Category Archives: Ireland

Boston, Donegal, Ireland, photo, picture, travel

Got home

5 Comments

Just back from a trip home to Ireland and am pooped. Got up at 6am (1am EST) and drove up to Dublin Airport from Donegal Town via Omagh. Got there about 10.30am, would have been earlier but the car was running on fumes and I had to stop for petrol. As I was whizzing down the M1, my cousin John, whom I gave a lift to the airport, said there’s no services on that motorway. Which lead us on a 30 minute detour trying to find some petrol pumps in the wastes of Louth! 😉

Got to the airport at 10.30am, dropped off the car, had a ciggie, met my friend Eamon L. who dropped out to see me off and had a nice big (expensive) breakfast before going through security. Had 3 jumbo sausages, 2 rashers, 2 slices of thick toast, 1 egg, 1 hash brown, 1/2 a fried tomato, and numerous backed beans.:) A good end to a long drive, and a nice fill-up before a long flight.

On the plane I got 2 seats to meself and dosed off for about 2 hours or more after they served “dinner”. Woke up somewhere over the Canadian north and got to watch the lame ending to the last Harry Blouter film.

At Logan (Boston’s airport), I got through everything quickly, and didn’t have to wait too long for a shuttle bus to the blue line on the subway. And it wasn’t too busy considering it was rush hour. I guess most of the commuters were heading the other way. I changed Gov Center for the Green Line that goes near the house, and lucky enough I got a local train going to Kenmore (never seen one of those before) which was nice and quiet and not full of rush-hour nasties. And got home in time to see the sunset.

So now I’m pooped, as it’s 11:45pm Irish Time, and I need dinner … pics will appear on Flickr at some point.

Update: Here’s one! 🙂
BackstrandsMore via this Flickr search.

Debian, Ireland, Linux, picture, travel, Ubuntu

Killing X

Leave a comment

On Ubuntu it used to be that ctrl-alt-backspace would kill X (the backend of the various graphical user interfaces on Linux). In an aim to be user friendly this is now disabled by default. This can be a real pain if X locks up, you can’t kill it nor change to a console.

On Debian and Ubuntu you can install the dontzap command which will allow you to kill X:

sudo apt-get install dontzap

Then run dontzap:

sudo dontzap -d

Or you can the following section to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (which is what the dontxzap command does):

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "DontZap"       "False"
EndSection

See Alberto Milone’s blog for more info:
http://albertomilone.com/wordpress/?p=335

Donegal, Ireland, video

At the Backstrands

2 Comments

On Sunday Jeannie, me sister, and I went to Murvagh beach on a lovely sunny afternoon (or the Backstrands as me Dad used to call it). We spend about 2 hours paddling in the water and walking along the strand on a beautiful warm sunny day, with a big black cloud slowly approaching. I got, what I think are, some amazing photographs. I took so many now I have a hard time deciding which to post on Flickr! 🙂

Here’s a video I made of the tide coming in:

Donegal, flickr, Ireland, photo

Old Donegal Town

Leave a comment

A while back I scanned some old postcards of Donegal Town that I borrowed from my Aunty Isabel. They’ve been pretty popular on flickr.com, with this one getting over 900 views:

Old Donegal Town Postcard

And this one getting over 1800 views:
Donegal Town: The Diamond 1973

Both of these were taken sometime in the 1970’s and I can’t take credit for taking the pictures, that would have been John Hinde or the postcard company he owned of the same name and sold in 1973 (right around the time these pictures were probably taken).

I really like these pics, they’re very nostalgic for me as the the postcard themselve remind me my childhood, as these were sold around the town up to the late 1980’s (even after the center of town changed they made the center into an open plaza with any cars on it). I can barely remember the town looking like, I would have been 3 or 4?

Ireland, photo, travel

NYC Irish Famine Memorial

1 Comment

A very unique design. It’s supposed to be a ruined house on a hill in Ireland.

NYC Irish Famine Memorial

You walk around the base of the memorial, towards the water.
NYC Irish Famine Memorial

Go through a short tunnel, which has speakers playing the voices of people talking about the famine (including Bono).
NYC Irish Famine Memorial

And your in a ruined house.
NYC Irish Famine Memorial
You walk out the front door of the house, and follow the path up the hill, past a grave, and a what to me looks like a fallow potato field (because of the mounds or ridges or riggs in the field).
NYC Irish Famine Memorial

Here’s a view from above, which should give you a better view of how it’s laid out.
NYC Irish Famine Memorial
There’s even an overgrown garden out the back of the cottage.

Really a very impressive memorial, hey was that’s Bono’s voice coming out the speakers. Sheesh, he’s on everything these days.

Friends, Ireland

If your in Miami

Leave a comment

Go visit my friend’s newly opened Irish pub, (Yes they are Irish) in South Miami:

The Irish Times

Irish Pub & Eatery is officially OPENING FOR BUSINESS today at 8:00p.m.!!!

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day….

The Irish Times

5850 Sunset Drive
South Miami, FL 33143

Corner of SW 72nd Street and SW 58 Court

One block west of Shops at Sunset Place

One block east of US1.

Tel: 305-667-4114 or 305-667-4116

If you like them, Yelp them: www.yelp.com

Ireland, News

Drugs in Wexford

Leave a comment

Interesting editoral on RTE about heroin use in Wexford (Ireland) and the lack of attention it’s getting from the Government. Seems to me (many) politicians wait until things reach crisis point before they act, as they don’t get credit for preventing things but for solving crisis’s!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0217/drugsfeature.html

If these people were dying at one time in one place (such as a shooting at a University) there would be a national outcry. But the information I have is that people are dying now every week from drugs overdoses all across Ireland. This, to me, is a crisis. But what Government minister has said the same thing? Not one. Even the opposition politicians don’t seem to have their finger on the extent of this disaster – and it is a disaster.

When most people think of heroin, they think of users injecting themselves. But what is happening now is that the vast majority of people taking heroin now are smoking it on a Saturday night outside pubs. Some people on a night out are having their drinks, going out for a cigarette, taking some cocaine or moving round the corner and lighting up heroin and smoking it. They think it’s only ‘recreational’ but the story which ‘Sinead’ tells in my RTÉ news report from Thursday evening shows that one fix of heroin and you can be addicted. And it’s only a matter of time before somebody suggests you get a better kick from injecting …