Archive for 'Personal'
ZX Spectrum launched 25 years ago today!
Posted on April 23, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal, Technology.
This mightn’t be a big deal to most people but it’s a huge deal to me. If my parents hadn’t got me a ZX Spectrum in 1982, I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had. No exaggeration. Every single college and career choice I’ve made stems from the skills I learned on that machine, which I still have (the machine, not the skills 
).
Sure 50% of the time I was playing Jet Set Willy and Sabre Wulf but on the Speccy I learned BASIC, Forth and Z80 assembler. I also learned the basic architecture of computers and basic electronics circuits.
I still crank up emulators on my PCs, phone and Palm and still get annoyed over the bugs in the games I wrote!
Thanks to my parents for realising how important computer skills might be to me and to Sir Clive Sinclair for having the clarity of vision to create the ZX series of computers. I’m actually surprised he didn’t come up with the OLPC as it is right in line with his thinking.
Happy Anniversary Speccy!
p.s and just in time, the 1988 Edition of the Your Sinclair Rock n Roll Years has just been released!
UPDATE 1: Colin Woodcock has also just released a Special 25th Anniversary Edition of the wonderful ZXF online magazine.
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Nostalgia Week at conoroneill.com
Posted on April 19, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Friends, Personal.
Given that this blog is six years old this week and we’ve started reminiscing about the good old days of Engineering in Merrion Street and Earlsfort Terrace, I’ve decided that it’s officially Nostalgia Week here at O’Neill Towers.
Knarf reminded me of Jimmy Jamjars at the gates to Merrion Street. Catherine reminded me of The Jimmy Jamjar Awards. I think Teresa won one in 1991 for the largest number of PFOs of any Engineering student.
I nominate our pop-rivetted aluminium boxes which ended up holding bog-roll in Merrion Street as a candidate for best re-use ever.
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Six Years a-Bloggin today!
Posted on April 17, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Personal.
17th April 2001, I got an account on this thing I probably heard about on Slashdot called Blogger. I just saw it as an easier way of keeping my personal homepage (which I think I started in 1996 on Indigo) up-to-date.
How wrong I was. The second blog post was 7th August 2001.
For the first 4 years, the blog mainly consisted of baby announcements of my friends and my job situation. In 2005 I finally started doing it very regularly, moved to a Wordpress blog and now look at me. In the next 4 weeks I’ll be launching a business built on blogging.
I can’t claim to have foreseen the profound impact that blogging would have in many areas. As with most things I get involved in, it just “seemed like a good idea at the time”. I’ve been very lucky over the years that many of those ideas turned out to be genuinely good.
I’ve gone from one reader (Catherine) to several hundred per day. Thanks to all of you for stopping by and leaving comments. I hope I’ve written the odd useful thing and made you smile once or twice.
I encourage anyone who has ever felt like expressing an opinion to more than their mates down the pub to give blogging a try. It takes less than a minute to get a blog over at wordpress.com and writing blog-posts is easier than sending an email. If it turns out you have no long-term interest, well you’ve probably wasted less time than your daily commute.
Here’s to another six years of conoroneill.com
Cheers!
4 Comments
Universities belong inside cities
Posted on April 11, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal.
I was a bit sad today to read this from the UCD Alumni office:
UCD will soon be saying goodbye to Earlsfort Terrace and completing the move to Belfield. Generations of students spent their university years at the Terrace and hold fond memories of that time.
This year, the last medical and engineering students will make the journey to Belfield and the Terrace will transfer to the National Concert Hall for major redevelopment as a multipurpose concert venue. To commemorate 124 years of UCD at Earlsfort Terrace….
From 1st Year to 3rd Year Engineering (1986-1989), we alternated between the Terrace, Merrion Street and Belfield. Then in 4th Year, they moved us out to the new Engineering building. I still think it is the worst thing UCD have ever done. I know they needed the space but there is simply no comparison between going to college in a City with all the facilities and social aspects that provides and going out to some horrible 60’s-style campus in the middle of nowhere.
