• Archives

  • Categories:

  • Other profiles

It’s official, over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women!

Tuesday, Nov 2nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 27 Comments

5%

Today I’m delighted to announce that it’s official:

There are currently 625 Ubuntu Members and at least 32 of them are women, which means over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women!

We hate turning people into numbers, but late last year it was decided by the Ubuntu Women Project that we’d start tracking metrics of the percentage of women who are Ubuntu Members. This tracking was launched by Alan Bell and bases criteria of gender upon: self-identification, use of public resources (wiki pages, public blogs), and our own public knowledge from meeting each other at UDS and other conferences (there very well may even be more women working in our midst who have not chosen to disclose their gender in public).

Why is 5% important? Back in 2006 the oft-cited FLOSSPOLS declared that only about 1.5% of FLOSS community members were female. A poll in the Ubuntu forums community around the same time came back with a number of 2.4%. We have since launched Ubuntu Women and worked hard to support and encourage women who come to us to become more involved with the the project, and then to make that step to Membership when they were ready. It’s exciting to see the numbers improve over the years, and I hope that the Ubuntu Women Project can continue to make a difference moving forward, eventually driving itself to obsolescence.

Ubuntu Women

Of course Ubuntu Women didn’t help all 5% of these women. In my past few years of involvement I’ve been seeing more women becoming involved with the community on their own, and today there is a large number women who work on Ubuntu who have never been involved with Ubuntu Women at all. It’s exciting to watch Ubuntu become a more inclusive community and to see the passion and support of new people joining from existing community members overcome (or negate) many of the barriers that may have been problems in the past.

Interested in the project? If you want to help out or are interested yourself, head over to ubuntu-women.org to learn more.

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet

One Laptop per Child SF Community Summit 2010: Wrap-up

Monday, Nov 1st, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

I’m happy to report that the OLPCSF Community Summit 2010 on Oct 22-24th was an outstanding success! We had an excellent team of volunteers whose skills in a variety of different areas really came together under Sameer Verma’s lead and the attendees of the summit itself brought energy to the event that was palpable.

On the evening of Friday the 22nd we hosted our opening reception and opened the registration table (where we gave out t-shirts and other goodies). We were treated to hors d’oeuvres, wine, beer and juice brought by volunteer June Kleider and her family. A local puppeteer was brought in for some entertainment and several OLPC-related groups had tables set up to show off their groups and hardware projects. Well into the evening the Dean of the SFSU Business College, Nancy Hayes, welcomed us and Carol Ruth Silver thanked the volunteers and presented Sameer with a proclamation from the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. proclaiming October 23, 2010 One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco.


Photo by Mike Lee

More of Mike’s photos from the event are here: OLPC SF Community Summit 2010 Slideshow

And Mark Terranova got this great photo of Alex Kleider and me (thanks Mark!):


Photo by Mark Terranova

More of Mark’s photos can be found on Picasa here: OLPC

Being new to OLPC the whole event was very eye-opening for me, but a few things really stood out.

The first was Bruce Baikie’s presentation on alternative power sources. It turns out that while I certainly know that there are many parts of the world that “don’t have power” I’ve never actually thought much about the options they have for moving forward with building an infrastructure for power. Additionally, his talk made me realize that while in the first world nations we have centralized power grids. a decentralized utility may actually be a better way to move forward with some of these places, especially the ones which are more remote.

In his talk, he first started out discussing why alternative power sources were important (which touched upon lack of centralization I mentioned above, plus typical discussion about dependence upon non-renewable resources). He then moved into talking about some of the most viable options:

  • Solar cells
  • Micro-Hydroelectric (power from streams and hilltops)
  • Wind Turbines
  • Biogas from Animal Farms

Now of course when we talk about power at an OLPC event, the focus is going to be bringing enough power in to power the XO laptops. Following Bruce’s presentation the folks from XO Dock, who create a low-cost docking and charging solution that provides the One Laptop per Child “XO” laptops with safe storage and reliable power distribution.

The XO Dock group seeks to address this problem:

This is a room with power at a school with XOs, as you can see the laptops are being charged by daisy-chained power strips from just a couple of power outlets in the room. XO Dock group had a demo of their device which is built out of popular PVC piping (so, cheap, easy to find, and resistant to a lot of different conditions). As the weekend progressed we saw other solutions to this power problem too, several of which created in the field as the need arose.

