Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

Burgertastic

Burger Blogs seem to be appearing everywhere but this guy Two-Twenty is an animal! It turns out that Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles restaurant does burgers too. Bourdain became famous because of his book “Kitchen Confidential” which gave the low-down on the high-jinks in a restaurant kitchen. A great read. His “Cook’s Tour” follow-up was less hyped but also a very good read. The associated TV series was pretty poor. His “Les Halles Cookbook” is fabulous but I’ve only read about a quarter of it so far.

The next Alan Turing?

[![](/images/flickr/2024_download/21966235_26854edbe3_c.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandon1/21966235/ "photo sharing") [IMG_1163](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandon1/21966235/) Originally uploaded by [bandon1](http://www.flickr.com/people/bandon1/). Not bad for a 6 year old with no adult help. If only Fireball and Warlord were still being published, he'd be a very happy little cryptographer.

Patrick Kevin Pierce, RIP.

Aged 22, Patrick died in his sleep last monday night. He was buried at Shanganagh Cemetery yesterday after a heart-breaking funeral mass in Shankill. I didn’t know Patrick that well, I met him maybe once or twice a year when visiting Eoin and Jill. But the short life of this young man should be celebrated as a example of achievement in the face of overwhelming adversity. Nine years ago, Patrick was hit by a car and suffered massive head trauma.

Births and Deaths

The first 3 years of this blog consisted almost entirely of baby announcements for my friends. I guess to be consistent it should also let friends know about those who have passed away. It is obviously a bit clueless to claim that the internet (and blogs in particular) democratises the news but I have to admit that I only buy a newspaper now on Friday, Saturday and Sunday - Friday for the jobs section, Saturday for the food/property section in De Paper and Sunday for the TV bit of the Sunday Times.

Burger Innovation in Ireland

One of the best foodie blogs out there isA Hamburger Today. The writing is top class and the enthusiasm for the food shines through. But it has got me thinking about the complete lack of burger variety in this country. There seems to the only three categories here - Mickey D’s Style (incl Burger King, Super Macs etc), Chippers (insert your local chipper name here) and diners (Eddie Rockets being the only example I can think of).

Impress with Wordpress

Sometimes I identify great software at first sight (XEmacs, Eclipse, VMWare, GMail) and sometimes I need to be beaten over the head with it (Subversion, NetBeans, Flickr). I have seen references to Wordpress constantly on blogs and for some reason never checked it out, which is totally out of character for a click-junkie like me. But I was getting frustrated with Blogger and the difficulty in customising it and started looking around.

Best In Show

Forget 100K for Celebrity Love Island; Oscar finally got the 10 Euro for his first place in Juniors/Seniors writing in the Bandon Show. The following is an exceprt from his winning entry:"Pine nut, which is a nut, but it's also the name of a town. Pistachio nut. Red pistachio nut. Natural, all natural white pistachio nut." This balanced his unfortunate lack of awards at the Crossmahon Sports day yesterday. The competition in the Senior Infants category was just too tough and his mid-placing in both running and muscial chairs may have scarred him for life.

Twee at 7.23

I smiled all the way through this. The JCB Song I’m hardcore baby! I catch a bit of AM Kelly on Today FM on the way in to work. Jesus, does she ever play anything other than bland innofensive soporific music? Fair enough at 4am but something a little more noisy at 6.45 to stop me snoozing off and ploughing into the nearest tractor would help. At least Dempsey gets it and plays the Kickstart right after the news.

Feedburner feed now available

For no discernable reason other than the fact that I can, this Blog is now also available via Feedburner. I suppose a possible reason for people using that feed is that I can find out if anyone other than Mark and my wife actually reads reads this blog. The Atom feed is available here: Conor’s Blog And while I’m at it, I’ll lash in a Technorati tag too. Yeah, I’m at a total loss too as to why this is useful in my case.

Beach Top Tips

As a good husband, I am empathising with my pregnant wife by attempting to grow a belly as big as hers. So far, it has been a resounding success. However, it does pose issues of aesthetics when heading to the beach for what is likely to be the only hot day this year that we had last Sunday. Myself and the three squirts headed off to the Long Strand in Castlefreke/Rathbarry (how could they get rid of such a hilarious name for a village and replace it with something so insipid?