Raiméis

It’s the 8th of November, an ya know what that means doncha? That’s right, in 3 days time it’ll be the leventh of November. An ya know what that means doncha? That’s right, Gaelic Games Football will be released on Playstation 2. An ya know what that means doncha? That’s right, for the rest of November and probably most of December I won’t be gehhin a lohha sleep. As one Sluggerette fecker remarked, tis the only way Longford will ever win the All-Ireland! He’s right, though i’ll make sure his county get a right lambashtin on me way to victory! An Longfort abú!!

Btw, GGF is based on an Aussie Rules game produced by the same company, IR Gurus, and so i’m not sure we can expect too much from GGF.

Update: It’s the 10th of November, an ya know what that means doncha?
Update 2: I found some screenshots.

I popped in to Irishjobs.ie (the job hunt begins) and spotted their press release of 25 October on the launch of their site which is bilingual. The press release presents results from a recent Irish language survey on IrishJobs.ie and interestingly has shown some quite positive attitudes to the Irish language among jobseekers. I contacted Irishjobs.ie to get more details and received an answer quite promptly.

The respondents
The majority of respondents to the survey (55%) were in the 21-25 & 26-30 age brackets (31-35 12%, 36-40 9%) as you’d probably expect considering it’s a recruitment site. Of those 88% learned Irish in school, 68% for more than 10 years.

Use of Irish
A surprising amount of people use Irish – 40% claim to use it socially among other places such as at home (36%), at work (28%) or online (29%). Unfortunately 39% claim they don’t use the language at all. And 47% of people claim to be able to converse quite comfortably in Irish.

Positive Attitude
The most encouraging results came from the following questions; when asked their opinion on the statement “The Irish language gives me a unique cultural identity” 66% of people agreed while only 22% disagreed.
On the issue of whether or not Irish should be mandatory in schools 59% of respondents agreed that it should be mandatory while only 26% disagreed.

Quite interesting results overall and quite encouraging IMO.
Unfortunately only 321 people responded to the survey (10% answered through Irish) which is a tiny number.

Btw, check out the Survival Guide to Office Speak especially the David Brent quotes.

“If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.”
“Mura n’éiríonn leat an chéad uair, faigh réidh leis an bhfianaise go ndearna tú aon iarracht.”

p.s. Thanks to a certain Sales & Marketting Exec at Irishjobs.ie for her swift and friendly responses to my questions.

p.p.s Well done to Irishjobs.ie & CNnaG for their work on the site.

JL reckons George Burley is the man to take over as manager of the Rep.Ireland soccer team. Burley left Hearts quite recently due to “irreconcilable differences” with the club board. A number of sites such as World Cup Latest and Eleven-a-side now claim Burley is the firm favourite to take over the job. To be honest I had to do a web search on George as I didn’t have a clue who he was, but going by his bio he seems to be better than most of the other contenders for the job, especially since popular favourite Martin O’Neill is out of the running. I wonder will Alex Ferguson now join the race since things appear to be going downhill at United?

Firefox 1.5 RC1 has been released this week, RC2 should be coming in another 8 days or so and should be pretty much the same as the 1.5 final release. [Download RC1]

Here’s a good Firefox extension I came across this morning, IE Tab, it allows you to open pages within Firefox using the IE browser engine, all you need do is click the icon in either the status bar or menu bar and you can switch immediately between the Firefox engine & the IE engine. Security concerns aside it’s a damn useful extension and a handy alternative to IE View which allows you to open web pages in IE via the context menu.

Opera have recently (I’m a bit behind the times) released Opera Mini, a lightweight browser for mobile phones normally incapable of running a browser. Their regular mobile browser runs only on Series 60 & Windows mobile phones. With Opera Mini web pages are pre-processed on a remote-server before being sent to the mobile phone, which makes it ideal for phones with very low resources or low bandwidth connections. The browser is currently available for free to users in the Nordic countries. Of course, my system being what it is (crap) I’ve so far been unable to download the feckin’ thing.

Firefox update: According to ZD Net Firefox has achieved over 10% of the browser market share for the first time, reaching a global market share high of 11.5%! IE of course still leads the way with 85.5%.

Troubled times continue for Manchester United. Following their drubbing by Middlesbrough at the weekend they went down against Lille tonight in the Champions League thanks to a Milenko Acimovic goal. Their CL hopes are now hanging by a thread and they aren’t doing much better at home either sitting in 7th place in the Premiership 13 points behind leaders Chelsea.
Keano hit the nail on the head the other day when he said that a clear out is needed in January. Keano made the comments during an interview with MUTV in which he tore lumps out of many of the United players. The interview was subsequently withdrawn by Utd’s Chairman before it went on air.
As fellow Utd fan The NI Magyar put it, Keane was “censored for telling the truth“. United fans have come out in support of Keane, even tonight in Lille fans chanted Keane’s name at the beginning and end of the game. Keane was only saying what most of us are thinking. The last few seasons have been crap, United have under performed the entire time and serious changes are needed if they are to challenge for the Premiership or even the Champions League. The changes should start at the top, Ferguson needs to move on … I hear there’s a job opening on the other side of the Irish sea.

Beneres. Beneres de deneres. Beneres de deneres de canto mui coolio, una prima dente fundo traffico ab lango del tono, del tono tono. Abla la Bertie (Ar Solo d’Irlandaize) la mucho dinero de “Transport 21″, cé de cè é è pyla de shi’ito Luas morte tragedi.

Don krakatoa en kindy dinky me a cheez puff un grande scalea dumdo den Chris Waddle. De Paramilitarios du runnas escapedo del Nood d’Irlandaize (ne Irlandaize du Nood ce te Republicano) no no impriosiono no no shooto. Finalissimo den IRA’y bangbang ne bingbing on a proxima falia. Héla helá hola tidikaka mit wanko moronico SF en DUP, mui biggotos on a zee zeebruga.

I sporti. De tutti frutti el schminky-pinky Olympikos ne suunto a Korea ea Nood i Sood ai mucho grav del nachos je 2008. Un wheezi-peez que ca complicare! Borussia Borussia!! (borussia mit vagino – Ed)

Eh, una Picardio Jean de Luca ne se he “not a clue whatsoever” inne grusser schlosser inte de. Eh, easy esé ne residenti Presidenti Räään Ranananenen no porko Finnlandaize. Eh, inter de nucho!

Mia macho jihad.

The organisers of last weekend’s loyalist hate fest rally in Belfast are considering brining their hate to Dublin. Ye can fuck off!

Posting has been slow this past week, as have been my responses to your comments, apologies. A lack of energy and motivation is the problem, it’s probably brought on by the coming of winter. I hate winter, especially here, it’s bloody cold, uncomfortable and a tad depressing.
We had our first snow here last week (I also hate snow), this picture is a quick snap I took on my way to work last Tuesday. I had to drive 2 hours to a meeting and I still had my summer tyres on, luckily one of the other lads had changed his tyres, we wouldn’t have made it in my car. The pic was taken just after I skidded 2 metres and just before I skidded another 3, 2 of about 20 skids that day (ok, some were on purpose). The snow has melted already, as the first snow usually does, but it’ll be back soon enough so i’m likely to be cold, uncomfortable and depressed for the next 6 months or so.
I think a good aul whinge about winter is needed but i’ll leave it for another day.

How stuff works article on “How Zombies work“

the numbers (na hUimhreacha): explanations