Netflix Profiles

Netflix have added profiles to their service so that all 5 of us in the house can have our own profiles and can watch stuff without affecting each other (in terms of history or recommendations).

A great idea.

Obviously this worked right away on the web interface.

Imagine my surprise/delight when it started working a few days later on my Panasonic TV. Without me having to do anything. Genius!

It hasn't appeared on my Android phone yet (not that I use it for watching Netflix) but I know it's only a matter of time.

Kindle Paperwhite Case

I was lucky enough to receive a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas.

Recently I started bringing it to work on the train and I quickly decided that I needed a case to protect it.

After some searching on the web I decided on the Fintie Flip Folio case. One of the reviews is here.

Unfortunately I couldn't source it locally and Amazon.co.uk don't stock it (although Amazon.com do). The official Amazon cover from the former would have cost me over $36 euro.

In the end I bought it directly from the Fintie website (€13.57 plus shipping).

I'm very happy with it. I especially like the fact that the Kindle switches on and off automatically as you open/close the case.

Even though there's a range of colours, I chose the black version like the picture below.

Irish Referendum Naming

I mentioned in a recent post that I had written to Referendum Commission to give my opinion that using words like "Children" and "Stability" in the names of referendums was adversely affecting their ability to inform the Irish public impartially about the ins and outs of the issue.

The first response I got stated that:

• They have "no role in the naming of the proposed bills"
• I should instead contact the "sponsoring Departments".

Do I hear the sound of hands being washed?

I replied saying that "realistically speaking I am not going to contact the sponsoring Departments" and asking if "you could give the Departments guidelines/feedback to help them understand that they are making your job difficult/impossible by selecting names which may, in and of themselves, influence voters".

The reply I got was as follows:

"Unfortunately I cannot assist you further with this matter, however, I will forward your emails for further consideration by our relevant officials".

Definitely the sound of hands being washed!

The Casino and the Fry Model Railway

In May of last year I blogged about the fact that The Casino was to come into public ownership and to rescue the Fry Model Railway (which had left Malahide destined for Busáras). All thanks to the generosity of local benefactor Michéal Gaffney who left money in his will for this express purpose.

A leaflet come through our door today with the following update from the local TD:

• A purchase proposal has been made to the representatives of Mr Gaffney's estate
• Once approved, funding will be made available to Fingal County Council for the purchase and the development

So the wheels seems to be turning slowly but at least they are turning. Things still seem to be on target for "Summer 2014".

You can see a "virtual tour" of how the model railway looked in its old location at the Castle here.

Geisha Restaurant in Malahide

I was saddened when Cruzzo's restaurant closed at the end of 2011. It was a nice restaurant in a fantastic location. Popular, as this article says, for "christenings, birthdays and weddings" (not to mention Communions and Confirmations).

So it was nice to hear that Geisha opened there a short while ago and my wife and I went for a meal to see what it was all about.

The unfortunate truth is that we were not all that impressed.

There are a lot of restaurants in Malahide. And a lot of them are VERY good. So it is a competitive environment.

While the good was fine, Geisha falls down in a number of specific areas:

1. The menu is too small and too familiar
2. The waiting staff are not experienced enough and the service suffers as a consequence

The food seems to have a strong Thai inclination (something of a surprise given the name), which puts the restaurant head-to-head with Siam Thai. And Geisha suffers by the comparison, I'm afraid.

I'm afraid Geisha will not be around for very long.

Garinish Island, Glengarriff, Co Cork

We went to see the fabulous Garinish Island when we were on holiday in Kenmare last year.

I mentioned it in a blog post but I called it "Garnish Island".

Apparently that is an acceptable spelling but according to the OPW, who look after the island, the correct names are:

Irish:

Oileán na gCuileann, Garinis

English:

Illnaculin, Garinish Island

Here is my ticket from the visit:

Irish Referendum Commission

The role of the Referendum Commission is explained as follows on their website:

The role of the Referendum Commission is to explain the subject matter of referendum proposals, to promote public awareness of the referendum and to encourage the electorate to vote at the poll. The Commission is an independent body. Since 2001 the Commission no longer has the role of putting the arguments for and against referendum proposals.

It is my contention that they are failing in their duty to be impartial.

