Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

See where the NAMA Properties are on Google Maps

Well done to Gavin Sheridan and the crew at The Story. They took NAMA’s pathetic PDF release of the properties it owns, extracted the data into the fantastic Google Fusion Tables and then mapped the results into Google Maps. nama Go on, you know you won’t be able to help yourself. I immediately zoomed into Bandon to see what was there. Surprisingly few properties actually. Head on over to the site and click on any dot of interest to see what property it is.

How Your Kids Can Re-Build The Country - Cork Coder Dojo

Ireland has more than enough Corporate Lawyers, Audit Accountants, Bankers and Civil Servants. What it needs are creative people building products, services and businesses. That doesn’t necessarily mean every kid in Ireland should be doing Science or Engineering but lord, would more of you please do those subjects. The internet is one place where we see a wonderful synthesis of creativity in design and engineering. I believe you can teach anyone the basics of web development to a level where they can contribute in some way to web applications and mobile applications.

More FSAI Nonsense - Now They are Trying to Ban Raw Milk

After the pork recall debacle, you’d thing the FSAI would get a bit of cop-on but obviously they need to keep inventing make-work to keep themselves in jobs. Their latest wheeze is to try and ban Raw Milk. Not bleach-cleaned chicken nuggets or mechanically recovered meat burgers or sausages with 53% “meat”. No, they want to ban a product that some people actively seek out and choose to drink. I’m really really getting sick and tired of this bullshit.

Bandon Happy Hour this Fri 1st and Sat 2nd July

This is a really great initiative by the Bandon Co-Marketing Group. From 12–3PM this Friday and Saturday, the town will be offering an unbeatable range of discounts and special offers on goods and professional services. Bandon Happy Hour2 More than 63 businesses have signed up to offer deals and there is also the chance to enter Bandon’s Lucky Dip and win one of six vouchers worth €200, redeemable in any member business.

Hot Desking Office Space in Bantry

It has always struck me as ridiculous that the only place in all of West Cork where you can get a short-term Hot-Desk is in Macroom. We’re not that far from it but it’s still a horrible drive from Bandon. We continue to struggle as a small Internet business with 6 Mbs ADSL (512kbs up). If we were slightly closer to the exchange we might get 12Mbs. Those responsible for allowing Fibre connectivity to bypass Bandon have ensured that there will never be a technology cluster in the town.

10 Years a-bloggin'

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: blogger01 And didn’t exactly take off like a rocket with only 3 posts in 2001! blogger02 2005 was the year I really got going when I moved from Blogspot to Wordpress.

What Bandon has to offer

Very nice piece by Trevor on what the town has to offer. Why not leave a comment over there with your thoughts?  

Join us on the Bandon Half Marathon and 10K

I was very disappointed to miss the inaugural Bandon 10k last year so there is no way I’m missing the first Bandon Half Marathon on May 14th. Bandon Half Marathon My type of running is known, by experts in the field, as walking :-) Last year I did the Courtmacsherry 10k, the Dingle Half-Marathon and the Galway Bay Half-Marathon. All done incredibly slowly and all tough. My dodgy ankle did not help.

How to follow the #CSW #GE11 Election Results/Buzz

This is for people interested in Cork South West election coverage/results. Love it or hate it, if you want absolutely up-to-date information on the General Election over the next few days then you have to be on Twitter. Don’t worry, for most of it you don’t have to setup an account. So the main feeds you’ll probably be interested in are: #GE11 - This will be a firehose and only for total politics junkies.

Cast Your Vote over on boards.ie

I love the mock election thing they are running over on boards.ie. Basically you can input your voting preferences for your constituency and see what the patterns are like already. Cork South West has only had 142 votes so far and it’d be great to see more to get a better sample set. It would be also good to get as wide a demographic as possible voting rather than the usual boards.