Add PM, to be sure to be sure.

One problem with the 12 hour clock is that if AM or PM is omitted or unreadable, you are could be very early or very late for your appointment.

The 24 hour clock eliminates any ambiguity and does so without making the number of characters used any longer. In fact it makes it shorter (01:00 is shorter than 1:00 AM).

In Blanchardstown Centre they want to really, really sure that there is no confusion as to when the on-site creche closes. It doesn’t close at 5:00 PM. It doesn’t close at 17:00. No, it closes at 17:00 PM!

At least the addition of “PM” is shorter than adding “in the morning“

Red cold, blue hot taps reversed

I joined my former college classmates for the early portion of the Jim Finn Stag pub crawl, before everyone got incoherent.

In the third pub, The Hut in Phibsborough, the bathroom had a sign about the incorrectly coloured taps.

The blue tap gives hot water, the red tap is for cold water.

That reversal must really get messy when the clients are drunk.

Why couldn’t the owners either swap the taps, or the feed pipes or even the coloured plastic at the top of the taps.

Ticket machine - Buy not translated

Irish Rail have installed automated ticket machines throughout the network. The interface can be displayed in multiple languages.

One day, while sheltering from the rain at the station, I decided to look at the translated interface. Early in my career I worked in localisation and we checked the translated software displayed and worked correctly when translated.

I checked the German translation to see if all the words fit (because German words are frequently longer than English) and it looked good. French was fine too, but then I noticed something small – the Buy button was not translated! Ouch.

It is surprising that this was noticed (and fixed) during product development.

Expensive at €92.50 per litre

When I am in my local Tesco I like to take a quick browse through the beer aisle to see if there are any bargains.

I am a big fan of Bulmers cider, even having a ‘Bulmers’ custom license plate while I lived in California and custom ‘Bulmers’ t-shirts made.

I have always felt that Bulmers is priced a bit high but the price per litre during this trip was crazy – -€92.50 per litre!!

While the correct value is €4.44 per litre,how can such an error happen? Surely this stuff is all in a computer. I didn’t inform Tesco because it seems to be pointless – I have used their Tesco Feedback site but have never received a response to any of my feedback.

KFC protecting the enviromental

When I worked in East Point Business Park I noticed that Smoking impacts dexterity, for Oracle employees anyway.

From a recent visit to the Blanchardstown Centre I saw an embarrassing attempt at a “green stance” by KFC. There are a few bins outside the restaurant with a brutal spelling error on them.

The bins say:

Thank You. Protecting the Enviromental (sic) for the next generation

“Enviromental” should be “Environment” – add an ‘a’ and drop the ‘al.’

I normally report issues that I find to the company or organisation responsible. The KFC.ie web site is a single page with no contact links.  The KFC.co.uk site only lists a snail mail address.

Litter overflowing out of the bag

It has been 9 months since I last uploaded a photo of litter that my son and I picked up in our area. This was around the time that Fingal County Council installed a bin on the open space area near our house.  This was in addition to the bin they installed beside the nearby pedestrian lights.

Since then there has been less litter and we mostly throw the few items that we find directly into the bin without photographing it.

A few days ago my wife, son and I went out for a walk in the area. I brought a bag as I knew that we would come across litter.

The bag filled up quickly and was overflowing shortly after that. My son enjoys picking up litter and especially enjoys putting our hauls into the bin.

Litter ready for the bin

We collected over 30 items. Some of the items had been on the ground for a considerable time  – the labels were bleached by the sun.

While the addition of two bins mentioned above has dramatically reduced litter in the vicinity, we collected most of the litter in locations where there isn’t a bin, but obviously should be one.

Attentive meerkat

Last weekend my wife, my son, my mother-in-law and son went to Dublin Zoo. As usual we went early so as to avoid the crowds.

My 2 1/2 year old son was an enthusiastic tour guide for his “Nana”. He tired himself out about 2/3 the way the through the zoo.

We always go anti-clockwise around the zoo so the meerkats are our first stop. For the first time, we saw them being fed.

At the reptile house the chameleon was quite active, climbing around this small tree.  The crocodile was looking threatening, with his jaws open.

The elephants were very entertaining, with the smallest elephant playing with a larger elephant, trying to push him into the water.

Seeing the Amur Tigers asleep just on the other side of the glass was exciting, and the Bornean Orang-utan baby holding onto its mother was very cute.

Still wearing the shower cap

Earlier in the month I completed the Ring of Kerry charity cycle. It was my fourth year doing it. Great weather (as usual), excellent food stops (getting better each year) and I didn’t feel as tired as last year (maybe ageing is good for something).

I only took one photo during the cycle. The guy looks like he had a quick shower (but didn’t wash his hair) and then jumped straight onto his bike.  It’s cool that his shower cap/helmet is hi-viz. He does lose ‘euro cool‘ marks for the high socks.

Hake fillet with Brooklodge Spice Rub

A few years ago a stallholder at a Farmleigh Food Market recommended Brooklodge Spice Rub (it was ‘Steak Rub’ back then).

Any time I cooked steak I would put a few pinches on either side before cooking. The cooked steak did not need any condiments, no salt, no steak sauce, no nuthin. It was fantastic stuff.

Last week I bought some hake fillets for dinner. Just before putting them into the oven my wife shook some mixed herbs on one fillet. I decided to try the Spice Rub on the other fillet. My wife said it was only for meat (and I thought the same) but the container said it is suitable for fish too.

Just like a steak with the rub, the fish was fantastic. The mix of salt, pepper, onion, garlic, cayenne, chilli, fennel, thyme and rosemary in the rub is just amazing. I highly recommend the stuff.

The rest of the mile markers seemed to be placed reasonably accurately (well, mile 3 seemed a little long) but I finished the race a full minute faster than last year (29:47 vs 30:50). I was suspicious – I felt that something must be wrong.

Back home I was reading the boards.ie thread on the race and someone questioned whether the course was short. A number of others soon followed with the same conclusion, with Garmin and similar data to back it up.  My Polar HRM measured low too (it normally measures low but this time it was extra low).

One guy developed a chart for people to use their chip time to extrapolate their time for a full 5 miles.  The chart only listed whole minutes so I wrote a PHP script to extrapolate any time.

I posted this on the thread and it was well received. I then posted it to the Dublin Marathon page on Facebook and I saw a jump in visits to the page during the day.