Category Archives: Ireland

Google does hotel reviews now?

A couple of days ago my wife and I discussed our next holiday and she was quite taken with the idea of going to a particular hotel. I searched for the hotel and when I discovered that Google showed hotel reviews linked right from the search page I had to write about it.
After I had written the post I realised that someone might ring up the hotel and if they were feeling nasty or malicious they might cancel the holiday. Therefore, I’ll use the Radisson SAS in Limerick, an excellent hotel we stayed in a few months ago thanks to SuperValu Breaks.

So, search for the Radisson on Google.

radisson1

Clicking on the reviews link takes you here:

radisson2

I can only echo the good reviews. It’s a 4 star hotel, but book through SuperValu and you’ll get a big discount! (with the appropriate book of stamps of course)

Richard knows more about this sort of thing than I and he blogged about it 2 days ago. Looks like a good change for Irish businesses!

BTW, the break away is booked, the hotel is child friendly, we’re looking forward to it already!

PS. Richard has a post on Google’s local search which is definitely worth a read.

My Public Representatives

While I was away last week John Handelaar announced his new project, kildarestreet.com. It’s a site dedicated to reporting all the goings on in the Irish Parliament, from the horses mouth so to speak. It makes available to the general public everything that TDs (our members of parliament) say in session. This information is available on the official Government websites but it’s not easy to find.

I live in Blarney, in Cork North Central. I checked the list of TDs and found those that represent me, my family, my neighbours:

Interesting stats on each of their pages, and I really like the “most recent appearances”. I wonder if TDs will watch more closely what they say come the general election to avoid giving ammunition to their competitors or to avoid “putting their foot in it” in front of a suddenly more well informed electorate.

The naked Brian Cowen

Earlier this month someone walked into the National Gallery in Dublin, Ireland and hung a nude painting of our illustrious leader, Brian Cowen, in the “National Portrait Collection” section of the gallery.
Another painting was hung in a nearby gallery. More details can be found on this Tribune article.

Brian Cowen

Brian Cowen

All a bit of fun right? Sure, nobody wants to see a satirical nude photo of themselves hung up in public but the pictures were only on display for a short time. One or two newspapers reported on it and the national broadcaster, RTE, carried the following report on Monday night:

I never saw the original news clip. I was barely aware it had happened until this morning when the blogs and twitter were all alight with talk of the apology RTE broadcast last night. They also removed the news clip and article from their site.

RTE has to apologise and be censored for reporting the news? What sort of country are we living in? If Fianna Fail had let things lie all this would have blown over and be forgotten by now.

Ray D’Arcy speaking on TodayFM (a private national radio station) revealed the painter is Conor Casbey yesterday, but he wasn’t the one who hung the paintings. After the show yesterday a Garda called to the TodayFM offices looking for the email of the artist to caution him. The request was refused. Ray admitted that if the Garda hadn’t called he wouldn’t be talking about the paintings today.

More coverage by Irish bloggers:

Grandad has a different viewpoint. Brave of you 🙂

Control of the media is essential at this time, lest they say something negative about His Holiness. In fact, the Director General of RTE should immediately be reassigned to a menial task in the Ringsend Sewage Station as a lesson to the rest of those who would speak ill of our Great Government.

We must all revere and adore His Godliness for his inspired leadership in this time of crisis. Nothing negative must pass our lips.

The North Koreans have the right idea.
cowanposter

(Great caricature by Alan Cavanagh)

So, next time you see something funny about Gordon Brown or Barack Obama be glad you don’t live in Ireland. Spread the news. Check out #picturegate on Twitter.

PS. Many many more blogs are covering picturegate now but take a look at this thread on Creative Ireland. Great photoshopping going on there! (Alastair)

cowen-1

The Simpsons come to Ireland

St. Patrick's Day So, a new Irish themed Simpsons will air tomorrow night to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and the whole world is going gaga over it.

We had lunch in Blarney today and heard from more than one person that the Simpsons will be making an appearance tomorrow at Blarney Castle! I think people are confusing reality with a cartoon storyline. Things are getting out of hand. Next thing you know, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Ducks will be spotted walking out of the Woollen Mills and drinking pints with the locals.

