I was at a wedding over the weekend. One of the readings was quite unusual but truly perfect. I’ll never forget it.

The reading was an extract from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

I thought it was absolutely beautiful and I was very moved by it.  It makes me smile when I think about so I wanted to share it with half dozen people who visit my blog from time to time.

I was holidays in Portugal the week before last. I asked my girlfriend Linda to marry me while we were there. So we came back with a wedding to plan. We’re not going to do one of those long drawn out engagements so the wedding will be May next year.

A week into the planning and we’re already fed up. It’s like there’s this whole new world of wedding politics that we’ve stumbled on. It’s not that much different from real world politics, it’s still full of bullshit and lies and secrets and pissing people off just to keep others happy.

Money is the other thing. It appears to be near impossible to do the whole wedding thing for under 20 grand. Mind you we’ll find a way to do it for 10 grand, it just means that there will be a lot of compromise. Both of us think it is idiotic that your first act as a married couple is to sink yourselves in debt to pay for your wedding.

Ah I just needed a little rant, I feel a bit better now.

If anyone knows how to get married abroad in Italy or Portugal with 20 - 25 guests for around 10k, let me know!

Blogging from an iPod touch today.

Arrived this morning around 9.15. I have to say I’m very impressed with the venue.

10.30
Caught an interesting talk from Cathy Fitzgerald about building an online arts community with the help of several local authorities in the south east. The site is artlinks.ie for those interested. All creatives are encouraged to join the community which is currently 650 strong.

Break for fresh air now. More to come. Read on »

On my mac at home I’ve been using Quicksilver for some time now. I’ve got no complaints there.

At work, where unfortunately I’m stuck with a pc for the moment, I have been trying out application launchers for Windows.

After looking around a bit decided to give two a try, Enso and Launchy. I tried Launchy first. It was very simple, I bound it to CTRL + SPACE as that is my preference, using that keystroke, the launcher appears (which is nicely skinnable), you begin typing, it starts figuring out which app you want to launch. Very like Quicksilver. I can’t fault it.

Enso, to be fair is more than just an application launcher. You can do a lot more with Enso as is detailed on their demo. There is one big difference however and I found it to be a deal breaker for me. Read on »

Been slow posting lately as I still have no broadband at home! God dammit.
Been doing a bit of web design work in the evenings and Clive Barnes has been helping me keep going. His music really seems to get my creativity going. Cheers Clive
I’ve seen him live in Kilkenny last year, word has it, he’s knocking about Kilkenny fairly regular these days, gonna try to catch a gig again asap!

In the meantime, enjoy.

I love the TED talks, there’s so much there for everybody. My housemate Brian told me about this talk from Tony Robbins this morning and its definitely worth a watch. He really makes you think about what drives you, how you succeed, how you deal with failure, how this applies to your life, how you can make your life better. You just need to watch it.

Then watch it again.

Nothing better to wake you up in the morning than a few guys getting whacked in the nuts. As a man I shouldn’t find this funny, I should cringe and ‘ooooh’ with every impact. But no. I was near breathless with the laughing. Enjoy.

If you needed one…

Would you go on a reality TV show with two other people who also need kidneys and try to win a kidney from a terminal cancer patient?

You know I think I might, if it was my life on the line. I think it would be wrong of me to criticise the people who are taking part in the program a whole lot because the contestants are just trying to live and the donor wants to help one of them. Without having experience of their situation it’s not fair judge them. I would imagine that they also feel that this stunt is horribly unethical but the pro’s for them far outweigh the cons.

However, I do think that the Dutch broadcaster BNN who is airing this show and Big Brother makers Endemol have brought reality tv to an all new low. They claim that the show will raise awareness about the length of waiting list for donor kidneys but they are bound to profit from this and that is completely immoral. They are taking advantage of a dying person and dangling her kidneys like a carrot to others who are desparate enough to compete with each other for the prize.

The whole thing just makes me feel sick.

via thisislondon.co.uk

24 Season 6 finished up this Monday night in the US. I’ve been following it eagerly since I’m a 24 nut. I love it.

I have to say I was quite disappointed with season 6 though. It seemed like they were really scratching their heads for a storyline for this one and when they put it all together it didnt really amount to much. It should have been a superb season, there were some really great moments, but on the whole it just didnt amount to being anything like the previous seasons.

I won’t say anything more about it because it still hasn’t finished up on this side of the Atlantic yet.

Bring on Season 7. Rebuild it. Make it better then it was before!

Thanks Godaddy for costing me my whole afternoon.

I was simply setting up a wordpress contact form plugin this afternoon for one of our projects. When I tested it no email arrived. I checked and checked again that everything was configured properly, still nothing. I gave it a reasonable amount of time to allow the emails to arrive. I figure 30mins to an hour is extremely reasonable.

So after that I spend the last 4 hours examining everything I’ve done, and checkingt FAQ’s to make sure everything’s right when suddenly, an email arrives, then another a few minutes later. 3 and 4 hours after they had been sent. Not all of the test mails I had sent have arrived yet but I’m sure they will. At least I know theres nothing wrong with the code but for feck sake Godaddy, 4 hours of a delay is ridiculous and it cost me an afternoon’s work.