Hello world, happy Friday to you. Haven’t done one of these in a while and feel I should try and get back some consistency with my blogging – at least for today anyway. One day at a time…

First off, why did no one tell me about these?

Creme Egg – in bar format. Ommmm nommm. Where have they been hiding? Only for the fact that I am a highly trained ninja chocolate bar spotter,  this perfect little lump of sugar would have go unnoticed. Try one as soon as you can – they’re Wonkalicious.

And speaking of sugar. In a conversation about the weather with someone yesterday, I made the observation that an Garda Siochana are seen inside the shopping centre only when it’s raining. She had noticed this too and told me about something her mother used to say when people complained about getting wet in the rain. Her classic line was “Are you a sugar lump or something, a bit of rain never harmed anyone”. Wise lady!

Watched Failte Towers, RTE’s latest celeb/reality tv programme last night to see what all the fuss was about, and because there was a chance of spotting Darragh Doyle, who is rapidly approaching celebrity status himself at this stage!

Jennifer Maguire (yes, the Apprentice Jennifer Maguire) is on the show doing her bit for charity – and a lovely lady she is too. She was a chamber maid in this episode. She got on with the job and not a bother on her. Looking at the state of the rooms though, there are a lot of filthy pigs still in Ireland. What sort of inconsiderate person pukes in the bathroom of a hotel, and leaves it for someone else to clean up? Your vomit – you clean it. Your shite on the bedsheets, you take the sheets and get them cleaned yourself. There’s no excuse for it.

A celebrity called Liz O’Kane got kicked off the show and from what I saw of her, she’s no loss – a thoroughly obnoxious character in my opinion who did her charity no favours at all with her behaviour. She should have checked her ego at the door and thought more about why she was there in the first place.

It continues on Saturday night when another eviction takes place. I’ll be voting for Jennifer Maguire because a) I like the charity she is raising money for (the Lara Lynn Foundation) and b) she’s hot.

Woo hoo, RTE are providing 1,500 hours of coverage of the Olympic Games. Sum total of my viewing will be a bit of the opening ceremony tonight (maybe), some of the diving, and the running (there’s a Wicklow Town girl flying the flag over there) – apart from that, I’ll avoid it like the plague.

Cromulent. Without looking it up, did you know what it means. I didn’t, but the word has been stuck in my head for a couple of days now since I read Erin McKean’s article in the Boston Globe. She makes the case for using words as you wish and not worrying about the word police. Can’t think of any makey uppey words I use at the moment (apart from makey and uppey) to show I highfively agree with her. No doubt I’ll think of some later when this is published. Oh, zizibot – that’s one I use.

Any totally made up words you use. Oh, consmackulations – stolen from Graham Linehan – love that word. Coinkidink – instead of coincidence – that’s more of a play on words though.

Ha ha, someone put a ridiculously expensive application on the App Store for the iPhone. 9 people bought it at $999.99 before Apple took it down. It does absolutely nothing useful. I’d never put totally useless applications on my iPhone even if they were free.  I most definitely don’t have the Star Wars Light Saber or Bubbles. Nope, definitely not. Don’t understand the appeal of either of them at all, at all

A very quick Friday Eyedrops this week – time is not on my side this Thursday…

I have mentioned before that I like books and also magazines. One magazine I tried for the first time this week was The New Yorker. All I can say is best €6.71 I spent all week. I’ve ordered a subscription too – now I now how Walter Kiam felt when he was “so impressed” that he “bought the company”.

This one article in particular I found fascinating and is quite simply a must read. It’s all about itching, brains and bodies. If you’re working right now, don’t attempt to read this right away, it deserves your full attention.  Print it out and read it tonight.

If you’re like me, you will feel itchy at some point during this and be reminded again of the mystery of our lives.

I’m sure lots of you have already discovered the New Yorker but I’m glad I’ve taken up the habit now!

Second magazine I bought this week was Monocle. It was on the shelf below the New Yorker and it stood out on the shelf + it had a special Design supplement which interested me. The tagline for the magazine is “A briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design”. Worth a read too. Had to laugh when I saw the reader survey on the back page. One of the questions was the household income. First box to tick was “Up to £100k” – last box to tick was “More than £7m”.  Ever read a magazine and feel like you shouldn’t be reading it. Seeing that survey, I did!

