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Bernie Goldbach posted a video:

Part of the 2019 Ideas in Education Conference in LIT-Thurles on Saturday, May 11, 2019.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

A random discovery I made while listening to "Unbecoming of Age" on Easter Sunday 2019.

It is Easter Monday and I am engaged in a normal enough tradition for me; listening to the Hall of Fame Countdown on Classic FM. 

I missed it last year, when, apparently, the 1812 Overture swooped in from nowhere to claim the Number 1 spot. It made a change from the dirge that is Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending. Don’t get me wrong – VW has a couple of pieces that I really like. The Lark Ascending, however, is a classical B side for a record that didn’t make the top 100 singles chart. I question the taste of Classic FM listeners some times. They’ve put both Bruch’s first violin concerto and Elgar’s cello concerto outside the top ten. You can find the chart here. 

Interestingly, I’d love to see a chart of the recordings they chose to play. I’ve heard Daniel Barenboim’s name a lot today. 

Anyway, apart from that, Easter in Luxembourg in 2019 has been absolutely gorgeous. It’s hard to believe that one week ago we had snow and it made a valient attempt to stick, freeze and generally cause confusion. This weekend has been absolutely stunning. I had planned to spend the weekend sewing but so far, I have spent it washing fabric, looking at the weather and thinking, you know what I have that new camera 

So yesterday I did a 6km walk around Luxembourg. It’s the walk I inflict on visitors, more or less, with a few bits left out. Out of the 126 photographs I took only 26 made the cut. 

This is near the tram stop at Theater. I’ve always loved this art installation but the strength of the sunshine made it particularly memorable yesterday. 

This is Fondation Pescatore, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, residential care home for elderly people in the world. It opened in 1855. Near it is a memorial to all the soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. The building is a mish mash of styles, but the main entrance is neogothic. The place also has an outdoor gym and a lot of lovely places for residents to sit and take their ease. 

Near Fondation Pescatore is the Pfaffenthal lift, which is a glass elevator, but not quite in the mode of Willie Wonka. This is the view from the top. 

This is the old jail. It’s been renovated lately and it’s connected to the old court house buildings which are in the possession of the Luxembourg government now. I believe the court house houses the Department of Foreign Affairs. A key piece of information is that this place had a mobile guillotine for dealing with justice swiftly, as it were. 

If you go to the City of Luxembourg Museum, in one of the galleries there are a set of drawings of Luxembourg when it was a fort. There are very few representations of Luxembourg as a fort as drafting any imagery of it was concerned an act of treason which could put the fort at risk. I wonder sometimes how many wannabe artists bit the dust on this one. 

This is the building now housing the Department of Foreign Affairs. It was recently renovated and on Open House Day (which was in the height of summer last year), you could do tours of it. If I remember rightly though, we could not take photographs. That being said, it’s a stunning building and I love the front of it. 

Nearby is the Palais Grand Ducal, which you can usually tour on Saturdays in July and August. Worth doing, mainly because it is a stunning building, but also, because it’s got a great map room. The building was not originally built as a palace but as an administrative building, and it was occupied by the Nazi soldiers during World War II. They painted over some seriously old wall art with white wall paint – you can see remnants of it here and there. But it was wanton destruction all the same. I loathe war. 

A two minute walk away you’ll find the double spired Notre Dame Cathedral which has some distinctions in my experience – one, it is the only cathedral which is not fully detached (it has buildings attached either side) and it has the most beautiful pillars which are beautifully and abstractly decorated. The organ is not too shabby either. Plus the sun was shining in the stained glass windows. I could not resist them. 

This is looking towards Pfaffenthal from the viewing spots near the legal district. There’s another elevator here to get you down to the lower level but this one is drilled into the rock so no glass elevator. 

Finally, this is the current Town Hall in Luxembourg (there’s actually another one which I didn’t include in yesterday’s gallery. You’ll find this building on Knuedlerplatz. 

I love Luxembourg. 

Today then was Easter Monday and clearly I have not been here on Easter Monday before as I was not familiar with the ceramic fair. Especially, they sell a lot of bird shaped ocarinas. The city was full of children playing their ocarinas which means the place echoed to the sound of whistling birdies. 

It. Was. Packed. And overwhelming. There were stalls every where. There were a few buskers around including a very decent slide guitarist. And the queue outside the ice cream shop was unending. 

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Ashgrove Lawn.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Snapped by Dingle Darkroom while high on Mount Eagle capturing the layers of the cliffs on the eastern side of the Great Blasket Island during sunset, when two people climbed on the pillbox atop Dunmore Head.

