When-in-Ireland – Page 4

Ireland.com uses WordPress MU

Damien alerted me to the fact that the new Ireland.com blogs are using WordPress, and so with much excitement I hit the site and browsed around. A quick look at the source showed that they are in fact using WordPress MU which is rather neat.

Ireland.com is the website of The Irish Times, a major daily newspaper here. It’ll be great to see journalists blogging there, but only if they are allowed free reign. If they pull it off, they’ll bring a lot more attention to the site.

So far, only two blogs are operating. On the Record is a music blog written by Jim Carroll, and Price Watch by Conor Pope. Conor’s first post is Window or aisle? €15 please, a short post exploring new charges by Aer Lingus. I don’t see a Trackback link there but hopefully they’ll allow trackbacks and pingbacks sooner rather than later.

Welcome to the ireland.com blog page. We have two blogs, one written by music journalist Jim Carroll, using his weekly column On The Record as its cornerstone. This blog will shed light on the machinations of the music industry at home and abroad. From today, the consumer-focused PriceWatch section will also be carried in blog form on the site. Written by Conor Pope, the blog will be updated throughout the week and will allow users to post details of rip-offs, ask questions and perhaps even highlight bargains they have spotted.

Update on Sep 8, 2009 They’re not using WordPress MU any more unfortunately. Looks like a Windows based system, with ugly urls. The links to the blogs above are broken as a result. Disappointing.

Boldly going where no 76 year old has gone before

William Shatner was interviewed by the Sunday Times for it’s In Gear section and in typical fashion it’s mostly about cars, but don’t let that put you off if you’re not a motorhead. He talks about his marriages, his future flight into space in a Virgin Galactic Shuttle (not looking forward to it), horse riding, and his hopes for good health which must play on the mind of an active 76 year old.

To lift the mood I ask what dreams Shatner still wants to fulfil. “Not to get sick,” he says. “I’m so healthy and I feel so strong and I jump up on a horse and I drive fast cars. And I’m thinking this has got to end soon, and I don’t want it to end. That’s my biggest dream.”

While on the subject of high achieving 35 year old septuagenarians, I want to congratulate my mother-in-law, Philomena Burns for winning “The James Stack Memorial Perpetual Trophy” and a gold medal in this year’s Feis Maitiu poetry and recital competition in Cork. She is of course delighted and we’re very proud of her! I hope to update this post with a photo of her and her trophy and medal next week.

Donncha vs the taxman vs the postman

How are you supposed to do business in Ireland when tax forms don’t come on time? Here’s a snippet from a form P30 I got from Revenue this morning.

A form that should be filled out before February 14th arrived on March 30th. A form that warns that there may be penalties for late payment. Sheesh. Oh, and it arrived opened. Not the first time that happened either.

This morning I finally paid my motor tax. Instead of getting the nice simple online registration form and pin number I got a “final reminder” sometime in February warning that the police would be called if the tax wasn’t paid within ten days. I didn’t and they weren’t. I called the garage instead who sent me a form to get another vehicle registration form, which I already have. I have two of them now, one must go back.

We know for a fact that mail has been lost. A letter that Jacinta was expecting last year vanished without a trace. Maybe it’s in some sorting office somewhere stuck behind a bin.

An Post need to get their act together and stop losing mail and delivering late.

Edit: oh, and next time you buy a second hand car you’ll have to pay the motor tax for the time the car was in the garage. You’re not supposed to, but it’s happened to me on my last two cars. I’ve had to pay for the month previous to purchasing the car because the tax just happened to run out before I bought it. The garage is supposed to register the car as off the road but that obviously doesn’t work.

Edit: It’s April 4th. I just received a tax assasement from Revenue dated January 10th. It had no address on the form, but someone had hand written the address on a slip of paper which was stapled to that form. We got an awful shock until we realised the issue date because we’ve sent Revenue big fat cheques since January. gulp!

Is this living?

I spotted this on a large advertising hoarding on the Western Road in Cork this afternoon and snapped it to remind myself to look it up. It’s right by UCC and in the perfect spot to attract the attention of webs savvy students. URLs on hoardings are like honey to a bee with me. I will snap off a few shots of the sign as a reminder and visit later. When I did visit thisisliving.ie I was presented with the following page.

