Frenchchurch St
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Review: The BoardWalk - Cork
I was at a function recently in the BoardWalk in Cork.
It's your typical glitzy gaff with dark wood and beautiful people. The toilets look like Darth Vader's bathroom i.e. all the ceramic ware is black. No paper towels.
Service was excellent and very patient. The food was fine but not outstanding and a number of people commented on the fact that the steak was only available in "Medium", the spud was quite like Smash and the carrot puree was too pureee'd (I liked it). I had a New York cheesecake for dessert and it was still fairly cold and a few people's dessert was still frozen (and wasn't ice cream).
They have cool steak knives - large and business like and not the usual wimpy knives that other places give you.
It was interesting to see that Niall Prendergast walked up and down a good few times but studiously ignored the customers. It wouldn't have been out of place for him to come over and make a bit of small-talk seeing as he's part-owner.
Would I go back there again ? No. Not my style.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Viigo - a useful tool.
I got a Blackberry Storm at the beginning of the week. It's a nice device that probably still needs at few tweaks here and there to reach it's full potential (much like the way the iPhone needed a few firmware updates before it got its act together).
One of the programs I downloaded was Viigo - this is a nicely designed feed reader which takes advantage of the Storm's beautiful screen. You can add feeds directly or you can just use it to access your Google Reader feeds. It also has stock/financial info and weather feeds.
If you're in the market for a free reader and you have a Blackberry or Windows Mobile device then go give Viigo a try.
It's nifty and well designed - unlike other feed readers it doesn't use the "old" Blackberry font and unliek AvantGo it uses the whole screen. The tech support is good as well - I'm having issues with updates but I'm putting that down to a combo of beta software and dodgy cellular connectivity.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Can you keep a secret ?
Cork City Council can !
Today the Black Ash Park & Ride starts its Sunday opening. Nothing about it on the Corporation website. In fact this goes to a 404.
The AA site had it buried in traffic notices.
A pity really because whilst folk are driving round the city looking for spaces or queuing for Roches they could be zooming in on a double-decker from Black Ash and all for a fiver !
Friday, November 28, 2008
Traffic Corps -a good news story.
I drove up to Newbridge this morning and it was a pleasant day for driving.
I drove down this afternoon and it was still a pleasant day and the new stretches of motorway make a vast difference to the trip.
When I was about 5 miles or so outside Littleton (Dublin side) a Nissan X-Trail in front of me (which had thrown a few wobblers near Portlaoise) decided to overtake the truck in front which was doing around 90km/h. This manoeuvre was prompted by the big sign saying "NO OVERTAKING", the pictogram saying no-overtaking and a double continuous white line.
However that didn't deter our brave 07-TS X-Trail and off he went down the wrong side of the road on the other side of the Ghost island and through the junction. He narrowly missed an oncoming car (a micra) and pulled back to his own side.
Next minute - sirens in my ears as a Traffic Corps car pulls out from behind me and off in pursuit. A few minutes later we passed them just about to have a chat with Mr X-Trail.
We all slag them off for shooting fish in the proverbial barrel but it's good to see that they do tackle sheer dangerous driving as well.
So a buala bos for the traffic corps.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Three muppetry goes on and on...
Website : Cork store open until 21:00 on Thursday
Store: Store open until 20:00 on Thursday.
Is it so bloody hard to get simple feckin' things like this correct ?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Three are a shower of moronic muppets.
So following on from my post yesterday I decided to hand back my kit and caboodle to Three.
I checked the website and saw the Cork store (whose staff were pleasant and efficient when I dealt with them) was open until 19:00. So in between dropping kids to beavers and collecting them we dashed into town and arrived at the door of Three at 18:35.
What did I find ?
I found a closed shop. A very firmly closed shop. A shop that was definitely not open.
Lo and behold as far as Three are concerned the shop is open until 19:00. It wasn't. Now it also says that it's open late tomorrow night. Will it ?
Sheesh. Is this anyway to run a business ? Basic facts and information should be up to date on websites especially for a communications company.
God help the national broadband tender. ...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Beware of Three !
I decided to purchase the 3 Internet bundle which consisted of a skypephone and broadband dongle.
The phone comes with 120 credit but of this only 5euro is available immediately (though this isn't mentioned on the product page). What is promised is "You also get €120 free credit so you can start texting and chatting to your mates straight away" (their bold text).
