Does anyone still read this? Probably not! Busy with a few different web projects, so no time for personal blogging.

The main ones I've been working on (all wordpress based) are:

Carrigaline Baptist Church

Showerdome Ireland - In case you want to get rid of steam from your bathroom!

And finally, Carrigaline Educate Together National School, the design of which was done by a professional web design company.

Sadly I now have a facebook account

It's been a while since I've updated the blog. As I mentioned previously I've a couple of other sites that I look after and more recently I've been sucked into facebook. I thought the likes of Bebo and MySpace were for kids and resisted the idea of having a social networking site but facebook gets it right (in the main) for my needs. If you're on facebook feel free to search and add me as a friend (assuming we are!).

Church Blogs in Cork

Once upon I time I asked if there were many Christian Bloggers in Ireland. Well I've recently stumbled across two blogs run by Pastors here in Cork.

Tom Burke, Pastor of Grace Fellowship has An Irishman's Diary while Irish Preacher is written by Craig Ledbetter of Bible Baptist Church

It's great to see blogs being embraced, not just by Irish Christians, but in particular by Church leaders in Ireland.

Blog all but dead?

Well it's been a long while since this blog was updated. Is it dead? Well it certainly isn't active! The main reason it exists was to post pictures of Christopher for family and friends. Most of that is now done through picassa web. I've also started writing a technical blog at http://www.embeddedincork.net and I also maintain the Carrigaline Baptist Church website (which is run using wordpress blogging software) at http://www.carrigalinebaptist.org So can I keep 3 blogs going? Probably not. I'll keep this one open for the next little while and see if I can find the time to post here.

Future pictures will mainly be on Picassa Web Albums

I've decided to stop posting so many pictures on this blog.

Instead they'll be uploaded to Picassa Web Albums. The reason for this is that they're really only meant for family and friends....and the quality of the pictures isn't great on blogger using the standard upload via Picassa.

Picassa web albums will allow me to upload higher quality images that people can print and also only give out the address of the album to family/friends. So if you want to access the web album just drop me an e-mail and I'll send you the address. My e-mail address is
ralph 'at' depping 'dot' com....replace the 'at' with @ and 'dot' with . and remove all the spaces to e-mail me :-)

My little boy

He really is the most beautiful baby...ever. I know I'm biased but there you go. 

Ben & Christopher

Christopher's cousin Ben was down visiting last week. Highlights included going to the beach (Ben lives in Athy...which isn't that near the sea) and going to Fota! 

A much better sporting weekend

Everton 3 Liverpoll 0...we're 3rd in the league and a tight 9-8 win for Munster against Borders. Plus the Cork Camogie team beat Tipp.

Much better than the 1-0 loss by the Irish football team to Germany, Munster loosing their opening match of the Magners League and Cork yielding to the cats in the All Ireland Final, which sums up last weekend.

Carrigaline Baptist Church Website - Major re-design

At last. After messing about over the summer with wordpress, plogger, multiple plugins, RSS, web servers and lots of other bits and pieces I've "launched" the new site design for Carrigaline Baptist Church (I nominally look after the Churches web site).

Mega thanks to Tim at LivingOS for the excellent Church orientated wordpress theme.

Feedback on the website is welcome...you can add a comment to this post.

A couple of known issues:
1.) The navigation bar at the top stops working correctly after 1 row in firefox (it's fine IE).
2.) The Crusaders section of the website is pretty bare at the moment. I'm hoping to get some content in the near future.
3.) There aren't many pictures yet.

Cardiff Blues 22 Munster 13

One week after our single match pre-season and without our Irish internationals, Barry Murphy, Trevor Halstead and a raft of other injured players Munster were beaten by a practically full strength Cardiff team in Wales. I know I'm trotting out excuses but if you're missing your full regular pack (and then some) and 4 or 5 quality backs like O'Gara, Stringer and Halstead you're going to struggle. Plus two of our better second string pack players are now first string pack players with Leinster (Hogan and Keogh). Mind you after they way we bullied Leinster in the HCup semi-final I can't begrudge them trying to stock up with Munster forwards.

