Anyway that got me to thinking about how kids nowadays are growing up with technology that to people from my generation and beyond is pretty mind-blowing. The magic of Facebook, Flickr! and Skype have enabled me to keep in close touch with my family who are thousands of miles away in Europe – in fact that probably know more about what’s going on in my life now than they would if I actually lived just around the corner!

I know they are eternally grateful for Skype and Facebook, allowing them as it does to get a regular dose of their beloved grandson Charlie. My Dad is obsessed with the Internet now and fondly refers to himself as a “silver surfer”.

For his part, Charlie, who is not yet 2 years old, is already a phone junkie. The image here was taken yesterday in Ireland where – he was calling his Dada (who was busy giving a Tech Briefing in his MIS class) and leaving a voicemail (see attached audio below).

A Voicemail From Charlie

Charlie already loves to come into the office and sit on my lap at the “puter” as he refers to it. The first thing he says when he does this is “Charlie call Nanny and Bumpy”. Here’s a video of him doing just that and talking to his grandparents in England over Sunday breakfast:

Sure, he’ll be tweeting before we know it!

In a project known as The EvoGrid, Silicon Valley researchers are attempting to harness the power of the Internet and the computing power of millions of machines to create an abstract simulation of the chemical origins of life on Earth. The aim is to create a plausible picture show of the really cool phenomenon which powered the origin of life on Earth and, possibly, how it may have emerged elsewhere in the Universe.

The main man behind the project, Bruce Damer, is the founder of a research company that creates 3-D spacecraft and mission simulations for NASA and the space community. Damer and his chief architect, Peter Newman, are developing the EvoGrid concept by adapting GROMACS, a powerful open source molecular dynamics simulator originally developed at The University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Basically it aims to digitally recreate the conditions that existed 4 billion years ago – an ocean rich in chemicals (the so called primordial soup) with particles interacting and connecting. The simulation will then allow artificial nature to take it’s course. The following clip highlights how this might happen:

From a technical perspective, the Evogrid is conceived to have volunteer computers become part of an interconnected grid for maximum processing capacity. These computers would receive data from the EvoGrid simulation engine. The simulation would essentially consist of a vast virtual ocean of interacting numbers that would model the time before complex life forms emerged. To know whether self-organization is occurring, the program would look for persistent patterns within the data.

I’m a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and on reading about the background and historical context for this project, it was no surprise to find out that he was involved in some of the early conferences (along with Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). For me, the implications of the experiment, if it is successful, are particularly fascinating with regard to the whole evolution versus creation debate – how, for example, might it affect people’s sense of God? Interesting philosophical thought

Of course, if it’s all too technical to comprehend, you could just go and play the latest incarnation of the SIM game series called Spore – pretty much the same concept but probably a whole lot more fun!

If you are interested, there is a good New York Times article on the project here. I will definitely be keeping my eye on future developments.

There is of course a good reason for that – our little bundle of joy, Charlie, arrived last December (5th) and has been the center of attention ever since (much to Maya’s annoyance;). At some stage I’ll put some pictures up on the blog, but in the meantime there are plenty of pics and video clips over at my Flickr! site.

So now we have a proper little family, in our own little house (which now also has a white picket fence for authenticity). All that remains is the wedding of course – as most of you know I finally proposed to Lorna on Christmas Day (only seemed fair after he she gave me the best present of all in Charlie). We are currently making plans for the exact date and location – all that I can reveal at this stage is that it will definitely be in 2009, somewhere in the US (yes, I am the official wedding planner!).

We’ve obviously been very busy since the last post and have travelled far and wide, in no particular order, skiing in Colorado a couple of times, Ireland and England to visit the folks, San Diego, Las Vegas, Toronto, New York, Seattle, Vancouver, Miami… We’ve had visits from Paddy and Lorna sr., Mom and Paul, Dan and Leonie. I think Dad may even be coming over soon!

We’ve planned our family vacation, ahem holidays, for August and are heading off to Hawaii (Maui to be precise) – can’t wait for that. Before then we are going to Boston and heading up to Vermont to look at a potential wedding venue, Lorna will be back in Dublin and in Edinburgh early June. So it’s busy, busy, busy…

I will try and blog again properly soon.

First things first, we bought a house. Having decided to look for a slightly bigger place, so that I could have a proper, dedicated office space and not be forced to decamp from the spare room every time we had visitors (which we love, hint, hint!), we started a brief search. For a week we looked at rented accommodation and decided that if we were going to spend that kind of money on rent, we could just as easily buy somewhere (property is cheap, relatively speaking , in Texas). So we began our search and looked at a few (5 or 6) houses and then amazingly within a week, we stumbled upon a jewel that had only just gone onto the market (we may even have been the first to view) – we quite literally viewed on Friday afternoon, put an offer in on Saturday morning (a speculative offer I might add) and much to our delight (well Lorna’s in particular) had it accepted on Saturday afternoon.

