Archive for July, 2008
It’s true, you can’t make a silk purse
Posted by: | Commentsout of pigs’ ears, but you can flog them as doggie treats.
These are not just pigs’ ears, these are jumbo pigs’ ears. Can you hear the dulcet tones of Dearbhla Kirwan flogging these in her best M&S voice (it is her that does the voiceover for those ads isn’t it?)
On sale in your local Super Valu. Apparantly, they aren’t recommended for dogs though.
Randy Pausch
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Randy Pausch died on Friday at 47 from Pancreatic Cancer. Back in April, I wrote that his book was coming out and that I was looking forward to reading it. Well, it was a wonderful read. If you’ve watched the Last Lecture and haven’t read the book, you’re missing out on so much.
One particular piece I bookmarked was in the chapter called “The park is open until 8 p.m.”. In it, Randy recalls his “medical odyssey” which began in the summer of 2006 when he felt some pain in his upper abdomen. In one particular trip to the doctor after the cancer diagnosis, he and his wife, Jai, flew to Houston. Before attending the appointment they went to a water park and had some fun. “I rode the speed slide, grinning all the way down”, he wrote.
Next day, they attended the doctor and unfortunately the news was pretty bad. Latest test results revealed that previous treatments had not stopped the progress of the cancer. The doctor told them that he probably had “three to six months of good health”.
At the end of the meeting, the doctor hugged Jai and shook my hand, and Jai and I walked out together, into our new reality.
Leaving the doctor’s office, I thought about what I’d said to Jai in the water park in the afterglow of the speed slide. “Even if the scan results are bad tomorrow,” I had told her, “I just want you to know that it feels great to be alive, and to be here today, alive with you. Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know how much I’m enjoying it.”
I thought about that, and about Jai’s smile.
I knew then. That’s the way the rest of my life would need to be lived.
Randy Pausch. October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008.
Photo meme
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So I was listening to Darragh on Newstalk last night and it got me thinking about memes. I’ve been blogging away for quite a while now, and secretly thinking to myself I’d one day get someone tagging me with one. I know some people absolutely hate them, but at least you know you’re part of something and people think enough of you to want to take part. So, feeling a little bit like the kid who no one likes because he smells bad or what not, I started looking to see if there was a meme I could start myself – and I found one that I really like so I’m going to kick it off.
It’s a picture chain. I start off with the above photograph and email this photo to someone else.
That person has to print it out in 6×4 format (all the photo kiosks print to that size) and then take a shot of the photograph with something in their world.
They then pass that photo on to someone else who gets it printed and takes a photo and so on.
Take a look at this website and it all becomes clear. It’s recommended to start with something not too complicated to begin with – so this photo was taken a short while ago out the back. The blue of the sky will stand out in the next photograph.
I have to think of someone to send this photo to. There’s really only one person I’d like to send it to. Unfortunately, she doesn’t like memes, but I might just annoy her with it anyway. I’ll create a special page to show the chain of photos as it progresses.
Oh, and don’t start hitting me with memes now that I’ve said I felt left out – I don’t want any sympathy memes thanks :-)
This weeks header image on le craic
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The photograph used in this week’s header image is really wonderful. It was taken in May this year by Zadok the Priest in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin. It looks so idyllic and dreamlike. It’s so well captured it makes me want to go sit under a tree somewhere by a lake for the afternoon – I can feel Glendalough calling me!
Photo owned by Zadok the Priest and used under the terms of a CC license.
Denis O’Brien on cover of Forbes
Posted by: | CommentsSaw this in the paper today
It’s Denis O’Brien, the man who never made good on his Late Late Show interview statement saying he would pay CGT on his €250 million payout on the sale of Esat. That’s all water under the bridge now and there’s no denying he knows how to make the green stuff.
In the Forbes article, O’Brien is quoted as saying the charge by Gavin O’Reilly that he has some sort of vendetta against Indepedent News Media’s coverage of him is “a load of shite”.
Forbes very helpfully insert (Irish Slang) after this quote, for the benefit of an American audience. Could the readers of Forbes not have deduced it was a variant of shit and not a reference to any of the following (per wikipedia).
A Shi’ite, a person who practices the Shia Islam faith
The shite, the principal character in a Japanese Noh play
Shite, the person who performs the technique in aikido
Is shite uniquely Irish though?
