Trust Tommy

Sitting in the backseat of the car, my hands getting used to the new case that I just bought to protect my new bundle of joy.

Probably heading down to the Blog Awards around 3 today. It shouldn’t take us more then 1.75 hours to get down there, so looking toward to mingling with people before the floodgates open and the calm before the storm ends.

Writing this on the WordPress app on my iPhone. It’s one of the great apps I have – and I don’t use the app much (this is the first post I’ve written). The reason I love it is because it’s simple. It doesn’t do much (while not lacking features) but what it does do, it does great.

Mum has a name for the people I know through blogging. She calls them my ‘bloggy friends’. One such person is Steven TS (Troughton-Smith), who is an iPhone app developer who’s made 5,000$ on the app store recently with his 4 apps.

Although he’s made 5 apps, only 4 are available on the ‘store. They are Lights Off, Speed, Same Game and Nuker.

He was interviewed on the nuacht last night, and I’ve stolen the embed code off his blog:

My Piece on RTÉ News / first TV appearance! from Steven Troughton-Smith on Vimeo.

So, I’m tearing myself away from iPhone-ing but I have a tale to tell. So, sit back, relax, and attend the tale of the chocolate shampoo.

Yes. You read that right. Chocolate shampoo.

I finally got up about two hours ago, and hopped in the shower. I reach for the green shampoo but it’s empty. I grab the lynx shampoo and click open the top. I pour some onto my hand and a brown cascade flows onto my hand.

Anyone else would think that’s poo, but you guys know Trust Tommy better then that. No, this is John’s latest (in a string of) attempts to force me to eat chocolate.

I look at it.

No. Impossible. He couldn’t. That’s..

I can wonder all I like, but the truth is that, yeah, John replaced my shampoo with chocolate.

It hasn’t touched my hair of face. It’s merely dripping down my arm.

I close the lid and run the shower again, getting it off. Then I pour half of the chocolate down the drain.

I decide on my method of revenge. I get dressed, grab the bottle and head downstairs. John is innocently eating breakfast.

Nonchalantly, I approach him.

“Funny,” I say, in mock concentration, trying to keep a straight face. “When you buy Lynx shower gel, it’s usual for it to contain gel, right?”

By now, I’m right beside him.

“Yeah” I continue. “I’d be almost certain that’s the case”

John smirks. The smirk is quickly replaced with a look of alarm when I lunge forward and pour the last 1/4 of the bottle’s contents all over him.

Revenge is sweet. Hell yeah!

**

And you know what? He had the cheek to send around a photo essay!

As always, peeps, click for bigger versions

Just in the door from Collision Course II and a generally awesome day. Am completely whacked though so no big long post. Just me, here, talking about how much of a rebel I am. Hopped over to the Limerick Junction – Limerick City train. There were about 5 people in my carriage and I can’t see many more being in the others.

So I fire up Twitter and stick in headphones to listen to music (guess what :P) and look around. There’s someone three rows behind me staring out the window, and there’s 2 people about 5 rows in front of me deep in conversation. They’re wearing suits. Finally, there’s a student chappy at the end with his nose in a book.

Right. It’s safe.

I yawn and slip one foot on the edge of the seat facing me (I got a table to myself). No one looks. I do the same and the other leg joins it on the edge of the seat. One fluid motion later, my heel is on the seat. Another fluid motion later, both are on the seat.

Now, all tables have the warning:

But y’see, there’s a little known bit of fine print. It goes something like:

This does not count if you’re a red-headed teen called Tommy Collison and you’re tired and there’s only five people on the train, someone three rows behind you staring out the window, 2 people about 5 rows in front of you deep in conversation. They’re wearing suits. Finally, a student chappy at the end with his nose in a book.

Gotta love loopholes!

Video:

Video quality on the 5310 is cow’s poo, I know ;-)

Up to Dublin today, so if you leave me a comment or drop me an email, chances are I won’t see it til late tonight. Train down tonight is at 9. Going to Collision Course 2 with Mulley

–oOo–

We had two things yesterday racing each other to arrive, namely my laptop and my iPhone. Now, my laptop’s back but something has taken it’s place in the race. Apparently, these things don’t give up easily. Yesterday, I decided to cave and I bought a Twitter mosaic t-shirt. It’s making good time in the production line (see picture), so it may be here in time for the Blog Awards.

So, now it’s a race between Twitter t-shirt and iPhone. :-)

–oOo–

John tells me he’s found a piece of music that all three (myself, Patrick and John) of us can play, there’s piano, fiddle and drums in it. Any other world by Mika:

–oOo–

6% of traffic to TrustTommy.com comes from iPhones, so I know there are a fair few of you out there. I’m wondering what the best Twitter client there is out there. I know Alan and Stephen Fry never stop singing songs of praise about Tweetie (:-P) but since I’m against buying iPhone apps, I’m going to ignore that one myself.