A hectic 12 days ensued whilst we had all the surveys and tests done, some haggling and bartering, a holiday to Austria and hey presto we were house owners. We exchanged contracts at the beginning of May. Since then we’ve had the builders in refurbishing the kitchen and the master bathroom. We finally moved in last weekend (June 23rd) and spent the next week moving the last odds and sods from the apartment. The extreme heat and humidity alternating with monsoon-like rain storms, made moving a real ordeal – I’m sure I’ve lost about half a stone just carrying loads down the stairs from apartment to car. Still it’s all done now and I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier – a real home-owner at last!

I will blog a bit more about the house a little later.

Second part of the big change, is that we also got a dog – well I got a dog, for my birthday to be precise. A 10 week old chocolate Labrador puppy, who I’ve named Maya – she is absolutely gorgeous, great fun and lots of work!

We had her for a week in the apartment, which was a bit of a challenge with toilet training (or potty training as they call it here) – however we enrolled her in Puppy Potty Training at a place called Urban Tails (in Midtown Houston) and they have worked wonders. We only had the odd accident in the apartment and since we’ve moved into the house and she has the run of the garden, no problems whatsoever. She is an absolute delight and great practice for the final piece of news….

Saving the best for last, yes, it’s finally happened, we are going to be parents – Lorna is expecting a baby in December!!!! We are both absolutely delighted and cannot wait for the new arrival. Perfect timing with the new house too, plenty of space for the Grandparents to come and stay and help out

I’ll try and write a bit more about the house and all the good stuff that’s happening in the next few days.

Mainly we’ve been skiing – in fact, we’ve been up to Colorado three times in the past few months. Our first trip was in December for a long weekend – we stayed in Breckenridge at The Four Peaks Inn, which we can highly recommend. The hosts Shannon and JJ are a lovely, easy-going couple and they provide great breakfasts. The B&B is ideally located for the Main Station lift area (about a 3 minute walk).

Breckenridge is a great ski village and has plenty of character, with copious bars, restaurants and shops. A couple of drawbacks are the high altitude – Lorna suffered from altitude sickness on the first morning – and the ski area is extremely exposed so suffers from being cold and windy. Not that we could complain, we had blues skys and plenty of powder. We also drove across to Vail (about 40 minutes from Breck) to ski on the Sunday – we were blown away by the size of the ski area and the facilities (although the village did seem more custom-built than Breck) and we had a fantastic day in the sun-soaked back-bowls.

We returned to Breck for a week in early January with Mom and Paul, who were over visiting from home. This time we stayed in The Fireside Inn – slightly less central than The Four Peaks, but the free village bus stops directly outside the door and brings you to the lifts in less than 10 minutes. The Inn is run by a British couple – Andy & Nikki Harris – in regimented style, which clearly harks back to Andy’s military background. It made for an entertaining week anyway, as Lorna and Paul in particular struggled to come to terms with the strict breakfast regime

The skiing was fantastic – there was a huge storm the weekend we arrived, ensuring plenty of fresh snow but it was mainly clear for most of the week. The first day in Breck was pretty cold however due to the wind, but we also managed to get over to Vail (twice) and Keystone (once) both of which are less exposed. Unfortunately Mom also suffered from altitude sickness towards the end – Major Harris seemed to think this was due to the alcohol, which is apparently three times stronger at that altitude (as he kept reminding us;-). All in all however a great week.

Myself and Lorna returned to Colorado last weekend but decided to stay in Frisco this time, which is about 10 minutes from Breck on the I-70 and thus better located for Vail (just under 30 minutes) and Keystone (about 20 minutes). It’s also significantly lower than Breck, so altitude sickness is less of a problem. We stayed in The Woods Inn and I can definitely recommend this place – breakfast is $5.50 for as much as you can eat, the poached eggs, bacon and blueberry pancakes were absolutely delicious!

We skied Vail on Saturday – snowfall made visibility pretty flat and we didn’t have our best day. It was also the first time we experienced huge weekend crowds and had problems finding parking. We learned our lesson however and had less problems in Keystone the next day, arriving slightly earlier to miss the rush. Despite the falling snow, visibility was fantastic and we had a great day. From a skiing perspective I would definitely recommend Keystone to anyone planning to visit Colorado – it ‘s extremely well laid out and the runs are very long (unlike Breck, which suffers from having lots of lifts but relatively short runs IMO) – there’s plenty for all levels of skier too.

