Trust Tommy

December 31st, the last day of the year.

Overall, 2009 was a fantastic year, seeing me getting more stuff done, being engaged almost 24/7, furthering all abilities, and acquiring new ones.

January started off on a high point with my competing in the Esat BT Young Scientist competition, with my project “What are the issues faced by children with Cerebral Palsy in mainstream education?” and which won first place in that category, Social and Behavioural sciences, and also a bursary for my communication abilities, which helped fund a new laptop that I use for school.

The year continued well, with the Irish Blog Awards down in Cork, in which this blog won Best Newcomer. In March, the theatre group that I’m part of that put on a production of the Little Shop of Horrors, which is a delightfully morbid piece but one that was ultimately very fun to perform. I played tired old miser Mr. Mushnik who eventually got eaten by the plant, photos of which can be seen here.

April saw me creating a short lived youth forum which unfortunately didn’t last too long, while May included highlights such as impersonating my brother and using Stephen Fry to show how influential Twitter could be. That was my first ever incendiary post, with people complaining that they’d been used. I won’t lie, it was a hugely useful learning piece for someone who’d never trod on anyone’s toes before. Contrary to what some think, I didn’t just do it to get Fry to link to me, nor do I condone bear-baiting for links.

June was the beginning of my summer holidays, where I interned for a week with Klara Golez in the Life & Fitness Magazine with Derry O’Donnell in Tipperary. A hugely fun week and a big leap in independence. When I got back, after a wicked birthday celebration, I did an acting course with the same folks who I put on Little Shop of Horrors with. The real horror of the week is that our internet went down. That sucked. What made up for it however was my new cane. The tail end of June saw me in Dublin, with my second internship, working with the wizards in Look & Taste. That was an amazing week, although I didn’t get to meet @FakeNiallH. Also, I caught RENT, at the Olympia Theatre, which rocked.

In July, myself and the parents went to France, which I’ll come right out and say that I didn’t enjoy. I was never the world’s greatest camping fan but that feeling seemed to be exacerbated this year. I don’t mind being in France, or even (shock horror) being away from the Internet for long periods of time, it’s just that camping seemed to rub me the wrong way.

August was America month, with me having to visit Minnesota for 4 days to see a doctor who operated on me back in 2004. He was pleased with my progress, and also the fact that I was using a cane, which apparently will push back the time when I’ll need to get a hip transplant. Scary stuff. I spent most of those four days typing away, working on a piece I’d been asking . Definitely a high point of the year.

September saw me back at school, with nothing major happening (for once) on the tech front, although I did go to the zoo with the awesome Aoife, wonder what it meant to the Irish and attend my cousin’s wedding.

I went to Hungary with Dad in October, which was fun. He works over there and probably spends at least a week of every month over there. He doesn’t usually do cool stuff like visit zoos or climb big mountains though. I also got swine flu that month.

November was a month dominated by my trip to Boston, to visit my brothers and, yes, I’ll come clean, to see the Broadway tour of RENT. The four days I was States-side in Massachusetts were probably the best days of my life. It showed me what college life in the US was like and boy did I love it. I was fiercely independent (Mom said, quite seriously, that she sent a 15 year old over to Boston, and got back an adult) and I absolutely adored it. Being independent is my marijuana.

December was exam month, and my daily posting took a wee break while I studied. The visit to Boston had implanted the idea of following John and Patrick’s footsteps and going to college abroad in my head and since they looked at all your results, not just the Junior and Leaving Cert, I longed to do well.

Christmas holidays came, and John and Patrick came home with them. We’ve had a lot of lazy days, playing cards or Scrabble. It’s been fun!

Overall, 2009 was a phenomenal year. Looking over what I’ve written, I realize just how much happened in 2009. That is a lot, but something tells me that 2010 will be even busier. I fell out with some people this year, but I gained a lot more. At the risk of sounding sentimental, I learnt a lot, matured, but most importantly, enjoyed every minute of it.

Well, because it’s the holidays, I just lose track of the days. When you’re doing nothing but drumming and playing cards, you can’t really differentiate which is a weekend day and which is a weekday. C’est impossible!

Yes, I’ve joined the Glee train, and this week’s song is Don’t Stop Believin’.

There’s a drumming video in the works but some of the intricacies are tripping me up, especially in the post-production, placing the song over the video. How I make them is relatively simple. Because the music is louder, I always drum to headphones rather than speakers. Using I movie on my MacBook, I record myself playing the piece through headphones, which leaves me with the drumming track, but no music. After that it’s a simple case of adding the song over the video and moving along the starting point of the song in iMovie until it’s at the same place as the starting point of the song through the headphones.

I’ll do a how-to video with screenshots and arrows and explanations of all processes involved soon. Stay tuned!