I was also very interested to learn about the work being done on the XO School Server (XS). Sameer has been working with a student to do a variety of tests on hardware to see what will best run the server (standard x86 machines, XOs, etc), and this photo shows one of their experiments – an external drive glued to the back of an XO:

Aside from simple backups and the extra infrastructure capabilities that the XS provides, it was really interesting to see how people were making us of Moodle, and how they’ve integrated it in the XO.

In general I was inspired to hear that there are a number of large educational establishments using Moodle, including SFSU (our venue) itself. It’s certainly something I’ll need to look into more in the coming months for Ubuntu-related course material.

See, don’t worry Ubuntu friends! I haven’t abandoned you for Fedora-based OLPC work, but being part of this summit certainly drove home some of the things I knew about the flexibility and power of Linux and open source. It also introduced me to people who feel the same way about open education that I do about open source, and it was fascinating to see how much overlap there was in our goals and how open education on open source technology really is a match made in heaven. With both, now not only can students and teachers learn material, they can manipulate their whole learning environments to meet their specific needs and push the boundaries of what they can and have access to learn.

Awesome event, I hope we do it again next year! For more photos from the summit, check out the event wiki: Community_Summit_2010#Photography_Album_.26_Film.21

Finally, in what are some fascinating coincidences:

Filed under: events, san francisco, tech, ubuntu planet

First Mountain View Ubuntu Hour

Friday, Oct 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

On Thursday evening I attended the first Mountain View Ubuntu Hour, where we had 13 attendees! This ended up being a bit of a combination Ubuntu Hour and release party for the folks in Mountain View, and I brought along a few of Ubuntu and Kubuntu 10.10 CDs for attendees.

Thanks to nUboon2Age of Ubuntu California for planning it. In spite of the long commute I hope to attend more in the future! We’re looking at planning a few throughout the Bay area per month, Mountain View joining the regular San Francisco Hours, and perhaps adding one down in San Jose.

This month is pretty busy for the team. In addition to several release parties, there are two more big events coming up for the team in the coming week:

Unfortunately due to my OLPCSF Summit commitments I’m not able to attend the booth at the East Bay Maker Faire, but I will try very hard to catch a train early enough to head down to Yahoo! for the “Lighting the Maverick LAMP” event, it should be a lot of fun.

Filed under: events, tech, ubuntu planet

My last day in Dublin: Seals, Malahide Castle and drinks!

Friday, Oct 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Finally, my last post about Dublin. I’m happy to report that as I write this post about my last day in Dublin, MJ’s last day has wrapped up and he’s coming home to me tomorrow!

Saturday morning we slept in. We had a leisurely lunch on O’Connell Street and at 2PM hopped on a bus for the Dublin Bay & Castle Tour. I have to admit that it was, predictably, the “Take time to feed the seals” that grabbed my attention with the description of this particular tour. The ride out to Howth was a nice one, and upon arriving the tour guide took those of us who were interested up the pier to meet some of “Howth’s residents” – the seals! Just behind where the seals congregate you can go to Dorans on the Pier and for 2 euros get yourself a dozen or so fish to feed the seals, so we did.

There were plenty of seagulls around eager to take advantage of the feeding, but the seals that were hanging around did manage to get a fair number of fish thrown in their direction.

The stop in Howth didn’t end up being very long, we had time to follow the tour guide down the pier to hear some stories about the town, and then all piled back on to the bus to head toward Malahide Castle.

The tour through the castle (where I couldn’t take pictures) was led by our own tour guide and took us through several rooms which were decorated with pieces from the national museums. The castle had been in hands of the Talbot family for almost 800 years, until it was sold to the Irish state in 1975 and opened to public tours. Perhaps the event of most historical, and tragic note for the castle was the Battle of the Boyne, in which 14 members of the family “sat down to breakfast in the Great Hall, and all were dead by evening” and to commemorate this, the large “The Battle of the Boyne” painting by Jan Wyck hangs in the formal dining room.

The tour got us back into Dublin around 5:30PM so we headed out to check out the third of three “formerly something else and now a bar” places – The Church Bar. Just like The Bank from a couple nights before, the interior was exquisite and has little changed from when the building was an operating church – including the organ (as you can see in the picture of the center bar), old memorials lining the walls (and presumably the crypts that go along with them?) and the stained glass windows.

