Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

Coming back to Donabate from Swords Co Dublin around 14:00 when just before Newbridge demesne there was a police diversion, loads of blue flashing lights redirecting traffic down to the Turvey road.

A couple of hours later I came across this http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/1010/651435-dublin-donabate-rta/ – which was backed up from chatter down the local supermarket talking about how the Golf Club (which one there are a number here) has been robbed and in the get-away the driver plowed into an oncoming car whilst overtaking some others. Apparently there is a lot of Damage. Both Drivers had to be cut out of their respective cars … a lady had 2 broken legs was hospitalized along-side a baby or young girl. The “Get Away Driver” may have had at least one leg amputated.

Interesting times indeed in rural Ireland.

“Pope Resigns” said the news – and I had to read it twice to check that I had read it correctly the first time. For the first time in 600 years a reigning Pope has resigned in office and the web and news channels are doing over time over it. Many thought that being Pope was a ‘job for life’ – that is those who have not read their Catholic history no doubt, How many Catholics realize that married priests were the ‘norm’ for the church until the 11th Century where upon the then Pope forbade it – ‘officially’ to allow the Priesthood to concentrate on the word of the Lord, although more probably to do with disputes between Widows and children of deceased Priests and the church over money and property.

I digress somewhat. What a day indeed, and I am still a bit ‘knocked for six’ by the news. The Pope says he is too old and frail at 85 to continue with the rigorous demands of being Leader of the worlds billion or so Catholics and this is very understandable, Cardinals and Priests must retire when they reach a certain age, and I think that the same should apply to the Pope too going forward. I think this will be better for the Church in the long run as part of a more general and fundamental reform of the root-and-branch of the Church itself. The Church is still way to self-absorbed in itself at the higher levels and has moved too far from its fundamental function of teaching the Gospel and helping the poor and suffering of the world – both of which still in the 21st century are far too numerous.The Church has isolated itself from the people and the Lords work and has paid a heavy price in recent decades for doing this. This is an opportunity the Church needs to grasp if its to remain relevant in modern life.

Pope Benedict is, and has been shown to be a humble man; His resignation today shows this and signals to us all his true beliefs and wishes. I wish him well and contentment in the Lord.

Today is truly an historic day.

Yeah I know its the US Independence day, but this is NOT what this post is about. What this post is about is that 20 years ago today as a 27 year old I came home to Ireland from England, and Ireland as well as myself have changed a lot since then. It was an overcast but warm day, and everything I had was in a kit-bag and a rucksack – and that included a small expensive 386 laptop which I had bought the previous week from my redundancy pay. England was in a bad way and in recession in 1992, and mom and dad (and my kid sister) had returned to Ireland a few years earlier; I had lost my job (voluntarily) and I had split from my then Girlfriend (she found someone new) and needed to get out of the rut my then life had gotten into.

Dad being the rock of a man he always was picked me up at Dun Laoghaire ferry port – the old train pier and not that fancy new one used by the HSS and we drove home to Navan. Ireland in 1992 was a very different place in many ways and in others was so very similar to today. Unemployment was high then and now – as was “the recession”; although the recession today is far worse than then. I have seen Ireland “boom” and “bust” because of Politician and developer greed where Fianna Fail bought electoral power with the money from a property boom used to bribe the electorate by reducing taxes and boosting the public sector and social payments. Ireland has become a haven for IT because of its closeness to Europe, we speak English and have a well educated workforce – being corporate friendly has helped. I have to admit the TV here is still awful and beautiful Georgian Dublin has been spoiled by high-rised development along the river and in the IFSC. A lot of the old cinema’s on Dublin’s O’Connell street and Abbey Street have closed – and a few new ones have opened. Thankfully the choice of cuisine has improved no end in Dublin in the last 20 years and the Porter House micro brewery produces some fantastic products.

Navan has gone from a charming quaint small country town town to one more bustling and surrounded by drab dreary housing estates full of people who commute daily to Dublin for work. There is now at least an “OK” motorway system in Ireland that was not there 20 years ago; although for the life of me I don’t understand why in Dublin they thought 2 lane motorways would be more than enough for any projected traffic load and that using roundabouts and traffic lights to gain access to motorways was the right thing to do.

I have had a great 20 years and life has been good to me and the family. I met a wonderful woman who for some bizarre reason decided to marry me; and together we have a wonderful daughter. I have a great sister who I have a grand relationship with and whose kids are gorgeous. Being an IT Developer/Architect is the best job anyone can have – well I think so. Life in short is good.

