Category Archives: Ireland

Three killed at Dunboy Castle

Three young men were killed today when their car fell into the water at Dunboy Castle just outside Castletownbere in Co Cork.

Investigating gardaí say that the three local young men had been driving in the grounds of Dunboy Castle when their Ford Fiesta got stuck in grass close to a laneway below the castle which is currently being renovated.

Two other friends came to their rescue with a jeep, but for reasons which are not yet clear, all five were in the Fiesta when it slipped from the embankment and into the water.

Sad and shocking as it is, I wouldn’t mention it here except that I drove down there with my family only a week ago. We enjoyed a lovely meal in Castletownbere during which we were told that Dunboy Castle was worth a look. On the way out of the town the castle is signposted so we decided to go look. Here are a few pictures. Judging by the picture on the RTE website I’d say they went into water very close to where I parked a week earlier. That freaks me out a little bit.

Dunboy Castle

Dunboy Castle

Dunboy Castle

A right tool

Scanning Gmail’s spam folder (815 emails after 2 days) is much more entertaining when I remember that all those messages about a longer tool refer to a completely different thing in Cork.

Sort of. 9 pages of spam.

I need to scan them because Gmail catches an alarming number of legitimate email, despite all my training. Sheesh.

Sell your soul for a luxury weekend in the country

What would you do for a luxury self catering weekend in the West of Ireland? Would you sell your soul and help launch a Google bomb?

Well, the good people at Glengarrriff Lodge would like you to link to their website with the keywords “Luxury Self Catering” in the link. Do that, and link to someone else who may be interested in the weekend and you’ll be entered in a draw for a weekend at the Lodge worth up to 1175 Euro! Nice eh?

Glengarriff Lodge

Anyway, now that my blog is squeaky clean, I couldn’t possibly consider subverting Google’s search engine. No sirree, but it looks like a gorgeous location so I decided to give it a plug anyway.

Oh, I’ll be in that part of the country in the next few weeks so I might call in and say hi!

Anatomy of an AIB Phishing Email

I’m well used to getting phishing emails for American or internationally known banks but this morning an email supposedly from AIB made it past Gmail’s spam filters.

AIB phishing email

AIB posted an alert a few days ago to watch out for fraudulent emails, but this one appears to be different. I’m forwarding it on to alert@aib.ie

The content of the email is a Jpeg image, and it links to a php file on http://internetbanking.aib.ie.2.3h8ax3.com/

As the rest of this post has a number of large screenshots click the link below to read the rest. You can probably ignore this if you’re not living in Ireland. 🙂

Continue reading “Anatomy of an AIB Phishing Email”

Everything is stupid

Some guy called John Waters says bloggers are stupid and can’t string two words together. Now, we all know that’s a bare faced lie, but maybe he had been trawling Bebo when he came up with that freakish idea?

I missed the radio interview where he said that and frankly I couldn’t care less. I only picked up on it when Irish bloggers went gaga over it. I did get a kick out of John’s new blog though. That’s funny. Thanks Niall.

John Waters

Lunch in the Long Valley Bar, Cork

We had lunch in the Long Valley Bar a few days ago. This is an old pub on Winthrop Street in the heart of Cork City. It’s a great place to go drinking at night, it’s full of atmosphere and lovely old decor. Unfortunately for lunch it’s only ok. Not that I can judge properly, all we ordered were toasted sandwiches but they weren’t great, and the staff member my wife dealt with was quite grumpy. Are we expecting too much of bar staff these days perhaps?

Anyway, great pub to drink in, but don’t go for the toasted sandwiches! 🙂

toasted sandwich

Here’s a more positive review of the pub, just in case someone tries to lynch me for daring to say a bad word about the dear old Long Valley Bar!

Your card has been captured

Irish Credit Unions recently announced that they would be rolling out an ATM system around the country. So far I’ve only seen one ATM. This one is in the Savoy in Cork and it looks like Credit Union members still haven’t got the hang of these pesky ATMs. It swallowed someone’s ATM card! Not a very successful start, eh?

Your card has been captured by the atm

Facebook advertising on a shoestring

You’ve got an interesting project to advertise but your advertising budget is, nil, nada, nothing. An empty box of air is worth more than you can spend on getting the word out.

That’s sort of what Frank said when he asked me (and I presume a number of his friends, the Facebook email is generic) to help get the word out about the new play in the Granary Theatre, They Never Froze Walt Disney.

I was wondering if you would help me out with an experiment… you may have noticed I am trying to get the word out about ‘They Never Froze Walt Disney’ – and I would love your help!

Would you mind changing your status on Facebook to read:

<your name> is letting people know about They Never Froze Walt Disney. See theatremakers. net for more details!

Always eager to help friends if I can, I updated my Facebook status. Will it help? Does anyone look at my profile? I doubt it, but it can’t hurt.

The latest teaser trailer is really, err, strange. Can’t we see a bit more please? TBH, it looks depressing!

Here’s what Frank said before the original production last year in the summer:

Funny and poignant, dark and yet light hearted, the writing is really tight and the story unfolds beautifully. Also the two performers (Jody O’Neill and John McCarthy) are excellent actors, and though I personally haven’t seen Jack Healy direct before he is extremely well known in the Cork theatre scene, and I have a lot of respect for him from acting with him and attending his workshops.

Check out my photos from one of Frank’s previous shows, The Importance of Being Earnest. We really enjoyed that show, but getting out to the theatre is a little harder to do these days with a small baby around!

They Never Froze Walt Disney
The Granary Theatre, Cork
8th-12th January at 8pm (preview January 7th)
Bookings & Info: 021 490 4275

Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.