I was very impressed when we had occasion to visit Russborough House recently.

The house is lovely and the tour was excellent. I would thoroughly recommend it.

It was a rainy day so we didn’t get to enjoy the outdoor attractions (although we did do a quick run through the maze and I did get a few photos).

Unlike a lot of similar houses in Ireland (e.g. our own Malahide Castle) Russborough house is not owned and operated by the state. Instead it is looked after by the Alfred Beit Foundation.

After our enjoyable visit, therefore, it was sad to see the controversy which arose when the trustees decided to sell some works of art to provide funds for essential activities.

Hopefully more visitors will discover Russborough so that something like this will not have to be repeated in the future.

On the 20th of March we had a partial solar eclipse in Ireland. All parts had at least 90% eclipse, and some parts had over 95%.

It was cloudy, and I was on my way to work, but the clouds cleared for a few seconds and (although you’re not supposed to look at it of course) I saw the spectacular view of most of the sun being missing.

I took the photo below with my phone. Of course, it does not really capture what I saw (which was very clear).

There won’t be another partial eclipse here in Ireland until 2026 so I was delighted to have caught a glimpse of it.

I travel on the Dart very regularly.

One day I spotted that something had changed! The straps you can see in the photo below had suddenly appeared throughout the carriages!

I wonder if they were there for long before I spotted them!

I spotted this sign in Connolly Dart station the other day.

I’m sure this sign has been up for a long time – parts of it are quite faded.

It’s a wonder that nobody (who could do something about it) ever spotted this mysterious way of spelling the word “restaurant”!

I was writing a sentence the other day and I came to a part where I wondered if I should say “alternative approach” or “alternate approach”.

The answer is that alternate approach should only be used when the original approach cannot be used for some reason. If you can choose between the two approaches then the second is an “alternative approach”.

The following sentences provide examples:

• I couldn’t get it to work so I had to use an alternate approach
• It was taking too long so I decided to try an alternative approach

There has been much talk recently in the media about the dangers from Artificial Intelligence (AI).

According to the BBC, Stephen Hawking said that: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”.

According to the Washington Post, Steve Wozniak said that “the future is scary and very bad for people”. He said that “eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently”.

All very scary.

I couldn’t help laughing therefore (even though this is not at all funny) when I read in The Guardian that a robot had killed a worker in a Volkswagen factory in Germany.

The cause of this inappropriate laughter was this thought: “And so it begins…”

I mentioned in my old blog how much I like the song “Eyes Without a Face” by Billy Idol.

Well, I happened to be listening to some “extended versions” of classic songs on YouTube and I found a version of this song which runs for 20 minutes and 48 seconds. I kid you not!

It’s brilliant but there are two catches:

1. The extended version is just created by looping parts of the song. There is nothing new.
2. The remix is really 10 minutes and 22 seconds long. It is simply repeated twice.

Here it is for your enjoyment:

One of the things I didn’t like about Blogger was that there was no support for including “spoilers” in your content. So when I wanted to include content in a post which might be a potential spoiler for some people, I set the foreground colour to be the same as the background colour. The reader would have to select the text to see it.

One of the joys of having my own WordPress environment is that I can install my own plugins. In this case I have installed “wp-spoiler-alert”.

So imagine that this sentence contains a spoiler. You can’t see it now, but you will be able to if you click on it.

Pretty cool, huh?

Kate Winslet has too much talent for one person.

She can do drama. She can do comedy. She has won Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs.

And then I discovered that she can sing!

I don’t know how many times I have listened to this song over the last few weeks. Too many to count certainly.

Enjoy Kate Winslet singing “What If” from the movie “Christmas Carol: The Movie”:

I mentioned in my old blog that:

• Trevanian (Rod Whitaker) is my favourite author
• Shibumi is my favourite book
• Whitaker’s daughter, Alexandra, collaborated with him on some of his later books
• She is going to complete his unfinished work, Street of the Four Winds

I took the liberty of writing to Alexandra back in January to see how things were progressing with her own book and SOTFW. She was kind enough to reply as follows:

“it’s all coming along. Thanks for your encouragement.”

So we can look forward to a “big canvas, large-cast, Nineteenth Century novel” (his words) from Rod and Alexandra.

You can read more about the book here (you can even read the first chapter)