nct

My car is due its NCT on Wednesday morning. I had a look at the NCT website and they publish their test stats, showing how many tests took place and the pass rate. What I found really interesting was that it doesn't change from one year to the next. Take a look at the graph I did comparing their data and the consistency between years:

I have about exactly 51% chance of passing first time. If I fail, I will have about exactly 90% chance of passing.
It will be interesting on Wednesday if I am in the lucky 51% or the unlucky 48% (±1%)

open letter to o2

Dear O2 Ireland,

I'm a long time customer of Vodafone, for at least the last 9 years. I've also only had 1 brand of phone, Nokia. I have been a loyal customer to both companies.

Now since you got your monopoly on the iPhone here in Paddy taxed Ireland, and I really want one, the only option for me is to abandon the two companies that have served me well for the last decade.

For the last 2 out of the 11 weeks that the new iPhone has been on sale I have been checking your website for the opportunity to purchase one. Needless to say I haven't been able to as you know well, they are all sold out.

I don't want to hear your beef with Apple and their supply, I do know they are mighty pissed with your rediclous tariffs too and there is no one to blame for that. And I am aware that you will be changing them after Christmas, after all how can Apple target business accounts when faced with the options, a Blackberry easily out matches an iPhone on value!

You have me, a customer who is willing to abandon ship and move networks for something you fought hard to gain exclusive rights to (did ye really have to work so hard on this considering the deal was in the bag once O2 UK got it). Yet, after 11 weeks with the phone on the market, I'm here writing this letter explaining my frustration.

From Wednesday, if there is not any news on your website (last updated nearly 2 weeks ago) I will have no choice but to try and buy an iPhone online, get it unlocked and stay with Vodafone for several more years.

If you loose potential customers like me one at a time and don't care if you do. I guess I'll be glad I join your Company. Hopefully that's not the case..

Kind Regards,

Darran :-)

P.S. I know I won't hear anything from you on this.. but wouldn't it be nice if someone dropped me an email..

title

Holy Snapping Duck Do! I just checked and I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died... You would not believe the fairy dust I have to clean up. I'm a blogger so I will though!.

I am not going to post now with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, watching the grass grow, just generally being asleep, dreaming and chancing to society in general, my day is passing in a blur from mid-morning to sun down and beyond. I am looking at rectifying this. I need some perspective.

I won't promise anything to you but I will make more of an effort to blog more often until the nice men in the white coats come back. Until I need your shoulder to cry on. Don't hold your breath though, you're likely to turn blue..

(via The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator)

twitter stuff

Some interesting things happening with twitter and other services for it in the last few weeks!

Last week I had a problem, As I was a new UCC Student I didn't know where exactly I was supposed to go for one of my exams. I put to the question out on Twitter, and within an hour or so I've got 2 replies! They didn't see my question thru Twitter, but on my Facebook status! So there you go. Twitter solves problems!



Another cool tool is Twitterfone. Call a local number, say your tweet and a few minutes later it's updated your status! Haven't used it much yet, as no disposable (or any) income to me making phone calls just to update twitter, but in the future I'm sure I will!



Tweetshots, as you can see from the two images above takes someones tweet and turns it into a image and they even give you the option to publish it to your Tumblr or embed it into a post!

And finally, search twitter has gotten way better with Summize. This is a real time search of the twitter, that actually tell you when there is new results and you should reload!

Follow me @darran

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!

stumbed

Funny Signs - Stumbling
Originally uploaded by luckybuttons76

I've been Stumbled apparently? So I just want to say welcome to all you stumblers out there. I hope you did hurt yourselves!! (Get it?!) And if that wasn't a good enough excuse to hit the button again, I guess you want to stay and have a look around. It's not much, my Life, the Universe and Everything. It's your basic blog! Enjoy :-)

ultimate gadget: n95

Todays Science Week Ireland Question:

What’s the next gadget that you want to buy?

It has to be the Nokia N95. It is Nokia's flagship smart phone that as so many thing including:

• Integrated GPS navigation
• Installed Maps application covering over 100 countries.
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• 2 megapixels more than my current camera.
• Multimedia player
• MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, M4A and Realplayer.
  
• WLAN Wi-Fi
• That's right, surf the Internet over WiFi!

So what about price. You can get it on Vodafone Ready to Go for €599 with €80 call credit, so really only €519. What if you were going to buy all these other devices individually?

• For the quad band, 3g smart phone with all the bells and whistles this one has like bluetooth and wireless Internet access, you will be paying about €250 at least and that is a low guess.
• A 5 megapixel point and shoot camera with the Carl Zeiss optics will be about €200.
• As for the multimedia player, the phone supports up to a 2GB microSD card, and you get a 1GB one with Vodafone. A 1GB iPod shuffle will knock you €79 and that doesn't even include video playback or the FM radio Nokia squeezed in there!
• Then there is the GPS navigation. The crown jewel in the phone! A stand alone version of this would be about €300, and this phone isn't like those stand alone ones, you can install whatever software you want! If you don't like the mapping system they use, get another one! You can't do that with your tom tom's what whatever!

