Sam Kidd's thoughts on business

After looking through the site I was well impressed so I signed up to the site, which costs me $9.95 a month to read 31 papers.  Which works out cheaper than buying the paper down in the shop. It has been one of my better purchases online to date.  I now find myself reading the papers now more than I did before because I find it easier to go though them on the computer. 

Once I got into using Pressdisplay I was blown away by the features it has and just how well it works.

The screen shot above shows when you mouse over a story it highlights the heading rating how popular the story has been as well as giving you the option to have the story read out to you. You do this by clicking the red speaker. Its read out using Microsoft’s speech thing but it still pretty good. Also with one click it zooms you into the paper to make it easy to read then you can just hold down the mouse and glide around the page.  There is so much cool stuff in it I would recommend you just take a look at it. Try holding down the mouse and drawing a red circle. I was well impressed with what happens next.

Anyhow if you find it interesting let me know what you think.

As we got up for day 2 on Cape we realised that the weather was going to be shite all day.  Still at least it wasn't cold.  We had a nice breakfast and headed down to catch up with the other two. The walk down the hill was certainly alot easier in the day and going down hill that it was coming home in the pitch dark the night before.  We walked down past South Harbour and stopped to have a look.  Not quite swimming weather so we carried on.

 

We met up with Gill and Aileen down at the shop/pub and grabbed a bite to eat. The guy running the shop was really sound and even gave us the keys to the pub over the shop so we could hang out up there. In fairness he looked out for us all day bringing us drinks and food and even putting our wine on ice. He must have hated us by the end of the day. But in fairness he managed to get most of our money out of throughout the day.

We got the bus tour of Cape around lunch time.  It was a great lazy way to see the whole island. The tour took about an hour as we travelled the roads in second gear.  There are some savage hills on this little island and walking it would certainly be a good work out.  But I will never know. (I'm a lazy shite)

 Once we got back to the Pub/shop we were wrecked .So we thought it was time for more food and drink.  Had a lovely steak there for dinner. MMMM hungry now thinking about it. Of course when our dinner arrived up guess who turned up.  That little fecker Pearse.  I couldn't believe it. He bitched and screamed and ran around while his parents yelled at him to sit,stay,stop and loads of other commands that the little devil ignored, generally he was just a pain in the ass.

After dinner we headed back to Danny Mikes. There we continued our card games of which I never one a round. We also found an old trivia pursuit questions book. Emma was the quizmaster and asked questions throughout the night. I ruled in the Cartoon section, comic section and at least in the respectable section of geography.

We had a laugh all night and we were joined by a guy working on the island for ESB called Seamus. He sucked at cards ended up hold most of the pack. Was bloody funny. Don't think he really got the rules of our game. He moved on to pool, which was his game. Seamus and myself took Team Aileen, Which was Aileen and another guy we met Tadgh, who was a laugh. Anyhow I sucked at pool and just did enough to piss them off while Seamus actually potted the balls.

All in all it was a good night and we headed back to the B&B about 3ish. As we walked back in the pitch dark we could hear a group of girls up ahead of us laughing and trying to scare each other.  As we approached them in the dark from behind they shit themselves. They jumped and screamed so much they actually gave us a fright.  They were completely embarrassed, it was bloody funny.

We woke late to similar weather and made our way down to get the boat back to Baltimore at 12.  Of course that little fecker was on the boat as well. All in all in was a great few days away and I would recommend a trip to Cape to anyone for sure.

I decided to take a few days off work before work gets really busy. Myself and Emma along with Gill and her sister Alieen decided to head for the island of Cape Clear. We headed down to Baltimore on Monday to get the boat across to the island at 5:30pm. As we sat at the pub in Baltimore we watch our boat pull away we realised that the boat left at 5:00pm and not 5:30pm. So a few drinks later and a bit to eat we caught the last boat at 7pm. The trip across was cool. It lasts about 40mins and you get some nice views of the sea and the surrounding countryside.