Coming home to Ireland 20 years ago was the best decision I ever made and I find it hard to understand how 20 years has passed so fast.

Anyway happy Independence Day everyone.

Bit of an exciting week for me. Last Friday a long contract finally came to an end and since I had six weeks notice of it I had signed up for the “Open Data 18 hour Challenge” on 4th and 5th July which from the blurb on their website was about local government data sets which have recently started to be released in Ireland. I was expecting something like the tech conferences I have attended in the past – some presentations, discussions maybe the odd coding and brain storming sessions; But boy was I wrong. If I had known what it was to be about before hand I would probably never have signed up for the challenge, but I am SO GLAD that I did. In short the challenge was to generate business idea’s that used open data and maybe in the future take them forward to a product and a new High-Tech business.

The challenge was run over two days when on the first day was almost a pure brainstorming session where you as part of a table of techies, academics, entrepreneurs you came up with as many idea’s as you could on using the open data sets (Fingal County Council datasets and Dublin dataset ) Each table had to create two or three posters from the best ideas they could come up with – and there were loads. Once the posters were created and everyone had a look at them there was a short presentation on each one of them after which everyone voted on which ones were the best idea’s. Once all the votes were cast the idea’s with the least votes were eliminated and then we were asked to pin our names to the projects we wanted to do the next day – I chose one called “BizFit”. We were then told at the end of the next each of the ten teams had to do a five minute “Dragon’s den” style presentation to a panel of judges who would make the the final choices.

The BizFit idea is conceptually a simple one in that the idea is to use demographic data to either allow a small-to-medium company to find the best location for their business or for someone like an estate agent find the best kind of company for a particular empty business unit. With a great team of six people we had to develop the idea, discover the competitors and work out revenue streams etc for the final slide based presentation.

Anyway to cut a long story short our BizFit team beat off stiff competition to win the £4000 euro prize. Needless to say our team were stunned at our success.

Not too sure what we are going to do next. There is talk about entering the launchpad process to see if we can take the idea further. I hope we do since its an interesting business idea.

If you want more information on the challenge and the results from the Fingal Open Data Site, New Tech Post, Silicon Republic and Digital Times

I learn’t a lot on the process of business idea generation and what is needed to initiate the process of turning an idea into something more concrete. The “buzz” in the air on both days was palpable and I got to meet a lot of great people whom I hope to maintain contact with.

Its Ten-Ten-Ten or 10/10/10 today, or if you are pedantic its 10th October 2010. Nothing special happened today except in 732AD Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a large Andalusian Muslim army led by Abd er Rahman at the Battle of Tours thus “saving” Europe from Islamic domination. I also realized that I have not blogged an entry in 4 months. There is not a lot to blog about.

The family had a nice holiday in Lisbon which is a very child friendly city and where my Daughter fell in love with the old trams and showed a love of Flying and airplanes – so much so she frequently asks to go to the airport to watch planes take of and land. On the flight back from Lisbon and just as the plane hit the runways and started to violently jolt from side to side as it decelerated my Daughter Maeve started to giggle with joy. When the plane eventually stopped jolting and slowed down she start to shout towards the pilots cabin “Again. I want to do it Again”.

Maeve has come along rapidly these last four months. She is almost completely potty trained and her English has improved a lot for one who is only two and a half. Phrases such as “No Daddy don’t do that – your are bad boy”, “Is Daddy going on the cho-cho (train)” are common. Her memory and understanding are progressing a pace to. For example we went down the village show for some “Bread, Milk, Pop and Potatoes” – and Maeve remembered the list without prompting. When we got to the shop I asked here what we were looking for and she recited the list off pat before pointing out the items on the shelves. Impressive.

As onto grander things Ireland is still in a deep recession. My family have been lucky so far, but many friends are now out of work and things look bleak for the immediate future. I know we all have to suffer, but the politicians and their backers in the banks and building trade seem to still have their noses in the troughs. All this doom and gloom reminds me of the 1970’s and 1980’s recessions which were pretty bad. Why did not the government realize we seem to a “downward spiral” every 10-20 years and plan for it and base most of the tax income off the one source? Pretty dumb.

Anyway time to look at something positive – my mom is throwing her 70th Birthday party next weekend.