Archive for September, 2006
I’d really better keep bloggin
Posted on September 25, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Humour.
5 Comments
Why can’t we make TV like this?
Posted on September 23, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment.
Whilst I’m on the topic of media – how the hell has Jon Stewart been on the air for ten years in the US, over a year on More4 in the UK and I only discover him four weeks ago because of some awesome Stephen Colbert clips on YouTube?
This is quite simply the best funny current affairs show on the TV globally. It makes “Bremner, Bird and Fortune” look like the repetitive snooze-fest that it became just after the era of TW3. As for “The Panel”, well to be fair, that is guest-based so the writing could never compare. But if you look at The Jon Stewart Show, this is cheap TV. Even RTE could afford to make something like this. It is nearly all studio based with lots of spoof location-based reports with blue-screens. It succeeds because of great writers.
I have never understood how a nation like ours which is supposedly bursting at the seams with literary geniuses has rarely been able to create well-written current affairs comedy. Maybe it’s not considered real writing by the numberati. Or maybe the breakthrough will come when a bunch of students with a digicam and a sense of humour start uploading self-written comedy onto YouTube?
Stewart rips everyone to shreds equally which is what makes it so watchable. All of the special correspondents are fantastic and I saw an old clip the other night with both Colbert and Steve Carell which was hysterically funny. Head over to YouTube and search for Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert and you’ll see what I mean. Any chance More4 will start showing The Colbert Report now?
Some say that YouTube will be crushed by the big media companies due to the amount of copyrighted material on their site. I disagree – clips of Stewart and Colbert and others are just advertising gold. Every viewer of one of those clips is another potential viewer of the show. TV companies in particular would be nuts to go after YouTube, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot.
My discovery of this show probably means it’ll be canned next week.
Technorati Tags: Jon+Stewart, Stephen+Colbert, The+Panel, Bremner+Bird+Fortune, TW3, That+Was+The+Week+That+Was, RTE, YouTube
3 Comments
Looks like the hamster is going to be ok
Posted on September 23, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Entertainment.
All reports seem to indicate that Richard Hammond is well on the mend which is a big relief to any fan of Top Gear.
Related to this, I noticed something very interesting on the BBC web-site over the past few days when checking up on him. All of the headlines are obviously decided by editors and news experts and reflect what they think are the pressing issues of the day e.g. various Iranian or Venezuelan numbskulls embarassing their nations at the UN or the genuinely important Darfur and so on. Nowhere in the headlines, after the first announcement, has Hammond been mentioned.
But if you scrolled down to the section on “most read” or “most emailed”, it is stories about Hammond that have been number one for the past three days! It really highlights the huge difference between what we “should” be interested in and what we actually are interested in.
Those of you familiar with Digg know that it is a news site where the top stories are dictated by how many votes they get from the users. They are sometimes accused by “our betters” as pandering to the mob mentality and you often do get nonsense stories as the top ones of the day but what I have always found interesting about Digg is that it generally is a strong reflection of the important stories of the day as agreed on mainstream tech news sites too. So the mob mentality works a lot of the time. I guess it is a variation of the theme of that book “The Wisdom of Crowds“(which I really should read).
Whilst I’m not saying the BBC should dump their editors (well actually they should fire all the ones who insist on the use of inverted commas around any phrase that might be considered controversial: “terrorist”, “mass murderer”, “totalitarian dictator”, “king”), they might consider making one of the headline boxes a display for the most popular story over a 4/8/12/24 hour period. News for the people by the people.
I guess that is why I am such a fan of blogs and RSS feeds – I can subscribe to sites that feed me information that I am interested in and by taking a reasonable cross-section, I end up with a fairly rich view of certain topics and stories.
My issue with general news sites (not just the BBC) is that I don’t have the tools yet to filter the torrent of stories they push out and I can neither keep up with nor have interest in 90% of that information. A news feed which monitors my reading and filters based on what I have read historically would be a very powerful tool indeed.
Technorati Tags: Richard+Hammond, BBC, News, Digg, Mob+Mentality, Wisdom+Crowds
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Apple of my eye
Posted on September 22, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Food.
We planted three small apple trees a few months back in the expectation that we’d get nothing for three years. Magically the poor Cox’s Pippin ignored this and is now creaking under the weight of about 15 apples. And they are beauties:
7 Comments
Eight years ago yesterday
Posted on September 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Babies, Family.
