Sat 28 Jul 2007
Many thanks to Pat over at roam4free.ie for directing my attention to Hotel Ballymun. I’m sure staying in the Clarke Tower would have been preferable to the Ballymun Plaza.
The Tower has, indeed, been demolished now.
Or maybe they just repainted it and called it the Plaza?
Thu 26 Jul 2007
Review of Ballymun Plaza Hotel, Ballymun, Dublin, Ireland
Rated as /5 on Jul 26 2007 by David Hollingworth
I would not normally have chosen to stay in the Ballymun Plaza; but a combination of a conference at Dublin Airport and a weekend break deal from Supervalu swayed me in the direction of this hotel.
Initial impressions were far from encouraging; the ground floor retail units weren’t completed giving the hotel a half finished look; but these were not as discouraging as the completely run down surroundings the hotel has been built in. Ballymun was renowned for its poor social housing and whilst the tower blocks have been demolished the hotel is surrounded by large tenement blocks, some of which are still occupied and some boarded up; and the whole area speaks of decline and deprivation.
Having seen the area then only thing that persuaded me not to look for somewhere else was the provision of a secure underground car park.
Check in was very slow, despite having emailed the hotel a few weeks before to ensure we’d have a family room we still had to wait in reception while the house keeper searched empty rooms for one with a single and double bed. The room itself was clean; but very basic. There were complimentary tea / coffee facilities in the room; but the kettle was mounted half way up a wall in a very inconvenient position to use. The furnishings in the room had to have been the most basic of any hotel I’ve been in.
We’d booked a table for dinner when we checked in; but when we went down to the restaurant we were asked to take dinner in the bar - something that I refused to do as I didn’t want my seven year old daughter in the bar that that hour of the evening. Having insisted on a table in the restaurant we were shown to a table for two (there’s three of us in case you’d forgotten), perhaps the waiter couldn’t count. Anyway there were plenty of tables for four available so I selected one and we sat down to eat.
The food was quite reasonable, and if anything this was the one redeeming feature of the hotel. Nothing exciting, I ordered Chicken Supreme and got Chicken Kiev; but it was well cooked and nicely presented. The breakfasts too where very tasty.
Noise at night was also a problem. Being a hotel I always expect some noise with guests coming and going. However both nights we stayed were punctuated by both guests and staff yelling up and down the corridors and guests repeatedly slamming doors. Desperate.
One final thing; I wondered why the fire alarm sensor in our room was covered in a plastic bag thus rendering it useless.
Thu 28 Jun 2007
If you’re like me then you need a gentle prod every so often to remind you to work on the targets you’ve set for yourself. If this is the case then the Hassle Me site might be good for you.
A very simple idea, you provide the frequency you want to be hassled in days, the text of the hassle, like “Go for a ride on your bike”; and a number of email addresses. HassleMe then emails you a reminder at roughly (not exactly) the number of days you’ve asked to be hassled. The slight randomness helps to prevent the hassle just becoming part of the routine “select / delete” part of email processing.
Try out the service (it’s free). If it works for you then great, if not then simply put it back on the shelf.
Tue 26 Jun 2007
In my last posting on attaining goals we looked at maintaining an All Projects list and a Current Projects list. However even my Current Projects list is too large to be easily manageable with eight projects on it, six of which are active.
To be really productive you have to be focussed and this means concentrating on one project at a time. Every time you switch projects it takes some of your productive time to get into the mind set for that project, pick up the tasks and get yourself organized. All this is time that is not actually moving the project forwards. If you spend your time doing a bit here and doing a bit there then you’ll make little progress across a broad spectrum of projects. This can rapidly become demotivating as seemingly little progress is made on any front.
With the index card system it’s easy to maintain the focus. Every morning, as part of the morning routine, review the Current Projects list:
Here’s my Current Project list for this morning:
This immediately puts me into the mind set I need to do focussed work on this project and makes the project stand out from the rest. Every time I glance at the Current Projects list I know just where I must focus my attention. Once I’ve completed all the tasks I can on this project then I’ll move the Focused Project sticker to the next most important project and start to focus there.
Soon we’ll look at breaking goals and projects down into the individual tasks needed to get them done and looking at how these fall into the organization structure.
Sat 23 Jun 2007
Review of Topeak Comp 150 Wireless Cycle Computer
Rated as /5 on Jun 22 2007 by David Hollingworth
I bought this wireless cycle computer to go with my new bike for two reasons. One was the fact that it had lots of functions and the second was the fact that it said on the box that it was suitable for mountain bikes. Also it wasn’t cheap so I thought (erroneously) that it had to be good.
So I installed it, which was fiddly; but no more so than a wired cycle computer. The instructions specified a maximum of 18 inches (1.5 feet) between the top of the sensor and the display unit. However at that distance no signal was being received by the display unit.
Tests showed that unless the sensor was 14 inches or less from the display unit then the signal was lost. On a mountain bike with a 20 inch frame this distance is impossible to achieve.
So I’ve been unable to check out the functions of the Comp 150 because it didn’t do what it said it would do; support 18 inches between sensor and display.
Hust in passing I found the Topeak web site attractive to look at; but lacking is useful information. The FAQ section of the site didn’t work at all and there was no troubleshooting section that I could find.