Victorian funeral procession featuring a four horse drawn carriage which looked beautiful, mourners at the front and rear and even an impromptu attendance by Gabi at the end if I'm not mistaken! The procession made full rounds of the main abbey lawn and was a sombre end to the evening.

It was also great to see the abbey lit up in purple and to see it at night which you normally can’t do.

Not long to another Whitby though as I’ll be going in April for Arthur’s stag.

Wild Birds

I’m lucky to be in an office on the ground floor as I have a “flower” bed outside the window which comes up to the window itself.

This is good because I like to feed the wild birds. As many know, we have two cockatiels but the wild birds are like my adopted pets.

Every morning I cast out some wild bird seed and some peanuts or bits of bread. In fact, before I can even do that, the big wood pigeon usually lands and gives a nod that he wants some seed.

After that the two magpies come over and gorge themselves on the peanuts, stuffing 6 or 7 in their beaks before flying off to hide them.

Sometimes I get a robin or even a big hooded crow. In the past, I’ve also gotten blackbirds, jackdaws and even a few different types of tit (no jokes)

I’m sure the lads in work think I’m mad but what the heck, it makes me happy.

Wedding Photos

I finally uploaded the wedding photos to Flickr, http://tinyurl.com/yf47km7.

Thanks again Seb.

Wedding Gallery

I created a Flickr account for any digital photos people took of the wedding.

The account is called johntashawedding and the password is whitby24102009

I suggest prefixing them with your name so we know who took what.

The more the merrier...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johntashawedding/

Goathland

While we were away in the UK, we got a chance to visit Goathland aka “the Heartbeat village” or “Land of the Roaming Sheep”. Strangely, this was where we were going to have the wedding reception but that didn’t work out.

We headed out with Anna and Ian in the afternoon, Goathland is about 45 minutes from Whitby and luckily the rain held off that day.

As I mentioned, Goathland is where they do some of the filming for the Heartbeat TV show (they also film in Whitby too). I also think it’s a funny village because sheep wander about everywhere.

We made our way around the village, bumped into Tasha’s family, had a bit of lunch then went looking for Beck Hole. It was a long walk and we skipped Beck Hole but found a lovely river with a rocky bank to try to traverse. There were some slippery rocks and awkward hops but we all made it along safely.

Again, here are the photos from our little country adventure.

Portmeirion

I figured I should go into a bit more detail regarding our trip so I’ll work backwards.

We got to Portmeirion at about 11 on Friday and knew the rain wasn’t going to let up, as it was like a carwash on the roads leading there, waves of rain washing over the windscreen. To add insult to injury, the window wipers were acting up.

But out into the smushy, leaf blanketed mud we went. We got a nice little guide book at the gate with our tickets but then we were stuck as a workman’s barrier tape blocked what looked like the only public route. We wandered around for a bit, confused, but the chap at the gate said it was the way to go; must’ve just been to stop cars.

However, even in the rain, it was worth it once we got into the village itself. It’s a stunning mix of Italian and old English architecture, all presented in bold colours and often with intertwining structures.

Some of the focal pieces were the clock tower, the fountain and the Japanese garden, although we missed others because of the strong wind and rain.

We made our way through, past the village and up the hills to the Japanese garden and finally back around to the village for some lunch and shopping.

We’re both keen to go back again to see what we missed. You can rent some of the houses in the village so it would be great to do that with some friends.

Here are the photos on Flickr.

Back To Normal

We're both back from our wedding, Whitby Gothic Weekend and our UK road trip.

The wedding was fantastic and I am so happy to be married to Tasha now. Thanks so much to everyone who helped out and to those who were there. I'm glad I have a good memory of the day as many people say weddings can be a blur.

WGW was great fun as usual. Enjoyed Faith and the Muse a lot on Saturday and the other bands were good although I meandered about a bit on the Friday night. Bought a few CDs but that's about it for myself. We got a portrait painting of Whitby by a local artist as well as a Victorian Image portrait of us in our wedding clothes.

Once we were done with Whitby, we made our way back across the UK staying in Premier Inns overnight via:

York, we had afternoon tea in Betty's Tea Rooms and perused the shops.
Manchester, popped into the Trafford Centre twice, Affleck's Palace, Cyberdog (I got new bag) and Forbidden Planet
Chester, skipped Chester Zoo and went to the Blue Planet Aquarium again, also wandered around Chester’s shops in the rain.
Portmerrion, Tasha had always wanted to visit here as it’s the setting of The Prisoner TV series which she loves.

