Busy busy busy.

Aug 20, 2009 |

I need to say sorry to those who have been trying to contact me lately or to those of you who are waiting for me to do something…

Time has been escaping me lately.

Firstly, I started on the Vics website for the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland. That was quite a difficult project and infact I have still a few things left to do on it.

Then, I moved on to the Listen and Learn recordings website. That didn’t take me as long and it’s better now than it ever was so I’m happy to continue building it again.

Then I moved onto this website. That took some more time. I moved all my sites over to an entirely new server that I had to configure my self from the foundation up. That was a lot of fun but it’s still a work in progress as inbound and outbound mail isn’t working properly.

The DigitalDarragh website is behaving quite well though all things considering.

After that I had to port the StuartLawler website over to the new server followed by Emma’s site.

It’s all been go go go!

Now, in work I’ve been focused on a particularly long and difficult project so for the next while that’s going to take up all my time.

At home, I’ve been doing loads of stuff. Finally after a year and a half I’ve unpacked my CD’s and aside from the last two hundred I have them all sorted. I have hundreds and hundreds of CD’s. From computer related to music I have a huge collection.

So, if your waiting on me to do something, keep hounding me. Otherwise, it will be pushed to the back of the queue.

Sorry.

Working on the house again.

Aug 18, 2009 |


Picture of a very cool wooden ladder stretching up to the large opening for the attick.

Although I’ve written very little about the house since all the work we did on it between January and April 2008, things are still progressing.

From new light shades, a new TV and blue ray player to all new and very cool window blinds and a huge amount of new pots, plates, bols and kitchen machines, we’ve spent a fortune in the past year.

The latest thing though is quite spectacular. Emma thought out loud three weeks ago that we were over half way into 2009 and we’d not really done anything huge to the house. So, I asked what would be the most important change she’d like to make. Less than three weeks on, it was finished.

A picture showing the attick with light streaming in from the right.

What did she ask for? More space. Since we looked at the house Emma had wanted to utilize the attick space and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

The attick now is accessible thanks to a pull down wooden ladder. It’s floored all the way across with extra shelvs at waste level. There’s also a window in the roof so it’s now a really clean, bright, open space.

It’s amazing how much we can fit in there! Everything from the garage that hadn’t been unpacked yet is now up there and organised so we can actually make use of it. Everything that was also hidden under the spare bed and in drawers is up there too. Even cables that were thrown into a corner of my room that I need to get at quite regularly are organised up there and are more importantly more accessible and easy to put my hands on than ever before.

Showing the window from the other angle but there's an idea of how much stuff is up here as well.

I really think it’s cool. I couldn’t be happier with it. Emma’s absolutely delighted. She’s a huge amount of junk …… sorry. really productive and useful stuff in her sowing room down stairs that has now been dumped…….. sorry…… very carefully placed and organised in this new bin…… sorry……. storage space.

The funnyist thing I heard all week.

Aug 14, 2009 |

I just thought about this a minute ago.

A few weeks ago, I was with a good friend of mine who has been going out with his girlfriend for a year. Now, I’ll start off by saying he’s far too honest for his own good and would never do anything that would hurt her but still… this situation was halarious.

He got talking to what was described as a fantasticly good looking woman. The two of them really hit it off. He’d be almost 7 foot tall and very very athletic.

Anyway, the two of them talked and flerted for at least half an hour and went their separate ways.

While walking away he commented: “Sher isn’t it always good to keep in practise. You’ll never know when the woman will dump you and you’ll have to go through the whole thing again.”

I thought it was the funnyist thing I’d heard all week.

Now, there’s forward planning and there’s forward planning!

Music Music and More Music… Recording again.

Aug 14, 2009 |

I’m really enjoying playing music at the moment. Last nigt I invited three musicians over to the house to play around to see what sound we could come up with. The result has potential.

Have a listen to these.

The first is A few jigs. I had only met Nial, the fiddle player five minutes before recording this… It still turned out well. I especially like the change over from the Kesh to Tatter Jack walsh. the second and third tunes. Although, the change into the Kesh from the first jig who’s name escapes me is quite nice as well.

The second song we recorded was from a singer called Julie Fowlis. Here, Trudy sings accompanied by Andrew on the guitar, Nial on the Fiddle… twice because he does some cool things that make him self sound like a small band all on his own and my self on the whistle and Bodhran. The result doesn’t sound too bad at all. Considering we had never played together before it could sound really polished after some practise.

What do you think?

