My brother gave my son a present of this Asterix Omnibus several years ago but I think I appreciated the gift more. Following the sad news of the passing of Albert Uderzo during the week I’ve been catching up with the adventures of Asterix again. I devoured these books when I was younger and reading them now they’re still funny and entertaining. I still love them!
Health
Making Plans for the Weekend
You’ve probably seen this one already: Or it might look like this: I was going to write a post featuring that image because Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced yesterday that everyone in the Republic of Ireland must stay at home with very few exceptions in an attempt to stop COVID-19. There’s an increased Garda presence with motorists likely to be stopped and asked where they’re going. Exercise must be taken within 2km of home. The image used in the meme above isn’t great. Every time I saw it the floor plan was blurry while the text was pin sharp so I […]
Music
Finding Freddie
The Finding Freddie video podcast on YouTube is a wonderful ongoing series of short videos covering different aspects of Freddie Mercury’s life. So far there have been 4 episodes. If you’re a fan of Queen music you’ll love these!
Podcasts
Dogs are the key to freedom
The most recent episode of the Reply-All podcast was a call-in show. It’s also the second of their shows recorded since the COVID-19 pandemic started and both presenters are recording from their own homes. One of the callers was Zorro, calling from Paris. He’s living with his girlfriend and parents and they’re in lockdown. Nobody is allowed out except in certain circumstances and one of those is to walk the dog. Apparently dogs are getting plenty of walking these days. They’re very popular! 🙂
Ireland
Is Ireland prepared?
The next few weeks are going to be absolutely awful for Ireland. Of course we’re not prepared. The HSE is doing everything they can but they’ve been underfunded for many years. This is what it’s like in Italy right now. If you’re not scared you should be. There was a short interview with Dr Catherine Motherway, Intensive care physician at UH Limerick on Prime Time yesterday. It’s an important reminder about how under resourced the health services are in this country. We have half the European average of ICU beds. That’s half what the Italians have per capita. “You don’t […]
Ireland
I was in a crowded room
A few weeks ago I was. Just thinking about it now fills me with dread. I think the last time I was in a crowded room was at the last Blarney Photography Club meeting and that’s when I first heard that a case of COVID19 was reported in Cork. Following an excellent presentation by Ann Francis of Cork Camera Club, Fergal came into the room and told us that someone suffering with COVID19 was in Cork University Hospital (CUH). It does not seem like just a week ago. We were reminded not to shake hands and avoid physical contact. I’ve […]
Ireland
St. Patrick’s Day 2020
This year the festival is cancelled because of COVID-19, but it was a busy day nonetheless as Gavan Reilly summarises: That didn’t stop people all around the country holding their own parades and singing to the neighbours! I’ve added a selection I found on Twitter to the end of this post, but first this. Treasa is back blogging so go look at today’s and yesterday’s posts on her blog at windsandbreezes.org. She reminded me that my wife took a photo of people queuing to get into Tesco yesterday. In other news, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will give a televised address in […]
Ireland
Social distancing in Blarney
Everything is local, but everything is also global now. The world feels a lot smaller. There’s one topic of conversation everywhere now and that’s the coronavirus (WB), SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) which causes the COVID-19 disease. It feels like Europe and North America sleep walked into this, ignoring what was happening in China until it was too late. This is the first in a maybe series of blog posts that I want to publish for the me in ten years time. For the time when this is all over and some sense of normality has resumed. Throughout […]
Development
Coloured svn diff
The output of svn diff can sometimes be hard to read, especially when there are a lot of changes to read through. I also realise that you might think I’m a dinosaur for still using svn because git has nicely coloured diffs out of the box but talk to any WordPress plugin developer and they’ll have to use svn at some stage. On the other hand, if you’ve used svn for years you may not even realise you need coloured diffs. I found a neat solution to that. Pipe the output of svn into colordiff. This Bash function, svndiff, should […]
Twitter
New Tweet notifications for …
A few months ago my Twitter notification icon lit up announcing one new event. Tapping into it I saw something odd. “New Tweet notifications for” was a new one. I had no idea what setting enabled this abomination. Every time I visited the site or opened the app I’d see a new notification. Over the months I learned to ignore the bell if there was only one event. I had to presume not many people had this problem because I didn’t see anyone else complaining about it. From time to time I searched again trying to find out how to […]
