Archive for October, 2006

CBBC, CBeebies and UTV on Sky Digital

Posted on October 30, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Technology.

I don’t know why it is so hard to find this info so I thought I’d post it here to solve that problem.

A lot of Sky customers don’t know that there are many other free channels accessible on the various Astra satellites (like the good old analogue days) which you can programme into your Sky Digibox. From talking to other parents, by far the most popular of these has to be CBBC and CBeebies. In fact, Channel 4 is now the only remaining mainstream station that you cannot get on Sky in Ireland.

In order to get the two kiddies stations, do the following:

• On your Sky remote, go to Services->System Setup->Add Channels
• In the Frequnecy box, enter 10773
• In the Polarisation box, select H
• In the Symbol Rate box, select 22
• In the FEC box, select 5/6
• Select “Find Channels”
• It will return a list of BBC Channels including CBBC and CBeebies
• Scroll down to each one of interest and press the yellow button to select them
• When you are done press the “Select” button
• Those channels are now available in Services->Other Channels

Unfortunately you cannot record those stations if you have a Sky+ box. There are more regional BBC stations available at “Freq=10802″ (with all other settings the same as above).

UTV can be found on: Freq=10906, Pol=V, Symb=22, FEC=5/6

Lyngsat, the best satellite info web-site has tons of others.

Technorati Tags: CBeebies, CBBC, UTV, Sky, Sky+Digital, Lyngsat

66 Comments

Irish men of a certain age, brace yourselves

Posted on October 29, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Entertainment.

Leslie Dowdall is playing The Brogan Inn in Bandon soon!

Pause, little shudder of excitement, continue.

For those of you too young to remember, Leslie was to many Irish men who are now in their late thirties, the 1980’s equivalent of Jessica Alba. I’m not sure if Hot Press had pull-out posters of her, but they should have. She sang with a band called In Tua Nua who were famous for 6 months in Grangemockler (five miles from Windgap).

I’ve no idea how she has aged and for some reason I can only picture her in my head wearing a big heavy coat rather than anything sexy. This was rural Ireland twenty years ago.

The signs for the gig actually say “Ex-In Tua Nua”. Is this the equivalent of Pat Rabbitte’s election signs saying “ex-Sinn Fein The Workers Party”? No, they weren’t too bad really, they just never grew beyond Ireland.

Thinking of her brought to mind “Cactus World News”. These guys went ballistic in Ballyhale overnight around the same time and I’ll never forget my friend Shaun stating categorically that they would be bigger than U2. When they disappeared without a trace after the first single, the reason given was that they were purely a studio band and had never gigged. Ah bless, the innocence of the 20th Century. If only they’d had MySpace back then.

If baby wasn’t due very soon, I think us auld pair would head out to the gig for a reminisce.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, YouTube is the greatest website ever. They have a clip of her in action! The spectacles weren’t that rose tinted.

UPDATE 1: Looks like we may have missed it, I found something on MySpace saying it was on the 20th. Damn.

UPDATE 2: Holy cactus batman, they have clips of Cactus World News on YouTube too. Check out “The Bridge” which was their only real hit.

UPDATE 3: There is still time! According to her web-site the gig is on Nov 24th. She has also gone all cool and done a MySpace page.

Technorati Tags: Leslie+Dowdall, In+Tua+Nua, Cactus+World+News, Pat+Rabbitte

11 Comments

Who do they think they are fooling?

Posted on October 29, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Ireland, Motor Cars.

Cork->Rosslare, Rosslare->Cork on a Bank Holiday Weekend. Number of cops encountered? Big fat zero. Number of hard-of-thinking suicidal cretins encountered? 4.

Oh but they did arrest over 100 drunk drivers today. Keep that up for 365 days a year and maybe it’ll be something other than a reflection of their day-to-day incompetence as they waste taxpayers money snaring people doing 45 in 40 zones on bypasses across the country.