I admit, not everybody will have eaten lamb today; lamb is relatively expensive to bu!. I’d bet though that if you did buy lamb for your Easter Sunday roast, you really don’t want to throw away any of that precious meat. This leftover lamb pasta recipe is especially designed for the itty bitty pieces that don’t come away easily when carving. They are perfect shredded into the sauce, browned until caramelised and cling to the pasta in nutty morsels.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. The recipe serves a family of 2 adults and 3 children generously. Whatever leftover vegetables you have from the Sunday roast are great recycled in this leftover lamb pasta dish. It is quick to prepare and is very frugal as you’re using up leftover meat from the day before.  Don’t be limited to use just using lamb in this pasta dish though, consider using up any leftover meat you might have from a roast such as ham, beef, chicken or turkey!

You can see from the pictures that I used squid ink pasta for this recipe. I may have mentioned a few times that I’m clearing the store cupboards? It just so happened that it was the last of the tagliatelle that I had in the house. The recipe will work, no matter what the colour of the pasta, but it’s certainly a talking point.

Ingredients

• 200g pasta of your choice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
• Leftover lamb meat, finely shredded
• 5 cream crackers, crumbled (if you’re based in the US, Graham Crackers work well here)
• 1 cup of peas (frozen or leftover from the day before)
• 1 teaspoon mint sauce (optional)
• 1 fresh chilli, chopped
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Method

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and simmer your pasta according to the recommended time on the packet. Mine takes 8 minutes to cook which is just about the amount of time it takes to prepare the sauce.

In a wide, deep saucepan or frying pan, heat the olive oil on a medium heat. Add the garlic, crumbled crackers and meat. Stir well until they begin to brown. Lower the heat, add the peas and coat in the sauce. If using mint sauce to accentuate the lamb add a teaspoon now.

Strain the (now cooked pasta) and add the pasta to your sauce. Stir until completely coated. with the crumbly cracker/garlic/lamb mixture.

Season with salt & pepper to taste, then serve with chopped fresh chilli on top.

Lovely with a fresh green salad, roasted cherry tomatoes or garlic bread.

Finally, if you have any leftover chocolate from Easter Eggs you might want to use it up by baking some of my Chocolate Bar Blondies For Leftover Treats (pictured below). These blondies also freeze well so handy for stock-baking for a party or event later on next month.

Don’t forget chocolate is grand in the freezer for a short amount of time. If, by chance, you or the kids have received a glut, remove all the packaging (into the recycling bin) and break the eggs into a freezer bag. You can then take out just the right amount when you need it!

The post Leftover Lamb Pasta appeared first on Caitriona Redmond - Wholesome Ireland.

I’m going to spare you an ode to the iron I bought; I haven’t yet unpacked it. 

But I bought a handblender yet. You don’t need to know any details about it except it has a metal blade attachment, came with a cutter tool that resembles a baby food processor, and it also came with a jug type thing. That jug type thing, and the metal blade attachment were my selection criteria, that and not costing 120E while not being a supermarket own brand that I have never heard of. 

I wanted to make my own smoothies. I wanted to do this because most smoothies I buy seem to have added sugar in them. I don’t want or need this. I have a basic recipe and it goes like this. 

You will need the following stuff

• a hand blender
• something to blend the stuff in
• a citrus squeezer of some description. 
• a knife. 
• a dessert spoon
• a banana or some papaya
• strawberries or blueberries or mango
• some no-sugar added natural yogurt. I use a set yogurt with very low sugar content
• some orange juice
• some ground ginger, 
• a lime

Here is how you do it:

• Chop some (say, four) strawberries/some mango, some blueberries) into your something to blend the stuff into. 
• Chop the banana/papaya into that something
• Add the juice of one lime, or half a lime if you are a wimp
• Add “some” ground ginger. Err on the side of caution (I like a lot, but that should be no reflection on you. 
• Add two dessert spoonfuls of yogurt
• Top up with orange juice. I generally advise against the stuff with pulp as cleaning that out is a hassle, particularly by hand. 
• Use the blender to liquidise everything. 
• Remove and rinse the blender attachment immediately. Dried on smoothie is a bitch to clean off. 
• Decant some smoothie into a glass. Enjoy. 

On Good Friday, 2019, to be precise. I had been angling for one for around 10 years but had never quite….got there. Until now. 

I had a conversation with a friend lately on the question of clothing; we both focus on the comfort of clothing, in my case, because I am so damn glad to find clothes that fit me that the colour matching is completely a secondary concern. I am Between Sizes. I have always been Between Sizes because I have DD cup breasts. It doesn’t matter what size I am, I am between sizes. 

I live with it. 

