If you haven’t tried it, or even heard of it, it’s being branded as the cola from Red Bull. “Strong and Natural” they say, and I agree

It was more curiosity than anything that made me pick it up when I went to EuroSpar a few weeks ago for a normal shopping trip. I never used to drink Red Bull much before (probably about 3 to 5 cans ever, most of which came from a college event where we were given free crates of the stuff!), so I thought it would be worth a shot anyway. First sip of it really made me realise the difference in the taste between it and normal colas like Coke and Pepsi. Like they say, it is strong and natural.

It’s strong in the sense that it gives the same sort of kick a normal coke does given the caffeine in it (which is seems to have more of than the other stuff) - but it’s the taste that makes a big difference. When you drink it, you’ll understand the difference between the natural flavours in this and the articficial crap in the other crap. Hence why I haven’t gone back (although I do still have the odd Pepsi now and then while it’s still in those 750ml for the price of 500ml bottles!).

Of course, this drink and the current addiction does come at a bit of a cost. Right now a 355ml can of it sets me back €1.45, and there are no 4-packs on sale as of yet. Given that I go through at the moment 2 cans a day, it’s €3.90 just on coke. Not including the other stuff I eat and drink!

Anyway, you should give it a try if you can find it in your shop. You might not like it at first, but that’s probably because it tastes “real” unlike other cola drinks. As Red Bull themselves say:

Red Bull Cola has a special blend of ingredients, all from 100% natural sources.

In addition, it is the only cola which contains both the original Kola nut and the Coca leaf. Therefore, it is a very special recipe. What else would you have expected from Red Bull?

The result is a classic cola taste, without being too sweet, which comes from using the right plant extracts.

Other food-based stuff I’ll be going on about soon: Heinz’s new “Taste of Home” range, starting with Chicken and Vegetable Casserole soup. Seems to stem from the “Big Eat” range, which I’m also big into

• First and foremost, my family Elaine, Aoife and Tim
• My aunt Paula, whose birthday was on the day before mine
• My aunts Colette and Christine
• Cousin Avril who still hasn’t dropped up to Dunboyne yet!
• Dr. Kawashima from my More Brain Training game
• Margie, Rosie, Friga and Curly from my Animal Crossing: Wild World town
• Donncha O’Caoimh
• Grannymar
• Primal Sneeze
• AdjustantReflex
• From CBTS: Penny, Zeak, Fatal, birdflu, Jeremy and Demon
• From Second Foundation: Bleak Visage
• “HappyTwitDay”
• And all those vBulletin forums that automatically sent me birthday wishes e-mails as part of their coding!

This list will probably expand as the rest of the week goes on - whether I’ll update it or not, I’m not sure

Although, I think this is turning out to be a bit of a “tradition” - everyone else in the house forcing me up just after midnight to give me their well-wishes, and then me trying to shrug it off and go back to sleep! I know everyone is enthusiastic about it (or at least they make it out as if they are), but I’m really not all that bothered about it, to be honest.

One thing I have wanted lately is for nothing particularly extravagant be put in place for the day (or weekend, in some cases). If we are going to go out for a meal to celebrate, I either insist that there’s only a few people, or that we bring my aunt Paula along - since her birthday is the day before mine (BTW, if you are by some chance reading this, Happy B-day!). And when we go to TGI Friday’s for said meal (again, tradition), I’m always really adamant that we NOT get that special birthday song sung by all the waiting staff. I didn’t mind it when I was younger as a kid, but these days I really don’t want to be the center of attention for the entire restaurant, even if it’s only for a couple of minutes!

Anyway, I’m still slightly in the dark as to what else is going to happen today. Either way, it probably won’t end up being all that different to a normal summer Wednesday - that is to say we all clear out of the house while our cleaner Emily comes, and just do stuff. There’s only really one thing I would really look forward to though - and that’s ordering my nice little Komplett shopping list so that I get to work on building my monster gaming rig

Odds of that actually happening though? Slim to none…

Thinking back to the beginning, there probably wasn’t much to talk about, hence why there were so many one-paragraph posts in the first few months. Over time, I’ve changed from more of an “online diary” to more of an “online place where I can vent my anger/emotions without any repercussions”.

Alright, I guess that part isn’t exactly true, there have been a few issues over a couple posts before. One of them was the main cause for me losing that low-paying and annoying Internet Café job, another got me ridiculed by half the CA people for at least a couple of weeks, and another almost got me kicked out of my college course (It’s not my problem that the guy is paranoid about e-mail spam!)