An opportunity to blood some new talent is all the positive that you can take out of this (along with an opportunity for the likes of Cullen and Sheehan to get some much needed game time).

But it's going to be a long, hard September for this team minus all of the players at Camp Eddie O' Sullivan.

I just hope we have some (or all) of our Irish internationals back for the match against Ulster at the end of September at Musgrave Park.

Laughing at/with Mummy

Who knows whether it's at or with, but he's obviously enjoying the occasion. Maybe he finds the camera funny? By the way happy 8th week birthday Christopher...pretty soon we'll start talking about how many months old you are. 

Wear your hoodie with pride..

...in 14 years time you'll see the same face hiding under a hoodie hanging around the streets looking intimidating. For the moment he just looks cute. 

Munster 18 Leicester 26

The rugby season kicks off next week for the Celtic nations and Munster's sole pre-season match in preparation was last night in Musgrave Park in Cork. A Munster team devoid of the Irish internationals took on a practically full strength Leicester side. Leicester started with the likes of Julian White and the impressive ball carring and tackle busting Tuilagi in the pack along with Varndell, Vesty, Murphy, Ellis and Gibson in the backs. Munster could call on Frankie Sheehan for his first game back in what must be almost a year long injury. The other notable returnee was Christian Cullen at full back.

Munster fielded a completly inexperienced midfield of Downing and Gleeson and it showed time and again as Leicester managed to rip it apart, especially through full back Vesty.
After a penalty from Manning, whose penalty kicking was excellent on the night, Leicester grabbed a decent 14-3 point lead through 2 Geordon Murphy tries on the right wing, both of which were converted by former Munster player Paul Burke. Munster came back through a Manning try after Varndell got isolated on his own try line and was put under pressure by Cullen with Manning on hand to scoop up the belatedly released ball from Varndell to score. After converting his own try and adding another penalty Munster went in 1 point behind with all 13 of their points coming from the young Manning.


The second half saw a number of substitutions, most of which strengthened the teams on the pitch. Frank Murphy, again a former Munster player, came on at scrum-half for Ellis and Andy Goode came on at out-half. Among the subs on the Munster side were Shaun Payne who came on at center, Lawlor for Downling, and O'Leary for Delooze at scrum-half. However the second half echoed the first half with Leicester touching down twice more and continued to make big breaks through the center. Munster kept in touch and scored a late try to make the final score 18-26 in Leicesters favour.

Overall an enjoyable enough game for a pre-season friendly. Leicester came with a lot of their big guns and a Munster team devoid of most of its star players aquited themselves well and an 8 point loss was far from dissapointment for the crowd. It was great to see Cullen and especially Sheehan back in action. Flannery is out of action until December so Sheehan has a preety clean run until then to re-assert his claim on the hookers jersey for both Munster and Ireland. New signing Chris Wyatt was immense in the line out for Munster and it was great to see that Donnacha Ryan has filled out quite a lot. Both Wyatt and Ryan should see some more game time this year in the second row with our frist 3 choice second rows on regular duty with the Irish set-up.

The big down side is that we're now 50% through all of the games that will be played at Musgrave between now and March of next year. The visit of Ulster in the Magners League being the only game between now and 2007. Oh well....roll on the new season.


MUNSTER: C. Cullen, J. Kelly (captain), T. Gleeson, J. Downey, I. Dowling, J. Manning, C. Delooze, E. McGovern, F. Sheahan, F. Pucciariello, C. Wyatt, D. Ryan, J. Coughlan, J. O’Sullivan, B. Cuttriss.

Subs. D. Hurley for McGovern (14), S. Payne for Downey (48), T. O’Leary for Delooze (66). M. Lawlor for Dowling (68), E. Hickey for Manning (71), C. O’Boyle for Kelly, S. O’Connor for Wyatt (77). S. Cronin for Sheahan (80)

LEICESTER: S. Vesty, G. Murphy, D. Hitkiss, D. Gibson (captain), T. Varndell, P. Burke, H. Ellis, M. Castogiavanni, G. Chuter, J. White, L. Cullen, L. Deacon, J. Crane, H. Tuilagi, S. Jennings.