Here is a list of recent referendums in reverse chronological order:

• The Children Referendum
• Fiscal Stability Treaty
• Judge's Remuneration and Houses of the Oireachtas Inquiries 2011
• Lisbon Treaty 2009 
• Lisbon Treaty 2008 
• Irish Citizenship Treaty of Nice 2002

The older referendums had neutral names. The penultimate one had the word "stability" in it. This raises the question (which I discussed in a previous post) of who would vote against something as obviously good as stability. The referendum was approved.

The most recent one was even worse. Who in their right mind would vote against "Children". Again this referendum was approved.

I have written to the Commission to bring this to their attention. Hopefully we will see referendums with more neutral names in the future.

The next one is to be about the proposed abolition of Seanad Éireann. Perhaps they will call this one "The Get Rid of Those Useless Old Fogies in the Seanad Referendum".

Turbo C Memory-Resident Utilities, Screen I/O and Programming techniques by Al Stevens

My last post talked about Borland Sidekick and Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs.

In the late eighties I bought a book by Al Stevens which provides some of the information you would need to write your own version of Sidekick.

Specifically it dealt with writing programs which could generate on-screen windows (stacked, layered, etc,) and also how to create TSR programs.

I liked the book so much that I still have it after all these years. I learned a lot about writing C code from this book.

I searched on the web and I couldn't find an image for it so I scanned the front and back covers of my own copy and you can see them below.

I did see on the web that you can but the book from Amazon. The price which is printed on the back of the book is $24.99. One of the listings gave the condition as " Used - Very Good. Very nice Copy - almost no wear". The price quoted was $369.98 plus shipping!

So if anybody would like to send me $400 or so then I would be happy to give you my copy, which is also in very good condition!

Borland Sidekick

I mentioned Borland Sidekick in my last post. Sidekick was an early (1983) Personal Information Manager (PIM) application. It had a phonebook, a calendar, a notepad, a calculator and various other utilities.

The genius of sidekick was that you could access it instantly by holding down two keys on your keyboard: I liked to use the two shift keys.

This doesn't sound like much these days but you must remember that we are talking about the time of DOS, when you had to stop running one program if you wanted to run another one!

Sidekick's secret was that it was a "Terminate and Stay Resident" (TSR) program. So when you ran it, it appeared to finish and you were returned to the command prompt but it fact it was still running and could be brought up instantly using the 2-key combination.

I thought TSR programs were so cool. I got one of my team to write one which allowed us to send printouts to a printer in another building (and you could still use the PC attached to the printer for other things of course). I wrote one myself later when I worked in Lotus Development. It addressed a problem which Lotus Freelance had on some platforms.

I would include Sidekick in the list of the programs which influenced me most because it showed that PCs were not just "one thing at a time".

The 10 Most Influential Software Programs

A blogger took it upon himself to try to name the 10 most influential software programs ever.

Here is his list:

1. SABRE (IBM, 1964)
2. Maze War (1973)
3. Adventure (1975)
4. VisiCalc (VisiCorp, 1979)
5. WordStar (MicroPro, 1979)
6. Hypercard (Apple, 1987)
7. Photoshop (Adobe Systems, 1988)
8. Lotus Notes (IBM, 1989)
9. Mosaic (NCSA, 1993)
10. Minecraft (Mojang, 2009)

I think it's a really good list.

I am particularly impressed by his inclusion of Hypercard and Lotus Notes.

The omissions as I see it are:

• Sidekick (Borland, 1983)
• Turbo Pascal (Borland, 1983)
• PageMaker (Aldus, 1985)

PageMaker was the product that made companies want to buy a Mac. I was working in just such a company. I fell in love with the Macs, of course (I had an Apple II at home by then) and spent the rest of my time there trying (without success) to convince my manager than I should switch from an IBM clone to a Mac.

I discovered Hypercard on the Mac and (even though I only ever played with it) I thought was very exciting product with huge potential.

Turbo Pascal (which I never used although I did use Turbo Basic) brought tremendous innovation in the area of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE): the forerunner of today's Visual Studio and Eclipse.

People are Awesome

One of my recent posts showed how people can be lucky.

The video below shows how people can be awesome!

Bet you can't watch it without replaying some parts!

Bus Strike but you can't use the Bus Lanes

Dublin Bus have been on strike but the Department of Transport has let us all know that we CANNOT use the bus lanes.

