First time in a Jet Ski!

Riding motorcycles for most of my life should mean that I take to a Jet Ski like a duck to water - right? 

Wrong!

We hired two Jet Skis for the first time yesterday and took to the waters with just a short lesson in how to turn the machine on (green button) and off (red button), and how to accelerate. When that 20 second lesson was over I was suddenly riding out to sea. I found the machine very difficult to control - nothing like a motorcycle. I kept trying to turn the handle as a throttle and bending like on a bike to turn. It took me a long time to get used to the handlebars and how to control them. I had a lot of stopping and starting. Nevertheless, I had great fun when going in a straight line at top speed. Turning was a different story, I fell off the Jet Ski when it was almost stopped.

Learning something new is good fun - especially when it involves engines and speed!

On Holidays

It's a strange feeling going on holidays for the first time as a retired person. Despite being retired for almost a year now, I am on my first "holiday" abroad. Today I am in Crete enjoying the sunshine for a couple of weeks. Normally, holidays are a break from work and all that goes with it. The moment I feel that I am finally on holidays after months of work was always when I have a beer in the sun at lunch time on my first day. Though just as enjoyable as always, it doesn't feel quite the same. The end of holidays always brought that resigned feeling having to go back to work. 

I am now enjoying learning about being on holidays without the before and after boundaries of work!

Cheers from Crete!

 

Family Heirloom - Shakspeare!

Recently, I received a copy of "The Handy-Volume Shakspeare" series from my Mum who told me that it belonged to her grandfather Richard Cullen. Of the original 13 volumes, this set comprises nine volumes, #VIII, #IX, #X, and #XI are missing. The set is not of any value - many copies are on sale on line for less than €20. Their condition is not great, further reducing value as a set.

There is no publication date on any of the books, though I believe they were are from the 1880s. Note the spelling of "Shakspeare" - this was a common spelling of the Bard's name in the 19th century.

An interesting feature of this set is that inside the front cover there is a sticker with the name "Wilson" and a family crest. On the first page there is a very neat signature for "HORACE WILSON". I asked my Mum if this name rings a bell, but she has no memory of the name in the family. It is therefore likely that my great-grandfather bought this in a second hand book shop in Dublin.

I was never really a fan of Shakespeare's work. In secondary school I studied Julius Caesar, As You Like It, The Tempest, King Lear, and Coriolanus. I once attended a performance of King Lear in the Globe Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon - I don't believe I have ever seen a performance of Macbeth or Hamlet.

I'll keep these little books as a memento of my great-grandfather. I am unlikely to read them, though I do open up random pages to see if any famous quotes stand out. I've put a post-it note inside the cover of volume I, so that whoever ends up with these books after me will know where they came from.

Volunteering at the Aviva @HSELive @DublinVolunteer #Covid19

Today I had my (probable) last day as a Volunteer at the Aviva Mass Vaccination Centre. For five months I have been giving a hand as a Volunteer Steward, it has dominated my summer. The Aviva MVC is closing for two weeks (to allow for World Cup Qualifier games) - when it re-opens on Sept 11th, I may not be able to participate as I will be on holidays.

What a five months it has been - I had no idea back at the beginning of March that I would still be involved. I have met so many wonderful people and been part of "one of the best teams" to play at the Aviva (Martina Queally, Chief Officer for Community Healthcare East). We had a send-off and photo call to mark the end of this phase of the vaccination programme. I got an opportunity to sneak onto the edge of the pitch for a photo, and I had my 26-year old Ireland jersey on to mark the occasion.

Thank you to all my fellow Volunteers for the welcome they gave me and for being a real joy to work with. The Clinical, Administration, Housekeeping, and Security teams also gave us great support - we backed each other up all the way through. I will miss taking part in this very historic occasion. I hadn't done much volunteering before - but now I have the taste for it, and the time, I hope to help out some more.

Simple Linear Regression, 1,000,000 Views

One of my most popular videos over the past six years has been How To... Perform Simple Linear Regression by Hand. It has recently become the third of my videos to surpass a million views. Since it was first published on 23rd December 2015, it has also got 505 comments (mostly very positive), and 9,442 Likes (a 96,7% positive rating). This video has also gained me 4,400 subscribers and earned just over €2,000. Most viewers (78%) are in the 18 - 24 age group indicating that most viewers are students. The top viewing countries are the United States (21%), and India (19%). Just 1,941 (0.2%) of views are from Ireland - less than Zimbabwe and Nepal!

