Conor's Bandon Blog » Blogging

10 Years a-bloggin’

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:23:32 +0000

Hard to believe. Little did I think, this day 10 years ago, that I’d still be blogging away like fury. I originally started with Blogspot as I wasn’t keeping my Geocities home page up to date. It was not an auspicious start:

And didn’t exactly take off like a rocket with only 3 posts in 2001!

2005 was the year I really got going when I moved from Blogspot to WordPress. Luckily I managed to import everything in the move.

Looking across various blogs, it looks like I’ve written the following in ten years:

conoroneill.com: 765 posts
argolon.com: 341 posts
loudervoice.com: 199 posts
web2ireland.org: 288 posts
conoroneill.net: 345
plus a bunch more scattered amongst random shortlived blogs

Let’s call it a nice round 2000 posts. I guess real writers would consider that a reasonable body of work.

Here’s hoping I keep it going for another 10 years!

Bandon.ie revamp

Conor O'Neill — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:26:37 +0000

Trevor and crew have done a big revamp of the bandon.ie. Tons of useful information about the town and area and the beginnings of a local business directory. You should definitely be subscribed to the blog if you want the latest news. I push all their blog updates to Twitter here too.

The best way you can help the site is to make sure you let them know about everything that is happening in the town. It’s a resource by the community for the community.

Phew, nearly missed July

Conor O'Neill — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:30:18 +0000

It’s been said by many others too but Twitter is seriously denting my blogging. Why write an entire post when most of the time 140 chars will do?

But what will be remembered and found in years to come? Watching Chris Moyles on “Who Do You Think You Are?” really drove home the importance of historical records. My mother ran into a brick wall with her genealogy research a few years ago once she got into the 19th Century.

It’d be nice if in 100 years there is still something resembling the internet and all of this “stuff” that we are all generating on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc etc can be found and read by our descendants so they can realise what a bunch of weirdos and wackos they share their genes with.

And on a completely different subject, here are some pics of the veg plot. Total effort expended in weeding and planting this year? Approx 8 hours.

Get your Irish Blog Award Nominations in

Conor O'Neill — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:01:25 +0000

It’s that time of year again to get your nominations in for the Irish Blog Awards. The ceremony is being held in the lovely Cork International Airport Hotel on February 21.

The number of wonderful Irish blogs increases daily and I can’t keep up with the flood of high quality writing out there. There are plenty of categories to nominate in, but you don’t have to do all of them. Why not head over to Irishblogs.ie and have a browse of the posts there? You may find some real gems you hadn’t known about before.

I think this year I’ll focus my nominations on the best of the newer blogs. For example, Ivan1 and Ivan2 will be getting several votes from me.

What you read here in 2008

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:54:00 +0000

It looks like 2008 was not a good year for new content on this blog. Only two posts were in the top twenty most-read in the last 12 months. I promise to do better this year

The most read content was:

Regular Service will resume soon

Conor O'Neill — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:07:19 +0000

I have no excuse for the lack of posting here other than the usual busy-ness of life. I’ll get back into writing mode very soon. Lots of blogposts and book reviews in my head, I just need to get them out through my fingers.

Speaking of reviews, I hope my loyal readers don’t mind me doing a very quick bit of blatant promotion of LouderVoice. We have just kicked off our 2008 BES offering. If the mayhem of the markets has you spooked, then you may find our tax-efficient offering interesting. All details over on our corporate blog.

So for my next post, should I do a rant on Annaghmore (greatest idea since the invention of the square wheel), a review of “Drive On” by LJK Setright (stunning), a review of “Full On Irish” by Kevin Dundon (patchy) or something on why I think British Stand-Up Comedy is dead (having seen The Secret Policeman’s Ball) ?

Wine Tasting in Bubble Brothers

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 08:18:57 +0000

Like blogs? Like wine? Then Julian over at Bubble Brothers is having a wee tasting this coming Thursday. All details over on the blog.