I loved Merrion Street, I loved Earlsfort Terrace, I loved being part of the City. I hated so much of Belfield, apart from the huge increase in the number of women I actually have fond memories of individual rooms in the old buildings. And who can forget the Merrion Street canteen with the white loo tiles on the walls or the pink pork chops in Earlsfort Terrace? I can’t say the same about anywhere in Belfield.
I was in UCC a few weeks back and that warm feeling of “this is why I liked college” flowed through me. Compare that to CIT on the edge of the city where everyone has a car and there is no sense of place. It is just somewhere to go to be lectured.
I’m not explaining myself well and I know I’m an old fart, but still.
11 Comments
It’s a pity my granny isn’t around for the Irish Blog Awards
Posted on January 17, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Family, Personal.
My Dad kindly voted for this blog in several categories in the Blog Awards earlier. He mailed me to say that it reminded him of my Granny (Mary O’Neill) who voted for Dev eight times in the 1932 elections on both sides of the bridge in New Ross. Could you imagine if those old Cumann na mBan women were around now and decided to help the blog result?
Technorati Tags: iba2007, Irish+Blog+Awards, Cumann na mBan
7 Comments
Thank You Dave
Posted on January 6, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal, Purchasing, Restaurants.
We discovered over Christmas that you can in fact put 5 children, 2 adults and all their stuff in a Zafira+Roofbox and go from Cork to Kilkenny to Cavan to Cork. Hurrah.
On our trip back from Cavan on the joke’s of national routes known as the N55 and N62, we got to Roscrea and Oscar decided to puke. We caught most of it in a nappy bag and then I dropped the bag as I exited it from the car. We pulled into the McDonald’s carpark at the roundabout and proceeded to change both Oscar and Fionn.
A McDonald’s employee appeared and asked if we needed any help, we did. He headed off and got black sacks and a roll of kitchen paper. He introduced himself as Dave and stuck his card in my pocket. He then apologised for heading off but his shift was over. Two minutes later he reappeared with a cup of water for Oscar to wash out his mouth and another one of 7-Up which he told us to shake flat so it would settle Oscar’s stomach (a trick we’ve used many times in the past).
Dave then left with the message to give any of the bits to staff and to just say that he had said so. I was so impressed with this guy. All of this help was unprompted and was deeply appreciated by us. I thought he was just one of the new-style Helper’s in McDonald’s which are a fantastic addition but when I checked his card later, I found he was the manager.
Anyone who thinks McD’s are going away any time soon had better wake up and smell the lattes they now serve. McD’s are finally realising that customer service is just as important as the burgers to retain customers. It’ll be employees like Dave who make that seachange happen.
Promote this man fast – he’s capable of far more than Roscrea!
Thanks again Dave.
Technorati Tags: McDonalds, Roscrea, Ireland, Dave+Green, Customer+Service
19 Comments
Curses – Tagged
Posted on January 3, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Family, Personal.
So Haydn tagged me. Five things you don’t know about me eh? Apart from my Spaghetti Hoop fetish?
1. I was Junior Irish Archery Champion in 1980. Not as impressive as it sounds. Three of us in the competition and other two were beginners. Never improved after that and gave up in mid-teens. Turns out not everyone else saw a blob of colours down the end of the field and I later found out I was short-sighted. My other problem was that…
2. I appear to be what is known as cross-dominant. No not a Tranny Whip Fetishist but I mix use of left and right. I’m not ambidextrous but I write right-handed, am left footed, left eyed and hurl left handed (the twice a year when I hurl). I think I’d be more comfortable golfing left-handed too, if I ever golfed. I switched to using my left hand for the mouse last year and find it more natural than using the right. For fun I’ve starting writing like a 3 year old with my left hand on occasion too. So in archery, holding a bow right-handedly but using my left eye meant that I couldn’t get the “sight” out far enough to the left to line it up correctly, so I always had to aim off centre. I cudda been a contenda otherwise.
