William Gibson has a new book out called Spook Country* and he’s doing the rounds at the moment doing book signings. Of course, he won’t be visiting that little island off Engerland called Ireland so the nearest location is Forbidden Planet in London on Wed, 29th August. I’m half-tempted to go (I like London) and take a few days hols there but I can’t seem to get a flight out of Dublin for anything less than €150.

The price of the flights are weird because I can do the London–>Dublin route for a fiver plus taxes, but Dublin–>London is €150 for the Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed on both Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Strange.

*Spook Country:
Spook Country is the sequel to his last book Pattern Recognition. It follows several different plotlines concentrating on a man working in information transfer, an investigative journalist, a junkie and a military troubleshooter. Spook Country also deals with themes of espionage and the media. Added to all that this multi-layered political thriller also revolves around a mysterious cargo from Iraq.

The ship prefix LÉ stands for Long Éireannach, or “Irish ship” as Gaeilge. (source: wiki).

Naval service vessels are all named with traditional Irish female names, taken from history and Celtic mythology.

LE Ciara is the fastest ship (of eight) in the Irish Naval Service.

Ciara was the daughter of a wealthy Christian family who settled near Nenagh, Co Tipperary in the 7th century. Ciara was a devout Christian and aged 20, she established a convent near her home which became famous and grew rapidly. It grew to such an extent that Ciara established another convent near Durrow, Co Laois where she spent many years, though she returned to her home before her death in 685.

(source: Irish Naval Service)

I don’t think anyone was hurt – it was just a momentary game of dodgems and, afterwards, a few bruised egos.

A larger photo is available here but it’s still a bit blurry since I photoshopped it to reduce it’s size. The original file shows much more detail but it would take forever to show here.

The Gardai in Co Louth tried putting wrecked vehicles on the side of the road to reinforce the message that ‘it could be you‘ if you didn’t drive carefully. Later, the Irish Lotto used the same slogan (it could be you) in their advertising but in an entirely different context.

I took the photo below in the Mahon Falls near Dungarvan, Co Waterford. I was surprised to see the abandoned car but it was a good photo opportunity with the sign in the background. Now, don’t get me wrong, the area does have a problem with car crime during the summer when the hire cars of American visitors are broken into but during the winter…??

You won’t be able to read the sign in the photo at that size (try here) but it says (sic):

Visitors to the Mahon Falls Are Advised NOT to Leave Valuables Or Personal Belongings In Unattended Vehicles

I was puzzled by the punctuation (lots of capital letters) but I also wondered if it was some sort of marketing trick by the local council. Did the sign fail to combat the crime in the area? Did they toy with the idea of placing a few multi-lingual signs? Or maybe a really big sign? Or did they get a grant from central government and just say, ‘feck it lads, lets put a burned out car up there. That’ll really get the point home‘.

Lots of ‘official’ signs in Ireland have the legend ‘by order of [local council]‘ on them. This one doesn’t and maybe that’s the problem?

The mind boggles.

Caitriona.net has published a wonderful photograph of a snail. I made a comment but co.mment can’t, err, comment. Is it caitriona or co.mment that’s to blame?

Blog in the Bog wrote about some terrible customer service he received from Fedex. I posted a comment at the time and he kindly replied. I want to return to it later to add my tuppence-worth and am using co.mment as a kind of bookmark service. Let’s see what happens… BTW, he’s had similar problems with UPS/Nightline.

They searched the rucksack and found nothing incriminating. They missed the secret compartment within the metal frame where I’d stored my college notes (oh, the innocence!). I wasn’t innocent enough that I’d let it pass so, with an ever-so-slight smirk, I told them about the secret compartment. Well it was a training exercise, afterall.

Why the trip down memory lane? I could be wrong but it looks like demos has delished (google cache) my blog post about how MBNA have very poor customer service skills.

I’m travelling to the UK in the next month and I wonder if I’ll be stopped?

How will they link the real me with isadub.com? Have a read of this register story! I didn’t sign up for the MI5 newsletter but my site is hosted in America.

Only in America could they do the exact opposite…
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Danger/Tcal.net once again…(drum roll)…on what is likely to happen if you want to bring your working monkey into America. It’s not obvious what the procedure is if you want to bring one’s working monkey on a holiday to America?

# Since monkeys may likely draw attention, the handler will be escorted to the physical inspection area where a table is available for the monkey to sit on. Only the handler will touch or interact with the monkey.
# TSOs have been trained to not touch the monkey during the screening process.
# TSOs will conduct a visual inspection on the monkey and will coach the handler on how to hold the monkey during the visual inspection.
# The inspection process may require that the handler take off the monkey’s diaper as part of the visual inspection.

Footnotes:
– Full story here: tsa-on-monkey-helpers
– TSA = (American) Transportation Security Administration. Their motto is vigilant, effective, efficient
– I got the photograph here. David Monniaux owns the copyright on the photograph.

He works in an industry where money is no object and they’ll pay whatever you ask as long as you deliver on time. In my last job, I did a deal with another American company where our profit was so outrageous that the board of my company actually considered whether it was legal to charge so much. They didn’t, of course, consider the morality of it!

I’m going to meet him and his team in New York next year, probably in March/April. Well, it would be impolite not to! I’m really looking forward to it because even though I’ve lived, and travelled widely, in America, I’m never visited New York. I’m not a big fan of big Government and Bush’s government is a bit scary now with their homeland security etc. Thankfully, the register reports that people are finally standing up to them.

Hands off our bank data, Europe tells US by Mark Ballard

The European Commission is set to call for an immediate halt on the illegal transfer of financial information to the United States Treasury.

A draft final opinion obtained by The Register concludes that central banks and local financial institutions that used the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) financial network had acted illegally in allowing data about their clients’ financial transacions to be transfered to the Treasury. The US started issuing subpoenas in the course of anti-terrorist investigations within weeks of the September 11 attacks of 2001 – the financial institutions and their messaging network hid the disclosures from citizens…

EFF sues US over passenger data by OUT-LAW.com

The US Government faces a lawsuit demanding information about the controversial programme which forces airlines to disclose information about European travellers to the US.

The suit follows the Government’s apparent refusal to give up information following a freedom of information request.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the digital rights group, has filed the case against the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The suit demands that the DHS release records about how collected data is handled, maintained, used, disclosed and secured…

And about time too. I’m what they call an independent traveller and I resent having to fill out forms telling some s’curity guard with a cap exactly where I’m going, where I’m staying and what I eat for my dinner. I’m a tourist, for gawd’s sake. I will spend loadsa Ben Franklin’s in your country on crappy t-shirts and keep those minimum-wage ner-do-wells in a Disneyland job and outta your social security system.

Sheesh, go figure!