This coming Thursday, 25th September, Emilio Saez van Eerd of Casa de las Vides and Javier Navarro from Tintoralba (earlier tasting summarized in this post) will be making a flying visit to us, and I’d like to give them and their wines as much publicity as possible. Check out the EWBC stuff on Vinus TV.

The day’s events have not yet been decided – but I think it would be great if as many blog and twit and wine folk as possible could come along to a leetle tasting here at the Marina on Thursday 25th. I’ve already had encouraging responses from a number of people, both on the wine side and in techno-trousers.

Blog Moved to Blacknight

Conor O'Neill — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:48:24 +0000

8 years after I first registered conoroneill.com, this blog is finally hosted in Ireland where it belongs. Based on all the great feedback I heard about Blacknight and the fact that they are great supporters of the Irish tech startup community, I went with them.

We’re on the SOHO package with is just €35 per year ex-VAT and it does everything I need. The move was extremely easy to do. I just copied all the WordPress files off the old host, copied the WordPress Database, loaded both up on Blacknight and told GoDaddy that the blog is now there.

All in all, maybe an hours work including email account setup? The one glitch I had was solved by their support people in less than 10 minutes. The blog feels a lot faster, I hope it’s the same for you.

Full review coming soon once I’ve poked around a bit but so far it’s 5/5. If you are thinking of setting up a blog, go for their blogger package and you’ll be up and running with close to zero effort or knowledge.

p.s. if you didn’t see a bunch of posts from the past two weeks, that’s my fault. Should be working ok now.

New Cork Foodie Blogger

Conor O'Neill — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:45:08 +0000

Ivan Santry has started a top-notch food blog over at Messy-Chef. Recipes, reviews and thoughts. The blog design looks gorgeous too.

Check it out.

Another Bandon Blogger

Conor O'Neill — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:03:14 +0000

There ain’t many of us so it’s great to see another Bandon Blog start. This time it’s the good people in Kilbrogan House B&B. Already a bunch of good posts. The one about Starbucks is particularly interesting. Check it out!

Ooh, very cool competition

Conor O'Neill — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:28:36 +0000

John Prendergast from Aonach just let me know about a competition a friend of his is running. It’s pretty damned impressive: Glengarriff Lodge near Bantry in West Cork is giving away a
Luxury Self Catering weekend worth €1175 to one lucky blogger who mentions it! The location looks gorgeous and the Lodge is interesting because the aim was to be both luxurious and eco-friendly/sustainable.

The concept might be of interest to Irish Bloggers who have a deep interest in sustainability like Tom Atkins or Rebecca Hillman.

Know anyone in the Whiskey Industry here?

Conor O'Neill — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:36:00 +0000

Kate Hopkins from the legendary food blog Accidental Hedonist is visiting Ireland from Feb 15th to the 22nd and is looking for contact names. Head on over to her blog and let her know.

Irish Blog Awards Nominations Now Open

Conor O'Neill — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:08:02 +0000

You can now vote over on the blog awards site for your favourite blogs and posts in a bunch of different categories. Sad to see that some of my fave bloggers like Sweary pretty much stopped in 2007 but glad to see some great new voices out there. In my nominations I tried to pick as many new people as possible. Here’s hoping 2008 will see even more great writing.

Love food blogs? You’ll adore Gastronom.ie

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:11:44 +0000

I have to apologise to Damien for not blogging this until now. He has put together one of those simple, beautifully executed ideas called Gastronom.ie. It collects all of the food writing from a set of Irish bloggers into one place. So if you are sick of bouncing around from blog to blog to blog and you really aren’t into this whole geeky RSS idea, then you’ll become addicted to this site.

It looks lovely and the development was done by the brilliant John Blackbourn who I would recommend to anyone who needs web development or design done. He has LouderVoice as very happy customers too.

Some of us are having a wee non-serious argument about wordplay on ie domains. Some think that only geeks get them and that a mainstream audience will always pronounce the dot. How would you say the following?

