Blazzers – Start of season is upon us

What a weekend!!!

I have a new found appreciation for gingers after Paul Scholes took that last minute header to seal the win against city.

Blazzers Logo

Tomorrow, the 1Z Blazzers take the field for the first time this season. That’s right, the Leinster Softball League starts back up, and I for one can’t wait. We had the Start of Season Blitz last Sunday. As usual, it was a blast. I pitched my first game (getting hammered 18-1, I’ll really have to work on that), and we had a good few victories to start the year off.

This is now when the serious business starts. We play a 14 game season over the course of the summer (not including cup games, IOST and other Blitz tournaments). I expect the usual bedding in issues we have each season, but we have a good team and should be competitive, if not vying for the league title.

Anyone can feel free to come down and take a look at our home games, which take place in Eamon Ceannt park on the Sundrive Road. It’s entertaining to watch, and you with the good weather, is a good place to have a few cans (along with the team, of course).  Our home fixtures are:

• April 26th – Braves
• May 10th – Mockingbirds
• May 17th – Renegades Black
• July 12th – Wildcats
• July 19th – Suspects
• July 26th – Beachers
• August 9th – Homers

You never know, you might want to join up afterwards Not too serious, and drinking is encouraged

To get you prepared, I’ll leave you with something every softball player and fan needs to know:

Blog 2.0

After what seems like an age of no posts, I’ve finally come back to my blog. My lack of posting has coincided with me taking a new role within Hostelworld, the company I work for. It’s so much more challenging than what I was doing before, and completely different as well. It’s taken me a while to get used to the new workload, though I’m starting to get a grip with it now, leaving me with a bit more free time.

I suppose the best thing for me to do would be to quickly run down what’s been happening with me:

• I bought a new phone, the Nokia 5580. I’m really liking this phone, well prefer it over my old LG Cookie.
• Arranged to go to Download in Donnington this year. I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE AC/DC AGAIN!!!!!
• Started listening to Major Nelson (http://majornelson.com/) podcast as well as the PSNation (http://www.psnation.org/) podcast. Both are great listens (people say great reads so I can say great listens)
• I’ve actually started to complete games. So far I’ve worked my way through AVP, Heavy Rain (absolutely awesome), Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and currently working my way through God of War 3
• Softball has started back up again. Trying my hand at pitcher, but it is one TOUGH gig.
• Prepping for WrestleMania 26 this weekend. Michaels v Taker II will be an epic.

In relation to development, I’ve started doing some simple Zend Framework stuff to try and get my head around it. If anyone knows any good tutorials, screencasts, books etc relating to this, please pop it into the comments.

I will be posting more regularly from now on (if I don’t, please harass me in the street and publicly ridicule me), and if people want me to talk about anything in particular, just suggest it to me, or you can message me on Facebook or Twitter. Laters!

2009 – My Year in Review

Well it’s been an eventful year to say the least But one that I wouldn’t change for anything in the world. I thought I’d do a “best of” 2009 post as part one of my 2009 review posts. So, here’s the best of the best of whats happened me in 2009

Hostelworld makes me permanent

Earlier on in the year, the company I work for, Hostelworld.com, made my contract permanent. This was such a huge relief, not that I’d done anything majorly wrong or took down entire websites with one wrong line of code, but more like a weight off my shoulders. I definitely feel I’ve become better integrated into the company this year, what with being on the social committee and almost getting naked at the ten-year anniversary party (sorry, no photos of this…. at least I hope not), and it continues to get better as I’ve recently took up a new role within the company

Concerts, concerts, concerts

This truly was a great year for concerts. Back in April, myself and Kyra went to see the greatest band on the planet – AC/DC. This show absolutely blew me away, from the completely over the top entrance, complete with runaway train (runnin’ right off the tracks) to the 70ft inflatable Rosie sitting on top of it! Also this year were Metalica and Green Day.

There were a few more unusual concerts too, including “Bugs Bunny on Broadway”, “Across the Stars – the music of John Williams” and “Video Games Live” – a whole concert of video game music. Here’s hoping 2010 is even halfway as entertaining.