I have the episode set to record on Sky+ anyway. Should be a laugh.

Oh, and it’s not “Patty’s Day”. A pat is something a cow leaves behind in a field and contributes to global warming and is quite smelly. Dung beetles like it too. If you must shorten “St. Patrick’s Day”, it’s “Paddy’s Day”! Thanks Gavin for alerting me to this atrocious misspelling.

Will the real Tubridy please stand up?

tubridy

After this morning’s blogger interview with Ryan Tubridy it looks like the radio talk shot host is diving into Twitter with enthusiasm. Maybe!

Listen to the interview here courtesy of @topgold.

PS. Will has an easy way to verify that @ryantubridy is real:

@ryantubridy @DamienMulley @RickOShea validity test. What socks is Ryan wearing today? Ryan has to answer first

I don’t think Ryan wears flip flops though.

The Irish Blog Awards in Pictures

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, we were at The Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night. Here are a few photos. They’re after the jump because there are 70 there and I’d hate to see them load every time someone loaded the front page of my site!

Gallery of shots from the photowalk to come tomorrow. Possibly over 100 shots in that. I do like to take photos don’t I?

grandad

BTW – Please Photoshop Grandad above. What’s he saying? Two example to follow ..
Continue reading “The Irish Blog Awards in Pictures”

Back from The Irish Blog Awards 2009

Jacinta and I are just back from the The 2009 Irish Blog Awards and we’re elated after the experience. If I thought I could convey half the good humour and energy and enthusiasm I’d try but I know I’d fail dismally. It was a wonderful night, full of great people and I’m only sorry we couldn’t stay longer and chat some more!

winner

Thank you Damien and everyone who helped. You pulled off a hugely success celebration of Irish blogging.

Ryanair Staff Give WordPress some lovin'

Oh yeah, a couple of Ryanair staff really love WordPress! Or maybe not. Jason Roe discovered that Ryanair’s website session handling isn’t 100% reliable. Click through to the voucher section, click back and suddenly the price of your flight is 0.00!

ra1

Unfortunately a few Ryanair staffers decided to take it upon themselves to chastise Jason for his blog post and took a dig at WordPress while they were at it.

You dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!!

Personally, I believe him about ryanair.com and the “dynamic data” which I presume is POST data, but they should handle these situations better. Their chief rival in Ireland, Aer Lingus show an “expired session” page at every wrong turn which is annoying but at least doesn’t lead me down the garden path of trying to buy tickets for €0.00!

Maybe Ryanair should hire Damien to give them a clue about how to play nicely online. Can’t see that happening though. They’d probably charge you €2+€5 credit card fee just to send them a refund request by tweet.

PS. Jason verified the IP addresses of the Ryanair staff. They were browsing blogs at work from their company’s designated IP range of 193.120.152.0 to 193.120.152.127.

I called the litter warden

litter warden

This morning I discovered a black refuse sack of rubbish had been dumped almost in front of my house. This afternoon it’s still there but I rang the litter warden for South Cork, Jim Dooley at 021-4285417 giving my name, address and phone number. Hopefully they’ll get out here soon and find incriminating details buried in the bag but I don’t hold out much hope of that.

From a brief inspection of it, whoever dropped it doesn’t have the healthiest diet in the world. Packets of crisps, cans of Diet 7UP, plastic wrapping, and of course some of the local dogs have got their jaws into it too. Oh yeah, dogs are supposed to be under the owner’s control? ‘Course they are. The dog warden would have a field day around here too.

Anyway, I’m really pissed off at whoever dumped the rubbish. It’s disgusting, ignorant and completely irresponsible. I’ll update this post if the litter warden shows up. Seething.

Lots of Irish in Texas

After I found out that Waterford had moved to Kilkenny (thanks ILUG!) on Google Maps I became curious and searched for Blarney and found Blarney Stone Street in Tyler, Texas. Check out all the street names!

Irish in Texas

You could travel all over Ireland by walking up and down a few streets in that town! Dublin, Limerick, Ulster, Blarney. I have to wonder who named a street, “Irish Moss St.” Sounds like something you get at a garden centre!

You never know, I might visit Tyler in Texas some day.

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