Bill Shatner talks about his Tinnitus
October 10th, 2009
Stumbled across these 2 videos sponsored by the American Tinnitus Association. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort in Ireland.
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Archive for the ‘Life The Universe and Everything!’ Category
#wobblybiker Motorbike Spin to Cork!
July 4th, 2009
So last week a gang of about 15 bikers took to the roads from Dublin and headed to Cork. What an overnight trip! The weather was good, the buzz was awesome and the anticipation for Cork poured beer was high! I drive a Honda Deauville myself which is a 650cc tourer. Its a big bike but was actually the smallest bike for the day, with most other riders on BMW’s or tuned road bikes.
We left Dublin via the N7 at 9:30. Unofficially marshalled by those good folks at Bike 2 Bike Training, we plotted a route over the back roads that took us from Dublin to Blessington via the Sally Gap, on over to Kilkenny city for lunch, then towards Tipperary, Clare, over the V to Waterford before finally arriving in Cork.
We didnt arrive in Cork in 6:30pm which goes to show how much of a challenge the route was. Many roads were windy, gravelly, badly marked but that didnt deter from the fun and the sights. We took a somewhat leisurely pace and safety was as always paramount. Taking the back roads reminds you of how beautiful the country really is and we dont often get to see it when bombing down the motorway in rush hour traffic!
The arrival to Cork was celebrated with lots of beer, a trip to the local pubs and then more beer to wash it the first lot down.
Myself and one of the other bikers, John Fair, tweeted the day’s exploits on Twitter with the tag #wobblybiker
Needless to say the trip home the next day in the rain was not as pleasant…
#wobblybiker – Older Men Take a Bike Ride!
June 24th, 2009
I’m excited about this weekend. Myself and a buddy, John Fair, both share a love for all things 2 wheeled with engines. (Thats a complicated way of saying we like our motorbikes) John and I are taking to the road early Saturday morning with 12 others on a long trip to Cork. By long trip, I mean Dublin to Cork via Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford, Lismore and Cork. Hopefully the weather keeps up.
We plan on taking lots of photos, and um, maybe washing down a beer or 2. You can follow our goings on in real time on twitter as we will be tweeting updates and photos with the hashtag search #wobblybiker
Will report back on the day’s antics next week!
CLinks – Ninja Cats
March 21st, 2009
Ok this is just for a bit of fun. Everyone knows what a lolcat is. It has inspired many a good photo but mostly crap ones to plague internet forum. However lolcat for a brief moment spurned ninja cat on youtube. Check it out:
But as with everything on the internet. There are imitators. But this one is even better than the original for all the wrong reasons! Check out the girly man scream at the end!
CLinks are back!
March 1st, 2009
Some CLinks to keep you entertained, or not, depending on what you are in to!
What an odd site. The new lolcat? Check out the adventures of Gynolamp here!
Irish Blogger Jason Row caused a bit of a stir for Ryanair this week with this blog post here.
Jack Black takes the console wars a bit too far here.
And while on the gaming theme, Whitest Kids You Know show us what its really like to playing online games below.
Attn: Entrepreneurs, Accountants, Company Directors and Business Owners! Please take a moment to complete this Survey!
January 25th, 2009
Given the existing economic climate that we’re in and the increase in company liquidations, I’ve put together a survey to assess how important cash flow is to companies at present and to determine how satisfied the decision makers are with the credit control and collections.
Please take a moment to complete this brief survey with your company’s view. All responses are taken in complete confidence and only the aggregated results will be published. User’s will not be identified.
Thanks for your help!
Latest CLinks
January 25th, 2009
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Ok so its been a while since I have put up some CLinks, let hope these are up to scratch!!
Check out Irishboy John Williams and his quest to win in the Twitter Shorty Awards here.
The recently successful Teen Camp Ireland event in Ireland has a few clips on YouTube, check them out below!
One of my favourite blogs, 2 Weeks on a Trolley can be found here. Its written by Irish people who work in the medical profession are doctors or nurses, some in Ireland and some abroad. Very interesting read.
