John Ó'Ríordáns Blog

Michael Corcoran turns into the cookie monster while commentating on two of Munsters’ Heineken cup matches won by the boot of Ronan O’Gara.

Everybody loves a chancer.

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’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.

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 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.

Be very sure you are not squeamish before looking at these. Before I saw these I thought I wasn’t squeamish but I only made it to number 3 before I had to stop for a breather.

The Top 10 Bone Breaks in MMA on MiddleEasy.com

“I don’t always know what I’m talking about…but I know I’m right!”

I read a very funny article in the Independent today about Sport in Ireland over the summer. Check out the link to the article after the little excerpt below on “Culchies on TV”

“If it wasn’t for the GAA, you’d hardly ever see culchies on the TV. You’ll get the odd glimpse on Ear to the Ground and Nationwide, but that’s mainly for sensible culchies who have their own artisan cheese business. Things are different from June to September.

This is where you get to see the true culchie: cute, cranky and up for a fight. And that’s just the football panel on The Sunday Game. Pat Spillane, Joe Brolly and Colm O’Rourke have the classic culchie dynamic: slagging the crap out of each other for laughs until somebody gets the hump over nothing, and suddenly there’s a chance Spillane will break a chair over Brolly’s head while telling him he’s brillunt at d’aul analysis, but it doesn’t happen because Michael Lyster has the look of a Guard.

It’s never like that with the hurling panel. Men who grew up playing a sport that involves hitting and being hit with a lump of ash are very good at keeping their cool. This is why The Sunday Game hurling panel has the polite feel of a staff-room meeting at a minor boarding school.”

Read the full article here.

I was at MMA training this morning at 12. I’d say it was my first time training on a Saturday since I was 16. Great craic though.

I was reading this great article explaining why people enjoy fighting so much. Maybe that’s why I don’t mind making the effort.