je suis revenu

After a long absence, I'd better get back to twinkling the ivories.

Work over the last couple of months was very busy with large swathes of my spare time being taken up with extra curricular work-related activities (think: documentation and testing). Hopefully these sorts of projects only come along once in a blue moon.

The latest project has taken me to Dublin for three weeks. Similar stuff to what I was doing last time, but with more of a guiness flavour rather than a full english flavour. (note to self: don't try coming up with smart metaphores after overinduling in fries and a croquette). Most of the malarky for this project is off site, so I've got a bit of opportunity to tour the Juniper offices working remotely.

I had a chance to catch up with Paul Smith (Mr. Barrel of Monkeys to some) last weekend in Cobh (pronounced Cove). It's the last city that the Titanic ever saw and often sees many super yachts docking for a few days. It's a very pretty area and when the cloak of night falls, the night life isn't too bad. Lots of pretty honies and in true Irish fashion, fully intoxicated.

This weekend I'm chillin' in Belgium. I heard they brewed Hoegaarden and wife beater (stella artois) there so I had to pop in for a quick quiet or two. It turned in to a few louds by the end of the night. Nice place and aparently there's a famous town house there....dunno...the beer was nice.

The main attraction of the weekend was I love Techno in Ghent last night. It was a 8 hour (or thereabouts) techno party featuring acts such as Vitalic, T.Raumschmiere and Underworld. Emile and I joined up in Antwerp on Saturday and after evening in Ghent, charged back to Antwerp and saw the movie, A History of Violence. Pretty good stuff...the whole movie was a slow plot twist that you could see coming after the first few minutes of the film.

I'm in Antwerp till Tuesday then off to Amsterdam to get the lab ready for a customer demo. I'm looking forward to the Radisson Burger...almost as good as the Dutch Frites.