The lads over at the excellent ifoods.tv prepare for the launch of their new name here.
BBC 3 news presenter Tasmin Lucia Khan learns that running to your desk with seconds to spare before live broadcast leaves you breathless here.
How Smart Workers Survive a Downturn
January 5th, 2009
It’s about time I wrote something about work life. After all, my working career has been good to me so far, although I have been good to my career by working at it. I work in a finance role at the moment managing a small global team for a large multinational. I have been in my limited career, project managed, insourced, outsourced, invented the wheel, fit square pegs in round holes and drank lots of tea. You don’t need to be a coffee drinker to succeed in life – trust me!
Given its all doom and gloom in the papers today, Ireland is hemorrhaging jobs, let me share with you some thoughts and ideas to maintain a healthy career. Some of it may seem obvious, some of it may seem like common sense, but hopefully there is something in it for everyone. Granted this is a very brief article, hopefully it can inspire some ideas.
We all need some level of security in our place of work, be us a cog in the corporate wheel or an up and coming entrepreneur. What sets us out from everyone? Think about the reasons that you shop in Dunnes Stores instead of Tesco, or go to one gym instead of another. After price, whats the reason? For many of us its Value.
Have you set yourself career goals, short, medium or long term? You probably have one of the following answers:
* Nah, what’s the point, sure I’m in X career, there is only so far I can go unless I go back to college or sumthin.
* Haven’t had a chance or given it much thought really.
* Yes
Now if you are reading my blog, you’re already a walking genius so lets assume you’ve your goals written down. Well done, you’ve given yourself a head start on everyone else. There are plenty of books that will quote you stats on how much more successful it will make you. But lets be honest, writing down “Goal 1: I want to be rich and successful” isn’t going to make you rich and successful no matter what Rhonda Byrne (author of The Secret) may tell you!
Its all about the detail.
If you goal is to be rich and successful, where do you begin? I’m fecked if I know! So get specific. Write down goals such as; “Goal 1: I want to own a 03 Mercedes in 2010.” Now we’re getting somewhere. You’ve set yourself a specific goal with a timeframe. Same goes with the workplace. E.G. “Goal 2: I want to project managing the outsourcing of X tasks to Site B by 2010.” Bingo. Same thing. Specific, time frame.
I could go on, but there are plenty of books out there on goals and realising them. Lets look at the roadmap to realising your goal.
Lets say your goal is to be your team supervisor by such and such a date. However there is rarely an opportunity for promotion because the person currently doing it has been there for years yada yada. Sound familiar? Yeah we’ve all been there at some point. I couldn’t be arsed, blah blah blah, hate the place blah blah blah. You get my drift. One day though that person will leave, or new position is created or a new opportunity within your company or externally. Its definitely going to happen. The question is how are you going to be prepared for it?
Let me give you an example from some years ago when I managed a large team of 20 people with 4 supervisors. The supervisors were institutionalised and happy with their positions. No signs of them moving on. One of the core feedback items from their subordinates was there was rarely opportunity for promotion. 2 people in particular came to me asking me for advice on moving up the ladder and expressed interest in progressing the management route. Over a 12 month period, the penny dropped with one of the girls, she started taking on additional responsibilites from her supervisor, getting more involved in task and decision making where she could and started to do more in house training. All off her own back and without (a) brown nosing and (b) working any extra hours. The other girl moaned about it the lack of progress in the company and how “shite” morale was. 12 months passed and one of my supervisors annouced she was unexpectedly pregnant. No prize for guessing which of the team members was first in line to cover her maternity benefit. The same individual is now a team manager in another industry, for another company. Progress with little effort.
So what has this to do with riding out a downturn? Well its an analogy for your effectiveness in the workplace. Take a step back from yourself at work. Are you good at your job? How do you know? Are you grade against your responsibilities or are you graded on what you do above and beyond your responsibilties? What value do you you add to your department and organisation? Just because its not in your job description does not necessarily mean you shouldn’t take heed or just get it done. The buck stops with each of us individually regardless of whether we are customer facing or not.