The problem is when you find clothing styles you like and the vendor discontinues them. I have serious issues sourcing nightwear at the moment, and swimsuits are a hassle too, causing a decision to quit Speedo after nearly 25 years of loyalty to the brand. And it occurred to me that in theory (note those two words as they may come back to haunt later) it should be possible to dismember clothes I like but which are no longer respectable to wear in company (that would be those two purple/lilac coloured tops, there, which I bought at least 7 years ago but refuse to give up because I like how they fit) and use them to creat basic patterns, particularly the non-stretchy fabric (that would be that last remaining shortish satin nightdress that I need to fix the dart on and really should throw out as I can’t even begin to remember when it was bought but we’re probably talking ca 10 years ago). 

One of my friend bought an overlocker. No, I didn’t know what one of those was either but she made a skirt using it, and it did not appear to have been a particularly high mountain to climb. I am a logical person sometimes. I reason, this works like computer stuff and knitting patterns. There are instructions, you follow them, and 10 years later or so, when you get around to finishing stuff, you have a wearable. 

I kind of need a shorter timeline than ten years would be helpful but recent experience of finishing two doilies started ten years ago gives me a fresh view of my motivation sometimes. Anyway. I went looking at the three sewing machine shops and found one with staff I liked/found friendly/found helpful, and agreed to buy a Brother A16 sewing machine. It cost 30E more than its older brother, the A15. The A15 was a beautiful looking machine. The A16 was a bit boxier looking. I asked what the difference was and was told that the needle threading mechanism was easier to work on the A16 to the A15. As I expect to have the machine for at least 10 years, I ignored the more esthetically pleasing A15 and bought the miracle of engineering that was the A16. The fact that the single most common complaint about the A15 in amazon reviews related to the needle threading and my lack of patience with that may have contributed. The shop sales staff trained me in threading the needle and the bobbin, several times, and away I went. 

I’m nothing if not ambitious. I bought a whole pile of fat quarters and plan to make some napkins for my house and for my sister’s house. I can’t wear these of course, but I need to get the hang of basic stuff like a) sewing in a straight line and b) putting enough thread on the bobbin so as not to run out in the middle of something. I also need to read the manual. 

But on Good Friday, I felt it would be a good idea to unpack it and try and figure out how I was going to fit it into my desk area. I have no other options – the desk where I paint and write blog entries is also where I will be sewing and cutting. So I also decided that sewing would be useful. 

So yeah I had a go at sewing, and trying to style photographs of me sewing. 

That was about my fourth attempt. I put up a hem and tried parallel lines too. Then I looked up YouTube videos and tried to figure out how I would make some napkins. It turned out the answer was “buy more fat quarters”. So I went back and did that. 

Then I discovered you had to wash and iron fabric before you sewed it. So I have about a dozen and a half fat quarters drying on the clothes horse and a deep desire to iron stuff so that I can start making napkins, either later today, or tomorrow. 

The washing them…was interesting. I’m starting to wonder if I should like, tack them before hand given that the edge threads are prone to rip. Some one of the blog instructions I read stated that you could do like 8 napkins in 2 hours but she didn’t include washing, drying or ironing in that time, as far as I can see. 

In general though, I have found the sewing world remarkably honest. You need stuff when you are starting off. It’s not a case of “just buy yourself some needles and away you go”. No. 

Buy the following items. 

• sewing machine
• scissors
• needles for your sewing machine
• pins
• probably a pin cushion
• chalk marking pencil
• iron
• ironing board

Where the scissors are concerned, issue death threats should someone be dumb enough to use your new and recommendedly the best you can afford to buy fabric scissors for anything other than fabric. I have no potential victims so I think I will be okay. But it’s refreshing that they recognise that you need to invest a certain amount of money up front. I had to buy an iron and ironing board for example. And I need to find homes for all these things. 

This Easter Sunday we’ll all gather as a family; my siblings, our partners, our children, and my parents, and we’ll enjoy this classic roast lamb feast. When I say a classic roast lamb feast that’s not strictly true in the Irish sense of the term. The flavours and the food that we will eat together are a reflection of us as a family. The meal speaks to us of a time spent in the Middle East when Dad was serving with UNIFIL and the youngest of us was still in nappies.

It’s a meal that we will all contribute to. I’ve already been told I’m responsible for the vegetables, which is really my favourite part anyway. The biggest battle in my house will be to get all the vegetables chopped without the kids depleting the serving platter. The beauty of serving a roast lamb feast in this way is that everybody gets to pick what they like. Some family members don’t like cucumbers, some love peppers; everybody will fill their pitta bread and plates before we sit down together and celebrate Easter as a family.

