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I took a few snaps of the masses as we all waited for our first sight of the parade.

Elly took a few shots in black & white. This one was just some random child in the crowd, but he seems to be enjoying himself:)

As the parade arrived Elly was closer to the rails and started to snap shots in both mono and colour.

Mono wouldn’t have been my choice for a parade but I don’t think either of the next two shots would have worked as well in colour

I’m not sure which one was scarier!

One thing, I noticed that surprised me, was the lack of any Irish Dancers. What’s up with that?

Well there were some interesting St. Patricks

These last 2 are my favourites I just love the colour and the energy. I am at times jealous of Elly’s ability to just pick up a camera and snap great shots, especially when she hogs the camera for an entire afternoon :p

 

So we drove to Cork this afternoon, yup Lucan to Cork on a friday afternoon, the journey can be best described as sauntering, we got checked into our hotel and headed out to try and meet up with a few people although we hadn’t let anyone know we would be about.

So it was about 8pm when we left the hotel. We walked around Cork from MacCurtain st. to “The thirsty Scholar” but no luck meeting any other campers. Ah well, I got to wander around Cork for the first time in over 20 years that I wasn’t there on business and I have to say there was a fantastic “vibe” about the city, maybe it was all the students on the street or the smell of fresh pizza dough in the air but it reminded me of the electricity that was in the air in the Temple bar of the late eighties and early nineties, before it was “improved”

On the way back to the hotel I snapped the picture above with the compact camera. I’m stunned that it even picked up the light but not as stunned as how steady my hand was for a long exposure, especially considering I have had one or two

I can’t wait to get out around this fantastic city with the 5200, I saw some gorgeous pictures just waiting to be taken.

OK, so a while back I posted a list of gadgets and said that I would be following up with mini reviews of my own personel favourite gadgets, here’s the link to the post.

Anywho, that’s what I’m gonna be doing for the first few of these weekly posts. This week i’m kickin’ it all off with my HP ipaq 6515.

The 6515 is, actually I should say was (a new model has been released), marketed as a mobile communicator, now to be fair it does have a lot of mobile communications type features, but it is primarily a windows based PDA. So it does all the usual PDA type features…

Calendar, Address book, Tasklists, e-mail via sync with outlook or Exchange push, pocket word, pocket excel, adobe acrobat, Media Player (great for podcasts;) some games etc. So before we go any further it’s already a very handy device.

Lets go a little further, there is a camera and GPS receiver built in. The camera is a fairly run of the mill 1.2 mega pixel affair with similar quality to the majority of camera phones available so it’s only really usefull for the odd emergency snap.

The GPS receiver on the other hand is fantastic, it’s just a shame that Hewlett Packard don’t include Ireland when they promise maps for all major western european countries Although to be fair until fairly recently even google couldn’t get good maps for Ireand out of OSI, so lets not be to hard on HP. Anyway, my route planning requirements have been looked after fairly well by “Via Michelin” which draws from the same data as google maps.

Until recently that satisfied my GPS needs but as I’m getting more in to my photo walks I’m gonna need something that gives me a tracklog which is where Megolith comes in. While it won’t do route planning I can use screen shots from google earth as my maps more on that once testing has been completed

News just in thanks to Stalltheball.com it would appear that I should have a look at this new AA Navigator Software, it would appear from what’s been said here that it’s got some great maps for Ireland included.

Okay so I’ve covered the PDA, Camera and GPS. I haven’t mentioned the bluetooth capabilities, I use this for 2 things, firstly my “hands free” connection in the car and secondly I can share my Media Centre’s Internet connection with my PDA enabling me to use the mobile IE app to web surf from anywhere in the house or garden at home (even the smallest room, newspapers are so 20th century) yes, web browsing on a pda can be frustrating as it reformats the page you are looking at in order to make it fit on the 240×240 display, however with things like “news rivers” and “yomoblog” becoming more widespread It’s certainly becoming more useful and less frustrating almost daily.

The last feature of this unit to mention is the GSM phone with GPRS and EDGE connectivity. The GPRS is something I only use occasionally as I’m usually not to far away from a web connection of some sort that I can use to sync to or share. On the other hand if I was using more public transport then that’s a different story, I’m sure it would get more use to pass the time.

