When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.

Gracie Allen

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

Evan Esar

Thankfully my backup paranoia wasn’t in vain. I’d recently done a fresh Time Machine backup and had also backed up my iTunes library to a separate hard drive so everything bar one or two files is present, correct and accounted for. Thank jebus for small mercies. At the moment my trusty old reliable G4 PowerBook has been elevated to pole position on my desk and is doing a sterling job at being my main machine until the iMac is back to her old self. I’ve imported my music and everything except two songs I downloaded after the daily backup is there. No matter, I can get them back again.

I thought that if anything like this did happen, I’d completely freek out. Quite the opposite actually. I’m quite calm about it. That’s only because everything is backed up though, had it not been it would be a totally different story that would require some valium. The other good thing is that I can now replace the 500GB drive with a 750GB drive (which is amazingly cheap!). All the more space for stuff. Hooray for more stuff!

So the motto of the story is; backup, backup, backup! I can’t say it enough!

“Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”

Faith Whittlesey

Any requests?

Update: OK so I didn’t quite hit my deadline (story of my life). I blame a completely mental weekend for my tardiness. I’ll get it done for the end of this week instead.

I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

Mitch Hedberg

This is where things get ugly.

The tariffs offered by O₂ are utterly shite. 1GB data limit(!), paltry inclusive texts & minutes, no visual voicemail all with the convienience of an 18 month contract. When compared to the tariffs offered by O₂ UK it’s quite clear that yet again, Irish customers are being ripped off.

My plans for buying one are now definitely on hold. I’m going to wait until a) the 3G version is available (rumoured to be later this year) b) the terrible tariffs are changed to better value and c) until my contract with 3 expires in late October.

Thank you again O₂ for showing how much you enjoy shafting your customers!

Our only hope is that the uptake of the iPhone is terrible which might actually force O₂ to get their act together and offer better value for money.

Congratulations to our new queen, Ms Sheila Fitzpatrick. I only got to see her opening number but it was a good one. Other notable entries were Ms Gaza Strip & Ms Geneva Summit, Ms Bunny, Donegal Catch & Faybelene.

As always, Panti’s opening monologue was top notch and her sketch was only hilarious! Here’s to another great show and here’s to next year!

Photos are up on Flickr.

It’s a very light and fresh design and is a return to the single column view of some years ago. Advertising is gone for now, it wasn’t really serving any use and I think the page looks fresher without it. We’ll see how it pans out after a while.

I’ve also added my Flickr stream to the top of the homepage. I’ve started using Flickr more and more recently so expect more photos to go up from time to time.

I’ve some upcoming projects launching in the next couple of weeks, more on that soon. But I’ve been spurred back into blogging again. I’ve loads to write about so expect to see lots more here soon.

“You try wagging these puppies around a while and see if you don’t have back problems”

Dolly Parton on her recent back problems.