Recently in Random Category

I'm pretty amazed! I sent a normal letter from the main Post Office in Carlow to Kerry at 5:45PM yesterday. Got a text at 12:30 this afternoon to say that it had arrived! It's nice to see that at least one public service in this country is doing something right.

Seemingly I'm now an official GrannyMar Toyboy. I've been given the badge and informed that I have to be photographed wearing it!

However, I didn't want the poor camera broken, so I got a dodgy shot of my super sub with the badge instead.

What's the point of even worrying about whether clothes hangers are better than monster cables, when in most cases we can't even hear the stereo as intended?

Of course if you're really worried about the files from itunes, you can get the uber Denon AK-DL!

I'm just after coming across the Stupid Filter project. Now I'm waiting for the Spamassassin and Support Desk plugins!

I created a quick Opensearch file to add the PHP Function search to my search bar. If anyone is interested it's available here.

Update: To make life even easier, use ctrl-k to select the search box, ctrl-up and ctrl-down to select the different search providers.

For those of you who have been following the Monster Spam saga, Grandad's summary of it is a must read!

Why is it so hard for a a sizable minority of Irish drivers to use an indicator? Having people slow down for no apparent reason and then swerve into a turn without any prior indication is no fun. Or for extra bonus points, stop for a full thirty seconds watching the lack of oncoming traffic and then turn to the right just as a car behind you attempts to overtake!

Michele posted about the fun and games with Domainnews and copyright two months ago. Domainnews seem to have finally realised  and their "Chief Editor" has replied claiming innocence. Unfortunately he still does not seem to realise what he has done wrong, and he still hasn't as much as apologised yet. In fact Michele had to send a DMCA Takedown notice to Google before anything was done. For fun and giggles I had a look at the Domainnews site and spotted a post attributed to "press" which is a copy of the domains.asia press release here. According to Domainnews: "press is one of our editors and not someone we are trying to credit this to". What's even more fun is that the DotAsia press release is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution License (look at the icon at the bottom left of DotAsia's press release) which probably means that DotAsia would at least like a link back. Even if they didn't have the CC license, it is just a common courtesy to link back to the originating site, even for a press release. There is no point posting about DotAsia starting a new program, if the reader can't click on a link and have a look around to get more details. The whole whole point of the Internet was/is to share information.

While I was dropping Ewan into the Train Station in Limerick today, we were both surprised to see every traffic light flashing either yellow or red. Ewan rang the Gardaí to find out what the story was, only to be told that they were all off because of the Limerick Vs Tipperary replay.

This might make some bit of sense if they had Gardaí at the intersections doing point duty, but there was nothing. Trying to drive across O'Connell Street was like playing Russian Roulette with oncoming traffic, but people had no choice but to take silly chances in order to get out. It was surprising that there was no accidents.

Can anyone thing of any valid reason to turn off all traffic lights in a city because there there might be a bit extra traffic due to a match? Maybe turn off traffic lights at some of the major choke points and put Gardaí on point duty at them in order to keep traffic flowing, but all lights? Imagine what would happen in Dublin if they turned off every traffic light in North Dublin just because there was a match on in Croke Park.

I went up to an Ulster Bank ATM during the week, put in my card, and pressed the option up on screen for €40. The machine buzzed away for a few seconds, and then kindly informed me that it could only give out multiples of €50. This is by no means an uncommon occurrence. But why should it be so common? It can't be all that hard for an ATM to keep track of whether or not it has a certain note available. Why can't it check what notes it can provide before giving options to the user? This is simple maths which anyone can do, never mind a computer. We trust banks with our money every day, yet this simple maths problem seems to elude them.