Now all I need is Santa to bring me a computer capable of running this!

Now that Christmas is just around the corner, my thoughts are turning towards a good pub crawl. For something completely different, how about a James St pub crawl?

Having a look at google maps. Start with:

1. Carrigans (yes yes I know it’s on Old Kilmainham road);
2. then Kennys Lounge opposite the hospital;
3. admire the nice architecture on the way to the Malt House (if open-looked boarded up last time I passed);
4. then across the road to The Tram where the Luas heads down the hill to Heuston;
5. Ryans coming up to the brewery;
6. McGruders after the brewery (not sure if that’s still there);
7. Handel’s (which has been re-opened);
8. onto Thomas St proper now, The Clock Pub;
9. Nashs;
10. Tom Kennedys past Vicar St;
11. The Thomas House (looks like a rocker bar);
12. The Pale coming up towards Christchurch;
13. The Lord Edward (next to Burdocks in case you’re in need of solid fuel)
14. and finally finishing up in the Bull & Castle.

That’s 14 but I’m fairly sure the Malt House and McGruders are closed so that gives us 12 pubs of Christmas.
Takers?

Got taken here by a couple who were familiar with the place and have eaten there loads of times since. The location is great, if a little hard to find for the first time. The prices are superb value. As for the food, it’s the most authentic Chinese food I’ve had since I was actually in China. Some of the dishes can be very spicy so if you’re not a huge fan of spices, play safe. Sea bass is very very good. It can be a little noisy & boisterous sometimes and that staff can be a little abrupt when under pressure but that’s part of the appeal of the place for me. It’s a perfect place for when you have a gang of people with no booking and you need grub on the spot.

We were there before but I wasn’t feeling well at the time so we wanted to give the Winding Stair another shot and sad to say, it doesn’t really measure up.

We went for the set menu. I had the pork chop main with chicken terrine starter. Herself had the lamb round main with asparagus and cherry tomato tartlet starter. My starter was fine and the pork chop was lovely but the lamb round was a big disappointment. There was no flavour to it whatsoever.

The atmosphere is always bustling and the view of the river is nice. The service is adequate. I love the decor and the pressed wood menus. Considering that the pre-theater menu is not especially good value, the wine is much too expensive. The cheapest (non-bargain bin) wine is €25 and it’s muck. I wouldn’t pay a tenner for it in the supermarket. I appreciate what the Winding Stair is trying to do. In a world of ethnic restaurants, the Winding Stair is offering authentic Irish cusine but the value & execution lets it down.

Anybody been playing this new game?
I’m after getting stuck on one of the missions and I just can’t seem to get it right.

Basically, I’m a super-soldier in the Israeli special forces equipped with more firepower than Robocop and more tech gear than the Apple product development lab.

I’ve breezed through earlier missions, which included bulldozing houses in Gaza, dropping smart bombs on highways in Lebanon and expelling Palestinians from their houses in the West Bank.

Now this mission is really bugging me. Basically, a load of ships are trying to break the blockade on Gaza and we have to stop them. There are six ships and I can take the first five with no bother but the sixth one with a few hundred civilians on board is the problem. Please help me understand what I’m doing wrong:

-I’m kind of in a hurry to get the good stuff so I rush right in but I think I saw a warning message about the ships being in “international waters”. I’m not sure what this is really. It immediately causes me to earn minus points. What’s happening here? Am I supposed to wait until the ships enter Israeli/Gaza waters? That’s really boring though. Why can’t we just annex the Eastern Med to make it Israeli waterspace?

-I’m dropping down from a helicopter in the middle of the night to cause maximum confusion but I’m immediately getting attacked by hundreds of people wielding clubs. Apparently shooting them fails the mission, which is a bit dumb because it’s like Left 4 Dead but not being allowed to kill the zombies. Would I be better off carrying out my attack in daytime? Is my problem the sounds of gunfire before boarding that makes the people on board nervous and instantly attack me?

-Apparently, there’s unlockable side-missions which involve executing terrorists in foreign nations but using the passports of citizens in European countries. No matter what I do, those nations end up hating me. What on earth am I doing wrong?

-On the strategic level in the game, I was able to select what items should be restricted from going into Gaza as part of the blockade. I clicked on “coriander” and “instant coffee” for the laugh but I think this might be causing me to suffer a diplomatic relations hit. What do you guys reckon?

It’s really annoying me that I can’t get through this mission. Why on earth are the people on the sixth ship fighting back? You’d swear we were pirates or something!

Back in July, I looked at the curious case of Ned O’Keeffe who has come up with a new and novel approach to winning elections.

Under our current proportional representation system, we vote the people we most want in a dail seat in order of preference. We then get a situation where (in theory) 51% of voters can disenfranchise the other 49%. For instance, Ned O’Keeffe (who got 12% of the poll) stated that he will work against the interests of those impertinent voters who failed to prostrate themselves at his feet (presumably the remaining 88% of the constituents).

How about doing it in a different way that would inject some humility into our public representatives?

Instead of voting for whom we want to take a seat, we instead vote those who we absolutely do not want to represent us. Last candidates standing get in.

The Greeks were onto something with their notion of ostrakon.
Divisive polarising politicians would be out the door before you know it. It would mean that gombeens like John O’Donoghue would have to watch their step because if they alienate enough people, they lose their seat. Currently corrupt politicians rarely worry about losing their seats because they only need a relatively small number of votes to retain their seat. The Beverly Cooper-Flynn’s and Michael Lowery’s of the world retain their seats because they cultivate enough numbskulls who continue to vote for them and not worry about anybody else.