As a manager I surround myself with good people. (Some will argue its because Im a lazy fecker who wants to skive as much as possible!) If you are part of an effective team, your strengths far outway your weakness and in many cases, null and void them. For the same reason the dragons on the Dragon’s Den dont invest in the new and interesting products but rather the individuals who create them, companies like to keep good people. Are you one of them?
Its a busy pace of life both at home and in the office. I generally use the Outlook calendar and Tasks to manage my daily routines. Whenever I need to set my goals for the week or even the day, I write them all down and then shave 30% of them off the list. That way I know I have a good chance of achieving them. Afterall, the work week never goes as planned. We get distracted from all directions. Bespoke requests from management, dragged out customer request, or just even the computer network being down. It all adds up.
Finally the last thing I will say (if you’re still reading and chances are you’re not!) is try stay positive. Nothing worse than a grumpy employee!
Burger King Comes to McDonalds…On a bun!
January 4th, 2009
Its hard not to find McDonalds or Burger King burgers tasty at some point in your life. Be it when dying with a hangover, or post drinking session with your friends or just because you are hungry, we’ve all done it. I went through a period of many years where I didn’t venture near fast food joints after reading Eric Schlosser’s excellent book, Fast Food Nation.
However now I’m older and far more ignorant. So when my head is pounding after a night on the tiles, I will settle, the odd time, for a drive thru from whatever fast food joint is nearby.
The trick with fast food is the flavour. Not the ingredients that are pulled from the ground, but the lab created flavours. Schlosser goes into as much detail as legally allowed in his book to explain it. Despite the complexity of it, one thing is for sure, you can blindfold a person and they will know the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper. Both companies are very proud of their burgers that for sure.
But a strange thing happened recently. On a hungover trip to McDonalds, they had a new burger on the menu, the Big Tasty. ( I believe its called the Big N’ Tasty in some countries). It was a few quid extra but it looked huge and had bacon on it and I had a hangover..
It was tasty. Not as big as I expected but tasty. However there was something glaringly obvious about it as I removed the huge slices of tomatoes from the bun. It tastes exactly like Burger King’s Whopper.
Some google searches later and it transpires that the burger was introduced to directly compete with Burger King’s Whopper. See here. Now maybe I’m naive and this is common knowledge. But for the few extra euro for the same tasting, slightly smaller looking burger, I never thought I’d say this but….. I should have went to Burger King!
Facebook doesn’t like popular people or your boobies?
January 4th, 2009
Facebook was in the news a lot this week. Mostly because of breasts. The social networking site has been removing photos of women breast feeding as they are considered to be obscene under their policy since 2007. Perhaps the decision makers on Facebook are all men, but they obviously never heard of the expression, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. There are lots of angry women on facebook. A facebook group was set up by a lady, Kelli Roman, who noticed photos disappearing back in 2007. The group, “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene!” has almost 130,000 members. A spokesperson for Facebook Barry Schnitt, in an unusual move, commented on the campaign advising that they only remove obscene photos where the full breast is exposed but they dont remove many breastfeeding photos. I say “unusual move” because Facebook are generally non responsive to many non standard user queries
The campaign set up a seperate sight with some of the photos that were branded obscene here. (Yes be warned, these photos contain boobies!)
I don’t have kids nor have I breasts, but I do think that in many cases Facebook is creating a bigger problem than it is trying to prevent. Breastfeeding is natural thing and the vast majority of it have been part of the process at some stage in our lives. By banning photos which is generating publicity is doing nothing but creating bigger stigmas around breastfeeding in public, something which regularly pops up in discussion both on and offline.
See an article in the New York Times here.
But the Facebook antics doesn’t end there. Internet movie uber geek, Harry Knowles, had this Facebook profile closed down without warning recently. Knowles, the founder and owner of the movie site Ain’t It Cool, had thousands of friends on his profile and would befriend anyone who requested it. He regularly updated his profile and photos. However Facebook didn’t like it when Harry received many Birthday greetings and closed his profile down. Although Harry wasn’t given a reason, he speculated that it was because of the high activity on his account. Weird. More on it here.