Technorati Tags: roadsafetyblog, efficiency, resources, resource+managment, competence, quotas, lip+service

5 Comments

Nurture my ass

Posted on October 29, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Family.

I have 4 kids (soon to be 5), 3 boys and 1 girl. Sibéal gives as good as she gets as far as fight are concerned. She has a very non-girly mother and only a slightly girly Dad. Yet this is what she spent all day yesterday in whilst chasing her cousin Rachel (similarly attired).

Technorati Tags: Kids, High Heels, Jimmy Choos

No Comments

Welcome to Rosslare

Posted on October 29, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon.

Give us €2 for every kid who wants to use the playground and shag off if you want to use it at 5pm on a Bank Holiday Saturday.

Hey, I’ve got a great idea, €5 per beach walk from 9pm to 5.30pm with a half day on Saturday.

But the nice new pastry place goes some way towards making up for the gouge.

Technorati Tags: Rosslare, Tourism, Tax Payer

No Comments

Digging a hole to China

Posted on October 25, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Ireland.

This site has been around for ages but I only discovered it today. It is a Google Maps mashup that allows you to click anywhere in the world and then it shows you where you would come out on the other side of the world if you dug straight down. I was stunned to see that you come out near New Zealand if you dig from Ireland. Many a childhood sleepless night for nothing.

1 Comment

So I told a little white lie

Posted on October 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Family.

We had an hour to kill in Cork whilst waiting for Oscar to finish one of his many activities. I told them I’d bring them to a playground.

“That was the worst playground ever, wasn’t it Dad?”. “Like really crap, like?”.

Any tips for playgrounds in the County Hall, Model Farm Rd, College Rd, Mardyke area?

Technorati Tags: Cork, Lee, Saurian

14 Comments

How could they cancel a TV series which comes up with this?

Posted on October 16, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Humour.

Arrested Development has a lawyer whose ad states, “you don’t need double talk, you need Bob Loblaw”.

C’mon, best play on words ever.

Then tonight they nearly go one better as he announces that he has to go home to write “The Bob Loblaw Law Blog”

Yeah, I’m tired, but I’m still giggling.

Ye wanna know why YouTube is worth $1.6B? Cos I’ve just discovered that they have the clip!

Technorati Tags: Arrested+Development, Bob+Loblaw

2 Comments

Pictures, Camera Phones, Picture Editing and that Internet

Posted on October 15, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Technology.

At this stage a huge number of people have camera phones and actually use the camera to take those impromptu pictures. I remember asking why anyone would want a camera phone three years ago. What the hell would you take pictures of? Well, it turns out I had no imagination and I now take pictures of everything and anything.

Now most people take the picture and either send it by MMS to friends n family or just show it on the phone to people later. But there is a lot more you can do with them and most of those things are free. The main thing you need to do is to get the pictures off the phone and onto a PC or a web-site. Whilst the network operators here still think it makes sense to gouge us on mobile data charges, the option of sending directly to the web doesn’t really make sense here.

But if you are loaded, then you can do things like:

• Install Shozu on your phone and send all your pictures to the photo sharing site Flickr
• O2 customers can sign up for foneblog.ie and send pictures to that site
• If you have a Wordpress blog, install Postie and send pictures from your phone via email to your blog

If you aren’t so flush, then there are a lot of fun free things you can do. First tho, you need either a data cable for your phone or a bluetooth adapter for your PC (if your phone has bluetooth). I recommend the cable as bluetooth is the most unreliable slow piece of rubbish ever to leave Scandinavia since the Volvo 480. For most modern Nokias that is the DKU-5 or CA-53 cable. If your phone didn’t come with one, they are on ebay.ie for €4 incl P&P. You’ll pay a fortune for one in a mobile phone shop so don’t bother.