Holiday to Pernink

I travelled away this year with the missus to Pernink in the Czech Republic. I’d never heard of the place before I’d left, but it is one of the most quaint little towns I’ve ever been to and I’d love to go back again. I got to meet a lot of my girlfriend’s extended family, and we had an absolute blast over there, from canoeing between cities to sitting out by the fire melting mallows and drinking.

We also went camping during the summer. It was my first time ever camping, and even though it rained the entire time we were there, I still really enjoyed it.

Halloween

One of the definite highlights for me this year was Halloween. I loved my costume, and it got some pretty decent reviews I keep having to try to top myself each year with a new costume so much so that I reckon I’m going to have to severe an arm to keep the increase in expectations going

Back into the Poker

Happy to say I’ve finally gotten back into playing poker again. The poker nights up in Monastery have become more and more competitive, and more and more fun since they’ve started, and it’s getting to the stage where absolutely anything can happen. First four cards on the flop all aces; check. Straight Flushes; check. Dean getting lucky on the river time and time again; check . Hell, we’ve even had Mario coin music counting our chips. It’s starting back again this thursday (though I did win an unofficial game New Year’s Day that took my winnings up to a 50% increase on what I’ve put in so far) and I can’t wait.I’ve got my chip and chair ready

And Finally…

Finally, I want to talk a bit about softball. I took this up in March 2009, hoping that I wouldn’t embarrass myself. And while I can’t say I’ve not done that (running off base in my first game, struggling to catch the ball for about 2 months), I’ve had so much fun doing it it doesn’t matter at all. I’ve met some truly cool people on the 1Z Blazzers – Tommy, Rach, Caro too many to list here (and I know I’d forget someone), we’ve had some memorable wins – No one who was there will forget both our victories against Marley and our final win against Munster 2 at IOST – and had a laugh all the while. Tommy, Steve and that broken wheelchair can definitely attest to that, as well as Air-Guitar Moore

On a final final note, myself and Jessica celebrated our one year anniversary this year. I’m sure it will be the first of many, and I can’t wait for each one of them.

So that’s it, my own happenings in the year of 2009. What were your best moments? Keep an eye out for my 2009 Awards, and hopefully it’ll be more of the same for Twenty-Ten…. Yes, I’m saying Twenty-Ten.

M

The weekend and new development

New post!

Weekend was good and bad. Liverpool were beaten 2-0 by Portsmouth, but then United had to go and get whooped 3-0 by Fulham. I really don’t know. Got to drown my sorrows meeting my girlfriend’s extended family though, so weekend wasn’t a total loss.

Decided this weekend that I’m going to do some personal development. I’ve been quite lazy regarding this recently, with the Monastery Poker Tour and Christmas among other things taking up the majority of my time. I’ve set my mind on a sports tracking site, it’s an idea I’ve had banging around for the best part of 4 months, mostly due to starting to play softball. I’m going to cater it towards my softball team, and see how that goes. I may also do up something quick for the Monastery Poker Tour, which is coming back after Christmas for its second season. (I really didn’t think I could fit so many inside jokes into one post).

I’m going to keep updates of my progress posted here, much like I did when doing my 4th year project in DCU. It kept my head focused, so I’m hoping it will do that again.

I’ll leave you with, in what was the highlight of the first rounds of poker (well, for me anyway), a picture of my after coming first and taking the plaudits, not to mention people’s money too:

This weekend will be quite busy

Suffering from a hangover is not a good way to start writing a blog post! Though I can’t complain as the WRI “12 Pubs Of Christmas” was brilliant (I’ll post on that a bit later, when I can remember everything).

Actually looking forward to the weekend, makes a change from when I worked in Dunnes and was in work every Saturday, always missing the football. So today, I’m going to stay at home, in my infamous house coat, possibly watch the football – will have to leave the house to see the United game tho – I don’t have ESPN at home. Then Jess is going to come over and we’ll probably enjoy the new Sky Player for XBOX. It’s so so handy, and actually has a suprisingly decent picture quality.

On to Sunday, and we’ll be heading over to Laura’s for some of her amazing rogan josh. And then it’s the usual Sunday plan; football, the last word and NFL on Sky Sports.

Into that aswell I have to get some time on MW2, Left 4 Dead 2 and help Stevy with his college java project…. I need more time