 

Interestingly, despite the video being 10:55 minutes long, the average viewing time is just 2:46 minutes. By 13 seconds into the video, 40% of viewers have already stopped watching. I introduce all my videos in the same way, but even though I am concise and to the point, there is still a large drop off. Only 12% watch the video until the end.

It is gratifying and humbling to find that a video, which took me less than eleven minutes to make, has been useful to so many people. Getting a "hit" is so difficult - none of my top 20 viewed videos was published in the last five years. It is difficult to build an audience.

Great Driving Experience at @Mondello_Park with @Max_Hart1

Yesterday I finally got to use a gift of a driving experience at Mondello Park for my 60th birthday (22 months ago!) from my three daughters. I had never been to Mondello Park before, so this was a first for me. My daughters think that I am the slowest driver on the road, so I'm guessing that they had a lot of fun coming up with this as an idea for a present.

My instructor was fellow Wicklow man and up-and-coming race driver Max Hart. He immediately put me at ease and showed me how to take corners and brake at the last moment. I got to drive a Porsche for the first time - in fact I don't think I ever even sat in a Porsche before. It is a fantastic powerful car, and I loved driving it. Six laps around the 3.5 km track went by so quickly, but it was the most fun I had in a long time.

If you are looking for a great present - give it a go!

Thank you girls!

Happy 4th of July

Today is a great day for Americans to celebrate their Independence Day, and display a fantastic sense of national pride. I searched through my photos to see if I had a picture of myself with the stars and stripes, and I found the one below from my Route 66 trip two years ago. It was taken in Carlinville (Illinois) on Day 3 of the trip. A nearby shop was advertising a fundraising draw - first prize was a gun!

God Bless America and Happy Independence Day to all Americans!

2 Years Ago Today - Route 66

This day two years ago Roma and I set out on Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. With all that has happened since then, it seems like a lifetime ago. It was a fabulous trip with a fabulous group of fellow bikers from all over the world. Two weeks of Americana was fantastic - is is a great country and I'd love to go back and ride again. We thought it would be the first of many road trips, but we will have to wait until next year at the least. We still have Route 66 photos displaying on our Google Nest Hub in our kitchen - great memories!

Here we are picking up our bike - a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide!

25,000,000 YouTube Views

My YouTube Channel has passed a landmark figure on reaching 25,005,845 views yesterday. This is the total number of views since I set up the channel on 7th April, 2006. YouTube was just 13 months old (it was founded in February 2005) at the time and this was just before the Google takeover in October 2006. I could not then have anticipated that I would go on to be a YouTuber with 25M views and 57K subscribers.

The number of daily views on the channel has shown almost exact similar patterns over the years. For example, it is currently experiencing a seasonal summer downturn, with views expected to rise again in September. There has been a steady decline in the number of views over the past two years. I put this down to ageing videos (eg, How To... in Excel 2010), as well as a lot more competition. Videos concerning data analysis are now dominating the view counts - Simple Linear Regression has for the past three years been the most popular video. The United States still makes up most views (32%), with India next (14%), followed by the UK (8%), the Philippines (5%), and Canada (5%). Ireland is the 13th most popular location with just 1% of total views.

As always - I continue to be amazed that the Channel has grown so much. Of course, it is an extremely modest number of views and subscribers compared to real influencers. All of the videos are "How To..." educational Learning Objects - there are now 280 videos in the channel. I plan to add more to this by competing my series of Programming in R in the next couple of weeks, and producing a few more Statistics videos. However, there will be every little over the summer.

A huge THANK YOU to every viewer who has clicked on one of my videos - I am very grateful for your time and support. As I say at the end of every video: "I hope you found this video useful, thank you for your attention".

The Second Dose

Having received my first AstraZeneca vaccination at the Aviva Stadium on 25th March, 12 weeks and two days later I got my second jab at the Shoreline Leisure Centre in Greystones. It feels great to finally get it done and join the millions of people worldwide who are hopefully now fully immune to Covid 19. There was hardly any queue outside the centre. Inside I was processed quickly, and steered to the vaccination queue (which moved quickly) of about 40 people, by the always smiling and cheerful volunteers. The wonderful Brenda gave me the jab, and then I had the obligatory 15 minutes in Observation. It was all very calm and extremely efficient. Despite having heard about horrendous queues, I was in-and-out in under 40 minutes. The Shoreline Vaccination Team is brilliant! 

