Thomil's Random Ramblings

Isn’t it strange? Sometimes, you want something really badly, try to twist and turn your finances to somehow be able to afford it, but still can’t make it work? And then, a few months later, you end up getting that object of your fancy anyway, without any effort? It happens very rarely, but it did happen to me earlier this year. My employer, an IT security company, had decided to allow all their employees to choose a number of high-tech gifts of their choosing, within certain limits, naturally. Those limits were more than generous however and have given me more than enough material for the next few articles on this blog. Anyway, one of the gifts I chose for myself was a new drone, the DJI Mini 2. There’s really nothing wrong with my DJI Spark , but it is getting on a bit, and I’d had my eyes on the Mini 2 ever since it was announced. I could never make the financial side work however, so when I got the opportunity to get it sent to me as a gift, I grabbed it with both hands. It was “on...

Well, today's the day. Exactly one year ago today, normality as we knew it ended in Ireland. In the morning hours of March 12th 2020, then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced that starting on the next day, Ireland would be moving into a partial lockdown. I've started calling it the "Missiles in Cuba" moment of my generation, as something that had been mostly academic suddenly turned into a very real thread. As my colleagues and I left work that day, there was a really weird vibe in the office, with jokes and humour covering up a very real sense of apprehension and worry. It was only supposed to be for two to three weeks, they said at the time. Yet, here we are, one year later It's been a year since I last saw most of my colleagues face to face, a year in which so many things changed, yet at the same time also stayed the same. Over the space of twelve months, Irish society has shown its worst, but also its best aspects, with the best aspect thankfully dominating. Larg...

You may have noticed that I recently bought a new tablet/2-1 device in the shape of the Microsoft Surface Go 2 . I’m currently writing an article about my experience with that device a few months down the road, so yes, I’m going to milk that particular subject for all it’s worth! However, while working on that particular article, and indeed while researching the Surface Go 2 before purchasing it, I couldn’t help but notice a certain pattern amongst most of the reviews on YouTube, as well as on the web in general. You could find hardly any reviews of the baseline model that I was looking into, no matter how hard you looked. Even reviewers who titled their reviews with the $399 price of the baseline model actually ended up reviewing the mid-range or even the top-of-the-line Intel M3 model. These reviews, while certainly interesting, don’t help anyone who’s labouring under budget limitations and may not be able to afford anything more than the baseline model. And that’s before you dive in...