It’s true. Taking a photograph is only one part of the final image. The rest is what you do afterwards, whether that’s in the dark room or on your computer. Andy Williams posted a couple of his photos, including the before and after shots. It’s amazing the difference that a few minutes in the GIMP will do to a photo! Then, you have to ask yourself, how much is too much?
Buying and Moving House in Ireland – Utilities
Part ??? of ??? – almost there!
I get the keys of the house on Friday so I’m quite excited at the prospect! There’s still a lot to be arranged, and transferring utilities is one of those jobs. I rang The ESB, Bord Gais, and Eircom earlier to find out how.
- Using the 2003 02 area phone book I saw that the ESB had a number of phone numbers. Unfortunately the first sales number I tried went through to their emergency/fault line! Ring 1850 372 372 if you want to talk to a sales guy. I was kept on hold for less than a minute and told to get a meter reading on Friday, get a forwarding address, ring them again and the account will be transferred.
- I rang Bord Gais then. The phone was answered immediately. A meter reading has to be done by the current owners, they should ring Bord Gais on Thursday or Friday with their new address, my payment details and the meter reading. Their phone number is 1850 426200.
- Finally, I rang Eircom. I was kept on hold for a good 3 minutes. Different recorded voices came on from time to time saying there were delays, and sorry for holding, etc. I thought it was strange to have different people recording those messages but it’s probably cheaper than hiring more staff to man the phones. Anyway, story is much the same. They ring Eircom, give my name and payment details. Transfer of a phone account costs €12, and if I want a new number it’ll cost €24.59. Isn’t it strange how the ESB and Bord Gais can transfer an account for free? (or at least they never mentioned a cost, in which case, my apologies to Eircom!) Ring Eircom at 1901 and press 1 for a sales person.
Much Later … It’s much easier than that. The previous owners took meter readings, and rang the various utilities to transfer the bills over to their new address. Bord Gais and the ESB were informed of my moving in to their house, and I rang Eircom and got the phone line connected a few days later.
B2++ Referer Listing
Blog owners on this site will notice and hopefully appreciate a minor change to the referer listing. Instead of printing the complete url to Google requests, Individual keywords are now displayed!
Instead of
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=font+too+sm
you’ll now see
which I think you’ll agree is much nicer!
Shopping, Shopping, Shopping..
I wish I had left that “misc” entry in my budget. It would have covered all the small little house things I bought today! Now I’m way over budget!
Anyway, thank you Michelle and Conor for the help today. Both for carrying too many bags and boxes and for helping me choose the right set of knifes, right vacuum cleaner, furniture and the rest! I really had forgotten that kitchens need knifes, a tin opener, various types of cutlery and such! I’m really looking forward to moving in next week!
And after spending so much on the house, I felt the urge to splash out on a nice new pair of glasses for myself! Woohoo! 🙂
Time to hit the town! Have a good night!
There Goes Intellectual Property Down the Loo
All thanks to the BOFH!
“Funny you should say lavatory,” the Boss continues, “as that’s just where this item came from.”
“You nicked an apple from the bog?!” the PFY responds. “That’s hardly hygienic!”
“No, this apple is a direct product of our toilet system!” he snorts.
“You nicked an apple from out of the toilet?” the PFY gasps, wrinkling his nose.
localhost, oh localhost, where art thou?
When your webserver isn’t running localhost isn’t very useful! Firefox/Firebird/Mozilla and possibly other browsers will then search for localhost and right now it finds localhost.be!
The author of that site wondered where all his visitors were coming from before the cookie dropped! The last localhost I remember on Google was an Australian localhost AFAIR. It looked commercial and the guy linked above should put a few Google ads on his site!
How to avoid visiting his site? Disable keywords in Firefox.
New Mozilla Exploit
Ooer. Looks like a vulnerability in Mozilla. It doesn’t mention Firebird or Firefox explicitly but I presume they’re vunerable too unfortunately.
Noise, Grain, Artifact Reduction – get rid of the scratches!
PhotographyBLOG links to a few interesting articles on photographic noise and defect reduction tools. Wow, the last link is a very lengthy article comparing different products! Unfortunately, only one application has a chance of running natively in Linux, it’s a Java app. The other apps might work in Wine. YMMV!
The High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC)
Mark reminded me to check out the The High Voltage SID Collection as I haven’t looked it up for several months! It’s a huge collection of Commodore 64 music all organised neatly for nostalgic types!
I note that my old friend Merman/Andrew Fisher is mentioned in the release notes for the latest update. Looks like he’s been very busy for the last few years!
Pics of the Day
Wow, several photos on photosig caught my eye this morning..
- Porcelain sky – love the sky!
- On Maligne Lake – I want to go on holiday soon!
- Water Flower – great abstract photo!