Cabaals Blog

Data charges on Meteor PAYG

2008-08-26T14:09:00.003+01:00

So I've been with Meteor for about two years now but recently got hold of a 2G iPhone but up until now Meteor on Pay As You Go had no data bundles and each kB was charged at 2c, so just to load the front page of boards.ie could cost 4 euro!!

So today I noticed Meteor PAYG have introduced a 50MB data bundle for 99c a day which they only charge once you go over the first 2kB, not bad!

Not the best bargain in the world but it makes my iPhone usable on edge now :)

Going Green: food digesture - Part 2

2008-08-25T21:25:00.004+01:00

You may all remember awhile ago I posted about a food digesture I installed in my garden, well with all the bad weather and due to poor soil drainage the digesture started to fill with water upto 1ft+ deep.

As the greencone stops working when it fills with this much water this is very bad! So I had to do some re-engineering work on it to solve the problem.

First off I've learned the greencone does a very good job and not smelling because when I dug it out it smelled awful but as soon as it was buried again it was fine and even if you stood within 6 inches of it you wouldn't smell a thing once the lid is closed.

So after a days work, lots of gravel and new clay as well as wooden pegs I've come up with this....

I'll keep you all posted on how the new design works out.

[UPDATE]:Photo now included on the greencone.com website.

RTE seeking news editor with Junior Cert geography

2008-08-08T12:32:00.005+01:00

RTE.ie/news posted this latest classic fuck up, its nice to know their employing a person who failed Junior Cert Geography, seems they now need somebody with at least a C in Ordinary Junior Cert Geography :)

[Note: Map of America used despite story relates to a country beside Russia]

They've since updated and corrected the story in question

Going Green: food digesture

2008-08-03T01:29:00.008+01:00

So awhile back I posted regarding my recent purchase of a efergy electricity monitor which I'm hoping to use to keep an eye on whats using power and making me conscious of costs. So far so well with this device but since I have a garden in the house which is something I didn't have in my flat I wanted to go more green when it comes to my rubbish.

In the area we have two company's that will collect recycled items (paper, plastic etc) and non-recyclable items such as plastic wrap etc but I've found that while we have little to no non-recyclable items we have so far ended up getting rid of what we have pretty quickly as it starts to smell.

Well the reason for this is of course food and unfortunately with a normal food composters you can't put meat and cook food into it as its not designed for such things, so with this in mind I did abit of re-search and came up with a Green Cone food digesture.

The green cone takes meat, fish, bread, bone etc and uses bacteria and worms to break down the food into water etc so its re-absorbed by the ground around it, I just spent yesterday digging the hole required for it and its all good to go now...its a pretty big hole considering the large black basket MUST be fully buried for the green cone to work.

So here's some photos of before, during and after installation of the cone, I'll keep you all posted on how I get on using it.

All going well it should reduce costs and help the environment..big thanks to eco shop for the fantastic service getting the green cone to me in 24hrs!

UTV Upgraded to 3MB

2008-08-01T09:53:00.003+01:00

Due to Eircom Wholesales recent speed upgrades to upto 7.6MB my line was upgraded to 3MB last weekend :)

DownStream Connection Speed 3072 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 384 kbps

Down Up
Line Attenuation 16 db 4 db
Noise Margin 27 db 19 db

Not bad :)

Father branded as pervert for taking photos of his kids

2008-07-18T11:25:00.004+01:00

I normally don't read the trash "paper" that is the Daily Mail, however I was browsing the News & Media forum on Boards.ie and came across this interesting Daily Mail story regarding a father who was abused by other parents because he was taking pictuires of his two children while in the park.

While there is no laws restricting a member of the public from taking photos in a public place it seems some people seem to believe they have the right to restrict somebody from taking pictures of their own children because they fear he or she will take photos of their children.

Below is a bit from the story:

He said: ‘The children wanted to go on an inflatable slide and I started taking photos of them having a good time. Moments later the woman running the slide told me to stop.

‘When I asked why, she told me I could not take pictures of other people’s children. I explained I was only interested in taking photos of my own children and pointed out that this was taking place in a public park.

‘I showed her the photos I had taken to prove my point. Then another woman joined in and said her child was also on the slide and did not want me taking pictures of the youngster.

‘I repeated that the only people being photographed were my own children. She said I could be taking pictures of just any child to put on the internet and called me a pervert. We immediately left the show.’

Complete madness if you ask me!

Going Green: Energy Monitoring

2008-07-14T16:19:00.006+01:00

So myself and the fiancee recently moved into our new house and in a effort to save money in these hard times and help the environment I decided energy saving lightbulbs were the best way forward for the majority of the house.

While initially I would have loved to get solar panels the initial outlay cost was too great so I had to abandon the idea, anyway I looked into other methods to help save money and monitor costs.

