Rosalie gets photographed with various relatives

During the past week Rosalie has been photographed in the company of various luminaries:

her uncle Hans-Günther

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her great-aunt Hilde

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her big brother Liam

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her cousin Corina,

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aunt Ilona and cousin-once-removed Celina

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She even had herself photographed in front of the flowers sent by her grandmother, the "original" Rosalie Cassidy.

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Not to be outdone by his little sister, Liam had himself photographed with a motorcycle helmet on his head (don't ask why).

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After all this photographic action, a little rest was in order for both kids and their father.

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Update to Class of '87 Post

Here's an update to my post on the St. Michael's Class of 1987. after some great feedback from Rob, Alan and Garrett. Errors in my original post are stricken through, updates are bold.

• Alan Healy: After spells of investment banking and South Afican brick factory founding, Alan is now an author of a sci-fi book, Tommy Storm. I attempted to purchase it here, but the webshop wasn't feeling good that day. I have a sourcing order in with Amazon.co.uk, (4-6 weeks). Alan tells me that he's in discussion with distributors for a re-launch which should ease the ordering situation. Update: Books can be bought no problem from the Eason website which is linked from Alan's website - & all their data is correct. As regards a "relaunch", a UK publisher will relaunch the book with a decent marketing budget next spring & are demanding a sequel - which means the current crop of books will be rare first editions! Alan is based in Dublin with his American wife and baby daughter.
  

• Barra Faughnan: Barra's a barrister, see his professional credentials. He also gets link love from Wikipedia for winning the 1991 Irish Times National Debating Championship individual title.

• Barry Sheehan: Tricky, as there are a few. Barry's email address gave me the clue to search with the term Heineken. Then you can discover that he's the National Sales Manager for Heineken Ireland.
  

• Breffni Gray: This is cool, Breffni's got a family diving business going in Connemara. Next time I'm on the West Coast of Ireland I'll go for a lesson.
  

• David Ganly: According to Google, David could be a used car salesman or fund manager or Arizona realtor. The jury is out on this one. Update: David is an actor based in London. He recently appeared at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in Cavalcaders by Billy Roche, but does most of his work in the UK. he's married to an English actress. See David's Voiceover profile here.
  

• David Kelly: Unfortunately David's GoogleJuice has been hijacked by the unfortunate weapons inspector who was hounded to suicide by the vast right-wing conspiracy. There may be more info hidden in the about 75,600,000 results, but I was not that diligent in my search.
  

• Derick Mulvey: Could he be Aer Lingus' Senior Sim Specialist who took part in a 2002 FLIGHT SIMULATOR ENGINEERING & MAINTENANCE CONFERENCE? Sounds plausible to me . Update: Derick Mulvey is an actors' agent with Macfarlane Chard. He's based in Dublin & is effectively their Dublin office.

• Edward Gleeson: No data available
  

• Garrett Quigley: Is currently running across China for charity. In his own words "The Gobi March www.racingtheplanet.com/gobimarch is a self-supported footrace across 250 kilometers of the Gobi Desert in China". Otherwise seems to be living the post-colonial high life in Hong Kong. Update: Garrett successfully completed the Gobi March, and raised a lot of money for the Child Welfare Scheme.
  

• Garry Keogh: Safety Officer of the Shankill Radio Flying Club.
  

• Gavin Quinn: Playwright and director. Artistic Director of the contemporary independent Dublin-based theatre company Pan Pan.
  

• Hugh Widdis: works for the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Research and Library Services.
  

• James Kelly: Film-maker and founder of independent production company Feenish. The site looks good James, I'll look out for your productions in future!

• Joseph Doran: works for an actuarial company, but no other leads.

• Kealan McCowen: not recognisable from Google results. Update: Kealan McCowen is working as a trader with CSFB in Tokyo. He's married to a German woman & they have 3 kids.

• Kevin Reynolds: Actuary (this I know because I met him a couple of times between 1987 and 1998). Picture number 14 in this link.

• Macartan Cassidy: Played at being an industrial mathematician, then became an IT consultant. Has a 2-year-old son and a heavily pregnant wife newborn daughter. If you're reading www.macartan.de, then you probably know enough about MC.

• Mark Caffrey: works for Ulster Bank and keeps a low profile online.

• Mark McKeever: works for Tesco, and any Google results he may have are masked by a football player of the same name.

• Mel Duignan: works for Canada Life, and wrote a letter to Time magazine criticising the Chinese government.

• Michael McCarthy: Not sure. If he's there, then he's swamped by other results.

• Miguel Favela: He could be this guy on LinkedIn, but I don't know.
  

• Neil Brady: Hard to say. There are 6 Neil Bradys on LinkedIn. He might be one of those, or not.
  

• Niall Fitzpatrick: Niall is photographing people in Baggot Street.
  

• Peter Crann: Peter seems to be doing a lot of creative stuff in Sligo and Spain. The painting looks great.

• Raymond Donegan: head honcho in the Re-union organisation activities. Very professional Internet presence here.
  

• Robert Reid: Became an accountant, and worked at several companies to judge from the various legacy email addresses I've had from him over the years. Was living in Delgany at last count with wife plus 2 kids. Update: it turns out that Rob's son Harry is 2 months younger than my son Liam, and his daughter Zoe is 3 months older than my daughter Rosalie.
  

