Owner: thesraid.com - I get it! URL:http://www.thesraid.com Join Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:01:53 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: John Ó'Ríordán. Blog about life in Cork, photos from Cork & elsewhere, my opinions, Linux, hurling and other sports and some funny stuff thrown in because life shouldn't be so serious. This is the blog of John O'Riordan. I get it! Site statistics:Click here
Best lawyer name ever 2007-11-30 05:29:48 This has to be the best name for a lawyer ever!
http://www.sullivanandcromwell.com/lawyers/detail.aspx?attorney=140
€1.60 for a pint of Guinness 2007-11-30 03:28:51 Everyone is talking about the robbery in Guinness
this week. However I think people are missing the real crime here. The mark-up on beer put on by the Government and Publicans. From the Irish Independent “A man drove a truck into the company’s famous Dublin brewery and hitched up a trailer containing 450 kegs of different beers before escaping through the front gates.
Diageo, the drinks company that owns Guinness, Budweiser and Carlsberg, said yesterday that the tab stands at €64,000.
That works out at less than €1.60-a-pint, as it does not include mark ups by the Government or the publicans. In the pub, the haul would be worth €160,000.
“It’s a serious breach of our security. I spoke earlier to one of our supply guys who said it was unprecedented that this number — a full trailer of kegs — would be illegally taken off a site,” a spokeswoman for Diageo said yesterday.
“So obviously, we’re taking it extremely seriously. Full in
GAA Players Grants are no giveaway 2007-11-30 01:36:03 Well finally the GAA grants things seems to be nearly sorted. No one seems to be mentioning the fact that the Government didn’t give the amount they had promised though. In fact they are making 1.5 million euro less available. But why should we be surprised I suppose. These are the same people who promised no waiting for hospital beds, a debt free Cork airport and tax cuts for all. Anyway regardless of what the players are getting they are going to be made work for it. Below are the goals they have to achieve to qualify for a grant.
A Player will have to attend at least 80% of all training sessions and/or matches. He’ll have to demonstrate sustained improvement through regular fitness testing. He has to keep a training log or diary, which must be updated regularly. If injured, he’s not off the hook either: he’ll then have to demonstrate he’s participating satisfactorily in the rehabilitation process.
On top of all that, he must get involved in coaching and games developme Read more:Players
Health Service Budgets and idiocy 2007-12-10 08:41:30
You know they keep telling us we are spending more money on Health
Care than other countries, and in fairness I kind of believe them. The problem is the money is being spent on administrators who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. I read the following article in todays’ Independent. Looks like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. It’d be funny if it was happening in a Health Service
.
“A FARCICAL situation has emerged whereby one hospital has a new CT scanner but no staff, while a nearby hospital has the specialised staff but no CT machine to operate.
Opposition TDs have criticised the fiasco, saying it further highlights the fragmented nature of the Health Service Executive (HSE) and an inability by management to marry resources with personnel.
Nenagh Hospital in Tipperary has a state-of-the-art CT scanner and a room built specially to house it — but the required specialised staff numbers have not been sanctioned.
But less Read more:Budgets
Rebel Panels officially on strike 2007-12-10 04:41:24 I read in the Examiner today that the two panels are now on strike
. It is no longer just the footballers!
“As of now, the Cork players are officially unavailable to the hurling and football managers. They have resigned from the panels.”
So what does this mean? Does it mean we are going to give our opponents a walkover in matches, maybe even not contest the Championship in the Summer?
“There is a clear understanding among the group that this could mean opting out of inter-county action for the year. Some have already presumed that.”
I agree with the sentiments of the panel, not allowing the coach to pick his selectors is a stupid move but surely if the clubs voted that was the players should follow it? I mean that is democracy after all. You have to go with the will of the majority, even if the majority are idiots? I mean just look at the Government we’ve had for the last few years.
I don’t know if I agree with them going on strike. Perhaps holding up games for a f Read more:Rebel
Adsense YouTube Player 2007-12-05 14:44:22 There is a new option on Google Adsense
which allows you to embed videos into your site. It picks up on the content of your site and chooses relevant videos. I’m interested to she how accurate it can be so I have embedded it below.