We found out that Catherine was pregnant with our first baby. She gave up smoking that instant. I wussed out for 24 hrs but eight years ago today I gave them up too. From 40 to zero overnight. One of the smartest things we ever did.
4 Comments
Indian Restaurants in Bandon
Posted on September 20, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Restaurants, Reviews.
Anarkali
Food style/ethnicity: Indian
Price: 10 – 20
Location:
North Main Street
Bandon, Co Cork
Ireland
I find it interesting that many people are still more comfortable sending me e-mails to ask questions rather than writing comments on the blog. I include all of my family except big sis in that group.
Do feel free to post any comments you like, you don’t have to give your full name (most don’t) and only I’ll see the email address. Blogs should be conversations rather than monologues.
In any case, I got a question from Clare asking about Indian restaurants in Bandon and I thought I’d post the gist of my reply here.
I haven’t done sit-down in either of the Indians in Bandon but I’ve had plenty of takeaways from Anarkali (023-29762). They are a bit hit and miss but the good dishes are really good.
The chilli garlic dishes are lovely, saffron chicken very nice, bhunas are good, dopiazas are good but their chicken tikka masala is awful for some reason. They seem to do creamy dishes badly.
All of their starters are really good. The restaurant itself is quite basic (and has a lot of take-away customers coming and going) but they are extremely friendly people. It’s a husband and wife team, one Indian, the other Pakistani. I also think they do BYOB.
I haven’t eaten anything from the one that was The Chapel Steps but it has already changed hands after only a few months in operation. My wife heard that it was not good when it was called Moghul. I’m not encouraged by the new owners describing it as “exotic cuisine”. I think currys stopped being exotic in the 70’s 
We’ve eaten in one of the Indians in Clon too. Not sure if it was Cobra or the other one (it’s on the same side as the bike shop) and it was in the category of not too bad. Tiniest kitchen ever!
16 Comments
I love it when a lashed-together meal just works
Posted on September 20, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food.
Pork chops in the fridge and no plan. What to do that we’ll all eat? Check the press – a Lloyd Grossman Puttanesca sauce looks out at me. Hell, I’ll make my own.
- Chops into a ziplock with garlic, thyme, lemon juice and olive oil
- Saucepan on with oil, garlic and 2 anchovies
- Two cans of Aldi’s finest generic no-specific-country plum tomatoes
- Cook it down
- Add some chopped olives from the Gubbeen gastrowagon at the Skibbereen market
- Add some chopped capers.
- Salt, pepper, hint of sugar.
- Boiling water on with a packet of Orecchiette Paesani (little ears), also from Aldi. Bloody hell, I have never seen this pasta in any shop or deli in Ireland. This is the stuff the old dears were making in that Jamie Oliver series in Italy with their thumbs. And now Aldi sells it. I’m pleasantly stunned.
- Chops onto the frying pan.
- Sizzle sizzle.
- Serve
- Eat
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Ah dammit
Posted on September 20, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Motor Cars.
You can say what you like about Top Gear but I can’t stop myself loving it. It is silly, childish and predictable but it is one of the few programmes I look forward to in the week.
Sadly, I just heard that Richard Hammond was critically injured in a crash in a jet car doing upwards of 280 MPH! Fingers crossed that he recovers.
tags: Top+Gear, Richard+Hammond
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Hey You
Posted on September 18, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour.
Norm Geras has given the history of one of my all time favourite one liners from a stand-up comedian. It is Michael Redmond’s piece of perfection “a lot of people say to me…..”
I heard that for the first time back in the early 1990’s, probably on one of the stand-up shows on TV. Or did he support Dylan Moran at some Irish gig?
It was around the same time that Mr Trellis were are their peak and Ardal O’Hanlon delivered his best ever joke. I’ll paraphrase it badly here: ”My Dad has a great sense of humour. Once, I put the price sticker off a bar of chocolate on the fridge and said ‘Hey dad, look, the fridge only cost 32p’. ‘No it didn’t’ he replied, ‘it cost £299′”
OK, ye had to be there.
tags: Michael+Redmond, Ardal+O’Hanlon, Mr+Trellis
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New Apple iWhatever
Posted on September 12, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Humour, Technology.
I see Apple have announced a new product allows consumers to manage and playback their digital-media files on their televisions.
They’ve called it the iTV. Sadly for UK purchasers, this means that it’ll only be capable of playing Corrie, Heartbeat, Celebrity Love Island and repeats of Crossroads.
