This comes only hours before the Portsmouth v Birmingham FA Cup game, where Birmingham scored a perfectly valid headed goal from a corner. The ball was over the line but David James’s hand scooped it out of the net before the linesman saw it. Goal Line Technology would have proved that this was a goal but the decision from the International Football Association Board (IFAB) meeting in Zurich voted against continuing any further experiments with goal-line technology although the English FA and Scottish FA both voted in favour of the technology being used.

FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said, “‘The door is closed. The decision was not to go ahead with technology at all.” The IFAB will decide in May whether to pursue the system of having an extra two officials behind each goal-line.

It seems FIFA are extremely backward – just as the game needs to move with the times, any efforts to do so are rejected by an organisation who seem not to care about fairness, i.e. a ball that crosses the line is a goal, but only if the officials see it … and … a ball the touches the hand of a player is a free kick and possibly a card, but only if the officials see it (and if the player is not French as FIFA is mainly made up of French personnel).

If you think Goal Line Technology is just for “is the ball over the line” type arguements, have a look at the video below, where the ball actually goes into the goal and the ref still did not see it!! The video is of Clive Allen hitting the stachion back in 1980, and Freddie Sears’ non-goal against Bristol City thirty years later.

The video of He Drinks Tequila is below if you want to watch it, it is also a huge hit on You Tube with a well organised Crystal Swing You Tube Channel getting huge hits this week.

They have become an Internet Sensation overnight, especially after ‘American Idol’ judge Ellen DeGeneres, posted a link on Twitter to the YouTube clip of Crystal Swing, made up of Mary Murray-Burke, her son Derek and daughter Dervla from Co. Cork.

I have yet to watch the video the whole way through, as the song itself just reminds me of 11:30 at an Irish Wedding. I’m not overly sure what the fuss is all about but certainly they seem to have some sort of hit on their hands with all the publicity and You Tube hits.

Captain Sullenberger, 59, officially retired at a private ceremony in Charlotte after flying his last commercial gig, Flight 1167 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida – landing 17 minutes ahead of schedule.

Captain Sullenberger also flew with the same co-pilot as during the Hudson landing of US Airways Flight 1549, First Officer Jeff Skiles. Also on board were some of the same passengers that were on Flight 1549 to celebrate his final flight.

If you don’t know the history of Flight 1549 and the amazing landing on the Hudson, check out the video below.

The road is apparently finished except that a “safety audit” has to be completed, which may involve a TD, a scissors, a camera and a ribbon, no-one is quite sure. I just think they should  “Open the Feckin’ Road !!”

So don’t be fooled – if somebody says the M9 Waterford section was opened ontime – this is a lie.

Inside you are welcomed to a very highly decorated and sumptuous interior with carved high ceilings and double height windows.

The menu is vast, and even for a lunch menu it was quite varied. I chose a Butter Chicken dish for my main. While I was waiting I got a pre-starter which was very tasty. I also ordered a Corriander Naan, and although it was not on the menu, they made one up for me. The main course of Butter Chicken was not what I expected; I was expecting more of a korma style sauce, instead it was a fusion style tomato based sauce and was like an Indian style pasta sauce … Don’t get me wrong, it was still very enjoyable and was served with a light pilau rice. As expected, in a UK Indian Restaurant, the dishes are a bit spicier than in Ireland. The portions are of a decent size, not too large but enough to fill adequately (as you can see below).

The dinner experience here is apparently a very refined affair with low lighting, good music and a more extensive menu.

The one thing which was obvious was the service. At all times attentive and attention to detail and service is very personal – there was a French waiter the day I was there and he was chatty but not intrusive, leaving you to enjoy your meal.

I really enjoyed the food and the ambiance here, £20 for lunch and a drink is a bit much, but worth enjoying a great restaurant experience such as this. Definitely 5 stars for food and ambiance but 3 stars for value as I’m sure you can get an Indian Lunch menu for half the price but you may have to compromise on the end result.

Contact

No1 Kensington High Street, London W8 5NP, UK.
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7795 6533

http://www.zaika-restaurant.co.uk/

This tool from Google is called “Google Trends” and it allows you to view relative search volumes and seasonal keyword search trends between two or more keyword phrases. For example if you want to see how people are searching on the web, you can include these keywords into Google Trends and leave it do its work. Below, I have done a search for Golf Course, Golf Club and Golf Links for the past 12 months using the Irish Datacentres.  Golf Club and Golf Course are usually the same thing in reality, but what do people search for?

