John Ó'Ríordáns Blog

Had a great time in Denver watching the UFC. There was a few people I knew around which made it much more fun.

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A short video showing our view of UFC 135. The atmosphere was brilliant. Americans are loud!

Just weighed myself for a work weight loss challenge. I am 85 Kilos (186 Pounds). I’ve put on 14 Kilos (30 pounds) since I got to Canada! That’s a jump from Lightweight to Light Heavyweight. Time to hit the gym and cut back on the Poutine I think.

Does this sound like you? Saturday night is looming. You’re looking to let you hair down. But the match is on at 10:00am in the morning. You know if you go out for “one or two” there is no way you’ll be able to get up and drag yourself to the pub to watch the match. And the funds are low so you don’t want to pay 20 bucks at the pub. Oh if only the TV could tune RTÉ or RTÉ Player worked outside of Ireland! Or maybe you really wanted to see the Rose of Tralee live when abroad. I don’t judge.

Well using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) you can fool RTÉ Player into thinking you are in Ireland. Or any country in the world in fact. And it couldn’t be simpler. You download the VPN Client onto your laptop, select the country you want to appear to be and in that’s it. Simple!

How does it work? Well VPN guys have a server in Dublin that will go to RTÉ Player and get the match for you. Then it sends it over to Canada to your computer.

An added advantage is that you can select the UK to watch Soccer on BBC Player, or USA to use US Netflix (which is much better than Canadian Netflix) or whatever else might be restricted in Canada (such as downloading torrents of your favourite shows). It can fool any software into thinking you are in a different country.

A quick search online give you a number of options such as surfbouncer.com, vpntraffic.com, overplay.net or ukproxyserver.co.uk. All of these allow you to pretend you are in Ireland for between 5 and 10 bucks a month. You can go to Proxy.ie to get a side by side comparison of what each VPN provider offers.

You’ll never have to miss another episode of Republic of Telly again. And it’ll be great to hear Hook and Pope arguing during the World Cup.

Hi Rugby Fans, I made a Google Calendar with all of the dates locations and times of Rugby World Cup matches. Using Google Calendar you should be able to translate these into your local times pretty easily.

HTML Link

ICS Link

All data taken from the Rugby World Cup Website

I was pucking around a ball in the Hurling Pitch in Centennial Park in Toronto and caught my Hurley on the ground and cracked it! Oh no!

So I went to Rona yesterday and got myself a vice grips, some wood glue and masking tape. It’s drying outside at the moment. I guess now I have to play the waiting game. I really hope it works because I don’t see many Hurley makers around here.

The video below tells the story of a group of US soldiers who watched a game of hurling on their way back to the US from Iraq via Shannon. They were so impressed with the “warrior aspect” of the game that they started their own team when they got back to the US. In an area with no great Irish influence and no prior hurling team they founded a team with no Irish members. It shows that Hurling could be a much more popular game if promoted more heavily outside of Ireland. But that is very difficult due to the small numbers of people playing. Which is a real pity.

There was a documentary made by the US Military about these players which is well worth a look. You can find the video entitled “Two Fields, One Team” below.

Found on The Journal

A very funny video for Rugby from the Czech Republic.

It reminded me of this

A cool kick by Anthony Pettis in this weeks final WEC 53.

Pettis captured the WEC lightweight championship, as well as a shot at the UFC title, with a unanimous decision over Henderson after a five-round war.

Here are some pictures form the Wanderlei Silva Seminar in Belfast. What a legend. It’s obvious he trains full time as he was really able to help people out with little things. He spent a little time with everyone there which was brilliant. And when we were done he had a Q & A session. I’d say he would have stayed for the night except we ran out of questions.

A true gentleman.