Mobile codes

There's a link to a good blog behind this image. If you have a nokia n95 go to menu, applications, office, then use the Barcode reader program (hint: open the camera shutter) to find out what's behind the image.

3 mobile network 3G broadband modem test – Dublin to Newry Enterprise Train

I've been hearing a lot about this guy and agreed in principal with his belief that Irish trains should have full internet access through wifi. However I thought that I was fine as I had a 3G usb broadband modem from 3.

I was actually very far from being “fine”. I had used the modem in Belfast city centre (decent speed) and more rural areas in Northern Ireland where I accepted the fact there would be low speeds. However the Dublin to Newry (remember this is the main line linking Ireland's two biggest cities - Belfast and Dublin) railline was a connectivity disaster.

I left on the 7pm train and carried out a speedtest using speedtest.net as we pulled out of Connelly station. The webpage was slow to load and eventually give me an average download speed of 150kbps. To put this in perspective this is only 3 times the old dialup max of 56kbps, yet 3 advertise 3.6mbps and I would expect to get near this in Dublin City Centre.

My problems get worse however as at 7.20pm the signal is completely lost when we are still within the built up greater Dublin area. Two minutes later the network roams to o2.and stayed with o2 until the modem picked up a signal in Drogheda at 7.30pm. However the speedtest give a reading of 74kbps download speed which did not give my Google Reader webpage time to load at this speed before the signal was lost at 7.38pm just outside the town.

The damn modem found the signal again at 7.49pm but it was too weak to even load the speedtest page. This contuined as we passed through Dundalk and the signal was completely lost again at 8.03pm.

Just when I was about to toss the bloody thing out of the window I arrived in Newry at 8.10pm to record my quickest speed of the journey with130kbps download and 118kbps upload showing in the speedtest window.

Please Irish Rail/Translink get moving on high speed internet access and don't let me have another disconnected journey like today.

Opencoffeeclub barbeque

Another great looking event in the Limerick area (Terryglass) taking place on the 16th July is Opencoffee club BBQ.

From the website, "The event in Terryglass will have a social as well as business aspect achieved by adding a barbecue and a beautiful location to the mix. It will take place in The Derg Inn and the community hall in Terryglass. More details on Terryglass can be found on http://www.terryglass.com. Childcare facilities are also being provided.

There will be facilities for people who would like to demo their product or service or who would like to give a short talk about a specific subject. There is also sufficient room for spontaneous break-out sessions to develop. People who would like to learn more about the internet & technology industry in Ireland or meet some of the successful entrepreneurs are particularly welcome."

State of the Map

The State of the Map conference is taking place in Limerick, 12th and 13th July 2008. Some are going for the mapping, I'm going for the drinking.

I am a geek

I suspected it might be true but the fact that I am offically a geek was confirmed after attendance at Barcamp Belfast. I'm a land surveyor and GIS (digital mapping) Analyst by trade but the fact remains that nothing said at Barcamp was alien to me. Even the chat afterwards in the pub about various linux devices did not throw me, infact I was very interested in what the rest of the guys had to say. The talk briefly turned to mapping and I discovered another openstreetmapper in our midst...now just need to persuade him to attend the openstreetmap conference in Limerick this summer.

Talk of the conference for me had to be Florian Hollerweger's demo of Pure Data. He demonstrated how easy it was to create great sounds through a drag and drop interface. I especially liked it as it reminded me of tunes I hadn't heard for a long time, think Aphex Twin and Warp Records sounds and you get the idea.

Actually that was probably the most "geeky" talk happening that day so there's no doubt about it...I am a geek.

3D camp Limerick

Meant to post about this ages ago. I'm going to 3D camp in Limerick on May 24th. A great line up and interesting talks are planned ranging from Google Earth models to World of Warcraft.

Irish Wifi Maps

Eirepreneur's mymaps map has nearly reached 100,000 views if the stats on Google are correct. If anyone knows free or paid hotspots please add to the map.


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