The latest Road Safety Authority of Ireland campaign was in the news this week. It’s called “He drives, she dies”. Research shows that two thirds of women who died in car crashes were passengers in cars driven by men.

This is another in a long line of ads targetted at young men and their bad driving habits. I can’t help getting the feeling that this sort of campaign is like telling someone they are “no good” until they start to believe it. They then act accordingly because everyone expects it of them anyway.

Maybe speed regulators on cars for young drivers would be a more sensible and life saving solution?

This video isn’t on Youtube so you’ll have to follow this link to watch. It’s a series of “15 x 20 second Idents for Russian channel ‘Bibigon’”. Lots of fun facts that you might not have known, including a very interesting one about pigs!

Yesterday I decided to keep a food diary. I want to try and get an idea why I’m getting so tired. It’s not every day but maybe 2 or 3 times a week. Sometimes by the end of the day I am literally hardly able to walk.

I thought I might use my mobile’s note feature. I created the first diary entry but it was too awkward. Then I thought maybe my internet tablet. No good – battery time isn’t great. Create a document on the PC – maybe, but others use the same machine so it was a no to that.

Of course, the last thing I thought of was pen and paper which was exactly what I ended up using.

I couldn’t just use any old bit of paper though. I headed on over to pocketmod.com which allows you to create little disposable notebooks. Every pocketmod you create has customised pages – to do lists, food diary, contacts and shopping lists. It’s been updated since I last visited it and now allows you to include pages from your favourite website. The pocketmod is printed on a single sheet of A4 paper which is then folded to create a booklet. It’s a little tricky getting the folding right the first time but the video showing how it’s done helps.

Just passing it along in case you hadn’t heard of it.

Twitter week. I joined twitter this week. It’s been good so far and very useful. It has exceeded my expectations even though it is frightfully slow. I imagine there is a point at which it could become a distraction though.

For me it makes me feel connected. My typical day starts at 7.25 when I leave the house to catch the bus. From that point on until 12 or 1 in the afternoon, I might not have any interaction with another soul beyond various exchanged hellos or good mornings.

I miss the camraderie of the office working environment which I spent many years in. There was always someone to share your news and thoughts with. Always someone to discuss something from the previous nights tv. Innane chatter really but that’s the stuff of life isn’t it? I do have someone that works with me on a few afternoons a week so it’s not all bad. Still, 4 or 5 hours until the afternoon is a long time to spend on your own if it’s not busy.

Anyway, if you want to join my virtual office and keep me sane, do feel free to follow me I’d be glad of the company.

Ok, so this is a bit like all those kit kat ads, but the animation is gorgeous and you know I only bring you quality videos on a Friday don’t you?

I twittered about buying a book on Bookhabit this week. The book I bought was the Secret of Rapid Learning. The title drew me like a moth to a flame, so I put down my hard earned $2.50 and downloaded it.

I’ve read maybe a third and will probably write a summary post about it later. The site is worth a visit in the meantime.

What is Bookhabit all about. Well, I think they say it themselves very well.

Bookhabit gives discovered and undiscovered writers a conduit to the reading world, and gives readers a place to explore.

Readers can look for books about niche or specialist subjects that a mainstream publisher couldn’t promote profitably.

As if I don’t read enough already, I’m a subscriber to Business Book Summaries. I find them very handy to get the salient points of a book without having to invest in it or read it! They have a special offer right now. A years subscription for $39.95 – that’s a bargain as you can download all the previous summaries as well.

It must be 10 years ago that I went and had my fortune told. I just wanted to satisfy my belief that fortune telling is all a load of nonsense. And so it was one Bank Holiday weekend that I stepped up into Madam Boswell’s totally ordinary looking caravan to see what was in store for me. I was disappointed that there was no crystal ball. In fact, there was nothing to add to the sense of occasion I believed should accompany a visit to a fortune teller. To try and recall the details of what she told me ten years later is a task and a half for a man who will, quite often, make up a lunch and then leave the house sans sandwich.

What I can tell you is two specific things she told me from reading my palm. She said I worked in computers and that I had an accident. She was right on both counts. There were some vague references to dead relatives and other non specifics as well. When I left the caravan I thought “wow, she was amazing – so accurate”. It didn’t take me long to figure out that what she had told me was stuff that could apply to anyone. Telling me I worked in computers could easily have applied to a lot of guys my age at the time. Everyone has had an accident at some point. It might not have been serious, but just think for a second and I’ll bet you come up with something, even it was stubbing your toe this morning!