So all this social networking is giving me a headache. Its now acceptable to send birthday greetings via your social networking site (instead of um, a text message?) but its not acceptable to breastfeed your kids or be popular. Strange morality issues there me thinks!
What do you think?
This Week’s CLinks!
December 26th, 2008
Hopefully your Turkey and Pud is settled by now and you’re onto the Turkey sandwiches instead!
Onto this week’s CLinks!
First up a youtube vid – watch an unofficial twist to the Mac vs PC ads.
Attack of the Show parody the upcoming movie, “The Spirit” with their own trailer with a dash of Christmas added!
This twitter user tweets from a plane crash earlier this week in the US here!
This is a mental Christmas house lights video. Its just mental. I know its an oldie at this stage but well worth another look!
Finally, Wired is compiling a user submitted Sexiest Geeks of 2008 here! I still can’t believe that yer wan from Buffy and American Pie looks like that in real life!!
This Week’s CLinks!
December 22nd, 2008
So here it is, I couldn’t come up with anything better so I’m just going to call it CLinks. Don’t ask why and yeah it sucks. I would have called it “Click here for Boobies”, but it might give off the wrong impression.
Anyway, this week I have the serious and not so serious. It seems that us Southerners make a trip “Up Da Nerth” (Northern Ireland) for our shopping for Christmas is big news, almost. The New York Times has an article on it here, but more interesting is the article which is from a Canadian news station here. Its the 12 hour journey “up da nerth” which had me laughing. Must be a slow news day.
Pat Phelan of patphelan.net raffling expense Nokia phone here!
Dirty talking xylophone can be found on limmy.com here. [Audio - NSFW]
Coldplay magically came up with the same song as Joe Satriani
zombo.com – pointlessly entertaining.
“No Drama Theatre” – Up and coming Dublin based Drama group, with a difference!
December 12th, 2008
Ok so it’s a shameless plug but its deserved! And they did link to my blog so they deserve a mention.
Back in June of this year, myself and another user from boards.ie, Niamh Cullen tried our best to form a Dublin based drama group with a difference after our efforts to find one failed poorly. We both had our minds set on a few criteria for a drama group:
* Stir clear of traditional Oirish plays which have been done over and over
* Avoid falling in the “Whats on this year in the Leaving Cert” trap
* Avoid groups dominated by old farts
Our first drama group meet up consisted of 4 people, 1 of which never returned. However through much persistence and online pushing, things started moving. We now have approximately 20 people who turn up every week and a committee.
So why plug this (shamelessly) now? Well a few reasons. First of all, our beta website went live. www.nodramatheatre.com This is due to the IT skills of Dave McGowan.
We have a forum on the boards.ie website where we update our goings on and the likes. The forum can be found here.
Our drama season is wrapping up for the Christmas but it ends on a high. We have cast our first production; a original piece one act written by Barry O’Donovan and his buddy (who’s name escapes me!) entitled Night At The Invasion.
We are kicking of again on January 6th and we plan to having an companion piece which will be performed on the same nights as Night At The Invasion. As things advance, I will keep you all up to date as to how it goes!
Lowerthetone.com needs a Theme!
November 28th, 2008
Yes we need a theme! And I’m ridiculously indecisive! I have used a few themes but some were not so compatible.
So I need your suggestions on a Wordpress theme that will work for me!
The Boards.ie Photography Yearbook 2008.
November 28th, 2008
You may have noticed that ad in the top right corner of the page for the boards.ie Photography yearbook which is on sale on blurb.com. (Click the link for a preview)
You can see from the original thread here that part of the cost of the book will be donated to the boards.ie annual charity, Santa Strike Force. With SSF, basically boards.ie users, mods and admins collect as much dosh as they can by organising charity events, and the proceeds are used to buy presents for less fortunate kids in hospital over Christmas. More details on the SSF can be found here.
My book arrived during the week and I have to say some of the photos are fantastic. As I understand it all photo contributors are amateur photographers. Well done to all concerned!