Glad to be back now so we can sort out the house as we're finally moved in.

Working on photos at the moment.

House Builds

So what have I been working on in the house lately?

Downstairs, Tasha’s dad built a wood frame around our electricity box in the hall. It’s clad with tongue and groove sheeting but looked a bit rough until last week. I cleaned it all down, took off the door, primed the lot, added some quadrant along the edges, filled in any gaps & painted it all. Now it looks great. Just need to get some decent hinges for the door.

Upstairs, I’m finally finishing off the bath panel. I finished off a bit of tiling near the head of the bath, shortened the tongue and groove sheeting a bit and fitted them in place. I have all the skirting done for the bathroom but need to do the cork floor first. I also have to build a level shelf at the end of the bath where it falls short of the wall.

Ho hum, drill drill drill, hammer hammer hammer.

Creating a ping-frastructure

As friends on Twitter & Facebook will have noticed, I've been experimenting with Ping.fm.

The primary idea was to update one place i.e. the Ping.fm website & it propagates to many i.e. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. This works fine just as Ping.fm designed.

However, another service called TwitterFeed added a new possibility. TwitterFeed primarily allows you to push RSS feeds to Twitter but more importantly it supports the Ping.fm API so you can build your feeds on TwitterFeed to update Ping.fm and consequently all your other services.

Ultimately, what this means is if you upload a new video to YouTube or favour one, add a new bookmark to Delicious, love a track on Last.fm, etc. it's automatically pushed out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. as these all have RSS feeds that can be TwitterFed.

While some of these services do cross over e.g. Delicious updating Twitter, they don’t cover all the services like this solution.

In this way you’re making you’re normal activity on sites work for you instantly.

The sound of silence

Like many, I’ve neglected updating LJ in favour of the quick fixes like Twitter and Facebook but here’s a catch up.

The house is still moving along. After big strides with the living room and front bedroom, things have slowed down but we’re nearly done with the bathroom and kitchen. Other rooms can wait until we’re moved in, which we’re holding off on until after the wedding.

Apart from that, we got a sat nav for the car, a Garmin Nuvi 205W. Hope to put it to good use when we’re over in the UK for the wedding.

Games wise, I got Batman Arkham Asylum from Tasha which is great fun although I play it too late at night when I’m tired. Also picked up Guitar Hero Metallica.

Tomorrow is a big day as it’s Beatles day, 09/09/09. I’ll be heading down to Dundrum before work to pick up The Beatles Rock Band and the new stereo re-mastered box set in HMV.

Last but not least, we are in the home stretch for the wedding. Over the weekend was 50 days to go so I got Tasha some more flowers. She’s done so much in preparing the wedding. Thank you Tasha.

Yay! Return of the Powershot S series, http://bit.ly/I7LR9 & http://bit.ly/CKVxv. I may finally get to move past the S70.

My head may explode. I can't decide whether to get the stereo or mono box set of remastered Beatles on 09/09/09.

Musical boxes. From 1 room to another they go. I also assembled our bed. Sweaty stuff.

Relentless, the gothest energy drink ever is available in Tesco's here now. Yay! Hyper goths abound.

Great night in. Good wine, bill bailey then dylan moran on dvd. Heavy work tomorrow.

We finally have 1 room in the house done. Front room is safe for visitors now :)

Testing ping.fm updates via sms.

One more test :P

Testing Ping.fm integration with Messenger. Will it work?!?!

John Hughes

Was very sad to hear that John Hughes died yesterday.

Only recently I had started to gather up some of his Brat Pack films having seen some of them in my youth.

This post was particularly touching and is a fitting tribute to the man.

Ouch!

I stood on a rusty nail out the back garden over the weekend.

Had to get a tetanus jab at the VHI clinic, in and out in about 45 minutes. Foot doesn’t hurt but the jab did for a few days.

All ok now, no lockjaw.

Happy birthday gothichaven

Hope life is treating you well and you have a great birthday.

Love and hugs

John

Happy Bastille Day!

Actually never mind that…

Happy Birthday Mr. Karl and Ms. Tara.

Hope you both have a great day.

Happy Birthday Cat

Hope you have a great day, Cat

Love & hugs.

Happy Birthday alan_ie

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger looks great (http://tinyurl.com/kuqbxa) & scored well (http://tinyurl.com/lrs79z). Hope it comes out here soon.

Flu

I was off work Wednesday and Thursday with the flu. I’m not usually susceptible to colds but I think the work on the house has me tired and vulnerable.