3. I have the worlds most awesome wife with whom I am still having a fling 16 years later. “Ah go on, let me stay on your couch” after a night in Kiely’s Bar led to marriage and five loudly opinionated children.
4. I was a thespian for a few short weeks in 1985 in the St Kieran’s College school play. I played the allegedly batty mother, Sybil Walling. It was a pretty dire farce built around a body up a chimney. Still seems to be popular. Personally I thought I was awesome and basically did a cross-dressing take off of Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple. And Emmet Cooney still has my copy of the goddammed video of it. I want it back Emmet! This short career diversion was mainly caused by my involvement in Irish and English debating in school (and the No Name Club). I completely dropped debating in college until 4th year when some class-mates decided to properly resurrect Forum, the UCD Engineer’s Debating Society. Not as famous as the L&H but ten times funnier and we whipped their asses in any cross-society debate. Ah fond memories of Jabba The Baby Eater and “Did DoWaDiddy DUM DiddyDoo and did he do so on three separate occasions, twice with a banana?”. Mark Connolly where are you now?
5. I’ve just had a vasectomy. Ouch. Essay coming soon.
Oops, forgot to tag others. So who can I annoy? Emmm: Walter, Curly K (good excuse to start blogging again woman!), Anthony, Kieran and Neal.
Technorati Tags: Five+Things, Archery, Brush+With+A+Body, Vasectomy, Forum, Engineers+Debating+Society
3 Comments
Yes I’m a sad old man, what of it?
Posted on July 14, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Personal, Technology.
This gave me goosebumps:
You have no idea, none, how much I wanted a microdrive as a teenage geek. I would have happily chopped off my little finger yakuza-style to get one. And this guy, the luckiest man alive, has 8 of them!
And what is it about rose tinted spectacles that I would be happier now to be given a ZX Spectrum +2 with a Kempston joystick than a fully loaded Dell XPS?
I automatically deride anything that Nicholas Negroponte is involved in as snake-oil (Media Lab Dublin, I laughed when they announced it, I laughed when they closed it). But the $100 laptop has the potential to create a whole new generation of programmers from places you would never have dreamed, just like the Spectrum, BBC Micro and C-64 did for us as kids. Let’s hope he doesn’t screw it up.
I think maybe we’ve all forgotten the impact those machines, and “The Computer Programme” on the BBC had on a multitude of British and Irish kids. I shudder to think what I would be working at now if my parents hadn’t had the foresight to get me a Spectrum when I badgered them incessantly for it. And I know I’ve blogged this before, but it is still the funniest thing on the whole damned internet.
[tags]ZX Spectrum, microdrive, Geoff Wearmouth, comp.sys.sinclair, The Computer Programme, OLPC, Hey Hey 16K[/tags]
5 Comments
We’re up to 1986, Speccy Fans
Posted on June 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Personal, Technology.
Nick Humphries has done it again.The 1986 edition of “The Your Sinclair Rock n Roll Years TV Show” was released for download recently. All nostalgic ZX Spectrum fans should grab it and watch 8 minutes of great memories. Non-Speccy fans can listen to the music and Apprentice fans can laugh at how young Alan Sugar looks in it.
1986 was simultaneously the peak of my Spectrum involvement and also my last year. It’s all been downhill technically since then. Will I ever need to re-flex my Forth muscles and will I ever finish my Irish-themed Jet Set Willy clone which if memory serves, had “humorous” references to Big Ed Loves Mona? I got to over 20K of Z80 assembler, all on paper and never a line tested. Agile schmagile.
[tags]YSRnRY, ZX Spectrum, Sinclair, 1986[/tags]
7 Comments
Discovering Black Sabbath at the age of 37
Posted on March 18, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Personal.
One of the business blogs I read is Fred Wilson over at “A VC“. He regularly recommends music worth listening to. The other day he mentioned Black Sabbath Vol 4. Apart from watching Ozzy on the TV and thinking that “Paranoid” is one of the top twenty best songs of all time, I have never listened to any Black Sabbath.