From the scientists who researched and created the vaccines, to the people who underwent clinical trials, to the likes of the HSE who managed and governed all of this, to the factory workers who bottled and shipped the vaccines, to the transport workers who shipped the vaccines all over the world, to the administrators who set up appointments and registered us all, to the IT folks who kept our systems working, to the people who invented SMS so that a simple text message with our appointments meant so much to us all, to the security people who help make the vaccination process safe, to the clinical leads at each centre, to the thousands of dedicated doctors/nurses/pharmacists/paramedics who are saving us all with a needle and a small drop of vaccine, and finally to the army of volunteers who manage the queues at the Mass Vaccination Centres: THANK YOU!

At the Shoreline Leisure Centre, Greystones.

100th Programming in R Video

Today sees the publication of the 100th video in my series of How To... Programme in R. This video is about the exciting topic of multicollinearity - which can be a problem when building Multiple Linear Regression models. Here's a useful definition:

The term multicollinearity was first used by Ragnar Frisch. It describes a perfect or exact relationship between the regression exploratory variables. Linear regression analysis assumes that there is no perfect exact relationship among exploratory variables. In regression analysis, when this assumption is violated, the problem of Multicollinearity occurs (Statistics Solutions).

I am coming to the end of this series of R videos as there are only a few small topics left from modules that I covered in my teaching days at NCI. I have mostly kept up publishing one video every working day since mid-January, but this will soon stop as I run out of ideas, and the summer is here!

The number of views for each video continues to be low - only a handful have exceeded 100 views. The most popular ones so far deal with Linear Regression, and the Chi-squared Test for Independence. I know there is a lot of competition on YouTube for videos about R programming - so it was always going to be a tough start to getting views. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed making the videos, even though the pressure to keep up the one-a-day schedule was often hard and at the last minute.

My 3 Seconds

Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan attended the Aviva MVC for vaccination last Thursday evening, and of course he had to tweet about it! He had his visit recorded despite cameras not being allowed at the Centre. I feature in the video for three seconds near the beginning, that's me in the blue vest patrolling the queue as it nears the vaccination area.

Minister Ryan queued up just like everyone else, in fact he was one of the last of over 2,000 people to be vaccinated that day at the Aviva. The work of the fantastic team of Dublin City Volunteers is in the main to manage and control the flow of people through the vaccination centre over three floors. We also try to project a positive attitude despite people queuing sometimes for over an hour. Almost everyone who comes to the Aviva is positive and accepting that queuing is necessary. Rudeness and moaning does happen, but it is thankfully very rare. Recognition such as that from Eamon Ryan is very much appreciated by all the staff and volunteers - we look forward to having him back in a few weeks! Here is his Tweet:

I was vaccinated last night before overnight events. @HSELive have done an amazing job adjusting to all the changes required of them. The staff & volunteer's attitude would make you proud of our country. They'll manage this latest twist. #TakeOneForTheTeam pic.twitter.com/Ul7j8EVRJS

— Eamon Ryan (@EamonRyan) May 14, 2021

To Answer (or not) viewer questions in YouTube comments?

Many people who watch my YouTube videos leave comments. Sometimes the comments thank me for posting the video, tell me that viewer has learned a lot, and that some like my style (while others don't!). However, I also get a lot of questions seeking further help - and I find that it is time consuming to answer them all. I take the view that if a student had asked the same question face-to-face, I would respond with "Did you attend the class?", "Did you study the course notes?", and "Did you read the recommended text book?". So I ask myself should I respond to all video comments when I feel it is clearly a student's responsibility to do their homework first?

In general, I do not respond to comments unless I can do so quickly and easily. As I write, my channel has 11,615 comments, so I feel with this volume that I cannot respond to them all. I'm guessing that responding to comments improves my rating in YouTube's algorithms, but I basically do not have the time to do so.