• Stephen Duffy: Pilot with CityJet. Shares name with a host of other people. I bumped into him in Turin airport in 1998, and he seemed to be doing well.
  

• Stephen Scaife: Works for an engineering firm in SanFrancisco (I'm jealous, SF is a great place to live).

My previous take on these biographies was that there is more than average creativity visible. The new info from Alan suggests a pattern for non-Irish spouses...

If anyone else has further info, please comment.

Mother and daughter come home

Yesterday was a long day. To get out of bed at 3, have a new daughter at 5, and get home by 7:30 was hard enough. Then to get Liam and dogs organised, text messages sent, blog updated, errands run etc. was enough to keep me busy till lunchtime.
A big thank you goes out to Ralf and Ute, who took Liam in the middle of the night, and subsequently lent me their daughter Anne to keep Liam amused in the swimming pool yesterday afternoon. Anne came with myself and Liam yesterday evening to pick up Heike and Rosalie from the hospital, here are all 5 of us sitting on the hospital bed.

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Liam was very happy to finally meet his new sister, and proudly sat her on his knee...

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We passed by Heike's brother Harald on the way from the hospital, finally getting home at about 21:00. The neighbours came out in force for an impromptu Sektempfang, which was great.

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Eventually we managed to get to bed at about midnight, having been on our feet for 21 hours. Here are the kids finally asleep...

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This morning there was time for another couple of pics:

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and here are the happy siblings together

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What's that in real money?

For the imperialists out there...

3 560 grams = 7.84845653 pounds

53 centimeters = 20.8661417 inches

Rosalie Wilma Anne Cassidy

Our daughter was born this morning!!!
The timeline:
03:01: Heike woke me to say this is it. Shower, shave.
03:30: Short round with dogs.
03:50: dropped Liam to Ralf & Ute Lorusso across the street
03:53: In the car
04:15: arrived Mannheim Diakonie
04:30: Heike gets into the birthing pool
04:45: I receive harsh but fair warning that my breathing tips are not appreciated
05:06: There she is :-)

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and here

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and here

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Sunday afternoon at the pool

We spent the afternoon in the Tiergarten Schwimmbad today, as the weather finally started resembling summer. Liam brought along his friend Lily, and they had a great time together.

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Just like Liam, Lily is growing up bilingual, in her case German and Spanish (her father is from Chile). Already Liam has picked up one or two words - he often says Agua for water. It's great that kids can learn these things so easily.

Cory Doctorow's take on DRM legislation

The venerable EFF old hand Cory Doctorow has written a long and interesting expose of the back-room dealing which goes into DRM governance and legislation. He quotes Otto von Bismarck (not a known supporter of open government): "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
I have yet to see a situation in which legislation and technology mix well. Too often the legislators are either out of their depth in understanding the technical details, or just plain corrupt. Can anyone think of another reason for the following governmental decisions? (my best guess in brackets):

1. Ireland's RFID passport (Incompetence)
2. Germany's Bundestrojaner (Incompetence mixed with Ideology)
3. The US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Corruption)

In each of these cases, an atrocious piece of legislation has been passed without real consideration for the technology and costs involved. The negative impact for me personally from the first two are degraded security and privacy. The DMCA impacts me tangentially by giving the content industry free hand to be foolish, and kill their own industry.
Any other guessed causes? Feel free to comment.

Politically incorrect factoids

There's an amusing collection of politically incorrect factoids posted on Psychology Today. The post is an excerpt from the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa.
In short, the insights are as follows, with my comments in [square brackets]

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them) [MC: and in other news, milk turns sour if you leave it out of the fridge. Who paid for this research?]
2. Humans are naturally polygamous [MC: hmm, Mormons are natural? Not so sure about this...]
3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy [MC: The G.B. Shaw quote is good - "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one."]
4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim [MC: because they're hoping to get laid in heaven. The challenge is to convince them to enter the afterlife alone]
   
5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce [MC: the idea is that dads want to pass on more wealth to sons than daughters, therefore stick around]
6. Beautiful people have more daughters [MC: My parents will enjoy this]
7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals [MC: Strong early careers leading to mediocrity, apparently]
8. The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of [MC: more or less the same as #1, we males do silly things to impress young females. Guilty]
9. It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male) [MC: Alpha males sow and reap. Believable]
10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist [MC: Men are pigs, but not evil pigs]

The PT article gives considerably less trite background to these points, and is well worth a read, regardless of how seriously you take the field of evolutionary psychology.

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Ultrasound #9

I just got a call from Heike to say that her latest ultrasound appointment went well this morning. My iGoogle Pregnancy Countdown Ticker tells me that we're on 37 Weeks and 5 Days (8.67 Months). The estimated weight is now 3400 grams.

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Liam makes his pregnant mother's life easier

One of the more difficult things for Heike in the latter stages of her pregnancy has been lifting our first-born, now going on 14 kilos. Thoughtful son that he is, Liam has responded to Heike's needs by learning to climb up onto the changing table by himself. Play the video to see how he does this.

Sunday morning at the zoo

As forward-thinking parents, we splashed out for a yearly family ticket for Heidelberg zoo. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours there, which Liam enjoyed a lot. Click on the picture for the full set.

From Sunday mornin...

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