I headed on over to my fave music site at the minute “AllofMp3.com” to see what they had. This is a very controversial site based in Russia which provides MP3 versions of almost any album possible for rock bottom prices. People like the RIAA in the US claim that they cannot be doing this legally and can’t be giving the correct level of royalties to the performers. I dunno. The only worry I had was handing my credit card details over to a site in Russia. I wondered if I would soon be getting charges on my card for beluga caviar. But it appears to be all above board and I’ve had no problems. Most of the albums come in at about $1.30 (Kill Bill Vol 1 Soundtrack, Garden State soundtrack) but for some reason “The Best of Black Sabbath” was $4.50.
I’m listening to it now. Oh it’s good. Don’t like “Black Sabbath” the song – too like Led Zeppelin at their most bloated, But “The Wizard” is a fabulous song.
Growing up, I really wasn’t in to music. My first ever record was bought for me by my Auntie Lena in (I think) Dolphin Discs. It was “Jailhouse Rock” re-released when The King died. Still a great song! But I remember being in sixth class in primary school and kids talking about Sid Vicious and how cool he was. I had no idea what they were talking about. I think Sid Coyne and Sid Byrne both re-named themselves after the aforementioned Pistol.
Then first year in Secondary School was very confusing. Why would people be engraving electricity symbols on their desks with their biros? Why did people like a German band which I pronounced “Muterhod”. And why did Neil Young in third year have a sleeveless denis jacket with his name in studs on the back? And Brendan wondered why Neil never replied to “hey Neil”!
I spent most of my teens listening to synth pop like Depeche Mode (before they were cool), Howard Jones (who was never cool) and Duran Duran (who I still like, go on flame me). But this deeply offended the music sensibilities of my friend Dermot who started giving me tapes of Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen, Stefan Grapelli, Pink Floyd and The Doors. It kinda worked, I became a Doors fanatic and a Cohen fan (still am in both cases).
Of course every girl I ever dated (or married!) thought the Doors were ok but all the rest of em were rubbish. I was force fed a diet of The Smiths, U2 and cool Depeche Mode with the odd foray over to The Pixies, NIN and Smashing Pumpkins. Ok, it worked, I now think “Debaser”, “Girlfriend in a Coma” and “Personal Jesus” are fab songs.
Back in a sec, “Paranoid” has just started………..Back again. Not top twenty, top ten.
I did an exchange trip to Germany when I was 14 where the guy I was exchanging with was a heavy metal fanatic. I spent night after night listening to his AC/DC and (far more importantly to him) Scorpions. I was like an old man: “it all sounds like noise to me, where’s the melody?”. And that was it for nearly twenty years.
It is probably a bit sad that I only started buying heavy metal in my 30’s and even then it was usually “Best Of’s” like AC/DC, Motorhead etc. But I’m with Twenty Major – at least I’m not buying c****ing Damien Rice.
I think Fred’s recommended “Vol 4″ may be my next purchase.
[tags]Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, Fred Wilson, A VC, AllOfMP3, St Kieran’s College[/tags]
11 Comments
Oops, we did it again!
Posted on March 14, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Babies, Family, Personal.
13 Comments
This week we’ll be mostly buying Lego and Carlsberg
Posted on February 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal, Politics.
And maybe some of their bacon for a change.
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I am the grim reaper for Texas Heroes
Posted on January 24, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal.
I just had a comment posted to my old blog by Kim on something I wrote about Bill Hicks back last May. She was stunned that I saw him live about a year before he died and wanted some details. It is odd timing that she posted now considering I’m just back from Austin. But I was also thinking about Bill when I was over there.
I was in the airport and spotted some Stevie Ray Vaughan CDs. I’ve liked him for years but wouldn’t be a fanatic. Having said that, the man was a genius with a guitar. His Voodoo Chile is probably as good as Jimi’s. I managed to see him live too in Stuttgart in 1988. We were really going to see The Hothouse Flowers who were playing support but every other person in the stadium was there to worship Stevie. The CD I bought on Saturday was a recording of a tribute concert with the likes of Clapton, BB King, Robert Kray and others covering Stevie classics. Bloody good. Ripped to MP3 already (if IRMA want to take me to court).
