I’m just back from a stay in Dublin. Up till now the kids hadn’t been in a plane, so I booked up cheap flights from Edinburgh to Dublin with Ryanair and we popped over for a few days.

First day there we went on the hop-on hop-off City Bus tour of Dublin, and did that about three times in total. This is the recommended technique for any city that you are unfamiliar with, lets you see where everything is and with the commentary from the Irish bus drivers, was quite amusing too. The open top had us absolutely frozen, so we grabbed a hot drink in the O’Briens in the Tourist Office on Suffolk Street.

Second day, when we managed to get up, was a visit to the Guinness Store House. Yes, they say the Guinness tastes better in Dublin but anyone who knows me knows that I have little experience to go on, so two complementary pints of the stuff wasn’t enough to form an opinion. That said, the gravity bar is an excellent experience and well worth the visit. This bar sits on the top of the factory and gives an almost 360 degree view of the city. Excellent stuff.

Third day was wandering about and a bit of culture, so we visited the National Gallery of Ireland, then popped almost next door to the Natural History Museum. Then wandered up the road and watched the pigeons in St Stephen’s Green. Then we went back down Kildare Street and visited the National Museum of Ireland there.

Opinions? An unfamiliar city and currency made it interesting, having the family to look after is a responsibility too. But I settled into it and would do it again. Could have sat on the tour bus a few times, the different commentaries are fascinating. Dublin and Ireland are a very interesting place too, the National Museum of Ireland has an excellent mix of archaeology and recent history and gives a potted history of the events leading up to the formation of the republic. Left Dublin with the impression that there is even more to find out. The City is going under a big change, with lots of cranes around the redevelopment of the town. I was surprised at the number of Motorcyles going around, Dublin has lots of dispatch riders on a variety of machines, the Garda were out and about on Honda Deaville’s and ST1100 machines and a few BMW bikes too.

And I didn’t even sample any of the night life !!

And sat on a few bikes. If you don’t know the Scottish Show, it is run at the Royal Highland show ground in Ingliston and is run by the crowd that publish Motorcycle News in the UK.

We toddled along in the afternoon, because I wasn’t sure about going. Over the years it has lost a bit of its charm and got all organised. It hasn’t quite gone all lifestyle, but I suppose it reflects the market. I’ve been to one or two trade shows in the past and you have to be able to justify the expenditure on sales leads.

The Honda stand was easy enough to find, being right inside the entrance, but we were a bit disappointed until we found the route to the other exhibition hall. For some reason the route between the halls was behind a large stand. It was only on checking the map and watching people disappear that we figured out where folks were going.

Found the BMW stand but missed Charley Boorman, who had been signing an hour or two earlier. Was good to get a seat on the new R1200RT and R1200ST. It is going to be said a lot of times, but the ST doesn’t look as bad as all that in the flesh – I want one 🙂 although the seat height was a bit low. Had a seat on a K1200LT which is mental. A bit like a large armchair, sitting there as it was with Satellite Navigation and a CD player in a compartment on top of the tank.

I’ll just have to save up my money and buy an old R1100RS..

I always find late night shopping a bit of a surreal experience, even when it doesn’t quite count as late night which I think should be sometime after midnight. After putting together the various bits of my new PC, I found myself going down to the local Asda-Walmart for supplies of bread, milk and other essentials.

Driving in to the carpark made me wish I’d had the digital camera and tripod to capture the late night emptiness that comes with 24 hour supermarkets and to feature in this posting. Except it wasn’t quite. Sure, there were about 20 cars in the whole car park, which must take several hundred on a busy weekend afternoon, but two lanes of spaces were cordoned off in the dark. Driving over to park nearby, there were two or three workmen sitting beside stacks of mono-block bricks, relaying in the dim lighting of the carpark. Not a crowd of workmen in fluorescent jackets under floodlights like you have on overnight roadworks, just a couple of white vans and at most 3 workmen. No extra lighting either.

The shopping experience was par the course for that time of night, too many open checkouts for the people in the store (not a bad thing – you don’t have to queue). And aisles full of stock to be placed on shelves, which again is a perfectly understandable activity when the store is quiet. And they played me in to Justin Timberlake and played me out to Avril Lavigne. I can’t remember ever hearing them in my previous visits, perhaps it was too busy to notice?

I’m almost certain that there is an “official” bloggy way of doing this, and a name to go with it, but I thought I would drop a few links to blogs that I follow from time to time.

First is, of course, Martin (Sunpig) Sutherland. An old colleague of sorts, and a major blogging dude.

Someone Else’s Life is the blog of a Photo Journalist who wrote an article on the Special Escort Group and hooked me on to his other articles.

That Blog has now got me on to Random Acts of Reality, the blog of a Paramedic, and also The Policeman’s Blog.

Over at the good looking end of technology, Steve Jobs has recently announced the iPod Shuffle and Mac mini.

The iPod Shuffle is an even smaller iPod that uses flash memory instead of a small hard disk, and the Mac mini is a small but perfectly formed mac but without keyboard, mouse or screen.

Look at the price points! $99 for the iPod and $499 for the Mac mini – nice!

Many years ago I attended a Young Enterprise conference in Glasgow and met a chap who went to another school in the town I am from, Glenrothes. Jon Bains then went on to form a New Media company called Lateral.

I drop in by their company website from time to time, and after a few visits showing a landing page with promises of a redesign, they have changed their site with new content, and new navigation.

The new navigation is still sinking in to my brain, I therefore classify it as “Interesting” for the time being.