So to add all that up; €250 (phone) + €200 (camera) €79 (basic mp3 player) + €300 (GPS) = €829

You get all this in one device for €519. So that is the device I would want to buy next!

Then again, you could always just wait for the next big thing from Nokia, but won't there be something after that too?

free tripit tshirt

I got an email today from Tripit!

Since words cannot express our full gratitude for all your support and feedback, we're offering the early beta testers of TripIt a free TripIt T-Shirt...sure to be a collector's item.

Yay me!

jamboreeing

This week I'm off to Jiingijamborii, the Swedish national Jamboree and their dry run for the next World Jamboree in 2011! I'll be helping out on the Information Stands and giving tours! I'm their native English speaker! So not sure about connections and blog posts while I'm there. If there is any wireless Access to be found I will be updating Twitter! I had added the New Twitter Badge to my side bar for those of you who just visit the website and have no idea what a Twitter is!



I'm then flying from there to London on the 24th of July for the World Scout Jamboree. I'm a KISC Bitch there. Again if I do have access, I will Twitter some Updates! Oh! I may also have a UK Sim :-) so I could cheaply update Twitter via txt!

But I'm sure there will be posts on both these topics in future!

Take it easy and Enjoy the Summer or whatever this time of year is supposed to be called. Talk to ya in August!

pop up tent

With the Scouts off to Switzerland next week, we needed a new tent for one of our leaders. I couldn't help but suggest and eventually tracked down a nice new pop up tent! It is pretty sweet and yes, its it does pop up once you open it. It took me a while to get the hang of folding it up again, with several attempts ending up with a complete pitched tent again!

Have a look at the video here

next purchase

I have decided I need a new camera. My old one, dating back to the late 2003 is grand and all, but I need something with a bit more... umph!

Mind you my HP Photosmart 735 has done good these last 2 ½ years. Back in the day it wasn't too shabby at all, and i got it at a nice price as well, under €€200 if i can remember. The one bad thing about it is the battery life, but i got over that fairly fast by buying rechargeable ones! Duh!

Any ideas?

5g ipod

Yup, Apple have just announced their new iPod. The 5th Generation or iPod Video...
Its thinner than the old 4G iPod Photo/Colour, comes in 60GB or 30GB and yup, as you gathered from the name above, it plays video as well!!

I have been doing my home work, as I'm interested in getting one, and up until I heard there was a big announcement from Apple today, I was going for the Nano... except for those bloody scratches!! So I was looking on their website, and checking prices... I found it interesting the Big difference in price from one country to the other. I got the prices in their own currency and just converted it to Euro:
If I don't have one by Christmas, I'm going to get one shipped to Kandersteg and pick it up over new years! But can I wait??

ipod nano

My Birthday is coming up... *cough*... and I was wondering what I wanted!! I don't think I want a PSP, as my Laptop and Xbox does everything that does. So I was thinking should I take the plunge and get me an iPod? I was going to wait until my Ski trip to Andorra and see if I could get a good one for a good price there! But can I wait...?

There is also the fact of these reports that the face easily gets scratched. I rang Apple today (nice free phone number) and was speaking to American Nancy!! And she was all helpful... telling me that yes, Apple have admitted that some screens crack and easily scratch. But she also said that they would repair or replace any of them if they do scratch. That's nice to know.
Oh... my battery also might go kerr-put in month 11 of my warranty as well... just a heads up Apple :oP

Anyway, I don't know what to do yet... or what to get for my Birthday... hummm...

willy jackson

Or is it Michael Wonka? Either way, Willy Wonka in the remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is very similar to the King of Pop, Mr. Jackson!

Whatever Depp or Burton were on when they came up, I wonder if you had this in mind!!!


But looking back at the original, Wonka always seemed to me like he was the guy, who knew everything about everyone!! Maybe its just the back story you see in the new one, but Wonka seems more human and weaker... Is that good?

the world you live in...

sorry in a sense

Ok, I'm kinda sorry for posting that last post. Don't get me wrong that I was annoyed at those two jerks. I still am. Common!! Is that your life, that brief encounter with me, granted it wasn't that brief, has labeled you as a jerk, an asshole, a prick etc...
I am sorry for going on about it, if you did even read the whole post, well done... I wouldn't of... I could have edited it and fixed the grammar mistakes etc, but I'm not going to. That's life, too short to be looking back...

We must move forward,
not backward,
upward not forward,
and always twirling,
twirling,
twirling towards freedom.

psst

sussshhh, don't tell anyone but i'm a closet past-blogger...

the real start

This is where it all really began on this site! I have signed up for this blog for ages, but never used it! So lets start now!!
I hope to put all my log KISC logs up here soon and some pictures. I also want to put up a load of pictures from ski trips, last summer and other general things that I feel the world needs to know and see!
Enjoy it you crazy person for looking at this!
P.S. Don't let anyone know this is where it starts :oP