Bone. Thrown. Our. Way.

To those of you dismayed, like myself, by the news that 3 UK is to abandon is '3 Like Home' policy, you may be pleased by the intelligence, recently received by SMS, that you may terminate your contract early and without penalty, if the new arrangement doesn't suit you. In my case, that is exactly what I wanted to hear and what I expected to hear.

PS3

The wonderful PS3 has had a firmware update again today, this time to v2.76. No great new features, but continuing to be as solid as a rock and we edge ever closer to v3.0.

Eating out in Dublin: Two

I was intrigued to be taken to lunch on the top floor of Marks&Spencer the other day on Grafton Street in Dublin. It was a lovely day and I was a bit miffed not to be eating outside, as I thought, but I need not have worried. M&S have a lovely restaurant on the top floor, with an outside section on the roof.

It affords the diner a brand-new view of this wellworn street and was utterly delighftul in the hot midday sun.

Grub? Spot on, as you might imagine. 12€50 gets you a main course, glass of wine and dessert, which is not bad on one of the world's most expensive pieces of real-estate. With coffee, the bill for two was less than 30€, which is more than acceptable. Treise libh!

Eating Out in Dublin: One

There were several days of eating in various establishments In Dublin earlier this week, a few of which were new to me and surprisingly affordable and pleasant. I decided to check out Star Trek on my last evening and owing to the location of the fine cinema, in Dublin's shabby Parnell area, I elected to check out one of the mildly-reputed ethnic restaurants on Parnell Street itself or at least see if such existed.

Chance and time remaining deemed that to be the Mandarin House at 179 Parnell Street: I had a good feeling on entry -the place was clean, the staff supremely welcoming and a quick glance outside revealed the menu to be full of surprising and unusual dishes.

And so it proved: tasty and prepared-to-order dishes, copious and generous. The menu is divided into real food for Chinese diners, Thai food and, at the back, Chinese food for white folks. We ate off the 'real-Chinese section', a mighty feast of 7-spiced beef, roast aubergine in garlic sauce, Hong Kong crispy duck on the bone, Noodles with shredded pork, Yangchai (sic) fried rice washed down with two beers and 1 bottle of wine. 75€ for three.

We'll be back. Maybe next time I'll try the "Husband and Wife sliced lung".

See some other opinions here: http://www.menupages.ie/restaurants/mandarin_house.aspx

We're all going on a Summer Holiday

The news I blogged about earlier this week where 3UK have decided to abandon their wonderful '3 Like Home' facility, a great boon to travellers in Ireland, as been offset by some apposite news from rival Vodafone UK. While only on offer for the summer, it's not too shabby and should prove useful. Shame it doesn't include data.

Have a gander here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/may/14/vodafone-roaming-holiday

More 3 UK News....this time it's a disaster

3 UK have just decided to withdraw their excellent facility 3 Like home, from the 30th of June. This is without doubt a major disaster and had I known of this upcoming change, I would never have resigned with them recently. For anyone travelling between the two jurisdictions in Ireland it has been a major boon and this news is scarcely credible.

I will be expressing my dissatisfaction as soon as is possible and leaving the network at my earliest opportunity.

Portadown on Edge

What has happened to the powerful old 3G signal from 3UK which used to reign in Portadown Station and environs? Over the past few weeks all I can get is a cruddy Edge signal (and sometimes only GPRS) which make doing interesting things on the MacBook, including updating this blog a chore, nay impossible.

We'll continue closer to Newry.

20 minutes or so later and here I am in Newry; great 3G signal here which will continue to Dundalk. There the handover to 3 Ireland will happen which will have the effect of increasing my speed by about 50%.

Yowza.

The Apprentice and the Zim

is desperately hoping that Ben "Ben" bin Ben gets his marching orders in The Apprentice tonight, the smug, sleekit, useless son of an auctioneer. Inch'allah.

Anyway, back in Dublin, Mr Robert Zimmermann surprised everyone by debuting "If You Ever go to Houston" from his new album last night, at the O2. Live reports I'm getting right now from tonight's gig is that it is uniformly excellent, with a delightful setlist. Good old Bob, currently Number One in the UK and USA, as well as several other territories. Furthermore, seems I was quite wrong when I said that he was no longer much of a concert proposition. Still, you have to be there.

Test

Just seeing if I can update from my iPhone.

Ríomhphost eile ón iPhone! Ar luas na gaoithe.

Bob Dylan

I very nearly left for Dublin and Bob Dylan at the O2 in Dublin tonight but it simply wasn't possible to get the tickets (offered to me) which were in Galway, to Dublin in time for me to pick them up. This is because of the global crisis which in turn has led to Iarnród Éireann withdrawing its Fastrack facility. And so the tickets remain in Galway and useless.

Then again, Mr Dylan, as admirable as his workload may be, is not really an attractive concert propostion,

Wet Day

I made my way home having wandered aimlessly round Belfast on a ghastly day in May, replete with rain and 0870 numbers. Oh for the confines of home cinema. Couldn't even be bothered listening to music, despite the advantages of being an iPhone owner with decent headphones. Ratz. Hope tomorrow isn't as crummy. Now to watch Cloverfield.

Ping.FM Ping!

Good Lord, am mesmerised by the possibilities of PingFM....so much that it's keeping me up. Updating a load of my nets by SMS. Such jolly fun! And such a splendid use of the unlimited 'texts' afforded me my the boys and girls at Vodafone UK.

Deep in the heart of Testing!

Is testy, testy, very very testy!

Crap sort of day with added crap

A day of utter crap today punctuated by 0870 numbers -which should be banned - then multiple-choice options within multiple-choice options, passed from one bored script-reading customer "service" johnny to another who insisted on the same details time after time after time.....yet, after 7 calls and 2 emails to TalkTalk UK and 4 to Vodafone UK, nothing was resolved and I got absolutely nowhere. Dreadful nonsense. Must be stopped.

One spot of balm in Gilead: Facebook can now be updated by SMS. Nifty.

Fáilte

Welcome/Fáilte to my new blog. It's not my first time to do something similar but my best intentions have always come to aught owing to unforeseen circumstances -loss of data, servers falling over, burglars, ne'er-do-wells and other minor irritations. 

I'll try and give this one more of a lash.

It's a quiet Sunday, so not a lot to blog home about. Should you wish, you can listen to my radio show every Friday night on the interweb and at other times through some playback/podcast-mullarkey. I'll stick the links up real soon.