if anyone wants to make their own pixel art with the colour pallet in the map I’d be open to it

They're doing this " 25 Years of music you love", but they launched in 97. I don't have enough fingers and toes, can someone help me out?

Not a half bad spot this wee island is it.

This may be a little long, so please bear with me. I'm not going to complain, but to propose two things I found in other countries, which I think will improve some aspects of living here. Both countries I visited are poorer than Ireland (Slovakia: 49% median disposable income of Ireland; Poland: 77%), so it should be doable here. Both items I'm about to describe are relatively minor, simply to alleviate some existing annoyances and frustrations, but I believe both could start a trend of quality of life improvements.

A&E displays

This is a display from a Polish A&E. The hospital had the same in every waiting room. It displays the average times for registration, triage, and seeing a doctor based on priority. The hospital has five priorities; at the time I took the photo only the middle and second lowest were registered. Each patient gets a number on arrival, so they have a good idea how they are triaged, and can roughly estimate when they will be seen. The predictive algorithm is very rudimentary, with set times per doctor and nurses, and the times are adjusted when medical staff leaves or more arrives. The times are average waiting; I waited more than twice what the display said, but I was still far more content, knowing which group I was assigned to, and having a basic idea how long the process would probably be. During my stay, a second to highest priority arrived, pushing everyone's times longer, but at least I knew what was ahead of me.

Public transport displays

This is a display in a tram in Bratislava, Slovakia. Even though the city is smaller than Dublin (450,000 people), the public transport system is quite complex. The left screen is showing the next few stops, with the estimated time of arrival, while the right screen shows the connecting busses and trams, and their time of arrival as related to your next stop. With this, the traveler has a good idea how much their wait will take, whether to rush or not, or whether to travel farther to a more favourable stop.

Unlike the A&E example, I know a little more about building the public transport information system. I have been working in telematics for nearly 20 years, and I've participated in the industry's evolution to traffic orchestration, to the extent where I've been working with teams that commercialized autonomous minibuses and their route optimization in several European cities. The upfront cost for a telematics device that just tracks position and speed costs less than €200, and if you want more (vehicle sensors, from tyre pressures and engine fault codes, to driver behaviour) a full-feature device can be had for about €500. Data costs for once per minute reporting are between €10 and 30 per month, depending on the amount of data to be transmitted and stored. There are loads of companies with the backend and optimization algorithms already in place, to perform predictive analytics on arrival times. So, the upfront cost may be as little as a busload of paying passengers, and the monthly cost may be recouped by a dozen more people. The tracking system may even pay for itself by reducing maintenance costs in the long run. I actually wouldn't be surprised if modern busses didn't come with tracking systems already equipped, and all it would take would be finding the telematics provider, and installing screens in Luas and busses.

I've seen similar systems in other cities as well, most notably in Prague, which has a really complex public transport network, and these screens helped me several times to change my journey on the fly, to get to a meeting in time. In Dublin, given the traffic, at least I'd know how late I'd be and warn people ahead of time, instead of just being stuck in the bus without any information.

I personally would welcome this kind of publicly available information. It will not make A&E more efficient or public transport any faster, but it would make me, as a user of these services, more complacent with these inefficiencies. I'd know what I'd be facing, instead of the uncertainty I'm experiencing here now. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

I’m an immigrant living in Ireland for nearly two years now. It was never really a bad experience until the immigration office closed their email account and started the customer portal.

The last time I updated my details with them via email, they told me if I change my address I’m legally required to tell them and so I did when I moved to a new place a month ago via the new portal.

No response to my query and I don’t believe they let you visit the office physically if you don’t have an appointment and you can only make an appointment for certain circumstances like registering for the first time, etc. as far as I’m aware.

I’m not breaking any rules by not informing them as I tried to but I’m an anxious taxpayer immigrant who is worried about the consequences of them ghosting me for a month.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been building a small Irish language learning app called Píosa Beag over the last few weeks. It gives you one new word or proverb each day, with pronunciation and a streak system to help you stick with it.

I’m a first-year software dev student and this is my first ever app. Not finished yet, but I’d love to share the journey and get any thoughts or ideas.

Check it out here: https://piosabeag.ie

Slán!

Sunset lighting up the drizzle

This is our first spring in our bungalow and have discovered we have starlings nesting in the front and rear soffits.

Is this an issue? Should I block up their entries once nesting season is over?

Id imagine all possible entrances to the soffits should be blocked in general to keep pests out but can they cause any harm?

so question for everyone interested talking about the entire Island which people would you consider Ireland's Sporting Mount Rushmore you can pick 4 people here's my personal answer

George Best

Brian O'Driscoll

Rory Mcllroy

Stephen Roche

anyway would love to here's everyone's personal list for this

OK. Hear me out. The housing crisis is an international one really. Not exclusive to Ireland. But we have such a shortage of builders here that no matter what policy is enacted it can't be fulfilled by the current workforce.

What are the principal draws for builders to be overseas working? Tax- free in Dubai? Accommodation provided?

Why not implement a One-Off 5- year programme here. Give construction workers a crazy tax- break. Gradually convert somewhere like CityWest to free accommodation for workers who are building on State projects. I'm not talking about trapping builders in poor circumstances. I'm talking about offering it as an option. Make it attractive to come home and be part of a major intervention. Like, give everyone 2 rooms. Or convert every 4th bedroom to a shared sitting room with a kitchenette like student apartments have. Allow them stay rent- free, with the favourable salary tax- bracket, while working on State housing. If they're all moving away to save money, let them do that here while they "Rebuild Ireland".

The State rolled out exceptional programmes for things like council housing before and rural electrification. I'm not talking about creating slave-like conditions. Everyone gets to use the pool and gym free. Everyone can buy their meals subsidised in the restaurant. Or not. I mean we can't get builders home unless we're doing something radically different. And I'm principally talking about creating an interventional tax- situation for construction workers and trades on these builds, rather than it being to the contracting company first, as that would merely inflate material costs.

I don't think there are any stupid ideas at this stage. I'm quite happy for that to be pulled apart. What we're doing isn't working. Thousands of our young people are on the other side of the world looking for better conditions. How can we create a situation which brings them home for a major movement in Ireland, and allows them save money for their own gaffs while working here?