This can show that Golf Club is used more than Golf Course. This is important when choosing your SEO Keywords. So if you are a Golf Course you can choose to go for the most searched term “Golf Club” or the less competitive term “Golf Course”. Selecting a less competitive search term can help you when you setup a website. If you are promoting a very competitive keyword, e.g. “music download” which is the second most competitive keyword term, you can try combine this into a niche 3 word phrase, e.g. “classical music download” , “free music download” or “irish music download”. You can then use Google Trends to see which keyword combination would be best for you.

If you were to search for something like “Festival” or “Mothers Day” you would be able to see the annual trends for these terms, which may be interesting for you when selecting keywords for your business website.

This is only one use for Google trends and there is much more that this system offers.

For a bit of fun, take a look at this Google Trend : LINK
It shows how talk of Recession is going down and Cheating is going up. Especially a huge spike , dated November 19th, when Theirry “Le Cheat” Henry decided he wanted to take up Gaelic Football for a few seconds.

Play around with Google trends and you should find some uses to assist your SEO Keyword Research.

How to use this system … it couldn’t be easier. Just go to www.trendsmap.com and you will see a map of the world overlaid with what is being discussed on a local level on Twitter with subjects, hashtags and mentions appearing. I have included the screenshot from the Irish viewpoint below.

If you want to see a larger version you can click the image above – but what you will see is the tweet subjects for that area. So over Ireland we had the following Twitter Tweet Subjects…

• Fianna Fail
• Glee and #Glee
• @PlanetJedward and #Jedward
• #rtefl
• eastenders

If you scroll around to Northern Ireland and the UK you can see Glee and Eastenders are repeated a few times, so these are obviously hop topics.

Trendsmap is an interesting website if you are a regular Tweeter and Twitter user. I haven’t really got into the depth of information which is available, as I’m not really into Twitter that much, but I’m sure somebody will like this!

After 3 years of development the motorway will see towns like Mullinavat (also known as Mullinavegas) and Ballyhale bypassed. I’m looking forward to not having to sit behind slow moving trucks and tractors on a stretch of road which has a surface which is becoming worse each and every day.

I just hope that the new section is not subject to the stupid political mess which almost delayed the Carlow to Kilcullen opening – If it does, then I am sure that boards.ie will see another people power move which saw politicians berated by the angry motoring public.

This was the final night launch for NASA , as there are only 4 more space shuttle missions after this one, with all of the remaining shuttle launches taking place in daylight hours.

Now that the Space Shuttle is in orbit, we will once again have a chance to get sightings of the ISS and Space Shuttle over Ireland. If you are up on Tuesday Morning at 6:20am you will see the space station cross the Irish skies and the space shuttle will only be 5 mins behind it crossing Ireland at 6:25am. The next time we see the ISS and Space Shuttle in the Irish skies, they will have docked and it will be a merged ISS+Space Shuttle which will be visible in the skies.

I have uploaded the times of the Space Station and Space Shuttle sightings for early Feb based on Sightings for Waterford, Ireland.

Unfortunately the blooper happened with Senator Cassidy called the “Jack and Jill Foundation” the “Jekyll and Hyde Foundation”.

If you want to have a listen to this, Newstalk 106-108’s excellent Morning Program have been covering this for the past 2 days ;

The Donnie Cassidy Jekyll and Hyde Foundation Blooper

An unfortunate blooper but everyone’s human and it does give great publicity to a worthy cause.

At 6pm on Wednesday 3rd Feb, emergency services all over the country received calls from people who said that there was an explosion in the skies over Ireland and that fiery debris was spotted falling from the skies. Smoke and heat trails were left in the skies for 10-20 minutes after the even as the ionised air was affected by the intense heat of the meteorite. Some people though planes had crashed and that the debris flying through the sky was aircraft engines.

People playing golf in Kerry reported it and at the same time people driving in Tullamore could see the same fire in the sky as the meteorite which would have been about 4 to 7 feet in size hit the atmosphere at hundreds of miles an hour. It would have broken into a few major bits as it fell to earth.

If anyone saw this they can place a “Fireball Report” on the Astronomy Ireland website, www.astronomy.ie and the search is now on for the pieces which fell to earth. Pieces of meteorite can sell for more than the price of gold. If you have pictures of the meteorite or video of the meteorite there are many media agencies, including RTE who are looking for spottings of the meteorite.

