Thursday, November 15, 2012

New blog address

I have a new address for you to view my blogs on its at http://derrykyle.com/wp/ hope to see you there :)

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

2 sister in laws not happy

Well both my Sister in Laws are not happy that I haven't being blogging with my usual gusto, so I am putting fingers to keys tonight in a vain attempt to satisfy their insatiable craving for my undoubted mastery of the written word and pictures of my pets.

In the news there was a mention of the referendum vote this last Saturday, which is a bit of a surprise seeing only 10 people bothered to go to the voting stations. 6 of them must have voted yes as the Child Referendum bill went through 60 - 40 and there is some talk about not having voting again on a Saturday seeing nobody turned up, maybe more folks would have, if they had got some time off work?
That Muslim cleric Abu Qatanda was released with a new bracelet today, he has been in jail in Britain for the past seven years fighting extradition to his home country of Jordan. It costs on average £47,000 per year to keep someone in prison so that's £329,000 and a bracelet that the stoopid human rights laws cost the taxpayers to keep Osama BinBag's right hand man safe. Bet you are happy I'm blogging again girls.

If you want to see how my fight against wind farms is going you can keep up to date at www.connemaraagainstwindfarms.com/wp and also marvel at my skill in website design at the same time.

Ben the pup has stopped eating socks, there are none left, have had the same pair on for a week. I saw him sniff one and turn his nose up today.

It has been raining heavy here the last two days and the river is in spate, the garden ponds are also full to bursting point and I have had a bit of a break from tree felling.

Ohh one last news item I saw that "One Direction would "kill" anyone if they hurt Niall Horan" hes the blond one in the band, not sure what instrument he plays, ohh that's right they are all singers. I cant imagine any of them being huge punchers maybe they would bite the person who hurt Niall or pinch him to death.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Good job if you can get it

How does £450,000 sound for 54 days work, I think that's £8333.33 per day hmm not bad ehh wonder what the pension fund is like that could swing it ehh. The director of the BBC just got that as a severance not because he had done brilliantly and made a fortune for the company but because he stuffed up, I'm sure I could do the same. His successor acting director general Tim Davie has urged senior corporation managers to "pull together" in the BBC's interests. He said that while rubbing his hands in glee and wondering how best to stuff up, no he didn't I just made that up.

I see Venice is underwater this morning after floods, I shouldn't be smiling at others misfortunes but I must admit to a smirk when this wally on TV, wading through thigh high water, at pace, so he could get on TV behind the reporter and probably make faces, stumbled, and took a wee dive, ipad first into what looked like crystal clear auqa blue waters in the Platza NOT.

Ireland is more like Venice than S Australia this morning which has bush fires raging, there is no way I would have bought this place if it had been in Australia I have acres of branches needing burnt, they would be prime hiding places for snakes and other goodies, there are ponds here that no doubt would be home to various man eating creatures and the whole place would be like a tinderbox. The reason I havent burnt off much in the way of branches is I have a phobia about the fire getting out of control. Unfortunately it has to be done at some point.

Well its almost 0800 I've had a shower and breakfast and am now going to have another look at Wordpress, wordpress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. Did that help you understand? Anyway the reason I am learning how to drive it, is that I knocked back a couple of jobs last week as Static website design would not have met the clients needs, one was for an auction house that has furniture and antique sales and they wanted a website they could administer themselves and add their >600 items for sale every monthly sale a content managment system is what they are after. I think I shall have a go this week at turning www.derrykyle.com into my new wordpress site and will move my blog to there.

Take care all.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Sorry about the lack of blogs

I know a few of you keep in touch with what is happening here through the blog so sorry about the lack of them recently. I have been busy protesting about the wind farm development that is proposed for this township and have made a website at www.connemaraagainstwindfarms.com Connemara is the part of Ireland we live in. The more research I do into this the more I am convinced that wind turbines are not the way to go to generate our electricity, anyway shan't bore you with turbines anymore today, notice the today.

I have stacks of chopped firewood all over the place now and could do with a tractor and trailer to get them all back close to the house, nevver mind it must help keep me fit dragging my sled full back to the house every time I come back up for a cuppa or break. A lot of the wood is unseasoned so it wont be fit for the fire until next year, if we are spared. The central heating is working well but I still need to put insullation in the loft as the North end of the house (Barney's wing) is still a lot colder.

The wee dog is saving me a fortune in washing powder as he just eats my dirty socks instead of them needing washed apart from that he is grand, I think he is further up the pecking (pack) order than Gus even though he is only half the size may be ther terrier in him gives him the edge, Gus is a bit like Ishan temprament wise and is just chilled out.

