Ireland day 3: The wonderful barn

The third day I didn't do anything special, I was just soo happy to see Isy again <3
Yesterday's bus trip to Leixlip was nearly painless except the bus had to wait for a traffic accident to be cleaned up. Isy and me had a lot of things to talk about and time passed by too fast! Nina, Zoe and the rest of the family were so friendly and lovely as all the other poeple in Ireland, which is maybe a bit unusal for german poeple, but I was happy :D

When she sent me her letter weeks before, I googled her address and saw a strange building called "The Wonderful Barn" just a footstep away.
So now I liked to see it and went there with her and little Tadgh. He looked really sweet in his buggy and was very happy about the walk for fresh air and a shiny blue sky.
So here it is, the Wonderful Barn:

Ireland day 2: Dublin Bay

So here is a new episode about my trip to Ireland last autumn (how time can fly by...).
Dublin isn't that far away from the Irish Sea, it's got a large area of docks and that stuff. You could see the cranes and some red-white chimneys in the far distance and it was clear to me that I wanted to go there.
On my trip, which partly was a long walk down the liffey, I took of course some nice photos which I want to show you. If you like the photos, take a look at my Picasa web album at https://picasaweb.google.com/t.burny/IrelandDay2DublinBay#. All picutures have a Creative Commons cc-by-nc-sa 3.0 license :) If you want to have them in full 12 megapixels, just contact me.

Breakfast started with a really funny and interesting article in a news paper lying around at the hostel:

KDE 4.6 is out and I love it!

Today I discovered KDE has released version 4.6 of their desktop Suite.
It is really awesome and much faster, although I still have to explore the details a bit further (never used e.g. "Activities"). I was surprised by the really cool login screen, then by the faceted search feature of dolphin, etc....

Desktop and Dolphin

I came to that point when I booted kubuntu on my desktop pc to upgrade it to Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick. When I clicked on the wifi icon, something totally different than on my laptop showed up. Have to admit I have been using Windows 7 on it for a while, but I was astonished how fast Kubuntu (still with old KDE) was. I thought that I might have missed something during the various dist-upgrades on my laptop and stumbled upon the great news. I first updated on my laptop(just add ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports to your software sources via KPackageKit), which didn't make any effect on that network-manager tray icon, the old one was still there.

T42p: Making AccessIbm Button launch an application

Under Kubuntu, the "Access IBM" button has no function. I just decided to change that, luckily it's like a key on the normal keyboard so we can assign an action to it.
In my example this will be konsole, the KDE terminal. You can't ever get enough of them ^^
Follow these simple steps:

• Open KDE system settings dialog
• Click 'keyboard shortcuts and gesture control'
• Now "My Shortcuts" on the left should be highlighted. At the bottom center of the dialog, click "Edit", then "New->Global Shortcut->Command/Address"
• Give the Action a name, e.g. "AccessIbm Button"
• Go to the "trigger" tab, click on the button and press the "Access IBM" key. If the caption changed, you can succeed, else retry
• Go to the action tab and type /usr/bin/konsole into the text field
• Click "Apply"

Now you're done! Press the "Access IBM" key to test it and have fun ;)
From what I've seen you also can assign dbus signals, keystrokes(keyboard macro functions!) , etc. just play around with it a bit.

Ireland day 1: Dublin (part 3) - Dublin at Night

In this post, I will mostly let pictures talk and maybe say only a few words on single ones. Most of them are bridges, which are illuminated by green light from below.Looks really beautiful, doesn't it?

Custom House at Night

Millenium Bridge

Ireland day 1: Dublin (part 2)

So, finally I got some spare time to write the rest of the Ireland series and the photos are all uploaded now, too.
The Historical Walking Tour started at the front of Trinity College. After walking through the front gates we had a look at the wonderful courtyard and the

A part of the Trinity College courtyard*

He told us some interesting stuff about the college's history, but I can't remember anymore, too bad!
Here is some nice photo of the Library Square:

Libary Square*

Trinity College had a lot of famous students, like Oscar Wilde, and also is - from what I understood - much involved in the Irish history and the history of dublin. For more details, have a look at Wikipedia.
Walking back to the front gate, you can find the Irish Houses of Parliament, which now inherits the Bank of Ireland.

Ireland day 1: Dublin (part 1)

So here I am now, in Dublin.
Flight was relatively relaxed, only few turbolences. I was a bit nervous before departure that I have forgotten something important so I would be taken off the plane in the last minutes, but everything went fine.
Isa recommended the three days ticket by DublinBus, the local public transport company, because I'll move to her tomorrow. I had some issues with the ticket's RFID chip, it was damaged so it could not be read. Luckily the bus from the airport(line 747) has its first stop at O'Connell Street, directly on the opposite side of Dublinbus headquarters and exchange was quite easily.
You have the possibility to get a "Freedom of Dublin" ticket for 24 € for adults and 13 or 14 euros for Students. With that ticket you can go on the dublinbus sightseeing and normal bus lines and drop off at any place you like. However, all desired places can also be reached by foot easily, so in my eyes you should think about it twice. As the ticket is valid for 3 days like mine (I paid 13.50 €  without the sightseeing feature) it is only worth if you either want sightseeing by bus or go to the outer regions.
After arrival I went to "The Times Hostel", which is a footstep away from Trinity College. On my way there I passed the O'Connel Bridge, which is wider than it is large.