Archive for February, 2008
Eur 50 million distraction?
In an interesting move today, the government announced that it was to allocate Eur 50 million towards helping start-up companies in the Institute of Technology sector. Good news for those companies. However, the cynical mindset would be wise to suggest that this is no coincidence given last week's release of the Port report on the re-designation of WIT to a university for the Southeast. One of the well-known arguments for a university is that it will attract additional investment into the region and help start-up businesses to grow. There is a growing opinion that failing to re-designate a [...]
Go Dustin!
Dustin is off to the Eurovision song contest to represent Ireland. This may very well be the single best moment in our Eurovision history; finally a bit of humour. I have to say that the booing from the audience when the result was announced was shameful. An entry is an entry, there are far more important things in life to get upset about. Good luck Dustin, knock 'em dead!
Port identifies Star Board
Yesterday came the long awaited publication of the Dr. Port report with respect to WIT's request for re-designation to university status for the Southeast region of Ireland. You can download the report here. My first reading of the report was somewhat downhearted as I eagerly desired to see passages of highly supportive text and great positive slant. It was only when I read the report for the second time that I realised that this indeed was a hugely supportive thesis, that diminished many of the strong arguments that WIT could have faced in their campaign to be re-designated.Many of the [...]
Caution! Fruit may contain bloody violence
Bloody Orange Originally uploaded by jbwan I've seen a blood orange before but I've never seen an orange that bleeds? This was the disturbing image that I was presented with over lunch today. What really got me was that this was some form of hybrid or so it would seem. Part of it was orange but the majority was deep, blood red and it oozed when I cut the surface with a knife. Anyone with an explanation, please leave a comment. This has me intrigued. Apologies for the fuzzy phone cam image.
No Nonsense?
Earlier this week I was very happy to hear that Ryanair were teaming up with FBD insurance to offer "low-cost" car insurance to the Irish market. Both on the media press releases and on the website Ryanair proudly say:Straight-forward, low cost car insuranceWelcome to Ireland’s new low cost, value for money car insurance. Right now, on this website, you can avail of cheaper car insurance and get on the road for less!At No Nonsense we ensure you have all the necessary legal cover to get you on the road and at the lowest cost possible. Then you can choose from a list of optional add-ons and [...]
What does Waterford University mean to me?
I have lived and worked in Waterford for most of my life, I dearly love my city and county. I was educated through 2 degrees at WIT and each day that goes by, I meet with some brilliant person that has somehow been attracted to Waterford by WIT. For me the upgrade of WIT to university status is a no-brainer. The Southeast of the country is the largest area in the entire of Ireland that is not served by a university and economically, it shows. There has been much talk over the years about Waterford needing to develop in terms of retail, road network, and other such but for me the one burning [...]
Review of My T-Shock
My T-Shock ""it doesn't tell the time but if it did tell the time then it wouldn't have been the right time, and the time it told wasn't what it meant to tell, and for that it was sorry that it told the right time even though it didn't think that it told time"" In 1997 I was given a present of a T-Shock, at first I was really happy with my T-Shock but as time went on I discovered that it was less and less pleasing. Initially I thought my T-Shock made me look good and that it made the people around me happy but then I discovered that this was down to other external factors such as an [...]
Bertie’s Constitution
Poor Bertie; he's gone to the high court to challenge the constitutionality of the Mahon tribunal's usage of his Dail statements. You've got to hand it to the man, he always makes it sound like he's protecting the country even when he's clearly got his own interests at heart. Of course he insists that he's undergoing possible personal expense to protect the constitution. I vote we change the constitution to allow this investigation and let the tribunal find out exactly what Bertie is trying to hide. Who's with me?
WebKit on your mobile
TrollTech have updated their mobile Qt framework to include the WebKit browser. This is fantastic news for everyone who wants the full range of luxury web 2.0 services running on their handsets. Bad news for Nokia however who are currently interested in buying TrollTech as this will surely push their price up. The announcement regarding WebKit was made at 3GSM this week. source: The Register
Hold onto your hats, we’re going on ultra-Safari!
Just read this over on Tom Raftery's blog, the latest version of Safari is starting to speed up, quite significantly, up to 250% quicker in fact. Wow! source: Computer World