It looks like showers and sunny intervals today so I am going to chop down another tree near the road that was split in two by a storm in the past, its hard going the bit I am clearing just now as there have been a couple of felled trees in the past that they just left the brances and the brambles have grown through them so I have a thicket about 10ft deep of thorns to wade through.

Anyway all the best to everyone and give me a call if you would like to be bored by wind farm facts and figuires, I think that writing to pollies, putting my hand up at meetings making a website and talking politely may not be working and Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King had to get arrested to get their message across, I wonder if they would deport me back to Long Bay in Australia if I do some Peaceful Demonstration? ok Wheres my black texter I'm gonna make a big bliddy sign and go down to Evening Mass with a mega phone, ok maybe not. 

Monday, October 22, 2012

pre winter gardening

Well the leaves are falling off the trees and grass has stopped growing for the season, the midgies have eventually dissapeared for another year and I can get out there and not be bitten all over. I have been cropping bushes back this last week or so letting a bit more light and breeze into the place.
 
 

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Peat in for the winter

Well it was another nice morning so I got a lot done about the place, chopped some more wood, cut a lawn and erected a wee fence while Gus trained Ben how to jump into the pond (and get covered in mud) and how to bark and Jessy tried training him to bite the lawnmower front tyre.

I bought a trailer full of peat from a neighbour for 60 Euro which will last me all winter with the wood supply supplementing it. Helped him load it and he had an awesome Fork specially for handling peat it has baubles on the fork ends so they don't pierce the turf and is sort of spoon shaped so you can pick up a good load at a time and it doesn't spill off. I have to unload it into the turf shed at some point which will take ten times as long but I have it covered with a tarp to keep it dry meantime. Tonight is meant to be wet again but we have been lucky this week with gorgeous weather.
I took a wee photomontage of my view across the bog it will be a shame if its covered in bliddy windmills. Emailed the Galway Mayor councellor Welby who used to be on the Oughterard small business committee with me to have a whinge lol probably do no good whatsoever but what the heck ehh.
We are meeting with the counsellor in charge of planning but he will already have had his backhander from the developer no doubt. I'm not opposed to renewable energy and I  understand how Ireland has to meet renewable resource deadlines but all counties in Ireland have areas with sufficient wind speeds to make them economically viable – this is borne out by the presence of wind farms in these areas already. It is evident that any national policy for Ireland which seeks to capture the country’s maximum capacity for wind energy can be achieved without impacting on areas with sensitive landscapes, ecology and hydrology and I think my bog could quite eassily qualify as sensitive.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Dog Psychology

Well its a joy to watch a puppy interacting with my two older dogs, Jessy the eldest and only female dog in the pack was having great fun racing him round the garden through the trees over hedges under stuff and round in tight circles earlier and now we are back inside dodging a shower he is slapping his front paws on the floor and dancing round her to try and get her to do the same chase inside. He is scared of the car for some reason, maybe he accosiates it with being dumped so I didnt insist he come with us for a swim this morning but it wouldnt have been fair for the other two to miss out so we left him in the porch I suppose the obvious way to get him to trust the car again is to make every time he goes in it a pleasurable experience, the other two as soon as I say "in the car" go crazy with excitement. Gus is not quite as enamoured with the new guy but puts up with him fine.

I am feeding them seperate from the pup as he is very skinny and gulping down his food then trying to get theirs which is a recipie for a fight, I read somewhere that getting malnourished animals back to prime health again needs a bit of thought you cant just dive in there and feed them as much as they can eat straight away so he gets small feeds often throughout the day with added extras like egg and cheese instead of a big feed at night which is what the other two are used to, they have been having smaller than normal feeds twice a day as well.

There was a call from the owner of Ross Castle yesterday that I missed but she was singing my praises to Angie about how much she likes her new website, its not "live" yet as I havent finalised with her if there is any more info to go on it but you can view the test site on my server at http://www.galwaysitedesign.com/ross/ another one I have nearly finished is for a wee guest house in Oughterard its also on the server at http://www.galwaysitedesign.com/fougheast/ others I am working on are http://www.galwaysitedesign.com/breizon/ and http://www.windowsgalway.ie/ any comments are welcome as pages look different on different browsers.

I had a call from a bloke in Dublin the other day asking about website design, he wanted a small site for his business with the capacity to buy items from him using paypal to pay, I quoted a really reasonable E200 to which he told me I was too dear, on asking him how much he expected to pay he said could I do it for E45, I spilt my coffee, luckily it didnt get on the laptop. I spend perhaps 10 - 20 hours getting a site right which equates to between 10 and 20 Euros an hour. To get a decent trademan to lay some flooring or make an archway would cost me twice that at least per hour, so I told him he should shop around a bit.