Then you need the Nokia PC Suite software. Another unreliable Scandinavian but has lots of nice things like phone backup which you should really use in case your phone is nicked. This is free and there is a link to it on Nokia.ie

I also really like the Nokia Lifeblog software. This grabs all the pictures, videos and text messages from your phone and shows them to you as a timeline. Looks really cool. In theory you can then publish what you want to your blog but for some nutso reason, it only supports Movable Type blogs and not Blogger or Wordpress. I just use it as an easy way of grabbing all the piccies off the phone and uploading the ones I want onto Flickr.

So you’ve got the cable and software installed and managed to download your pictures to your PC. Now what? Well you can put them up on a photo-sharing site like Flickr or Zooomr or Photobucket to spread the love. You can set the privacy on pictures on most of these sites so only those you invite can see them. I use Flickr and the free account is pretty good. I pay a few bob for a Pro account which allows me to upload as much as I like. There you can discover simple but powerful ideas like tagging where you add some labels to your photos like “cork” or “hurling” and then click on “hurling” to find all the other pictures on the site with the same label.

You’ve got your Flickr account and you’ve uploaded some pictures and you’re sharing them with your friends but you think “damn, I wish I could cut the edge of that picture and remove the red-eye on that other one”. The solution comes winging its way to you from Ballincollig in Cork in the shape of PXN8 from Sxoop Technologies. This brilliant piece of software allows you to edit pictures on your PC or your Flickr account inside a web-browser! You really have to check it out. It’s one of those “why the hell didn’t I think of that?” sites. No need for special photo editing software on your PC. You could edit the pictures in an internet cafe in Vietnam if you want. And it is easy to use too, check it out. And I’m not just saying that cos I know Walter, this is an awesome bit of software. It’ll soon let you add text to the pictures too so you can do wee postcards or posters for people.

And all this from taking a piccie on your camera phone whilst out having a walk. Isn’t that internet just the bees knees?

Technorati Tags: PXN8, Sxoop, Flickr, Nokia, PC+Suite, Lifeblog, Zooomr, Photobucket, Shozu, Postie, Foneblog

10 Comments

Conor’s ultra secret Chicken Tikka Masala recipe

Posted on October 13, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking.

Handed down through generations of sufi mystics and carried by the Priory of Sion to Bandon where it remained undiscovered in a secret vault until excavations found the ancient stone etchings, I can now reveal the best chicken tikka masala recipe on the planet.

More accurately, I was given a stocking-filler cookbook by my sister years ago which came with packets of spices. It did lay undiscovered for over five years until I finally used it to make a tikka paste and then used their recipe for chicken tikka. And it really is awesome. Up there with Mumrez Khan’s lamb and spinach karahi from “Rick Stein’s Food Heroes“.

The book is called “Great Curries” by Manisha Kanani and was published in 1997. I’d be surprised if you can still get it. Actually I just checked Amazon and someone is trying to sell it for £48! Original RRP was £9.95.

First the tikka paste. I normally make 3x these amounts and put it in a sterilised Tupperware and keep it in the fridge. Easily lasts a month, might even last longer but I always use it up before the month is out. Our regular Friday curry sees to that. I get (or actually Catherine gets) most of our spices in Mr Bells in the English Market. Great value in the big bags. Grinding cumin and coriander seeds is a pain in the ass with a pestle and mortar and doesn’t work with the multiquick type blenders so I usually use a coffee grinder and forget to clean it. Mmmmm, cumin coffee.

• 2 tbsp coriander seeds
• 2 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1.5 tbsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• .5 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp dried mint
• .25 tsp salt
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• drops of red and yellow food colouring (I know, I know but it gives you that “authentic” UK-style curry colour)
• 150 ml white wine vinegar
• 150 ml vegetable oil (I use sunflower, I don’t recommend olive, I guess nut oil works too)

Put the oil in a frying pan and put on a medium heat. Grind up what needs to be ground (or buy pre-ground) and mix all the dry ingredients together. Then add the liquids plus some water if needed to have a thin paste. Pour into oil and let it bubble gently for 10 mins or so. Let it cool before putting in tupperware. Warning – it does stain.

