I’m still alive!

Been a while since I’ve posted hasn’t it? In fact, I think that’s the longest period I’ve gone without blogging since creating this website. In fairness, I’ve had perfectly good reasons for my absence from the blogosphere.

Firstly, I graduated from school a week ago. A very odd affair it was, leaving the place I’ve gone to day after day for the past six years, saying our final goodbyes. It’s also one of the rare occasions you can buy a pint for someone who’s been giving you homework and detention for the past few years. I’ve very fond memories of ol’ Lucan Community College. The friends and teachers I’ve met during my time there have had a great impact on me as a person, and for that I’m grateful. There were some very nice goodbyes from our teachers, and a couple of them even mentioned my blog to me, so it’s nice to think some of them are actually reading this thing! (Yet have never left a comment!)

The graduation ceremony was a very nice one, and I was pleased to be nominated for Student of the Year, and then was a finalist for it - good to get a bit of recognition!

Now to the heavy stuff, and the main reason I haven’t been posting on here lately. A week on from my graduation, and there’s six days until my Leaving Cert begins. Six feckin’ days!

It’s very strange to think that the exams we’ve been dreading and preparing for for the past six years are now only six days away. Strangely, I’m not panicking, perhaps because I’ve grown so accustomed to the idea of these exams that I’m just looking forward to getting them over with. The thought of walking out of that last exam is possibly the most beautiful image I could fathom in this brilliant mind of mine.

I’m really looking forward to the summer, and finally being able to work on my websites again. All this time I’ve had ideas brewing at the back of my mind, and I’m hoping the work ethic I’m developing right now because of the exams will carry on over to the summer and my online work.

I’m going to try to post on here during the exams whenever possible. It’ll be good for a) Other students to see my opinion of the exams and b) For me to look back on after I’ve gotten the results.

I’ve gotta head back. An Triail, Eavan Boland, Complex Numbers, Volcanoes, L’Obésité, Stalin’s Show Trials and how A is proportional to F - all await my attention! Somebody alert the authorities - it’s gonna be a wild night.

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It’s been another fine few days

Getting a bit repetitive eh?

Just a quick update before I turn in to grind out another blissful Monday morning.

Firstly, a thanks to Scoby, for keeping his word. He set himself a challenge of earning $200 online in the month of April, and if he failed, one person who’d commented his blog would win $20. Sadly (for him anyway) he failed. With my good luck lately, was there any doubt that I’d win the fecking thing? So cheers to Declan for that, would have been easy for him to lie and save himself $20.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my backlinks lately, and noticed another new one in there two days ago. I was led to this post. The author had seen a piece of mine in the Irish Times, and referred to me as an eloquent blogger. So, having looked around his blog for quite a while, I grew to really enjoy his writing, so I was pretty glad to have received a link and some approval from this guy, known on there only as Primal Sneeze. I had a look at the links in his sidebar, and found some really great Irish blogs that I’d never seen before. My own blog used to revolve around my online money making, and while I plan to get back into that after my exams, I probably prefer my more general posting or ranting. I read very few “Make Money Online” type blogs these days, and the links I found from Primal Sneeze will certainly be filling that void. This one in particular caught my attention. A columnist with the Times, her standard of writing is just excellent. Being a fairly confident writer myself, it’s rare I’ll be humbled by the quality of someone else’s writing, particularly on a blog, but this one did just that. I’ll stop my ass kissing now.

Any nerds reading this will probably relate to this next part. On Friday I signed up for a RapidShare account for one month, at a cost of €7. Basically this opens up a whole new galaxy of downloading at good speeds.

I can honestly say I have no idea what I’d been doing with my life for those miserable, wasteful 18 years before I bought a RapidShare account. This must be how people felt when they discovered the wheel, or fire.

Oh, congrats to the Man Utd fans out there, you deserved it.

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It’s been a fine few days

The past three days have been decent for me on all fronts.

Firstly, I had Monday and Tuesday off school, and just a half day today. The weather has been fantastic, which is really a rarity for Ireland, and I’ve been enjoying it by trying to do my study out in the back garden while soaking up some rays. My celtic skin can only burn however, never tan.

Yesterday I was mentioned in the Irish Times (no tabloid junk, thank you very much!) for the second time in two weeks, so I’m certainly not complaining there. They actually took a snippet (the first paragraph) of this post and left my name and website address. Funnily enough, yesterday evening while walking, enjoying the beautiful weather, I actually saw one of the teachers I was referring to in that post. I smiled and said hello and quickly walked on hoping she didn’t know I had made reference to her in a national newspaper that day.

Then today, I logged in to make this post, and noticed some strange backlinks to this blog. I investigated and noticed that Retire At 21 (a website that’s quite well known in the world of online money making) had included me in their list of the top 30 bloggers under the age of 21! This was complete with a link to my blog. Several others made a post about the list, so I’ve been getting a few links around the place and not even realising! Here’s the full post, read it and be happy for me.

I must admit I was very proud to have made the list (albeit at number 30!), especially considering I haven’t been working online much of late. While I may currently not be earning as much online as the others, my alexa rank and technorati rank aren’t bad at all (I hadn’t realised my site stats had improved so much), and I’m still younger than a good few of the people who are higher up than me. So little old walsho.net is holding it’s own.

And a huge thanks to Michael for considering me for the list, it really made my day!

While we’re on the online side of things, those lovable sods down at Google have decided to pick me back up from the gutter and give me back my PageRank. The site is once again a Google PageRank 2. Google you old softies!
Also, yesterday I bought some revision books for my exams, and realised later I’d been overcharged. Today I went in and as soon as she saw me, the girl apologised and took out a little bundle she’d put by for me with my money in it. Didn’t even have to ask!

So, a nice few days. I can only hope now that this continues until the end of my Leaving Cert, which is only four weeks away.

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