Subs. S. Rabeni for Varndell (40), F. Murphy for Ellis, G. Hickie for Chuter (both 57), T. Croff for Tuilaga (58), J. Hamilton for Crane (71), A. Goode for Burke, B. Cornwall for Murphy (both 63).

Referee: D. Keane (IRFU).

My coolest outfit at the moment....

Who would have thought that combat gear on a little baby would work? Well this outfit has attracted the most "isn't his outfit lovely" comments from strangers. Plus it means he blends in with his play mat :-) 

A thoughful bigfoot....

Christopher is thriving...or so they say. He's 12lbs 9oz at the moment which is at the bigger end of the band for a 6 week old. His feet are actually seem quite large, which the community health nurse commented on the day he got his heel prick test. So will he be tall? Too early to tell...I think you have to wait until a child is 3 or 4 years old before you can accuratly estimate final height. 

This looks cruel but it helps with sleeping...

Swaddling looks a little mean...trapping the little baby in a blanket. But at this stage limbs are a big distraction. When he wakes from sleeping he flaps his arms and legs around which keeps him awake. Swaddling is a big help in getting the little man to sleep. 

College Offers are out...what happened to elec eng?

The offers of college and university places in Ireland came out today.

Out of curiosity I checked out how many points were required for the course I did (Electrical/Electronic Engineering in University College Cork). When I sat the leaving certificate (in 1996, almost 10 years ago...which makes me feel old) it took 465 points to get into the course, which is exactly what I got. Now it's only 330 points. Computer Science in UCC is *only* 300 points..while courses like medicine, dentistry and pharmacy are in the high 500 range.

It's now tougher to get into a general 3 years arts degree (345 points) then to get into the 4 year electrical engineering course (330 points). In fact elec eng has one of the lowest point barriers in UCC (computer science is tied with food science as the easiest course in terms of points to get into in UCC).

So? Well it shows that the points system is purely market driven - supply and demand. Points are a subjective value placed on the course by the applicants and may or may not reflect the related difficulty or job prospects.

Compared to when I studied either the supply of places in elec eng is higher, the demand is lower or more likely both conditions are true. Since the telecomms and dot com bust in 2001 the perception is that the tech sector is not a good career route. Points reflect demand and a change from 465 to 330 (granted over a 10 year period) is substantial.

I scraped in on 465 points in 1996 and struggled during the first couple of years on the course (which had a very heavy maths/physics content). I just wonder how the students making it onto the course with around 330 points will fare?

Edit: For some further (and non-UCC specific) reading ElectricNews has an article on the points required this year for CAO IT courses.

Countries I've Visited....

Click image to enlarge.

Some of the more interesting ones....

Work (Motorola):
Chicago, United States
Beijing, China

Honeymoon:
Kilifi Creek, Kenya

IFES Summer Team:
Odessa, Ukraine

Luxury Holiday:
Royal Cliff Resort, Thailand

Legoland:
Billund, Denmark (which Ryanair are soon flying to from Dublin!)


create your own visited countries map

Christopher & Dad

One of the few times we've caught him with a smile on camera. He actually smiles quite a bit now....different types of grins and expressions. He especially likes it when you copy his facial expressions and noises. 

A Little Smile

 

Favourite Toy

This is definetly Christopher's favourite toy at the moment. It's a chime with fish on the end. When you hang it over him he'll flap his hands and legs at it. When he connects it makes a wind chime type noise and bursts into a grin. He's more alert each day (today he turned 6 weeks old!) 

Cool Baby...

...according to the t-shirt at least. He's got his "I'm cool" serious look going on. 

AMG S65 - Interior Picture

It's been a few days since I've taken pictures of Chrsitopher...I promise to add some more over the weekend. In the mean time here's a picture of the interior of the S65 AMG that I had the chance to drive. Very nice indeed....search the blog for previous pictures.