Category Archives: General

Ireland June 06

As I mentioned before, I was in ireland last week at Marty’s wedding and visiting my folks. I now have the photos up – some quite embarrassing but I ahve a rule that if it’s on the camera – it’s going online 🙂

There are a few of note – Peter nearly getting drowned by Bobby, Myself and Gill on our 6th aniversary with the arran islands in the background, Myself and a very nervous Clav – it was a great week

Skype mania

I love Skype and use it for most of my calls. I have a Skype-in number “+44121 288 5321” and I have Skype voicemail too. I recently got my dad set up so we can have free calls.

I was wandering around Sainsburys the other day and was very surprised to see a leaflet allowing you to top-up your Skype-out credit.

Sainsburys Skype-out top up

Then today I was wandering around Asda and saw 2 usb skype phones and a a skype starter package. Skype have one hell of a marketing machine – We can learn alot from the way Skype is growing.

Asda skype starter package

Complete relaxation

I’m over in the motherland for the best part of a week trying to relax and de-stress. We got the ferry from Holyhead on friday afternoon. Stayed at my mum’s on friday night and saturday morning we drove down to Cahir in county Tipperary (It’s a long way) for my mate clav’s wedding which as expected resulted in copious amounts of alcohol. Sunday morning with one hell of a hangover we drove via Limerick and Ennis to my Dad’s place in county Clare. Since then I have been chilling, diving (with Burren Adventures again :)), eating, snorkelling, swimming, fishing, reading and sleeping. It really is nice to get out of the office setting and get away from masses of XSLT and C#. Don’t get me wrong I love my job but sometimes I just need a nice break.

While here I have also set my dad up on skype using the Easy Blue Box which I also have – hello free phone calls :). It was myself and Gill’s 6th anniversary yesterday which we celebrated with a fantastic vegetarian meal in the HolyWell Italian restaurant in Ennistymon, on the way back we stopped at the Cliffs of Moher to watch the sunset over the Arran Islands. I really do love it here and plan on making many more trips this and next year – especially now I have my own snorkelling set (courtesy of the wonderful Lidl).

Pillar with the green-style logo

A text message I received today led to a quite interesting text message conversation –

Stranger: Here today mate?

Me: I am here, where are you?

Stranger: By the pillar with the green-style logo

Me: I still can’t see you, i’m by the fountain

I haven’t had a reply from that one – but it got me chuckling none-the-less.

Update –

It turns out it was Chris Ward who I met last year at @media – The conversation was an attempt to find me (he thought I was there) . I feel like a right prat – sorry dude.

Lake District

Myself, Gill, and Bobby went on a spur of the moment camping trip to the Lake district this weekend. THe start of the weekend did not go well, with the Volvo overheating 4 times to and from work on friday, eventually resulting in the boiling over of all my coolant and a trip to the local Volvo garage on a tow truck. This led to us leaving an hour and a half later than expected and in the wrong car (we had planned to go in the Volvo [one of the main reasons for getting it]). Because we were late, by the time we got to the national-trust site we wanted to stay on —– it was full, As were all the other campsites near Lake Windermere. There was one last site that we had been given directions to – If that was full we were going home. It wasn’t full so we pitched our tent and had a lantern lit bbq for dinner (at 10pm.).

The rest of the weekend went very well, with plenty of relaxing, sun bathing, swimming, eating and generally running around sniffing the bitches asses. Bobby also had fun.

I would definitely recommend the Lake District as a camping destination but booking a site would be advised.