Tuesday night was the usual “I’m hot” then “I’m cold”, lie on the left then lie on the right. Had to take soluble painkillers to get any sleep.

Still left with a sore throat and sore back at this point but at least no more head/body aches.

Carpets

We have carpets upstairs finally. I'm so happy.

Never thought I'd be so pleased to have carpet.

Happy Anniversary karlthulhu & littlepinkfaery

All our love to both of you on this special day.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for the kind words of support before and after the work redundencies.

Love you guys

Phew

They've carried out the redundancies & thankfully I'm ok (pending further economic downturn of course)

Most of the lads were last in but the decision was based on skills/experience which they hadn't yet accumulated.

We figure it was about 8 to 10 people so it might have been 10%.

We are now without a QA coordinator so I may be greater involved in the QA area than before.

I think the only thing that saved my ass was the on call work.

Stuff and ting

We had a nice make shift BBQ in Arthur and Catherine’s over the weekend, just some of those disposable ones but the food & company was good. Tasha and I look forward to having people over once we get the backyard sorted out (might be next year for that). We also wanted to avoid Tasha’s mum’s house as it was Killian’s third birthday party and would’ve been a mad house.

I also got hit with a rapid cold over the weekend. Friday afternoon it started with sneezing and runny nose then Saturday was sore throat and now it’s clearing up. Finn was over to see the house and brought doughnuts, thanks Finn :)

As for the house, we having a go at coving in the front room now. I already messed up the first mitre. Doh! But we sorted it out.

Concern

This afternoon, we got our first indications that there will be redundancies in our Dublin office. There will be a review of staffing levels and skills and then a decision will be made.

I hope I have made myself an essential part of the team so as to make it through this phase.

Eep!

House Photos

It’s been ages since I posted any photos of our progress in the house & at least there’s some decent progress to show.

The kitchen is coming along very well, as is the bathroom.

Here are some photos of the 2 rooms.

I went to take some photos of the front bedroom but the battery died.

Second Niece

My sister gave birth to her second baby yesterday at 19:05. Her name is Caitlin Mhairi and she was 8lbs 8oz and both are in good health.

Congratulations to Sharon, Phil and Evie.

Books

Chapters is such a dangerous bookshop to go into. Wander in and you’ve spent €80 before you know it.

• Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness
• Edgar Allan Poe Collected Stories Illustrated
• Taschen's Art Nouveau 25th Anniversary Edition

Might get the Sherlock Holmes Collector’s Library Edition later. Info also here.

Our Goings On

With a whole week off work we are almost done with the master bedroom. Only a second coat of paint & some skirting boards to go on.

The kitchen is awaiting the granite counter tops, some tiling & painting of the remaining walls.

Tasha tiled the bathroom so we still have to paint the rest, clad the ceiling, build up a bath frame and tile the floor.

We also had a nice break from the work on Sunday & went to Dun Laoghaire for the market. Good weather & nice food.

Un-house related, we’ve been forced to send back our X-Files & Buffy DVD collections because they had a scratched & duplicated disc respectively.

Notebook Remote

I got the travel remote for my Studio 17 yesterday. I’m surprised they didn’t include it by default as it’s dead handy.

It works perfectly with Media Center & Media Player but doesn’t seem to operate in Windows itself i.e. higher or lower the system volume (it may only be programmed to trigger certain responses)

Most of all it slots seamlessly into the ExpressCard slot on the left side of the notebook.

Do The Right Thing

Great movie & here’s Radio Raheem’s excellent monologue to Mookie:

Let me tell you the story of "Right Hand, Left Hand." It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: It was with this hand that Cane iced his brother. Love: These five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: Static. One hand is always fighting the other hand; and the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But, hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that's right. Ooh, it's the devastating right and Hate is hurt, he's down. Left-Hand Hate K.O.ed by Love.

Depeche Mode

Just order 4 tickets for Depeche Mode in December, €288 (£270)!

Still, I wouldn’t miss it.

Social Life?

I’ve been looking over some of the photos people have posted on Facebook & it’s made me a bit nostalgic & that I don’t get out to Dominion or even just seeing the gang as much (although Dominion is a convenient meeting place).

Unfortunately, with the physical effort needed for the house I haven’t had the energy lately.

But I’ve decided I’m going to try to go at least once a month from now on.

It did feel odd the last time (& first in the new venue) seeing lots of new faces in the place. Kind of felt like the years spent in Frazer’s (mainly) never happened even more so than the move to Isaac Butt’s.

