Paul Clerkin

Wednesday, December 24. 2008

Forkncork.com

This is my mate Ernie's food and wine site. Ernie and I met by accident some years ago in the Dame Tavern. They used to have a singer-songwriter night, and as my brother was fond of penning depressing songs about life, I went along for support. Ernie is a transplanted Mancunian with a line in humourous songs about Volvo drivers, and we hit it off. At the time he was running a small cafe on Tara Street, and I soon discovered that a) he made the perfect hangover cure for a Saturday morning, and b) he liked to close up at 12 on the saturday and go for pints, and c) and the back room in Mulligans around the corner was always quiet. There's been a lot of beer, food, and wine since. And stories.

He wrangled me a ticket for some food awards some years ago, just after the Berlusconi and Caravaggio incident. Wandering out of the reception, I went looking for a bathroom, spotted him talking to someone, and interupted to ask. Later it transpired that the person he was talking to was the journalist who I duped with the Caravaggio and reportedly had come close to being fired by the Indo. I'm sure she would really have liked to be introduced to me.

Eventually I built him a website, using Vbulletin as a CMS to power it. Clunky as hell but it worked, kinda.

Anyways it's just been redone, as a freebie, and will still be getting some tweaks - forkncork.com. Trot along, he's an entertaining writer without being too dry on the subject matter. And somewhere in the archives, you'll find me. And join the forums.

Wednesday, December 3. 2008

On the road again

Heading off for a few days architecture appreciation. This time around, it's a short overnighter in Montreal followed by Quebec city. I've never been to Quebec (Montreal is way up my list of favourite places), and I've very excited. Seems to be some great architecture including the Second Empire style provincial parliament as well as the old walled town and star-fort. Should provide a lot of new content for archiseek.com.

Of course there will be other distractions, food and drink included.

Wednesday, November 19. 2008

Scrum Thoughts

I was at a talk last night, billed as a Scrum 101. Not familiar with the process, but having heard the term a few times recently, I went along. It was quite interesting, and suited if not was largely already my mode of working.

According to Wikipedia: "Scrum is an iterative incremental process of software development commonly used with agile software development.... Although Scrum was intended to be for management of software development projects, it can be used in running software maintenance teams, or as a program management approach."
Continue reading "Scrum Thoughts"

Thursday, November 13. 2008

Calling Names

In the midst of adding new content to the Victorian and Edwardian architecture area of archiseek yesterday, I clicked on an architect's name. The way I have set it up is that on a list of buildings, clicking the architect performs a search on the site, pulling up all other references. I randomly clicked on one to see how much came up as a result.

Hence I've had to adopt a few naming standards to make sure I'm consistently calling an architect by the same version of his name - ie G.E. Street or George Edmund Street. And not as I discovered last night, George Edward Street. Bad Paul. It's not like I didn't know his name, somewhere along the line in the last decade I just got sloppy.

As an aside, the best naming story I ever heard, was when they built Lord Edward Street in Dublin in the late 19th century. Some aldermen in Dublin Corporation (as it then was) wanted to name it to reflect the recent and ongoing restoration of Christ Church Cathedral.

Wait for it.

Street Street (after George Edmund Street)
or
Roe Row (after Roe the distiller who paid the bill)

Thursday, November 6. 2008

A long time ago, in a far away place....

Twenty years since I left school, and odd things come back to you at the oddest times. Recently while my oldest is displaying her newly learnt French (she's four), I remember the Irish for the same thing. Considering how bad I was at Irish, that's quite stunning. Anyway seeing as every link counts, here's the Class of '87 at St. Macartan's College in Monaghan Reunion site. Not one of mine, before you ask.