I was home in Roscommon over the weekend and was reminded about just how great it is to visit my parents. I grew up in Roscommon but feel no affinity to the county. Except for this place that my parents have made a fantastic home and place of safe contentment. My parents are big fans of nature and several years ago started putting out nuts for the various birds that used to perch themselves on the washing line at the side of the house.

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Always looking at gadgetry, I sometimes manage to find something non-tech related that I want. The Xtracycle kit is something that held appeal for quite sometime and I finally decided to go for it. I’ve used a pannier in the past (excellent but not roomy enough while being easily transportable off bike) and I’ve recently gone to a backpack for carting the commute gear but found that even with a well fitting one I was getting some back pain.

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This is probably ignorance on my part more than anything. I’m finding my RSS stream a little overloaded from tech news which is interesting but not necessarily impacting me in the context of being Ireland based and focussed. For this post ‘tech news’ should be treated as shorthand for Irish tech news. At the moment I pick up most of this tech news from a combination of blogs and the sites like Gadget Republic or Silicon Republic (coalesced via Yahoo Pipes).

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I’m somewhat reluctant to write this post as I’m not much of a fan of calling people out in blog posts. However this is something which seems stuck in my craw and so I have to get it off my chest. Last Friday SimplyZesty published a post exhorting us (Twitter folk, that is) to stop the #FollowFriday convention: I mean am I really going to look through 10 different @names and see if they are interesting or not?

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flickr.com/photos/baboon Update 11 November 2010: I’m seeing an increase in traffic to this image so I thought I should link it properly: http://www.flickr.com/photos/baboon/3946055/ – there are some fantastic photos over there, really worth spending some time browsing through. I’m not even sure what to call it so perhaps that gives a sense of where I am with this. I’m pretty sure I’ve brought it up before so it might be a somewhat tired subject but the meetforeal.

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I really didn’t need any persuading to pay the extra €15 at Vision Express for a digital retina photo. Loved how quick they became available online. Left Right

Surely must be the last of the food posts I manage for the next while, no more on the agenda for the next while anyway. Following the Look and Taste recipe this is my second attempt at risotto which turned out much better than the first one. I’m not a huge fan of mushrooms but really enjoyed eating them in this dish so I’ll probably keep an eye out for recipes with mushroom in there.

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Continuing the trend of talking about food, I’m still enjoying the fruits of my trip last week to Olio&Farina and Sheridans here in Galway. Finishing up the bread (pan with olive oil and thyme) and then going with the old melted ham & cheese with a dob of fig jam, serious nom nom for me :)

It’s interesting to see the amount of buzz food is generating within Ireland again, in particular people taking an interest in cooking again. I’ve always found cooking to be something very relaxing and as it turns out it’s a great way to get a sense of being home again after travel (I’m over and back to Lebanon quite a bit at the moment). What’s inspiring is how many people are taking it on as a casual interest and sharing the experience.

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Had a good laugh this morning (via Redmum): http://redmum.blogspot.com/2009/03/tax-dodging-365.html