Things that were true about me on 1st January 2012 that are not true on 31st December 2012

I've never been to Belgium, Poland, Skibereen or Argentina
I speak no Polish
I've never seen grouplove, Two Door Cinema Club, Stone Roses or Snow Patrol live
I've never had a tooth removed
I haven't published an article since I left IBM
I've never been to two weddings on two consecutive days
I've never been photographed with a mayor
I've never had a photo go viral
I've never been to a Boca Juniors game
I've never organised a film screening
I've never been interviewed on 98FM, Q102 or Phantom 105.2
I've never been to an Irish rugby international at Thomond Park
I am not followed on twitter by anyone with Irish international caps
I've never been to a wedding in the Southern Hemisphere
I've never gotten into the second round of the Facebook Hacker Cup
I don't own a raspberry pi, tablet computer, or giant bean bag
I've never given a presentation in my new job

Ireland Monthly Records

After figuring out the highest ranked team beaten, and lowest ranked side lost to, by recent managers a few weeks ago, I was reminded of Staunton's quote that we play better in March anyway (at least I think that's what it was, the only record I can find of it is here: http://www.munster-express.ie/sports/studsup/staunton-survives-and-its-all-to-play-for-in-september/ ) so I decided to see if I could use the same results set as before to find out what month we play best in. The results history I'm working off of is here if you want to check any of them: https://sites.google.com/site/tetsujin1979/matches
Month         P  W  Win %  D Draw %  L  Loss %  GF GF/G   C  C/G
January       0  0  0.00%  0  0.00%  0   0.00%   0    0   0    0
February     26 13 50.00%  6 23.08%  7  26.92%  36 1.38  24 0.92
March        41 24 58.54%  7 17.07% 10  24.39%  61 1.49  37 0.90
April        38 15 39.47%  8 21.05% 15  39.47%  45 1.18  45 1.18
May         106 35 33.02% 22 20.75% 49  46.23% 123 1.16 165 1.56
June         64 25 39.06% 21 32.81% 18  28.12%  77 1.20  71 1.11
July          1  0  0.00%  0  0.00%  1 100.00%   0 0.00   2 2.00
August       16  4 25.00%  7 43.75%  5  31.25%  19 1.19  21 1.31
September    56 26 46.43% 18 32.14% 12  21.43%  85 1.52  55 0.98
October      75 30 40.00% 24 32.00% 21  28.00% 128 1.71 106 1.41
November     54 20 37.04% 17 31.48% 17  31.48%  93 1.72  66 1.22
December      9  0  0.00%  1 11.11%  8  88.89%   8 0.89  26 2.89
GF = Goals For
GF/G = Goals for Per Game
C = Conceded
C/G = Conceded Per Game

So, the first thing to note, is that Staunton was right, with a 58% win ratio, March is our strongest month!
Technically, July is our weakest month, losing the only game we ever played in July, the 2-0 loss to Holland in World Cup '94. However, December is probably worse, losing 8 of 9 games played in the final month of the year, also the most goals conceded per game in any month, with over 2 goals per game
We've scored more goals in October than any other month, just ahead of May, but by .01 of a goal per game, November has the highest goals per game
May is comfortably our worst defensive month, conceding 165 goals (probably due to end of season syndrome) almost 60 more than the next worst, 106 in October

A Tale Of A Thumb

On Saturday evening, my friends and I returned from a day in Torun, a small town roughly halfway between Poznan and Gdansk, after attending a charity game between the Ireland fans group You Boys In Green (YBIG) and a local selection. Poland were playing the Czech Republic for a place in the knockout stages of the tournament, and, with the fanzone full to capacity, we headed to the main square to watch the game on one of the screens erected by its bars and restaurants. On the way there, one of the many volunteers for the city handed me a flier for a goodbye appreciation from the volunteers in the square on the following Monday afternoon. I took a quick snap of the flier in my left hand with only the edge of my thumb visible and tweeted the pic, using the free city wifi - https://twitter.com/tetsujin1979/status/214109757739503616/photo/1. Initially I didn't think anything more of it, it was one of many images I'd posted from Poland and another of the thousands of tweets I'd posted since joining the microblogging site After the game ended, and a downpour had convinced many of the fans to head home rather than risk being soaked, I checked twitter again and was surprised to see the image had been picked up by the sports and humour blog balls.ie - http://www.balls.ie/2012/06/16/crazy-poznan-is-throwing-a-goodbye-party-for-the-irish-fans/ - and had been retweeted several times The next morning I was surprised to see that Paddy Power had mentioned it on their twitter feed - https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/214281980760702976 - and credited me as the author of the pic. What followed on Monday caught me completely off guard, while browsing the Irish Independent's website, I noticed a headline for a goodbye party for the Irish fans in Poznan. Thinking this would be about the party itself, I opened the page only to have my photo staring back at me - http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/euro-2012/irish-news/so-lonely-round-the-streets-of-poznan-polish-city-throws-a-goodbye-party-for-irish-fans-3140886.html Finally, after the Ireland - Italy game I received a tweet from a former co-worker that my photo had appeared on Craig Doyle Live! The episode is still available on the RTE player - http://www.rte.ie/player/#!v=3321453 - at 7:30, I took a quick snapshot and you can see it here: Finally, using a site I built myself some time ago, I built a graph to show how my tweet progressed though the twittersphere - http://retweetgraph.appspot.com/Gallery?id=237001 - it received little traction until the RTESoccer account retweeted it and then it really took off, finishing up with 55 retweets, a personal best!