Poll : is billy happy or crazy ?

Posted by Ronan on Apr 27, 2005 in Uncategorized | 3 comments

phantom planet pvr

Posted by Ronan on Apr 27, 2005 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

listening to california from phantom planet – new stuff – and the plinky piano is simple but yet it catches you and makes you listen to it ..anyway.. its not really a band song..

new bike arrived – its sweet. v.light, v.cool v.fast.
in contrast – I got my driving licence also. its pink and nothing special.

aido is gonna take the winTV card off my hands as he is gonna build a PVR – it will work better for him as he has cable – which doesn’t need a decoder card – so you can watch / record different channels at the same time.. he has spent a fortune on all the stuff… it isn’t funny!!

othernews.. no significant update with my aliens.. – I’m not sure they are growing.

grow an alien in two weeks.

Posted by Ronan on Apr 25, 2005 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

picked up one of Grossmans Alien babies in Toymaster over the weekend – they have been raising some eyebrows recently… people mistaking them to be foetus etc.

\/ to explain – they look like this \/

.. and over the period of two weeks the babies ‘grow’ into an adult alien and inside is another baby alien – which you can take out and let ‘grow’ again. They have an 5+ age recommendation which is questionable… they really look and feel slimely and would scare the $hit out of certain kids!! Anyway my little alien is now in Day 2 of its growth period.. I will upload some pictures soon….

Monty. R.I.P

Posted by Ronan on Apr 25, 2005 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

We lost Monty this weekend.
Gonna miss ya pup.

i just don't get it

Posted by Ronan on Apr 21, 2005 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

as usual cycled in this morning.. flew past the traffic, all stopped from the kilmurry turn all the way to the East gate – great feeling. Not so great feeling is when a jag the size of tank is oblivious to his surroundings, I gave a clear ‘Right Hand Signal’ – this guy decided to speed up and shove me back into the curb and then decided he want to turn right…. nearly knocked me off.. idiot.

I cycled the remainder of my course grumbling to myself. As I was walking in ..I was in behind three girls – the barbie kind – they did a couple of things that ticked me off :

1. they didn’t hold the door ( it was clear I was closely following ) allowing it to slam in my face
2. they then decided to take the lift – which is clearly mark for wheelchair / handicap people

I took the stairs and I headed to the canteen to get some money ( machine is OUT OF ORDER ) – the three girls appeared from the lift.. Is it so hard to walk up 2-3 flights of stairs?It seems we {Irish people} are getting to the point we are so lazy and so unaware we can’t walk up the stairs, pay attention to people/cyclist in the morning when we are fresh out of bed ? time for a MikeM moment rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant

the meaning of bakelite

Posted by Ronan on Apr 19, 2005 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

just in case you are wondering what bakelite is … its a plastic.. kinda off..
from wiki:

A chemist named Leo Hendrik Baekeland, a Belgian-born American living in New York state, was searching for an insulating shellac to coat wires in electric motors and generators. Baekelund found that mixtures of phenol (C₆H₅OH) and formaldehyde (HCOH) formed a sticky mass when mixed together and heated, and the mass became extremely hard if allowed to cool and dry.

Baekelund built pressure vessels to force out the bubbles and provide a smooth, uniform product. He publicly announced his discovery in 1909, naming it “bakelite“. It was originally used for electrical and mechanical parts, finally coming into widespread use in consumer goods in the 1920s. When the Bakelite patent expired in 1927, the Catalin Corporation acquired the patent and began manufacturing Catalin plastic using a different process that allowed a wider range of coloring.

Bakelite was the first true plastic. It was a purely synthetic material, not based on any material or even molecule found in nature. It was also the first “thermoset” plastic. Conventional “thermoplastics” can be molded and then melted again, but thermoset plastics form bonds between polymers strands when “cured”, creating a tangled matrix that cannot be undone without destroying the plastic. Thermoset plastics are tough and temperature resistant.

Bakelite was cheap, strong, and durable. It was molded into thousands of forms, such as radios, telephones, clocks, and, of course, billiard balls. The U.S. government even considered making one-cent coins out of it when World War II caused a copper shortage.

I have an old bakelite philips phone – I will take a photo of it and post it .. maybe tomorrow..