One of my most popular videos (a surprise "hit" for me with 867,638 views since published January 11th, 2012) is How To... Calculate Mean and Standard Deviation in Excel 2010. This video has 261 comments and today I received a comment from a viewer looking for further help. The viewer should be able to check out other resources before they come to me - I am not an on-line tutor providing an education service. Nevertheless, in this case I will respond as I have used the viewer's post as an example here.

I hope that any viewers reading this post do not think that I am being mean!

40 Years Ago Today #BobbySands

On 5th May 1981, I turned on my little radio when I woke up to hear the news of the death of Bobby Sands after 66 days on hunger strike. He was just 27 years old. I was both sad and mad. Sad that he had died after much suffering in a cause he had the courage to believe in, and mad as hell that he had been allowed to die. He was the first of 10 to die on this strike - all the strikers were in their twenties, and would surely all be still alive today if they had not participated in the strike. It was a turbulent time with many demonstrations in Ireland and black flags everywhere. I was 21 years old during all this and was a student at Trinity College. There was a lot of sympathy for the strikers, but perhaps not as much support for their aims. While I was supportive, to my shame I did not participate in any of the campaigns. However, I did sign the Book of Condolence for Derry man Thomas McElwee (died 8th August 1981, age 23) outside the GPO in Dublin. I recall I signed my name as "E O'Loughlin, Wicklow" - not having the courage to give my full name or address. Shame. Photo to right taken in 2016 at the Bobby Sands Mural, Falls Road, Belfast.

Aviva MVC #VolunteerDublinCity

For much of the past two months I have been working as a volunteer steward at the Aviva Stadium Mass Vaccination Centre with the Dublin City Volunteer organisation. The Volunteer team manage the queueing systems (yes - there are queues!) and we act as stewards at key points for the one-way system over three floors. If you are familiar with the Aviva, vaccination is taking on the third floor in the large bar area. It is all very efficient, with the Volunteer, Security, and Medical teams working well together. Everybody is always in good humour and the best part of the job is seeing the relief on the faces of people who have just received their vaccine. 

The Volunteer team is very diverse, with people from all over the world "doing their bit". Most are young people giving up their time in a good case, but there are a few retirees like me who are glad of something to do during the Pandemic. If you wish to volunteer - there are often opportunities posted on the Dublin City Volunteer website.

It is weird to think that this is a historic moment in human history. All over the world in sports stadia, car parks, and medical centres - there are people queueing up to have a needle jabbed into their arm. It is desperately sad that people are still dying in such large numbers in places like India for want of a vaccine. What is happening is a great relief to us all here in Ireland, but relief is not spread evenly all over the world. I do hope that lessons will have been learned for when the next Pandemic comes along.

My Maternal Great-Grandparents Richard Cullen and Anne McCann #Census1901

The fourth and last installment of my quick review of Census data from 1901 relating to my great grandparents features Richard Cullen and Anne McCann - both from Co Wexford. They were married on 12th November 1905 in St James' Street in Dublin. Luckily, I do have photos of both of them - I think they both look very glamorous in the photos below - especially my great-granny Anne.

Richard Cullen (1870 - 1940) 

Richard proved hard to find in the Census. He was from Wexford Street in Gorey, but is not listed in the Cullen family which still lived there in 1901. He was 30 years old at the time of this census - clearly he had moved out. We know he was a plasterer by trade and that he had moved to Dublin. By the 1911 census he lived in Ivar St in Arbour Hill. In a search I found a "Richard Cullen" who was a "Boarder" at a house in Merchant's Quay in Dublin (Residents of a house 18 in Cornmarket (Part) (Merchants Quay, Dublin). His occupation is listed as "Plasterer", and that he was originally from "Co Wexford". However, some doubt arises in that his age is given as 29. As he did not fill the census form out himself, it may be that his landlord guessed his age or didn't bother with accuracy. Nevertheless, I can be reasonably sure this is my fourth great-grandfather in the 1901 census.

Anne McCann (1874 - 1952)

Anne McCann grew up in Kilnahue, near Gorey in Co Wexford. Unfortunately, she is the only one of my eight great-grandparents that is not recorded in the 1901 census in Ireland. In the 1905 marriage registration her address is given as 13 Gambier Terrace in Liverpool, England. Clearly she had moved to Liverpool for work. Unlike in Ireland, access to the 1901 census records in England is not free.