The mobile phone feature set is fairly basic it calls people, it receives inbound calls and it sends and recieves text messages, with one exception, the contacts list, it’s synced to your outlook address book so every contact you have is on your phone, if your using Exchange push then you have access to the entire domains contact list, what more could you want from a phone? Well reliability is the only concern I have on that front, now bear in mind I’m not a huge mobile phone user and if you are then I cannot recommend this unit as it has problems about once a month where it simply stops sending or receiving calls and a soft reset is the only way to resolve the problem. Big deal you might think but you’ll only know there’s a problem when you go to make a call, who knows how many calls you might have missed in the meantime.

As for the size/weight well it’s not one for the shirt pocket, jacket pocket yes. A better idea though is to get one of the many beltclip cases that are available, that’s where mine lives quite happily most of the time.

Now for some pictures

Ok the first Picture showsa you the front complete with mini keyboard, which works surprisingly well once you adjust to it. and the othe shows the rear of the unit in it’s case, nice of the case manufacturer to leave openings for the camera and speaker.

The left side of the unit showing (from left to right) it’s IR port, the Camera Shutter/memo recorder button and the volume slider.

The right hand side showing (left to Right) mini-SD card slot and the normal SD card slot, Stuffed with 2Gb card. [homer] mmmmmmmmm Storage [/homer]

And for our final shot some nudity

Just to give you a size comparison but also to show what 12 months of daily use and abuse has done to it. Answer very little apart from the fingerprints

Thing is as a publicity stunt it sucked the people on the street were wondering what had happened to pollute the river like this! there was no advertising anywhere that I saw and well no Fringe festival to be honest??? all very confusing for the literally tens of people that were standing around watching the spectacle.

You have to wonder why there was no one on O’Connell street bridge handing out flyers or even posters about to draw attention to the fringe festival, or am I finally just getting old and not able to “get it” anymore? Is this the new thing now then? is it? At least these guys looked like they were having some fun but again nothing to explain what was happening…

I have to admit to being tempted to tell a few tourists that the Luas had derailed crossing the bridge at Heuston station and that the red river was the result of the contents of the passengers vascular systems having emptied into the river, but then I decided not to tempt fate. you never know.

Some people slag me for it but when I started with Compustore there were 2 stores when I left there were 5 and about 10-12 franchises, so I like to think I played my part, and even if I didn’t I had a hell of a lot of fun and met some great people while working there.

And, if you’ll indulge me I’d like to tell you a story about one person I met there a little more than 8 years ago.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I’m pretty sure I was hung over, I was hung over a lot in those days, hell it was right in the eye of the storm that was the Celtic tiger. So life was a constant party, we liked to think we worked hard and played harder and there were times that was the only way you could stay sane

Anyway, I digress, I was prowling the shop floor doing my best to avoid the time wasters and be available to the people that were there to spend money, hey, a good months sales made the difference between getting the bus home after work or a drink after hours and a taxi later

Anyway, I see this group come wandering in what looked to be fairly good suits, on a Saturday afternoon, so I’m seeing a “cure” there’s 2 guys and a lady, different ages and very obviously serious business people. So I make my way across towards them doing my best to play deaf to the scumbag looking for help reading the system requirements of some piece of software and see the fantastic looking shoes the tall skinny guy is wearing.

Cha ching, I’m thinking:D

So I introduce myself and the tall guy takes the lead…

“You don’t sound terribly local?” I inquire as we start to wander toward the display of shiny new state of the art PC’s.

“naw, I’m from the U.S.” he says.

“ah ok” I say,” so your in town for business?”

“Yup, so why don’t you show us your best selling PC?”

“Ah nuts” I’m thinking cause I know our best seller is also the one I make the least commission on. So I start to nudge him a bit about what he wants the machine for etc. Trying to get a bit more info for the up sell I’m thinking of

Then without any prompting he starts talking plural and I’m all of a sudden thinking “give him exactly what he wants get the deal and if he’s looking for a few, sure that’ll make it worthwhile. Little did I know…

I’m settling into my patter now about our best seller it was a Compaq Presario If memory serves, it was definitely an AMD K6 2 powered model, a budget model with most of the bases covered.

All in all we talked for about 20 minutes a lot about business and how the different chips were sizing up against each other and so on and so forth, it was refreshing to speak to a middle aged man who actually new a fairly decent amount (As I thought) about computer technology, please don’t think I’m being patronising or ageist with that statement if you had worked there at the time you would understand what I mean, it wasn’t unheard of but it was rare.

