John Ó'Ríordáns Blog

I read this in the Irish Independent today.  In it he says that Paul Galvin is “100% innocent” and “shouldn’t have been sent off”. Is he on crack? He punches a guy (again) which causes Eoins tooth to come out. Then he sticks his fingers into his mouth (fish hook) and worries the wound. Now Eoin had to have an operation. What kond of a thug sticks his finger into the whole where someones tooth was seconds before? And now O’Connor seconds his 6 week ban is too harsh? This is the same Paul Galvin who served a one year ban and is in trouble at work for abusing a school boy!

Still I suppose this is the same team that elbowed Nicholas Murphy in the first few minutes of the All-Ireland and nearly knocked him out. So obviously Jack has no issues with theses thugs and perhaps encourages them.

Was driving the car from left to right in this photo. When I went to turn the car to the right, towards where the photo was taken, nothing happened! The snow in the shade had turned to ice. I very nearly hit the parked car to the right of the photo. Close one!

There is a great website called British Pathe which has a huge amount of old newsreels from Ireland up from the late 1800’s up to 1970. There is great stuff there from the War of Independence including this shot of IRA members being arrested in Dublin. You can even seem some of the British Tanks in the shot.

It contains some other fantastic movies as well.

I am glad I held off on buying a house when everyone was putting pressure on me to do so. I was telling everyone that there was no way prices could stay that high. If you looked at other countries houses prices were not as high as ours compared to GDP. Well today in the Independent I saw an article saying they are €100,000 less on average than 2007. I hear they are back to early 2000 levels now.

I’ll have to figure out how much money I’ve paid on rent since 2000 and now and see if it equals €100,000. I’m sure it would.

Lets see, lets assume I paid around €400 a month, I paid less in early 2000 but let’s go with that. So in 10 years x 12 months I would have paid rent for 120 months. That’s 120×400 = 48,000. So if I bought a house now I would have saved €52,000 over someone who bought one in early 2000. Cool!

An old video about the Hurling Strike but I’ve only come across it today.

“Jens Danstrup, a 77-year-old retired architect, used to bike all around town. But years of smoking have weakened his lungs, and these days he finds it difficult to walk down his front steps and hail a taxi for a doctor’s appointment.

Now, however, he can go to the doctor without leaving home, using some simple medical devices and a notebook computer with a Web camera. He takes his own weekly medical readings, which are sent to his doctor via a Bluetooth connection and automatically logged into an electronic record.

“You see how easy it is for me?” Mr. Danstrup said, sitting at his desk while video chatting with his nurse at Frederiksberg University Hospital, a mile away. “Instead of wasting the day at the hospital?”

He clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctors enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.”

Read the rest of the original article here.

Why can’t we do this in Ireland. We have the expertise. The last time my Mother was in A&E I had to tell the doctor she had recently had a heart attack. The doctor took an ECG but couldn’t compare it to the mothers normal readings because it was on paper locked in a fecking cupboard.

The main reason I think we don’t do this is because they’d had to leave go all the admins whose sole job is moving paper around in this archaic system. It’s embarrassing and, in the case of my mother and others like her, dangerous.

Made a small snowman outside to mind the door. You’d know Cork City doesn’t get snow often.

This is the most amount of snow I’ve seen in Cork City for a while. I had a few skids today in the car. Great fun. Reminds me of when I used to live in Millstreet and had to back cars up hills for traction.

It seems it’s not just people in the UK making a fool of themselves on the ice.

Man Slips on Ice During News Report – Watch more Funny Videos

The Press association today reports on Cork making the Lonely Planet Top 10 cities in the World. I laughed when I saw the following entry.

“Praising the city’s unshakeable self confidence and pride, the roll-call of must-see destinations also described the Corkonian lilt as musical.”

Of course the rest of the country will begrudge us this and say we are arrogant. I perfer the phrase “self-confident” myself.

So if you decide to visit Cork check out my Cork Slang post so you can talk like a local.