Recently though, my “market share” per se of the blogosphere seems to be going up ever so slightly. Although I’m not on par of more known bloggers like Donncha, Grannymar, Elly, Grandad, Primal and many others on their blogrolls I don’t know about - I still am glad to see that I do get a few regular visitors (although that’s mainly Reflex ;))

Now, I know I don’t post every day (and in some cases not every week!) and I don’t have a regular schedule of posts, but I do still do my best to post at least every couple of days. Sometimes I don’t feel like posting, sometimes I want to post but can’t, and other times I just don’t even think about it - but at least I’m doing my bit. Thanks to all for reading. I’ll keep doing my best to grow and get more known in the blogging community and I hope you all do too

And a couple of small little notes:

• It’s my 19th birthday in 2 days… I really don’t want too much of a big deal made out of it. Hopefully this year it can be completely low-key. Last year seemed quite minor, but it got a little “out of hand”, if you know what I mean…
• I’ve added a few more Irish bloggers to my Links page. If I have you there and there a few details wrong, feel free to let me know and I’ll change the stuff to better suit. And if I don’t have you there, and you want in let me know
• The Microwave show is back on YouTube for Season 4! Watch it here: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=purDYWSVo54

Semester 2 Examination Results
Examination results will be posted online on Thursday 26th June 2008 at 3pm.

Oh dear, those two little sentences are really making me edgy about tomorrow.

I know I had a few problems here and there with a few subjects, although not as bad as the complete blank in Languages and Computability in Semester 1…
However, I don’t expect myself to fail as many as I did in first year. Some of the more dreaded ones went a lot better than expected, so failing those would be a bit of a shock to me.

Of course, the main problem with failing will be (most likely) another day in August wasted having to go back in to Glasnevin to sit the repeat exam. They do their best to get them out of the way, but it’ll still be annoying if I have to go in every day of the week…

On a side note, I’m still trying to figure out how on earth I managed to fail the Logic Continuous Assessment in the first semester. I received an e-mail on the Thursday or Friday in the last week of exams which told me that there would be a repeat of the C.A. on the Monday. As soon as I read it, I was thinking many things to myself. First and foremost, why the heck they were holding them AFTER the exams period. I mean, don’t they think that people would have made plans for after the exams once they found out when they would be finishing? Needless to say, I had plans and was unable to attend. If they can’t hold one that can accommodate most people, well then they are pretty wrong in the head!

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to talk about some decent results and only one repeat exam in August. The odds of that actually happening? Probably only about a fifth…

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And before I start, let me just clarify that this is about self-hosted Wordpress, since I’m not entirely sure of the options available for WordPress.com blogs.

First of all, WordPress can be more than a blogging tool if you choose to make it that way. It can be used as a general website, a news site, or some other form of a very-light content management system. I’m going to be using both of my current installations (my site, and the RPWS site) as examples here for what you could do with your own installation.

Static Front Page

The ability to have a Wordpress page as the home of your website, is an option that I very seldom see being used, but it’s one of the most useful options available to you. With the static front page, you can make a custom template file to show whatever you wish on your front page. In my case, I use my front page to show a brief welcome message, followed by my latest blog posts and random gallery images.

Use query_posts() or a custom posts query to show what you want on your front page, or use it as a splash page before your visitors reach your blog. Just don’t forget to make a new page which becomes your new blog home page (and is affected by the home.php template file)!

Photo Gallery

WordPress 2.5 introduced increased support for photobloggers and galleries, but I still swear by the combination of WordPress and Gallery2 - and the plugin which merges them together: WPG2.

Using this plugin, you get all the features of Gallery2, along with the ability to easily add photos from your gallery to your WordPress posts or pages, as well as the gallery displaying inline in your WordPress site. My Stuff page is an example of WPG2 in action - the Gallery2 displays within the WordPress header and footer.

Website and Forums

Another possible option with WordPress is to use it as the main website for your bbPress powered forums. bbPress may seem very lightweight at first, but it’s infinitely extensible with a wide range of plugins available, allowing you to pick and choose which features you want.

The main advantage of this is that WordPress and bbPress integrate so well with each other. With the ability to use the same user info, the same database, and with the bbSync plugin, use the same WordPress posts and comments as bbPress topics and replies. This setup is currently in effect on the RPWS website.

In short, there are many things that WordPress can be used for, not just as a blogging platform. Think about the possibilities you can make using a combination of plugins, settings and other fancy options

However, I have to say I am impressed. OK, well maybe I can’t really say that, especially as I’ve been using Firefox 3 since the Beta 4 version, so I’ve been used to all the new features for quite a while. Coming back on this evening on my RC1 version installation, I tried the auto-upgrade feature, only to find it couldn’t update (although whether this was by design or down to the fact the servers were extremely busy, I’m not sure). So I had to trduge to the main Firefox page to get it.

