irishblogs

The world outside my window

- paul

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 …

IEDR reload times / nameserver update schedule

- paul 9 Comments

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.

Have a Mantra

- paul 3 Comments

A little bit longer than a normal mantra, but here is a 15 minute long mantra from Gary Vaynerchuk. He explains the ultimate way to be happy and successful by doing what you love.

I’m still going through the whole moving to being 100% self employed, but as a motivational video, I just love this. Gary Vaynerchuk explains that you don’t need money to do what you love, you simply position yourself to succeed. He explains that you do you can do things after hours, come home from your 9-5 job, grab a bite to eat and then start doing what you love from 7pm until 2am. That’s enough time to have an impact and change the world.

He ends by saying, ” just work” that’s how you get it.

I treat this as my little mantra, and I’ve probably watched* it at least 30 times so far. Do you have a mantra ?

Looking for book recomendations

- paul 4 Comments

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.  Do you have any recommendations of books for:

  • starting up  a business
  • running your own business
  • web development
  • programming
    • PHP
    • Ruby on Rails 
    • 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 !

 

Update : I’ve started to keep the list online here in case anyone else wants to view it.

Being able to work anywhere

- paul

There is a lot to be said for being able to work anywhere around the world. Today I find myself in Kilkenny town in Ireland, and overlooking the river Nore and the local castle. We are staying in the Kilkenny River Court Hotel, which is quite nice, and not too far from the train station here. Here is a look of the view across the river this morning.Killkenny Castle & River Nore
Since starting to work for myself I can’t really complain with where I’ve traveled to and the work schedule. I guess the main thing is that you need to be well organised, so that you know you have everything you might need to work out of a hotel room.

 

After lunch I took a trip to St. Canics’s Cathedral ,  who have a nice public round tower from 1285AD ! Here I am at the top.

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Time for New Years Resolutions

- paul

I am not really a person for NYR (New Years Resolutions), as I believe that you can make conscious changes at any time, and it doesn’t just need to be on Jan. 1st. So here are mine, 3 weeks into Janurary.

  • get in shape, well not that I am over weight, but I do think that I need to tone up a little
  • have a more regular working schedule. Start at 9am and finish at 5pm or earlier. 
  • go to at least 3 new countries. South Africa is already planned in March, so I just need to find 2 more. 
  • to stop buying new domains, the plan is to develope the existing ones (about 30) before I go  further. 

So there I have it in writing. 

P.S. The domain here is still being setup properly so do let me know if there is anything askew.

Setting some goals

- paul

After the month-long holiday, and doing very little excerise & drinking a lot of beer and eating well, I’ve decided I need to hit the gym and loose some weight.  I’ve also decided to put it in writing so that I don’t skirt around the issue. So the aim is to loose 10 lbs, 4.4 kgs by the end of February.
Let’s see how it goes. The final weigh in should be sometime at the end of February.