Happy Halloween!!

This is what Triona looks like after a night on the town guys! Seriously - a great night was had at the St. Cecelia's fundraiser in the Sally Gardens. Triona dressed up today to do some story telling with Jenny. It's a good look for her - suits her nose. I'm off to be killed now :)

More Rally Ireland pictures

Well they're not exactly Rally Ireland - more Infacta sponsored rally car pictures :)

Shane and Jim did really great finishing in 20th position overall - a superb performance considering it was their first time in a car of this size (Shane rallies a 106 usually - though I think that's about to change).

Here's a collection of pics from Saturday (note to self - find better locations to shoot from next time).









Well done again to Shane & Jim!

Rally Ireland

Rally Ireland, the pilot event for what is hoped will be a WRC stage is in Sligo this weekend and Infacta (my company) is sponsoring one of the cars in it. The car is an Evo 8 and it's being driven by Shane Feely and navigated by Jim McGrath, both from Boyle. We've got our product logos (GroupMail and GroupMetrics) on the sides and the company one on the front - here's a few pics from day 1:

Park Ferme







City Hall




I'll be following the Rally all weekend and hopefully I'll get some decent action shots - if I do I'll post them here. If you want to find out more about the rally visit rallyireland.org.

Cathy & Angus's new arrival!

Everybody say Hi! to Alex Anne. I'm told that 'Ally' is a firey redhead and has been keen to let everyone around know about her arrival and that Mom and Dad are smitten. All are doing great and looking forward to catching up with everybody (of course we will probably have to travel to Australia to do that - or will we?).

SF Web 2.0 : That's a wrap

Sorry I didn't post on Saturday or Sunday last. The conference was finished on Friday evening and with that so was our free Wifi Internet access. On Friday evening there was a drinks jobby hosted by Yahoo. Pretty tame stuff but I think we had built up quite a resistance to free booze at this stage.

We (Paul, Brian and Julian) got hijacked by a limo driver in Union Square who brought us to the "Best Italian Eatery" in town (North Beach). I think there were moments when we all thought about jumping out of the car. Needless to say we stuck with it and everything worked out OK. No beatings or anything and the food was excellent. We finished off the evening with a few night caps in O'Reily's in Washington Square.

Saturday was tourist day. Sight seeing, some light shopping and the likes. The weather was great and the town was packed to the rafters (there was a golf open on as well as fleetweek). We finished off the day with a nice Mexican meal and a few scoops in Foley's. Julian left for home earlier but Fergus was back from his meetings on Friday.

Sunday/Monday were travel days - everything went more or less to plan. It was a real pain having to go through 3 sets of security (San Francisco, London and Dublin) but I guess that's the price you pay now adays for international travel.

I'll wrap up my SF posts with a few pictures from the trip not shown in previous posts.


This is a picture of the Cascades taken from the window of our plane en-route to San Francisco.


Picture of San Francisco from the Conference Hotel, The Argent.


Of course we took a cable car ride (and it was great).


Paul (enookdesign), Brian (Enterprise Ireland) and Fergus (Nooked) (taken at The Irish Bank). Missing from pic is Julian (Tablane) and Benjamin (Enterprise Ireland) and mise.

SF Web 2.0 : Day 3

Sitting here now listening to Sergey Brin of Google fame. Since yesterday we've had dinner with people from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google - nice people, very open and lots of opinions. We went to a great party after in a bar called SWIG - let's just say there was plenty of networking, chit chat and perhaps a few drinks? :) I met up with some of my friends as well - pictured, Mike and Ehren. It was great to catch up with them again. Yahoo are hosting a party tonight which should be a lot of fun.

SF Web 2.0 : Day 2

Yesterday was a very busy day, and sort of over overwhelming. 13 new businesses were launched and they were all really amazing (none making money yet but that doesn't seem to matter here in web2.0 world - yet at least). Most of the discussions were excellent and the speakers of the highest caliber (Ray Ozzie for instance). Microsoft sprung for dinner then for all guests last night (there is almost a thousand attending!) - Surf and Turf - and it was excellent. Google then had an open bar for the rest of the night. Of course I'm doing my best for Ireland Inc. and participating in everything :) I'm meeting up with some old friends tonight after dinner (Enterprise Ireland are buying tonight) and I'm looking forward to that. Battle on I say.


Here's another really interesting picture of the event (not). I'll do the tourist thing at the weekend and hopefully get some typical SF images (there's a really cool thing called fleetweek beginning here this evening which involves the Navy and the Blue Angels). More later.

San Francisco - Web 2.0

Hi from San Francisco! I'm at the web 2.0 conference in San Francisco at the moment - it's a pure geek fest. We got into town last night after a 13 hour flight, got some dinner in Chinatown and a night cap in 'The Irish Bank'. I've been awake since 4am but I feel reasonably OK. Microsoft are hosting a dinner tonight and then it's drinks with Google. It's a tough life.

Rathmullan

Triona and her family used to go to Rathmullan every year when they were small - and as a treat for her recent birthday it was decided to arrange a return visit. Shelly booked us some apartments and we headed up last weekend. A great time was had by all and even a dog was rescued. Legendary stuff.

Oscar

Say hello to Jenny & Tim's new dog Oscar! he bumped into them while walking on the beach in Rathmullan last weekend. He's mad.