Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

Vote for your county in All-Ireland Monopoly

Courtesy of Jonathan Hill. Get your county into the top spot in Monopoly! It looks like the entire population of Leitrim and Roscommon has voted with 296 and 258 votes respectively. Cork floundering with 31 and Kilkenny with 26. Note to Hasbro - maybe get a custom PollDaddy widget created that we could all put on our blogs? It’s viral baby!

Wondering how to reading lots of web-sites quickly and what RSS is?

If you are one of my many non-technical readers you may have heard me and others mention things like RSS and words like “subscribe” and you may have wondered what it is all about. Well the lovely people over at The Common Craft Show have put together a great 3.5 minute video called “RSS in Plain English” which explains it all. If you check more than one or two sites/blogs per day to see if they have any updates then you need to watch this video and save yourself hassle.

Review of Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K

A brilliant machine that is much better than Commodore 64 or Vic 20 rubbish <div> Review of <span class="type">product</span>: <span class="item"><span class="fn">[Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/)</span></span></div> Rated as 5/5 on Apr 23 2007 by Conor O’Neill This review originally conceived November 1982: My Dad contacted a workmate of his in the UK to see if they could get me one of the new ZX Spectrum home computers. I’ve wanted one of these since I saw the announcement but they are very expensive (over £100) so we went with the 16K model instead of the 48K.

ZX Spectrum launched 25 years ago today!

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.

How not to get my vote

I cannot understand why Christy O’Sullivan thinks he’ll get a vote from me. Here is a guy shoe-horned in by FF at a national level who sends me flyers with absolutely no information on them about who he is, what he believes in, where he lives, what he has accomplished as a politician or why I should vote for him. And of course his website doesn’t load! Inserting this nobody over a well known local politician like Alan Coleman is a huge mistake by FF.

Sign the RTE Digital Free-to-Air Petition

As a lot of you know, you can get a Digital version of RTÉ (including Widescreen) on Sky Digital and NTL. However you must have a Sky/NTL subscription to see it. Many people, including myself, believe this is fundamentally wrong as we already support RTÉ through the mandatory TV licence. Please sign the petition from Brian Greene demanding that RTE make digital broadcasts of their programming available for “free”. If you are a blogger, consider adding the badge in support.

Motorcycle Drag Racing in Old Chapel tomorrow

The annual drag racing competition on the main Clon road in Old Chapel is on tomorrow. Always loud, always fast and always really well organised. We’ll be popping down for a few minutes until the younger ones start bawling.

220 Children to get Chest X-Rays

due to the TB outbreak in Cork. Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacteria usually attack the lungs. But, TB bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal. TB disease was once the leading cause of death in the United States. TB is spread through the air from one person to another.

Nostalgia Week at conoroneill.com

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'm playing GAA like Rooney

So he is only five years old and this was his first ever GAA session. He reported back that he played hurling and soccer. His Nana from Meath better have a word with him about Gaelic Football. Next week we are sending him in Kilkenny gear to shake things up a bit ;-) Bloody hell, now I have two hurlers in the house. Who would ever have thought?