Here we have two guys from Texas, both the very best in their field, I see them perform live and they both croak it wayyyy before their time. Coincidence? I think not. Let’s just say Willie Nelson, Michael Dell and ZZ Top better stay the hell away from me.
But back to Kim’s question’s about Bill. It was in 1993 I think so we’re talking a long 13 years ago. I can’t remember what I did yesterday so the details of that long ago are pretty vague. We saw him in the Tivoli theatre in Dublin (Ireland). We were to the side of the stage about two rows back. I had seen his videos before so some of the material was familiar but the switch from smoking lover to hater was a bit of a shock. He was also doing his “big opening” with smoke, lights, a big hat and Hendrix music. Didn’t really work for me but the show more than made up for it.
My main recollection of the night (apart from Goat Boy) was that my sister was rotten drunk and kept shouting “Yoh Bill! Woo hoo! yeah!” after every punch-line. His material is still hilarious after all these years. I couldn’t believe it when Gulf War II was building up and the media started using the phrase “Elite Republican Guard” all over again. Some things never change.
[tags] Bill Hicks, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Texas, Goat Boy, Tivoli Dublin[/tags]
2 Comments
The “Your Sinclair” Rock n Roll Years 1985 now available
Posted on December 15, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal.
Unless the name Matthew Smith means something to you and you get a wee tingle when the words “Manic Miner” are uttered, then you are probably not interested in the rest of this post.
But, YSNRY 1985 is finally with us just in time for christmas. This is the latest in a very very special (to Speccy fanatics like myself) series of animated “movies” about the hey-day years of ‘Your Sinclair/Your Spectrum’ magazine, an esteemed journal which published two games by yours truly back in 1985/1986!
It really is worth checking out all of the episodes if you ever had a Speccy or even a (spit) Commodore 64, Vic-20, Jupiter Ace, Oric-1, BBC Micro, Electron, ZX81, ZX80 or Enterprise/Elan/Flan. Do the author a favour tho and use bittorrent to download.
Some kind soul with an enormous amount of spare time has scanned in all the issues of Your Sinclair and Your Spectrum. Conor’s works of genius (being “The Grid” and “The Cherry Run”) in pure Z80 assembler can be viewed in all their JPEG glory below.
The Grid: Your Spectrum, Final Issue, December 1985
The Cherry Run: Your Sinclair, Issue 4, April 1986
If you are nostalgic for games that had graphics designed by a blind person, then you can actually play these games on your PC. Grab either ZXSpin or EmuZWin. Then download one of The Grid, Cent The Pete or Cherry Run and check out what a sad puberty I really had.
[tags] ZX, ZX Spectrum, ysrnry, Your Sinclair, Your Spectrum, ZXSpin, EmuZWin, emulation, 8-bit, nostalgia[/tags]
4 Comments
One of the best ever words in a foreign language
Posted on December 7, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal, Technology.
My first employer was S3, who are 90% owned by Philips in The Netherlands. As a result,I spent quite a bit of time in Eindhoven, where the HQ is based. Big hello to the Eindhoven posse (Mark)!
The Inquirer has an short article on the death of the son of the founder of Philips at the age of 100. They mention what he was in charge of in his heyday. The same name was on a giant sign which you passed in the train on the way into the city from Amsterdam. I never needed anyone to translate it for me:
Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken
Just a perfect word.
[tags] philips, Gloeilampenfabrieken, S3[/tags]
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LJK Passes Away
Posted on December 7, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Motor Cars, Personal.
I was gutted to read in CAR that LJK Setright passed away recently. I started reading CAR when I was 14 years old and continue to do so despite his absence for the past few years.