During the bus strike in 2000 people WERE allowed to use the bus lanes.

The logic now is that the lanes must be kept free for taxis and private buses.

This is crazy. People are being forced to use their cars but they cannot avail of the bus lanes which are now even emptier than usual.

This backs up my theory that bus lanes were not created to make bus travel faster. They were created to make driving more annoying and so to drive people out of their cars.

The things that are annoying about bus lanes are:
1) They reduce the space available for other road users
2) They spend most of their time being empty
3) People are continuously driving up them and then cutting out in front of people who stay out of them

If bus lanes were intended to REALLY help the situation then people who are willing to car pool would have been allowed to use them years ago. But they're not - they're just there to annoy drivers.

Luckiest People 13 Video

I blogged about Part 12 of the "Luckiest People Compilation" previously.

Part 13 is available now and also has lots of WOW and OMG moments:

Blocking websites

I happened to try to access the Pirate Bay website the other day and I got the following message from my ISP here in Ireland:

This happened on foot of a High Court order in June to 6 ISPs ordering them to block access to the Pirate Bay. The action was taken by EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal.

I think this is very foolish for a number of reasons:

1) As I pointed out in a previous post, downloading is dying. People can get music and movies on demand from services such as Grooveshark and Netflix.

2) The Pirate Bay is just one Torrent site. There are many others.

3) Anyone who wishes to access the Pirate Bay can do a simple web search for a "pirate bay proxy" and can access it that way.

Starting to feel a bit like China around here.

And as usual the lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank.

Terminator Salvation

I re-watched Terminator 4 the other day. I thought I must have missed something the first time I watched it as I could remember almost nothing about it. I was wrong: it's simply that there is nothing worth remembering.

I think the main flaw is that the two stories (Marcus Wright/John Connor) are not woven together well. At some stages the movie would flick back to what was going on with John Connor and I would be surprised that he was still in the movie!

I read some reviews which rightly point out how surprising it is (given the legacy of the previous movies) that it lacks strong female characters.

All in all a bit of a damp squib.

The current IMDB ratings for the 4 movies are:
Terminator 1: 8.1
Terminator 2: 8.6
Terminator 3: 6.4
Terminator 4: 6.7

That's about right.

And I see that Arnie is working on a fifth movie! No mention of James Cameron unfortunately.

Casino Marino

My last few posts were about things to see in Dublin at at specific time of the year.

This is one about something you can see any time.

We went to see the Casino Marino few weeks ago.

This "little house" was built by James Caulfeild, the 1st Earl of Charlemont, in the late 1700s.

The building is lovely and the staff are very friendly and informative.

The weather was lovely the day we were there and we had a picnic in the grounds (something the staff encourage).

My favourite part of the story is about the tunnel that was used by servants to go back and forth to the main house so that the family and their guests would not have to see them. Different times indeed!

It's a little gem well worth seeing, slightly off the beaten track. A family ticket is only €8.

More information about location and opening hours is available here.

This is a photo my wife took inside the building:

Dublin Castle Sand Sculptures

In my last post I mentioned that we try to go into Dublin city every year to catch the Street Performance World Championship.

Another trip we have been doing for years (although we missed it last year for some reason) is to see the sand sculptures in Dublin Castle. It has been going on for 11 years apparently (there are photos on display going back to 2006).

The first 3 sculptures were to be finished today and the fourth between the 10th and 14th August.

The sculptures are to be demolished on the 29th so there is still plenty of time to see them as I write.

Congratulations to the Office of Public Works and Dublin Castle for sponsoring this event.

Here is a picture I took yesterday of the work in progress:

Street Performance World Championship 2013

Last year I blogged about the SPWC 2012. I mentioned what a great day (or two if you like) it is and that "Cirque No Problem" (whom we didn't see) had won. Well we went back in to Merrion Square again this year and again the weather was extremely kind.

Our favourite act (Mario - Queen of the Circus) was not present this year unfortunately.

We made a point of seeing Cirque No Problem and it is easy to see why they won last year. They are absolutely brilliant. We would have voted for them if we could (the winner from the previous year is not in the competition).

The other acts we saw were:

• Alakazam
• Senmaru
• Nigel Blackstorm
• The Chairmen (briefly)

I think Senmaru (whom we had seen a few years previously) is incredibly talented but I suspect that because he makes the (almost) impossible seem easy (and because he says "very easy" at the end of each piece!) that people do not realise just how impressive his act is.

