February 2011 Archives

February 26, 2011

Air Boss Rocks!

Image by blacknight via Flickr

As I mentioned before Christmas, I was looking into carry on bags.

In the end I opted for the Red Oxx Air Boss and added the laptop bag as well.

I got to try it out properly this week when I was over in Brussels.

Packing 4 days worth of clothes and various other bits and bobs into the bag wasn’t an issue and the shoulder straps on both the main bag and the laptop one worked well.

As I was only going away for a couple of days I didn’t need to worry too much about wedging a large volume of clothes into a small space, but I can see how you could pack quite a bit in if needed.

Checkin on the way out of Dublin took all of 30 seconds, as I simply had to collect a boarding pass (which I could have done online if I’d really wanted to).

Checkin on the way out of Brussels was painless as well, though they don’t have automatic machines there for Aer Lingus passengers

Arriving back in Dublin’s Terminal 2 today I was able to walk straight off the plane and probably saved myself about 30 minutes. I’d have been faster if I could have found my way to the exit!

Saving so far 30 euro.

EDIT: I’ve been asked by a couple of people where you can buy the Red Oxx bags. The only place I’m aware of is directly from their website.

Apple Keyboards – Which One Is Best?

Image via Wikipedia

My work desktop was dying a painful death and so had to be replaced with something a bit saner. Of course by “saner” I mean a faster Mac, as I’ve been converted to the dark side for quite some time now!

Unfortunately the keyboard that came with my new “toy” is tiny.

I’ve got quite big hands and type reasonably fast, so I’m finding the new slim keyboard quite hard to work with – it’s actually slowing my typing speed down quite a bit, as I have to think more so that I don’t do myself damage while typing.

So what are the options?

I still haven’t worked that out, so I posted over on IWF. Seemingly the bluetooth option is only available for the slim keyboard. If I want a full size keyboard with a number pad I have to go wired, which I really don’t want to do,as it will use up a USB port (plus add another cable to my desk).

Logitech have a keyboard which looks pretty slick, though I’m not sure if it’s what I want.

Are there any other brands out there that do decent full size bluetooth keyboards?

Solving An Irish Voting Problem

Ireland is a wonderful country in many respects.

One of its weaknesses, however, is that its electoral system has some flaws.

If you are not physically in Ireland at the time of an election you cannot vote. So if you are overseas, like so many Irish citizens are, then you have no say in any Irish election.

Other countries have systems and processes that ensure that citizens get to vote.

BallotBox.ie was setup to solve this problem and allows Irish citizens overseas to cast their vote in the 2011 general election.

If you’re Irish and overseas you can cast your vote online before next Tuesday

Fake Enda Kenny

Fine Gael’s online disasters just keep coming.
Earlier this evening people were talking about their latest “wonderful idea“.

But Enda Kenny’s fake Twitter account is much more fun.

I love the profile description:

Kind of sums it up.

Spartacus Gods of the Arena – Cheeky Slogan Tshirt

If you’ve watched Spartacus Blood and Sand or the new series Spartacus Gods of the Arena, you’ll know that John Hannah’s character, Batiatus, favourite expletive is “Jupiter’s Cock”

So here’s the tshirt:

Simple, yet genius!

Duke Nukem Forever Trailer

Duke Nukem was one of the first games I played on a Windows based PC back in the mid 90s.
It was great fun. You got to kill lots of people and there was some vaguely risque bits which weren’t all that risque, but it was fun all the same…

For the 13 years (give or take) there’s been talk of a sequel. Whether it will ever get released or not had become almost a running joke (or so I’m told)

Seemingly it might actually get released this year, so here’s the trailer: