Conor's Bandon Blog

Running, Food and Local stuff from a blow-in

Bandon Coder Dojo on the move

Bandon Coder Dojo kicked off this year and they have just made the move to St Brogans school at the top of the town. It’s on every Tuesday from 6:30pm to 8pm. They are currently focused on Scratch, HTML and JavaScript. If you have any skills in those areas, they would really appreciate more mentors taking part. Our eldest has just started using Scratch and is finding it good fun. Here’s a screenshot:

Finally, together at last, Vibram Five Fingers and Sugru

My two favourite products working together to make me run like the wind (cough). VFFs and Sugru When I switched from running in Bikilas to these TrekSports, I started getting a sore spot just behind the ball of my left foot. It appears to be due to a seam on the VFFs rubbing me. Using a temporary pad worked during the week so now I’m hoping this Sugru fix will be permanent.

Without Fibre, Bandon will suffer Timoleague's fate

Timoleague was formerly a place of some note, being much resorted to by the Spaniards, who imported large quantities of wine here and it is said there were formerly no less than fourteen taverns that sold sack in the town. Looking at the wide slob lands when the tide is out, or the shallow waters at full tide, it is hard to believe that here was once a busy Medieval port where foreign merchants from France and Spain bartered their wines and Mediterranean produce for Irish butter, hides and farm produce In Timoleague’s case, the harbour silted up through no fault of the town.

All the young hipsters around Bandon are now sporting the Vibram Five Fingers Summer Collection

Think of them as Christian Louboutin’s for the stylish man. These are the original Classics worn by our legendary foot-model, Conor. vff_classic

Goodbye My Friend Bikila #VFF

In March 2011, after doing 2 Half Marathons and a 10k, I was close to giving up on running. Every time I got on a treadmill in my ASICs, I got crippling shin-splints within minutes. It was like trying to run with two solid wooden peg legs. Running on grass was only slightly better. 18 months prior to that I had also destroyed my ankle by going over sideways on it twice in quick succession.

Diary of A Virgin Semi-Veggie, Part 4

Hard to believe I started this in mid-Jan and we are just about to bounce into May. Plenty of activity in the past month, some good, some bad. Variety and texture remain problematic but overall, sticking to veggie and fairly vegan for the past few weeks. Some product updates to share. First, the good ones: Sojade - A bifidus soya yoghurt-alternative. This is a shocker. Smells and pretty much tastes like natural yoghurt.

Diary of A Virgin Semi-Veggie, Part 3

It all kicked off in mid-Jan and here we are on April 1st, still at it. I don’t have a huge number of updates since the last one in February but a couple of interesting tidbits, including one which just happened and threw me completely. Overall, it’s still entirely vegetarian except for the Friday chicken curry and I’m be strongly tempted to replace that with something veggie soon due to a great Indian Veggie book my sister got me.

Bandon in 8-bit Google Maps

Go to Google Maps. Zoom into Bandon. Click Quest. Gotta love a giant global corporation that allows stuff like this to be made. Quick, I’m sure it’ll be gone by April 2nd. 31-03-2012 19-29-18 And here’s the video that explains it. Just fantastic.

This year's chilli harvest

Catherine is delighted with this bumper crop of kitchen-grown chillis. Next year we hope to get upwards of 2. DSCF1026 Sidenote: The best picture quality you’ve ever seen on this blog. Guess who finally got a proper camera?  

How to avoid the Irish pharmacy gouge by buying from drugstore.com

For the past few years I have been buying a variety of pharmacy products from drugstore.com in the US. Don’t worry, they’re part of Amazon, not some dodgy crowd flogging fake horse tranquillizers. There are two reasons I’ve been doing this. The first is that I use a miracle stomach drug called Omeprazole which solved over 20 years of chronic stomach problems when I finally discovered it (and other PPIs like Nexium).