From the beautiful, curved span of floor-to-ceiling windows in their penthouse apartment high above Temple Bar, ELF Technologies Ltd computer systems administrator Maura McHugh and PaceMetrics Ltd programmer Martin Feeney look out over Dublin's rooftops towards Dublin Castle.
For most people, the dramatic sitting room and its spectacular perch would be the focal point of a hip, twentysomething home. Yet a visitor cannot help but feel that the true household centre of gravity resides in the relatively nondescript, boxy adjoining room - "The equipment room," grins Maura - which pulls like a magnet and insists you put your head in for a look around. This is the house's digital heart, a his 'n' hers computer room for a couple who relish their careers in the field that fuels Ireland's economic boom, technology.
And for the couple, as for nearly everyone who works in the sector, playing with the tools of their trade once they get home from work is part of the pleasure of a peculiar lifestyle which interlaces work and leisure, home and office, uptime and downtime.
Unlike the showy but more neutral sittingroom, the computer room bristles with the distinctive personalities of the two. Maura's PC squats on a black desk, sporting a screen-saver she designed herself, and, across the top of the monitor, the small, cereal box figurines of all the Wallace and Gromit characters. A few yards away, Martin's PC sits on a large gleaming table, next to a display rack of ceremonial Japanese swords and a state-of-the-art, multiply-adjustable computer gamer's joystick (a present from Maura). His monitor serves as a plinth for two geek icons: a plastic figure of the cartoon-character computer engineer Dilbert, and a jolly stuffed penguin, the mascot for the hacker devotees of the computer operating system Linux.
Then there are the scanners, more joysticks, the modems, the PC speakers, the snake's nest of cabling writhing along the floor. There are shelves packed with programming manuals and computer games, novels and more small figurines of dungeons and dragon characters. An electronic keyboard takes up another corner. People might relax in the sitting-room, but lives are lived in this small silicon universe.
And, as for most of the youthful generation who've chosen technology as a career, they are comfortable lives. The average starting salary for the tech elite, computer programmers, is between £20,000 and £30,000 and can quickly shoot towards higher figures. They are so in demand that employers have rushed to create lush working environments to lure a workforce only just out of college but packing the knowledge of the arcane new computer languages and latest digital technologies which cutting-edge companies desperately need. So, despite their youth and lack of real-world experience, tech whizkids enjoy perks their parents only dreamed of - in-house gyms, generous cash bonuses, stock options in their companies, flexible work hours, and no dress code.
The latter is an important consideration for Maura, who hates office-wear and likes comfortable shirts and trousers ("for crawling around under machines"). Likewise, more traditional employers might balk at Martin's modest display of earrings, a Pac Man Tshirt and hair which has varied from a long ponytail to its present No 1 blade skiz.
Plenty of quirky dress sense, of the sort which would have mothers tsk- tsking, is also on display at Oniva, a Dublin new media company that creates Web pages and CD-Roms. Perhaps it's the promiscuously creative blending of technology and design which goes on in such places, but new media companies are known for flamboyance and style and Oniva is no exception. With the average employee aged 26, the 36-strong company features a curious blend of geeky and trendy young things with body piercings and clubwear, computer company T-shirts and baggy plaid shirts, designer shirts and leather jackets, and the occasional splash of neon hair colour.
The company's founders and former programmers, Daragh Scaife and Lebanese-born Wael Wansa, are now in their mid-30s but you'd never know it if you've watched the two shouting through a game of TombRaider on the company's Sony PlayStations in what is normally the boardroom for formal client meetings. After all, that's where the best monitor is for gameplay and in a company where frantic all-night rounds of guns-and-gore game Quake have not only been known to happen but are positively encouraged among the staff, activities that would be considered wasting time elsewhere are seen as a virtue.
Technology and work merge seamlessly with the pair's wider lives - they are inseparable best friends and have been since they set up the company with third partner Niall Kiernan on St Patrick's Day in 1993 ("That's where my social life ends - 1993," quips Wansa). Despite loathing each other instantly when they first met at Trinity College in the 1980s, now the two often wind down at the end of the day in a pub or meet up in the evenings or on weekends for meals. Girlfriends need to be willing to be absorbed into a lifestyle where the two are in touch constantly and work never separates entirely out of the day-to-day.
They finish each other's sentences at times and speak with unselfconsious affection about each other and the company they run more like a large good-natured family than a profit machine, despite doing more than £1 million in business last year and plans to establish UK and US offices this year. "I like to feel that what happened with me and Daragh and Niall is a voyage of discovery," says the soft-spoken Wansa.