2 Comments
You can’t get much simpler than this
Posted on September 10, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour, Technology.
Considered by Jeffrey Veen of Google to be close to perfection when it comes to usability on a web-site.
2 Comments
Cully & Sully, the Dragons await
Posted on September 7, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Food.
I just got a mail from Colum over at Cully & Sully to say they are going to be on the TV tonight. If you don’t know them they have two main businesses: The first is supplying lovely pies to pubs whose only cooking apparatus is a microwave. The second is supplying same/similar packaged pies to supermarkets. Now we normally never buy pre-made dinners but their ones are really gorgeous and you get to keep a nice ceramic dish when you are finished.
I’ve just checked and this is a much bigger deal than Sully let on. It is actually a preview of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award! This is fantastic and the guys absolutely deserve to be one of the nominees. Here’s hoping they come out on top.
It’s a three parter starting on RTE1 at 11pm. Fingers crossed that Cully got his hair cut 
I believe Brian O’Driscoll has some tips there.
Colum also mentioned their new Rather Portly Beef & Stout Pie. One of our all-time fave winter dinners is Beef and Guinness made with the Sophie Grigson recipe (variation here) and mashed spuds. The boys have a challenge on their hands to beat that, so I’ll definitely have to give it a go.
tags: Cully+and+Sully, RTE1, Ernst+and+Young, Entrepreneur+of+the+Year
2 Comments
I miss Dublin, particularly the rats
Posted on September 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour, Ireland.
Craig sent me this picture taken by a tourist in a Dublin playground. To save you having to zoom the picture, the warning sign says “These lands are bring treated for rat infestation and have been laid with poison”.
Happy days.
tags: Rats, Playground, Dublin, Poison
2 Comments
Shockingly – Yayyy Vodafone
Posted on September 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Technology.
So I bitched about Voda (twice) and the fact that I couldn’t upgrade the software on my N70 mobile. Then Ciarán, an old workmate, pointed out that I could get the phone unlocked by just calling customer service.
It turns out that they have to ask Nokia for the unlock codes for the N-series, five days later they texted me the code and now the phone can work with any SIM card (like Roam4Free for example). I never knew they would do this so good on them. I’m still on a long contract with them so I guess they don’t really care.
I then re-tried the software upgrade of the phone (as previously described) and the beauty worked! I have no idea if it is related to the unlocking or it is just a coincidence but I now have the latest (bar one) version of the N70 software and I’m a happy bunny.
The main obvious change is that it just seems faster, particularly the SMS menus. Hopefully they have also fixed the idiotic bug where if you paused an MP3 that you were listening to and then someone called you, it would play the paused tune at full volume for the world to hear rather than the ringtone.
If you have an N70, go get the upgrade. If it doesn’t want to upgrade you, call Voda and get the phone unlocked.
tags: Vodafone, Vodafone+Ireland, N70, Nokia, Roam4Free
2 Comments
Interested in what the papers were saying up to 200 years ago?
Posted on September 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Entertainment.
Well Google have just released their most impressive service in a long long time. Over at News Archive Search you can search on a bunch of newspapers worldwide going way back. In many cases you have to pay to see the scan of the paper itself but you can read the actual text for free.
As a test I put in the phrase “famine Ireland” and then selected “before 1880″ and found a newspaper article from The Republican Compiler of Gettysburg on March 1st 1847 which mentions the suffering caused by the Irish famine.
This is an incredibly powerful tool for anyone interested in what was really going on at a particular time rather than the interpretation put on things by historians.
As a tool for schoolkids, it really does boggle the mind compared to what I grew up with. I remember our Irish history book in the Inter Cert doing 1922 to 1969 in a couple of pages and then stopping at 1969.
Imagine if the Irish Times, The Indo and whoever owns the rights to The Irish Press were to hand over their archives to Google Ireland? Hell, I’d be happy to see my tax euros spent on paying them to do it.
Next query, “bombing of Dresden”. Dunno why but it was the first thing that popped into my head after the famine. Oh I’m a barrel of laughs today.
tags: Google, News+Archive+Search, The+Irish+Press, The+Irish+Times, The+Irish+Independent
2 Comments
Mail Glitch
Posted on September 3, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
Small mail glitch over the past 24 hours. If you sent anything from early Saturday morning to early Sunday evening to any conoroneill.com address, I’m afraid it got devnulled. Please re-send.
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