The Dongle comes with 100MB data allowance out of the box. However this allowance is only valid for a month. I feel that this is disgraceful and the allowance should be longer lasting or at the very least this should be clearly mentioned on the relevant page.
It's browning me off a bit as I had planned for the dongle to be a backup unit for the odd time when out and about (and also as a handy way of uploading files to shozu from my N95).
Next decision is to whether or not the whole kit and caboodle goes back to Three....
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Budapest
Sitting in Cafe Martinelli about to have a mocha in cold dry Budapest.
Interesting city - modern buildings and restored buildings jostle with ramshackle buildings that haven't been looked after since Communist days.
Modern trams run beside ancient tarta trams and rusty metro trains run through refurbished stations.
Marks and Spencer is near Saturn. Tesco, Cora and Auchan fight it out for business.
Seatbelts don't seem to be used. Drivers seem mad. Traffic police patrol tram junctions in the morning (an idea for Dublin maybe ?). Its like home with the poor information at tram/bus stops.
Prices ? Beer last night was around 3.50 for half a litre. Tram tickets are just over 1euro and just like home if you change tram or bus you have to buy a new one. This mocha is around 2.10 and is waiter service. I am told that ciggies are around half-price. Electronics are much the same as home.
Let your email find you with BlackBerry® from Vodafone
Interesting city - modern buildings and restored buildings jostle with ramshackle buildings that haven't been looked after since Communist days.
Modern trams run beside ancient tarta trams and rusty metro trains run through refurbished stations.
Marks and Spencer is near Saturn. Tesco, Cora and Auchan fight it out for business.
Seatbelts don't seem to be used. Drivers seem mad. Traffic police patrol tram junctions in the morning (an idea for Dublin maybe ?). Its like home with the poor information at tram/bus stops.
Prices ? Beer last night was around 3.50 for half a litre. Tram tickets are just over 1euro and just like home if you change tram or bus you have to buy a new one. This mocha is around 2.10 and is waiter service. I am told that ciggies are around half-price. Electronics are much the same as home.
Let your email find you with BlackBerry® from Vodafone
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Spot the difference !
Game pulled by Sony for having religious phrases.
Violent game - set in cathedral - not pulled by Sony.
Answers on a postcard to Sony.
We should treat all religions equally and not just on the basis of fear.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Address Change
I've finally gotten around to setting up a custom domain for this blog (I'll still be using blogger) .
As and from now the blog is reachable at blog.despod.com - it was pure laziness which prevented me doing this before.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Welcome to the Cloud.
Here at home the main computer is my iMac - it holds our music, videos and photos. It's backed up to an external drive and also to amazon'S s3 servers using Jungledisk.
This also holds all my email.
As a gadget freak I also use netbooks and it's often a pain having to go to the iMac to check on historical mail etc.
So today I moved to the Cloud. I signed up to Google Apps and it's now taking care of the email for my domain. It was a straightforward process with a slight hiccup when I discovered that I couldn't change my DNS settings on Digiweb. I resolved it by signing up to Dyndns for my DNS services and pointing the website to a specific Digiweb address and the MX records to Google Apps. A little bit of CNAME tweaking and the same address as previously used for webmail was redirected.
Benefits for me ? One less backup. Greater search capabilities and access from anywhere using a decent interface.
I've been trying out Evernote and OneNote for notetaking etc and I think I'll plop for evernote as it has better text recognition in images and the ability to access through a browser.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Drinks Industry to Government : "please help us"
I was shocked during the week to see the Alcohol lobby asking the Government to layoff alcohol in the Budget because consumption is lowering.
We have a shocking high rate of alcohol consumption in this country. We are always being urged to reduce it and become more resonsible and yet we have a trade organsiation moaning about how it is a bad thing for the country to be drinking less.
Almost a case of go out and drink for the sake of the country. And for the sake of the fat cats in the drinks industry.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Thomond Park hush
Good to see that whilst we might have an upgraded stadium we still have the Thomond Park silence when someone is taking a penaltu
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
RipOff Indo !
It's not just other folks postings that the Irish Independent is ripping off.
despite being a proud co-driver of the anti-sterling-price-differential-bandwagon they fail to mention that they too engage in price gouging.
The Irish independent is €1.80 but a mere 75p if you buy up North. So it's not just the naughty British multiples who are screwing us but one of our own homegrown companies.
