sudocrem in sweden

I noticed a post today on Reddit about Sudocrem.

Sudocrem 1931 invented by Dublin pharmacist Thomas Smith. Sure where would we be without it? Every tub of Sudocrem sold worldwide is still made in Baldoyle.

Well holy god! Isn't that great!

That little grey tub that works wonders on nappy rash and is the leading baby cream in both Ireland and the UK was an Irish invention. I wonder if they sell it here in Sweden? I quick search on Apoteket.se for blöjeksem and blöjutslag shows 3 products available for that purpose. None of them Sudocrem.

• Inotyol - 54kr for 50g (432kr for 400g)
• Bepanthen - 55kr for 30g (733kr for 400g)
• Generic brand Babysalva - 49kr for 60g (327kr for 400g)

Inotyol and Bepanthen seem to be the two favourites talking to a few people and looking at some of the forums. 

I put the price per 400g for a reason. The big 400g tub of Sudocrem on Boots.co.uk is currently £6.25 or about 64kr. Go back and look at the price per 400g for the options available here in Sweden.

Now imagine paying over 10 times the price of Sudocrem for something you're going to rub on the arse of a baby.

Welcome to Sweden.

avoid ryanairs credit card fees

Mr. O'Leary will love me for this but I just booked a flight and saved paying the 5euro each way/per person charge for using my credit card. It is simple and here is how:

1. Head over to entropay.com and sign up. Create a virtural card and leave it at that for the moment.
2. Start booking your Ryanair flight.
3. Don't add any extra's or bags, just pay for the flight and the web check in fee of 5euro each way/per person.
4. When you get to the payment screen, select Visa Electron and watch as the total doesn't increase!
5. Head back over to EntroPay and load your card with the required amount, down to the cent. You will be charged a loading fee, but I will talk about that below*
6. Copy the details of your new virtural card and paste them into the Ryanair website where they ask you for your Visa Electron Card (I used my own address).
7. Click Pay!
8. Once the flight is confirmed go back to the main Ryanair homepage and click manage your booking using Option 3. You can then choose to add more bags or extras. You can use your main Credit Card now as it won't be charged the 5euro handling fee!

*EntroPay charge a fee of 4.95% to load the card. Booking your flight without bags etc will cut down the EntroPay charge as it is a percentage of the amount you are loading. You can pay for the bags with your normal credit card without any fees once the flight is booked.

Please note, this method is only beneficial if the cost of the flight and online check-in is under 202euro per person (404euro for two people etc..), mine was 77.32euro. I believe my maths is sound. Here is what I just paid for my flight using EntroPay:

I know it is only a 6.17euro saving, but because it is Ryanair it is even more sweeter!

On a side note, it has been a long time since a post here, but there have been many over on tumblr! I am also in a position to talk once again about the Amazing Teaching Council of Ireland.... but that's another post!

kisc gmail gadget

If you loved the Kandersteg International Scout Centre Webcam Gadget for iGoogle as much as they did in Switzerland to even mention me on their webcam page:

NEW: ADD THE KISC WEBCAM TO YOUR iGOOGLE PAGES!

Use this fantastic widget to keep an eye at the Centre from your own personalized Google site! To insert the KISC Webcam to your iGoogle, click here! (thanks Darran for creating this widget!).

Well the you will love this! (Thanks for the kudos too!)

K.I.S.C. Webcam in your Gmail!

As you can see, a little version of the Webcam right there in your Gmail, which I have open way more than iGoogle! So here is the step by step guide on how to add it:

1. Click on Gmail Labs in Settings
   
2. Scroll the the bottom and enable: Add any gadget by URL
   
3. Click Save
   
4. Click on Gadgets in Settings
   
5. Paste in the address for the gadget:

http://darranc.googlepages.com/gkiscam.xml

That's it! If you want to move it around, like above chat, go back into Labs and enable: Navbar drag and drop.

Met Éireann Gadget
On the topic of Gmail Gadgets, Peter created a nice Met Éireann Gadget to keep track of the weather!

Add this line to the Gadgets page:
http://www.highonsnow.com/metgadget/metgadget160.xml

fake christmas tree

Following on from Dec's post on Christmas Trees, I thought i'd share my thoughts. We have always had an artificial/plastic Christmas tree and I don’t see the problem really. There are many advantages to a fake tree:

• They pay for themselves the following year
• They are safer. They are made with fire resistant materials they don’t go up like dried out trees do
• They don’t loose their needles
• There isn’t an issue with sap (sticky stuff not anything here)
• It is environmentally friendly. And don’t listen to those people who tell you that are from a controlled forest. What happens to your real tree when you’re finished with it? You gotta pay for a wood chopper, or chuck it in a car park/recycling centre and it will set on fire? Right?
• They save time. No need to search for a nice tree
• They are allergy friendly. Nothing on a fake tree will cause you to sniff your way through the month of December if you suffer any allergies!