I’ll be honest, I never spotted the first wordplay but I did see it in the second two. You?

In any case, get yourself over to Gastronom.ie and check out some top class food writing.

Oh and votes please

Conor O'Neill — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:15:57 +0000

For the new blog theme. Like or no like? Like but would prefer a Cork specific image in the header? Don’t like cos it looks like mud?

And while I’m here, we launched blognation Ireland on Monday. It is part of a fast growing global tech news network called blognation and it covers Web 2.0 and Mobile in Ireland. So if you are a techie or in a start-up and you read this blog but not Argolon (you nutter), check out the new site.

SOHO SOLO Ireland

Conor O'Neill — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:55:43 +0000

I gave a talk today about blogging to the West Cork Soho Solo Networking Meeting in Clonakilty. I previous gave the same one to the East Cork group. It was very well received and I hope we see a few new blogs coming from them. If you are not aware of Soho Solo, it is a very worthwhile project. As their site says:

The aims of the project are to identify Small Office Home Office Workers(Soho Solos) in the South West of Ireland, to encourage others to relocate or return to the region, to promote Small Office Home Office Working and to offer support to these “new” entrepreneurs.

If you fit that description, I would highly recommend you contact them as they offer great support for what can be a very solitary endeavour.

Three of the attendees today already had blogs. I didn’t get the details of the third but you should definitely have a look at:

Give Donncha the vote in the PhotoBlog Awards

Conor O'Neill — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:25:49 +0000

The fabulous Donncha is not just a new dad, the creator of WordPress MU and from Cork, he is also a great photographer. Head on over to this site to give him the vote.

Between this and telling everyone at Soho Solo to setup their blogs on wordpress.com, he owes me at least a bottle of babycham.

Think you can review something in 140 characters or less?

Conor O'Neill — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:22:00 +0000

Then LouderTweets are for you.

After a few late nights we’re now ready to let you send reviews from Twitter to LouderVoice. We’re calling them LouderTweets and they are 140 character mini-reviews you can send using Web, SMS or IM via Twitter to LouderVoice.

So far we’ve had reviews of chocolate, couscous, a conference, a lawnmower and many others. Make your Tweets Louder!

An important point is that you don’t have to be a LouderVoice member to send LouderTweets but you should join if you want to rate, bookmark and build/share useful collections of reviews and mini-reviews.

And how do you send LouderTweets as a Twitter user? It’s very simple:

Add the Twitter “review” user as a friend here
Wait until you get a confirmation that you have been added back as a friend
Post reviews using this format on Twitter: @review RATING ITEM. REVIEW
Example: @review 4 The Apprentice UK. A stonkingly good series that has thrown up plenty of surprises
That format is very specific otherwise we won’t pick up the review. Rating is in the range 1-5. Full-stop/Period mandatory.
Shortly afterwards that review can be found by searching on www.loudervoice.com (in an open community microformat called hreview)

You can see an example here:

Tweet: http://twitter.com/oldchapel/statuses/101344802
LouderVoice: http://www.loudervoice.com/search?q=tesco+chocolate

As with all tweets, you can send your review tweet using whatever tool you like: web-page, Google GTalk, SMS, Tweetr etc

Let us know what you think.

New Bandon Blog.

Conor O'Neill — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:06:50 +0000

Just discovered that the bandon.ie folks now have a blog. Excellent!

Of course they should have used WordPress.com from the fair Donncha of Blarney instead of Blogger but we won’t hold that against them

Subscribed.

Greatest WordPress Theme Ever!

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 07:15:21 +0000

If you are not a geek, stop reading now. Factory Joe (aka Chris Messina) did a Tweet earlier pointing to a theme for WordPress. I just checked it out. I am so in awe of this person.

It is a Commodore 64 Command Line Interface to a blog.

Try typing last, next, current, help or cat

Someone somewhere please please do a ZX Spectrum version of this.

UPDATE 1: Ach, just realised Chris must have seen it on Boing Boing.