As a kid, I checked out most of the motoring magazines and CAR was the only one I read where I felt I was learning something, rather than just reading pseudo-ads. For a short while in the late 80’s I tried Performance Car but to be honest that was only because of Clarkson. I can happily claim to have spotted his future greatness whilst still in my teens. The letters page every month were filled with missives from indignant middle-Englanders who were scandalised by his digs at everything they held dear.
But Clarkson was just naughty and after a while I returned to the more thoughtful bosom of CAR, and more importantly, to LJK’s monthly column. Each month I worked my way through it and understood about half of it. His breadth and depth of knowledge was extraordinary, with many literary references and tons of Latin (all of which went straight over my head due to giving up Latin for Classical Studies in 2nd Year in Kierans!). I learned more about cars from his one page each month than from the rest of the magazine.
LJK was arrogant, pompous and usually right. This is a man who argued engine cylinder design with Honda’s Nobuhiko Kawamoto, who argued that there were distinct advantages to smoking, and who, most of all, argued that speed does not, in fact, kill. And for that, I loved every word the man wrote.
Last year I bought the last book he wrote: “Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car”. As I am averaging two book completions a year right now, I have only read a few chapters. But this is a masterpiece of erudition, history, opinion, insight and humour. To many people, a car is simply an appliance whose main contribution to the world is pollution. This book shows how so much of who we are and how we live our lives comes from the motor car. And the critical thing is that most of its effect are to our benefit. It’s a heavy read (as were all his CAR articles) but you’ll feel that you understand the world just a little bit better as you go through it.
I felt that the obituary in CAR was a sad reflection of what has happened to that magazine. In the past, they would have articles running to twenty pages or more. Phil Llewellin (who sadly also died recently) specialised in articles like that. As a young-fella, I did find many of them overly wordy but now I see what the alternative is – every article stripped to 2 pages for the ADD-addled Max Power generation. No depth, no analysis, barely time for the specs. They gave two pages to Setright, one of which was a picture (and what a unique style the man had!). He deserved half the entire issue.
Here are a few links to obituaries:
The Telegraph. The Independent. Pacific Motorsport.
I’ll finish with two quotes from the great man:
On the Citroën GS in 1971:
“According to Voltaire, ‘the secret of art is to improve on nature’. It is a peculiarly French attitude, one that is manifested as much in their engineering as in their graphic, plastic or musical artefacts. In their automotive engineering it is especially apparent…”
And most famously, Setright on speed limits:
“Apart from tax evasion, there should logically be one and only one motoring offence: dangerous driving… If what one does (even if one does 150mph) is not actually dangerous, then it does not matter what it is, nor what other people think. It is then no business of other people – not if this is, as we used to think, a free country.”
I’m going to miss that man.
[tags] LJK, LJK Setright, CAR, CAR magazine, obituary[/tags]
18 Comments
Hey Dad, that’s the same ugly fish as last week
Posted on December 4, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Family, Food, Ireland, Personal.
I have a wee bee in my bonnet about how difficult it is to get good fresh fish in the “greater Bandon area”. When we moved down here, I thought I would have fish coming out of my ears (as opposed to sleeping with the fishes). But it was the complete opposite.
The SuperValu in the town has a small fish counter but you can never rely on it to have anything you want. And in the spirit of old Ireland, there are two fish stalls every friday up near the top of town. Whilst this is a lovely tradition and long may it continue, I do tend to want fish other than on the same day every week. The two vendors also only sell the usual staples like cod etc.
I got excited one day when I spotted a van with a sign saying “The Bandon Fish Shop”. And where do they turn out to be based? The English Market in Cork City! I think they live in Bandon, hence the name……
Of course the English Market is heaven for all sorts of food, particularly fish. If you visit the city and don’t check out O’Connell’s fish stall, you are missing something very special. These guys have everything. They have a counter which has a constant running stream of water on it and they gut and fillet at high speed on demand. Not quite the high jinks of those guys in the Market in Seattle who throw the huge fish at each other but still pretty bloody impressive.
