It’s difficult to believe that today is the last day of Samhain. Tomorrow we’re into Mí na Nollag which is the Gaelic term for December (lit. Month of Christmas). Roll on the Winter Solstice only 3 weeks away now, after which the days will be gradually getting longer again. And there’s the Yule celebrations of course.

The weather is utterly horrible here right now - it’s been lashing rain with gale-force winds all day, and most of last night as well. The roads in mid-to-West Clare, normally in shite condition, are absolutely dreadful.

I’m suffering from a head cold, and a touch of SAD. I need some serotonin! Oh for a few days of hard frost and the crispy sun-drenched weather that entails!

I’m off into the kitchen to cook dinner right now and crack open a bottle of rich red wine to get some of that wonderful Mediterranean sunshine inside me.

I’m pondering an intersting coding challenge at the moment and trying to decide on a solution. The challenge can be summed up as follows:

How to dynamically generate database queries for placement in tooltips triggered by the title attribute of the anchor tag upon mouseover.

The context is a work of creative writing consisting of numerous small sections some of which have explanatory footnotes. The work is stored in a MySQL database, each section having its own record, and called in sequence by the reader via hyperlink for insertion into a web page. The footnotes are also stored in a separate table in the same database. Footnotes are flagged in the text in the usual manner (superscript arabic numerals).

The challenge is how to insert the text of the relevant footnote (as called up from the database) into the tooltip that appears when the reader mouses over the footnote numeral.
Methinks the answer may lie with Ajax. Any thoughts?

It’s been a promising day so far on many fronts. The sun is shining - and even the nasty showers of sleety rain that make impromptu appearances every hour or so can’t take from that.
The weekly Clare Music Maker’s Orchestra session at the Buttermarket in Ennis went well, and the orchestra is sounding very good. I didn’t have a good innings today, however, as I miscounted on several occasions and missed my queues as a result, which really annoyed me given that the oboe is sounding well.

I’m all set for an afternoon-evening of food, wine and music. Food-wise I’ll be cooking and marinading for tomorrow’s luncheon get-together: two Spanish Omelettes to cook, and the 1500g of venison haunch to marinate overnight. Wine-wise I need to bottle the remaining two demijohns of Elderberry as I’ve drunk the other one and a half. Music-wise I’m going to clear the kitchen and put Pink Floyd’s Pulse on DVD. So here goes.

It’s been 10 (ten) years almost to the day since we moved into our house - it was on a cold dry 16 November 1996. We had no furniture to speak of - just one armchair, 4 chairs and a bockedy old table left us by the previous owners. No sofa, fridge, freezer, washing machine, or dishwasher either. It was sparse, cold and uncomfortable.

We’ve accumulated quite a bit of stuff in the invervening decade - as you do.

To mark the occasion, we’re having some friends over this coming Sunday for lunch. The last time we got together with anybody was ages ago. Everybody is so busy that we’re all time poor. Looking forward to cooking the venison I got at Superquinn’s and sampling the good selection of wines we picked up at Coopers Wine and Beer Superstore on the Dock Road, Limerick last Sunday. Got a 10% discount on same. I’m salivating at the thought of it!

A brighter day today in many ways. It’s amazing how dark and hopeless everything can seem when one is in “the tunnel“. And, of course, being in the tunnel means having tunnel vision as it were. If you’re lucky you will glimpse a faint glimmer in the distance towards which you can walk without smashing into walls in the dark - if you go carefully. If not, you just have to hape that things will be better on the morrow.

In the immortal words of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Don’t Panic. For if you panic, you tend to make rushed decisions. And it is essential NOT to make rushed decisions in the tunnel. For a rushed decision in the tunnel turns out to be a rash decision in the cold light of day.

The depths to which we sink serve only to further enhance the heights to which we soar.

Keep the faith, whatever brand that may be, and you’ll breathe cleaner purer air once more.

First post on a cold wet windy November Monday. Not the most auspicious of starts perhaps, given the atrocious weekend I’ve just endured, weather- and emotion-wise.

It began well enough with a busy Saturday as per normal. Went to Casino Royal in the evening and really enjoyed it, so much so I think it’s the best Bond film ever.

Once back home, I cracked open a bottle of red wine and we watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on the box. All seemed to be going ok until I commented on how the cultural bias could be seen in the dialog 36 years later, which was taken up as a negative criticism of the film on my part which was not at all my intention. I was merely voicing what I was thinking. My drawing attention to the presence of one Leonard Rossiter - the lead actor of one of my all time favourite series (The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin) - was taken as a personal attack almost, and things went rapidly downhill from there, so much so that I didn’t watch the rest of the film and went to bed. My dreams, which I don’t remember, were dark and foreboding.

I lay in bed on Sunday morning for more than an hour, filled with confusion, foreboding and sadness, with what’s the point as a refrain in my head. What was the point of getting up? I may as well not have as the day proved a washout and I’m not just talking about the weather, the only bright spark being 40 minutes of truely awesome rugby played by Ireland against Australia, during which I managed to get through a large pile of ironing while I watched.

Today isn’t much better. I keep asking myself what is the point and feel like I’m just going through the motions. I feel unappreciated, misunderstood, pissed-off, isolated, sad and bewildered in turn.

Not an auspicious start, like I said, on this dark moon day. Here’s hoping things will improve.