There are a few advantages to having a real tree (so my argument is kinda balanced):

• Help the local economy
• Cheaper to produce.. yes it is true.. 
• The smell of a real Christmas tree.

That last point would be a very strong reason to have a real one. This however can be artificially created too! Just buy a load of Royal Pine car fresheners and stick them around the tree, out of sight. This will give you the real smell you were looking for, without having to go get a real tree!

Anyway, with trees like the following video ... why would you ever consider a real tree again!

P.S. I notice from a comment that they were first invented by those who make toilet brushes! Classy!

google a to z

• Google Analytics *
  www.google.com/analytics
• Google Book Search
  books.google.com
• Google Calendar *
  www.google.com/calendar
• Google Docs *
  docs.google.com
• Google Earth *
  earth.google.com
• Google Finance
  finance.google.com
• Google Groups
  groups.google.com
• Google Health
  https://www.google.com/health
• Google Image Search *
  images.google.com
• Google Jobs
  www.google.com/intl/en/jobs
• Knol: a unit of knowledge
  knol.google.com
• Google Labs *
  labs.google.com
• Google Maps *
  maps.google.com
• Google News *
  news.google.com
• orkut
  www.orkut.com
• Google Page Creator
  pages.google.com
• Google Questions & Answers (Russia!)
  http://otvety.google.ru/otvety/
• Google Reader *
  www.google.com/reader
• Google Scholar *
  scholar.google.com
• Google Talk *
  www.google.com/talk
• Google U.S. Government Search
  www.google.com/ig/usgov
• Google Video
  video.google.com
• Google Webmaster Central *
  www.google.com/webmasters
• Google Lunar X PRIZE
  www.googlelunarxprize.org
• YouTube *
  www.youtube.com
• Google Press Center: Zeitgeist
  www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

* I use this on a regular basis.
Some others that I use that are not included: AdSense, Alerts, Blogger, Chrome, FeedBurner, Gears, Gmail, iGoogle, Mobile, Pack, Picasa, Toolbar, Translate and of course Web Search!

teacher training in ireland

So now I need some teacher training, to become a teacher and all!

There are a few courses around Ireland that will train you to become a teacher. The main 4 are through the National University of Ireland. Cork (UCC), Galway (NUIG), Maynooth (NUIM) and Dublin (UCD). DCU and Trinity (TCD) also run courses and Limerick (UL) does a nice Business Teacher course too.

So to apply for one the NUI courses, you have to go through a similar process to that of the CAO, through PAC (Postgratuate Applications Centre). You apply for an application form pack and receive it in the post. No online applications here, these guys want to keep it old school!

Be warned, the closing date for entry into the 2009/10 course is December 1st 2008! A whole 9 months before hand.

Photo owned by germanium (cc)

I’m at this point now, just about to get everything together to send it into PAC. Lets just recap on what I’ve had to do... so far:

• Request a application pack from PAC.
  
• Paid a € 80 application fee through the bank (not online).
  
• Got an official copy of my results from CIT where I did my undergraduate degree (luckily I still have the originals I obtained from last year for my masters application. It cost me € 20 or something).
• Copied my degree results and masters parchment.
• Got those photocopies certified as true copies.
• Got a stamp for the confirmation post card.
• Now just go to the post office to get the evidence of postage page stamped.

This is only the tip of the iceberg with what I'm sure will be a bureaucrats dream. Next time I will tell you about the teaching council of Ireland!!

becoming a teacher

Since I don’t have much to blog about these days, I’m going to bring you on the journey of becoming a teacher in Ireland.

First of all, why do I want to become a teacher? Lets look at the pros and cons of going down the road of teaching.

The Cons

• Dealing with kids all day
• Some kids don’t like to learn
• The pay
• Bureaucracy
• The nicknames
• Dealing with parents
• Lack of respect among other educated professionals
• Car getting keyed
• Early mornings
• Uncertainty in the current economic climate

The Pros

• Teaching people
• June
• Influencing them to do my bidding once they have grown up (may involve subliminal messaging in my teaching methods.. haven’t quite figured this one out yet.. I’ll keep you posted)
• July
• Job satisfaction
• August
• Job security once you have one

Photo owned by sridgway (cc)

So I’ve now talked myself into taking the first steps and consciously making the decision to become a teacher. What is next?