The tidbit that most drove me to come here though was that Arthur Guinness (founder of the brewery) was married here in 1761. Very cool! Thinking about it, I really should have ordered a Guinness! But I had a craving for one last cider before heading home, so I went with that. Then I had my picture taken with the bust of Mr. Guinness:

Our next stop was the Porterhouse Brewing Company location in Temple Bar. In spite of not being much of a porter drinker I had a look at their pile of awards and decided to go with their Plain Porter, and I’m very glad I did. It was the best porter I’ve ever had! The description from their website: “A classic modern light stout with the added complexity of a late kettle hop. Aromatic character. Rich roast, dry, clean and bitter without any sourness.” These are the same characteristics that I enjoy in a good ale, so it’s not a surprise that I’d find it such a pleasant drink. After a few drinks it was over to the kebab place across the street to round off our evening with a nice kebab.

Upon arriving back at the hotel I packed and got ready for my flight in the morning… dark and early in the morning. I grabbed an airport bus at 7AM and was off to the airport to head back home.

In all, an absolutely amazing trip, I really fell in love with Dublin. And I was fortunate that the only rain I experienced while there happened over-night so didn’t impact my travels at all (even if I did joke that living in California I missed rain, and went to Dublin to see some).

Filed under: beer, travel

San Francisco Mayor Proclaims October 23, 2010 OLPC Day

Friday, Oct 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Tonight we launch our One Laptop per Child San Francisco Community Summit 2010 with an opening reception at 5PM. I’m so excited!

But the big announcement today was that the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has proclaimed that October 23, 2010 is One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco!

For more see the OLPC blog at: http://blog.laptop.org/2010/10/22/october-23-is-olpc-day-in-sf/

It’s been a real honor to be a part of the planning committee for this event, I’ve been able to work with some truly amazing people and I’m looking forward to an exciting weekend of education, technology and outreach tracks. The XOs run on Fedora, but I’m particularly excited to meet Luke Faraone, who is part of the team working on Sugar packages for Ubuntu.

Limited remote participation and streaming will be available for some sessions, see here for details: http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/#remote

Filed under: events, san francisco, tech, ubuntu planet

Book of Kells, Dublin Castle, Christ Church and Saint Patrick’s

Thursday, Oct 21st, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Friday I decided to spend the day visiting the great Cathedrals of Dublin, as well as crossing off Dublin Castle and the Book of Kells from my to-see list.

First was the The Old Library and the Book of Kells Exhibition. The Book of Kells portion of the exhibition featured a couple of big rooms that you walk through which explain what the Book of Kells is, who wrote it, the methods used in creation, and details about other illuminated manuscripts (a couple of which are also on display). In the end of the exhibit, in a dark room, you finally get to actually see the Book of Kells, under glass and open to an illuminated page. It was pretty cool to see such a famous book, and I think I can safely say it’s the oldest book I’ve ever seen. Now it was the Book of Kells that really drew my interest to this location, but I was in for quite a treat when I walked upstairs to the Long Room for the Old Library portion of the exhibit. From the site: “The main chamber of the Old Library is the Long Room, and at nearly 65 metres in length, it is filled with 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. “ It was beautiful! While I probably will get an ebook reader one of these days, I still am firmly in the “I like to touch books” camp.

It was then off to Dublin Castle. It was the one thing on my list I already felt somewhat familiar with because MJ sent me pictures and told me about it the last time he was in Dublin, but there is nothing like seeing it for yourself. It was built in the 1200s on the orders of King John of England and throughout the centuries it primarily was the seat of British rule within the country. Since the formation of the Irish Free State it’s now a major Irish government building, the inauguration of the Irish president happens here, among other things.

The original castle lasted until the 1600s when it was rebuilt to be the structure we largely see today. Only one of the original record tower remaining standing today. However, excavations of the site unearthed the foundations of a second “Powder” tower and one of the archways which used to stretch over the River Poddle. The tour guide also pointed out what deeper excavations showed, what they believe to be part of the original fortifications that the vikings put in place on that location even earlier than the original towers.

My next stop was Christ Church Cathedral. I am not a Christian, but cathedrals have always fascinated me. This fascination turned into awe as I got older and could further appreciate the exceptional amount of work and artistry that was put into them by people in times past who didn’t have access to the technology we have today.

The inside of the cathedral was stunning, huge stained glass windows, the amazing architecture you come to expect from such places, and probably the most welcoming staff I’d encountered on my already exceptionally welcoming trip!

Aside from the typical splendor of a grand cathedral, Christ Church has some interesting artifacts, the first being a holy relic – the preserved heart of St Laurence O’Toole. Earlier in my trip Laura had told me that the head of another religious figure was in a cathedral we passed, and not knowing much about Catholic lore it struck me as somewhat macabre. It turns out that it’s very common for these old European catholic churches to have them and in the faith they are regarded as a source of miracles. Still a bit creepy for me but at least I had an explanation.