So why on earth am I recalling this “brush with the paranormal”. Well would you believe, it has a little something to do with a book I’m reading called Quirkology. Yep, I’m back to that book again, it’s becoming a bit of a hoary old chestnut at this stage.

There’s a bit in the book about personality tests and an experiment which shows that fortune telling and astrology just pick out general, non-specific pieces of information that could apply to anyone. Rather than make this post too long, I’ve put the personality test results on a separate page. When you read it, just imagine you did the test, had the results analysed and were presented with this description. How well does it describe you? Click here for the description of your personality.

This is lovely and floaty and wonderful.

A TV programme that I like very much is Dragon’s Den. If you’ve not seen it, the premise is very simple. Entrepreneurs pitch their business idea to a panel of multi-millionaire business people. If the dragons like the idea, the entrepreneur gets a nice wad of cash to take their business to the next level. It has had some really great ideas down through the years, and even more crazy ones.

One success story from the last series (or maybe the one before, I’m not sure) was Levi Roots who started off his pitch to the dragons by singing a song “Reggae Reggae sauce”. They liked the idea of his home made recipe for barbeque sauce and gave him an investment £50,000 for 40% of his company.

The product has gone on to sell very successfully in the big supermarkets in the UK and now Levi has a book out. It has 80 simple recipes with a Caribbean flavour. Selling well on Amazon at the moment and available locally in Eason.

A really great success story.

Isn’t it marvellous what computers can do? This is what I hear from customers when they watch me do some Photoshop related task that is second nature to me. It usually passes over my head but sometimes I say back “Well, it’s not the computer that does it – it’s the person in the driving seat”. “Ah yeah, well still though the computer is amazing” is sometimes the reply.

That’s the problem with allowing people look over your shoulder while you work on something. I try not to let that happen, precisely for the reason that when someone sees me do it and I make it look easy, they see no value in the work I’ve done.

It’s a bit like the golfer Gary Player who managed to to get himself out of a really tricky sand trap. Not only did he excute the perfect shot out of the sand trap, he landed the ball about half a metre from the hole.

Someone in the crowd heckled him after the shot saying, “Hey Gary, that was a really lucky shot.”

Gary stopped and turned to the heckler and said : “I guess you’re right. But you know, it’s a funny thing. The more I practice the better I become, and the better I become, the luckier I get.”

Walking down to the polling station this evening along a route known locally as the mass path, the smell of Elderflower was on the wind and it’s a smell that I really like. It reminds me of the long summer holidays as a child and the elderflower cordial we drank as refreshment. I also recall that elderflower steeped in water and then put in the fridge made a good sunburn soother.

If you’ve never tasted an Elderflower drink before, you really should give it a try – very refreshing. Some recipes here and tons more if you do a search on your favourite search engine.

Popbitch has a snippet about Brian McFadden’s foray into the world of radio down under. Here’s what they have to say :

“Ex-Westlifer Brian McFadden is now living in Sydney. He recently guest co-hosted a big breakfast radio show. It was reported that he was 30 minutes late, had three instances of ‘dead air’ in an hour and played the same song twice in 30 mins.”

The same song twice in 30 minutes – not a problem Brian, you’d fit right in on 98fm.

New series of Top Gear is “coming soon” – no one seems to know when though. Love this promo for it.

Bonus video (not embedded), office worker totally freaks out.

Picked up a magazine the other morning because it stood out on the shelf. Hadn’t a clue what it was, but I like the graphic on the front. It’s called Adbusters and their website is here.

It’s very different (it has no advertising at all) – and doesn’t have the formal structure of a magazine. It’s full of eye catching graphics, photographs and articles. One of the articles is entitled East Meets West and features the artwork of a Chinese Born artist called Yang Liu. She was raised in Germany and her art depicts the cultural differences between East and West.

Here’s an example entitled “View of Self” – blue is West, Red is East. There are lots more here – all very interesting and thought provoking. Which one catches your eye?

