Category: Life

Sunday, February 22, 2004

I was in the farmers’ market in Meeting House Square when all the sirens started hollering, and police cars and fire engines came down through Temple Bar.

‘Weird, I wonder what’s happened’, was the most interested I could get. Then we crossed the Liffey at the Millennium Bridge and I heard a grey-haired Guard say there’d been a ‘bad crash’ down below by the Clarence.

Now we know how bad it was – and we’re all shivering a little tonight in Hurdleford Town and it’s not just the cold crisp air.

Thursday, February 19, 2004

An article in today’s Indo describes the problems facing Bewley’s: ‘Bewley’s, which also announced the closure of a northside bakery, said there was a question over the future of the iconoclastic caf?s as a result of Luas disruption, falling numbers of passers-by and steep increases in rates, rent and insurance’ (my emphasis).

Wow. And I thought the cafes were traditional and conservative. Instead it turns out they (to quote the American Heritage dictionary) ‘attack and seek to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions’. I suppose the flock wallpaper should have tipped me off.

Clearly the journalist meant the exact opposite of what he said, a mistake made worse when the quote two paragraphs down uses the word ‘icon’ more or less correctly. But where were the sub-editors? Broadsheet or tabloid size, that’s pretty bad.

It’s not too long ago that the Irish Times ran a letter lamenting the amount of violence on our streets that included the horrific description of someone being ‘kicked into a comma’. Copies of ‘Eats Shoots & Leaves’ for both sets of subs?

Monday, February 16, 2004

I’m trying to give up coffee again. But she won’t let me go.

First it’s the routine thing. I’m into work, just checked my mail, time for a nice cup of coffee. It’s how I (used to) mark my morning. So I’ve dodged that one by bringing tea bags and brewing up as soon as I get here.

Then there’s the withdrawal headaches. I normally only drink one cup a day, but if I haven’t had it by lunchtime my head starts to ache. Fortunately, that’s only for the first day or two, so I’m past that now. Not exactly Trainspotting as a cold turkey experience, but it underlines how much caffeine gets to you.

Then there’s the culture thing. I love sitting in cafes, and they’re not called that for nothing. I know there are plenty of other things I could be drinking, but none seem quite right.

Finally it’s the taste. Except for a few exceptions, decaff coffee tastes terrible, and few enough places in Dublin have more than a jar of instant tucked away for visiting Americans.

So why am I even bothering? When I’m not drinking leaded coffee I sleep better, my joints stop being sore and I’m less agitated. I was in the Motor Tax Office on Friday after a couple of great coffees, and I was a wreck, dropping cheques, photographs, forms and stuff all over the place, my heart racing.

Coffee is great for loads of people, and causes them no real problems. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m one of them. I’ll try being off it for a week and let you know how I get on.

But it just tastes so good.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

First Marathon became Snickers, and now this? Creme eggs becoming less creamy?

In the halcyon days of the mid 1980s, when my only concern was getting home from school in time to watch Grange Hill, the passing of the seasons was measured by the arrival of the foil wrapped egg shaped delights from cadburys.

But I just had my first creme egg of the year, and the ‘creme’ was more like foam – it didn’t ooze, drip or pour and if you bit the pointy end of the egg and turned it upside down, nothing would happen. You just can’t suck the stuff properly any more.

Did I get a bad egg, or has there been a recipe change?

Monday, February 02, 2004

Have to say there’s something brilliant about this duvet cover.  You get one with the positions reversed, too, for couples who sleep on the other side.

Same sex variants are also available, but we could also do with a set with dogs or cats curled up at the foot of the bed. Or in the case of the cat in our household, climbing over our heads, knocking things off nearby shelves and generally making a nuisance of himself until we get up and feed him.

(They’re for sale, if you fancy one.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the link)

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I’m struck down with a cold, blurggh. That’ll teach me to go to the Botanical Gardens in the middle of January. Until normal service is resumed, here’s an article I wrote a while ago, about a similar predicament:

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

In the UK, broadsheets are now tabloid, and I’m not just referring to their editorial policies.

Late last year, first The Independent and then quickly The Times started producing issues of their papers on tabloid-sized paper, specifically aimed at commuters struggling to turn broadsheet pages on a crowded train.

I got the chance to check out a copy of the Independent while I was in England over Christmas, and I think it’s great – much more manageable even if you’re not hemmed in on the 7.45 to King’s Cross.

There’s obviously a design overhead in laying out two versions of the same paper, and the smaller size performs so much better from a usability perspective, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the broadsheet version was rapidly phased out.

Which leaves us with only one question – what do we use instead as a derogatory term since we can’t just slag something off as being ‘tabloid’ any more.

– Guardian coverage of the Independent’s switch

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

So I’m converting my old tapes to digital format in preparation for the arrival of my iPod (which is somewhere between LA and here, most likely in the corner of sorting office under a pile of other forgotten Christmas presents).

I’ve got a tape player downstairs, but for some reason the tapes were lurking upstairs in a dusty box. I think it was an attempt to forget the wayward music tastes I enjoyed in secondary school.

And it’s great to be reunited with albums that meant so much to me as a 17 year old. Steeltown by Big Country is still stirring stuff, and Outlandos D’Amour by The Police has some cracking tunes, but some inexcusable fillers too (’Be my girl – Sally’: a love song to an inflatable doll, I kid you not).

There’s also something satisfying about the process. (From the tape deck through an amp into the Mac, digitised in open source program Audacity, and converted from .aiff to AAC in iTunes.) Seeing songs as wave forms is probably as close to synesthesia as I’ll get, and the repetitive work is a rewarding combination of science fiction and manual labour.

There are plenty of tapes to get through (but I think I’ll pass on the Chris de Burgh ones), so I’ll just keep pulling the odd tape out of the box whenever I’m working on the computer. Next up, Suzanne Vega.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

So I’m fascinated with medieval saints, enjoy reading Latin and Old Irish, and should probably have been born around 1900.



But there’s another part of me that’s a complete geek, and loves the latest gadgets and gizmos. And this is the part that’s having fun with my new camera phone.

The built-in radio is a simple but brilliant feature that turns my long walk to work into a much more pleasant experience, as I drift along Mary St in my own world of classical music.

The camera seems like a useless feature, but I’ve started using it to capture tiny moments that ordinarily I’d remark on to myself, and then promptly forget. Like the mad colours of the veggies on the Moore St market (shown), or a nice sunset over the Four Courts.

Looking back through the spontaneous pics, Dublin looks different and better than the pessimistic view I tend to have of it now. How’s that for a feature – ‘this phone makes you like your surroundings more’.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Last night I rode my bike through the Phoenix Park, on my way to Blanchardstown.

On the way up, at about 5pm, the light was fading, and a layer of mist was gathering on the grass. With the moon rising behind me, it was a lovely scene.

On the way back, at around 6:30, it was dark and very foggy. On the bike track along Chesterfield Rd, you couldn’t see the tarmac beneath your wheels, and the fog prevented you seeing the way ahead. The lights from cars coming the other way made things worse, creating a bright white duvet to ride into.

With my front light illuminating nothing but the fog, I just kept the bike straight and picked my way along. It was great. Across the road I could just make out the ghostly lights of cyclists on the other track. Even the tearoom close to the Parkgate St entrance was fogbound and scarcely visible.

As soon as I was out of the Park, the fog disappeared, and you’d never have known there was such adventure to be had.