Dangerous "Joe Lawlor Coach Hire" driver on the roads

Yes, this morning, at 10:51 at the main UL entrance, a Joe Lawlor employee ran a cyclist through a line of parking cones set up as part of the roadworks at the college entrance. I know this, because I was the cyclist. I am alright, but that's thanks to luck and a good sense of balance, not to mister "I can't see and shouldn't be driving people around in a professional capacity". The details: I am approaching the main entrance from the CPH direction. I hear a commercial vehicle engine behind me, and then a white minibus starts to overtake me. While the rear wheel of the bus is still level with me, the bus pulls hard left and comes to an abrupt halt. I have 2 choices, go under the back wheel, or crash through the line of parking cones on my left. I choose the latter, thinking they will be light and will move out of my way. Wrong. They are a lot more solid than they look. I bounce off one of them, clip the next one, and somehow retain my balance. I am now in the roadworks themselves, on a racer (i.e. not a mountain bike with offroad tyres). I manage to make my way out through the cones ahead of the bus, point at myself, and ask the driver if he saw me at all. He looks surprised, as if I've just appeared out of thin air, even though he just partially overtook me 10 seconds ago and tried to run over me. It is daylight, I am wearing a bright red cycling helmet, and a dayglow yellow jacket. He has no excuse other than complete incompetence and dangerous driving. It contrasts nicely with their website, where we are told that "Joe Lawlor Coach Hire is a family run business offering a professional but friendly mini bus and coach hire service to all customers". Ah, I've seen the loophole! I wasn't a customer, therefore, I did not deserve the professional service! This also excludes me from their motto: "if we look after our customers they quickly become our friends". Well, if you don't look after other road users, they quickly become incensed and vitriolic, that is even if they aren't also hospitalised, and you get a lot of bad publicity. And with driving like I witnessed, and suffered because of, this morning, you deserve all the bad publicity you draw upon yourselves.

MusicSequence is crap

Why, oh why, is the framework in OS X so unhelpful to musicians? MIDI files should be easily parsable, but they're not. OK, they can be sucked in to a MusicSequence, but there is no way to find out what the Division value is in the inputted file, even though you need to specify it for writing the file back out to MIDI afterwards. Aaaaargh! I'll just stick to reading the file manually in C, I guess.

Nice one! McRae, Piironen support Ireland's championship bid

Saw this in the Irish Examiner today...

McRae, Piironen support Ireland's championship bid

Two former World Rally Championship (WRC) title holders have announced their support for Ireland's bid to host a round of the prestigious championships from 2007.

Great Britain’s first ever WRC champion, the legendary Colin McRae, has come out in support of Rally Ireland, in the run up to their candidate event from Friday to Sunday, March 10-12.

"I’ve been rallying in Ireland for years, and it has always been great. They are serious about their rallying, and the stages are tough and testing but the Irish sure know how to host a rally, and there is a lot of fun after the rallying is done," said the Scot.

McRae continued: "I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a round of the WRC in Ireland; the championship needs more tarmac rallies. The stages are different to European tarmac rallies, and it would be a real test for today’s WRC drivers. It would also be a great place for drivers to compete because the scenery is spectacular so that would also make it great for TV."

McRae holds the record for being the youngest ever WRC champion when he won in 1995.

Finnish Champion co-driver Juha Piironen has also thrown his weight behind the bid saying: "The appeal of Rally Ireland will be that the tarmac stages are so good to drive in the dry but devilishly challenging when they're wet!

"The stages I’ve seen float through beautiful rolling hills, waterfront roads and wide open green spaces. Ireland really is the most beautiful location in the world for WRC," he concluded.

Piironen is three time world co-driver champion with fellow Finn Juha Kankkunen – who was the second-most successful World Rally Championship driver of all time behind Tommi Mäkinen.