I already made a mention of a book I’m reading at the moment called Quirkology. It’s fascinating and I’m taking my time reading it because it’s one of those books I don’t want to get to the end of. Anyway, many of you will have heard about a very famous psychology experiment done in the 1960’s by Stanley Milgram. It was designed to test how much pain people would inflict on others when directed to do so by an authority figure (in this case a man in a white coat). Follow the link above if you want to read more. 60% of participants were prepared to deliver a potentially fatal shock to another human being just because the authority figure said so. Even though I’ve read about this experiment many times, I didn’t know about another similar experiment. Instead of actors playing the part of people getting electric shocks, they used live puppies. Incredibly, 50% of men delivered the maximum shock to the puppies versus 100% of women. This either shows that women are innately submissive or they really just don’t like dogs because they remind them of men, ergo women hate men? Thoughts on a postcard

Youtube video time. Superb promo for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. The sheet music turns into a roller coaster. Bet you’ll watch this one twice at least.

An inspirational story. I had read this before and dug the book out last night as, for some reason, it came to my mind when I was doing the Apprentice review post. There are days when I feel like what I do doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, so this is a bit of a pick me up.

In the pioneering days of space research, John Kennedy was visiting NASA at Cape Canaveral. He had met many great scientists and researchers. He had met the men whose great ambition was to conquer space and walk on the surface of the moon. He had met administrators, accountants and many others whose contribution to the project was immense. Men and women who had a sense of destiny, purpose and pride.

Walking through the corridors on his way back to his limousine, he came across a stooped, grey-haired black man with a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. It seemed to be quite a redundant question, but the president asked him politely, “And what do you do here at the Cape?”

Straightening his back, the cleaner looked square at the President, and with a strong sense of pride and dignity in his voice replied, “Sir, I’m doing the same as everyone else, I’m working here to put a man on the moon. That’s exactly what I’m doing here.”

If you are in the vicinity of Leopardstown on Sunday it might be worthwhile to drop by the Green Energy Fair. As well as having lots of ideas for home owners to reduce their carbon footprint, all your favourite green party people will be there – John Gormley, Eamon Ryan, Deirdre de Burca and Ciaran Cuffe. There’s foodie things there as well so it’s not just all about houses. I might pop along myself. It’s on Sunday from 11 to 6.

US postage stamp photo by mwboeckann and used under a creative commons license.

Via Frugal Ireland – €2 off Ben and Jerry’s Baked Alaska. Deb points out that it’s €3.24 in Te$co at the moment. Voucher valid until December. I’m stocking up – great deal…

It’s always good to learn something new every day. Yesterday I learned that Fota Wildlife Park in Cork is one of the world’s leading breeders of this magnificent animal. The latest additions to the cheetah family in Fota were revealed on Wednesday. So cute.

A little experiment that I found interesting in a book I’m reading at the moment called Quirkology. Using the index finger of your dominant hand, write the capital letter Q on your forehead. Did the tail of the Q you wrote go towards your left eye or your right eye?

Write your result in the comments. I’ll reveal what it means later.

Excited? I am For the record, I wrote the Q and the tail went towards my right eye.

Well done to Grannymar on winning the Blog post of the month award. A very touching post. Grannymar definitely walks the talk about encouraging other bloggers too so it was well deserved. Congrats.

Oh, and check out the website that Grannymar has inspired – toyboywarehouse.com

Jessie Buckley FTW in I’d Do Anything on Saturday. Yes, I do watch the programme and watched last years Joseph as well. Sad, I know. I’m hoping to go to London and see the show next year and hopefully she will be in it. Might take in the Lord of the Rings musical too, if it’s still on then.

Finally, a bicycle in the shape of a vagina. Isn’t that just wonderful? Link to the flickr photo below. I’ve made it a NSFW (not safe for work) link.

http://nsfw.in/7ae73b

One of these fine days I will actually make my own ice cream. It’s something I have never done before. I always think it will be difficult. With so many delicious ideas on Ice Cream Ireland I really don’t have an excuse. Whilst visiting the afformentioned purveyors of deliciously sweet things, I came across the post highlighting that Dingle and Killarney are in the top 100 places to visit worldwide according to Tripadvisor. The only other place in Ireland to be included is Galway. I was rather disappointed that Glendalough wasn’t on the list.

It’s my favourite place in the whole world. Not to be morbid or anything, but when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I want my ashes to be scattered there. Back to the Tripadvisor survey though. Try as I might, I couldn’t really get a great grasp on exactly how they compile the list. Obviously, visitor ratings are part of it, along with forum discussions and bookings also.

