	Part 14 - It's Summer time! After enduring the cooler months of Ireland, I'm glad to feel the warmth of Summer at long last. We have had two Winters (back to back). One in Australia and then another one here. We have been very industrious of late. My book 'fix a troubled Mac' has been selling well and we can nearly pay the rent of the tower on the earnings. I hope it keeps up. Fo fo has decided that making foofbags should be our next online venture. It's early days, we've just started out. You can see our first production ibook bag/sleeve sports some bright colours indeed. We'll also be doing a Connemara tweed version for more serious laptop users. We are aiming them at the 12" demographic first. The Irish Sea has become very clear and almost tropical looking. I'll tell you though, it's 'just' swimmable, temperature wise. If you don't mind changing colour and screaming your head off as you jump in. That burning sensation (that we've grown to love) is millions of skin cells snapping and breaking. We have had some very large tides which have constantly brought the water level up to the wall against the path just outside our tower. That's 4 metres from our front window. I'm sorry about the uncensored picture that has made it onto this website. Fo fo found it entertaining that i should be surfing the net from the laboratory. Talk about extreme wireless. (it's only 802.11b). A fishing trawler has been mining for Finger shells just off Portmarnock beach. They dig up the sea floor and all the little fishes, shells and other sea life get disturbed and die. They float to the surface and then get washed ashore in the next tide. They make the beach very smelly. This happened a few months before with a larger unidentified trawler doing the same. The next day, i estimate seven thousand dead star fish all arrived on the beach to rot in the winter sun. With summer in full force here (22 degrees celcius mate!), the smell can be over powering. You can see some dead sea debris in the pictures below. Very smelly. We're going to call the coast guard if this happens again. We've made friends with our neighbours (above and below us) in the Martello Tower. Max and Fran respectively, as in, up and down. We all headed off to the West Coast of Ireland to County Mayo and Galway for an Atlantic adventure. Max, who calls himself 'Lord of the Tower' (he's Italian you know), has a 4WD Land Rover called landi which we were all going to go trekking of in. But that didn't happen, so we took our more mundane European cars instead (sorry Ernie). We headed to Westport (Co. Mayo) for a full Irish breakfast and then south towards Clifden, passing through Killary Fjord which was shrouded in mist, peppered with sheep and covered in wet bog. Millions of rhododendrons abound over the hills and little winding back roads that make up the West Coast. I didn't know it at the time, but I later learnt, that the beautiful area of the Delphi Valley was the place of much misery and suffering during the Famine times (Potato blight - Phytophthora infestans) when thousands of Irish fled to ships that were located in Killary Harbour that were bound for America.

Part 14 - It's Summer time!

After enduring the cooler months of Ireland, I'm glad to feel the warmth of Summer at long last. We have had two Winters (back to back). One in Australia and then another one here. We have been very industrious of late. My book 'fix a troubled Mac' has been selling well and we can nearly pay the rent of the tower on the earnings. I hope it keeps up. Fo fo has decided that making foofbags should be our next online venture. It's early days, we've just started out. You can see our first production ibook bag/sleeve sports some bright colours indeed. We'll also be doing a Connemara tweed version for more serious laptop users. We are aiming them at the 12" demographic first.

The Irish Sea has become very clear and almost tropical looking. I'll tell you though, it's 'just' swimmable, temperature wise. If you don't mind changing colour and screaming your head off as you jump in. That burning sensation (that we've grown to love) is millions of skin cells snapping and breaking. We have had some very large tides which have constantly brought the water level up to the wall against the path just outside our tower. That's 4 metres from our front window.

I'm sorry about the uncensored picture that has made it onto this website. Fo fo found it entertaining that i should be surfing the net from the laboratory. Talk about extreme wireless. (it's only 802.11b).

A fishing trawler has been mining for Finger shells just off Portmarnock beach. They dig up the sea floor and all the little fishes, shells and other sea life get disturbed and die. They float to the surface and then get washed ashore in the next tide. They make the beach very smelly. This happened a few months before with a larger unidentified trawler doing the same. The next day, i estimate seven thousand dead star fish all arrived on the beach to rot in the winter sun. With summer in full force here (22 degrees celcius mate!), the smell can be over powering. You can see some dead sea debris in the pictures below. Very smelly. We're going to call the coast guard if this happens again.

We've made friends with our neighbours (above and below us) in the Martello Tower. Max and Fran respectively, as in, up and down. We all headed off to the West Coast of Ireland to County Mayo and Galway for an Atlantic adventure. Max, who calls himself 'Lord of the Tower' (he's Italian you know), has a 4WD Land Rover called landi which we were all going to go trekking of in. But that didn't happen, so we took our more mundane European cars instead (sorry Ernie).

We headed to Westport (Co. Mayo) for a full Irish breakfast and then south towards Clifden, passing through Killary Fjord which was shrouded in mist, peppered with sheep and covered in wet bog. Millions of rhododendrons abound over the hills and little winding back roads that make up the West Coast. I didn't know it at the time, but I later learnt, that the beautiful area of the Delphi Valley was the place of much misery and suffering during the Famine times (Potato blight - Phytophthora infestans) when thousands of Irish fled to ships that were located in Killary Harbour that were bound for America.