Once we arrived on Cape Clear we got the only taxi to our B&B up a bloody big hill. Of course Gills B&B was right next to the pub (how convenient) the roads there are bloody shocking. I would say that our Taxi has never seen 3rd gear. All the roads are just little lane ways with potholes everywhere. Our B&B was really nice and at €15 each per night it's hard to complain.

The weather was on and off over the whole weekend. Never really cold at all, it would just rain every now and then. Because of this we saw alot of the inside of the 2 pubs that were open. For the first night we stayed in Danny Mikes pub and had dinner there and thought well since we were here we should stay on and have drinks till about 2ish. Sure why not. Dinner was alright there apart from a little kid called 'Pearse' this little fecker would go on to appear everywhere on the island that we went. Little Pearse, I'm guessing was about 4 years old, yelled screamed and bitched during our whole meal no matter what his parents tried to bribe him with. Alieen who hates kids alot wanted to have him beaten within an inch of his little life. To her disgust this never happened.  The only other interesting thing to happen during this meal was to come from a pack of butter.  Now the packs of butter that I'm referring to are the ones you get in restaurants. They come in little fat rectangles made up of a foil type thing covering the butter. Now me being me, I kept playing with mine till it was nice and soft. (as you do) I was then squeezing hard when to my shock I shot the butter across the room and spat on to the far wall. Along the way Emma took a bit of a hit to the head as well so we had to pick butter out of Emma's hair. I thought it was bloody funny. Emma was not as amused. But still it was amazing how far it went.

 After dinner we played pool for a while. I now remember how shite I was at pool when I was at school.  We also played cards for ages which a bloody laugh. Been ages since I played cards. It's strange how you always have to go somewhere far away to do things that you could do at home no problem. We played a type of last card with a few new interesting rules added such as touch your nose or make bunny ears if a seven was put down. This got very sneeky by people as the night went on and as more drink was had. Also when a ten was put down no one could speek till it was covered. This resluted in you having to pick up the whole discard pile when you spoke. It's amazing how sneeky people get as the night goes on. Such as asking questions or getting someone to sing before putting the card down. What a laugh!

To be continued.......

Just after lunch today, the skys parted and a ray of sun emerged so Dan and myself decided we'll look into going fishing tonight.

Its been about a year since we last went and its good to get out and do something different. Hopefully the tide will be in. Last year, we caught buckets of mackerel off the rocks in Mertylville so we're going to try there tonight!

Got to go and get new rods...our old ones are rusting in the shed down Dans house in Glanmire since the fat lazy shite didn't clean them.

This video Dan took a few years ago of us fishing. (when we looked young) you will have to forgive his filming skills. Guess he just ain't pro like myself.

Howdy,

This is my new and really exciting Blog. (hopefully) I have no idea yet as to what I will put into this Blog but after time I may find some sort of route that I want to go down. Untill then it will probably just be a mix of shite. So enjoy and feel free to drop in and let me know what you think

Who am I ?

Well My name is Sam Kidd ,as the website suggests.  I was born in New Zealand in 1979 (dam that sounds a while ago now) I have moved round this planet quite a bit as my dad is a rugby coach. I have lived in France, all round New Zealand and Ireland. I am now currently living in Cork Ireland, where I been now for 10 years. The rest of my family are now back in NZ now for the last 3 years. I stayed on here for a few reasons. One being of course a girl, and second being business. I have a few things on the go but the things that are up and running at the moment are AREA51 and Scorch. AREA51 is a 24 hour gaming café that I opened with 2 friends of mine, Dan  and Topper in late 2004. It's been a massive learning curve and something that I may go into at some stage in more detail another time. Infact I could write all day about the things we have learn't there.  AREA51 has been a big success for us and long may it continue. The other business is Scorch which is a filming company. Emma (the girl I stayed for) and I set up when we got out of college. They were hard times and again I learnt a massive amount from that too. Again something I could talk about all day. At the moment all I do with Scorch is Filming rugby games for UCC the IRFU and Munster development dept. It's great work and pays well and because it is mainly weekend work enables me to concentrate my time on AREA51 which is great. Well I hope this gives you some idea of who I am to start with and I hope you enjoy and find something that interests you here.