Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

This is Masterchef not Master Scallops

It’s time to put Masterchef out to pasture. I’m watching an average show in about 10 minutes using Sky+. The formula isn’t working any more. No tension, no excitement, the same stupid catchphrases. Cooking doesn’t get any harder than this. Yeah, it does. Scallops. If I see one more bleedin scallop on that show, I’ll explode. Fabio Viviani, in the far superior US show Top Chef, described the same problem perfectly back in January 2009:

Learn about Twitter whilst having a nice glass of vino

I know the whole Twitter thing is still completely alien to a lot of people. How many wondered what the hell the papers were on about when discussing Dan Boyle’s “tweet”? Here’s a suggestion for dipping your toe in and getting a handle on it all. Karwig Wines in Carrigaline is running the third “Twebt” which is a Twitter wine-tasting competition (Bubble Brothers and Curious Wines ran the first two).

Techie updates have moved

I know the tech stuff annoys the foodie readers here and vice versa. So last week I started up a new Posterous blog over on conoroneill.net. It is much more high volume than this blog and consists mainly of pointers to interesting tech stuff, opinions thereof and the odd funny bit. So basically pretty much anything except food/Bandon, which will remain here. I’ll do the odd cross-reference when it makes sense.

Fat Club Update

The idea of relentlessly banging on about weight and fitness here and on Twitter didn’t really work. There are only two people that I follow on Twitter doing it and one of them is my sister. But I have been marking major milestones and today was one of them. So from Dec 29th to Feb 9th, I have lost 20 pounds. How? No booze, no snacking, no sweets, normal breakfast, normal lunch, smaller dinner, fruit whenever I’m peckish and a small amount of treadmill Mon-Fri.

Just in case you haven't seen/heard it

Very very funny.

Neven watchable but not memorable

I’ve always been a huge fan of Neven. Anyone who can run a successful restaurant in the middle of nowhere in rural Cavan gets my vote. His energy is always fantastic too. This new show is ok but nothing amazing. I’m surprised to see cookery programmes still being made that refer to “dinner parties”. Does anyone still have those? His three dishes in the opening episode were asparagus and smoked salmon tartlet, confit duck and a tiramsu variant.

The Rules of Fat Club

Pat Phelan’s recent post about losing weight and giving up ciggies highlighted that we all stand a better chance of success if we do some online group supoort of each other via Twitter/Facebook. The bruv in law came up with Fat Club. So here we go: #1 - The first rule of Fat Club is, you must talk all the time about Fat Club online. #2 - The second rule of Fat Club is, you MUST TALK about Fat Club online.

As You Wish

Well Bandon Film Society has gone and done it again with this brilliant idea. In association with Partnership for Change they are organising a Special Christmas Charity Screening for Bandon Flood Appeal on Wednesday 30th December 2009 in St Peters Church, Bandon at 8pm The movie is one of my top 5 of all time, The Princess Bride, starring the angelic Robin Wright. If you don’t live in Bandon, get into your car and drive here for this.

Wondering how to run your business?

Watch this video from Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos, which sold this summer to Amazon for $928m. I have ordered the Zappos Culture book he mentioned (just email ceo@zappos.com and they’ll post you a copy) and downloaded the Tribal Leadership audiobook from here (use California 90210 for your address in the registration screen). Wonderful stuff. Most Irish businesses are still a decade behind the US exemplars when it comes to customer service.

Thinking of setting up a business? Watch this.

The most inspirational thing I’ve seen in a long long time. Gary Vaynerchuk is amazing. Note, audio is NSFW.