Tim Edey and I playing in the Harcourt hotel at the relaunch of the Harcourt sessions.

Sep 17, 2010 |

It was a pleasure an honor to play with the fantastic guitar player Tim Edey at the relaunch of the new Harcourt sessions.

I was only really going to have a listen but as I had the pipes with me, I was asked to play a few tunes.

Here are the videos from the night. Excuse the tuning of the pipes. I really wasn’t happy with how they sounded. They were a bit sharp after returning from the hotter climate of Italy.

I also had never even met tim previous to playing these tunes so there was never any chance to practise. At all!



Internet explorer 9 and Jaws 12.

Sep 16, 2010 |

So this is kind of interesting!

Internet explorer 9 installed in about five minutes without any fuss at all. In fact, it was probably the cleanest and responsive installation I have ever done when it comes to Internet explorer upgrades.

Now, keeping in mind this is a beta, some ofthis could change when the final version is released but so far so good!

What have I noticed so far? Well, this is a short summary.

  1. A few shortcut keys have changed..
    Control J no longer brings up the feeds menu for example. this is now replaced with control and g. I have no idea why they didn’t just leave control J for feeds and make control g the download manager. Perhaps it was to standardise with MOzilla’s Firefox but I doubt it some how.
  2. All the tool bar buttons are accessible by using the tab and the arrow keys but this was true of the previous version of IE also. What you will notice though is the lack of buttons. Everything is hidden until you need it. The menu bar is not displayed on the screen at all however it is accessible still using the keyboard using alt and f for file, alt v for view alt t for tools etc.
  3. The download manager seems to be totally accessible which is great.
  4. Notifications are now not presented in dialogue boxes or on the top of the Internet explorer 9 window. It looks like IE are following the example of Firefox again by having all notifications standardised in a small bar that appears on the bottom of the screen. This is a major change and it’s one that Jaws seems to work well with but it’s not as seemless and reliable as the notification method used in Firefox just yet. Who knows, maybe this is something that FreedomScientific is looking into.
  5. Pages do seem to load a little quicker.
  6. I’m loving the way that the auto complete works in the address and search bar. That’s another thing I’m liking also. the search and search bars have now been mearched into one. This follows the example set by the Google Crome browser some time ago.
  7. The jaws cursor does not work at all in the Internet explorer 9 window. This is kind of unusual however may have something to do with the direct GPU rendoring. This may be a show stopper until FreedomScientific, the makers of the Jaws for Windows screen reader resolve this.
  8. I was unable to write into edit form controls while writing this blog post until I turned off the virtual PC cursor. This iis definitly a show stopper. I will have to down grade to Internet explorer 8 until this is resolved.

    9. There you have it. It looks like Jaws 12 has some minor support for Internet explorer 9. When you press insert and q it informs you that Jaws 9 scripts are loaded however the lack of Jaws cursor support and the problems with form controls seems to indicate that the support is unfinished or baddly written.

    It will be interesting to see what Freedomscientifics response will be to these problems. I really hope they get sorted faster than the other issues that I and others have reported in relation to Jaws 8, 9, 10, 11 and indeed 12.

    WE can only but live in hope cant we?

Playing music in Italy.

Sep 15, 2010 |

I’m a little behind with blogging at the moment. A lot has been happening. I’ve been abroad twice since the last major post. From the middle of August until the beginning of September, I was in Spain for two weeks. We went on a holiday in Salu. But, I’ll write about that in much more detail complete with pictures in the next few days. This blog post will instead focus on the trip to Italy I’m just back from as with five days of returning from my two week holiday in Spain, I was flying off again to do a five day tour around Italy to play music with the Willin Fools .

We stayed around Padua and Lake Garda this time with gigs in Malcesine, Padua and Torbole to name a few. In fact, I can only name a few because I don’t remember the name of the city we played in last even though it was by far the largest of the gigs with over five thousand people in attendants.

For those of you who are not long time readers, I play with a group called the Willin Fools . The band has the following musicians and instruments.

Damian on drums
Toaster – AKA David on bass.
Connor on mandolin.
Me on pipes bodhran and whistles
And finally, this time, we had Oliver on guitar and vocals.

We tour around Italy a few times a year generally between May and October and we’re always received very well. There’s never a gig where everyone is not dancing. There’s a huge difference between playing for Irish crowds and Italians, Germans, French and other nationalities. They seem to be more relaxed. When they go to enjoy themselves, they do just that without letting anything stand in their way.

It’s also great to see a few regulars from year to year. Depending on the towns or cities we’re playing in, we usually find at least four or five people returning again from the previous years.

Enough with all the writing. Let’s get to a few pictures and videos.


My self and Conor Hughes, the main man in the band are just having a bit of a jamming session.

Conor is seen here tuning his Mandolin.
This shows the four lads, Damien, David AKA Toaster, Conor and Oliver at the side of the stage.

A picture of the entire band.

The band along with Peeno, one of the organizers of the trip.
Let me take this oppertunity to thank Peeno and everyone else for organizing these tours. There’s nothing more we could possibly ask for. Everything is catered for and they do everything they can to make sure that we enjoy it.

Toaster, the base player and Damian the drummer.

Darragh, AKA me playing the Bodhran.

Me playing the bodhran with the audience looking on.

So, now for a few videos. These are straight from Youtube.

I’m not overly happy with these. The tuning of the pipes, the sound quality and the background noise would make them less than I’d usually want to post but it would be a shame to post nothing.



Darragh Ó Héiligh on Uilleann pipes and Tim Edey on Guitar in the Harcourt hotel

Darragh Ó Héiligh on Uilleann pipes and Tim Edey on Guitar in the Harcourt hotel

Sep 15, 2010 | , ,

This is the second set of tunes with Darragh on the pipes and Tim on guitar. This is a selection of reels. Excuse the tuning of the pipes. They were sharp as a result of hot weather in Italy during a recent tour over there. This was recorded during the relaunch of the Harcourt sessions on Monday the 13th of September 2010. For more videos, visit www.digitaldarragh.com/musicroom

Darragh Ó Héiligh on Uilleann pipes and Tim Edey on Guitar in the Harcourt hotel

Darragh Ó Héiligh on Uilleann pipes and Tim Edey on Guitar in the Harcourt hotel

Sep 15, 2010 | , ,

This is the second set of tunes with Darragh on the pipes and Tim on guitar. This is a selection of reels. Excuse the tuning of the pipes. They were sharp as a result of hot weather in Italy during a recent tour over there. This was recorded during the relaunch of the Harcourt sessions on Monday the 13th of September 2010. For more videos, visit www.digitaldarragh.com/musicroom