It looks like they found what was left of the idiot priest who was blown out to sea when doing a balloon and deckchair stunt in Brazil. He is was an idiot as although he brought a GPS unit to identify his position in an emergency, he had no idea how to use it. Safety equipment you can’t operate is pretty pointless.

Laura and I are helping bring a boat from Dublin to Cork in a few weeks. The owner has been clear that he wants us down there an hour before to go through things like the locations and operation of the flares and liferaft. You need to know before, not be trying to figure it out in an emergency.

If you are buying me presents remember Hairy Baby

or how about:

Maybe:

There are loads more there

Very worrying development this morning. My SAS flight back into Dublin pulled up at pier D. My heart sank when I saw this. I am sure that this part of the airport is actually in County Meath. There was no airbridge either so they made us cross the tarmac in the rain. And to add to the fun the imbeciles told us to stop (in the rain) while they brought other passengers out of the terminal. If they weren’t finished boarding the other plane then we should have been left on our dry one. And being terminal D there was a huge queue for passport control and even after that delay it took over 20 minutes for them to start the belt to get us our bags.

My problems didn’t start in Dublin either. I had to explain to some idiot in Stockholm that he was in my seat on the plane. The concept of window and aisle seemed to be a bit beyond him. And as it is summer in Sweden they are busy with roadworks and related road closures that meant my taxi to the train station had to travel all over the city for sport.

You can live with any one of these issues, but when they keep coming at you they wear you down. I just want to go home…

Nice post on Gizmodo about changing the SSID on your wifi network to scare the neightbours. A load of our neighbours are all on default settings. I think we have three that have “Eircom” in the name. These would be better:

• YourDaughterIsAWhore
• KeepThatNoiseDown
• ThosePeopleIn32LookLikeTerrorists
• ThatLawnChairIsSoAwful
• YourWifeCheats
• FreePornography
• IHaveYourMail
• IPoisonedYourDog
• IPoisonedYourKid
• YourPriusSucks
• GetYourOwnDSLCheapskate
• MyNetworkIsLockedJackass
• ISawYouNaked

Interestingly while all my neighbours (and our house) keep the network secured, my sister in law from New York said most people there don’t bother with WiFi security. They are happy with their neighbours jumping onto their network connections. Is that a lack of awareness of security, or a well developed one, or is it a better standard of community than we have?

I have been a bit depressed since the Lisbon vote debacle. The only sunshine to the whole thing is that no one here in Sweden has been hassling me about what happend in Ireland.

I was cheered a little bit when I read this story from the BBC about the 28 candidates running in the Haltemprice and Howden by election. This is the one triggered by David Davis’ principled, if odd, resignation.

The list shows that we have no monoply of nut-jobs who want their voices heard on the political stage. There is everything from the far right to the far left loonies here, with all shades in between. No sign of the Natural Law Party though. Elections haven’t been the same since the yogic flyers left the political stage. Instead we just have the usual boring policies of

• The Evangelical George Hargreaves of the Christian party who’s main concern is with the European Union, which he says will “imprison the whole nation for 42 years or more”
• Gemma Garrett of the Miss Great Britain party who pledges to make politics “sexy and not sleazy”
• Christopher Foren who wants to “sustain the UK’s population level by allowing only as many people to come to the country as the number who leave it.”

As well as candidates who are dedicated to fighting the smoking ban, tackling mass immigration, returing to British values, etc. etc.

For real variety there is the not so boring David Bishop of the Church of the Militant Elvis Party who:

wants to overthrow the capitalist state, which he blames for turning the singer Elvis Presley into a “fat media joke”

The crackpots we have that think the EU is about legalising abortion, prostitution, hard drugs and euthanasia (which I would have voted for in a flash mind you! ) seem mild in comparison.

Yeah, I am obsessing here, but so what? This is my site, I can post what I want

Mobile computer has comparisons between the EEE PC 901, the MSI Wind, and the Aspire One.

Despite my earlier reaving about the EEE I am a little unsure of which one to go for. The EEE wins on size of track pad (the multi-touch is nice) and cleans up on the battery life. The Wind has bigger storage, and a better keyboard, but shitty battery life unless you are prepared to shell out for a 6 cell battery later.

What to do, what to do…

So today is July 1st, and the EEE PC 901 is being launched in this part of the world. Having waited for the bigger screen (8.9″) and better processor (Atom), I had to hum and haw as MSI gave the 901 a run for it’s money. But the clincher is the battery life.

Except no one seems to be stocking the bloody thing. I have checked Elara, Expansys, Komplett, Dabs, Laptops Direct (end of July, hah!) even Amazon without success.

I want, I want, I want, but no one seems to have!

At the weekend Laura and I were discussing the changes to driving laws that kick in today. Holders of a second “Learner Permit” can no longer drive unaccompanied. And to mark this change the Guards are going to be stricter about enforcing the existing rules (not before time says I).

What were weren’t clear on though is what the sanctions are for someone who is caught driving unaccompanied. They can’t get penalty points as they are not licenced to drive. They can be fined. Will the Guards be able to seize their car on the spot as they are not supposed to be driving it?

Does anyone know what is likely to happen to such a driver?

Back in May I was in the Central Criminal Court, and was nearly selected to do Jury Duty in a very interesting case. Everyone I have mentioned this to knows the case, it is the one about the Clare woman who is supposed to have sourced a hitman over the internet to kill her partner, and the guy (who turned out to be an Egyptian working as a card dealer in a Las Vagas casino) ended up approaching his targets asking for €100,000 not to kill them. Anyway, at the time I throught I would love to serve as a juror for this one, the case of a lifetime. But as the case has dragged on, and on, I am not so sure.

The judge at the time said this one was scheduled to last 4 weeks, but he expected it to run to the end of June. Today’s reports are that the prosecution case is only just conculuding! It looks like this one has a few weeks left in it. No wonder that I saw in the newspaper report last week that the Jury were looking bored and listless.

I might have been quite lucky not to get my wish to serve on this one.

The Irish Times has a story about a fake Garda car being used in Kildare to “encourage” motorists to slow down. I think this is a great idea (and one I had years ago).

Who hasn’t see a white car pulled in at the side of the road and instinctively checked their speedo as they slow down?

Hiding real Guards in the fake car would be a nasty tactic as well.