A less spiritual duo also graces the halls of Christ Church Cathedral – a cat and rat which became trapped in an organ pipe in the 1850s and were mummified. They are now on display downstairs in the crypt, where there is also a coffee shop.

It was then time for lunch! I stopped at Legends Bar for a nice sandwich and drink.

The other famous cathedral on my list was Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Another gorgeous church full of Irish history, it also boasts a beautiful park just next to it.

Perhaps their most famous burial is that of Jonathan Swift, a cleric who became Dean of Saint Patrick’s and is most famous as the author of the popular Gulliver’s Travels. In the center of the church you can see his burial plate.

I took a TON more photos during the day, which are over in my Dublin flickr gallery.

By the time I had finished visiting Saint Patrick’s I was pretty tired, so I headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit. When MJ got back from work we headed out to the second of three “formerly something else and now a bar” places I went to in Dublin – The Bank on College Green. Of course this used to be a bank! I enjoyed my first Bulmers Cider of the trip (after completely forgetting it existed for the first half of my trip, I love British Isles cider!) and a wonderful Guinness and beef pie.

We wrapped up the evening with a stop at The Porterhouse Brewery Central location on the way to our hotel. I snagged their red ale since ales tend to be what I prefer, but I wasn’t a huge fan. Luckily they were able to redeem themselves the following night when I tried their fantastic porter.

Filed under: travel

Guinness, Jameson and prison (luckily not in that order)

Wednesday, Oct 20th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Thursday morning I slept in a bit, because vacations are good for that. But by 11AM I was up and ready to go out, so I grabbed a bagel at a cute little cafe across from Trinity College and then bought a ticket on one of the City Sightseeing buses. Again it was my aunt who recommended I give one of these a try, I’d be dropped off at all the key locations and get a nice tour guide to go along with it. I ended up grateful for the guide, as the recommendation of visiting Kilmainham Gaol is not one I would have come up with on my own.

So, full of breakfast, it was time for a lunchtime tour of the Guinness Storehouse! I had already been warned about the touristness of this attraction, and that it’s the most expensive tour in the city, so my bases were covered.

The adventure begins by walking you through a couple of floors which explain in detail, with a lot of photos, diagrams and real materials how beer is made. Admittedly this was a bit dull for me, but after smelling all those beer ingredients I was working up an appetite for a Guinness – which is why the tasting room halfway through the tour was so fantastic. No more rushing to the bar, a nice tasting in the tasting room allows for craving-quenching and a leisurely exploration of the rest of the storehouse.

Now, I have to say that my favorite part of the storehouse (aside from the very cool Gravity Bar) was seeing all the Guinness advertising stuff – especially the figurines and cartoons. I suppose it’s not appropriate to advertise beer with cartoons anymore but the cartoons that ran back in the day were quite a treat, and they had a bunch of them playing in one an exhibit all about the artist, John Gilroy.

Plus, they had a gnu poster!

From cartoons I headed up to the Gravity Bar for my pint of Guinness! This is on the top level of the storehouse and offers a 360-degree view over Dublin.

My Guinness right off the tap:

Once the Guinness had settled I found a free spot next to a window and sat to enjoy! You know, talking about this all again makes me want a Guinness… I think there is one in the refrigerator calling my name.

Guinness consumed it was off to the bus and on to Kilmainham Gaol, a former prison.

All exploration of the prison is led by a tour guide (no wandering off!) so we were able to hear about the older history that included talking about the high number of women imprisoned for food-related crimes during the famine and the culture of imprisoning children of working age (which was typically as young as 8, but there is evidence of a 5 year old prisoner at one time) who committed crimes.

I didn’t know much about Irish independence, and the Easter Rising in 1916 only vaguely rang bells, but the former prison’s claim to fame was being the place of execution of the leaders (who later became martyrs for the successful war for independence) of this uprising. In the years to follow the prison held Civil War war criminals. In 1924 the prison closed and in the later half of the 20th century it salvaged and restored to be the historical landmark it is today.

