XBox 360 demo stations

There are now XBox 360 demo consoles in several computer game stores around Dublin, including Game Stop and Smyths Toys. I was playing Call Of Duty 2. It looks amazing compared to the original Call of Duty, which I am playing again on PC. The demo level appeared to be based in North Africa, and the graphics look great, though the colors were just a little too white. Personally I've never owned a games console. I prefer my PC and I prefer to play first person shooters with a keyboard and mouse. Which, coincidentally the new Playstation 3 is reported to support.

Starbucks College Green

Another Starbucks posting, I should just rename this blog Dec's Starbucks Rambling. Anyway after months of saying the first Starbucks in Dublin would open soon on College Green (near Trinity College) the Starbucks in Dundrum beat them to it and opened last August. I don't know what the delay with College Green was, maybe they were waiting for the best location to open up. It looks like they got it sorted out and now have 1 College Green. They should be open in a few days. The store is on the corner between the Bank of Ireland and Little Caesars. Nice prime piece of real estate, they should do well.

Update: Newstalk 106 announced this morning that the first Starbucks in Dublin has opened on College Green. Probably a deliberate marketing mistake to ignore the fact that its the second. Its a small mistake but I really wish media outlets would stop regurgitating the press releases they get from marketing departments without bothering to check the truth of the contents.

Oh, and the Irish Times has a story from a couple of weeks ago explaining that the delay was caused by competition for retail outlets in the city center and people objecting that Starbucks would dumb down a historic part of Dublin :-)

However, the coffee chain had originally planned to first launch its flagship store at College Green but was held up by claims the company's presence would "dumb down" an historic part of the city.

Obviously the convience stores, fast food kebab outlets and lapdancing clubs have standards about their neighbourhood.

Update: I went into the new Starbucks on Saturday. Follow the link to that posting.

Hillary V's Condi

Here is a story I bookmarked a couple of weeks ago and only just got around to reading. It is an extract from a new book discussing what is, at the moment, the most likely line up for the next US Presidential race, Hillary Clinton V's Condoleezza Rice.

It outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the two and why they are likely to get their parties nominations. It all makes for interesting reading.

Like them or hate them they are likely to dominate US and there-by world politics for the next 3 years.

Update: Looks like someone wants Condi to get a Nobel Peace Prize in the run up to an election, or at very least a Time Person of the Year. She is getting the credit for brokering the deal between Israel and the Palestinians to open up the Gaza border. A few years ago the credit would have gone to the President, Bush or Clinton. The media would have been told that the President had made a late night phone call that clinched the deal (most of the deals in Northern Ireland were explained like that). Now Condoleezza is the one being portrayed as the world statesperson and peacemaker.

What's in your Coffee?

Hmm, I must be getting addicted to caffeine. Far too many of my posts these days seem to revolve around coffee and ways of getting it.

Here is another coffee related posting. This one comes via Boing Boing. A 77 year old lady found a baby turtle in her bag of freeze dried coffee. Unfortunately for her it was a 2 pound bag of coffee and she had been using it for a month, yuck. The turtle was dead, but was it the freeze drying or a caffeine overdose that killed the little critter? A surprisingly small amount of coffee could kill something that size. Don't believe me? Try this web site to see.

All things considered the woman is fairly calm. As she says herself it could have been worse,

"It could've been a snake," Morris said.

I guess that's looking on the bright side of things. There is a lesson for us all there, check your bulk bought food for the factory managers daughters pets before eating :-)

Toys 4 Big Boys

Each November for the last few years I have gone to the Toys 4 Big Boys show in the RDS. And after each show I've come away thinking "that wasn't great, I wont go next year". The first year I was really disappointed, last year was a big improvement but I still went away feeling a little disappointed.

But you know what, I love gadgets. I leave each show with a bag full of leaflets and brochures for TV's, home cinema systems, stereos, cars, saunas (don't ask me, I've no idea why), mobile phones, mp3 players, activity centers, boats, and various other things, 99.999% of which I will never actually purchase.