Other than skiing, as I say we’ve had plenty of visitors. Mom and Paul came back with us after Christmas for New Years in Houston and Colorado for 3 weeks. Prior to that Lornas parents came over in November for Thanksgiving for 3 weeks. Currently we have Amanda, Donal and Oisin visiting. This has been great and has allowed us to experience all the Houston/Texas tourist attractions with our visitors.

Two weekends ago we all went to a real cowboy ranch for a long weekend – the Mayan Dude Ranch in Banderas (just past San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country). We all went not knowing what to expect and without exception we all had a great time. There are plenty of activities to keep everyone occupied including horse riding, fishing, shooting, roping, dancing, hayrides – all with REAL cowboys on a real ranch, I hasten to add – but equally it can be very relaxing just taking in the beautiful hill country scenery and wildlife (deer, armadillos).

Myself and Lorna rode to the cowboy breakfast both mornings and experienced the stereotypical “blazing saddles” fare of beans and bacon, whilst being serenaded by a cowboy guitar player (Reuben Darnell). A nice way to start the day. We also went horse riding both days, which I really enjoyed – western style riding is certainly a lot easier than European style!

The ranch was all inclusive, so alcoholic drinks were complimentary from 11am until 1opm – we were able to take back a couple of pitchers of beer to our cabin each night to enjoy whilst Oisin was put to bed

On the return journey we spent the night in San Antonio and visited The Alamo – which bizarrely is smack bang in the middle of the city centre. It’s a very american/texan experience and a bit strange for europeans, but interesting nonetheless. San Antonio is nice and compact and relatively small for a city – so there is a great, bustling atmosphere around the city centre and the River Walk. We had a fantastic meal at the Little Rhein Steakhouse courtesy of Donal and Amanda.

Other than that we have been keeping very busy – plenty of golf (I’m slowly improving!), learning Spanish and becoming avid followers of the Houston Rockets basketball team.

Anyway, I will endeavor to keep things a little more up-to-date in the forthcoming months.

Anyway the accomodation was secondary to the real reason for our visit – to see The Killers playing at Vegoose. Which we succeeded in doing. And they were AMAZING.

Leonie had come all the way from Birmingham just for the special occasion (and to visit us of course!) and I don’t think it was a wasted journey. There certainly aren’t enough superlatives to describe how good they were – it was a feelgood singalong of Brobdingnagian proportions and I think this little clip shows what Leo thought!

There are a few hilarious video clips in the same vein, which feature Leo emitting the loudest screams ever heard by mankind (however I am refusing to upload them in the interests of animal safety, if they do that to the human ear, imagine what damage poor dogs and cats will suffer!). There are numerous photos from both Leo’s and Lorna’s (HERE) cameras which will be uploaded to Flickr in due course. In the meantime the official event photos can be seen HERE – if you haven’t bought Sam’s Town yet, do so, it’s brilliant and it WILL become a classic.

Last weekend saw our first official US “roadtrip” – we packed the bikes and golf clubs into the car and headed west to Austin. Lorna had made the accomodation arrangements, which were as usual excellently organised…. not!!!!! (Lorna just wrote that – the cock-up came when she booked our SF hotel for the Austin weekend and our Austin B&B for the SF weekend!). Anyway we did have accomodation – Brava House – and it turned out to be wonderful.

The drive took us on the I-10 west towards San Antonio, veering off on the TX-71 to Austin – unfortunately due to the late hour and falling darkness, we were unable to enjoy much of the scenery, so we amused ourselves by telling one another ghost stories instead and imagined what might happen if we were to break down in the Texan outback with only Chainsaw Massacre type dwellings in the near vicinity

Anyway we arrived safely enough and were greeted in the guest house car park by Mr.Chocolate (well that’s what we called him!) the house cat – not sure exactly what breed he was, but he was the most gorgeous cock-eyed cat I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

We had a wonderful weekend which included a lovely bike ride around the South Austin area, a splashabout in Barton Springs and a great coffee at the Bouldin Creek Coffee House on Saturday. On Saturday evening we went to see Josh Ritter who was unfortunately only supporting Jamie Cullum (why?!?!?!) at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q – he was fantastic and worth the entry fee, which was quite lucky cos I couldn’t stomach more than a couple of songs from the headline act.

Sunday was spent wandering aimlessly around downtown Austin and doing touristy stuff – which did include eating a wonderful and extremely cheap Vitnamese meal in Mekong River – before we headed back east to Houston. This time we were able to enjoy the Texan scenery (I saw we, Lorna actually spent the entire journey snoring her head off, whilst I sang Josh Ritter songs to my hearts content!;-)

Anyway, I’ve already backfilled a couple of posts from my activities in the past couple of weeks – comments welcome!