I have placed some YouTube Video of the actual Meteor which exploded in the skies below.

Unfortunately, I was driving south at the time and didn’t see a thing!!

It would be so much better if Irish children could be taught something like French that they would actually use, after-all, French is the official language of the EU. If you look at the people who come over to Ireland from Poland or Czech Republic, their English is actually very good. I’m sure they can converse in English better than most Irish people could converse in French. WHY? Because in Ireland from the age of 4 to 12, Irish is drilled into kids, instead of a language they would actually use. It is at this age that children find it easier to learn a language – so why expect them to start learning French at the age of 13 when they start secondary school? Its too late for them to be actually fluent – start them learning from a young age.

Irish – What a Terrible Language

Lets look at some of the crap you learn as a child.

I left school with an Irish Vocabulary of about 10 words which included such classics as;

Also, Whats the story with this?
Take for example the phrase “Comhartha ar an mbus” – MBUS … is this some sort of Hanson song. MBus???
What sort of crappy language puts an M before a B ??

Irish, a Dead Language

I think they should get rid of the language and get the children of Ireland speaking a European language rather than a dead language. Nobody speaks it – unless you want to get rid of the kids and shove them off to an island for 3 months during the summer.

I wish we had a language we could be proud of but we don’t – so stop hooking it up to a life support machine and leave it die so that the children in Irish schools leave with something they can use.

To celebrate Australia Day I’ve just uploaded a picture which I took on Australia Day back in 2004.

There were 5 cars in the hard shoulder this evening all fixing punctures from one ginormous pothole as you head up the hill (straight stretch outside Ballyhale) towards Mullinavat. Be careful if you are driving that route.

The road damage is as a result of the recent snow, thaw and rain. What makes it even more annoying is the fact that the new M9 Waterford to Danesfort motorway is almost ready … but when will the Dublin to Waterford motorway actually be opening?

Some say Mid February will see the Waterford to Danesfort section open, but with the recent bad weather will this actually happen? The road is under construction for about 2 years now and still its not finished. In that time the M9 Carlow bypass and M9 Castledermot to Kilcullen route have opened. Its ridiculous to think 2 major stretches of motorway have opened in this time.

Lets wait and see – hopefully this is the last month I have to travel this route. The N9 is now a dreadful road to travel.

In this attack on the boards.ie website, some data from the database, including some usernames, email addresses and security protected passwords were accessed. An email has been sent out to all boards.ie members and they have changed passwords on the system. The danger is that if you use the same email address on other websites – you should change that password now for your security. It is never a good idea to use the same password across all your online systems.

I think boards.ie did the right thing by advising people, alerting the Gardai and data protection commissioner and also were on Today FMs Matt Cooper show.

I hope they catch the hackers responsible – sending a strong message to them!

This one is called – 100,000 want ‘Sorry’ from Thiery Henry at World Cup to Ireland at Opening

The Link is ; http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=257875898092

I think its time to put this one to bed no matter how much the Irish hate him!

if you want to sign up to the new Facebook group visit;

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ban-Thierry-Henry-The-Cheater-From-World-Cup/177331092751

If you want to take things a step further and send Thierry a little message of “support” you can always “Add as Friend” one Mr. Thierry Henry. Hie Facebook profile is at;

http://www.facebook.com/people/Thierry-Henry/1192425162#/profile.php?id=1192425162

UPDATE

As it stands however, today, Thierry Henry (according to the BBC) will not be punished by FIFA for his handball. FIFA, the world governing body’s disciplinary committee concluded there was “no legal foundation” to deal with the case.

Republic of Ireland defender Sean St Ledger told BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday “Obviously I don’t want to see players getting banned but at the same time it promotes, ‘if you can get away with it, then do it’.

This was always my view – basically FIFA are saying that If you want to handle the ball , do it, but don’t let us catch you doing it …. be if we do catch you … and you are French … we won’t say a word.

FIFA at this stage is too French and are obviously biased !

The problem was that Safari on the iPod Touch would not accept any touches to the address bar, search bar or bookmarks – basically the Safari GUI on the iPod was frozen.

