Co. Kerry safer then Co.Clare

Changed my Car Insurance address from a Co.Kerry address to a Co.Clare address and guess what? Clare is more dangerous to drive! Nice finding out these random facts when it costs you €45 extra for the year!

;o(

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Print Shop in Ireland

I wanted to get some professional printing done for ideabubble so off I went on the route for a online contact that would help me out with my printing needs..



www.buyprint.ie/

www.local.ie/Ireland_Business/Print_-_Packaging_and_Stationery/index.html

www.standardprinters.com/estimate/businesscards.asp

www.gumtree.ie/dublin/computer-services_3035_1.html

www.vistaprint.ie

www.techstore.ie/Design-Print/Business-Cards.htm

www.printing.ie/



I was surprised to stumble upon Gumtree in the top ten rankings in GOOGLE! Approx prices are above €100  for printing what I need...hmm..can I get cheaper??



While I am tempted to do this myself and use a good printer I know I could borrow for the evening, I would like to start delegating pieces of work rather then doing them all myself! Apparently make good business sense!!



Off I went to checkout www.goldenpages.ie



Haven't chosen one yet..

:o)

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The Great Caddy lookabout

I love to have my handy backup...backup backup!! I have been using a mediagate caddy for my 2.5 harddisk(laptop size) and have been delighted until... the firewire connection became faulty...So I will need it to get looked at and in the meantime I need a sub! I haven't use the option to use your TV to watch whats on your medigate much at all. Remote control is a nice touch.



So looking at the sub bench I see:

Adaptec 2.5 inch USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure Kit converts 2.5 inch int

CP International 1 Bay (CP-UB-200) USB 2.0 External Drive Case

Dynamode USB Caddy for 2.5 Hard Drive

Akasa Integral P2 HDD Enclosure for 2.5" IDE, aluminium Silver, USB 2.0



- The Winner

Akasa Integral P2 HDD Enclosure for 2.5" IDE, aluminium Silver, USB 2.0



Mainly on price and convenience however not on performance. Have decided due to 12Euros delivery charge that I wont buy online and I will see whats in the PC stores in Limerick.



Will let you know what I find!

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Text To Speech

Well I was asked to find a good software to help my Dad read attachments and websites when he uses his computer. He does not like all the flickering lights and gets headaches when he looks at the screen for too long!



The task was to find a solution that was free(of course!) and "fire and forget" usability, as my dad is not very technical or PC savvy.



First stop was www.sourceforge.net(open source directory of software) then to the next stop www.download.com(freeware/shareware directory of software). After all that I searched through GOOGLE to see what sites were coming back.



The list was down to these:

Sayz  - http://sayzme.sourceforge.net/

ReadPlease - http://www.readplease.com/

Natural To Text - http://www.naturalreaders.com/

Ultra Hal - http://www.zabaware.com/

AliveTextToSpeech - http://www.alivemedia.net/



The libraries I also downloaded to see what was the latest from the Microsoft Voice API. - www.microsoft.com/speech/download/sdk51/



- THE WINNER

Ultra Hal - http://www.zabaware.com/



Ultra Hal met the needs perfectly. Automatic speech options to read incoming messages, copy text to immediate playback was perfect! Thanks to zabaware.com for a great job!

Firefox - ScribeFire

I wanted to test the very neat and handy Firefox addin that allows me to publish my entries from a custom window within Firefox, a great internet browser. No excuses now for forgetting my login or address information! ;o)

blog providers and us

Ok so check out quite a few online blogging tools and blogger came out on top for flexibility and custom design options. Like it hence the text you are readings location!



In the planning stages of a concept I have and am excited in sharing it online. Will keep the progress posted here. I love to organise what I find and use on my PC so I will share my findings also! Oh yeah and one of my projects is an self written and produced album. Am really excited about that.



Myself and Elaine arrived back after our travels for over 18months around the world. Its been weird settling back into Ireland and real life and times. But like I heard someone say, lets build a bridge and get over it! Great positive attitude that I love.



A busy and heady(exercise to get me out of my head a priority at the moment! any suggestions?)



Michael