Roast Lamb Feast

• Servings: 6
• Time: 2 Hours
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients

• Leg of Lamb
•  Hummus
• 1 Red Pepper, sliced
• 1 Yellow Pepper, sliced
• 1 Pack snack cucumbers, sliced lengthways
• 1 pack radishes, sliced
• 2 large carrots, coarsely grated
• 2 baby gem lettuce heads, leaves removed and rinsed
• 1 pomegranate, you’ll only need the seeds
• Fresh coriander
• Pitta Breads
• Salt & Pepper

Method

Preheat a fan oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Put the leg of lamb on a roasting tray, cover the end with tinfoil. Score the outside of the leg of lamb with a sharp knife so that you get a criss-cross pattern. Season with salt and pepper.

Roast the lamb in the preheated oven for 1 hour 30 minutes. Then remove the lamb from the oven, cover it in tinfoil and leave to rest for 20 minutes before slicing and enjoying.

Serve slices and generous chunks of roast lamb stuffed inside of pitta breads with a dollop of hummus, oodles of chopped vegetables, salad, fresh pomegranate seeds, and coriander. Top with thin slices of fresh chilli if you like the heat!

Top Tips

• Soften your pitta breads by sprinkling with water and microwaving each pitta individually for 20 seconds on high.
• Leftover lamb meat (if there is such a thing) makes for delicious traditional shepherd’s pie filling.
• If you have leftover chopped veggies use them to make a stir fry the following day.

Disclosure: This recipe was originally developed, written, and photographed for Lidl Ireland.

The post Roast Lamb Feast appeared first on Caitriona Redmond - Wholesome Ireland.

I'VE DISCOVERED fascinating cross-talk beyond the 448 page Mueller Report. Local radio host Fran Curry counted on me to digest the large document so I printed it for him and then went on air to localise its content for Tipperary listeners.

Tipp Today Mueller Report

It will take several weeks to listen to the cross-talk from others who have also read special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. But I know that only a micro-segment of America truly cares about its contents. "No Collusion" and all that.

Nonetheless, there exists jaw-dropping details about the inner workings of the administration of President Donald Trump, meetings with foreign officials and plots to affect not only the Americas elections but other elections throughout Western Europe.

Trump has business dealings in Ireland and now I wonder if his commercial property evolved after working with relatively unknown developers like in his Moscow dealings. The type of development Trump wanted in Moscow needed Putin's approval. That would have been something Trump needed to keep from prying eyes.

Moscow for Trump would have been a mega deal. In fact, Cohen said the Trump Tower Moscow overall "was potentially a $1 billion deal.” Under the terms of the agreement, the Trump Organization would get an upfront fee, a share of sales and rental revenue, and an additional 20% of the operating profit. The deal offered by the well-known Agalarov developers, in contrast, would have brought in a flat 3.5%.

For Trump, this agreement promised to be the deal of a lifetime.

For a better analysis, I recommend you listen to ProPublica's "Harm to Ongoing Matter".

In the meantime, I'm continuing to parse the single section of the Mueller Report that explains how Russia weaponises social media. That's what is in the screen cap above and I will update this blog post with a link to the relevant OneNote content once I've reviewed my edits. I'm capturing the pages by using Microsoft Office Lens and OneNote 2016.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology.]

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Because--you know--Twitter. More inside WaPo.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Part of the backyard dig out.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

None of the discharges used more than 2800 mW when flying and recording on the DJI P3P with Fly Litchi.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

When the drone cannot find the ground. It's actually three metres above the ground but confused by the clear panoramic roof of the car.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Neil Nolan, Adam Mullen, and Rafal Radziwill.

AS PART OF A CLOUD COMPUTING meet-up in the Questum Centre, videographer Jack Allen will attempt to fly the Clonmel Digital Campus drone on a survey mission along the proposed route of the Clonmel outer ring road. If high winds scrub the flight, we will be inside a Zoom Conference room that you're welcome to join between 1115 and 1145 Irish time on Saturday, April 13, 2019.

Listen to "Planning a Drone Flight And Zoom Hangout E80" on Spreaker.

Thanks to the generous RAM on my Samsung Note 9, we've been able to fly the DJI Phantom while streaming its video to an audience. We've discovered there's good interactivity from an audience who enjoys seeing an "eye in the sky" drone while talking to the aircrew. People can ask pilot Jack Allen to direct the drone's 4K camera at specific landmarks, recording video footage and snapping high resolution still photos. The on-board mission tracking of the DJI Phantom 3 Pro records its flight path, giving us an exceptionally accurate idea of where items are located under the drone's flight path. We use Wowza Cloud Streaming and our work can be seen on a specific hosted page.

We will put archival footage on this blog post after the live stream is finished at 1140. You can join the Zoom Conference at http://zoom.us/j/386174369 between 1115 and 1145 on Saturday the 13th of April.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

As explained on Spreaker edtech.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Cardioid and well-priced.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

While making an edtech episode.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

An inevitable trend.