The world is in recession, and it’s even affected Cork. The city was busy but it’s been much busier in previous years. Every second shop had a “Closing Down sale” or “50% off sale” sign. Usually you have to wait until the January sales. It’s great that prices are down, but depressing what it means for the economy. I heard that many stores on North Main Street have already closed their doors.
Construction work still continues in the center of the city though. I bet the developers of those sites are not looking forward to the job of selling floor space to retailers. The Elysian, tallest building in the country, is practically empty since it was opened officially a few months ago.
Besides the maddening crowds, collectors for Share and other charities were out in force. At least that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. The streets were packed with people, but the queues in the shops weren’t that long.
Bully’s on Paul Street was excellent as usual. Their ground floor tables were all taken but they have a first floor restaurant I never knew existed! We got a nice table away from everyone, it was a nice reprieve from the crowds and sounds outside. Their Bully Burger is well worth sampling too. Yum!
You heard about the gov’t of Belgium? Tried to bail out a bank and got biatch-slapped for whatever stunt they pulled. And Iceland damn near going belly up … rough sledding for small countries. (Alberta is running on petro dollars, so no way we’re going to feel the pinch.)
p.s. notice I didn’t ask about MU2.7? ;-p
You gotta love the shop up the marks and sparks end of Pana with the window full of “closing down sale” posters. According the the wife, it never actually opened!
adam
Which reminds me of a writers’ contest … “tragic want ads” … the winner was, “For Sale: BabyShoes; Never Used”.
Hard times make for mundane drama … best of times / worst of times.
Ben, Adam – thanks! I remember a few men’s clothes shops that always had “closing down” signs alright.
Ben – here’s the MU trac. If you can fix a bug or two it’ll get the release out a whole lot faster, but I doubt it’ll be this month because of the holidays and I’m so busy with WordPress.com stuff right now.
On the Mooo side of things: Oh, hey, I’ve been crawling trac for a while.
And I’m moving cautiously in that direction; last serious programming I did was lat 90s. (VRML interface using VB5. And I’ll deny that if you quote me.) So lots of little things I’m not confident about e.g. commit with Subversion. So right now I’m coming up with a clear list of RFE for my own project, and getting up to speed on BuddyPress. By the time I’ve done that WPMU2.7 will prolly be done! *grin*
FYI/BTW: I suggested something to Mark and Westi, putting something together on Eclipse/PHP/Subversion 101 … so more folk can do some work very well.