Inside View

Planning to Walk After the Lockdown

WHEN WE CAN FINALLY drive beyond a 5km limit, we're headed into quiet wooded areas in southeastern Ireland.

Taking a Page from @davewiner

FOR YEARS I've watched snippets from Dave Winer scroll through my feed readers and learned from them. I think it's important to be able to share quickly (like many do on Twitter or Instagram) while also saving important snippets inside your own space like I try to do with a 23 year old blog I have. So I am going to try to scrape and share daily snippets from my Zettelkasten and from my Flickr photostream. I've started saving screenshots of life, such as the reference to a Ryanair advertisement I spotted on the way into my local Tesco supermarket.

Getting Ideas from @vincenthaywood via @johnpeavoy

I'M GETTING A SLOW START to 2021 but that means having time to read a Twitter thread containing clever time-saving tips from Vincent Hayward. I've an opinion on several of Vincent's ideas.

What to do when eir Vision Freezes @eircare

WHILE PREPARING for an extra week of school holidays, we discovered our eir Vision box freezes. Suggestions appreciated to help restore normal service to our Netgem STB.

UPDATED 2 JAN 2021: An eir call centre tech thinks there's a possible over-voltage condition on the line so he's sending a tech out to the house to look into the line quality.

UPDATED 3 JAN 2021: On a Sunday, an eir technician spent more than an hour opening access panels next to our home and throughout our housing estate before he found the cause of spurious voltage on our line. He solved the eir Netgem STB problem and sorted out a landline issue I had not reported.

I'm Smarter After Importing h/t @readwiseio @inoreader

I TRY TO WORK SMARTER by adopting intelligent routines. Perhaps the most important routine I've adopted involves using Readwise behind the scenes to import highlights from things I've read. I started reading wiser because I wanted to squelch FOMO.

After Spending €3186 with @ThreeIreland #billshock

WE HAVE SPENT more than 3000 euro in data charges with Three Ireland to power two different iPad since 2010 but after being charged €689.91 for "out of allowance" usage, it's time to cut our losses.

15 Years of Christmas

I'M SPENDING SOME DOWN TIME regretting that Ruth and I didn't save Christmas cards from the six different homes we've had through the 22 Christmas holidays we've shared. Instead, I scrolled back through Flickr to find images from Christmases past, starting with a candle flickering in our home in Kilkenny from 2004. I need to find snaps I think I've saved inside traditional photo albums buried in our attic.

It's Manta Claus forom Yahoo Photos on 22 Dec 05: A South African diver sporting a Santa Claus outfit feeds fish at Africa's largest marine theme park the UShaka Marine World in Durban. (AFP/Rajesh Jantilal). We had just moved into our new home in Cashel, County Tipperary.

Our first Christmas candle of 2006. It's been years since we bought new Christmas ornaments for the house, mainly because we've moved into smaller homes and there's less space to decorate. But we have outdoor space now and if you check back on my blog next year, you'll see interesting illuminated spaces.

Dark Christmas

WE KEPT OUR CHRISTMAS lights turned off for several days during this Christmas season to honour two neighbours who died in their homes on our street. Their passing, along with continued COVID-19 restrictions, marked Christmas 2020 as the darkest in my lifetime.

Deaths During Christmas

ON THE RUN-UP TO CHRISTMAS, we've had several sad events unfold near our home. First, an arthritic cat adopted us and was deemed so ill that our vet recommended putting her to sleep. Then a neighbour a few doors down died of a heart attack in his home. And now a steady parade of cars park outside our front door as an elderly man works his way through his final days of terminal cancer.

Because of @dens I have contact tracing

WE EXPOSED OURSELVES to the largest number of people since March 2020 by making a pilgrimage to Mahon Point Shopping Centre. And during our exposure, I let Swarm by Dennis Crowley check me into the places where we lingered the longest.