All that being said Tasha will be home on Friday so it may not be this weekend.

Gaming

I’ve been playing Far Cry Instincts from the original Xbox for the past few days. Bit odd considering I have about half a dozen top Xbox 360 titles to play but I just got sucked into it.

I’ve bought quite a few Xbox games from Amazon UK for very cheap (usually you get about 5 games for less than 1 Xbox 360 game). I ordered some more yesterday.

• Burnout Revenge
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
• Psychonauts
• Jet Set Radio Future

Most of them are backwards compatible so they’ll work on the Xbox 360 but once I’m set up in the house I won’t mind playing the others on the Xbox.

I was so inspired by Far Cry’s jungle fun that I watched Predator. El cazador trofeo de los hombres kicks everyone's ass (except Arnie of course)

House

We had a thoroughly exhausting weekend with the house. We ordered a proper skip as we had quite a lot of junk to dump & the concrete/rubble had to be moved out of the skip bag so I had to move about a ton of concrete & soil from the skip bag to the proper skip. Took about 2 hours & then we had the junk from the backyard.

My legs & back are wrecked now but should be back in order by midweek, still at least all the junk was gone.

On Sunday I had a go at raking the backyard. The last tenants left tin cans (thrown out to feed the dogs!), bottles, balls, Styrofoam, a torn up duvet reduced to fluff, etc. matted in the grass & dirt so it was quite a chore.

While I was doing that Tasha trimmed some of the out of control bushes in the front.

On another note, Tasha is gone to Whitby to sort out the wedding plans so I’m on my own for the week :( Still I hope she has a good time anyway.

Happy Birthday Sandra

Hope the day goes well & you have a great night out.

Watchmen

Did it successfully make the transition from graphic novel to screen? I think so.

We went to see it last weekend & the only major change that surprised me was the climax.

Sure they had to leave bits out, such as the Tales of the Black Freighter sub-comic & the newspaper salesman/comic kid, that added depth to the graphic novel but these were elements that reinforced the main concepts not presented new ones.

The other difficulty in migrating the movie is that the Cold War doesn’t have as much impact as it did have when the graphic novel was first released, only 4 years before the Cold War ended. All the paranoia & contempt was still very much in the minds of everyone back then. We do have terrorist threats nowadays but (hopefully) they will not wipe out all life on Earth.

But all in all I enjoyed it & look forward to the DVD to get some background info by way of director’s commentary regarding the decision/development process.

Gaming

I got Street Fighter IV yesterday evening. Ah, it brings back memories. I haven’t been able to buy/download the HD remix edition of Super Street Fighter 2 but I already have the anniversary edition on the original Xbox.

Still it’s quite different as I missed out on SF after Super SF so there’s lots of new elements to pick up.

I also migrated all my game licenses from the old Xbox 360 to the Elite as well as downloading any title updates, while I had our purloined wi-fi.

I have so many games to play it’s stoopid.

Bathroom Suite

Here’s the photos of the bathroom suite.

Poopy goes in poopy chair!

Bathroom

We have some decent visible progress on the house finally. The bathroom was installed today. It’s still a bit rough but the bath, toilet & sink are all in place.

Not long now until we can move in. Don’t mind if we’re in & doing decorating.

Will take some photos & post them tomorrow.

House Progress

Here’s the latest photos of the house progress.

• Bathroom has plaster work done
• Opened out the other attic wall storage & sorted it out after the plumbing work
• Some radiators installed upstairs
• Various plumbing work under the floors

House

The plumbing is moving along nicely but the plumber put the main bedroom radiator in the wrong place despite it being marked on the wall. So he’ll have to move it now.

 

Had a big cleanup on the weekend to straighten out the previous week’s wreckage from the plumbing work.

UK Visit & House

The trip to see my sister in Cambridge went well. They are all in good form & Evie is a great laugh.

Bought a pair of Skullcandy Hesh headphones & a bunch of DVD box sets

• Black Adder
• Spaced (I lost copies Karl gave me :( )
• Tintin
• Ulysses 31

At least that gives us something to watch for a while (no TV in bedroom)

As for the house, the plumbing is well under way. Hot press tank is in & a lot of the upstairs pipe work is done.

UK

Heading over to the UK for the weekend to see my sister in Cambridge.

Hopefully when we get back the plumbing will be done (and nothing broken) in the house.

Home Server

After several virtual machine installs & an experimental build when we were renting, I’ve finally built the home server for the house.