I have to ask, if I’m visiting thisisliving.ie what country do you think I’m in?

After selecting Ireland and hitting “Enter” I was brought into a nice animation of a resort or hotel which built up and zoomed away again, and then repeated with another 2 locations before being brought to a hotel reception. I signed in and clicked around for about 5 minutes before getting bored of all the loading. It reminded me of the days spent loading C64 games from datasette. At least then I had the cool Ocean or Thalamus loading music to entertain me..

The copyright notice at the bottom of page identifies “Sony Computer” and a quick search took me to this post which has the following tv ad for the Playstation 3. Apparently this advertising campaign has been running all over Europe since January. I’m sure I would have come across a games console somewhere if I had persisted!

Game footage in the above trailer does look pretty. Anyone bought a PS3 yet? Someone told me they’re going for about €600 or so. That correct? You could buy a reasonably specced “home PC” for that much! Supposedly Ireland has a less than healthy obsession with everything Playstation so I’m sure they’re selling like hotcakes!

A free daffodil for your blog today

Today is Daffodil Day here in Ireland and in honour of the day I’m offering a daffodil header image to any blogger who’d like it. There are no restrictions on how you use this image, do what you like, but I would love if you would blog about Daffodil Day.

I’ve made two header images especially suited to blogs using the K2 theme. These are 780×200 images, and to make things easier there’s a mirrored image to suit your blog title. Larger sizes are available on request.

Daffodil Day is in aid of cancer research. The Irish Cancer Society does what it can to fund raise for cancer research and care so they’re a good charity to support.

Daffodil Day is the largest annual fundraising event run by the Irish Cancer Society to raise money for people with cancer.

This year our Daffodil Day is on March 23rd, and over 5,000 volunteers nationwide will be helping to sell fresh and silk daffodils and daffodil pins.

If you would like to help out during Daffodil Day, just phone us on 1 850 60 60 60 or Email reception@irishcancer.ie

Daffodils are flowers of hope and of springtime. That is why they are such an appropriate symbol for the Irish Cancer Society’s cancer care projects. These projects help to improve the quality of care available to people with cancer throughout Ireland.

I have to admit their linking policy is a little strange. I never thought I’d have to ask permission by fax to link to a website.

Slightly later … we bought our daffodils while doing a spot of shopping in Blarney. Here’s the very nice volunteer and her springer spaniel who were manning the stall outside Supervalu. A bunch of daffodils or a pin are 3 Euro each. A small contribution to cancer research.

Updated a year later in 2008! Daffodil Day is next Friday. I’m offering a beautiful daffodils photo for sale in aid of the Irish Cancer Society. See my blog post for further details!

Níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil iad féin

Seachtain na Gaeilge is now over for another year but this year RTE actually featured a tv program I enjoyed. Níos Gaelaí was a four part series which followed 4 immigrants to Ireland as they learned to speak Irish and learn about Irish culture through cooking, sport, music and dancing. The show was presented by Bob Kelly who was engaging and jumped from Irish to English with ease while keeping the conversation going.

The last episode on Arainn was wonderful to watch. The scenery there is so stark and barren but the local populace were friendly and full of fun. Witness dancing at the cross roads! Predictably enough they ended up at Dun Aonghus but drinking champagne near those cliffs? Gulp!

I felt Bob Kelly preached a little too much at the end about the importance of keeping the language alive but it was humbling to hear these new Irish speaking as Gaeilge. I for one would love to labhair cupla focail in my daily interactions with strangers and friends.

Classic Irish Rock from Horslips

St. Patrick’s Day has arrived and it’s beautiful outside. It’s perfect weather for landscape photography – plenty of light and an interesting sky with fluffy clouds floating on-high. I’ll be on the streets of Cork photographing the crowds and the parade so look out for me if you’re around!

