Past Diatribes

If a tourist ye are, you've come to the right place. Check out my recently revamped DFA Guide To Dublin. It's an ousider's view of the city. Sure, there's lots of guide books and reservations systems on the net---- but this one here is the only one that is 100% by Dumb Americans, for Dumb Americans. Replete with tips, reviews and recommendations regarding the less-travelled bits of the city, the DFA Guide is an informative marvel for all who wish to visit the "Land of A Thousand Welcomes."

Is there anything else interesting to be found here? There's a section on computers, including an absolute beginner's guide to what goes on inside them. Also available are various essays on life in Dublin, programming, computers, and the state of the Internet that have been posted over the last two years. The cream of the e-mail joke crop has also been distilled here on Hello From Dublin, and no home page would be complete without biographical information, my CV, and me favorite links.

I participate in an online cooperative forum, one aspect of the Internet that I have found rewarding. From Sweden to New Zealand, a creative bunch of amigos submit fiction to each other's whithering criticism. The forum has brought some truly excellent talent to my attention, some of the world's most imaginative, and sincere stories that would have otherwise completely missed. A collection of the stories that I have posted in the past can be found in me orange section. Some, I admit, are better than others: the feedback I have received has truly helped me to improve.

A favorite bit of coding that I've done: check out the .

Some portions of this site haven't been touched since the initial launch two years ago. Other sections demonstrate each of the new tricks and effects that I've learned since. For instance, check out how the DFA title screen now displays on the Dublin Guide page until all of the images for the header have loaded. (View the Source of the dubhead.htm page to see how it's done. The trick is to use Layers with the onLoad attribute of the BODY tag. onLoad will carry out whatever instruction follows when 100% of the body's contents are available.) I've learned a great deal through designing, implementing, and upgrading this site.

Another thing I've learned by messing about a bit...... this Christmas, my fiance's little sister received her first PC. Like a youth's first car, this first PC was a bit of a banger. JBA was going to bin a bunch of old cases, components, and peripherals immediately before closing up for Christmas. I managed to save the guts of an old P5-166, and collect a loose monitor, set of cables, hard drive, and so on. It took me about twelve hours, all told, but I tested each bit, got it assembled, and turning over. A modem, sound card, speakers and keyboard proved cheapest by mail order (word to the wise- PC World is a RIP-OFF!!!) The hard bit was getting the hard drive recognized, partitioned, formatted, and the operating system loaded on. The fun part was creating a special logo in Paint Shop Pro 6, printing it off and afixing it in the indent on the front of the case. The world's first PC from Mo Computers was much appreciated!!!

Me bird gave me an Agfa Snapscan 1212p scanner, so I'll soon be posting some pictures up here. I just hope the thing holds together long enough for a picture!! The power supply is a bit dodgy... anyway, enough of a ramble for now. Explore away, and be sure to send me some feedback regarding any old thing. And also news of what you've been up to. Happy Christmas, mi amigos!

Peace.