One solution was a Efergy Electricity monitor, it cost me about 60e and took about 5min to setup with no wiring etc. I've been using it about a week now and I have to see its interesting to see what everything uses.

for example:
1 60W CFL bulb uses 3 times less power then a 40W standard bulb or I've found the 3 spotlights in our downstairs hallway uses more power then my computer (monitor, computer unit and 4 external drives combined).

Its a cheap and easy way to watch what you use and I'd recommend it to anyone, you'd be surprised what everything uses.

so far so good with UTV ADSL

2008-07-09T21:37:00.003+01:00

So I got my username and password from UTV and setup my ADSL router when I got home but because I'm moving into a new house I haven't had much spare time on the net lately.

All is well and line is operating pretty good, pings are not as good as what I got with my old BT Business line or NTL 3MB service and of course as its a 2MB line its not as good as my old 3MB NTL connection but its a sight better then the 1MB connection I've been using the past 2 months on a temp basis.

Speed tests results ok too (see above), another benefit over other DSL providers is when using UTV's Northern Ireland proxy server on a UTV connection you can use BBC iPlayer which is very handy :)

Broadband enabled!

2008-06-30T12:37:00.000+01:00

So during the weekend I connected up my ADSL router and noticed that my router was showing sync at 2MB/256K with pretty healthy looking noise margins so all looking good, unfortunately UTV support were closed Saturday & Sunday so I couldn't call them for my username & password.

I gave them a quick ring today and they said they hadn't received notification from Eircom yet that the service was active yet however they put me on hold then came back and advised it was and gave me my username & password and also e-mailed me the details, so far so good...I'll test it out this evening.

First Google Adsense Payment!

2008-06-25T12:41:00.004+01:00

Finally I've reached $100 on my Google Adsense account and I will now get my first payment! I signed up for Google Adsense back in October 2007 and placed a number of adverts on a number of sites I host from the 1st November 2007, since then I've slowly watched the cents role in.

I've found the advert banners on the top of pages to be the most successful and the search box which you can see on this site hasn't earned me 1c all this time :(

None the less its money I wouldn't have made otherwise and it helps pay for my hosting package for all my sites which is good, it only took 116,492 Page impressions and 802 clicks. I guess I could improve on those click percentages by better advert placement any suggestions welcome.

Lets hope the next $100 doesn't take as long :)

Line test passed!!!

2008-06-20T14:52:00.003+01:00

So got an e-mail from Eircom today saying my account has been created and in the e-mail I got my new telephone number and eircom a/c number, I called somebody in my house and got them to connect a phone and sure enough it rings out!

So quick check on Eircom website shows line test passing for Broadband so another quick visit to UTV website confirms this also so I've placed my order for UTV Broadband 2MB Bundled, got confirmation e-mail from UTV just now and its due live in 10 working days!

Fingers crossed! :)

Broadband Saga: Getting a telephone line...

2008-06-18T21:46:00.012+01:00

So here we are again back to the start of what historically has been extremely painful, those that know me know that I've recently bought myself a house and that I've moved out of my apartment.

Well as part of the usual moving of stuff I now have to get myself a new broadband provider as I can't get NTL in the town I'm now going to be living in and its pretty limited provider wise in the area its basically an unknown wireless provider or a ADSL provider who operates one of Eircom Wholesales resold bit-stream products.

After much reviewing of websites I have decided to go with UTV's bundled 2MB package which includes a "unlimited" option for 5e extra a month so I won't be restricted by set caps that other providers like Eircom, BT or Perlico offer and overall it works out decent enough value at a total cost of 55e per month for phone & Broadband.

So as part of this move I've once again had to get myself an Eircom phone line, those that know me will know I've gone through this saga THREE times before and they I really hate Eircon..sorry Eircom at this stage.

The first time Eircom kept sending the bills to somebody else's address so it took me 3-4 months to get my a/c number as Eircom flat out refused to give it to me over the phone, fax it to me or e-mail it to me and I needed it to change to BT Business, the second time it took a month to get the a/c number and the third time also took weeks to get the a/c number so in the end I canceled the lot and went with NTL's 3MB package.

So here I am, I've just placed an on-line order for a telephone line and based on the details on the site the install "should" be free.

If your home has never had an eircom phoneline but all line work is in place, the connection will be FREE (normally €49.99** inc VAT).

While my house has never had a phoneline as its just been built it does have all the wiring and I can even get an engaged tone off a phone when its plugged in, the nearest install date Eircom would give me is 2nd July so we'll see how things go and I'll keep you all posted.

Fingers crossed.....

I love the Apple community!

2008-06-11T21:15:00.002+01:00

So today I got myself a Nokia 5310, a few months ago I sold off my iPod Shuffle with the idea of buying a iPhone but plans changed and was then left without a MP3 player.

For years I've been using my trusty Nokia 6680 which has worked perfectly with iSync on my MacBook and its been a great phone but the mp3 player sucks and its pretty big so I've been looking to replace it this past week.

I finally decided to get myself a Nokia 5310 as it had a nice standard 3.5mm headphone jack with saves me messing about with adapters so I picked it up today brought it home only to discover it doesn't work with iSync...yes I'm well aware I should have checked!

