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It feels like I should be getting through this training faster. Since the last post I’ve had one successful lesson, between bad weather (like today) or just not finding a free slot to do it.

The one lesson I did do was pretty much a repeat of the previous lesson, too, although the weather was better the second time around so there was more that could be done. Practiced recovering from a couple of spiral dives, which are a bit like steep turns gone horribly wrong. Nice bit of G-force to keep things interesting. The instructor also let me do the radio work (which was... terrifying), the takeoff (didn’t do too badly there!) and the landing (with was very.. er.. Ryanair-esque).

No lesson today because of crappy weather - cloud cover at 500ft - but managed to practice pre-flight checks at least. Other then that, just been reading through the big blue book.

Before the last post here I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t put anything up for about a month or so, after promising to post “regularly”... well, it’s probably best I wasn’t holding myself to that because it’s now 2018, nearly three years later. Woo, consistency. I actually had another blog for a while with some pictures of an electric car, and a mongrel Ikea desk design that worked pretty well, but it was self-hosted and I got bored patching it, so it’s gone to blog heaven now.

I’ve recently started learning to fly - having spent the best part of 30 years with my head in the clouds (and about 16 years playing PC flight simulators) I was convinced to actually finally go for it through encouragement and vouchers for intro lessons from Kat, and discovering a bunch of Youtube channels about aviation for reasons other than airline flying (Flightchops and Matt Guthmiller being the main culprits). Turns out I’m not completely insane, although maybe just a little in an Irish context.

It started with some email back-and-forth with NFC in Weston, and a chat over coffee with one of the instructors there about what’s involved, as well as a class 2 medical exam in a clinic in town. I’ve done two lessons (didn’t get to fly during one of them, damn Irish weather, but poked and prodded at the plane and still learned a lot), and really am still just at the start of the whole process.

2 and three-whole-quarter hours logged in that blue book so far!

My plan is, roughly, get my PPL, fly for fun a little on rental aircraft rates (there’s a bunch of places in Ireland you can visit in a little aeroplane that you could definitely get to by other means, but flying there is just more fun), build some hours in my logbook, maybe look at getting an instrument rating and one or two longer trips, and just be happy with it as a hobby. An insanely expensive and almost impossible to fund hobby, but a hobby nonetheless.

I have no real interest in a commercial licence right now, although who knows a few years down the line. I’m pretty certain I won’t ever want to go the airline pilot route, but there might be other options when I start getting old and jaded about computers.

Of course it might not work out at all (it costs a tonne and there are plenty of exams and tests to screw up along the way) but at least I can say I’ve tried it.

This lovely horse took me on my last lesson - everything’s even still attached.

So far I’m enjoying the learning curve. From the outside it kind of seems like it should be like a more intense version of learning to drive, but it feels more like a college course with all the theory (between studying the book and the classroom sessions, I’ve only spent maybe 10% of the time investment so far actually in the cockpit). And the officlal theory part hasn’t even actually started yet, there are a few weeks of structured pre-exam ground school lessons to do too.

So much for the idea that I might update this thing regularly. At least my phone won't let me forget about it with notifications, at least.

So much has happened in the last few weeks. Not much guitar playing (although more than zero, so, success!). I built a new computer to play games on, and it's wonderful. And it doesn't sound like it's about to take off when you run GTA4 on it. All the marketing guff about Asus DirectCU heat sinks/fans being cool and quiet turned out to be true!

Dallas

(the lack of a real header button on this tumblr editor is annoying).

Last week, work sent me to Dallas for a few days to meet up with a vendor who was going to the office there. The work bit of it went great, and I got to finally meet some people I'd been talking on the phone to for over a year now.

Dallas itself though is such a nice place (or rather, the edges of it, and Fort Worth a few miles down the road. Didn't get time to venture downtown). Honestly, I would have preferred to drag everyone over then then to come home by the end of it. The stereotypical friendly Texan thing is one hundred percent accurate - it isn't the same sort of forced friendliness you can get sometimes in the other US major cities, it was genuinely warm friendliness.