Watch the latest videos on YouTube
.com
Discovery about the true use of Fulacht Fiadhs 2007-12-05 13:06:47
There is a great article in Wired this week about what Fulacht Fiadhs may have been used for. When I learned about them in school I was told they were for cooking deer but this sounds a little more Irish all right.
“Hangovers rarely inspire scientific breakthroughs. But Billy Quinn’s eureka moment occurred on just such a head-pounding morning in 2003. After a night spent carousing at a pub in Galway, Ireland, he and colleague Declan Moore were discussing their plans for the day over a traditional breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, white pudding, beans, and fried potatoes. The two archaeologists were scheduled to excavate a nearby grassy mound known as a fulacht fiadh (pronounced “full-oct fee-ah”). About 5,000 of the mounds have been discovered throughout Ireland, most dating from 1500 to 500 BC. They’re not much to look at — excavation reveals a rectangular trough (fulacht is Gaelic for “recess”) surrounded by a horseshoe-sh Read more:Discovery
Recorded Newgrange Footage 2007-12-21 05:25:24 Well I managed to catch it on TV3 this morning in the canteen at work. It’s a real pity the webcast didn’t work. However looking it seems Brian Greene was able to find a recording of it somewhere.
Read more:Footage
View the Winter Solstice at Newgrange via Webcam 2007-12-21 01:47:21 Heritage Ireland have set up a live webcam in Newgrange for the Winter Solstice
event. Once a year, at the time of the winter solstice (shortest day of the year), the sun shines directly along the long passage into the chamber for about 17 minutes as it rises and illuminates the chamber floor. The alignment with the sun is too precise to have occurred by chance.
You can view the webcam from 08:30 on the 21st and 22nd of December.
View the webcam here.
——————
UPDATE: A good ol’ public sector. The site is down so it looks like we are not going to be able to see it. However it is being broadcast via satellite as well.
Satellite Atlantic Bird 3 at 8 degrees West
AB3 TxpKC06 ch.F
Downlink Frequency 11,192.5 MHz
Polarisation Vertical
Symbol Rate 6.666MSym/sec
FEC 7/8
Tandberg MPEG2 422 SD encoding
No Encryption
Underwater Camera 2007-12-18 15:34:01 I got an underwater camera from Lorri for my birthday. So come the summer hopefully I can post some nice underwater photos from around the Irish coast. It’s very cheap for an underwater camera. Not the most high tech (it doesn’t have an focus option) but its a great entry level camera. The next cheapest one I could find is around €499. I’ll let you know what the quality is like when I get a chance to use it. You can take it out of the case as well and it’s nice and small so it might be useful in the pub as well.
If you are interested in looking at underwater pictures from Ireland check out the Cork Sub-Aqua Club. Read more:Camera
Irish Letting Agreement 2007-12-18 15:22:49 My mother is renting out a house back home. She rang the Solicitor to get a copy of a LettingAgreement
or Lease and he asked for €80 for it! Robbery! I said not to bother because it must be one on the internet somewhere. Anyway after a lot of searching I found one so I have posted it here in case someone else needs it.
Download Lease here. Read more:Irish
Pixar 2007-12-17 15:22:00 I love Pixar
. I remember the first time I saw one of their animation show before the start of a film. It was about a desk lamp. It was really simple but really well done. Anyway here is another short from Pixar that I really enjoyed.
Working Christmas Day at at the Office 2007-12-25 10:25:08 Well work is nearly finished. Another Christmas
Day working at the office is nearly done. It was great. Only a few calls from Asia and Israel and the whole Christmas has just passed me by. It was a good one this year. Avoided the town for my grocery shopping, not many decorations are work or home, (I let Lorri but up a few lights this year) and working all this week so it feels like any other week. The only hassle was the traffic over the last few weeks on my way home from work. But that’s all over now and there is no traffic today so I can enjoy my drive home.
Next month in January. I love it, the longest possible time away from Christmas and the start of a fresh year with fresh possibilities. It’s great. And I have the whole first week of becuase I worked all of Christmas Week. Going to go out an enjoy myself. Happy New Year!
The “Smart” Debt collectors are coming knocking 2007-12-24 08:34:59 People who visit this blog are aware of the problems I’ve had with smart. For months I tried to get broadband in my home but couldn’t as Smart
had messed up a previous order and retained ownership of my line.