Lando Calrissian for President!
November 5th, 2008
With all the furore on the US election at the moment, it gives me a great opportunity to plug this extremely nerdy yet somewhat relevent ad campaign for the “Vote Lando Calrissian” campaign! Enjoy!
Clip courtesy of funnyordie.com
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Blarney Castle Paranormal Investigation!
November 2nd, 2008
So last night I joined the other brave souls and was brought for a paranormal adventure in Blarney Castle after dark with the guys from P.I.G.S. After packing my Long Johns, Pringles, Twix and naggin of whiskey, at 8:30pm things got under way. It was a cold night, but fortunately it was a dry one.
In total there was a group of about 30 people, so we were split up into 3 groups, myself, I joined the high spirited (no pun intended!) boards.ie crew! Eight of us in total. The boards.ie group were a great crowd and were able to have a giggle along the way.
After the introduction and safety spiel from the PIGS, we went on our way. Our first stop was the castle’s cave and dungeon. Not for anyone with a fear of tight spaces or for overweight American tourists… Despite the grim sounding nature of our first stop, it was actually quite pleasant and warm. Even when the lights went out. A brief EVP session was held. EVP, Electronic Voice Phenomenon, is essentially letting your recording device record and you ask questions of the ghosties in the hope that something is picked up on the tape.
Its when we moved into the next location that things got a bit more interesting, well for me anyway! We held another EVP session but it wasn’t until we were in the “family room” in the castle that things got interesting. The room had an eerie feel to it as it was open top and overlooked from the ledge where the Blarney Stone is seated.
I moved into the centre of the room to take a photo of some of the group at back wall. As I posed to take the photo, I felt something brush against my right shoulder, as if gently pulling down on my shoulder. Very creepy, yet not unthreatening. However it took me a few moments to announce it to the group, mainly due to the embarrassment of saying someone touched me but there was no one there!
We all had a feeling of being watched from the upper level however when we moved up there, despite one guy trying to kiss the Blarney Stone, nothing spooky happened and my camera battery died. I cant credit this to the spirit world, sometimes we’re just to thick to check before we leave!
Our final location to go to was the creepiest of all. The grounds. Before we entered the grounds, we held a brief EVP session. Our group medium and PIGS guide had the feeling of being watched from one of the tunnel. I was the opposite, I really felt like a woman was watching us from the other end! However I didn’t mention this to the group until one of the group mentioned feeling the exact at breakfast today!
Although nothing specific happened in the grounds, we all had the feeling of being watched. Although walking around Dolmens, “Witches Kitchens” and “Druid’s Circles” would make anyone uneasy!
The night drew to a close about 3am and despite our tired and cold faces, everyone seemed to enjoy the night. The guys from PIGS are a decent bunch. They add a nice touch of not taking it all too serious while maintaining their professional at all times.
What could have been a very nerdy event, was a very enjoyable one. More photos to follow in the coming days!
A big thanks to the PIGS team (Mark, Niall, Gavin, Graham and Colum) for making the event possible and bringing me along! You can visit their official site at www.thepigs.org
Paranormal Investigation tomorrow – “Scare the knickers Off You Night!”
October 31st, 2008
No this has nothing to do with my previous post about Zombie Strippers! Tomorrow I will joining P.I.G.S. on a Halloween excursion to Blarney castle as we go ghost hunting, or hope to anyway.
The PIGS were the people behind the recently successfulParacon event in Clontarf castle.
So basically a gang of about 30 of us will have the privilege of having Blarney Castle in Cork to ourselves for 6 hours tomorrow night. Despite all the techno talk about gadgets and gizmos the investigators, mediums and psychics are bringing, the only advise the gave me was to bring a torch and chocolate. Presumably the torch is used to help me eat the chocolate should the lights go out?
I don’t know what to expect. My fear level is currently at 2. The 2 representing my fear that I will get lost driving down.
I will post back up some photos and commentary on Sunday! Some more photos below. Click to enlarge.
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