The Road to Triathlon - March's Sport Totals

The totals for the month of March were:

• Bike: 111 KM (Down 16km on February)
• Run: 50 KM (Down 16km)
• Swim: 6743 Metres (Up 1193km)
• Mountaineering: 3hrs (Down 1 hour)
• Soccer: 2hrs (Down 45mins)
• Gaelic Football: 11h 35mins (Up 9h 20mins)
• Golf: 7h 15mins

I was meant to be increasing the training this month but it all went a bit wrong. Most totals were down on February's and so far April is not looking much better. Getting worried as I have to swim one mile in a river in about 6 weeks time in TriAthy.

Securing a Belkin Wireless Network (belkin54g)

After preaching about security recently to a group of students, they pointed out that I still haven't secured the wireless network in my house. The irony of it all eh. I decided to see how many of my neighbours could connect to my network. Off I went out the front door with the laptop on a field trip. Turns out that only about five or six houses could sniff out the network...as well as passing traffic. Is that bad???

Anyway, in case anybody else is wondering how to secure a Belkin Wireless G Plus Router. You type in the URL http://192.168.2.1 into your web browser. On the Wireless section on the left hand side, click on the Security button. There are a few security options here but the simplest is to select WPA and type in a password of your choice. After that, the router will reboot and from then on if any new user wishes to use your network, they will be prompted to enter the password.

The Road to Triathlon - February's Sport Totals

The totals for the month of February were:
      Bike: 127 KM
      Run: 75 KM
      Swim: 4750 Metres
      Strength: 4h 35mins
      Gaelic Football: 2h 15mins
      Mountaineering: 4hrs
      Rowing: 1mins
      Soccer: 2h 45mins

Need to do more but don't have a whole lot of motivation for long lonely runs and solitary cycles. Must get myself a training partner.

MacBook Air - Slam Dunk or Air Ball?

I have in my possession the new Apple MacBook Air, "the world's thinnest notebook". Now I don't own it, I am merely sending it back to the manufacturers to be repaired as my cousin, the owner, is out of the country. He bought it in LA this week and when he was registering in the airport it stopped working...not a great start.

So a quick non-techie opinion on the pro's and con's of this much-vaunted MacBook Air are:

Pro's

• It's super thin - really this machine is as thin as you could ever imagine a laptop being. Although I'm sure it won't be long before it is surpassed, probably by another Apple.
  
• Looks very cool - which make you look cool by default
  
• Powerful machine -2GB DDR SDRAM, 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz processor
  
• Adequate screen size - 13.3inch is plenty big for the average mobile user
• Keyboard lights up when its dark
• Extremely portable - the thing almost fits in an A4 envelope
  

Cons

• 80 Gig hard drive - not that big these days so it wouldn't be long before you'd need an external drive or desktop to store your music, video and other multimedia.
  
• Limited connectivity - no ethernet connection to connect to LAN, with a wire. Have to get an adapter if you want to connect to one.
  
• No optical drive - i.e. no CD or DVD drive. If you want one you can pay extra and get an external drive, but this is Apple specific so it won't work with any other brand of PC or laptop.
• Only 1 USB port - could be messy if you wanted to use a memory stick and a mouse and maybe connect to a printer etc etc. You could always carry around a usb hub, but then you're starting to look like a pack horse and ultimately reducing its portability.
  
• Can't customise it while purchasing to add or remove capability, the way you could with say a Dell laptop.
  
• No connection for a projector - you'd have to pay extra for another adapter. See above!
  
• Relatively expensive - pound for pound or euro for euro it works out more expensive than others in the same range. Then again Macs usually are. You can get your hands on one for about £1150 or my cousin got his for about $1800...better value especially with the weak dollar.

Will any of these cons turn off an Apple user from going out and buying one...absolutely not. They're in the Apple cult and in fairness if I had a few quid to spare I'd probably get one too. It was great showing it off in college over the last few days.

North / South Conference in DkIT

Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) hosted a major North/South Conference last week, where members of the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive held talks on a wide range of issues, from the future of the peace process to commercial relations between the two states. It was significant for the town of Dundalk and especially the college as it is the first such gathering to be held in the Republic outside of Dublin.

The front of the college was closed off to college staff and students unless you got your hands on one of the exclusive security badges. It was a great opportunity to showcase the college, and in particular for the Event Management, Hospitality and Professional Cookery students who prepared, organised and cooked at the event. Apparently, it was a great success.

Have a look at the clip on RTÉ at http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0207/northpolitics.html. Click on the little icon of the camera beside the word 'Thursday' under the main heading to see the video. You also need to have Real Player installed, which really annoys me. Why don't RTÉ just embed their videos on the relevant page?

The Road to Triathlon - January's Sport Totals

Aiming to complete an Olympic Triathlon in Athy (TriAthy) on May 31st so I have to start proper training this month. Last month's totals will be a good benchmark on what to beat by the end of February.
      Bike: 17.7 KM
      Run: 44.5 KM
      Swim: 5125 Metres
      Strength: 4h 35mins
      Gaelic Football: 1hour
      Golf: 3h 30mins
      Rowing: 10mins
      Soccer: 2h 00mins

Hospitality Student Blogs

Here are the blogs that the students have set up for one of my courses, E-Tourism. Let's see what the next twelve weeks brings.

• linzib.blogspot.com
• sherspot.blogspot.com
• madbanana86.blogspot.com
• bowsey.blogspot.com
• bumblebee86.blogspot.com
• purpleturtles2008.blogspot.com
• suzanne85.blogspot.com
• chocolatelover2008.blogspot.com
• grace-rira2008.blogspot.com
• alan-rooney.blogspot.com