I need to be trained. More next time..

free priority boarding

****WARNING****

This post is only for fun and meant to point out how poor security is and how easy it is to change your boarding card. Changing your boarding card may result in you not being able to board and prosecuted.
****END****

I fly a fair bit with Ryanair. I was reading their in-flight Mag on my recent flight with them to see that there is a glaring mistake in their "aren't we a great airline company" page:

That bit in the middle:

Passengers who avail of our FREE online check-in service enjoy the double benefit of skipping queues at both check-in and boarding, as Check'N'Go passengers automatically receive priority boarding onto their flight.

Besides that mistake and Ryanair stealing €5 from you each way if you want Priority Boarding, I thought what is stopping you editing your own printed off boarding card to give yourself Free Priority Boarding?

It turns out nothing! And I sucessfully managed to skip the queue on my recent trip with a modified Boarding Card. I present to you my:

Guide to Free Priority Boarding in 10 Easy Steps!

1. Book a flight with Ryanair

2. Choose: 0 Bags & Online Check-in And No to being one of the first to board the aircraft:

3. Have a PDF Printer installed on your PC. I use PDF 995, It's Free!

4. Check-in online up to 5 days before your flight and print your boarding card to PDF.

5. Open the PDF in Photoshop (YES! You can do that!)

6. Move the page down a bit to make room for the two new lines:

7. Add the text: PRIORITY BOARDING PASS in Arial, 14pt, Bold Italic.

8. Print the Image to PDF, scale it to A4 size.

9. Open the PDF and then print it to your physical printer.

10. Enjoy FREE Priority Boarding :-)

subcard

Yesterday I picked up a SubCard from a Subway. Hurray I thought! They are bringing back a loyalty scheme since they discontinued their Subway Stamps!

Lets look at this new "Collect points. Get FREE Subs" deal:

For every 10p [UK] or 15c [ROI] you spend you will receive 1 point.
500 points gets you a regular 6” Sub, wrap or salad
1000 points gets you a 12” Footlong

That means to get a FREE  6” Sub, you must spend at least €75 or £50, and double that for a footlong!

Now lets compare this to their old Sub Club - Customer Appreciation Card:

From what I remember, you got a stamp for every 6” Sub you bought, and 2 for a footlong. Stick them onto the card and when you have all 8, claim for your FREE  6” Sub.

An average price for a  6” varies from about €2.99 to over €4.50.
So lets say you spend on average €3.50 for a 6”.
Then multiply that by 8 to fill the card.
You end up spending €28 to get your FREE 6” Sub, or the equivalent now of 500 points.

So you now have to spend over 2½ time more to get your free Sub. On top of that, this time they have complete and accurate information on where and what you buy in the store from ordering extra cheese to making it a meal!

For me, I don't want to give them all my eating habits, but when I end up spending €150 a little reward would be nice. Do I even want to know when I reach that amount!! Surely for handing them all that delicious customer data their reward wouldn't be as stingy.

iphone prices worldwide

With the release of the new iPhone world wide on Friday, I have been contemplating should I get one. Afterall my old phone is getting a bit dated!

The offers here in Ireland from o2 are pretty shite to be honest. A €45, 18 month contract and pay €169 for the 8GB model up front! So I started to look online at the other countries offers to see was everyone else getting screwed, and the answer is yes.

I've gotten prices from USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Mexico, Denmark, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. This is the 8GB model of an iPhone on the smallest and cheapest contract. You can see a summary below and a break down of each country on my Flickr Photostream.

Some things I've noticed:

• Switzerland is the cheapest place to buy a contract-less iPhone
• Belgium is selling unlocked iPhones with no contract
• Canada has the worst deal, with a 3 year contract
• After Belgium there is Denmark with a 6 month and Norway for 12 month contact

Data-wise:

• The Netherlands, UK and USA offer unlimited data
• Sweden, Norway, Mexico and Finland only have 100MB per month
• Ireland and Switzerland isn't doing too bad with 1GB per month

Price-wise:

• Per month: Mexico, Germany and The Netherlands are all under €30
• Ireland is up there with The USA, Norway and Denmark with most expensive monthly contact
• At the end of the contact, Canada, USA, New Zealand and Ireland are most expensive

You have to take what you get from the contract (datawise, free minutes, sms) with what your going to be paying. Obviously when you live in one country it would not make sense to buy a contact for another country.

All currency conversions done via xe.com. I couldnt translate/understand Italy, Hong Kong or Japan. There is no word from Australia, Spain, Portugal or Austria.