On arrival, I was met quite happily by a fresh new look page to show off the delights of FF3. Although since I already knew of them all, I skipped straight to the download link for good old Firefox 3 for Windows/Irish. After the eventual download, which probably took about 15 minutes at a rough estimation, the first thing to wake me up like being slapped in the face by a wet fish, was the installer.

It was in Irish. Now that does go to show just how good the different language version are, if not only the program operates in your language, but every little detail of the installer is, too. And it’s even more impressive when it’s a language that you normally wouldn’t see around the net!

And now FF3 proper is installed and up and running for me. Nothing much has changed from using Beta 4/RC1 except now that it has an Irish language pack, which I now have set as the default
Hopefully the rest of you will be able to download it without many problems and help set the world record for most downloaded piece of software in 24 hours!

Now better go post this, Dún Cluaisín, Oscail Twitter i gCluaisín Nua, Athluchtaigh Leabharmarcanna Beo, Cruthaigh Leabharmharc don Leathanach that I come across during my surfing, and finally Scoir for the night!

Right, to make this more “beefy”, a few random tidbits of information:

• On the 26th of August, my 360 will have lasted 2 years since it’s manufacturing date (provided it does last, that is)
• Pokémon Adventures volume 27 arrived a couple of days ago. Still want the rest of the volumes to be translated quicker! I want to see Ruby and Sapphire again!
• And BTW, still haven’t got any scans for that “featured post” about Ruby… I really do need to do that soon…
• Not that any of you have seen my small Lego race car, but I’ve recently come up with a variant IndyCar style look. Looks a bit more streamlined, and like the real things has a stupidly long and thin nose
• The rain has also come back to Dunboyne today. There ends a long run of decent weather
• If any of you use the Forerunner Wordpress theme, and are looking for a bbPress conversion, give me a shout. I might just share the conversion of the theme that I use on the RPWS forums
• I might go for a new “official personal pic” soon. That one over there is looking a bit dated and crappy >>>
• I’m getting back into Wikipedia editing again. Although not on the scale of that vandalism patrolling fetish I went through some while back.
• My RSS news feed backlog grows daily. No matter how quickly I read them, there’s always a load of them left unread by the end of the day…

I think that’s enough for now… Although I may add more as I think of it

It started out as another annoying shopping trip to fetch more stuff that we didn’t really need, only Elaine wanted. While Aoife and I were about to start heading back, I noticed that there was a lot of commotion going on in the field across the road from the shop. I noticed that there was another display from Dunboyne Motor Club, of different forms of racing cars either from Ireland, or driven by Irish drivers. I persuaded Aoife to come with and have a little look from afar, when I noticed that at the very end of the little park area… was the A1 Team Ireland car

After dumping the little one and the shopping back at home, and picking up my camera, I headed back down to the centre of the village, mainly to get a better look at the car and to get some good pics! Niall Quinn, A1 Team Ireland’s rookie/test/reserve driver was there, along with his family, as part of the event. The A1 car certainly seemed to be very popular - a good portion of the adult male population of Dunboyne were out in force to show their support. It turned out that it was actually a season two car rebuilt into a show car, which Michael Devaney had driven for real. It’s probably why it was missing the Celtic Tiger logo from the nose

A1 Team Ireland wasn’t the only attraction, there were plenty of rally cars, classic cars, and even a car from Formula Libre at the event. Not to mention all the buses that were at the terminus right behind the green space
Sadly, the A1 car didn’t hang around for all that long after I came back - it was being packed up quite early, perhaps around half seven or so (I really wasn’t sure of the time, I was too busy paying attention to cooler things ). Packing it up, however, was another sport in itself. Although it wasn’t a whole team of mechanics and race engineers putting it away, it was quite exciting to see them getting the car up on the jacks, onto the trolleys and then packing it away in the trailer

I managed to get a little chat with Niall near the end. It was fun talking to him, especially as he is sort-of an expert in the subject of A1 - he mentioned that the new A1 car looked a lot nicer than the current iteration, and is probably going to be around 8 seconds a lap quicker! Faster-paced racing is always a good thing! One more thing that he did mention to me, and this is a bit of exclusive insider info (or at least until Monday morning) - is that next season, 2008/9, there won’t be another trip back to Durban in South Africa. Instead, there will be a return to Beijing in China. When I heard that, I was very astounded especially after the disaster that was the previous race in Beijing in Season Two. However, he assured me that it would be taking place in a different part of the city, so with any luck this time there won’t be a very tight 180° corner that even when made wider, still can’t be traversed by a car even on full opposite lock!

All in all, it was very enjoyable hour (yes, it was only an hour from the time I arrived with my camera to the time I got back home) and I got plenty of pictures and videos, which I’ve uploaded as well into my Gallery. Hope you enjoy them!