Anyway, it was at this point, after I had pitched an AMD powered PC to him, discussed the virtues of the CPU over the Intel alternative at the time, that he introduced himself as Craig and handed me his card…

INTEL COO

And as I was apologising he asked me to stop and thanked me for being “straight and honest” with him explaining that it was rare that he got the chance to speak to people like me that new so much about “his” market.

At this point as we were saying our farewells, I’m thinking that’s a bit much “his” market, jaysus like you run one Intel factory in Ireland, get a grip mate. God I was so naive/dumb.

As soon as he had left the store our head technician, Rob, comes running out from behind the tech counter asking who the guy that I had just been talking too was. Keep in mind Rob, like myself, wasn’t the smallest lad in the world and I don’t ever remember seeing him move that fast before.

I said it was some bloke from Intel, to which Rob replied “yea he pulled up in a massive stretch limo.

Slowly the penny was starting to drop, I pulled his card out of my pocket and as Rob saw it he just looked gob smacked and goes “George you do know who he is?”

I reply “yea he’s some big cheese out in Lucan” and Rob starts shaking his head.

“no George, that’s THE big cheese in Intel”

Ker klunk finally, the penny drops. I can still hear Rob laughing when I told him that I ‘d tried to sell him an AMD PC.

I learned some very valuable lessons that day.

The value of honesty in all your dealings as you just never know exactly who you are dealing with.

The truly clever people will always listen to and value everyone else’s opinion, before forming their own.

Always remain humble, you will gain far more respect from people that way than telling them how fantastic you are

And the most important lesson?

Listen to your elders, chances are they have seen and done it before you or else they have a PHD

So, we are using this as an excuse to have a weekend away together in the “other Capital” I will have to remember that I’m there in a social capacity and not a business one, everybody needs a break from time to time, you know As I was looking through the list of attendee’s and speakers I noticed a few familiar names, so it will be a chance to get to know them.

My Sweetie got me interested in blogging and probobly leads the most web-centric lifestyle of any person I know. Her job is managing a web-based Doc-control system, the team of people she works with are based in numerous different timezones. She “talks” daily to her friends and mum over MSN (who my sweetie introduced to personel PC’s and the web. Her mum is now an active member in some online communities, runs her own Wiki and not so long ago installed her own broadband. She gives us both tips regularly now) also gives her mum remote assistence for troubleshooting those annoying issue’s we all have her current web project is getting our photo collection geo-tagged and online, so that we can both use it for our own blog’s and so that we can share these images with our families and friends. Almost all our shopping with the exception of food and impulse items is purchased online, every holiday we have taken together has been booked online. All our maps, newspapers and lots of our entertainment are virtual, both on and offline.
I’m blaming her for a lot in the last paragraph but in truth these are the things that we do together. I’m looking forward to this, it’s not often we get to “geek out” in public, so this should be fun and interesting for us both.

These aren’t your regular run of the mile Dragonflies either, some of them are freakishly large. like this one I snapped with the Camera phone this morning on my way into the office. Apologies for the image quality, now I know why photographers never go anywhere without a good camera

So while I was sitting in traffic this morning, I was thinking how bloody dumb is it to sit in a car for an hour and a half to travel about 6 and a half miles?

I mean, here I am doing my utmost to get a bit fitter and more importantly to loose some (a lot, if I’m being honest) weight and I’m sitting on my fat ass in a car that’s travelling at an average speed that’s slower than me walking!

Then tonight I get home from work late, on a friday evening, change and rush out to the gym to go do a 90 minute workout??? (That I didn’t have the energy to finish) when did the world get so messed up?

Now I know what your thinking, well why don’t you just ditch the car and walk then or cycle? well I work in sales, I’m a customer facing member of the company who has to present a professional image and lets just say smelling like I just walked/cycled to the office would not be acceptable.

So instead of walking/cycling to the office and arriving fresh and awake to begin my days work, I arrive to the office having had to get up before the sun and slowly build stress for an hour and a half before my day begins, I get to arrive to work, like most who work in Dublin, stressed and in a bad mood, this is our burden to carry until next May/June when the primary school kids stop driving to class for there summer holidays.

The sad Irony is there is no real need for me to be in the office 9 to 5.30 every day. What?

Think about it I work for the largest Internet hosting company in Ireland. All the tools of my job are available to me from anywhere, with one exception and that I could actually get around with a little help from one of our support staff.

To explain, the tools of my job consist of the desk phone (easily forwarded to my company mobile)the company web site (it better be available on my broadband connection) my CRM application which is also web based, and my outlook e-mail (thats the bit that I need help with) oh and of course the company IM.

