Believe it or not, it´s a wet Madrid I´m writing this from! It´s been mostly overcast the last few days and this morning the heavens opened up. “Ah, just like home!” hehe.
Night life is, well, bloody good here! I´ve been out the last few nights, twice getting back to the appartment at 5am! I blame Andrea. He´s an Italian guy in Cachu´s Japanese class with the most amazing English accent! The first night we talked on a bench for 2 hours after we were kicked out of the pub, then we went wandering, looking for some of his friends! Madrid is very, very busy at 4am in the morning!
No idea what´s happening tonight, but I hope it revolves around food and drink!
I´ll be back in Ireland on Wednesday, I checked my spam count, and there´s twice as much spam as regular mail, already hitting 7MB of email in my spam folder! Spammers – you´re losing!
So, until Thursday, adios!

I booked my flights last night and I’m off next month for a week. Can’t wait to get back to Madrid!

Here I am, back in Cork. Still suffering slightly from jet lag but at work and sorting through a lot of mail. In the past 10 days or so I received 183MB of mail. That’s over 5300 emails. Over 1400 of them were email viruses (mostly Sobig) which is the largest number I’ve ever captured coming through our mail server. wow!
Just like the last time I returned, a hardrive died on me. This time I was prepared a little better. I had already backed up my photos onto several CDs (as I mentioned previously), so all I lost was 2 days of photos (about 30-40 pictures) which I still might get back if MS undelete works on a USB device. (I used ‘mv’ to move the files from the memory stick. The fs on the stick is fat16, so I’ll try it tomorrow – I forgot to bring my camera to work today!)
I’ll post some photos over the next few days. There’s lots there as you can imagine!

On another note Mark’s getting strange comments on his weblog. I know he likes to talk about the broadcast media, politics, and rant a bit, but did he ever say he was connected with CBS? *boggle*

We’re heading back to Chicago today. Mark – you’ll be glad to hear that I have a few snaps of the Apple Store. I didn’t take photos inside this time but it looks the same as the one in Chicago (I wasn’t about to repeat the same ‘Sir, you’re not allowed take photographs in the store’ mistake I made in Chicago!)
My cousin has a beautiful Sony Vaio desktop machine. Built-in memory stick, dvd-rw, big 100GB HD alongside the smaller 14GB one, and a very nice LCD monitor. It runs so quietly the overhead fan makes more noise! *sigh*
While burning 3 copies of my photos (667MB – 469 pics) I took a look around the ‘net.

1. PHP Neural Networks on phppatterns.com has some interesting links. We have lots of stock market data at work. I wonder if I can apply some code to it?
2. phpcomplete looks really good. I probably linked there before but you know how it is, if it’s not in the blo.gs favourites it’s forgotten!
3. John Coggeshall is doing interesting work at a low level with the Zend engine, including a PHP to ASM converter!

I may post from Chicago, but it’s not likely. Otherwise, see you all on Monday or Tuesday!

This time from the Apple Store here! I prefer the store in Chicago, but this one is in the middle of SOHO which is a bit cool.
I’m just after a chicken salad in a local store – Irish prices (ie. expensive) but probably the healthiest meal I’ve had all summer!

We’re here in New York, on the final days of our trip to the USA. We’ll be heading back to Chicago tomorrow, and then back to Ireland on Friday. It’s been great here and I’ll be a little sad leaving!
See you all back home soon!

Tomorrow Martina and I leave for Boston, then on to New York a few days later. We’ll be back to Chicago for 1 day before heading home to Ireland on the 29th.
I can’t believe 3 months have gone by. It seems like only last week that I landed here first.
Now, that time has come again. I’m closing my browser, shutting down gaim, xchat, kmail for the last time. My email has been rsynced home and I have a few CDs of photos to burn.
I had a great time last night – met up with Pat and Linda and their family. I just wish we had made contact sooner!

I’m going to Boston and New York next week with Martina. I just hope the power cuts are sorted out by then! Cam has pictures from the blackout in NY. (Thanks to Garret for the link, nice new design!)

I’m in Chicago, but it’s been yet another hectic day. No rest for the wicked as they say.

Thanks Andrew for sending my old demos – I’ll have to install Vice again to take a look at them but I’m really grateful you had them lying around. I was certain I had lost the C-Force demo for good years ago!
Update! On the flight over I had the pleasure to talk to Mary Meade and her husband. Hi Mary, told you I’d mention you here!

Next time I post, I’ll be in Chicago, unless I get itchy fingers and blog something from Heathrow tomorrow afternoon!

Normal transmission will resume on Monday.