Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

Kilkenny Alive is the future

I’ve been saying it non-stop for two years; if your business is not online, you are heading for extinction. I don’t care whether you are a butcher, baker or artist, start selling online now. Too difficult or pricey? Check out these guys or these guys. But more than “normal” business, the move of media online is accelerating all the time. Traditional newspapers across the US are going bust and the Voice group in Ireland couldn’t get traction.

I do love a bargain

I’ve mentioned Twitter many times on this blog. Bit by bit, it is going mainstream. It’s a great way to hang out online (or on your phone via SMS or mobile web) with people you like and who can fit their thoughts into 140 chars. But Twitter has a ton of practical uses too, one of which is saving money. My buddies in Nooked have created a ryanair_ork account there which publishes some great special offers regularly on Ryanair flights from Cork.

Help with Blog Research

Sinéad Cochrane of Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology is doing a survey of bloggers and those who read blogs. It would help her a lot if you took part. It’s very short and you could win a prize! Start here

TB Hospitals in Ireland

I made a quick mention of the old TB hospitals in a blog post about BCG almost two years ago. As far as I know there were lots of them. Peamount, which we drove past many times, opened in 1912 and there was also Cappagh and others. I just got a lovely email from someone who was in such a hospital in the 1950s wondering if I’d got any feedback. Unfortunately I hadn’t.

Sick as a large whale

We decided to head down and look at the poor dead whale in Courtmac this evening. Totally unprepared of course. Hundreds of cars down there, traffic mayhem, tons of people out on the sand taking pictures. Unfortunately we were a bit late with darkness falling and the tide was coming in fast. So only myself and Oisín ran out to grab some quick pictures. We might pop down at a better time tomorrow.

Pork and Sons Review

I was given this lovely book for Christmas 2007 and finally finished it last month. What initially appears to be a coffee-table resident turned out to be one of the best books on food I’ve ever read. The title says it all. This is a book about pork. Every single bit of the pig gets a mention and use. The author, Stéphane Reynaud is the grandson of a village butcher from the Ardeche plateau in France.

Get your Irish Blog Award Nominations in

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. irishblogawards1 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.

Return of the Porki

The Empire may have done its best to kill the pork industry in Ireland but the producers are fighting back. Barrie Tyner from Slow Food Ireland just let me know that the West Cork and Cork City Conviviums are coming together to bring us ‘The Pig Extravaganza’. jedi-1 I was disappointed to find that this did not include dancing pigs but it’s the next best thing :-) To celebrate National Pork Weekend, an evening of eating and great chat is planned down west on Sunday, the 18th of January.

Foodtalk on Newstalk

I just got a mail from the lovely people in The Good Things Cafe in Durrus to tell me that the awesome Carmel was on the Foodtalk programme on Newstalk Radio. Good Things Foodtalk is hosted by one of the best food bloggers anywhere, Caroline Hennessy from Bibliocook. If you want to listen online and subscribe so that you get each broadcast, then there are a bunch of different ways of doing it.

What you read here in 2008

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: Tikka Masala CBBC on Sky Digital Goat’s Cheese and Pregnancy Social Worker Jobs in Cork HDClone Review RTE Free-to-Air The Snip Cheap Calls Nigella Express Review English Irish Dictionary Tesco Online Shopping Review Buffalo Wings Real Gourmet Burger Heston Blumenthal Review Buddah Bar Paris Review Capote Review Rashers Gizmo Boqueria Tapas Review Losing Teeth