Well throughout the course of that I never actually received a broadband service from Smart and yet they continue to bill me. I was talking to their representative Ann-Marie and she said she would sort it out. Well surprise surprise recently I have received a letter from debt collectors
acting on behalf of Smart saying they will initiate legal action to get money from me for a service they didn't provide!
I told the collector on the phone not to call me again unless it is with a summons where I will get an opportunity to lay out my grievances. Read more:knocking
Music firms take Eircom to court over downloads 2008-03-11 07:03:53 I read the following in the Examiner and on Digg today about the Music
Industries trying to force Eircom to filter my internet connection and limit my bandwidth.
A) Why should any ISP monitor traffic. I don’t want anybody monitoring any of my activies be they on the internet or elsewhere. I value my privacy. Not [...] Read more:firms
Webex Player on Linux 2008-03-10 03:38:06 We use an application called Webex
in work to remotely access peoples machines. These sessions can be recorded and therefore we often use this to view sessions from other Engineers and to record training sessions that may have been given elsewhere. One place to see a lot of trainings is from the VMWorld website which [...] Read more:Linux
VMWorld 2008 2008-03-09 14:11:28 I am back from presenting in VMWorld 2008 in Cannes. Really enjoyed the experience of presenting to around 300 people and as my presentation was around an hour long I managed to get a lot of time to walk around. Also had so much time as I somehow managed to avoid working in the “Genius [...]
Rome Holiday 2008-03-08 15:45:21 Went to the Vatican with the mother and my girlfriend last week. Nice spot but the Italians can’t drive. Man it was some fun trying to even cross the road! The weather was lovely and Rome is amazing. The ruins are fantastic and the Vatican is quite impressive. I put the pictures up in the [...] Read more:Holiday
The Sultans of Ping in Cypress Ave. 2008-03-08 12:37:28 Went to see The Sultans of Ping yesterday. I was at them a few months ago in Galway and although the band were good the crowd was very small. So I was looking forward to going to see them yesterday where the crowd was guaranteed to be bigger. Well they didn’t disappoint anyway. Really good [...] Read more:Cypress
Marine Wildlife in Ireland 2008-02-21 08:56:17 I was looking for some good books on Marine
Wildlife in Ireland
and a Scuba Diving Club member recommended the following. I thought I’d post it hear for anyone who is interested.
There are a number of posters and books out on marine mammals but one of the best around is called ”A Guide to the [...]
Cork GAA Rebellion 2008-02-15 01:18:14 Many of you are probably wondering why I haven’t said anything about the Cork GAA trouble that’s happening at the moment. The reason is I was undecided about how I felt about in. I always agreed with the players that the coach should be allowed to pick his backroom staff, which I said to the [...] Read more:Rebellion
How to save a life 2008-03-12 04:11:36 Hypoglycaemia Diabetes expert CathyMoulton says that hypoglycaemia is what happenswhen the blood’s sugar level drops too low. “If a diabetic becomes hypo, they might complain of tingling lips, feel anxious and start to perspire,” she says. The easiest form of treatment is consuming rapid-acting [...]
Paddys Weekend 2008 2008-03-19 05:19:17 I have uploaded the Paddys Weekend
Pictures to the Gallery. I took hundreds but managed to trim it down to around 85 pictures for the site.
The Muppets sing Danny Boy 2008-03-21 03:14:25 This is funny, but you know I have never heard this sung in Ireland. It is really an American Anthem. I don’t even know the words. Read more:Muppets
, Danny
Convert wma to mp3 2008-03-25 06:18:12 This is a little script I use to convert wma to mp3 in Linux. Thought I would share it with the world.
for i in *.wma ; do mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 -ao pcm:waveheader "$i" && lame -m j -h --vbr-new -b 160 audiodump.wav -o "`basename "$i" .wma`.mp3"; done; rm -f audiodump.wav Read more:Convert
Stress Relief 2008-03-25 04:36:41 Most people are aware of the fact physical activity can reduce stress but an article in the Irish Independent today contained a passage that explains better than I have seen elsewhere.
“If, by around 4pm, it feels as if a stressful day at work has turned your brain to blancmange, it might not [...]
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