Of course, the other simpler (but much less exciting) option would be to have less TD’s.

In case, you’re wondering what the hell this is all about. Link.
The short version is that iTunes 9 is killing iPods, mainly iPod classics but there have been reports of dud Nanos as well and a mate reports a dud Shuffle. My sister is one of the unlucky people and her video iPod has stopped working. I promised her that I’d have a look online to see if any solutions were available. There’s plenty of anger & frustration in the Apple Support forums. It’s not definite and I’m waiting on my sister to test it but a possible solution was suggested and I’ve summarised it below. My sister tested it last night and got it working after some time.

• You need to find a computer with iTunes 8 installed or even better, a computer with no iTunes at all.
• If there’s no iTunes on the machine, install iTunes 8, which can be found here. You’re bound to have a friend or relative who hasn’t updated their copy of iTunes. Look for technophobes!
• You could try uninstalling iTunes 9 and then installing iTunes 8 but apparently it’s difficult to remove it fully.
• When you find a suitable machine, whatever you do, do not allow it to upgrade to iTunes 9.
• You need to disable “automatic sync” and you do this from edit>preferences and then the devices tab.
• Put the iPod in “disc mode”.
• Then select “update”. This takes a while. It took my sister 2 hours.
• Now you have the task of copying your music library to that machine. It’s tedious but if it saves your music collection, it’ll be worth it.

Some info on on the whole process here (and where original credit is due for this method before my sister tested it and I added her feedback).
Good luck and feel free to use the comments section to leave feedback, suggestions or just have a good rant.

In these recessionary times, it pays to watch the pennies and where they end up. One of the things that really jumped out at me from my bank statement was my monthly phone bill. This was around the same time as I was looking to change my phone and I looked at upgrade options. Needless to say, I was not particularly impressed by the price of phones on offer and in a state of shock when I saw the price plans. O2 and the others might think that handing over €600 a year in after-tax pay is perfectly reasonable but I’d much rather spend that money on something more worthwhile. I immediately looked at changing to Vodafone, Meteor and 3 but their billpay options were not all that attractive either.

It was then that Ms Gaius suggested “pay as you go” and I had a look at it. I mainly text people and phonecalls are kept to a minimum and sure enough, I found the perfect solution where all texts to all Irish mobiles were free for only €20 every 30 days. Any phonecalls that need to be made can be made out of that €20.

Considering that I was spending approx €60 a month on phone bills, getting that expense down to €20 a month for the same service is pretty good business. The lesson is that big savings can be made if you’re prepared to look around and not accept the first thing that’s offered to you.

Note: at the time of writing Vodafone no longer seem to have a similar price plan but they did about a month ago. Meteor also have a “€20 and text whoever you like” price plan.

Open Safari and paste the following into the address bar:

javascript:(function(){var d=0;setInterval(function(){document.body.style['-webkit-transform']=’rotate(‘+ d +’deg)’;d+=1},10)}());

Thanks Zen.

Note: I intended this to be a spoiler-free review but it turned into something of a retrospective. There’s no major spoilers but if you want a completely “clean” review of the film, just stop here rest assured that it’s very very good.

Every now and then, you watch a film on dvd at home and kick yourself for not watching it in the cinema. Into The Wild is one of those films. It has the intimate feel of an American indie film but also the grandstanding visual scope of a western made in the “good ole days”.

The film kicks off with an excruciating family dinner after the son, Chris, graduates. The over-bearing and domineering parents make us wince but the petulant reaction from Chris demonstrates that there are two sides to every conflict. It isn’t long before Chris sets off on his ultimate and doomed act of rebellion, where he packs up all his troubles in his old kit back.

This movie is a road trip movie for large stretches but it’s also a sensitive character drama where Chris (aka Alex Supertramp) enriches and is enriched by the lives of others. He meets:

• A hippy couple with heartbreak in the past, who act as surrogate parents to Chris.
• A lonely pensioner who works leather and also acts as a surrogate father/grandfather to Chris.
• A mid-west farmer who lives life from day to day (played by an unrecognisable Vince Vaughan).

It’s the people who make this film and likewise, the message of the film is that it’s these people who enriched Chris’ life, not his futile crusade against materialism and commercialism. The film flashes back & forth constantly but it is beautifully handled by the director, Sean Penn. At no point are you confused by the timeline yet you are challenged to put the pieces together for yourself and make up your own mind.

The acting is universally excellent. Emile Hirsch is excellent as the idealistic but naive Chris McCandless. Hal Holbrook is heartbreaking as the lonely pensioner, Ron, and his Oscar nomination was well-deserved. The supporting cast are equally good but special mention must be made of William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden as his heartbroken parents. You never really find fault with them to the same extent that Chris does but by the end of the film, you will be cursing the selfish child who has done them so much harm.

The cinematography is stunning and the soundtrack is the type that will have you nodding your head and tapping your foot in time with the music. Eddie Vedder might seem an odd choice to score a film like this but it’s an inspired one.

If there’s one thing that Into The Wild will make you do, it’ll be to question your own life and also the extent to which you will go against the system and/or compromise your ideals to fit into modern life. Do we really want to marry, start lucrative businesses, have 2.3 children and know nothing of the world outside those walls? Is burning your cash and living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness a viable option? Or is the answer somewhere in the middle ground? Myself and the missus spent a few hours talking about this after the film and this is the real joy of Into The Wild. It asks questions and it doesn’t put answers in your mouth.