After the success of the first tweet up in munich, we rested for 4 months and now recovered and regrouped. Not that there is a need to celebrate new things, we will will still do it.
The background : A few English speaking tweeters in Munich have come together and decided to have an informal tweet up. It’s open to everyone, the language is generally English, but most of us speak-the-german too. Think of it as an open coffee club meeting with beer !
Details of TUB2
Date : Wednesday September 15th 2010
UPDATE 14/9/2010 : Because of the U-bahn strike, we have to move this to Thursday 16th,
Time : 18:30 (6:30pm CET)
Location : Unionsbrau, Einsteinstrasse. (near Max Weberplatz)
Here is just a few words about my experience with the Irish Embassy in Berlin and the experience of getting :
new biometric passport
an emergency passport
Overall I must say that I am extremely happy with how I was dealt with in a fast manner by the helpful staff, and I do encourage you to call them if you have any questions or worries.
The background
Stupidly I washed & dried my passport, and it was in pieces afterwards. As it was expiring later this year I didn’t really mind so much, just I knew that it would take a bit of time to get one because of the strike in Ireland. And with plans to travel to a few places this summer I knew I needed a new one ASAP.
Passport forms
After doing some quick research I realised that I needed to get the forms for a renewal from the Embassy. A quick phone call to the staff was all that was needed and I had the forms by post on the following day. You can’t download the forms, and I guess this is probably a security precaution.
I realised on the following Thursday afternoon that I need a passport to go to Italy on the subsequent Monday. In a panic I filled out the forms, got passport pictures taken and got it all witnessed by my bank, and sent it off at 6pm on the Thursday. As I needed an emergency passport for the Monday, I included the copy of my flight booking, and the destroyed passport.
On Friday got a call from the Embassy to check some details, and the temporary passport landed on my door on the following day. Thank God for postage on Saturdays in Germany. So it literally took 65 hours to get an emergency passport. If I was in Berlin I guess this could be done almost on the spot, but due to commitments in Munich I couldn’t do the 1,200km round trip (plus I don’t own a car). From right to left : The new one, the temporary one and the old passport
Emergency Passport
The emergency passport is good for 12 months, and looks different to the other Irish passports (it’s green). As far as I know you can travel to most places on it, but you might get some questions if you go to the USA with it. Once your full passport is ready, after being processed in Ireland, the Embassy will contact you, and ask you to send the temporary one, or your old one, back to them in Berlin. They will chop off a corner from them and send them back to you, along with your new passport. I’ve found that they are really quick with postage turn around, and in my case it was done with the return of post the following day.
New Biometric Passport
The new passport took just under 8 weeks to get to me, from sending the completed forms to getting the new one delivered. While it’s not quick, I do understand that these things take time. It certainly isn’t the embassy’s fault it takes 2 months to get a passport, they always seem to react to things as fast as possible. More about obtaining a new passport is on the Embassy’s website.
HashTag for the event : #tub1
Note : If the weather is bad we will meet inside, in the basement / keller if it’s open. Otherwise we will be out in the beer garden.
Just back from 2½ weeks in Ireland, and while the weather was quite bad at times, i.e. lots of ice / cold / snow, it was still great to be back. I’m not going to comment on how the County Councils could run of of salt and grit, or fail to have adequate material dispersed on the roads, because, well it doesn’t happen every year.
Generally I am a fan of the “bad weather“, snow really makes the city streets quieter (it absorbs the sound), like the brightness in the mornings, and the feeling of a few flakes landing on your tongue as you walk down the street. I’m a big fan of the mountains and skiing and I’m really looking forward the season ahead. I’ve missed a bit of the season already, so I’m eager to hit the slopes.
I didn’t mean to ramble on, what I wanted to do was share the view from the office today : now it’s time to get that snowboard waxed …
Edut : 2014 – the IEDR now updates their zones every 2 hours.
Seeing as it was a little hard to find on www.iedr.ie‘s FAQ page, I thought I would do a quick post for myself and perhaps for other people search “when does the IEDR update their domainservers“. On the page listed, it’s hidden on point #19,
” How long does it take to register a .ie domain name?”
Technically it’s called “server reload” and it happens 4 times a day for the IEDR, at 10am/12pm/5pm/10pm. Previously it used to be twice a day, as far as I can remember.
So if you came here via google or any other search engine, looking for this information, I hope you were helped by this.
Edit : as far as I can see, this page, in their quote
Please note that nameserver changes submitted after 4pm on Friday will not be processed until the following Monday, therefore please submit your hosting changes early to avoid delays.
This is no longer the case, as they are updated every day.
Here is a quite a cool promotional video for the Heineken Cup. It’s a bit like Al Pachino’s in Any Given Sunday Speech, but it’s adapted to rugby.
I quite like this idea, how would your organisation do a motivational video like this ? Do you feel passionately enough about what you do ? Can you instil this passion in others ? If you and your team were to tell people about what you do, how would the people feel about what you do afterwards. Would their opinion change ? What is your mantra ?
Whether you are a professional rugby player or a programmer (like me), you need to be passionate about what you do. It doesn’t have to be something glamorous or humanitarian.
If you are not passionate, then maybe you are doing something wrong. Life is too short to be miserable every day or not loving what you do. You don’t need to love every part of what you do (like having to fill out and pay taxes) but, it’s the overall feeling of enjoying what you do that is important. 😀
I just got a gift voucher from a nice client for Amazon books and I think I need a hand picking some out. As this was work related I wanted to get books that had something to either do with business or programming. Â Do you have any recommendations of books for:
starting up  a business
running your own business
web development
programming
PHP
Ruby on RailsÂ
CSS
Database
As I’m am new to the world of working for myself I think that I should at least get a few books on this topic.
Any help would be greatly appricieated, the more recommendations the better !
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Update : I’ve started to keep the list online here in case anyone else wants to view it.
