Tag Archives: cork

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

JFK visited Cork in 1963

John F. Kennedy, visited my home town Cork, during his trip to Ireland in 1963. This is a photo that popped up on the “Cork” tag Flickr stream last night and I had to blog it.

Different times, he’s completely exposed to the crowd. Patrick Street is thronged with people. They’re practically hanging out the windows trying to catch a glimpse of him. If anyone wanted to take a pot-shot at him it would have been simple to do so but at the time the country was swept up in a tide of pride and joy. “Kennedy had near-legendary status in Ireland, as the first person of Irish heritage to have a position of world power.”
This was only a few months before his assassination in Dallas later that year in November. The Wikipedia page on him has a paragraph dedicated to the visit, and links to this article from the BBC archives.

Image hosted at Flickr.

Really ancient maps of Cork

Google Maps offer a glimpse into the past of Cork, but to really dive into the past try Yahoo Maps.

yahoo map of cork

That building in the marked circle is the old An Post Sorting Office on Eglinton Street. It was demolished at least 2 years ago, and was probably gone long before then. Does anyone remember when? It’s now the building site of the Elysian. Google’s map shows the cleared building site from 2 years ago. Boy, am I glad I took that photo now! 🙂

Google map of Cork

A Simply Silly WordPress URL

I’m not sure why I noticed this protest sticker. It’s stuck to a lamp post on Patrick Street, Cork but maybe it was the typo in the URL that triggered my subconscious. One thing I can be certain of is that WordPress.org is not taking sides in any conflict of any sort! GPL software can be used by anyone just so long as they stick to the agreement with which they accepted the software.

Silly Stupid Typo

As expected, palestinesolidarityproject.wordpress.com points at an old blog of theirs as they have now moved to their own server at palestinesolidarityproject.org.

Glossing over the .org mistake for a minute, why do people still put the “www.” in front of long-winded urls? It gets stripped by WordPress.com anyway. Why not put “http://” there instead? Makes more sense to me. Three cheers for the no-www movement!

So, have you seen any glaring typos on posters, fliers, stickers or blogs that made you look twice? Today’s link post doesn’t count. I did that on purpose to make a point. Sure. 🙂

Google Maps glimpse into the past

Google update their Maps service on a semi-regular basis but their images of Cork City are hopelessly out of date.

Elysian Building Site
The Elysian Building Site

The Elysian will be a large 17 storey tower with offices, apartments, shopping centre, parking and gardens. It’s been years since that building site looked like it does in the image above!
Key:

  1. Elysian building site.
  2. Cork City Hall. (The building work behind that is now complete)
  3. Cork City Fire Brigade HQ
  4. Anglesea Street Garda Station
Patrick Street
Patrick Street, Cork City Centre

They can be forgiven for not having this updated. The large block marked with red has only recently been demolished while superwomen walk past and railing hide the view down by the bottom-right corner of the block.

Nice to have these before pics of the city.

We can have a good world

it@cork Innovate and Connect conference

Watch Hans Rosling’s great talk at TED 2006 where he, “demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale.”

It’s amazing to see how quickly Chile and other less developed nations have caught up with the “industrialised world”, and are about to surpass them in terms of health care. He’s speaking at the it@Cork conference on November 28th this year and should be very entertaining and insightful.

Dinner in Aroma

Just a quick note at the end of the night. My sister took care of Adam (thank you so much Mairead!) while Jacinta and I went out for a fabulous meal in Aroma on Emmett Place in Cork. It’s a Thai/Chinese/Malaysian restaurant and I’ve never been disappointed when I eat there. In fact we’ve brought lots of visitors there, including Matt if memory serves.

The Thai fish cakes are scrumptious, and I ordered the a beef dish with a Malaysian curry sauce. The meat practically melted in my mouth and the curry was nice and spicy. It can be quite busy but we arrived early at 8pm when only a few tables were taken. Service is great with attentive staff. Compared to other restaurants in Cork, prices for an evening meal are reasonable.

We’re definitely going back!

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