In practise all I did was install the Windows Home Server OS on my old desktop PC. It’s a bit of overkill for a server but it’ll do. I have to move all the internals into a smaller/old case as my current “Samurai” case is massive.

The OS install went very well with only a few bits of hardware undetected (sound/LAN/chipset stuff) but I got those off Gigabyte’s site.

I disconnected my secondary 500GB HD as there’s films on it & I didn’t want WHS to merge the drive in yet.

Unfortunately beyond this initial install, there’s little I can do as we have no network.

House

Well the snow has slowed things down a bit with regards the house but just before that kicked off we get the new front door installed.

Here’s some photos of it with house exterior shots in the snow and from the inside. Also a shot of the hole I made in the bathroom floor.

Leave my nuts alone

I’ve been putting peanuts and bird seed out for the birds for sometime now. I get 2 magpies, a hooded crow and 2 robins most days.

Today, I was surprised to see a cheeky squirrel eating the peanuts. He came very close to my window and at one point was chased off by a magpie.

I put some more peanuts out to see if he’ll come back, either way the magpies will have them.

In other news, I got a beautiful Belkin neoprene sleeve (black of course) for my new notebook. I can carry the PSU in my bag as I always have that with me.

Xbox 360 NXE

I finally managed to get my 360 updated with the new NXE last night.

Unfortunately, we don’t have broadband in Tasha’s mum’s house so we’ve been “borrowing” it.

Until now I never thought of it but last night I tried using Internet Connection Sharing on my new notebook. It has a much better wireless card than my desktop PC so I figured it might be up to it.

I shared the connection, connected an Ethernet cable to the 360 and a few tests later it was working. Down came the update and after a number of reboots and updates it was done.

I’ve done up a quick avatar to catch up on everybody else who’ve had the update for weeks :)

Happy Birthday to my Boo

Today is Tasha’s 30th birthday.

We have some lovely dinners planned for this evening, Friday and Saturday.

I love you Tasha

New Kitchen Wall

Here’s the photos of the new wall. Since those photos we’ve moved the waste pipe (corner of kitchen going up through floor) outside and I cleared all the broken tiles in the dining room.

Happy Birthday Rebecca!!!

And again Happy Birthday Rebecca!!!

Wii Games

Last night I got the last game on Metacritic’s top (>90) Wii games list, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. That is excluding Rock Band 2 which I will be getting on the Xbox 360 and the WiiWare games.

Now all I need is some time to play them all :P

House Photos

Here’s the latest photos of our progress. I will try to narrow down to only the ones that have changed but in some cases there are little changes.

Took some of the new wall last night which I’ll upload tomorrow.

Rock Band

As a secret surprise on her trip to Ikea, Tasha got Rock Band (game only as I have Guitar Hero World Tour) for me.

We were trying to get it in Smyth's as I have vouchers but they’re always out of stock.

Cleared easy last night with all songs 5 stars, many 100% successful so on to medium next.

House

 

We made significant progress with the house over the weekend. Myself and Tasha's dad re-instated the kitchen/dining room wall with a simple wood frame and plasterboard stud wall. It looks well but we've to clean up a few plasterboard corners.

I cleared all the floor tiles in the kitchen/dining room to clear the way for the stud wall and as it just needed to be done. We also took out the sink which was the last of the old units. All looks quite well apart from the pile of broken tiles.

Tasha also ordered the bathroom suite and bought a tonne of stuff in Ikea for around the house.

Pictures on the way soon.

New Notebook

My new Dell Studio 17 notebook finally arrived today. It’s a beautiful piece of kit, 17” screen, backlit keyboard, a/b/g/n wireless card, bluetooth, integrated webcam, 7200rpm 250GB hard drive, slot loading DVD drive, etc.

It’s to replace my desktop as I’ve decided I don’t need it as I use the Xbox 360 for gaming. So I will re-engineer it’s components into a home server. Already have a smaller (but crappy) case as my Samurai case is massive.

House Photos

Here are some more progress photos from the house…

2008-12-28 House mostly work on stairs and start of living room

2009-01-06 House living room and kitchen done, bathroom tiles started

House

We’re finally done with the wall paper stripping and the very last wall in the kitchen was murder. It was plasterboard cladding on the exterior wall and the steam mangled the plasterboard coating.

Still all done now with that drudgery. Now we can finally move onto filling holes and painting.

Happy Birthday Gabriel

Hope you had a good day and a great new year.

Hugs from across the waves