Holy Shmoly! » When in Ireland

Signs that Halloween is tomorrow

Donncha O Caoimh — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:13:04 +0000

Sign reads, “Eggs are at the checkout”. I remember seeing similar signs in other shops in previous years. My car was egged twice on successive years after working late. “Those damn kids!”

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We can have a good world

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:31:32 +0000

Watch Hans Rosling’s great talk at TED 2006 where he, “demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale.”

It’s amazing to see how quickly Chile and other less developed nations have caught up with the “industrialised world”, and are about to surpass them in terms of health care. He’s speaking at the it@Cork conference on November 28th this year and should be very entertaining and insightful.

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Stop sending me junk mail Chorus

Donncha O Caoimh — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:55:16 +0000

The previous owners of my home had a Chorus box and never cancelled their account properly, or told them they were moving so for the past three years they have been sending me brochures every few weeks or months. At least I presume they didn’t, but all the brochures are addressed to “The Resident”. This blog post is a reminder to myself that I finally rang them on 1890 940 940, pressed 1 for sales, pressed 1 because I really wanted to buy lots of channels and told Sarah that I didn’t want to be contacted again.

Within moments it was sorted and hopefully I’ll get no more junk mail from Chorus.

If you’re getting unsolicited email this document from the Data Protection Commissioner might come in handy but here’s what it warns about those anonymous “The Resident” mail that so frequently litters our doorsteps.

This is the traditional and oldest form of direct marketing. For mail received through your letter box to be considered to be direct marketing it must be addressed to a named person and must be promoting a product or service. Unaddressed mail put into your letter box or mail addressed to “the occupant”, “the resident” or “the householder” does not necessarily involve the use of personal data and consequently data protection legislation does not apply.

You can also opt to be removed from company mailing lists by contacting the IDMA.

Apart from contacting organisations individually, you may also wish to avail of a service run by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA). Under the Mail Preference Service, if you supply your contact details to the IDMA, it will circulate these details amongst its members. This will result in most of the main direct marketing companies removing your details from their mailing lists.

If only those fake charities respected the law too, we might stamp out all the rubbish flyers that drop through the letter box. Reminder: I really must set up clothingcollection.org soon!

I love this story from boards.ie:

Apparently the postman in my hometown was removing all the spam and advertising from people’s post, putting it in a bag and dumping it in a bog outside the town. Had been successfully un-spamming people for years before he was found out and fired.

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Census 1901 – a look into the past

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:16:08 +0000

Do a search for Census 1901 Ireland and you’ll find lots of sites offering lists and information from the census that year. However for a personal insight into the Census, Grannymar has an interesting post. It was a completely different world. “The good old days” indeed!

Column 4 – Education.

State here whether he or she can “Read and Write,” can “Read” only, or “Cannot Read.”

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Dinner in Aroma

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:51:55 +0000

Just a quick note at the end of the night. My sister took care of Adam (thank you so much Mairead!) while Jacinta and I went out for a fabulous meal in Aroma on Emmett Place in Cork. It’s a Thai/Chinese/Malaysian restaurant and I’ve never been disappointed when I eat there. In fact we’ve brought lots of visitors there, including Matt if memory serves.

The Thai fish cakes are scrumptious, and I ordered the a beef dish with a Malaysian curry sauce. The meat practically melted in my mouth and the curry was nice and spicy. It can be quite busy but we arrived early at 8pm when only a few tables were taken. Service is great with attentive staff. Compared to other restaurants in Cork, prices for an evening meal are reasonable.

We’re definitely going back!

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Perfect Parking in Blarney

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:03:45 +0000

I should blog this at Shite Drivers but this was too good to give up. Sorry Niall!

What you don’t see is the old SUV (probably new when such vehicles were called 4x4s) that swerved across the road in front of me to block 3 parked cars. The elderly driver waited in the vehicle all the time I was walking about there. I parked across the road by AIB because of the stellar parking of the car above. Good thing most of the tourists are gone home now!

Edit: this is how they should have parked!

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Charity photography exhibit starts today

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:31:41 +0000

If you’re not subscribed to my photoblog, In Photos dot org, you might have missed the announcement about the exhibit. Mallow Camera Club (no, we don’t take photos of candy, cookies or biscuits, Mallow is a town a few miles from here!) will be exhibiting a number of photos in Mallow Town Library for three weeks starting today.

One of the Club’s members, Sean Riordan, is heading out to South Africa shortly as part of a group from the Niall Mellon Township Trust helping to build homes for the poor in that country. All the photos on exhibit will be for sale with all profits going to help fund Sean’s trip and the good work he’ll do in November.