So why can’t I either work from home unless I’m actually due to be meeting a client or at the very least start my day from home so I don’t have to sit in the rush hour traffic? well I’m kinda hoping it’s cause I ain’t asked (see ya monday Boss )

Now here’s a thought, I can’t be unique in this, have a look at your own job if you work in an office, chances are you use a PC of some sort to access files and your e-mail and maybe some special software that relates specifically to your job or company and a phone and maybe an IM app of some sort.

Newsflash we live in the 21st century, if it’s on a computer it can be accessed from anywhere over a secure web connection. I’m not going to get into how cause that would be to much like work but it can be done.

Now think about how many people you know in the same situation in Dublin. Why aren’t more companies doing this?

Is it lack of Broadband? well possibly outside of Dublin but most people commuting to work here have access to Broadband.

Is it the cost of the computer systems, possibly, but they can be offset by the increase in productivity.

Is it because the boss is a power mad megalomaniac? more than likely not

So why are we sitting in traffic day in day out when we could be working from home, there by reducing the number of cars on the streets and improving everybodies quality of life, while lowering greenhouse gas emmissions?

I’m starting to think it’s cause we the workers haven’t asked, and I don’t mean asked once I mean asked regularly, if I were to change job in the future I think this will have to be part of the package. I’d recomend anyone who’s tired of rush hour and the stress it brings to talk to your boss about this, maybe they’ll listen maybe they won’t but I think if we don’t ask and keep asking we’ll never have the option.

A few days ago this story surfaced, of a badly punctuated sign at the side of the road, slow news day maybe but even still this guy seemed to think it was his right to criticise a sign-writer in another country and he even went so far as to say “I assume it was produced by a professional sign-writer who didn’t know his job.” The first thing I would say about that statement is “assumtions are the mother of all f*** up’s”

The second thing I would say is that what gives John Richards the right to criticise this mans work? does he not have the right to seek emplyment? Does he not have the right to make a mistake?

Thirdly, if his work is all so bad people will not hire this guy again. That is how a market economy works. Except now this guy will probobally not get any more sign-writing work because of all the negative publicity that you called down on him John Richards. Sleep well, while he and his family find another source of income to replace the one you robbed him of.

Fourthly, John Richards you are a Hypocrite. The following text is taken from the main page of your website…

“We are aware of the way the English language is evolving during use, and do not intend any direct criticism of those who have made the mistakes above.”

Your criticism was fairly direct John, shame on you.

I have in the past made fun of my own spelling and grammer and been irritated by the spelling and grammar Nazi that I am going to marry in the less than a year. To be fair, she does this when beside me or when my mistakes are noticed and I’m within earshot. Unlike John Richards who was so distressed by the lack of an apostophe that he used the worlds press to lash out internationally at an individual. Would his anger and frustration not have been better served by slating the education system that so obviously failed this man? probobally, but then “Malcontent frustrated with his lot in life lashes out at the Irish education system” wouldn’t have gotten quite so many column inches.

As someone who doesn’t have the best grammar (or spelling) in the world, I am regularly the butt of jokes amongst friends and to be fair I have to take some responsibility for my own actions, however when your teacher cannot explain the difference between how to use there and their, simply telling you to always use there (one of many examples from my education) because they can’t be bothered to do there job correctly I won’t take all the blame.

I think your goal is admirable John, I think your methods are self serving and you should really get down from your soap box for a look around the real world, there are far more inhumane things happening in this world today than bad punctuation.

Actually, just thinking about it and after seing this on your website “Due to the receipt of huge amounts of ‘spam’ and virus emails, the address previously used for the submission of examples has been withdrawn. We will continue to update this site from time to time but we can no longer receive pictures due to our email address being clogged by unsolicited mail.” maybe you should stay on your soap box and respond to all spam mail correcting there grammar, who knows it might irritate and frustrate the spammers enough so they’ll stop, now that is something that could truly help mankind.

As part of my research I did come across this rather interesting page about the origins of punctuation, maybe mine ain’t that bad after all, just a little old fashioned or ahead of it’s time.

Oh and just before I sign off this post, no I didn’t spellcheck this, I have re read and corrected as many punctuation and spelling mistakes as I could see. So any that remain are not meant as a pun or some form of irony, they are the result of the Irish education systems failure to educate me.

Anywho, enough of the ranting, I think I’ll leave the last word on this to Twenty Major, the guy is wittier than I, so hopefully will cheer the few that have read this entire post.