Got my Huge Hammock set up !
Just got this bad boy delivered and setup in my back garden, roll on the summer weather !
Extra Large Hammock and Stand (460045)
Good day for Eircom … Bad Day for Eircom Employees
29th May 2007 - Eircom announces €240m group operating profit
30th May 2007 - Eircom announces the cutting of 900 Jobs
Ireland to become major worldwide producer of Oil & Gas ?
A report in today ’s Newspaper has claimed that the amount of natural resources off the west coast of Ireland could rival some of the world’s largest oil production locations. An estimate €450billion in Oil alone is thought to be there.
If and when these Oil fields begin yielding and profits are paying tax at the 25% margin, this will be an enormous boost to the Irish Economy. Reduced National debt, improved infrastructure and health services will probably be the expected investments for these new taxes. Then who knows what will happen in the future, Kerry to become the next Dubai ?!
Lets just hope Ireland never gets accused of having WMD’s !
Ireland on the verge of an oil and gas bonanza - Independent.ie
Irish Rail and terrible Customer Service
- It was Good Friday and I was heading for the Train at 11:53 (Assuming a Sunday Service)
- When I got to Coolmine the barriers were already down
- I had to run up onto the City-Bound platform through the gate on my side.
- The train arrived at 11:50 (Saturday service was running), which did not afford me time to get across to the ticket booth to buy a ticket
- On arrival in Connolly I was heading to Belfast on the 13:20 service
- Instead of merely walking straight to Platform 1, as others were doing, I tried to do the honest thing and buy a ticket for the completed journey.
- I was greeted with incredible hostility from a Scottish gentleman at the ticket desk, who refused to allow me to purchase a ticket
- The Scottish gentleman then proceed to display great joy in imposing the fine in a heavy-handed manner
- When I asked what I could have done I was rudely told “Got to the station earlier”
- When I pointed out that I was just trying to do the honest thing I was told “Not my problem”
- I was once late for a train before (Friday March 9th @ 20:00) and I was able to buy a ticket at the same desk in Connolly station without any issue.
- When I asked other members of staff afterwards, they were shocked at the Scottish Gentleman’s lack of understanding.
Boo.com Return’s
One of the all-time examples of dot-com crash & burns has re-launched, but in a different guise - This time as a travel website.
The site looks good, but I have to wonder why this domain name was used ?
Is it simply a case of a famous domain name, and may attract visitiors out of curiosity?
Best of luck to them anyway.
boo.com - a new type of travel site that’s all about you!
Parsing XML without an Internet connection
I came across this hand bit of Java to allow you to parse XML while behind a restrictive firewall or without any internet connection at all. Previously, reading the DTD was causing java.net.UnknownHostException’s, the updated code stops the parser from trying to connect to the Internet to download the DTD.
DocumentBuilderFactory docBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder docBuilder = docBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
//Here is the new code….
docBuilder.setEntityResolver( new EntityResolver() {
public InputSource resolveEntity(String publicId, String systemId)
throws SAXException, IOException {
return new InputSource(
new ByteArrayInputStream( ““.getBytes()));
}
} );
document = docBuilder.parse(xmlFile);