For the Chicken Tikka Masala itself, I usually do 6 chicken breasts for 3.5 people (us, Fiona, Ois/Shibs nibbling). Yeah, we’re hungry savages.

• 6 chicken breasts cut into thick strips
• a thumb of fresh ginger peeled and roughly chopped
• 3 or 4 cloves garlic roughly chopped (or to taste)
• 1 chilli roughly chooped (or 1 tbsp of harissa or jarred chillis)
• 8 tbsp of the paste
• 1 pot natural yoghurt
• 2 medium onions roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 4 tbsp ground almonds
• 300-400 ml water
• 150-200 ml cream
• half a lemon
• vegetable oil

Mix 3 tbsp of the paste with the yoghurt, cover the chicken all over with it and leave to marinade for as long as you have. To be honest this is rarely more than an hour for me.

Onions, garlic, ginger, chilli and some oil into big pot and sweat em down for 5 or 6 mins

Add the rest of the paste and cook for a minute. Add the puree and cook for a further few mins. Ditto the almonds which are a really surprising addition but you really miss them if they are not there.

Add enough water so it won’t stick and cook it gently for about 20 mins.

Grill the chicken for a 5-7 mins on each side (the book also coats them with butter but I don’t bother).

Put on your rice.

Zuzz this sauce using a multiquick or food processor or liquidiser and return to the pot. Squeeze the half lemon in and add cream until it is the consistency you want. Put the chicken in the sauce. Bring it back to bubbling and check for seasoning. The book adds fresh coriander but we’re not fans so I leave it out.

Naans under the grill for a minute or two each side.

Drain the rice, plate up, crack open a few tinnies and that’s Friday all nicely sorted.

Technorati Tags: curry, chicken+tikka+masala, tikka+masala, Manisha+Kanani, Mumrez+Khan

56 Comments

Broadband is back

Posted on October 12, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Cork, Technology.

If you live anywhere in the Cork/Waterford/Tipp area and have fixed line broadband with any provider then you may have been having problems since last Friday. I was getting 40 kbs instead of 2 mbs since Monday rendering the internet connection almost useless. Eircom fixed it for their customers yesterday and fixed it for their competitors this morning. Normal service should have returned everywhere. Yet another reason for us all to switch over to Wimax and HSDPA wireless broadband when it gets rolled out rather than using a set of providers who clearly couldn’t give a damn.

UPDATE 1: Cancel that, it’s gone down again.

4 Comments

I’m not eating that, it’s for cats

Posted on October 9, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Family, Humour.

Oisín continues to come out with the funniest lines in the house. He refused to eat his dinner yesterday on the grounds that it was food for cats. Were we trying to feed him Whiskas perhaps? Or maybe KiteKat or Iams? No, it was lasagne.

All of this because his older brother, in an effort to get him to eat it, pointed out that lasagne is what Garfield eats.

Twenty minutes of tears, one taste and then he wolfed catted down the lot.

Technorati Tags: garfield, lasagne

9 Comments

New Car Blog

Posted on October 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Motor Cars.

Two of my favourite automotive blogs used to be Autoblog and Jalopnik. I had to unsubscribe from both due to the huge number of posts they were doing daily which I just could not keep up with (same reason I only lasted a few weeks with Blogorrah).

Alex Algard mailed me last week to tell me about a new car blog that he has launched called CarDomain Blog. I have to say it is the dogs for over-aged car nuts like me. Yeah yeah, I know I drive a Mondeo, but just wait until I have a mid-life crisis and then it’s Mustang all the way baby.

Check it out – great pictures (not just car pr0n) and huge enthusiasm. He has a winner on his hands.

Technorati Tags: Autoblog, Jalopnik, CarDomain, Blogorrah

2 Comments

Oh no, can you imagine flying RyanAirLingus to the US?

