Notnem

I don’t know why this isn’t common knowledge because it is signposted at the start of every bus lane in Dublin. If you read the signs, you can drive in bus lanes during certain times of the day, usually between 1000 and 1200 and on Sundays and Bank Holidays. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people don’t know about this and instead queue up in the regular traffic lane. Maybe they can’t read the signs because they are too small, but if you can read a road sign you either need glasses or should be driving.

While I am on the subject of bus lanes and general traffic management in Dublin, I generally think bus lanes are a good idea, and people who are prepared to use public transport should get to work quicker than those who want to drive. The only problem I have with some bus lanes is the 24 hour bus lanes, and considering that we do not have a 24 hour bus service, or any plans to have one, it doesn’t make sense to me

Anyway, just my 2 cents on the subject…

I headed out on Friday night with Chris and Down Town last night. We hit the Ivy House for a couple before heading into Café en Seine. The plan was to head out for a few drinks and then go mountain climbing in the morning, but we didn’t get back until 4am. The climbing got postponed until tomorrow, so hopefully it will happen. … I have had a headache all day which is strange for me as hangovers don’t usually come with headaches, and particularly headaches that last all day. I only had 6 drinks which makes it even more strange, but it looks like all of us had the same symptoms.

It was a great night and amazingly I got ID’ed going into Cafe en Seine. First time in a long time and since I am 29 next month I don’t know how to read it. Maybe I should grow a beard… Anyway, a really good night and we should do them more…

These are a few pictures from my little sister’s art show as part of her IB exams. She sold 8 paintings at the show which is a fantastic result. I am trying to get her to buy an xbox 360 with the money but it isn’t looking good.

I always thought I was environmentally contentious. I drive a car that has good fuel economy, don’t do huge mileage and I am a vegetarian. Google today had a graphic to commemorate Earth Day.

I clicked on the image out of curiosity and found a site that allows you to fill in a quiz to determine what your effect on the environment is. I was stunned to see that my environment impact, as the quiz results stated:

If everybody in the planet lived like you, we would need 3.6 planets.

Obviously I am not happy about this, so I am going to see if I change my behaviour over the next month and redo the quiz, how I can change this?

I could walk to work on good days and buy the majority of my food from a farmers market which is situated nearby. I will need to focus on turning off appliances after I use them (mainly shutting down my computer) and try to waste as little as possible.

I will have a go at this and see how I get on. It could be an interesting experiment, and I will proably end up fitter (walking to work) and healthier (eating local fresh produce).

There are few things in life I dislike as much as loyalty cards. I am not saying that there should be no loyalty cards, or that people shouldn’t use them, but just that I don’t want to use them. Surprisingly very few people actually understand this point of view, so I decided to outline my views and make them public for comment.

I don’t like loyalty cards for a number of reasons:

1 - I want to go shopping with the knowledge that if I shop in Tesco I will get 55 super points. I don’t care and I don’t want them. They mean nothing to me. I think it would be better if Texco / Superquinn etc etc discounted their prices instead.

2 - It is reasonably e to think that things are actually more expensive on a whole because of loyalty cards. People have to be paid to enter data etc etc…

3 - I want to be able to make logical judgements on where I shop and not have my decisions affected by the fact that shop a will give me club points or whatever.

4 - I don’t want information on my shopping / purchasing habits to be data used by other people to determine what offers I should get in my next coupons. For those of you who say the coupons are not targeted specifically to you, I leave you with this from the tesco.ie website: “We also use your details to send you offers and information on things which might interest you.”

5 - I don’t want coupons or any post/mail from the places I choose to bring my business.

6 - In Ireland today, different chains of retail outlets are sharing in the one loyalty card schemes so it isn’t just what you buy at your supermarkets that is being monitored. Now instead of a privacy policy protecting you from your information being shared, you have a policy that says your information will not be shared beyond x, y, and z companies.