One last bit of information. The i in the iPhone means Internet, as it does it iMac. That holds true in the USA & UK as you can use it as an Internet Phone. It is a pitty that other countries put a cap on how much you can use the Internet on it. o2 here in Ireland gives you no indication of your monthly download and if you reached or exceeded your limit of 1GB.

I found it intresting to see the wide differences around the world. I am considering getting the unlocked Beligan iPhone or waiting to see what the prices for unlocked one sell on eBay for. I'm not sure what i'm going to do yet. Lets see how the launch goes 1st!

travel thoughts

Here are some thought and observations from my recent trip to Sweden:
Ryanair:

• It is impossible to hear announcements on board. They always seem to have 4 stewards working, usually 2 native English speakers and 2 non-native. The non-native English speakers will do all the talking into the PA system making it nearly impossible to understand their thick eastern European or Russian (I'm certain it was Russian, he looked like he was with the KGB!)
• If you dress up like a pilot you get free food. Wear a white shirt with epaulets and a ID badge. Sit either in the 1st row or the emergency exits in the middle. Introduce yourself as you board the plane. Always say your new. Then when it comes time for the food trolley to come around, order something to drink and eat and offer to pay with not enough money. They guy I was sitting next to ordered a cappuccino (€2.95) and a slice of pizza (€4) and offered to pay with a fiver. He got his meal for free! Altho he did spill the cappuccino all over his shirt and had to go change! :-)
• They love flight change emails. These are emails they send to inform you that they will be leaving 30 minutes earlier than when you booked the flight. I've received seven so far (I got another one this morning), I even got one an hour before boarding my flight! I wonder when it will stop.
  

Dublin Airport:

• The Secret Door. When flying out to Dublin on a domestic flight to somewhere in the Republic of Ireland, there is another door to security you can go through. This will cut at least 5 minutes or 10 at busy times queuing up to go through security. It is just to the left of the main queue, manned by one person who will check your boarding card. Handy to know!

MAXroam:

• Texts aren't cheap. It was my first outing with my MAXroam sim. I put a message on my Irish mobile number, if people needed me, try me on my MAXroam number. The thing was everyone knew I was going away, no one needed to ring me! I do communicate a lot through texts on the other hand. On my Vodafone sim it was €0.29 to send a text, and it was €0.08 more expensive to send it on my MAXroam sim.
  
• Saying all this I could have saved about €0.04/min to receive or anything from €0.09-0.20/min to make a call.
• It didn't work out too well for me in Sweden. The Vodafone Group are over there making sure they keep costs down for their users. I'm sure in another country the pros would outweigh the cons. I really need to find a dual sim phone for trips!

south park

Ya gotta love South Park. They are taking digital distribution to the next level. They have their entire catalogue of episodes going back 12 seasons available to watch online on their South Park Studio website (and none of this outside the US Region crap either!).

I just watched their latest episode, Canada on Strike. The Canadians want some of that Internet Money, similar situation to the writers strike, so Cartman and co make a video that becomes a huge internet hit. When they go to collect their millions of "theoretical dollars" from the hit, they meet a load of other internet memes; numa numa and tron guy as well as the Star Wars kid!

What I didn't know was the song Butters put online was already up there! See the videos below:

saint patrick's day

It's Today! Why?

The date of the feast is occasionally moved by church authorities when March 17th falls during Holy Week. This year Holy week starts on the 16th of March, thus the feast be celebrated today on the 15th. Next time March 17th falls during Holy Week is in 2160.

So now you know! Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

In other news, I've been here for 3 years now! There will be cake.

the game

RULE 1: You are playing The Game.
RULE 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
RULE 3: Loss must be announced.

The objective of The Game is to forget that it exists.

P.S. I lost.

asshole

Another Year, another trip to Clon, another year where nobody knows the right/correct/any rules of asshole. So I have decided I'd do some research.

Asshole is a card game first introduced by Seb. It is usually played once a year, at New Years and has been played for the last 6 years! Over those years the game has transformed into a hybrid of the original and a game of switch. I want to find the original rules we used so in 12 months time, we can have another argument about them. At least I'll have something that represents the original ones!

First stop, wikipedia. It has a page on the game. Its not so bad, the layout is a bit hard to read, it is an article about the game, not how to play it. So the search continued.

Google provided me with a load of pages with different variations of the game, all hard to read and understand. I tried to read through a few of them, they all mostly had the idea, but each was boring and didn't sound like I was getting the complete game. I then remembered one of the words from the original game and threw that into the search query: Waterfall!