Congratulations to Laya Healthcare for sponsoring such a great event.

Here is a clip of them performing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in last year's competition (we watched this from a better angle this year but unfortunately we didn't video it):

Last DVD purchases

Two of my recent posts have mentioned Bruce Lee and buying DVDs in Xtravision.

To pull these topics together somewhat, my last DVD purchases in Xtravision were:

• Game of Death
• The Big Boss
• Fist of Legend

I already own the following discs starring Bruce Lee:

• Fist of Fury (aka "The Chinese Connection")
• Enter the Dragon
• Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey

Fist of Legend, of course, is a Jet Li movie but it is also a remake of Fist of Fury.

So while these were my last DVD purchases, they will not be my last: obviously I still need to buy The Way of the Dragon to complete my Bruce Lee collection.

It is interesting to note, by the way, that IMDB include Game of Death in the list of movies for which Lee was the writer, producer and director, but not in the list of movies for which he was an actor. 

Xtravision closes in Malahide

I blogged some time ago about the HMV outlet in the Pavilions shopping centre closing and how the centre had lost a "creche for men".

Well, the Xtravision outlet in Malahide closed a few months ago and now the village has no creche for men either!

All my favourite shops are closing!

I didn't really rent movies from there very often: I did buy DVDs though.

I searched the Xtravision site just now and the closest outlet seems to be in Artane.

In fairness I can't really understand how any Xtravision outlets are remaining open. Services like Netflix are killing demand for renting and buying movies. Basically they are cheaper and more convenient.

Still, I will miss the shop.

Candy Crush Saga

I love and hate the game "Candy Crush Saga".

What I love is the game itself (I'm on level 53).

What I hate is the way it is constantly asking you for money!

A few simple examples:

• Before each level you have the option to buy "boosters" (with real money)
• At the end of each failed game you can pay for extra time
• Between certain levels you have to do one of three things to progress to the next level. One of these (which is free) and involves solving three more levels. But you have to wait 24 hours after completing one level before you can try the next level! And if you want to avoid the 24 hour delay then you have to pay!!

Google Play contains the following warning about this: 
"Please note Candy Crush Saga is completely free to play but some in-game items such as extra moves or lives will require payment. You can turn-off the payment feature by disabling in-app purchases in your device’s settings."

I think the number and nature of these incentives to pay is disgraceful. I hope everyone resists the temptation to buy these "in-game items".

Trevanian's Daughter

I have previously mentioned my favourite author and book: Shibumi by Trevanian (Rob Whitaker).

Whitaker's daughter Alexandra is also an author. Here is a link to her website.

Alexandra collaborated with Trevanian on his last 2 books: Incident at Twenty-Mile and Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street.

The really good news is that she is going to complete his unfinished work: Street of the Four Winds.

The only bad news (as a Trevanian fan) is that she seems to be working on another novel ("set in Spain") in the interim.

Hopefully we will see SOTFW before too long.

Sugar Ray Leonard talks about Bruce Lee

It amazes me to realise that I have not blogged about Bruce Lee to date.

Bruce Lee was the most amazing martial arts star of all time. He may never be matched.

Here is a clip from YouTube of Sugar Ray Leonard (another hero of mine whom I have mentioned previously) speaking highly of Bruce:

Master versus Students

In my last post, I had a link to a video which shows what I believe to be the genuine superiority of a master over his students.

The video below shows something else.

It shows how unintended collaboration between master and students can lead a master to believe that he has powers which he does not.

This particular "master" has a rude awakening when he comes up against an opponent who is not a believer.

The quality of the video is poor but still worth seeing:

Kyuzo Mifune - Judo Master

I happened upon the video below while surfing on YouTube one day.

Kyuzo Mifune (who was a 10th Dan at the time the video was taken apparently) fights a series of 7 much younger opponents ranked between 6th and 8th dan.

In each case he allows the opponent to try to throw him at least once before he finished the bout.

The way he avoids being thrown is so brilliant that it made me laugh-out-loud!

The man was a genius.

Apparently the video was made in 1948 and Mifune was 73 years old (although I find it impossible to reconcile these two facts with the report on Wikipedia that he was born in 1883). But his age certainly makes his performance all the more amazing.

The full video is available here.