Anyway a quick 1min search in google brings me this, basically somebody made a nice installation file for a plugin for the Nokia 5310, all works perfectly!!

Knockroe Passage Grave Pt 1

2008-06-03T15:16:00.001+01:00

IMG_3236, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

So during the weekend I decided to go in search of the Knockroe Passage Grave which is the most southern passage grave in Ireland. So after a quick search on google I found a handy map on the Discover Ireland website and then set out to locate it.

Well after about an hour of searching and driving up and down country roads and asking the odd local I gave up and visited some local sites, after I got home I did another search on google and discovered that the map on the Discover Ireland website was over 20km off the mark!

So now I've a proper map with the correct location and now I just need the time to go out on another trip :)

The above shot is one of the photos I took up around Killamery's High Cross which is about 5-6knm outside of Callan, Co Kilkenny.

Boatstrand, Co Waterford

2008-04-14T11:37:00.002+01:00

IMG_2012, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

So I got up early yesterday morning and went for a drive on the copper coast, my first stop was Boatstrand with its small harbor but unfortunately the tide was in so couldn't go for much of a walk on the beach. I'm going to make it my business to get out there again in the next few weeks.

Here's one of the few photos I took during my visit,

St Mary's Church, Co Kilkenny

2008-03-31T21:49:00.003+01:00

IMG_1740, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

So during the weekend I visited St Mary's Church ruins in Callan, Co Kilkenny, I was lucky enough to get access to bother the external surrounds as well as the internal as normally the whole place is locked up in order to protect it (awful shame).

For interior shots I used my Speedlite 430EX flashgun as the light source, however I could have done with a tripod and I'll certainly have to go back there soon as I have some lovely shots in mind.

More of the St Mary's Set can be viewed on my flickr.

Walk around Waterford

2008-03-13T13:58:00.002Z

IMG_1201, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

So I'm off on holidays at the moment and yesterday I went for a little walk around Waterford, the weather was so so and at times it rained but for the most part it was actually ok.

During part of the day I paid a visit to the People's Park here in Waterford and took a few shots of the fountain, more from the set are here.

Making poster prints

2008-03-11T10:28:00.002Z

IMG_0677, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

So last week I decided I'd test out photobox.ie for print quality as I'm planning on getting prints done for the People's Photography this coming August.

So I had a quick look through my recent shots and decided to pick the photo above to get printed as a 20x30 poster size print, just received it in work today and have to say I'm very happy with the quality and size of the shot....now I just have to see how much it'll cost to frame or mount it :)

Father Ted Festival, Kilfenora

2008-03-04T13:31:00.002Z

Father Ted, Craggy Island parochial house, originally uploaded by James Horan Shoots People.

I was browsing Flickr today and came across alot of nice work by James Horan who recently visited Ted Fest 08 in Co Claire.

To be honest it looks like great fun and its something I've been meaning to goto for the past two years, well I'm going to put in into my diary for next year and make it my mission to go, certainly looks like a treat photography wise too.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-03-04T12:51:00.002Z

Finally the trailer is out for the new Indiana Jones movie, since I've heard of this movie I've been waiting for it and hoping that they don't make a mess of it.

After watching the trailer it seems they might have actually done a good job of it, fingers crossed...here's hoping!

Project Stoneworks

2008-02-25T15:19:00.002Z

IMG_0975, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

So I'm already running a project called "different view" which involves my 50mm 1.8, well I've decided to start another project called project stoneworks (yes I like giving them names).

Basically its based on the photo above which I recently took in Tramore, I really like the detail on the stonework in this shot so I'm planning on doing something similar with other old buildings and fixtures.

Car Park #003

2008-02-25T15:12:00.004Z

Car Park #003, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

Another addition to my different view project, taken in the car park along the Quays in Waterford City,

Tramore this morning

2008-02-23T17:35:00.002Z

IMG_0659, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

After watching the weather forecast last night and seeing that it was supposed to be sunny I decided I'd get up nice and early and goto Tramore, Co Waterford so I could get some shots of the sunrise from the beach.

Well this is what I was greeted with, far from a sunrise...still none the less I got some lovely shots.

I'm still happy despite the bad weather...

Inprov Everywhere do McDonalds

2008-02-21T14:33:00.004Z

For those that don't know what Improv Everywhere is then I suggest reading up on them and there adventures, there latest one is to have a bathroom attendant in a Tux in a McDonald's in Time Square in New York,

Very creative and funny stuff, well worth a read.

Tramore Dunes

2008-02-20T23:07:00.002Z

Tramore Dunes I, originally uploaded by TheCabaal.

Another shot from my visit to Tramore last weekend, they day turned out well but I'm abit behind my photo processing so I'm going to play catchup over the next few weeks...I'm also changing my file structure for storing my stuff.

So with luck this weekend I;m off to the boards.ie photo meet up near Dublin, should be a interesting weekend, I'll post what I got later next week :)