Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with developer Dave O’Reilly last week & he showed myself and few of the X Comms crew his iPhone app called ‘How Much Is It On Amazon?’.
Essentially, it’s an app that plugs into the Amazon web service to give you instant prices on anything that’s for sale on the site with the option of purchasing as you would on the Amazon site itself, read customer reviews & find out more info on products.
Link to the app in the iTunes store. A welcome departure from the sea of crazy useless muck that’s in the app store these days & one I’ll be popping on the iPhone for sure. I’m waiting on Dave to give me a link or email or somewhere to send feedback & correspondance, will post it when I have it.
So I’m finally hitting my first ever BarCamp on Saturday in Belfast and I can’t wait. Here’s a little guide on logistics of getting there, particularly if you’re travelling from Dublin.
Registration is from 8.30am and talks will start around 9.30am so it’s a sprightly early start for all. Travel options:
Bus Aircoach is probably the most comfortable bus option, leaving from Dublin Airport at 7am arriving in Belfast at 9.25am. €22 return/€15 single. Bus Eireann do a bus service through the night (shocker!) so you can grab a 6am coach that arrives at 8.30am if you like. Same price as Aircoach.
Train
First train up from Connolly to Belfast leaves at 7.45am arriving at 9.45am. If you book online in advance you can get it for a lovely €20 return as opposed to the €80 I’ve been quoted previously.
Night before
If like me you’re thinking that’s an awfully early start on Saturday to be primed for learning & proper enjoyment of nerdy talk, consider travelling up the night before. The more budget friendly options appear to be Travelodge, Days Hotel or Park Inn. You might be able to take in the pre-camp meetup in the bar on the ground floor of the Premier Inn on Waring Street for drinks at 8pm also.
If anyone has useful info to add whether it be about parking, travel or places to stay/avoid or whatever, leave a comment or email me steph@iamsteph.com and I’ll add it in.
Stu’s virus is getting contagious. Ridiculously so. I can’t help but think of songs as bloody alert boxes now. Some really awesome ones over on the Buzzfeed page, expect more later.
And about 15 mins later I had another one, good God help me.
Stumbled across this photo the other day – it was one of the first I took with my little red camera that my dad got me for my 21st ChristmasBirthday (born 26th Dec, this is what it has become). The beach at home in the month of January. Nature is stunning.
Des wrote a lovely post about the death of the ‘desktop metaphor’ over on the Contrast blog.
Stu is climbing the viral charts in the Buzzfeed competition with his fantastic ‘Songs Reimagined as Alert Boxes‘. You have got to check them out!
Got my tickets in the post for the closing gala concert at the Cork International Choral Festival yesterday. It’s taking place on the May bank holiday weekend and there’s loads of international choral music on all over the city for the long weekend. As if you needed a reason to visit Cork anyway.
Create Ireland, a start-up incubator type affair that’s now enrolling for 2009.
An article in The Examiner today that seems to be essentially saying that newspapers are better than blogs amongst other bizarre and questionable things. Get ready to face-palm.
On Thursday last, I had the fortune of getting to hear a powerful, moving & inspiring rendition of George Fredrick Handels’ famous work, ‘Messiah’. As part of a week of celebrations in Dublin called ‘Handel 250′, the magnificent choir of Christ Church Cathedral, The Orchestra of Saint Cecilia, soloists Deboragh Abbot (soprano), Duncan Brickenden (alto), Peter Davoren (tenor) & Philip O’Reilly (bass) gathered in the beautiful venue of Christ Church Cathedral for a performance of the ‘Messiah’, a piece first performed in Dublin in April of 1742.
My first memories of hearing this beautiful piece go back to when I was in 2nd class of primary school, about 8 years old. Our teacher at the time occasionally had a ‘music appreciation’ lesson & more often than not it was an aria or chorus from ‘Messiah’. I have for years failed to catch a live performance of it and my am I sorry it’s taken me so long to do so. It was magnificent from start to finish. The infamous ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ didn’t disappoint – I haven’t felt goosebumps race from head to toe like the ones I felt on hearing the voices raising the roof with their rendition of the powerful chorus. Admittedly, I was moved to tears by it!
Congratulations to all involved in the performance and in the festival that ran all week which seemed to offer up a fantastic selection of musical delights. There’s photos and video from the week over at the Temple Bar Cultural Trust website.
You can sample some choral tracks I recorded (only when the blinking iPhone decided it wanted to) right here.
