Kudo's to HP !

Back in September I bought a HP "all-in-one" F2100 from Dunnes. It cost around 49 euro if I recall correctly. Around the same time I bought some spare cartridges (got a good price in PC World of all places) because we all know that the supplied cartridges are only enough to print a few pages. Well today after 6 months of printing "printables" of every sort, from Bob the Builder to Club Penguin, I finally changed the initial set of cartridges. Not bad eh ?

Is there anywhere sacred ?

Madam, I'm shocked. I cannot believe that the Irish Times felt the need to run a 1/3 page obituary on Jude Goody. What next - a red masthead and single-syllable headlines ? Yours Sincerely. Disgruntled in Cork.

Hello world

This is a test from ping.fm

Bye Bye Blueface.

I signed up to Blueface a couple of years ago as they were Irish and had excellent rates. I use a Siemens C450IP as my phone as this combines a traditional DECT and IP phone. It connects into my router and connects to the chosen SIP provider - in my case Blueface.

Or at least that is the theory. Despite setting up port-forwarding (and QoS) on my router the Siemens is regularly (multiple times per week) unable to connect and gets a "SIP registration fails" error. This requires a router reboot to clear and frankly it became a total pain. So much so that I haven't used it for a couple of months. I still used Blueface for SIP calls over wifi when I was away but ended up ringing home using a PSTN breakout from Blueface.

When I got my 5800 I downloaded Fring. Despite entering the correct info Fring could not connect to Blueface. Fring has a number of rpe-defined SIP operators and I remembered that I had an account setup with one of them - voipcheap. A few seconds after entering my voipcheap settings I made a call to my landline over wifi. 

Following this success I entered voipcheap's settings on my C450IP and it connected immediately. Two days later and it's still happily connected. I didn't make any changes to the router.

Seeing as voipcheap works like blueface should I've decided to switch over. Unfortunately voipcheap don't supply and inbound phone number but my blueface number was worthless anyway seeings as disconnections were so regular.

Change of Phone

I've been using the N95 as my cameraphone for the last while (with a short breakout to a K850i) but whilst on my travels last week it started borking whilst taking video and some nice vids were lost.

So I decided to change the phone and went for a Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic. One of my constraints was that the phone should have WiFi and this really added to the cost. I'm also partial to Symbian phones so that narrowed the field.

The 5800 has WiFi , GPS, touch-screen, 3G and is a good music/video player and comes with an 8GB card. The camera is fine but not as good as the N95 (which really is a benchmark phone). The GPS is blisteringly fast (way faster than the N95).

Some of my favourite apps can work on the 5800 - Mobbler (Last FM), Opera Mini but others don't yet have support - Shozu. Rather annoyingly Nokia have removed the full SIP client so you need to use Fring to make VOIP calls. Further annoyance was caused because I couldn't connect to Blueface using Fring but had no problem with Voipcheap...

So Mr.Shozu please hurry up and release a version for the 5800, Nokia please replace the SIP client as I don't like having to use Fring.

Independent Hypocrites

I notice that the Irish Consumerist has a puff piece congratulating the Indo (and Charlie Weston) on fighting for rate cuts to be passed on by the banks yadda yadda yadda.

However this is the same paper that charges wildly diverging rates for its products whilst excorciating others who do the same.

Have a look at the attached image - 'twould be well worth your while to go up North to buy that rag.

X marks the spot

Luxembourg

Model of the Ville Haut

Luxembourg

Luxembourg

The Grund

Luxembourg

Convoi Exceptionnel

Luxembourg

The Flying Blackberry

On a TGV AT 317 kmh

TV3 and France 3

What they say & what they mean - Part 2

They say:

"In recent days Cork City Council has been responding to difficulties reported in connection with the Kinsale Road Landfill Site."

They mean:

All of a sudden on Saturday houses in the Douglas, Blackrock,Ballinlough,Ballintemple Areas suddenly experienced visitations from large numbers of flies.

These are pesky flies and well able to avoid my rolled-up newspaper.

Supposedly the Corpo ploughed up the dump without bothering to spray it first with some form of insect killer.

The same Corpo closed the South Douglas Road near Dosco and didn't bother to make sure the diversionary road was clear of cars...

What they say and what they do...

What they say:

“Ruinair’s move to 100% web check-in from 1^st October 2009 is a first for the airline industry and is another pioneering move from Ruinair, which will again lower the cost of flying for millions of Ruinair customers. 

What they do:

"The web check-in fee of £5/€5 per person, per flight will apply to all new bookings (except promotional fares)from 1^st May 2009"

So. Paying extra will reduce the cost... hmmm.. that's like the logic the banks use..

Did you know ?

That you can easily register on the ESB site and view your last
18months worth of bills ?

You can even see a graph of your bills and records of meter readings.

Two Classic Irish Ads from the 80's

"You're Home" from Aer Lingus featuring "Gabriel's Oboe"

"Going Home" - the classic ESB ad complete with slam-door Iarnrod Eirean stock !

Les Lacs du Connemara

I came across this song by Michel Sardou on Last.fm . It seems to be a popular tune with a Karaoke version available on iTunes. The lyrics are interesting.

There's also a weird Dutch version - watch and see just what Lego can do - which is vaguely reminiscent of Riverdance :

Amazing eh...? Les Lyrics: "Terre brûlée au vent, Des landes de pierres, Autour des lacs, C'est pour les vivants, Un peu d'enfer, Le Connemara, Des nuages noirs, Qui viennent du nord, Colorent la terre, Les lacs les rivières, C'est le décor, Du Connemara. Au printemps suivant, Le ciel irlandais, Etait en paix, Maureen a plongé, Nue dans un lac, Du Connemara, Sean Kelly s'est dit, Je suis catholique, Maureen aussi, L'église en granit, De Limerick, Maureen a dit oui, De Tiperrary, Barry-Connely, Et de Galway, Ils sont arrivés, Dans le comté, Du Connemara, Y'avait les Connor's, Les O'Connely, Les Flaherty, Du Ring of Kerry, Et de quoi boire, Trois jours et deux nuits. Là-bas au Connemara, On sait tout le prix du silence, Là-bas au Connemara, On dit que la vie, C'est une folie, Et que la folie, Ca se danse. Terre brûlée au vent, Des landes de pierre, Autour des lacs, C'est pour les vivants, Un peu d'enfer, Le Connemara, On y vit encore, Au temps des Gaëls, Et de Cromwell, Au rythme des pluies, Et du soleil, Au pas des chevaux, On y croit encore, Aux monstres des lacs, Qu'on voit nager, Certains soirs d'été, Et replonger, Pour l'éternité, On y voit encore, Des hommes d'ailleurs, Venus chercher, Le repos de l'âme, Et pour le coeur, Un goût de meilleur, L'on y croit encore, Que le jour viendra, Il est tout près, Où les Irlandais, Feront la paix, Autour de la Croix. Là-bas au Connemara, On sait tout le prix de la guerre, Là-bas au Connemara, On n'accepte pas, La paix des Gallois, Ni celle des rois d'Angleterre ."