The weather is a huge improvement too. It was icey cold the week I was there (between -1 and -10 degrees C for most of the week, there was snow), but there was no wind and very little rain. If it were normal weather it apparently would have been sunny the whole time.I'll take those sorts of weather patterns any day over the North Atlantic muck we've been bombarded with in Ireland for the last few weeks.

The food... steak. Everywhere. 'Nuff said. And it's more tender than anything you're likely to find on this side of the pond.

Team Ireland tryouts

I got back from Dallas yesterday (Saturday) morning at 8am. Today I got to referee to the Team Ireland tryouts for the Roller Derby World Cup. I don't want to say too much about it (it feels a bit unprofessional to talk about how refereeing a particular event went), but it really does feel kind of cool to have been that deeply involved with any sport at a national level. Something that directly affects how this country's team will perform at an international level. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that I'll be refereeing the World Cup itself, but I'll happily take my little part of it.

It was also awesome to see some of the best skating and gameplay that this country had to offer, all in the one (giant) room.

I've just spent the last hour playing guitar, after a long, long absence of playing properly. And when I say "properly", I mean without any idea of how music theory is supposed to work, but at the time I could make some stuff sound like the MP3 after a few hours of trying to play from tabs, over and over again.

I have learned things about myself from doing this:

My brain remembers lots of things, my hands have forgotten everything though.

Especially tremolo picking.

Drop-C tuning seems to be the home of a lot of easier songs - at least, the ones that seemed easiest to 16 year old me. This is annoying when you don't have an electric tuner to hand and you've gone back to being tone deaf.

To my surprise, my brain remembers how to play "One" by Metallica.

Not so surprisingly, my hands are having none of it. Damn feeble muscle memory. Especially the tremolo picking.

It's currently a dodgy shade of white (with some clumps of yellow and red paint samples poking through) around the fireplace and chimney area, and the original yellow everywhere else. Combined with the black curtains we put in yesterday, the room looks awful.

However! There is a plan. And this is all part of it. The current dodgy white is just an undercoat to put on an orangey red. The rest of the old yellow will become a much nicer white. Combine this with the black curtains, the new sofa and armchair that's coming in a few weeks, and the yet-to-be-chosen-but-probably-some-extremely-light-whiteish-wood-shade laminate floor and it should look quite good.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how it would be cool if I could start (and keep) writing into one of these "blog" things. I signed up for a tumblr account years ago, but so far only use it to follow other folks. Hopefully I'll be able to keep this up and make it more of a two way thing though (hey look, that pig over there is putting on aviator goggles...).

It's been a good Christmas. A little short for my liking but hopefully next year will be better planned in terms of spare holiday days. This is what I get for spending too much time on roller derbying. It started off with the usual friendmas dinner here - I felt a little bad for dragging everybody out to Blanchardstown for it, but it was a great night. It was also the first time we've had a large group of people over in the house - seemed to work out well for this though.  The ham, as usual,  disappeared without trace in minutes because of how Cian cooks it.

There was Christmas itself then - everybody has their own Christmas rituals and things that they do so I won't get too much into it, but it was a good few days. Got to see my whole family, which I only realised this year has become somewhat rare with one of them moving to the UK. A full family sitting-around-drinking-session now involves all of the girlfriends too, so anywhere up to ten people. Also got to see a lot of Kat's family who I hadn't seen in a while, which was great (bar the board games, jesus the board games).

New Year's Eve in theotherreceive and Ornat's house was another good night - started with a game of Catan on the crappiest board ever (where's all the damn coal!?), Chinese, then a lot of drinking and shouting the countdown with Jules Holland. There were a lot of photos too, Ornat even made us look respectable in them. 

We climbed Bray head the next day (after a pre-emptive feed in Porterhouse Bray - need to go back there). Something I'd never done before.

So, that was my Christmas period. I resumed working for The Man on Thursday (he's really not that bad), it was a bit annoying to go back before most but at least come Monday I'll have already dipped my toes in, whereas everybody else will be still trying to remember what it is they do for a living by then.

Future blog posts probably won't be as long as this, and hopefully they'll be a bit more interesting. Hopefully they'll happen more than once a year too. One can always dream, I guess.