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Out of this World - Northern Lights in Cork

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We humans sure are a peculiar bunch. As we go about our daily lives, rushing from work to play to home, struggling with bills or chafing in jobs that, for the vast majority of people, simply aren’t that fulfilling, we often forget just how breathtaking, how staggering, the world around us is. Indeed, even in this time of unprecedented access to knowledge, many of us never seem to lift their eyes too far from the infinitesimally small part of our own planet we call home to marvel at the wonder all around us, from the lushness of this world to the magnificent desolation ensconcing that little aquamarine jewel we call home. I myself have fallen victim to this mindset more than once.  In light of this, it is always nice when Mother Nature sends us a reminder of just how incredible our cosmos is. One such reminder passed by Earth back in Summer 2020. As humanity lay in the grips of the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, it floated serenely through the evening skies of the northern hemis
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No Wheels, No Problem? - Living in Ireland without a Car

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Recently, I needed to go to Dublin again, for the first time in two years. The reason? Well, my German ID card had expired all the way back in 2019 and after a succession of bereavement, job changes, hospitalisation and, you know, a pandemic, I finally got around to fixing it. I’ll spare you the details as the admin work in question is just a rehash of what I went through when I applied for my new German passport, something I already wrote a blog post on . Instead, what I want to focus on this time is the experience of shlepping all the way up from Cork to Dublin and back without a car. I’ve never had a driver’s license and, given how little money I have left over at the end of the month as it is, I have no desire to change that anytime soon. This leaves me at the mercy of public transport in Ireland, in particular Bus Éireann, something that is a frequent source of frustration. Having said that, my recent business in Dublin gave me the perfect opportunity to test how public transport
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Wireless is the Way!

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I’m a nerd. Yep, I know that’s a shocker. And, in retrospect, I’ve been one for as long as I can remember. I got my first laptop in 1998, my first PDA in 2001, and so on, in a nearly unbroken line up to the present day. Throughout my time, I’ve seen many changes in the mobile space. Brands had their rise and fall, trends came and went, but throughout it all, one thing remained constant. For as long as I can remember, every single device I had, with the exception of my two Palm PDAs, had its own proprietary charger. If you haven’t lived through it, you’ve probably never known that very special type of panic that springs from your phone running on fumes and that one very specific cable that you need being nowhere to be found. I’ve gotten more than one grey hair thanks to this very special type of panic. Thankfully, as time moved on into the early and then mid 2010s, most manufacturers seemed to somewhat come to their senses, and slowly, first micro-USB and then USB-C emerged as quasi cha
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