Past Diatribes

Easter Monday, 1998. First off, here’s a detail that I (as a DFA ex-pat Yank) found funky about Ireland. They don’t exchange chocolate rabbits over here, at Easter. The Easter Bunny brings chocolate eggs. Carmel received one that was hollow and had sweets inside. I got one that came with two Moro bars. Excellent! Thank you, Easter Bunny!

Snow came yesterday, too. It was a strange snow. I think it was supposed to be hail but it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t ice; it stormed down the consistency of cheese doodles. Or little balls of Styrofoam. In any case, they poured on down for about two hours yesterday. This morning (a bank holiday here in Eire!) I was up early and went for a walk toward the mountains. The tops were shining with it still, this white Easter snow. Breathtaking.

I love the city of Dublin with its mountains always waiting on the horizon. You can see them from anywhere in town, can make out the fields and towers and houses on them just about, and know they are just a Dart ride away.

Some good news: Mo is alive and well! For those of you lucky enough to know Mo, this is cause for celebration. Mo was hit by a bus about two months ago. “Played chicken with one on my bike, and lost,” is I think how she put it. We were all worried; one e-mail from a friend of hers and then, seemed she fell off the face of the Earth! No more Skippy the Clown?! No more Flemgirl, world’s happiest superhero?!! No more cool Alaskan missionary chick who gets her nose broken being punched over a snowmobile?!!! In all seriousness, we her friends were worried. Maureen is one of humanity’s most outstanding individuals, a person whose every effort is spent trying to make this world a happier place to live. Kind of like Mother Theresa, but cuter and not dead. :) Una chica buena. And almost fully recovered, and back at work with the kiddies, and no doubt back on that bicycle!

Lastly, one bit of tech speculation. This page is located in ‘Silicon Valley,’ I guess it’s about time I contribute something computer-related to this fine neighborhood. . . . Don’t buy a VCR. I believe VHS will have gone the way of Betamax within the next five years. I have been following trends, one of which is toward ‘Convergence.’ Gateway 2000 has a new line called ‘Direction’ which combine a big-screen TV and computer. It comes cable-ready and, at the flick of a switch, operates as a Pentium II unit with giant monitor. The keyboard and mouse are integrated wireless, just like a remote control. Another trend I’ve been watching is “Web TV” and its competitors, which meld the television and Internet browser. Also, with new DVD technology, feature-length movies fit on CD-ROM sized disks. . . .

If you have visited my TMBG link, you have seen the spot where you can click to download a song. Using my 14.4 modem, over analog lines, without codec (compression/decompression) I was able to transfer an audio track in about fifteen minutes. Using more advanced technology over ISDN lines, the possible rates of data transfer leave this in the stone age. Video conferencing and FM-quality Internet radio are already realities; I predict within a few years images with sound will be able to fly across the net, entire films being available in the time it takes now to rewind a cassette. With “pay per click” economics tried and true by then, there will be no reason to run off to Blockbuster or Xtravision. VCRs will be obsolete.

Mick Halpin: full of s***? Only time will tell.