Your one week’s hard work will change the lives of generations of some of the poorest families in the world. Over 200 families will move from a one roomed shack measuring 3m x 3m to a house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Most importantly, these houses will have running water, electricity, and sanitation – facilities we take for granted in our everyday lives.

One of my photos, this one of Brendan O’Carroll outside the Opera House in Cork will be on show and for purchase too. It’s not exactly like the one shown here. It’s a portrait with a tighter crop and better. I’ll be there tonight at 6pm to see how things go. If it’s bought while I’m still around, I’ll sign my photo for you. You never know, it might be valuable in years to come!

So, here’s me asking for everyone to give this a plug, especially if you live in Cork or some of your readers live in the locality. Come on Donal, Ryan, Tom, Damien, Adam, Gamma Goblin, Conor, Will, Mel, Haydn, Mark and everyone on Cork Blogs .. Giz a link and a plug, please!

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Waterloo Renewal Fundraiser

Donncha O Caoimh — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 19:56:08 +0000

Originally I thought we might head to Youghal tomorrow but someone called to the door a few days ago selling raffle tickets to support renewal of the local area. It’s organised by “Waterloo Renewal Group” who have great plans for the local river area and walk. There will be a BBQ at the Waterloo Inn so it looks like we won’t be going far from home on Sunday!

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Around Ireland in 80 links on July 18th 2007

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:29:34 +0000

Anthony found Pixar’s new short cartoon, Lifted. It’s quite fun!
I’m amazed that Drogheda Library wouldn’t let a student charge his laptop. “Doing a ryanair on it” alright!
Kathy Foley’s festival of mud and horrors tries to understand the fuss over Oxegen. I stay well clear of RTE these days so I missed the hype, but I have to agree with her about the mud .. WHY?
Justin wants the vigilantes to stop polluting the phisher’s sites. It makes it harder for investigators to find the real victims.
Granny Mar posted a few days ago about July 12th in the North. That’s one hell of a tall pile of tires! Can you imagine the black oily smoke off that heap of rubber? Her daughter Elly was in touch asking if someone could help move her mom’s blog from Blogspot to a shiny new WordPress install. I have my hands full but perhaps some kind soul could get in touch, please?
Paul is plugging new “Internet nanny” service Glubble. The Techcrunch write up is fairly positive, but I can just see Adam with a Linux boot disk in a couple of year’s time bypassing all my carefully constructed whitelists to check out the dark side.
My Harry Potter post is getting an insane number of hits today. Looks like lots of people looking for the online version!
Finally, it’s not Irish news, but Joseph has blogged about the WordPress.com and Facebook integration! Barry blogged about keeping track of the 300 servers Automattic use, and I have to add that if you use any of the premium products on WordPress.com you might see a renewal notice in your Dashboard when your subscription runs out…

I did the online check-in thing this morning and I have an aisle seat. Mark is sitting across the aisle so we both have room to sort-of stretch our legs on the long journey to San Francisco tomorrow!

PS. so nobody wants WordPress stickers? Read my WordCamp post below to find out how you might be able to get a few ..

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Around Ireland in 80 links on July 13th 2007

Donncha O Caoimh — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:49:13 +0000

Unlucky 13? Oooer!

What would you like to know about me? Apparently a company in Dublin is selling private information.
Paul’s friend was dumped over Facebook when his ex-girlfriend changed her status to “single” and “up for it”. Paul, that was mean to laugh!
I would love to see the referers to this post when it makes it’s way into Google. I’m sure Grandad will oblige in a future post.
Online photo sharing on pix.ie via Czajkowski. Anyone else tried them?
Kae says php.ie could be coming soon!
Firefox 3 talk by Marcio Galli in Cork on August 8th. What’s in store in version 3?
I got my first Facebook invitation. Should I sign up?

Fred the Band played in the Opera House in Cork recently, after a tour of the US where the following video was shot (after the jump). Their first album was great, the second album was so-so being a bit more of the same thing. You can hear a portion of their new single on their website above. They are absolutely brilliant live however. I took photos of them last year in the Spiegeltent. I never did post photos of the crowd surfing …

Way back in March I took photos at the shooting of a music video for Stanley Super 800. Finally, you can see the resulting video for yourself. No, I’m not in the video, I was in the background with my camera! They did a great job of it, and if you’ve been to Cork, watch out for Scotts on Caroline Street, Patrick’s Hill and the alley across from the College of Art on Emmet Place. Great stuff!

Fred The Band

Stanley Super 800

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