Right now, there’s almost a sense of… ‘how’d I manage that?’. Seriously, an entire year without chocolate. 365 days. 8,760 hours. 525,600 minutes.

Was it easy? Yes and no. When undertaking this, how easy you find it is directly proportional to how much chocolate you eat. I ate relatively little – we never stocked that much of it at home so my intake was mainly at parties and the like. That made it easier than if chocolate was always kept in the house and I dipped into that cupboard regularly.

The hardest part was when you were with people and they offer you some. As I’ve mentioned before, people can’t seem to get their head around that you’re not doing this for a specific reason. Explaining “well I was just wondering if I could go without it for a year” doesn’t seem to satisfy them, insatiable things…

Even when Mom’d make nice desserts I wouldn’t feel too great a pang, unless I really liked what she was making, such as toffee shortbread.

Up until about July, I always maintained that I wouldn’t be hovering over a chocolate bar on 1/1/10 at 00:01AM but now I think I just might. My parents getting me chocolate for Christmas may have influenced this decision.

What about next year? I jokingly suggested staying off it for another year; a notion greeted without enthusiasm in most corners. I don’t drink, so I can’t give that up, nor smoke.

Oh the conundrums I have to deal with…

Well, Christmas is over. The next big thing we have to look forward to is the coming of the New Year. I think the days between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day perhaps my favourite days all year. No one is working, in fact, no one is doing anything at all really. I think it’s the one big advantage that Christmas holidays have over a summer holidays are any other holidays. And so we have a pretty laid-back lifestyle over these couple of days – seemingly endless games of Hearts (try not to let Mum shoot the moon…again) or scrabble succeeded by intense bouts of endurance reading. Yesterday, we went karting, and today we have some relatives visiting. The former was actually a bit out of place in this lethargic, easy-going lifestyle.

I think that this is why I enjoy Christmas. Being quite nonreligious, I instead enjoy the byproducts of the holiday season – the food, spending time with your family (everyone comes home for Christmas), the time off school. I’m not a Grinch, I don’t hate Christmas. What you believe is between you when your God, and being honest, it’s not so much that I’m a very tolerant, respectful person, it’s just that I don’t really give a huge amount of thought to what others believe.

Photo owned by rinkjustice (cc)

Patrick got the board game Diplomacy for Christmas, and we tried to play a game of this after Christmas dinner. Oh, and who would have thought that playing as 1910 countries could be so fun! I was France, and I attempted to make a crafty alliance with Mom, Britain to double-cross Dad, Germany, and steal his land. Meanwhile we had Patrick, Russia, coming down through Scandinavia to mount a northern attack on Germany. Finally, John went off and did his own thing, as Austro-Hungary, and captured the countries around the Black Sea. I feel sorry for the poor Yugoslavians…

However, in the end, negotiations broke down between countries and we all went off and played Hearts.

That’s totally how happened in 1910, right?

We are a family of precious few traditions, it has to be said. Well, tradition in the, erm, traditional sense of the word. You know, like going to midnight mass or having Grandma over for Christmas dinner, or everyone piling on the couch at 20:30 on a Christmas Eve to catch the Father Ted Christmas Special.

Then again, the word ‘tradition’ is actually defined by Google as an “inherited pattern of thought or action”. That, to me, seems a lot more lenient in that it says to me that it doesn’t have to be anything common, normal or usual.

And so, here’s a tradition. :)

Last year, around this time, I went Karting. I’ve always had a sordid relationship with karting to be honest. I was never a very tall child so when people went karting, I’d come out onto the track, into their self-titled ’smallest car’, sit in it and see if I could reach. Invariably, I couldn’t, so I’d wait in the main building while the others went karting. My annoyance as to not being able to varied, depending on whether there were books and TV wherever I was waiting, or if water was readily available, things like that. I was always one of those kids who could stare at the wall and entertain himself but you do kind of grow out of that.

So because this time last year was my very first time behind the wheel, I was a bit of a Granny, and the only way I would’ve won is if they’d been measuring from the bottom up, or by the number of overtakes. I wasn’t very experienced and wasn’t aware that you could go faster than I was going. In fairness, the kart makes a loud, guttural roar when you floor the accelerator and that probably put me off.

So, since I approach this with experience under my belt, this time will be different. I didn’t overtake anyone last year so that skill still escapes me. Once I get that sorted nothing stops me from coming first, right?

Check back here to see if my confidence is placed well or not…

There’s too much ritualistic, I-don’t-mean-it-but-it’s-what’s-done wishing of a Merry Christmas on blogs and Twitter I think. This isn’t one of those Merry Christmases, I assure you :)

Twitter had a gift for me too:

Abuse? I don’t tweet thaaat much. Certainly I know several people who do elephantine proportions much more accurately than I do :)

No matter, they let me back in. *changes password*

I’ll come out and say it: I’m not the world’s greatest fan of poetry. I’ll read it an appreciate it but I never enjoyed the autopsies that you do in school, spending many lessons agonizing to find hidden meanings behind the lines, between the lines and wherever else you care to look.

