LUAS

During the week, I had my first experience of the tram system in Dublin - LUAS. Hving read about it and seen it in the news on TV, it seemed like a good idea implemented 30 years too late. Now, having had a firsthand experience, it's just silly. I now believe that the name LUAS is an acronym for Largely Underdimensioned Asynchronous System.
1. Nowhere else in the world would you find a tram that stops and waits at traffic lights for cars to pass. Nowadays most countries have computers that solves this.
2. Nowhere else in the world would you have motorists that are so stupid that they stop their car on the tram track.
3. Nowhere else in the world would you have passengers that are so silly that they rather squeeze one to many onboard (and the doors won't close => delay) than boarding the tram that's just 100 meters behind.
4. Nowhere else in the world would you find ticket machines that for some strange reason talk to you at the end of transaction. If you are visually disabled, you can't use the ticket machines...
5. Nowhere else in the world have anybody managed to create to totally disconnected piece of transport infrastructure.

Blogvertizing

I thought spam was bad. Now there are bots that post crap as comments to your blog as well!
Where will this stop? If EPIC is indicative, it won't stop until unknown bots print real-time ads on our underpants.

Satellite TV - at last!

Maplin Electronics had a special offer in the past week. A complete sat receiver kit for 148 euro. And it worked. We're now finally free from RTE and TV3 and we can now watch Euronews and BBC whenever we want - for free.
I really like the idea of Free-To-Air sat broadcast. It allows you to pick up high bandwidth stuff from all over the planet. Amazing. From Earth to satellite and back. For free.
Choice...

NCT - Irish National Car Test

The NCT is a scam. I had my car ('93 Rover) fully serviced, and then brought it for testing. One FAIL. Re-test. I brought the car back to the garage, and HONESTLY, there wasn't any fault on the little silly rubber part they had indicated. I guess NCT is part of the backbone of Rip-Off Ireland. So, two little rubber bushings have been replaced in my car and and I'm bringing it back for a re-test. This time, I'll carefully question their work. Who's testing the testers?

Weather!

I’ve finally installed my new weather station. It’s from HeavyWeather ;-) Despite my age and everything, I spent the whole afternoon on ladders with a power-drill and tools, to get all the peripherals installed properly. I think I might be complaining about pains and aches throughout the week.
It’s a pretty miraculous machine, temp, humidity (indoor and outdoor), wind speed and direction, air pressure. Full interface for downloading data. The only thing missing is getting broadband - always on. If, or rather hopefully when, I could put up realtime weather-data for HERE.