My Maternal Great Grandparents James Byrne and Margaret Coburn #Census1901

Continuing my research into the 1901 Census, today I am focussing on my mother's side of the family. Her surname was Byrne, but as many before me have found - names have been spelled differently in the past. In the 1911 census, the family record featuring my grandfather Paddy Byrne was "Burns". In the 1901 census, James Byrne and Margaret Coburn are listed as Residents of a house 4 in Ballincor (Redwood, Tipperary) - he was a "Farm Servant" and she was a "Domestic Servant". In this record his surname is given as "Byrne". James married Margaret on 29th January 1903 - their marriage registration shows the surname "Byrne".

The 1901 census form shows that my Byrne/Burns great-grandparents were working as servants on a farm. James is listed as "Can Read", and Margaret is listed as "Cannot Read" - neither are listed as being able to write. Perhaps this might explain some confusion over the spelling of their names. It should also be noted that the census form was probably filled out by the Head of Household Denis Maher, and he may not have checked the spelling of James' surname with him. According to the Enumerator's Return Form, the house they lived in had a thatched roof with either 2, 3, or 4 rooms. With 10 people in the house it must have been very crowded. Though there is no evidence of this, I would not be surprised if some or all of the male servants lived in sheds or farm buildings.

The confusion over the surnames Byrne and Burns has made further research about this side of the family difficult. For example, within the family we know that James Byrne served in the British army from the beginning to the end of the first world war. He most likely enlisted in the Leinster regiment in Birr, Co Offaly - but there is no record of his service. I have never seen a photograph of either of these great-grandparents, though I expect they do exist. My great-grandmother Margaret Byrne lived until 1965 - I remember my mother visiting her in hospital, but little boys were not allowed on the ward. 

My Paternal Great-Grandparents Thomas Hurley and Bridget Murphy #Census1901

For the 1901 Census, my paternal great-grandparents Thomas and Bridget Hurley were already married and had four young children. They were Residents of a house 74 in Newmarket (Newmarket, Cork), which was on Church Street in Newmarket. Thomas was the local Creamery Manager, while Bridget ran a small shop in the ground floor of their house.  On the census enumerator's House and Building Return form, their house is described as a "Shop" and has a "1st" class rating with a score of "12". This figure was based on adding up scores for number of walls (1), number of roofs (1), number of rooms (4), and number of windows at the front (6).  In the family listed below, their son Charles became a priest, Tim became a doctor (and moved to Wales), Hannah became a nun (Sr Bridget), and Pat never married.

This is Thomas Hurley's signature:

My Paternal Great-Grandparents Joseph O'Loughlin and Julia Murphy #Census1901

Following on from my recent post about the 1911 census which featured three of my Grandparents, I knew that in my Ancestry family tree that I did not have all census details for my eight Great-grandparents - so I decided to see if I could find them at the National Archives. Here are two of my paternal great-grandparents:

Joseph O'Loughlin (1864-1916)

The common (and annoying) practice of dropping the "O" and the apostrophe from surnames made finding Joseph a little difficult. By the 1911 Census he had been widowed twice and did not marry again. In the 1901 census I found him under the surname "Loughlin". I already knew that he was born on 10th April 1864 in Tureenclassagh in North-west Co. Cork. I found a "Joseph Loughlin" living on his own in house 11 in Tooreenclassagh (Williamstown, Cork). The writing is identical to that on the 1911 Census. However, I am only 99% certain that this is my Great-grandfather - his age given in 1901 is 32, but he is 46 in the 1911 (which would be correct based on his date of birth). Did he lie about his age on the 1901 census? He later moved to Barnacurra (about 20 kms away) where he lived in 1911. Here are his details from the 1901 Census:

Here is his signature from the 1901 Census form:

Curiously, in the 1911 census form, while he filled the form out - he did not sign it. It is signed by the Enumerator (Thomas Brien) - who added other bits to the form which was obviously not completed correctly by Joseph.

Julia Mary Murphy (1876 - 1907)

My great-grandmother Julia Murphy was from Lisrobin (about 6 kms from Tooreenclassagh). As she died in 1907, she is obviously not listed on the 1911 Census. But I found her in the 1901 census living as Residents of a house 1 in Lisrobin West (Meens, Cork). She married my great-grandfather on 16th February 1904. She came from a very big family - she was the fourth youngest of the 14 children of Daniel and Mary Murphy. She was just 31 years old when she died. Here are her details from the 1901 Census:

Trivia: it is through Julia's mother Mary (née Finucane) that I am related to the late broadcaster Marian Finucane - she is my 2nd cousin x2 removed!