If you talk to most people who use loyalty cards, they usually say it doesn’t influence judgement, but the fact is it does, otherwise these companies wouldn’t offer them in the first place. For those of you who say I don’t really care what information is collected about me when I go shopping, I say fair enough, I feel differently. My privacy is important to me.

Have a break for water and chocolate about half way up and enjoying the view

The view… Absolutely spectacular and a good enough reason to climb Lugnaquilla

All seven of us at the top… picture was kindly taken by a stranger

I did my first climb of the year today with 6 great mates. We had planed to meet at 10am to start the climb, but both cars making the trip were equally late. We started off just after 11 and it took just over four hours to get back to Murphy’s Imall pub. The views were spectacular and we had a mixture of conditions. While it was a nice temperature with ideal temperatures, the clouds were coming in and out and the last 500m of the climb was in the clouds.

The climb was difficult enough for me, partly because it was Lug, partly because of my asthma and partly because it was my first climb of the year. On the way down my ankles and knees got really stiff and what would/should have been a nice walk down turned into a bit of a struggle.

On the way back to Dublin, we stoped off in Blessington for soup and sandwiches which was well needed. As soon as I get the picures from Mark I will put them up in the blog.

Anybody who has read my old blog (spaces.msn.com) will have seen this picture, but for those of you who are new to my blog… I wanted to put up a picture to brighten up the place.

This was taken while white water rafting in a small town just South of Ipoh. Myself and my mate Chris did this one on our backs for the fun of it. There is two steps in the particular rapid (the one you see in the picture is the second step)

It was pretty painful as there was so many rocks, but it was well worth it. We enjoyed it so much we did it twice. We were in fact the first people to ever do this part of the river without a boat which is something to be proud of

I am an iPod user in a rather unusual situation, I have two computers, one I use for work in my office, and a second one which I use for home use / playing games etc.

My music is on my home computer which meant I couldn’t listen to tunes at work without copying all my music onto a second hard disk, installing it on my work computer and then copying it across to the desired location on the main hard disk.

It would also be great to know in the case of a hard disk crash or a complete windows reinstall when you forgot to backup your tracks (guilty) that you have a copy easily accessible on your iPod.

But wait, isn’t your music on your Ipod I hear you ask. The answer is yes, but it is complicated. For some reason Apple have put measures in place to prevent you from accessing the music on your iPod, which include an updated version of iTunes which prevents a drag and drop facility similar to how you put your music on your iPod.

Luckily there are a couple of free tools on the web which allow you to accomplish this task. I used ephPod which I found to be very simple and and to almost accomplish the task. This is probably down to my own stupidity, but my music wasn’t sorted correctly into arist/album/tracks.

I did some more reading on the topic and found SharePod which was very easy to use and within a couple of tries i had my music copied onto my hard disk in the format I like.

I did my NCT (National Car Test) today. It is supposed to be done every 2 years on cars that are 2 years or older. My car being 12 years old, has been threw quite a few tests in its time. Let me just say that I am in favour of the NCT. It means that the cars on our roads have some sort of safety standard and hopefully it saves lives.

Last time I brought the car to be tested, it failed on its number plate… yes you read that correctly. As it transpired, I had Dublin on my number plate onsted of Bhaile Atha Cliath. Thank God it was caught as unchecked I would have been both a major safety risk on the road and also a determent to our national language. I can assure all of you reading here today, that the number plate issue has been sorted for once and for all and I look back on those days with an illegal number plate in shame.

Today, I got to say I was worried that the car wouldn’t get through without major work. I had recently (well my sis) put in a new windscreen which was not cheep. The car had been serviced in December and I had checked the oil, water levels and the tyres. Unfortunately, I am again a major risk to all of you other drivers sitting on the M50… I failed again. This time, my battery had not got an additional battery security hold it in the same place thingy…

Rest assured road users, I will have this sorted in the very near future so that I can once again drive without being a safety risk.