I found the complete, concise and easiest to read rules of Asshole. These guys seem to have mastered the game after perfecting it after many attempts. It covers everything from the general rules & special cards to players rank & terms used! It is the closest thing I've found online to match the original game and it looks like it is fun to play too!

• Rules for playing Asshole - 87C Style

I'll be printing out a copy of this for next year.

year in review

Like last year, you take the first sentence from the first post for each month of the year. It gives you a summary of 2007!

January: So I put off this post for a while.

Febuary: I'm going to do a month by month review of my posts on the Team Geared Up Blog here on my blog... *

March: What I've been up to lately: A bit of house keeping, replacing Gurr with Grrr!

April: A new month, some new changed to the blog!

May: This Saturday is 24 Hours of Flickr.

June: Following up on the RSS in Plain English video, Common Craft have created a video explaining wikis!

July: Ever wonder what you might look like as a Simpsons chatater?

August: Mid-July Blogger rolled out a new feature: You can now specify a URL to which Blogger will redirect your feed's traffic!

September: Last week my Aunt received this letter from BSkyB or Sky about Sky+.

October: My RTÉ post got a lot of reaction.

November: Now that Hallowe'en is finished for the year, it has given everyone the all clear to start to talk about the C word.

December: I finally got around to scanning in the newspaper article from the Sunday Tribune about my post on RTÉ editing Wikipedia.

* Not going to use them as the first post each month, coz then this would be a page of links and boring!

tumblr

I've been trying out a TumbleLog for the last week or so and I like it. What are they:

To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.

It is basically any video, image or link I find amusing and want to share with the world. I'm not going to writing a post here about every silly video or funny picture I see, because then this blog would loose its perception of high quality and top class I've tricked you all into thinking it has!

So if you want cheap laughs and to see what I've been finding interesting online, you can check out my full rss enabled tumble log! Simply titled Darran.

http://darran.tumblr.com/

blogs in plain english

Another excellent Common Craft video. This time it's Blogs in Plain English!!



Click Play to watch!

learner drivers

A recap of the last few days:

Thursday
New rules are introduced for learner drivers, changing the system we currently have. The major chance would be that all second provisional license holders will now need to be accompanied for a full licensed driver from midnight Monday.
Excellent a shake up in the way things are done! About time!

Friday
The Gardaí say they would not be using their discretion on a case-by-case basis in relation to provisional drivers and would enforce the law as normal.
Our Minister for transport Mr. Dempsey also said on the news that the new laws will come into force as announced and went against the Gardaí by stating they will take a 'common sense' approach for 'two or three months' in relation to the short period in which some drivers will have to make new arrangements.
I'm getting mixed signals!

Saturday
Opposition politicians call for the minister to defer the introduction for six months saying that the government is out of touch with the conditions of ordinary people and the number of people who will be discommoded.
The opposition doing what they do!

Sunday
Minister Mr. Dempsey announced he was deferring the introduction of the accompanied driver provision until 30 June 2008. This gives the 122,000 people on their second provisional license plenty of time to apply for and sit their test, because they would now have it on demand.
Good for him, listening to the people!

Monday
The Driving Instructors Register say that they don't believe it is possible for all the drivers on their second provisional to pass the test before the end of June. This is might be because there is a failure rate of about 50%, the surge in applications in the last few days and the fact it isn't just second provisional license holders applying for the test.
Maybe the Minister and the Driving Instructors should of had a meeting?!

Tuesday
With the new rules/law in place, I guess it is business as usual...

For your Information:
Number of people on provisional licenses are as follows:
1st - 209, 253
2nd - 121,871
3rd - 31,792
4th - 25,076
5th or subsequent - 37,233
That's 94,101 who are gone past the 2nd provisional license stage!

Sources: rte.ie/news & rsa.ie

twitter bots

I've been busy the last few weeks creating some RTÉ twitter bots. They provide an individual twitter channel for all the RTÉ news feeds.

• RTÉ News
  
• RTÉ Business
  
• RTÉ Entertainment
  
• RTÉ Sport
  
• RTÉ GAA
  
• RTÉ Racing
  
• RTÉ Rugby
  
• RTÉ Soccer
  

I also got a Nob Nation Twitter feed going to update you with the latest sketches and direct links to the MP3's to listen to! twitter.com/NobNation

I was actually surprised that all the names had not been taken and I even managed to get twitter.com/rte! I was inspired by the excellent BBC breaknews bot and other feed bots from menti.net.

What other names/feeds need to be twitter'ized!?