The show is on again this weekend and of course I'm going again. I'm a sucker for punishment.

Update: Went tonight (Thursday). I managed to get a free corporate ticket so I decided to go for an hour tonight and see what it was like then if it was any good I'd go again on Saturday and spend a few hours there. Its not as good as last year, feels a bit like the first year I was there. Fewer stands. Some stands were more spaced out, obviously just using up space. All in all not, as good as last year. After an hour I'd seen everything I wanted to see.

Update 2: I forgot to mention this last night. As an example of how bad this state of the art gadget and technology show was, Sligo Macra na Feirme (the Young Farmers association) had a stand there. No farming gadgets on display, they seemed to be recruiting. Maybe they got locked in and have been there since the Dublin Horse Show?

The Last Tommy

The BBC has shown the first part of a documentary telling the personal stories of the last 27 surviving British veterans of World War I. The last Tommys are now all over 100. One was 107 when the series started filming in 2003. They were born when Queen Victoria was on the British throne. They watched the victorious British troops come home from the Boer War. One walked on the deck of the Titanic. They grew up in a world that was totally different from the one we now live in. They fought in the war that changed it.

Harry Patch never told anyone about his experiences for 80 years. He only spoke about them after moving into a retirement home and suffering flashbacks as the result of a light flickering in another room and shining like shell blasts through a small window into his room. When he spoke you could see the haunted look in his face, and at 106 years of age it is obvious that the experiences are still vivid and painful. Another veteran, Arthur Halestrap, spoke as strongly and clearly as a man half his age. He has traveled to 30 commemorations in Belgium and yet when he visited a trench being excavated in Belgium and saw the uncovered flotsum of war it was clear how close he was to tears when he made an excuse and asked to go back to the bus.

All of the veterans talk about their lost friends with sadness, pausing to reflect. One soldier Alfred Anderson is the last surviving soldier who was in the original 80,000 sent to France. He witnessed the Christmas Truce in 1914. He was wounded and sent home in 1916 while a friend who took his place died. The family of his friend blamed him for getting wounded and surviving. He said "All these years I've been trying to forget and its all been dragged up again. I thought I would die peaceful" and then came a quiet, resigned laugh, not at his friend, but at himself.

The second and final part will be on next week. It is worth watching to see these men tell their own stories. As Harry Patch said, they did it all "for 18 pence a flipping day".

London Starbucks and IPods

I'm just back from in Dublin after spending the weekend over in London (hence the lack of posts over the last 4 days).

This is just a quick post to deal with two topics I've blogged about before.

First the Starbucks Challenge, I went into one of the MANY Starbucks around Leicester Square and they do the Fair Trade coffee as a brew. The lady behind the counter was very apologetic that they did not have fair trade lattes available. I thought I would be able to say "The Starbucks in Leicester Square passes the Starbucks challenge" but I walked past 4 others in the area while still drinking my latte, so who knows how many are in other directions, I'd guess even Starbucks must have lost count. We can now say that like Dundrum at least one of the Starbucks around Leicester Square passes the Starbucks challenge, but it would probably take weeks to work ones way through all the Starbucks in the area (do Londoners really drink that much coffee???) .

Next the IPod Videos and what we can download in ITunes. I went into the Apple store on Regent Street. It's huge and has every Apple product you could ever want, including the IPod Video. They look pretty good. I would consider getting one if I could download TV programs, but the shop assistant I was talking to said that while there should be loads of content coming from the BBC, it will only be available to BBC license payers, so unfortunately that means it probably wont be available in Ireland.

Coffee Beer

Nestle have patented Coffee Beer. You can now have coffee that "that pours and foams like beer, but smells of strong coffee and packs a concentrated caffeine kick." Unfortunately at the moment it is non-alcoholic which pretty much removes the sole reason for drinking beer. You only have to look at the popularity of non-alcoholic beer to realise that most people don't actually drink beer for the "pour and foam" experience. However all is not lost:

The beverage is made in a similar way to beer, but fine-tuned temperature control stops the formation of ethyl alcohol. So the new drink could go down well with people who want a long tall pick-me-up while driving.

Obviously it should not be too difficult to make the beer alcoholic, in which case it would not be recommended as a "pick-me-up while driving" more a "pick-me-up while stumbling". The trick for Nestle would be to achieve a perfect balance between alcohol and coffee so that one could get drunk and sober-up at the same time.

(Via New Scientist and several other blogs today)

West Wing Debate

There will be a "Live Presidential Candidate Debate" on TV this weekend in the States. Unfortunately its not between Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton, thats a few years away yet. Instead its between Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits on the TV show The West Wing.

Apparently it will be a live debate between the two and though it is scripted they will be able to veer off the track a little. Should be interesting if for no other reason than it could well be less scripted and controlled than real Presidential "debates".

The West Wing is some of the best TV to come out of America in the last 10 years, I hope they show the episode over here. At least one other special episode was never shown on TV this side of the Atlantic. At least I've never seen it and I understand it was never intended to show it again since it dealt with the aftermath of September 11th and was a stand alone episode before the season opener that was out of sync with the rest of the season and the previous season cliffhanger (the one where Bartlet announces his MS). I wonder if the missing episode is on the DVDs....

The Transport 21 Plan

The Irish Government has released its 10 year plan for improving the transportation network in Ireland, they have called it Transport 21 (I've no idea where the 21 comes from).

'Transport 21' is targeting an integrated transport system for Dublin which will include seven new LUAS projects, two Metro lines, DART extensions and an underground station at St Stephen's Green integrating all services.

Newstalk 106 said that the DART would be extended to Gorey and Drogheda, so much for the Dublin Area part of D.A.r.t. :-) . In general it seems like a good plan, assuming they can deliver it on time, on budget and on spec. Given the governments previous track record I would seriously doubt they will.

One thing really worries me and I think is worth highlighting is the role St Stephen's Green will play in the plans for Dublin. They plan to run a metro line from St Stephen's Green out to Swords and the Airport, and to link the LUAS and the Metro all they plan to build an underground station at St Stephen's Green.

The St Stephen's Green area is one of the most high value commercial areas in Dublin with some of the highest ground rents in Europe. You can bet they are not going to be knocking any buildings around there. Some construction work has been under way for several years to the south of the Green at the far end of Harcourt Street, but that would be a little isolated from the city center and it is also unlikely that the developers would switch from building office blocks to building a Metro/LUAS station. I've searched online but can't find any official report about where this would be located. So the only place I can see to put a station is under the Green itself.

That wont go down well (no pun intended) as the Green is one of the most popular and historic landmarks in Dublin. Every summer it is full or tourists and Dubliners enjoying the little good weather we get. Personally I would be conflicted, I like the idea of a city center transport hub but I don't want to see the Green destroyed, even if it was replaced with a new park that covered the new station it would be many decades before a new park would reach the same level of maturity.

Also I'm not convinced that St Stephen's Green is the best place to start a metro line to the airport at all. Being at the far side of the city center and the other side of the river would seem like factors that should rule it out. The O'Connell Street area would be far more logical, especially if they interconnected the LUAS tram lines so people could easily get from St Stephen's Green to the Metro.

Anyway why am I worried, it'll probably never happen, they will spend a few hundred million on feasibility studies and designs then realise the price has doubled so they will shelve half the projects, take 20 years to build the other half and then decide its no longer suitable and announce a new 10 year plan that will include all the things they shelved at the start.

Update: Yep, its going under the Green. Eamon Ryan of the Green Party is on Newstalk 106 and thinks this is a great idea, though he's worried about how long it will take and he estimated it would be a hole the size of a football pitch in the Green for several years. I think that would involve most if not all of the Green being destroyed, especially when you consider that the builders would need space to park their equipment.

Update 2: The 6pm news on Newstalk just said that St Stephens Green would be truned into a "Civic Space" with LUASs overground and Metros below. Hmmm, I smell concrete.

Update 3: The 21 stands for "21st Century" (which is probably how long the government will take to complete it).