Tourism bodies around the country should be looking at Tripadvisor carefully to see what Dingle, Killarney and Galway are doing that sets them apart from other locations.

Silly Friday video which has just had it’s 1^st anniversary on Youtube. This is one of my favourite videos ever. Never fails to make me laugh. It’s been viewed an incredible 27 million times in the year since it was uploaded. I only discovered it recently though.

Lifehacker has a good list of Firefox 3 features. Firefox 2 has been running very slowly on my PC lately and it quite often hangs so I’m glad to see the new version has improved performance. It’s only a preview release still so I will wait until the final version before installing. It can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned.

Of all the bits and pieces I have read about Dustin’s demise in the Eurovision, this piece by Gerard O’ Neill really stands out for me.

I think he hits the nail on the head when he says:

It is a measure of our success that we need neither heroes nor trophies to feel good about ourselves

I’m not so sure that we were ever infatuated with Europe, but this is the best thing I’ve read about the Eurovision all week and why Ireland will never win a Eurovision again. A must read post if ever there was one.

Ok, this is quite possibly the most pointless way to waste time on the internet, but I find myself strangely addicted to flipping the pages every which way and seeing what colour comes next.

Don’t know if there has been a similar campaign in Ireland, but this certainly caught my eye anyway. Even though he died in 2003 from prostate cancer, Bob Monkhouse is spearheading the campaign for research into prostate cancer in the UK.  

It’s been great weather this week but my God, the heat on the bus in the evenings on the way home is just unreal. Wednesday was particularly bad. The driver would put on the air con on for a short while and then it would be off again, but it didn’t seem to cool down. A bus inspector got on at one point, and all of sudden the aircon seemed to work – cool air – it was magic. I am really convinced some of the drivers deliberately put the aircon on the wrong setting. How else could the sudden temperature change be explained?

Is there anything better than this song for good weather like we’re having right now? I love when my iPod shuffles to this track! Magic.

Look what I’m going to make. It’s a Vegetable Paella and it looks fab. It’s from Victoria’s brilliantly named ommnomnom.com blog, which is stuffed with loads of Vegan recipes. I tried changing to a completely vegan diet at one point, but had to revert back to veggie – I missed the dairy product but I didn’t have much in the way of inspirational recipes until now.

ommnomnom though – it’s a great name for a food blog

I have developed an irrational hatred of a certain type of Dublin guy who has, with the good weather, forsaken his usual tracksuit for shorts. It’s not the shorts they are wearing that bother me. It’s more the exagerrated swagger that accompanies the wearing of the shorts. Where does this manner of walking come from? It’s meant to be the “hard man” walk. Some comedian or other (might have been Andrew Maxwell) characterised the walk as being like that of a pigeon. The hard man walk is evident all year round, but it IS definitely more prominent at this time of year.

The absolute worst offenders are the ones who wear shorts, do the swagger AND have a penchant for stuffing their hand down their shorts. Even though fondling the crown jewels is very comforting and soothing, there is a time and a place for it and it certainly isn’t in public.

I’ve often wondered about the music from the pensions board ad. I find it very sad and wistful and was surprised to learn that the brief for the ad was for a “60’s feel, upbeat song with a country edge”. Whatcha think. Was the brief met?

Here’s the link to the music. It’s composed and produced by Steve Lynch who is the name behind a lot of familiar ad music on Irish TV and Radio.

First off, I think I might extend the That’ll never work book competition, so if you get a chance take a look at what it’s all about and give the two thumbs up to some deserving Irish business. Go on, you know it makes sense!

The Dear Lover Blog – have you checked it out yet? The first post I thought was very hearfelt.  I love the header graphic on the blog as well – ‘tis very nice. Rosie found it first.

All the Simpson’s Couch Gags, all in one video.  And there’s a whole list of them on Wikipedia.

After paying for Oxegen or Electric Picnic, would you then pay over €300 for a myhab. It’s an absolutely fantastic idea but waaay too expensive. Looks like lots of people are paying for them at Electric Picnic anyway – it says limited availability.

But, as they say on their site, if 2 people are sharing maybe spending €150 each isn’t so bad for the bit of comfort.

Finally, One for the road has the definitive take on Brian Cowen’s cabinet shuffle.