It really was great weekend. We arrived late Friday evening after a 3 1/2 hour flight from Houston and took a taxi to our hotel – Beresford on Sutter Street (downtown), which despite the circumstances of our booking turned out to be really nice – the room was compact but clean and tidy.

We decided to head straight out and went for a stroll around Union Square/Market Street in search of a bar and liquid sustenance – we ended up back on Sutter Street and following some local advice headed up to the The Red Room, which strangely enough was very red but kind of cool. There was busy Friday night crowd, but we managed to find a seat and proceeded to get trolleyed – this was mainly down to Lorna not liking either of the first two cocktails she ordered, meaning I was forced to drink them as well as my beer before ordering more cocktails and another beer. Anyway, from what I can remember (very little!) the cocktails were good and reasonably priced. Suffice to say we slept well that night when we finally stumbled back to the hotel in the early hours.

Despite the hangover, we managed to get up relatively early on Saturday morning and decided to take a walk down Market Street to the Farmers Market situated at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. The market offers organic produce from regional farmers and ranchers and is well worth a visit – the sounds, smells and free tastings are brilliant – just pity we weren’t in a position to take advantage of the goods on offer (although I know Lorna would have spent a fortune if it had been in Houston!).

After the market we continued up the Embarcadero toward Fishermans Wharf and then headed off up Telegraph Hill via the Greenwich Steps, which were pretty steep at the bottom and a little bit scary for anyone suffering from vertigo (like me!)- also a good fitness test! The effort was rewarded however when we got to the top with views on all sides of the city, Golden Gate and Alcatraz. We took plenty of pictures here and indeed during the whole weekend, which can be viewed on my flickr account .

From there we headed down into North Beach, the Italian district, and stopped for a coffee in Caffe Trieste – a lovely little family cafe with a band providing musical entertainment.

We then wandered up through Chinatown (Grant Street) and took a break in the park in St.Mary’s Square before trekking up the very steep California Street where one of the cable car/tram lines run. Deciding it was time for lunch we headed down Jones Street for lunch at Dottie’s True Blue Cafe – as the guide book (Lonely Planet) warned there was a queue, but as the guide book also promised it was worth the wait. We only queued for about 20 minutes before being seated and we were treated to a yummy brunch with a neverending supply of coffee and water. It definitely hit the spot.

We had already decided to try and grab a taxi to head over to the Golden Gate Park for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Unfortunately nobody told us that hailing a cab on the street in San Francisco is virtually impossible and we ended up wandering through the very dodgy Tenderloin district – Lorna eventually decided standing on street corners was attracting way too much unwanted attention. We ended up down at the Civic Centre and eventually caught a bus up Haight to the entrance of the park.

After a 40 minute hike (my map reading skills aren’t what they used to be and the park map wasn’t to scale!), we eventually made it to the festival area. There was a huge crowd making the most of the free entry to see some of the biggest names in Bluegrass – lord knows why or how Billy Bragg got invited (I’m guessing something to do with the Woody Guthrie connection – anyway a link to Billy’s blog of the event HERE), but as ever it was well worth it. It was gorgeous weather, a gorgeous setting and Billy didn’t let us down (of course he never does!). It’s so great that having introduced Lorna to him, she loves him as much as I do.

We had a lovely romantic meal on Saturday evening at Plouf – a gorgeous bottle of Chablis, Moules Marinieres and Frites, delicious Fish & Chips (me) and the Bouillabaisse (Lorna). Highly recommended.

Sunday was probably the most fun day I’ve had in yonks (althought to be fair there have been a lot of fun days since I met Lorna). We hired one of these things – absolutely the most fun way to see San Francisco! They have a maximum speed of about 35 mph, are louder than a Ferrari (at least when you’re sat inside) and are so low to the ground you might as well be sat on a skate board! They are ideally suited to the famous hilly streets of SF and also come with in-built GPS tourist guide – we switched it off and went native! Suffice to say we had a whale of a time – the highlight of which was getting a police escort off the Golden Gate Bridge (which is basically a motorway and not suitable for mopeds!). We thought we looked like the protagonists from CHIPS! and elicited lots of attention – but probably we looked like complete dorks in those shiny helmets Make up your own mind from the pics on Flickr.

I had previously been to a baseball game – the NY Mets – so it wasn’t completely new. The Astros were taking on the Cincinnati Reds and eventually won 5-3 after taking an early lead. It has to be said that it wasn’t the most exciting spectacle – in fact the scoreboard prompted crowd sing-along of The Yellow Rose of Texas (I think) during one of the innings intervals was far more amusing. Almost but not quite as amusing as Lorna cheering for the wrong team, as the Reds hit a couple of home runs late on – in her defence the team colours on the night looked very similar

Of course we consumed the obligatory hot dogs and lite beer and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. We even got our photo taken: