Words Myte Bite

The Mystery Of The Zero Charge For Parking

Sunday having had our fill in the Woodstock Cafe, Mr L and I drove across Dublin, watching the car report temperature changes. Eventually we arrived at the Square we were met with a parking barrier which dispensed a ticket. I don’t know how long they are there, however I have not seen them operating before. A sign told all who read it that if you bought goods to a value of €15 in certain shops you could get parking for free. As I was not buying anything in the Square I did not want, I most certainly  was not going to benefit from this largess.

Anyway shopping concluded myself and Mr L sat down to have a coffee and watch the passing humanity. It was amazing to see how few people had a smile on their faces. We saw customers, they were there of their own choice, and mostly seemed to be unhappy with their choice. There was one lady whose expression changed as she intereacted with a sales person from not quite blank to a warm smile. When finished her business she walked out of the shop turned in one direction, then in the other. Checked her watch, checked her bag. She looked at the shop she had just exited and walked back in. Amazing things people. We only saw on other person who had a big smile on their face, perhaps a mother or some relation, who was pushing a small child whose back was to us in a shopping trolly. Both were making eye contact with each other and oblivious to the world around them.

Coffee concludes, as it does, we got up to walk. We entered Eason’s and left almost immediately, a couple of magazines the heavier and some less cash. Heading for the door we went to pay for parking. Oh joy, the parking card was stamped “paid”, no fee would be extracted. There were a couple of theories as to why this was the case. My personal one is that they have people pay on normal business days, when the place might get full of day trippers using the Luas or some other mode of public transport. We could have asked but why spoil the fun.

The Green Red Gems Find a Troika Home (Ruby Ireland in the troika persons in one deity hotel)

News at 11.

In other news well done to Declan McGrath for getting the ruby people together, haven’t had as many giggles in a long time.

Bad geek joke warning:

It was Reg Ex with a Broken Pipe in the Shell – who/what got killed … the interpreter process.

Nerd stuff strange how people think.

QT was for me Trolltech’s kit.

Not Quick Time.

Both are valid answers but in a Ruby context think Trolltech.

Open Source software I kept saying, I don’t say open source, I say Free Software.

When someone mentioned a language called closure and brackets, lisp got a mention.

RMS got a mention at that time.

Some people coded, others just out pedant ed the other pedants.

I will try harder.

RubyIreland meetup in the Trinity Hotel, in summary rocked.

Tech stuff mentioned, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Java, Groovy, C++, frameworks, Haskel Closure, and many more.

Declan’s write up:
http://short.ie/santasgotgems

It’s a long way to Tipperary, and it is a longer way to Maynooth.

My grandfather on my father’s side when he was alive told me many stories this is one of them.  In this case we tell of the bitter atmosphere in the country after the Civil War towards the old occupiers.

Back in the day there were races in Maynooth and people travelled from Dublin’s City Centre to them on a tram. What a lot of people may not know is that the song “It’s a long way to Tipperary” is actually a British marching song. In a land which had only recently rid itself of the yoke of British rule the singing of a British marching song did not go down too well with some people. What would not be known is WWI  there were large Irish regiments on the British side in WWI. It could be called an inconvenient truth which was ignored for a long of time. This fact was not mentioned in the history books of Irish school children in the sixties and seventies.

Back to the tram, an exchange of words, neither side was willing to back down. Words having failed fists were used to try and get the point across. The tram like the fight continued on its way west having no place to stop at for some time. Eventually the tram stopped at the Dead Mans Inn, in Palmerstown,  a pub which exists to this day. The Guard’s arrived and removed the offending parties.

My grandfather and a colleague were on that tram, they were not in uniform, had they stood up on either side would have turned a two man brawl into a riot, tensions about the level of the animosity between sides here and the third party the British after the civil war can’t be stated strongly enough. The civil war had nothing civil about it, it tore the heart out of Ireland and left us with the strange politics we have today.

As for my grandfather and his pal, they continued on to Maynooth and by all accounts enjoyed themselves.

How the RIC saved DeVelera’s Government of the Irish Free State

It is documented that Éamon de Valera or Dev as he was known and his party (Fianna Fáil) turned up to take control of the Dáil (House of Parliament) having won the election in 1932 carrying arms as they expected to be objected to as they had objected to the previous government which lead to the civil war in Ireland about ten years previously. However why they were carrying arms might not be understood within a historical context of excitement, and anger that the side which had objected to the elected body in control of the Irish Free State (as Ireland was known at that point) by way of an armed struggle against the incumbents in the Irish civil war. When that war was over they threw their guns away rather than surrender them to authorities, now the time has moved on. In 1932 they won the vote and were in control of the state. They had carried arms into the Dáil on day one (this is documented elsewhere).

What a lot of people would not know and I have this on the authority of someone who told it to me, my grandfather a member of the Garda Síochána, Dev and his party had good reason to be afraid.

The night before they took their seats in the Dáil there was a meeting of members of the Garda Síochána in the National Stadium (I have to presume this is the one on the South Circular Road). This meeting was heading towards sedition, the atmosphere was tense. There was a tension in the air as person after person decried the election of Finna Fáil, and it was almost the case that the Gardí within that room were about to leave and arrest deValera. An older man, a sargent I believe, stood up at the back of the room and asked to address the floor. He was well known, it is worth reminding ourselves that the State was only ten years old. This story recounted a similar day about ten years eariler but with a difference. He went on to tell his story*, “he had worked in the RIC*,  and he wanted to relate to the people in the Stadium that a similar situation had occured when the Free State was founded, he had gone to work one day and he was working for the Crown, later that day his allegence was switched to the Free State. It was his job not to decide government, it was his job to carry out duties in enforcing the law of the land. It most certainly was not his place to object to the will of the people who elected a new body of people to govern.”

The ex RIC man stopped, my grandfather said he never saw so many people exhale a breath and with that breath so the anger that had been building all evening died and they got on with their job.

Bertie as my grandfather was known to us, told me several stories all of them interesting, this one he told me in his nursing home a couple of months before he died.

RIC* This was the  Royal Irish Constabulary, the police force in Ireland before the creation of the Irish Free State and  loyal to the British Crown. They had been involved in the fight against Irish Independence.

story* Sadly I did not write this account down years ago, the words used do not reflect how elequently it was told to me.

Culture Everywhere

Culture, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us is “the arts and other manifestations if human intellectual achievement regarded collectively” as it starts to define a word which is perhaps abused more than used. A conversation yesterday about culture went something like this. All cultures are a subset of the things we all bring to culture. We all bring something to the table.

Culture is a super set of cultures national and ethnic and all the way to local community. However this is too crude a measuring line, so at a best guess, perhaps this would be better. Everything is of cultural significance, the question is how profound mixed with how much of what community is impacted by it.

Consider this, communities are not necessarily living in one localised district, they can and are spread around the world.

As 10CC put into song, art for art’s sake, money for god’s sake. Have fun out there.