Italy trips over for another year.

Aug 12, 2009 |

I was back in Italy again with the Willin Fools for the third time this year last weekend. We played in Padova and Lake Garda in Riva, Malcesine pronounced something like melchaznay and torbole pronounced like torbolay.

As usual we played in some fantastic venues. One of the places that really stands out was a private island about two hours drive from Padova. It was the coolest place I’ve ever seen. There were roads but they weren’t really used for cars. Bikes were much more common. They weren’t locked to anything either. The people there just left them anywhere they wanted. It was just the coolest place ever!

Oh, the beach that we played beside was also the cleanest tidiest beach I’ve ever seen too. And because the weather was so hot, the water was actually a very comfortable and warm temperature.

I have to get loads of pictures off three band members but I need to travel to them so I’ll try to do that over the next while. There will also be a few videos posted as well.

As a teaser, have a look at these:

A picture of the lake. This is where we swam from usually.
picture looking at the narrow part of the lake.

Looking across the lake with a fantastic view of the mountains at the other side.
picture of a wider part of the lake with mountains on the other side.

A picture of the stage before the gig.
A picture of a reasonably large stage with mike stands, a few instruments and lights set up.

Twitter’s dead!

Aug 6, 2009 |

Shock! Horror!
Twitter has been down now for about two hours.

I’ve seen it go down a few times before but never for this long.

There’s only one possible explination.

The world is coming to an end.

We’re doomed!

Anything you’d like to do before you kick the bucket, venture to that big kennel in the sky, walk toward the light, meet the big cheese etc etc etc?

I’m going to do nothing. the loss of Twitter has me lost, depressed and alone.

How will I survive?

How will you survive?

Cars.

Aug 5, 2009 |

With a car, when one thing goes wrong, you can be reasonably certain that you’ll find another two problems with it.

That was what happened to us on Saturday.

I was abruptly woken while still in a state of being really hung over as a result of the previous nights shananigans by a call from my mother. She asked us to drop her to a wedding in an hour.

Of course, although my body was screaming insults at me… or maybe that was Emma screaming the insults, I’m not too sure still, I had to say yes. You just cant say no to your mother. It never works. The words just won’t come out.

Anyway, on the way to my parents house we noticed a strange noise from the back of the car. It was like we’d forgot to put the dog in the boot and he was franticly chacing after us. OH that’s a horrible thing to say isn’t it?

Well, we started to drive on the M1 to Dundalk but the car was very sluggish. It was really difficult to get it above 70KPH.

It felt like the car was very jumpy. From having that kind of problem before we deduced that it was a missfire so we asked a friend to look at it.

Sure enough, the spark plugs were in need of a change however there was oil all over them. With some more digging, we found that the main intake for fuel to the engine was fractured and it was leaking a lot of petrol thus causing the sparkplugs to misfire. This particular tube comes attached to other parts so the part that needs to be replaced is quite substantial.

Thanks to the work of our friend we got back on the road again. However, only temporarily. To add salt to the woond, he also noticed that there was a small leak in the center box for the exhaust causing water to leak out.

It’s not all doom and gloom though.

The car came with a full warranty!

On Tuesday morning we left it back to the reseller and we hope to hear back from him later today or tomorrow.

Believe me, if everything is not fixed to a very high standard, there will be trouble ahead.

But I’m hopeful.

And……. I’m back!

Jul 30, 2009 |

That was reasonably quick wasn’t it? I took the old site down yesterday, Wednesday at around 2PM and I had it back up again by 4PM yesterday with the pages added today.

I’m running on an entirely new platform, a new content management system, a new way of doing things, a new design, a new everything!

I’m hoping this is almost finished but I’m aware there may be a few rough ends to smoothe out.

One thing I need to do is add audio playback but that will be taken care of soon.

So, what’s new in the new dodgy domain of DigitalDarragh? Well, You’ll notice that the site is separated into four parts now known as room. The blog, otherwise known as the diary room, the techy stuff, now known as the computer room, the music page now refered to as the music room and the usual about me page that is now refered to as my room.

You’ll notice that there are pictures and videos hung up in most rooms to add a bit of life to the place. I need to dig out a few other pictures to dot around because I hate bare walls.

I just wanted to be a bit different with this design and approach so we’ll see how it all works out over the next few weeks and months.

One unfortunate side effect to the change over was that unless I can find a way of importing BlogML to Drupal, I will lose all of the old posts from the past year and a half.

What do you think?