Joe’s Blog

Val’s Kitchen has done a nice review of Donkey Ford’s - the famous eatery in Limerick


Last of the summer whines

and to find it - here is a map

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At times it must have felt like this:

A German teenager accidentally climbed out of a fourth-floor window and fell 10 meters to the ground where he kept on sleeping, albeit with a broken arm and leg - German Sleepwalker Steps Out of 4th-Floor Window

Vista has a bug/feature - [...]This throttling effect occurs when someone launches Windows Media Player and tries to copy files at gigabit speeds. [...]

free soothing music

Out-of-body experiences being explained/recreated

Via Irish girls rock! - geewiz

Lifehack’s 18 tips for killer presentations

Don’t put your home address into your in-car GPS device by Jonathan Brazil.

Via robinb - funny rugby ad

Via Brian Greene - Irish radar as a gif

Procrastination via Martijn

ah - nerd nostalgia Triumph of the Nerds!:

Star Trek Parody/Germany nostalgia

Bebo adds RSS feeds and Conor spots a clue in the URL

read more | digg story

Spotted by Damien Mulley in the Examiner and then Damien Blake(FF Cllr.) in the Donegal News

How it works:
1. The victim receives a cheque and lodges it to their own bank account - because the scammer cannot open one….
2. The victim thinks the cheque has cleared after 1 to 5 days, takes a commission and wires a payment to the scammer
3. It is only several days or weeks later that banks, especially international banks process the transaction fully and discover the fraud. The funds are reclaimed by the bank and the victim has lost money. See wikipedia: Check cashing scams

The ad from The Examiner:

and The Donegal News:

Via Stewart Curry - video about content-aware, dynamic image resizing - http://tinyurl.com/2fhcua

Does Vista forcing reboots? (under certain common settings)

Via Walter - Orphaned Projects

Via blognation DownloadMusic.ie based around independent Irish artists but also makes novel use of SMS

A bad day for Ubuntu servers - problems with “the network cards and later kernels”

skiing ostrich

Via Brian Greene
“there are people who will forever feel I suppose that Shannon is under threat and some of them will be doing that for political reasons” Tony Killeen TD on RTE before the election - fast forward to 13:09 MP3

Note how I’ve refused to put Aer Lingus in the title. That’s because the company management has acted in the way I expect a company to act. The failure arises in how Fianna Fail et. al failed to safeguard the Heathrow slots.

They have a 25% share in Aer Lingus and if they are not prepared to use them, then they are worthless. Fine Gael is calling on the government to act and will put forward a motion calling on the government to do just that when the Dail sits again.

Bertie Ahern’s review group is simply a fudge to take the heat out of the controversy imho.

And in typical Fianna Fail fashion - we have the same party saying all sorts of vague and often contradicting things - Minister for Defense, Willie O’Dea wants Aer Lingus to reverse the decision before an EGM would do it. Noel Dempsey doesn’t think it’s such a big deal (O’Dea suggested Dempsey was getting bad advice) and Mary Hanafin doesn’t think the government should intervene at all! Who is taking responsibilty here? Dan Boyle, John Gormley and Tony Kileen have been saying various bits and pieces too but it’s all talk and no action/accountability. This affects Kerry, Clare, Limerick and perhaps Tipperary and Galway too but where are Michael Lowry, Jackie Healy-Rae and Noel Grealish to be seen now?

UPDATE: The SaveShannon.com is now live

Welcome to Dysfuncional Ireland written by Joey.

Colm Burke MEP for Ireland South (Munster minus Clare) has a new website and blog to keep everyone up to date with his work in the EU, having taken over from Simon Coveney
We were privileged enough to be invited to Inniscara for a party organised by Colm and his super assistant Catrina

Near the very end of the party, we had a bit of a sing-song and I managed to grab a bit on video - take it away Liam and Colm -

The following day we headed down to the Michael Collins commemoration at Beal na Bláth organised by the Collins 22 Society and others. David Puttnam (entries on wikipedia and imdb) had the honour of being the first non-Irish person to give the oration. He is famous for being the producer on Chariots of Fire and winning the Oscar for Best Picture as well as being nominated for oscars for The Mission, The Killing Fields and Midnight Express. He was knighted in ‘95, became a Labour Lord in ‘97and now lives in West-Cork. His speech focussed on integrity, consumerism and the kind of society we are creating and how Collins inspired him.

Finding Beal na Bláth is was an interesting task, especially coming from Dripsey so I’ve taken the liberty of placing it approximately on Google Maps:

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I still wonder how Ronan just happened to drive past it some day…

German banks have had to make €17.3 billion ($23.3 billion) available to the Saxony state bank (.de) to cover Dublin-based affiliate/conduit Sachsen LB Europe(.ie). That affiliate (or off-balance-sheet investment vehicle) had a fund called “Ormond Quay” which had invested in “asset backed commercial papers” and got into liquidity problems. It has two other funds also - “Georges Quay” and “Sachsen Funding” which are not in trouble (yet).

Via Spiegel: Banks in Germany Wobble and Sachsen LB Europe Statement

The crisis claimed its first Irish casualty last week with the collapse of the Dublin-based firm, Structured Credit Company (SCC), with liabilities of $350 million (€259.5 million). - Irish Times

Speaking at the company’s launch earlier this year, the minister for finance Brian Cowen had described SCC as ‘‘a flagship project’’ that would ‘‘help to underpin Ireland’s standing as a centre of excellence for the location of international financial services’’ - Sunday Business Post: Dublin finance firm falls victim to credit crunch

It’s not Brian’s fault of course