The solution to fix this is fairly easy, but not everyone knows it. To fix and unfreeze the iPhone Safari App , do as follows;
- Load the Safari App on the iPod Touch / iPhone
- when Safari has loaded, press and hold the home button (the circular button in the middle of the iPod) until Safari quits
- your iPhone / iPod Touch should return to the home screen.

If this does not work you can try do an iPhone reset. The iPhone / iPod Touch reset is done by pressing and holding the home button and the power on/off button simultaneously, until you see the Apple logo and then release – while ignoring the “slide to turn off prompt” when doing this.

Its probably useful to clear your cache and cookies when this has resolved; this can be done by Going to Settings > Safari and select Clear History, Clear Cookies, and Clear Cache.

You can also ensure no further issues occur by turning off and repowering the iPod/iPhone once finished this.

Hopefully, this should solve any problems if you have an iPod Touch or iPhone with a Safari App which is Frozen.

If you are very unfortunate and your iPod / iPhone won’t start at all, review this fix which resolves this issue.
Click Here to Read this iPod Full Reset Fix

But seriously the defeat against Reading was embarrassing (at home too!) and should not be something a team of that calibre should fall fowl to.

Former Reds captain Ronnie Whelan says that the Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez should go following the shock 2-1 FA Cup defeat to Reading, saying “Liverpool have not been good. They have lost 10 of the last 20 games,”

Benitez has said he is going to continue, even though they are out of the FA CUP, out of the early Champions League, and have a poor Premier League form.

In fairness, the better team won, Shane Longs winning goal was well taken and Liverpool had no defense against it. In fact the keeper didn’t move.

If they fail to win anything this year it will be Liverpool’s fourth successive season, without a cup of any nature.

The latest joke from last night is…
“Rafa is in the bar and is about to buy a few drinks when he is tapped on the shoulder and tole to leave the bar.
He asks why and he is told its because its the fourth round.”

I’d give him 2 weeks at most!

PS: If you are reading this on the blog the title may not make sence but it looked really funny on Facebook!

You can run multiple blogs using the same App. There was a previous version of the WordPress App but if you had this old version WordPress for iPhone 2 or 2.1 won’t automatically update the old app to 2.0.

The new WordPress App has a better user interface overhaul, some improvements to the software, some bug fixes, as well as some requests.

The WordPress App 2.0 and 2.1 allows you to add and update your posts and blog pages.
The updates in the 2.0 / 2.1 version of the app are.
* A better user interface making it easy to view comments, posts, and pages with a brand new comments interface
* Posts are automatically saved and restored if network connection is lost during publishing
* The Wordpress App re-opens in the blog you last used
* You can manually enter the XMLRPC endpoint for non-standard setups – other XML issues resolved.
* Fixed edge case where local drafts were sometimes not saved
* Fixed the order of photos so that they’re displayed in the order they’re uploaded
* A post or page can be deleted by swiping across its title in the Posts or Pages list
* People who made comments, their email addresses are now visible
* Fixes for the link helper, errors in using the more tag, Comments section and URL issues.

The benefit of this great App is that you can compose a few blog entries even without WiFi or 3G connection. As soon as you have connection you can just hit the post button and update to your hearts content.
You can Download the WordPress iPod App from the iTunes App Store.
http://itunes.com/app/wordpress2

Met Eireanns weather forecast is saying “Weather on Sunday will be cold and mostly cloudy with occasional sleet and snow showers in the south and east, giving accumulations in places. Monday will be very cold again. It’ll be a mostly cloudy day with frequent showers of sleet and snow in a strong easterly wind. Significant accumulations will occur and drifting is possible due to strong easterly winds.”

The BBC weather forecast portrays a similar picture (Searched for Waterford, Ireland and got this…)

5 Day Forecast for Waterford

Either way, with grit running out fast and UK & Ireland are struggling to cope; things could get worse before getting better. The temperatures in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny reportedly dropped to -10 on Thursday Morning. The last time this happened to the same scale as 1963.

Below I have attached some pictures taken in Co. Kilkenny on Thursday Morning.

Lets see if the forecast brings 3 days of snow!

Clip 1 : Ninja Cat
The Cat sneaks up like a ninja each time the camera man hides.

Clip 2 : Sneezing Baby Panda
As the parent chews on some bamboo the baby lets out a big sneeze much to the surprise of the parent.

Clip 3 : Tickling Slow Loris
Just for the expression on the animals face …

Enjoy !

Thanks to the 486,892 visitors who visited the website in 2009.

Heres to 2010!