50 "How To... Programme in R" Videos

Today marks the publication of the 50th video in my "How To... Programme in R" series - I have been posting videos every week day since the launch in mid-January. I don't know how many more I will do, but I estimate that I am about half-way through my former "Programming for Big Data" module that I used to teach in NCI. The 50th video is about how to reference data in a matrix:

Unfortunately, so far the series hasn't really taken off. To date, the How to... Programme in R series has garnered just 3,845 views for all 50 videos. In contrast, my most popular single video How To... Perform Simple Linear Regression by Hand achieved 46,600 views during the same period. I do expect that when I create videos about performing statistical tests later in the series that the view count will go up. I also would like to be able to figure out how to group the videos into lessons without having to re-record. The 50 videos that I have created equate to six out of 12 classes that were in my module. I did not intend that I would create a full course - there's too much competition for that, but it might me a nice option to have.

Census Data 1901/1911

Wednesday was the 120th and 110th anniversaries of the 1901 census and 1911 census respectively. For anyone who has searched through their family histories they are a mine of information, and a fascinating look back in our history. It is also interesting for me and others of my age in that they were taken at the time when my grandparents were small children. My maternal grandmother Kathleen Cullen was born on the 14th April 1911, so missed out by two weeks on being recorded for posterity. However, both my grandfathers and my maternal grandmother were recorded.

Patrick (Burns) Byrne

My maternal grandfather Paddy Byrne was born on 20th July 1905 and was 5 years old for the 1911 census. His record was difficult to find due to the spelling of his surname. His father (James) spelled the surname with "Burns", which became "Byrne" in the 1920s. The record is located at Residents of a house 17 in Ballyquirk (Lorrha West, Tipperary)

PJ O'Loughlin

My paternal grandfather was born on 22nd December 1904 and was six years old for the 1911 census - he was an only child. His first name is recorded as "Pattie", and the surname is spelled "Loughlin" instead of "O'Loughlin". His mother Bridget had died in 1906. Note also that there is a cousin "Eugene" listed. The record is located at Residents of a house 3 in Barnacurra (Barnacurra, Cork).

Kathleen Hurley

My maternal grandmother was born on 28th August 1903 and was seven years old by the time of the 1911 census. Interestingly, her first name is recorded as "Katty". This family was originally hard to find, but one of my cousins living in Newmarket found a "Hurby" family recorded and sent me the link. The hand writing on the original census form is difficult to make out, but this "Hurby" family names, age, and location matched my grandmother's family, so I reported the error in the surname and it was corrected within a few weeks. The record is located at Residents of a house 2 in Church Street (Newmarket, Cork).

Happy 90th Birthday Dad!

For the month of March I have been taking a break from blogging, but I cannot let the month go by without paying tribute to my wonderful Dad Joe who is 90 years young today. Born on 31st March 1931 in Dublin, he has lived all his life near Carnew: first in Tomacork before moving to Ballingate in 1960. Despite the Lockdown, he is keeping in great spirits and has not lost his sense of humour or love of music and singing. What a pity we cannot celebrate with a big party - no doubt we will be able to get together as a family later in the year.

Here are some photos of Dad over the years:

Tomacork, c1933.

With sister Breda, and brother Pat.

Joe, Breda, Pat, Charlie, Mary, and Eileen O'Loughlin ( Tomacork, early 1950s).

Mid 1950s.

The Mikado - Gorey Musical Society 1956. Dad at centre of front row
(and Mum 3rd lady from left in second row).

Joe and Phil Engagement, 1957.

On FCA parade for the Séamus Wrafter monument unveiling in Enniscorthy, 14th Sept 1958.

Dad is under the letter "J" on the shop sign.

22nd October, 1958.

On stage with the late Pat Sheppard (HMS Pinafore).

O'Loughlin family gathering in Ballingate (1977).

Dad with grand-daughter Claire - new Oak Tree plantation, Ballingate (1995).

40th Wedding Anniversary (1998).

75th Birthday Party (2006).

With Joseph, Brian, Kathleen, Eugene, and Phil O'Loughlin.