However, I am curious as to what apps you use. Am I wrong to ignore Tweetie because it’s not free? is it actually the bee’s knee’s/cat’s pajamas? Is John right? That TwitterFon is the best thing to happen to the world since the Big Bang? What’s your favourite Twitter client? Answer in the comments.

–oOo–

On the subject of twitter, one of the people who follows me DMed me last night and brought Twitter Grader to my attention. Apparently, I’m one of the elites of Limerick, sneaking in at #2.

Am loving the fact that John’s all the way down at number 10 :-)

Yours truly is a finalist in his category (Best Newcomer) in the Irish Blog Awards 2009.

There are five finalists in my category. They are:

- Trust Tommy
- Lee Munroe
- The National Lottie
- Joe Scanlon
- Outside In

Congrats to everyone who got this far!

Link to official website, with list of nominations for all the different categories

***

in other news, it’s quiz time. What is better then a laptop under insurance? If you guessed “a non-broken laptop, I guess you’d be right. The actual correct answer in *this* instance is… A laptop under insurance!

Yes! I didn’t know this at the time but my laptop is under warranty until the day after St. Patrick’s Day, March 18. I called CompuB looking for the serial number of my laptop, to have the guy say they he looked it up and he found that I was still under warranty. He also said that the minute he saw that, he went straight ahead and ordered the logic board that would secure the continued existance of my laptop. They told him it would either be here Tuesday or Wednesday. Now, I’m in Dublin on Wednesday (tomorrow) for Collision Course, so I’ll definitely have my laptop back when I get home

EDIT ~ Tues. 15:08 I went upstairs for something this morning, and as I was in my room, I decided to grab my phone. I notice there’s a missed call from CompuB. I ring them back and discover that the new logic board arrived and has been fitted! Went into town with John to collect it and even stopped by the Wild Onion :-)

EDIT ~ 18:14 iPhone is officially shipped. If you’re interested in tracking it’s progress as it makes the arduous trek from Rhyl, Wales to Limerick, Ireland, click here and enter LY387272161GB as your reference number.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that my leg gave out on me yesterday as I was carrying my laptop. I fell to the floor, banging my laptop on the dresser and giving it an awful hard knock on the ceramic tiles of the kitchen floor. After making sure I hadn’t broken my leg (that’s what it felt like), I opened the laptop to see if, miraculously, it’d still turn on.

Nope, fate wasn’t feeling particularly generous, and my laptop wouldn’t turn on. Well, it turned on, did nothing for 5 seconds, and then turned back off.

I used Dad’s macbook Air for the rest of the day and can now honestly say I will never want one. Yes, it’s light, but 1) no CD/DVD drive, 2) Screen doesn’t go back far enough* or 3) Power cord is finicky to attach. Now, the lack of a DVD drive is almost perfect for Dad, who can’t remember the last time he put in a disk to any computer, so he doesn’t mind. Plus, he works over in Hungary, which requires him over there every other week, so portability is a big plus. Myself, I’m going through my House M.D. phase at the moment so I like being able to watch DVDs. Having said that, it’s a welcome change to be able to watch House on a 30″ TV screen rather then a 13″ laptop.

This morning, myself and Dad went into CompuB to get it checked out. First stop was the new store beside Brown Thomas where they re-attached the screw loose beside the battery and then onto the old store in Henry St. where repairs take place. Sad to say, there’s not much they can do.

There might be a break in regular programming for a while. I’ll try to keep up at least one post a day, but don’t expect much more then that for now. Hopefully, insurance should be quick and I’ll be OK.

* This is actually solvable, as shown inadvertently by Patrick. The story goes that Patrick left his Air open on the ground beside his bed when he went to sleep. During the night, he falls out of bed. Fate was again in a bitchy mood and of course, it has to be the side that the MacBook is open on.

Yeah. He fell on the macbook, pushing the screen back almost to 180 degrees. Miraculously, the computer still works.

So, yes kids, you can fix that, just fall out of bed on top of it!

Yesterday, I popped down to Skycon down in UL’s computer society yesterday (after going to reception and not being able to locate it). Met with Livies and also with Kla and Lexia. Chatted for a while and then went in to see Randall Munroe, of XKCD fame, give his keynote.

I caught the last bit of the talk before his, and the place was maybe 65% full. In the time between the end of the previous talk and the beginning of XKCD, the extra 35% got filled as people slowly filed in.

I have loads of pics, so they’re all small. Click on them for full sized versions

Described as ‘the only time that venn diagrams have ever been useful’, Randall showed us one of the British Isles

Randall is a great fan of both flow charts and Hulu, where he watches The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. However, Hulu is infamously only available in the USA

Showing us his robot game. He used to work with robots in NASA. When I learned where he worked, I asked him was it like in the Bond films where the space shuttle is about to be swallowed and they’re all in a big control room and the astronaut says “Hueston, we have a problem”. He laughed and replied, “nah, more like “Hueston, can you build us a robot that runs in walls?”