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.
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?
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!
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 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. 🙂
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.
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! 🙂
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!
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?
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
We’ve been busy calling to relatives and making our home baby proof over the last week, so we went down to Kinsale and Garrettstown this afternoon to get away from it all. Even though there was a strong cold wind blowing in off the sea Garrettstown Beach wasn’t deserted. People were out and about walking their dogs, some with kids, others with tiny babies. Oscar, our Shih Tzu, had lots of fun chasing after a tennis ball that seemingly had a mind of it’s own as it arced through the air!
Back in Kinsale we met a friend for lunch in the Blue Haven Hotel. The hotel has been there for years but recently underwent a facelift and is beautiful and luxurious inside. Despite the crush of post-Christmas punters looking for food and/or a drink staff were great and found us room for Adam and a baby seat. I ordered an open steak sandwich while Jacinta had fish and chips and Niamh ordered salmon linguini.
Service was a little slow but as the staff were run off their feet it’s understandable. Adam was fed and watered by the time we were served our food, and we made short work of it. My steak sandwich was nice, if a little on the small side. Chips were salty but tasty. The Christmas pudding I had for dessert filled me up nicely though!
So, I definitely recommend the Blue Haven Hotel for a meal. This was our second time there in the last month. The last time I had their burger. It’s a beautiful hotel, food is good, and it’s very baby friendly!
Those with a long memory may recall my do not delay post from November 2006. In it I exposed a fake charity that collected clothes at people’s homes and then sold them for profit, without a penny going to a legitimate charity. Because they’ve pissed me off so much, I’ve set up a new site to expose the rest of the fake charity crooks.
So, are there any real charities collecting clothes? Yes, there are two. Dochas Nasamu in Galway run an orphanage in Kenya. A quick search reveals lots of positive reports about them. Their last collection in this part of the world was on December 18th 2007. They don’t call to houses to collect clothes. Instead, they wait in a public area and identify themselves to would-be charity givers.
That’s how it worked the first time we gave them clothes, but this time all we saw was an anonymous Mercedes van, it’s back doors open and not a soul in sight. We dumped the clothes in the St. Vincent de Paul bin instead. Sorry guys! I kept meaning to ring them but I never got around to it at the time.
The Irish Cancer Society (who have an annual charity collection on Daffodil Day, but also an odd linking policy for their website) dropped in a plastic bag to the house a few weeks back. Unfortunately they never called back because we did leave out clothes!
It’s bugged me for a long time that the fake charities get away with selling second hand clothing for profit while masquerading as charities. Only last week my next door neighbour left a bag out for one of them, even though I told them they were crooks!
Finally tonight I set aside a few hours to launch a new site at ClothingCollection.org highlighting the fake charity crooks. Each post contains a snapshot of a leaflet handed in to my home along with identifying details from the leaflet/flyer/sticker. I’ll update the site as I get new flyers, and I need to fill out the posts a bit more. Those images have been sitting in my photo folder for the past 3 months so it was about time I uploaded them somewhere!
So, if you hate seeing crooks make money, and especially if you recognise one or more of the flyers, please link to ClothingCollection.org in a blog post or your sidebar. Thanks!
I really would love to know how the Minister for Finance survived so many years without a bank account.
Linkies ..
“I sold one print during my first year on the web, and that was by check, and that check bounced.” (True story).
The 8 bit Philosophy is a documentary coming in 2008 about some of the musicians that made the C64 a great sounding machine. The trailer has sound bites from such famous names as Reyn Ouwehand and Thomas Detert. There’s a 78MB high quality trailer too but it’s the same thing that’s on Youtube.