With Mum and the late Pat Sheppard (2007).

The Farmer's Journal, 10th December, 2016.

Three Joe O'Loughlins! (2011)

Still working - 1st March 2021

Dad and I in the yard at Ballingate (1st March 2021)

Disconnecting Blog from Linkedin and Twitter #ImRetired

For several years I have been using the dlvr.it platform to automatically post all my blog posts to both Linkedin and Twitter. This was both to keep up some traffic on Linkedin and Twitter, and to save manually posting anything I wrote. Even though several of my posts over the years were not really suitable for a professional network like Linkedin (eg posts about family, and bells!), I felt that I had enough writings about education, video, data analysis, books, etc, to justify the automatic reposting.

As a retired person I feel I no longer need to keep up with everything on Linkedin. I am fed up of getting messages about recruitment, even though my status is "Retired". I am becoming less and less interested in posts from others, though I still love to see postings by former students announcing promotions and new jobs. I am not leaving Linkedin and Twitter altogether - I'm just not auto-posting any more starting March 1st. I can manually repost anything if I think it is suitable. I don't use Twitter that much, but I have found it handy for technical support and am keeping it for that purpose only.

Does a retired person need Linkedin? Comments welcome!

The Sound of the Ballingate Bell

A newspaper article about a bell is of course lacking one major aspect of the story - sound. My "Ballingate bell calling the faithful in Zambia" story is about the quest to find the bell nearly 60 years after it left Ireland. But I also wanted to hear it!

Shortly after photographs and other evidence from the Franciscan Missionaries in Zambia helped us to trace the bell to a church in Malengwa, my Franciscan contact there Br Owen Mwene, made a short video. Several of his colleagues surrounded the bell as many were interested in the story of where the bell came from. I was delighted to hear the bell for the first time. It sounds just like any other bell, but after the long quest to find it I felt a strong attachment to it. 

There's quite a bit of wind noise in the video. It was my original intention to try and make a documentary of this story. One idea I had was to actually go to Malengwa to see and ring the bell for myself. I planned to collect recordings, I already have some of my father telling the original story, a neighbour recounting hearing the bell and what it was used for, and a retired friar telling me about life in Zambia (all done on my Google Pixel 3a phone). Once I realised that a documentary was not going to happen, I got the story published in The Wicklow People instead.

Bell Manufacturing in Ireland

The Ballingate Bell, now ringing in Malengwa in Western Zambia, was manufactured in the Murphy Bell Foundry in Dublin in 1889. This foundry was based at 15 Thomas Street - it is long gone and is now a car park according to Google Maps. According to the June 2002 edition of "The Ringing World" journal, John Murphy and his son John J. Murphy made bells for churches and cathedrals all over the world. Here's an extract from the article: Rings of bells by Murphy included those for Melbourne in Australia, St Thomas the Apostle in Douglas in the Isle of Man, St Mary's RC cathedral in Cork, the fine-spired Church of the Immaculate Conception in Wexford, Mount St Alphonsus' Monastery in Limerick, Thurles cathedral in Co Tipperary, St Nicholas' in Cork and Ss Augustine and John in Dublin. Murphy bells were also "awarded prizes at the Dublin and London Exhibitions and First Prize in 1900 at the Paris Exhibition".

The Ballingate Bell.

There were other bell foundries in Dublin including the Eagle Foundry run by James Sheridan in Church Street, and a bell foundry run by Thomas Hodges in Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) before moving to nearby Middle Abbey Street. Clearly the church building boom of the late 19th and early 20th century fuelled the need for local manufacturing. In a time before telephones of any type, bells were also used as a form of communication. I recall visiting my Aunt Sr. Bridget in the Loreto Convent in Bray - straight after arriving a bell would ring out to signal to her that she had visitors. There were two rings, then a short pause, and then four rings - her number was 24.

Bells on top of houses were not uncommon, and many still exist today, though are no longer in use. Not far from Ballingate there are two bells located on what was the Coolattin Estate. On the roof of Coolattin House you can clearly see a bell when walking from the 16th to 17th tees in the adjoining golf course. Not far away on the road to Shillelagh there is another bell on what was the Building Yard. I'm sure there are many more around the country.

Coolattin House.

Close up of bell on Coolattin House.

The Building Yard bell.