Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

Ah dammit

You can say what you like about Top Gear but I can’t stop myself loving it. It is silly, childish and predictable but it is one of the few programmes I look forward to in the week. Sadly, I just heard that Richard Hammond was critically injured in a crash in a jet car doing upwards of 280 MPH! Fingers crossed that he recovers.  tags = Top+Gear, Richard+Hammond

Hey You

Norm Geras has given the history of one of my all time favourite one liners from a stand-up comedian. It is Michael Redmond’s piece of perfection “a lot of people say to me…..” I heard that for the first time back in the early 1990’s, probably on one of the stand-up shows on TV. Or did he support Dylan Moran at some Irish gig? It was around the same time that Mr Trellis were are their peak and Ardal O’Hanlon delivered his best ever joke.

New Apple iWhatever

I see Apple have announced a new product allows consumers to manage and playback their digital-media files on their televisions. They’ve called it the iTV. Sadly for UK purchasers, this means that it’ll only be capable of playing Corrie, Heartbeat, Celebrity Love Island and repeats of Crossroads. tags = iTV, iProduct

You can't get much simpler than this

Considered by Jeffrey Veen of Google to be close to perfection when it comes to usability on a web-site.  tags = Haynet, Usability

Cully and Sully, the Dragons await

I just got a mail from Colum over at Cully and Sully to say they are going to be on the TV tonight. If you don’t know them they have two main businesses: The first is supplying lovely pies to pubs whose only cooking apparatus is a microwave. The second is supplying same/similar packaged pies to supermarkets. Now we normally never buy pre-made dinners but their ones are really gorgeous and you get to keep a nice ceramic dish when you are finished.

I miss Dublin, particularly the rats

Craig sent me this picture taken by a tourist in a Dublin playground. To save you having to zoom the picture, the warning sign says “These lands are bring treated for rat infestation and have been laid with poison”. Happy days.   tags = Rats, Playground, Dublin, Poison

Shockingly - Yayyy Vodafone

So I bitched about Voda (twice) and the fact that I couldn’t upgrade the software on my N70 mobile. Then Ciarán, an old workmate, pointed out that I could get the phone unlocked by just calling customer service. It turns out that they have to ask Nokia for the unlock codes for the N-series, five days later they texted me the code and now the phone can work with any SIM card (like Roam4Free for example).

Interested in what the papers were saying up to 200 years ago?

Well Google have just released their most impressive service in a long long time. Over at News Archive Search you can search on a bunch of newspapers worldwide going way back. In many cases you have to pay to see the scan of the paper itself but you can read the actual text for free. As a test I put in the phrase “famine Ireland” and then selected “before 1880” and found a newspaper article from The Republican Compiler of Gettysburg on March 1st 1847 which mentions the suffering caused by the Irish famine.

Mail Glitch

Small mail glitch over the past 24 hours. If you sent anything from early Saturday morning to early Sunday evening to any conoroneill.com address, I’m afraid it got devnulled. Please re-send.

Tis Blogday 2006

So we’re all supposed to post links to 5 blogs we haven’t mentioned before. Here are my blogtastic links: Donal Fabulous photos, lots of Cork goodness. Rymus Ditto is totally understating his awesome pictures. An Irish Craftworkers Good Life Superb new blog from from Rebecca. Downshifting never looked so good! Disillusioned Lefty Needs no intro from me. What freaks me out is that he hasn’t even started college yet. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs