I am lucky enough to be living in (well near) Galway city as I complete a Masters degree at the University.  Everyone knows by now that the Volvo Ocean Race is in town. Galway has never looked better, the docks look amazing, the old city looks amazing, the Claddagh looks amazing – etc etc. I was lucky enough to be given a vip pass to the civic reception last Sunday night where the officials met the skippers infront of Cowen, Cullen et al but that didn’t spoil it – don’t worry. Actually John Killeen was there too as the main driving force behind the entire event, much loved locally he got a great cheer and rightly so.

I was back in town today and took a walk down around the docks in the glorious sunshine. It was like being in Monte Carlo. The place is buzzing with stands, stalls, bands, boats, carnivals, street performers, food, racing and lots of beautiful people (and a few not so beautiful). Just being on the docks today made me smile for the afternoon ad I wasn’t the only one.

Sunday 10th May turned out nice. Just as well as I had made the journey all the way out west to cycle in the Tour of Sligo. Well actually I travelled the day before and stayed with my old neighbours Gardiner’s Tower Hill B&B.  After a nice bite to eat in Bistro Bianconi with friends and family on Saturday night, it was up early and off round the most scenic parts of Ireland on the push bike. The route took in Lough Gill, Dromahair, Ballintogher, Knocknarea, Strandhill etc so it was non stop scenery. The event was a huge success attracting over 700 cyclists – especially considering this was the first year it was run. It was great to be back in Sligo. I used to love living there and still miss the  place  

I was out and about in Galway during the afternoon. I was actually in the University doing a bit of study but eventually gave up and just went walking into town down along the river. It was unusually sunny especially for St. Patrick’s day and needless to say, the glorious weather brought many people out onto the streets. The atmosphere was great although I’d hate to be a cop once nightfall arrives. If you ever walk out to the very end of the pier, you will see the poem by Louis MacNiece displayed in a brass memorial. The poem is a record the experience of hearing the news of the German advance into Poland while on holiday in the west of Ireland in 1939.

Galway
========
O the crossbones of Galway
The hollow grey houses,
The rubbish and sewage,
The grass-grown pier,
And the dredger grumbling
All night in the harbour:
The war came down on us here.

Salmon in the Corrib
Gently swaying
And the water combed out
Over the weir
And a hundred swans
Dreaming on the harbour:
The war came down on us here.

The night was gay
with the moon’s music
But Mars was angry
On the hills of Clare
And September dawned
Upon Willows and ruins
The war came down upon us here

It is with the deepest sadness that we report the death of Bert. Medical personnel pronounced him dead this morning after he was found hanging by his co-star and lifetime friend Ernie.

Preliminary investigations would suggest suicide but Sergeant Jake Sellers (Sesame Street divisional precinct) has advised that it is too early for further comment except to say that if there is the slightest suspicion of fowl play, no stone will be left unturned.

Bert, star of Sesame Street for years in the 70’s and 80’s had been struggling with life after the Street was axed by TV bosses. He found it impossible to get work and blamed that on the fact that his role in the Street had typecast him. He had been in and out of rehab over the last decade as he continued to battle against alcohol and cocaine dependencies. Rumours about his sexuality remain rife within the industry and over the past five years since the Cincinnati public toilet episode, many have speculated that his morals were less than adequate for him to continue in the role of any sort of children’s entertainment. Despite these rumours Bert is alleged to have fathered many children throughout the northern states.
Ernie was being consoled by friends and family today, “He was my best friend, I’ll miss him terribly” the puppet said to our reporter earlier.

Had an email from my cousin Jeff Haley in Colorado last night. Jeff has recently setup a campaign office for the Obama campaign in his home town of Lakewood. Things have taken off there in a matter of a couple of weeks Jeff has a couple of hundred people working from the office. Amazingly on September 16th, the big man him self paid them a visit at the office and what more can I say. A picture really does paint a thousand words. For those of you who don’t know Jeff or Gale, I have circled them in a cropped version of the photo. I have also included the text from Jeff’s email as it tells the story way better than I can.

Jeffs email reads as follows

Hi Kieran and many of my other Irish and American cousins,
I’ve said to Gale several times lately that I feel badly that I’ve been so out of touch with my cousins over there.  To say the least, I’ve been out of sorts as well – what’s with you Eamonn?  Thanks for your message and reminding me of my duties as Clan Healy genealogist.  With me it’s the very subject about which you write – this election.  Here’ what I’ve been doing about it:

The Democrat’s national convention was held in Denver in August, but I started working on the staff  weeks before.  I worked my way up the pecking order to the plum job of handling the VIP entry to the big complex where it was held.  That got me working with our Secret Service to greet each “VIP” that was entitled to enter that way and get them through security, etc.  That included past Presidents, many US senators and such, as well as some notables from the celebrity and news world (too many names to mention).

Then, I went to work on the Obama campaign, which started out rather slow for me, but just kept building.  I was going over to their office, which is about 5 miles from my house, a couple of times a week, but it was beginning to get crowded and crazy.  So, I went and found a vacant office near my home on the main thoroughfare through the town of Lakewood and set up a new campaign office.  That was early September.  From working there a few hours a day with a couple of people the campaign sent over, I now have a team of over 200 people and I’m going 12-15 hours a day, even though I’ve got 6 directors to whom I delegate most of the coordination and voter contact actions.

Some of them are shown in the accompanying photo, which was taken with Senator Obama on September 16 when he was in the area.  Look to the left of the man in the center for a couple of familiar faces.  I asked him then if he would be back as I had a large team that would love to see him and he whispered that he would.  He did.  He had to go to Hawaii to visit his ill grandmother last week and made a quick stop in Denver, where many of our team were among the 100,000+ people at the rally.  He’s coming back tomorrow already, but I’ll be unable to get to that rally.

We’ve had our Congressman, Governor and other notables (actor Kevin Costner a couple of nights ago) come to the office to pump up the team, so it’s been a worthwhile investment in time and money.  I’ve had to deal with the press on several occasions, not my forte, especially the TV parts, but here’s the latest:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/28/the_volunteers_gear_up_for_one.html

Tracy will recognize that as the Washington Post and the reporter is often seen on our network news programs.   Two of the women in the article, Vanessa and Penny, are on our team here in Lakewood.  It’s been fun to watch them develop from shy, first time into politics people, to see Penny get to introduce Obama at a major economic policy speech here in Colorado in September when the financial meltdown was beginning.  Most of that article is blogs, so don’t bother to read past the end of the actual news clip unless you need to put yourself to sleep.

So, with that it’s back to the office to see if I can catch them working over there.

All my best to all of you and I’ll be back amongst the clan in another week or so after I get the office shut down and cleaned up and we hold our victory party.

Yes we can!
Slán
Jeff

When I was a lad back in the 80’s, I can remember being in the centre of Cork city on a cycling holiday with a friend. I recall going into Golden disks and finding a 7″ single called “The Model” by a band called Kraftwerk. At the time, it was a record I had been trying to find for about a year after it’s release and chat peak but until that point, had been unsuccessful. I loved the song, for a while I declared it to be my favourite song of all time (a claim that I now realise is actually impossible to make). Anyhow, I found it in that store on that day way back then, I managed to look after it for the remainder of the week on my bike, kept it from getting wet, scratched, bent etc and when I finally got home, I played it to death for about the following three years.

Of course, in that time, being a record collector, I also decided to look at other material from this strange band. I ended up owning some of their albums – ‘Man machine’, ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘Computer World’. I owned a fourth album (I think) but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was called. Anyhow, part of the fascination I held for this shower of German geeks was the fact that I was a fan of the synth bands who were all over mainstream pop at that time. Depeche Mode, Visage, OMD, Talk Talk etc and Kraftwerk seemed to be the pioneers of this whole movement. I can remember reading articles about them with great interest and some fascination. They were building their own synths, messing around with their own vocoders, they were engineers and they were experimental.

I used to listen to their albums; I think more through a sense of duty to the cause rather than any real appreciation of the repetitive and sometimes monotone melody. I was not being moved musically, rather this was me being elitist or perhaps even showing off. I loved the fact that I was the only “Kraftwerk fan” that I knew of (apart from my mate Podge who did listen to the albums once or twice). Fast forward to 2008. Kraftwerk playing a live concert in Dublin. Only 5000 tickets, outdoor, marquee, summer, fun blah blah. I had to go and see that, out of fascination, a sense nostalgia and whatever yer havin yerself.

The gig was a 6 hour dancefest. Little did I know that in all the years that me and Kraftwerk have been apart, a whole new generation of cyber trance dance / synthetic drug music kids have adopted Kraftwerk as the beat masters. Walking into Kilmainham yesterday evening, I should have copped that straight away. In the park you could get your face painted, have a massage, visit a chiropractor, suck pure oxygen for 5 minutes, choose from a million different smoothies, have a gourmet burger, sit on bean bags and watch fringe theatre, dance in circles with flowers in your hair and politely queue in an orderly fashion to urinate. I mean lets face it – the clues were there before the music ever started.

MUSIK NON STOP
Upon walking into the park, (around 5pm) I was immediately hit by the bass. The bass line was at a frequency that makes your ears ring (they have not stopped yet). I think putting a heavy canvas wall between 100,000 watts and your ears adds an extra muffle and reduces the lowest frequencies by a factor of -10. Either way I could not hear Dee, nor Podge nor Nick talking to me unless we were in certain positions or behind certain domes etc. I walked around the field and listened to that bass for the next three hours. Not that I really minded it, the whole thing was an experience. I kept on being amazed at the crowd, I had pictured loads of 40-50 year olds (all now working in IT), I had imagined that the male to female ratio at a Kraftwerk gig would be 99:1. I had envisaged gaming tents with rows of XBOX 360’s, and maybe lines of Commodore 64’s (in keeping with Kraftwerk’s era), but as I described above, what I saw was the opposite. I loved looking at wall to wall babes, at the masseuse’s, being able to buy a nice cup of tea and a muffin for a fiver from a smiling friendly face. It occurs to me I spent the evening smiling myself.

Kraftwerk appeared on stage at exactly 9:00pm. They open with Man machine. The crowd go mental. I look around bemused. Why are they going so crazy for such monotonic inane electro clicks. I still haven’t copped on. I stand still for two hours and watch the 4 members of Kraftwerk eh . . . stand still for two hours. They poke fingers at their boxes and laptops in the classic Kraftwerk pose. Then ‘Neon Lights’ and I am moved musically for the first time throughout the entire event. Then ‘Radioactivity’ and I am blown away by the sheer beat, power and the effect of the vocoder. It was never like that on vinyl back in 1983. They play “The Model” but I feel nothing really, I sing along and it’s “nice” but that’s about it. I guess I was right about it being impossible to declare a “favourite song of all time”.

I see the sea of digital devices before me, all lit up, all snapping, recording, germinating YouTube’s next bumper crop. I see the digital devices requesting pills on scrolling dot matrix text. I am surrounded by clouds of smoke from the finest weed Dublin has to offer.

It occurs to me, I’m actually seeing Kraftwerk out of context. It’s not the same band, not the same cause, no more pioneering. They have found a new home for their geeky repetitive “Kling Klang” blips. I guess when you listen to the stuff from 197x, you probably need to be high. Was I the only one listening to it sober at that time? But yeah, I totally get it now. Take that vintage electro pop, sex it up, pump it up and its pure dance. Not only that but the kids get to say that they are Kraftwerk fans, it gives them a sense of credibility. “We’re real Kraftwerk fans, We’ve been collecting their albums for years”. OK sweetie – whatever you say!

I finally get it. I’m at a rave.

Kraftwerk – Radioactivity. Live at The Myth in Minnesota on April 19, 2008

A couple of years back, I was at a dinner with some colleagues, they were talking up the advantages of having a Facebook account. According to them, it was a cool new way to keep in touch, make business contacts, have an Internet presence and so on. In the months that followed, I would receive an email every now and again saying that ‘Joe’ wants to invite me to be his friend on Facebook or ‘Susan’ wants to invite me to be her friend on Facebook.

I fell for the it and went hook line and sinker to Facebook and duly set up my account. I spent some time playing around with the Facebook interface, searching out other people that I knew and basically trying to get to grips with it. I found it a bit minimalist and counter intuitive. I invited one or two people to be my friends and responded in the positive to a couple of invitations myself. I then abandoned it for a few months until one day when I received some comments on my Facebook from an old acquaintance. This person had their own Facebook account and had found me using the FB network. That’s all very well but the person in question was someone I did not want to hear from. I decided that my only way out was to get off the FB radar altogether.  Easy peazy right ?  Wrong!

Firstly there is no user option to delete your own account from Facebook, you have to contact the Facebook people via email and ask them to delete your account. Their initial response is to ask why you want to leave. Your answer has to have a pretty strong justification about it as far as I could see, it’s a bit akin to applying for an annulment. They don’t grant them to just anybody you know. Next; after you’ve lied to them about your reasons for wanting to leave their cult you are then told that before they can delete your account, you need to log in and delete all data on your account. This can be a mammoth task, you have to delete every contact, comment, friend,  message etc etc and you can only achieve this by deleting the various items one by one, there is no mass way of say deleting all comments. Finally you have to go back to the Facebook police and beg them nicely to delete your account. Unless you’ve done everything perfectly and exactly as per their instructions, they will respond with a ‘no can do’. After about a week of email tennis with them, I finally managed to get an email from them telling me that my account was now deleted. It’s an email that I treasure and consider it to be somewhat of an achievement.

Bebo, Myspace ??? These really are for kids. Granted I can see the attraction of these tools to kids and teenagers. When I was a teen (just a few short years ago ahem) I would have loved a facility like Myspace. What a great way to show off how many friends you have or to meet girls without having to actually go through the terrifying act of physically meeting girls. You could lie about yourself, make yourself ultra cool, impose your musical tastes on your page visitors and even blog. ke ke ke ke cool.  But as I say – for kids.

Then there’s the Twitter thing. I just don’t get this, it’s almost akin to a personal gps tracking device.  “Keep your friends up to date with what you are currently up to” . . . . . . . . . in God’s name WHY?  Not to mention Linkedin et al. They are like mini social networks where people post about what they are doing right now in order that their friends can see and keep track of them. Again I ask . . . WHY?  In gods name Why ? Look life is short enough believe me without all of us building information mountains out of useless trivia. Or is it useless? Is it perhaps useful to some ?

As I read more and more articles about the mass of data that is being built up by these online tools, I am usually left feeling uneasy and almost part of a George Orwell novel. I remember a few years back having a brief encounter with Myspace (oh alright I admit it). I actually had a Myspace account there for awhile but in my defence, it  was a great way to keep up with all my friends in Alaska (yeah right – ed). I remember during that time, the amount of spam that ended up in my email inbox and in my Myspace messages became unmanageable. Luckily it was a temporary email that I had setup solely for the whole Myspace experience so I was able to just abandon it. Turns out, the best way for me to keep up with my friends from Alaska was to simply email, phone and write to them (yes write to them, can you imagine that).
I don’t think I want to be part of an information mountain. I don’t want marketeers to be able to process me as part of a bigger demographic picture. I would much sooner have control of my own fate, be i control of my own information, write my own story and carve my own path through cyber space. I think an online presence is a very useful thing. It’s great to be online, to be able to put your own content on the web, to share with others, give opinion, communicate with friends, business colleagues, family etc.

All you need is a blog folks, and they are free (in every sense)

This past week was interesting. I had a visit from an ex girlfriend – Nadine. We used to go out when we both lived in London. Aint seen her in 19 years would you believe.  All of a sudden she’s in Ireland and I spend a few days showing her and her friend Susanna around the west of Ireland.

On Tuesday we arrived in Killybegs where my sister Eimear had arranged for us to get a trip out to see the the pipe laying ship “Solitaire”. Solitaire is currently sitting about 5 miles out from Killybegs harbour on the south side of St Johns point so the journey out in the pilot boat takes about 45 minutes. Solitaire is here in Irish waters to take on the job of laying the pipeline for the Corrib gas field off Mayo. She is in Killybegs in order to collect the actual pipes.

The Solitaire is big, let me say that again, this boat is big! You can see it from most places in the general Donegal bay area. As you round the tip of Johns point in a pilot boat you get your first glimpse of her as a complete picture and then – wow! It’s f’n huge dude!  I am told by the experts that she can lay 6 to 9 kilometres of pipe in any 24 hour period. The process is automated from the welding of pipe segments to x-raying the joints.

	On the pilot boat out of Killybegs to see the pipe laying ship – Solitaire.  Tuesday – 22nd July 2008
	Approaching the Solitaire off St. John’s point. The photographs do not do the size of this boat any justice.
	Myself and Susanna on board the pilot boat moored beside the mighty Solitaire.  Tuesday – 22nd July 2008
	Leaving the Solitaire, I tried snapping it but no shot was able to get everything in, the best I could do was shoot the helicopter landing pad from underneath.  Tuesday – 22nd July 2008
	Nadine and Susanna beside the fishing boats at Killybegs.   Tuesday – 22nd July 2008