There are however a couple of poems which I really do quite enjoy. The Listeners by Walter de la Mare is one. Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen is another. Seriously awesome.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is also one I enjoy:

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap —
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a minature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:
“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen,
“On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;
“To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
“Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys — and St. Nicholas too:
And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:
He was dress’d all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnish’d with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys was flung on his back,
And he look’d like a peddler just opening his pack:
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples: how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly:
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

This morning, John arrived home for Christmas. I decided to join Mom and Dad in going to collect him, joking that good brothers came and met their siblings from the airport when they came to visit, because when I had gone to visit John and Patrick in Boston, neither of them had been able to come and meet me from Logan Airport. Not that it had been a problem, because I was able to fetch public transport into the city to meet them.

So, yesterday morning, I woke up at 5:20 AM to make the journey out to Shannon Airport with Mom and Dad. We’d subscribed to e-mail updates from flight EI 132, and I checked my e-mail en route to see that the flight had been delayed until 6:40 AM. The junior to the report was interesting because we saw a truck that had entered a roundabout too quickly, hadn’t been able to stop, and ended up ploughing onto the grassy verge.

The weather really has been crazy over the past few days, and this morning we had freezing fog that put the visibility down to terrible standards. eventually, we got to Shannon Airport, and met John, who arrived in about 6:50 AM. while I was waiting, I read a bit of a health magazine from the Irish Times, which really is a fantastic magazine; Adam Brophy’s column “It’s a Dad Life”, is fantastic. This week, he was talking about his dog, which had given birth the three puppies. What seems like an everyday occurrence is transformed into a very entertaining read purely by his vivid descriptions and engaging writing style. These are the sorts of writers I aspire to.

Right now, John’s catching “40 winks” on the couch, while I sit at the kitchen table writing this. Patrick doesn’t arrive for another few days, at which point, the Collison’s Christmas Reunion 2009 can actually begin. :)

On that note, can anyone actually believe that it’s almost 2010? Like, it’s a decade since the turn of the millennium, which I remember. Wow.

- Written at 13:42, 22/12/09

Apologies for the drop in programming this afternoon. I tried to update WordPress to 2.9 and next thing I knew, I couldn’t reach my blog. Or Mum’s blog, or indeed John’s (*tumbleweed blows by*) blog.

The man himself was asleep when I fubared the server, so I went off and watched the 3rd episode of Glee (my new love). John got up about an hour ago and fixed it though :-)

Normal programming back now!

When I was in America, back in August, they recommended that I get some voice recognition software. I actually got around to buying the software last week but decided not to touch it until I’d finished my exams, or else I wouldn’t have got any study done. However, now that my exams are over (yahoo!) I got it out and set it up.

I think that these voice recognition softwares are infamous for many things, first and foremost: their difficulty to set up. Indeed, when I hopped onto MSN and told one of my friends I got this software his reaction was “oh good luck with setting that up!”

Now that I can speak experience, having done this 15 minutes ago, the installation process was pretty painless for a something for so much can go wrong. Because all voices are different, having a computer that can understand what you’re saying is a pretty impressive feat (an especially cool feature of this is that it knew the difference between “feet” and “feat” by the words around it. Of course the novelty will dissipate when I want to talk about someone’s impressive feet!).

It works with any application including MSN, Chrome, iTunes or pretty much any app that I have tried. This is handy, although the iTunes support is kind of unnecessary because I can’t exactly listen to music while I’m dictating. I’m just being picky now.

Even looking up the word count of this post and now (236) I can totally feel that this is worth it. While it may be quicker in MSN conversations to type manually, big boxes of text like this are much better handled when I use the dictation.

I suppose I can’t do a review of the speech recognition software without talking about how accurate it is. The answer is that it is too early to tell. I’ve been using it for about an hour now and of course I’ve had a lot of mistakes but I think that could be down to the fact that I use a lot of colloquialisms (got that first time!), such as LOL (which came up as Lyle, Law all or lull the first time that I try to say it) or when I tried to use emoticons such as :) or :P which would come out like this: P

Overall, I’m very happy with the software and I’m doing big batches of writing such is now. And like any good software, it’s learning very quickly: many of the mistakes made when I first started using it are not being made now. Of course there is still a lot of room for improvement and a lot of practice to be done.

I’ll keep you updated!

P.S. Interested to see how my manual typing speed compared to my speech speed, I took one of those online typing speed tests. Manually typing, I can manage about 50 words, while speaking I managed 126. Also, if anyone is interested, the software I have is MacSpeech Dictate, which I bought from CompuB.