Tag Archives: ireland
March 18, 2013

Life On A Plane?

Dublin-airport-tunnel-between-terminalsOver the next few weeks I'll be "on the road" quite a bit..

Tomorrow morning (early) I fly over to Brussels for the Alliance On Safe Online Pharmacy meeting. I fly back to Dublin in the evening .. and then the following morning I'm off to London for a meeting of the Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services (EWG)

The following week is Brussels again for the EURid Registrar Advisory Board meeting...

I get a few days in Ireland before heading to Beijing for the ICANN meeting..

In April I'll also be speaking at Domaining Spain in Valencia

It's a busy few weeks, but I enjoy it. If I didn't enjoy it I can't imagine doing it!

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March 16, 2013

It’s Paddy NOT Patty

This weekend is a long weekend here in Ireland. It's our national holiday - St Patrick's Day.

Now I could ramble on about the history or the culture, but let's face it that's not what I'm interested in writing about.

I'll keep it very very simple.

It's St. Patrick. Patrick or Padraig. So it's either St. Patrick's Day or Paddy's Day. Either option works.

It is not and has never been "Patty" or "St Patty". ("Patty" is actually acceptable as an abbreviation of Patricia, but the patron saint of Ireland is a man, so unless you want to go back in time and give him a sex change or try to do it posthumously ... .. )

I've no idea why so many Americans can't get this right.

Go read the wikipedia entry.

Do you see any reference to "Patty"? Didn't think so.

Someone else even went to the trouble of setting up a website to explain this all in plain and simple terms.

Unfortunately a lot of big brands still haven't got the message - I'm looking at you Disney / Pixar:

pixar-fail

 

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March 10, 2013

Irish Times New Site Is A Bandwidth Hog

The Irish Times has been trying to reinvent itself over the last year or so.

Both the online and offline editions of the newspaper have been given design overhauls, but the online version might need a few more tweaks.

Running it via a couple of tools that check how quickly it loads the results are a bit .. well see for yourself below ..

GTMetrix gives it a score of C and D. The frontpage is very very big and takes a long time to load:

gtmetrix-results-irish-timesRunning it through Pingdom's full page test gives similar results:

pingdom-test-results-irish-times

James has been posting a bit about speeding up websites over on his new blog, which is sort of why I was interested in this, though I've always been aware of how quickly a page will load for people on slower connections.

But even if you don't get into crazy technical analysis of a website's size in bits, bytes etc., the frontpage of the Irish Times website is currently too big to fit on  floppy disk!

By comparison Pinterest, which is 100% image driven, is only 853kB (if you're not logged in)

Yahoo! Ireland is under 400kB

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Written by in design 3 Comments
January 9, 2013

Bypassing Delivery Restrictions With Parcel Motel

parcel motel logo

parcel motel logoOne of the frustrations when you're shopping online from Ireland some of the time is delivery. Either the costs are sky high, or the vendors simply won't ship to Ireland.

Parcel Motel takes away some of that pain, as they can give you a legitimate delivery address in Belfast, which usually qualifies for UK priced shipping, which is often free.

Last week was the first time using the service and my first package arrived early this morning.

Picking up the package was easy. The lockers are accessible 24/7 and you simply key in your phone number and the pin they've sent you by email and SMS. Once you've done that a door "magically" opens and you pick up your delivery.

It's also very reasonably priced, with a standard package costing €3.50. They'll charge you more for if the package is oversized or weighs more than 10kg, but it still works out to be cheaper and more convenient than either not being able to buy the item or having to pay some of the crazy delivery fees that some sites charge.

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Written by in amazon, ebay, ecommerce 3 Comments
December 18, 2012

Air France Finally Find My Bag

flyingblue-platinumWhat a saga!

I checked my bag in on Tuesday morning in Dublin and expected to pick it up later that day when I arrived in JFK.

Of course there was no sign of it .. and to make matters worse Air France didn't know where it was either.

I was in NYC for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and then I headed off to DC.

Still no bag.

The Air France online baggage tracking system didn't have any trace of my bag either ..

In the end they managed to locate my bag on Saturday and got it to me on Sunday morning.. I was leaving DC on Monday afternoon..

So of course I had to buy clothes, toiletries etc., while I was in New York and DC.. there's only so long you can wear one set of clothes .. and being able to shave, brush your teeth etc., is kind of key to maintaining a basic level of personal hygiene.

So now that I'm back in Ireland I'll have to followup with Air France to see about getting reimbursed for my out of pocket expenses. I've no idea how much hassle is going to be involved with this .. but judging by my dealings with them over the last week or so it's going to be quite messy.

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Written by in rant, travel 0 Comments
December 7, 2012

Bank Charges Bite

AIB bank charges for 1 quarter on my personal account

I never go into my local bank branch.

I only call the bank when there's a serious issue.

Most of my interactions with the bank (for my personal account) are via their online banking.

Now it seems I'm being penalised for using the bank ..

This sucks

AIB bank charges for 1 quarter on my personal account

So are there ANY banks in Ireland that don't charge €200 / year for doing very little? (It's not as if they can't "play with" my money or make money from me .. )

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October 28, 2012

Slightly Convoluted Travel

In a couple of weeks time I'll be heading to Belgrade (Serbia) for the Webfest closing ceremony. I'm also scheduled to chair the Eurid Registrar Advisory Board meeting in Brussels a few days later..

Originally I had planned to go to Belgrade, come back to Ireland for a day or so then head back out.

That was rather silly, as I'd end up either spending 24 hours in Ireland and racking up both petrol and hotel expenses etc., or just hotel expenses.

The solution is a bit convoluted, but hopefully will work.

So ..

Dublin - Paris - Belgrade (Air France)

then

Belgrade - Brussels (JAT)

Train from Brussels to Paris CDG airport. (TGV)

Paris CDG to Dublin (Air France Cityjet)

The only ticket I need to book is the one for the TGV from Brussels.. I also need to sort out the hotel in Belgrade, but I'm not overly worried about either.

This should be fun!

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Written by in travel 2 Comments
August 27, 2012

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag – Blacknight To Open Data Centre In Carlow

We've finally let the proverbial "cat" out of the "bag" ..

We (Blacknight) are building a data centre in Carlow - hopefully it'll be open early in 2013.

Full details here.

 

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July 4, 2012

Ulster Bank Fiasco And Irish Humour

Ulster Bank, which is one of the main banks in Ireland, has had a major technical issue which has led to thousands of its customers being unable to access their money, pay bills, get their wages etc., etc.

It's yet another example of why people shouldn't trust banks - assuming that there's anyone out there that still does ..

But we're Irish, so we somehow manage to find a funny side to even the most annoying situations:

The guys over at Hairy Baby came up with that rather amusing graphic. A rough translation is: "Show me my money"

And by sheer coincidence I came across a gadget for recycling credit cards :)

 

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Written by in humour 3 Comments
July 2, 2012

Dominos Ireland Misleading Customers?

Dominos Ireland advertise Paypal payments on their homepage

I don't know what Dominos Ireland are up to with respect to their site. It's quite confusing and misleading.

If you go to the Irish site and login you get the below front page which clearly says that Paypal is available as a payment option. It's been like that for a couple of months:

Dominos Ireland advertise Paypal payments on their homepage

Dominos Ireland advertise Paypal payments on their homepage

But if you try to pay via Paypal you simply can't:

Dominos Ireland only takes cash or credit / debit cards - no Paypal

Dominos Ireland only takes cash or credit / debit cards - no Paypal

No explanation as to why they're advertising it and not actually taking it.

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Written by in rant 5 Comments
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