There are only two problems with the English Market – it is a 40 minute drive and the only day I can go is Saturday when it is mayhem from about 10am onwards. Ideally I want to use the double buggy to cart around the two younger ones whilst I have Oisín in a head lock to stop him running away but the aisles are just too narrow and there are too many people to make it a pleasurable experience.
I spent a day last year touring villages near the sea trying to find one. Clon is on the bloody sea and they don’t have a fish shop – the fish counter in Dunnes is a joke. Nothing in Kilbrittain, nothing in Timoleague. But I did spot a sign for Ummera Smoked Salmon and headed in that direction, thinking I was being very cunning as they would surely know where to get fish in the area.
We drove up a rutted track to find a fabulous wooden building which unfortunately looked closed but a van arrived just after us and it was the owner, Anthony Creswell. I spent about twenty minutes having a really good chat. He is an interesting, friendly and funny guy. The Smokery is just so cool; It is totally environmentally friendly and uses a reed-bed system for filtering its waste. If you get a chance, try their salmon, it is fantastic. They are part of
Irish Smoked Wild Atlantic Salmon Presidium of The Slow Food movement, along with Marky Mark’s Da’s company, Dunn’s of Dublin (which is also fabulous and a lot easier to get than Ummera). But the unbelievable thing was that he had no idea either where we would get fresh fish other than heading down to the ports.
I gave up for a long time except for the odd foray to the English Market. Then a few months back there was rake of ads for Fish shops down in West Cork. Union Hall Fish Sales advertised that they now had a place in Skibbereen and then Antcar advertised that they had a shop in Union Hall which is a major fishing port.
Two weeks ago I headed to Skibb. On the way we passed through Leap (pronounced Lep or Leep?). Fab Lake/Estuary/Sea/Bit of water as you leave the village. I toured Skibb and failed miserably to find the Union Hall shop, but I did find “The Baltimore Fish Shop”. I had the three younger squirts in the car so I bundled two of em into the buggy and Oisín pushed. The shop was quite small and pokey with a very small selection of fish. But Ois was enthralled. “What’s that ugly one called Dad”, “Monkfish, Ois”. What about that long one “Cod, Ois”.
So I got some plaice, tuna and smoked haddock. I wondered about overall freshness as the place wasn’t exactly hopping but when I took the fish out later to cook, there was only the smell of the sea so it was top quality. All of it was lovely. Fishcakes for the kiddies, fried plaice for us and then tuna with spaghetti and tomato sauce for the squirts the following day.
So of course I had to go one better and the following weekend headed down to Union Hall to check out Antcar. This is one of the best drives you can do in the country. There is the lovely view of Rosscarbery Lagoon just before you turn towards Glandore. And then Glandore, dear god Glandore. My C in Honours English in the Leaving means I lack the descriptive skills to give you any sense of the views as you drive through and past Glandore. I can see why lots of “stars” have houses there. Jaw-droppingly fabulous sea vistas. Easily as impressive as the Grand Canyon.
After Glandore is one of the coolest bridges in the country. It is a small metal pokey thing and it is one car wide apart from a bulge in the middle to allow those playing chicken to pass each other. I would love to have been at the meeting where they decided the design of the bridge. “I call to order the monthly meeting of the Ballymagash Town Council. The first order of business is the planned bridge joining Union Hall to Glandore”. “We have £1000 available to build it, how much will it cost?”. “£2000″. “Bugger, anyone got any ideas?”. “How’s about half a bridge?”. “What, they swim the rest of it?”. “No, half a bridge, one donkey cart wide”. “Genius, motion passed, build it”. That is lateral thinking at its very finest.
And so onwards to Antcar. Absolutely brilliant. It is a small shop fronting their wholesale business and was hopping at 11.30 on a saturday morning. Shibs and Fionn were buggy-bound and not that interested. Ois had eyes bulging out of his head when he spotted the massive lobsters in the tank. And then, “Hey Dad, that’s the same ugly fish as last week”. You’re spot on Ois, it’s another monkfish. Poor lad nearly jumped out of his skin when the crab beside it made a move. The guy behind the counter was extremely friendly, helpful and did a great job on gutting and filletting.
On the way back I popped into The Lettercollum Kitchen Project in Clon which is half food shop (mainly organic) and half pre-prepared food for foodies who hate cooking. They do fantastic quiches, salads, tarts and a bunch of other things. The shop half has lots of things made from spelt (what the hell is spelt?) and good value in spices and other ingredients. I splurged. I also got a big bar of Green & Black Caramel chocolate and broke the diet badly for one lip-smacking day.
We had a weekend of gurnard, haddock, a fab Gigot de Lotte (Monkfish roasted with garlic and rosemary) and calamari.
And then onto the final chapter in my slightly obsessive adventure. Last weekend, I tried to find the Union Hall Fish Sales place again in Skibb and this time I succeeded. They are just on the road out to Bunalun. So I guess Bunalun Organic Products is not an invented name after all? The Co-Op is another smallish shop fronting a wholesale business. The selection was not great at all but the fish looked good. One thing I had noticed in Antcar was a complete lack of molluscs and it was the same here so I asked why. He just said it wasn’t part of their business. Maybe this part of Cork doesn’t land much in the way of mussels or scallops? I think it is the right time of year for them. I got some sole and frozen scallops and then asked him about the John Dory. I wanted to know if it was best to cook them whole or get him to fillet them. “Dunno mate, don’t eat the stuff”. Jesus! What is his weekday job? Vegetarian in a butchers? So I got him to fillet them cos they looked awkward to do.
On the way back this time I went to the Organic Shop on the same street as Lettercollum. Pick a random name from the 1916 boyos and they are both on that street. This is a branch of the one in the English Market. They seem to have re-focused since Lettercollum opened and now do a lot of fresh veg and food rather than the dried goods. It’s also an excellent shop but the prices are pretty steep. In any case, the sole was lovely but idiot-boy forgot he was going to Boston for the week so the rest of it was frozen until I get a chance to eat it.
So top tip for eating fish in Cork: Move to Union Hall.
Update 1: Finally went to Scally’s Supervalu in Clon. Fish not bad. but even better – they do bacon from Gubbeen in Schull. I’ll be back.
[tags] Baltimore Fish, Union Hall Fish Sales, Antcar, Skibbereen, Bandon, fish, Cork, English Market, fish on fridays[/tags]
10 Comments
I despair – “It’s You’re Birthday”
Posted on November 27, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour, Ireland, Personal.
We just had Oisín’s 4th birthday party. He had a whale of a time in KidzKlub in Bandon and two of his buddies from his old playschool turned up so he was over the moon. He did well on the present front and has just spent the past hour opening them and enthusing in the way that only he can do. Catherine was putting the cards up on the mantlepiece when she noticed something odd about one of them. Check it out:
I initially put it down to the card being made somewhere like China. Then I turned it over. It appears that English is not the first language for people in Roscommon either!
[tags] birthday card, spelling, grammer, english, pomposity[/tags]
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Weight Crash in Aisle Five
Posted on November 22, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Drink, Personal.
Not that anyone cares other than those who have to look at me, but I managed to drop a stone (14 fluid ounces in US measurements and 3 kilopascals in metric) in the past 4 weeks. Only 28 more pounds to go. Targeting another stone by Christmas but that is probably unrealistic. With the money I have saved from not drinking, I’m buying myself a new Ford Mustang.
Another apt “Unfit” comic to celebrate.
[tags] weight loss, booze, GI, Unfit Comic, Ford Mustang[/tags]
3 Comments
Le Singe est dans l’arbre et peut etre l’auto aussi
Posted on November 17, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Personal.
JWZ has a link to a fabulous piece of footage which will give any petrol-head goose-bumps:
Early morning in Paris in 1978 at 140MPH in a Ferrari 275 GTB!
The original story, with lots of updated detail is here.
I’ll dream happy dreams tonight.
[tags]jwz, paris, ferrari, vroom[/tags]