I wonder when wil they publish an article about that ?
I wonder when will they "call on" the Minister/The NCA/God/Anyone to do something ?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Culture Night in Cork
We took advantage of Culture Lab and went along to the Lifetime Lab (Lee Road) this evening. It was quietish. It's really an environmental exhibition place for schools and groups but has some interesting relics of power and water distribution and the staff were enthusiastic. for kids the encironmental bits are interesting with plenty of hands-on. The boys liked the bit where you could sniff the smell of the dump which we are told will be lanscaped and used for fairs and circuses when it's finally closed. The playground was a hit with children and adults alike and had some excellent equipment - it was a credit to them.
Next stop was Blackrock Castle. Halfway along Castle Road we encountered parked cars and it was a case of one-way traffic (though someone was patiently waiting to go d'other way). When we got to the Castle the queues were long so we decided to keep going.
Not for long though - we were stopped at the corner as they wanted to try and get the Culture Bus through. So I tightened up the car and waited. Whilst waiting I was chatting to the bus inpector who told me that the place was mayhem (and that road doesn't need a lot of cars to get blocked) and that they had been looking for the Guards to come for quite a while.
Eventually the bus came around and we reversed in order to clear the junction a bit more with the Inspector giving directions. We were nearly done when a Guard finally turned up and started to tell us all to reverse in a tone which suggested that nobody thought of it until he did...
As we drove on we realised that there were three buses in total and they were all well filled so it seemed to have been a successful night for the Castle.
Now why the Guards didn't plan a bit ahead and make Castle Road one-way is another day's story...
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sinking of the Asgard - the rescue video
The French newspaper Ouest-France has a video of the rescue of the crew of the Asgard. It happened at night time so it's a bit dark.
It's sad to see her being lost but it's good that all are safe. It would be a shame to see such a proud name go out of use so maybe we can have an Asgard III ?
Friday, September 12, 2008
Hey Iarnrod Eireann - why do we have to queue ?
I was coming back from Dublin last evening and when we got to Heuston I noticed that the queue for the Galway train was almost out to the door. I noticed also that Cork has its own permanent "Queue here" signs.
Why do they make us queue ?
You don't queue in France, or Germany ...
You don't queue in Mallow or Thurles or Kildare ..
So why do we have to queue in Dublin and Cork ?
Can they not just let people on the platform ? They'll spread out along its length and the tickets can be checked on the train (just like they were last night - 5 minutes after leaving).
Well ? Why ?
Why also does Heuston have the most intimidating private security presence ? Guys with tattoos and stab vest walking around spoiling for a fight without any ID badges...
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Are they at it again ?
Ryanair in the news today -
"A RYANAIR pilot and the Irish Aviation Authority are at loggerheads over claims that a landing at Cork Airport had to be aborted because of an obstruction on the runway.
The pilot of the Ryanair flight, the 3.45pm from East Midlands on Sunday, told passengers on board the Boeing aircraft that an “unscheduled” plane on the runway prevented him from landing. The pilot initiated a “go-around”, which involved circling and approaching again. The plane landed safely a short time later....
... However, a spokesman for Cork Airport said there was no obstruction at the point of landing and the reason the pilot had to initiate a “go-around” was because it had been advised it did not have permission to land. "
So is it a case of Rynair getting their excuses in first or is it another manifestation of these problems referenced here .
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Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Water in Dublin.
On RTE1 at the moment is a programme about water shortages in Dublin.
Interviewed one concil guy who said that on a good day they have around 1percent spare capacity and on a bad day they don't have any spare capacity.
He was later asked if Vartry and Blessington reservoirs failed would the remaining one (Lucan) be able to cope.
He hummed and hawed and grimaced and eventually replied that he couldn't answer that for security reasons.....
Hmmmm.
Tom Parlon to the Government :
"It's high time that we had a stimulus package".
Tonight on the 9PM News he came out with that. He believes that there are 30,000 folk holding off on buying houses.
So Tom, tell us what did ye have for the past 10 years ? Seems like a stimulus package to me.
So Tom, how about some of ye builders using some of your super-profits from the past 10 years to fund a stimulus package ?
Or is it a case that the builders keep the profits from the bumper days and the taxpayers cover their current losses ?
Friday, August 29, 2008
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