Posts tagged with: galway

/me is back at Galway, attending ISWC 2005. Murphy is again with me this time, my SPARQL store exploded last week, my posters were destroyed during shipping, the plane had a power outage, almost missed my connecting flight, plus the usual chaos ;)

But I'm here now, everything is just as expected (storm and rain) and hope is getting back to have a new version of CONFOTO up by tomorrow's Demo/SemWebChallenge session. I didn't manage to finish some of the more fancy features I had in mind (such as drag 'n' drop annotation), but I've got a nice new UI (you may notice that I'm a mac user now ;), and I'm going to introduce an RDF shopping cart which allows you to export resource descriptions collected during browsing photos and events.

After working overtime three days in a row, I'm now completely off-sync with the other folks here. This doesn't mean that I don't see anyone in the streets when I walk home in the night (that will never happen in lively Galway), but without a doubt I'm the only non-drunk person.

Apart from feeling a little bit like a zombie, night-working at cube farm DERI is definitely much more productive than during the day (with my fan heater being the best investment ever). Oh, and NUI Galway looks actually quite nice after sunset.

Susanne came to Galway for the week-end and I was reminded that Ireland had more to offer than just working 24/7. So we relaxed, went to several fish restaurants (trying to compensate my 4kg weight loss so far), and booked a "spectacular" coach tour to the Burren, the area south of Galway.

The weather was OK. Cold and stormy, but no rain. And no fog!

The usual pics and panoramics:

Dunguaire castle


"Ireland's most spectacular sea-cliffs, the famous Cliffs of Moher, which are 200m high and are extended for 8km long"


"Poulnabrone dolmen, a 5000 year old tomb used by the stone dwellers to bury their dead". I always wondered where the guys who built the house I'm currently staying at got their heat insulation know-how from. Now I know...

Today we went to one of Galway's golf courses. Cold, but definitely fun. We lost a lot of golf balls but found new ones that allowed us to continue playing ;)


Armin, Andreas, Eyal, Simeon

Today, we've been at Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands. We had incredible luck with the weather. No rain at all during our 6-hours visit. We walked around for several hours and I took lots of pictures.


We saw a lot of "half price" things on Inis Mór:

"House, half price!"

"Bananas, half price!"

"Car, half price!"

"For rent, half price!"
more serious now:








We learned, that on the Aran Islands wealth was not defined by money but by the animals someone owned, with cow being the most stable currency. Well, times are different now, but we found a cowionnaire's field (3 cows!)

oh, and another funny one:

The University's "Quadrangle" where the Aula Maxima and several NUI Galway offices are located:

The fake-old, but still ancient looking Cathedral on my daily way to DERI:

In order to phone home I installed skype, an Internet-based telephony software. Very easy to set up, and I can use DERI's wireless network, but I needed a headset, which I bought at the Wellpark Shopping centre. The latter is in walking distance from the Docks. I took the following picture on my way back:

Galway is quite nice. Today I found the time to take some pictures:

Ce Na Mara, the place where I'm staying:


It's next to the harbour, 2 minutes away from the city centre:

More luck today. Sun and everything. The view from my room:


And a double-screen working environment.