Posted on October 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Ireland.

I love paying €3 to fly to Gatwick but the thought of them running trans-Atlantic flights makes my blood run cold. How many Bullseyes do they think they could sell to the average punter over 5 hours to deaden the headache caused by the yellow everywhere?

On the upside, I’d happily pay €5 an hour to have a PSP embedded in the seat back in front of me. But will he really do that?

Technorati Tags: RyanAir, Aer+Lingus

7 Comments

Badger, Badger, Sugar, Badger, Badger

Posted on October 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Humour.

I heard the other day that Alan Sugar and Michelle Dewberry have parted ways. What a shocker. If that is Sugar at his people skills best then it’s pretty obvious why he never went global.

All together now Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger.

YouTube currently down? They must have forgotten to pay their bills to Eircom.

Technorati Tags: The+Apprentice, Alan+Sugar, Michelle+Dewberry, Ruth+Badger, Badger+Badger+Badger

No Comments

Good food but small seafood choice

Posted on October 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Cork, Ireland, Restaurants, Reviews.

1 Comment

Not a problem, I already have the password saved on the phone

Posted on October 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Babies, Humour.

This is the second and last bLaugh I’ll ever re-publish but I just couldn’t resist this one.

No Comments

Non-technical unconferences

Posted on October 3, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Business, Ireland.

You may have noted my lack of posting on my various blogs recently. The main reason for this is that I was helping to organise a free technology conference in Cork called BarCamp. BarCamps are neither about booze nor barristers but are grass-roots unconferences where the agenda is only decided on the day by attendees putting themselves forward to speak or to moderate sessions on topics they are interested in.

We had the event on Saturday and it was a huge success. Over 80 people attended from all over Ireland and their backgrounds ranged from college students to programmers to Venture Capitalists. We were thrilled to be able to get tons of sponsorship for everything – the building, the wifi, the food, the drink, the t-shirts, the works!

It made me think that this model of a free adhoc grassroots conference is applicable to far more than just techies talking about the web. And of course I wasn’t the first one to have this thought since WineCamp was held in California and I see links to BourbonCamp and ArtCamp.

Rather than having top-down invite-only or pay-through-the-nose events, I highly recommend that people who want to have a get together with like minded others investigate this idea. You could have BookCamp, FoodCamp, FishCamp and with a nod to a very funny gross-out movie: “This one time, at BandCamp…”.

There is general BarCamp info over at BarCamp.org and the info our our event is at BarCamp.org/BarCampIreland. I ran a blog for a few weeks which you can read over at the BarCamp blog. We have the great site set up by one of our sponsors which collects all the blog posts, pictures and links between people. Check it out at the Backnetwork. If this idea does interest you, feel free to contact me with any questions on arranging them. If you’ve ever run a kids birthday party, then you are more than capable of arranging a BarCamp.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampireland, barcampireland1, winecamp

6 Comments

 

• LouderVoice Reviews

  

• Recent Comments

  • PLUNKETT MCKENNA on Buffalo Wings, mmm tasty but not so hot
  • PLUNKETT MCKENNA on Buffalo Wings, mmm tasty but not so hot
  • PLUNKETT MCKENNA on Buffalo Wings, mmm tasty but not so hot
  • dNa on Conor’s ultra secret Chicken Tikka Masala recipe
  • eimear on Neven watchable but not memorable

• Recent Posts

  • Annual Paddy’s Day Post
  • Rosmini Community Event Needs Your Help
  • Community Variety Show on March 26th in Bandon
  • This is Masterchef not Master Scallops
  • Learn about Twitter whilst having a nice glass of vino
• Search for:

• Blogroll

  • Argolon Solutions
  • Conor's Dangly Bits
  • Cork OpenCoffee
  • LouderVoice
  • LouderVoice Blog
  • LouderVoice on Facebook
  • LouderVoice Reviews

• Weather

  Weather Forecast