Just because of the day that’s in it, and because I was dancing around the kitchen with Oscar this morning to this song, here’s Horslips playing “An Dearg Doom”.
Video of the aforementioned dancing will not be making it’s way onto the Internet any time soon…

Just back from town now. We met Linda and went to Luigi Malones for lunch, hoping to catch the last bit of the parade afterwards, but as we reached Patrick’s Street at 2pm the crowd started to disperse! The parade lasted barely an hour! Conor saw the whole thing and he said we didn’t miss much. I got some great shots of the crowd and as everyone was in good mood many people posed and acted a little crazy for the camera.

A few minutes later we met Conor and Sylvia, headed to the farmers market where Linda and I took long exposure shots of the carosel and we eventually ended up in a nearby cafe for further refreshment.

Looks like some photos of the parade are showing up on Flickr already. I saw an insane number of people with digital SLRs. Folks, why aren’t you all blogging?

I think Linda might have found a new passion in street photography too. Can’t wait to see her shots!

More photos: Red Mum took some excellent shots of the parade in Dublin. Monasette did the same in Galway. Gallery to follow! Flickr has lots to offer today! Anyone else I can link to? Leave a comment!

Everyone’s very quiet! No more photos? I have a few photos on my photoblog, and I’ll be posting some more over the next week.

St. Patrick's Day 2007

Tomorrow is the feast day of the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick. Unfortunately it seems that St. Patrick was never canonised officially by a Pope, but that’s ok because according to Wikipedia, “for most of Christianity’s first thousand years, canonisations were done on the diocesan or regional level.” We’ll not give up our Saint without a fight! (via)

In honour of the day parades will be held in all the cities and many of the towns of Ireland. I’ll be in Cork tomorrow to capture a flavour of the day and photos will appear soon after on In Photos.

Some links to whet your appetite for tomorrow:

I can’t believe the last time I posted St Patrick’s Day photos was 2004! I did shoot the St. Patrick’s Festival which was on during and after the parade last year. That was great fun with street entertainers and food stalls. Yum!
Details about the Cork Parade can be found on the Cork Festival website. The parade starts at 1pm from the end of the South Mall and heads up towards Mc Curtain Street. The usual route of the parade if memory serves.
The Dublin festival lives at stpatricksfestival.ie and if the radio adverts I’ve heard are anything to go it’ll be a great day!
Does your town or city have a parade website? Leave a comment and I’ll link it here!

Blogorrah lists five reasons it’s great to be Irish which will either bring a smile to your face or confusion. Frawley’s? Never heard of it! I love reason two however!

You don’t have to resign from office for being corrupt – just pretend you’re really sorry for about half an hour. Or better still – ignore it and it’ll go away!

My home from space

If I were in the house buying market it just got a little easier to spy on the neighbours of your possible new home. My home.ie added a satellite mapping service to their site which allows one to zoom in closer than other online maps, although I don’t think you’ll be watching anyone skinny-dipping..

It’s not quite as smooth as Google or Yahoo’s offering. You have to click the direction arrows instead of dragging the map but it’s not bad for scouting around.

Finally, my map on Useamap links to a spot in Blarney a few hundred meters down the road from where I now sit. They offer driving directions and distances just by clicking on your destination on the map. It’s not perfect. It likes the main road to Cork a little too much, but I guess if you didn’t know an area it’s probably better to stay off the side roads eh?

MyHome.ie

Google Maps

Craic agus ceol ar an gCeadaoin

My brother Donal who I mentioned a few days ago is going to Lesotho in mid-April to help build a school and raise funds for the ISPCC here in Ireland.

As part of his fund raising effort there will be a charity trad gig on Wednesday night, that’s tomorrow night! Sounds like a great line up and I’m going to try get in for an hour or so. Watch out for the guy in the WordPress tshirt with the camera. That’ll be me!

Performers on the night include The Fuchsia Band, back from their travels and who always put on an energetic and entertaining show; Cork singer Ger Wolfe singing some of his distinctively Cork ballads; Dan O’Callaghan, a piper from Cork who has travelled around the world playing music; Tommie Cunniffe on accordion, who is currently recording his debut album; and, last but not least, John Mitchell on flute accompanying Donal O Caoimh on the uilleann pipes.

Update! The gig was great. A huge crowd gathered to watch and listen and we even had a few dancers! I hope to post some photos tomorrow if I find time to work on them tonight.