Phew, after all that I needed a drink! So it was back on the bus and over to the Old Jameson Distillery tour. Much less grand in scale than the Guinness tour, it starts off with a video and then the tour guide asks if anyone wants to be one of the few tasters at the end of the tour. Now I am crazy shy, I’d never volunteer for something like this… unless everyone I mentioned this tour to responded with “YOU MUST VOLUNTEER TO BE A TASTER!” which was the case here. So I volunteered and was selected, yippee! But first the actual tour! It was a guided tour through the whiskey making process, from ingredients and processing to distilling and distribution – all along the way reminding us why Jameson is the superior whiskey.

The tour wraps up with your choice of whiskey drink, Jameson straight or mixed with coke, cranberry or ginger ale and to relax in their lounge and watch (or participate in!) the whiskey tasting. So I scooped up my whiskey and cranberry and headed over to the tasting table. The three for tasting were a Scotch Whiskey, an American Whiskey (JD, naturally) and the Jameson. Not being much of a whiskey drinker (aside from some lovely St Patty’s day memories with a bottle of Jack) the tasting was a fascinating experience – the Scotch was very smokey, the JD was it’s delicious but harsh self, and the Jameson was smooth and good. They convinced me! And as a reward for being convinced I came home with a Qualified Irish Whiskey Taster certificate with my name printed on it, excellent.

Unfortunately at this point it was 6PM and my only meal of the day had been breakfast so I was full of a few shots of whiskey and hungry. So, I did what any good British Isles tipsy person would do and met up with MJ for dinner at Zaytoon, where I had my very first kebab. Yummy.

Filed under: beer, travel

The Wicklow Mountains

Wednesday, Oct 20th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Wednesday I took my Aunt Mary Ellen’s advice and booked a Wild Wicklow Tour for the day. I have to extend thanks in her direction for all the great tips for this trip, plus thanks to my friend Scott Sweeny who had lots of great ideas following his recent honeymoon in Irleand (and posted some great photos!), and finally to Mark Murphy, the son-in-law of one of the people I work with who is from Ireland and had a huge email full of ideas.

Booking online I was able to get a pickup spot at our hotel, so pre-9AM I was outside waiting for the bus, which arrived on-time. We had a nice ride through the city where the bus driver gave us the all kinds of tour-guidey facts about the city, and from there we headed to our first stop, Dun Laoghaire.

It was a cool morning so the stop was quite refreshing and I was struck with how similar the coast of Ireland looks and feels like the coast of Maine.


From there it was a quick stop at the Avoca Kilmacanogue store and cafe for refreshments before getting back on the road to head deeper into Wicklow. Our first mountain stop was to look over a magnificent valley where one of the Guinness estates is located. It was also during this stop where the driver cracked open the Jameson and gave tastings to everyone on the bus – before lunch!

Along our journey the bus took us through several small villages, up very narrow winding roads, past sheep, cows, horses, donkeys, and more sheep. Our tour guide told us about the area and share stories from the Irish past. It was during this tour that I learned the most about the Great Famine, I was surprised to learn that during the the 1841 census the population of Ireland was 8.2 million – today it’s just 6.2 million (both of these statistics include both the Republic and Northern Ireland). I certainly knew that the famine was a bad one, but I was never really knew quite what the scale of starvation and mass emigration out of Ireland was, or that even today the population hasn’t recovered.

Lunch was in the village of Laragh at Lynhams of Laragh. They have a carvery very well-suited to busloads of travelers, quickly processing the queue of hungry travelers and allowing us plenty of time to eat so we could be on our way in under an hour. I went with the Irish experience for lunch – half pint of Guinness and some Guinness and beef stew with mashed potatoes.

We wrapped up lunch around 2 and headed off to the longest stop of the day – the ruins of an old Monastic Village in Glendalough. I love ruins, always have. Growing up on the coast of Maine I had endless adventures in the old castle and military ruins at Fort Williams and it was honestly a dream come true when an exhibit opened at Two Lights State Park one summer that allowed you entry into one of the old underground WWII battery bunkers located there.

Exploring the ruins of this old monastery was fascinating! Our visit began with our tour guide giving us a quick tour of the grounds, explaining what each of the buildings was and was used for, and that the cemetery itself was still an active one, with about 5 or so family plots still open, but was expected to close in the coming years as those final spots are filled. Once the guided portion was finished we had over an hour to explore on our own, which is when I took the photos and then decided to take the long walk down around the lakes.

I put more photos over in my Dublin Flickr gallery.

We headed back toward Dublin around 4PM, arriving back by 5:30PM. MJ was still at work so I took the opportunity of a free hour to take a short nap before meeting up for dinner with MJ and some of his co-workers. Dinner was at The Schoolhouse Restaurant, which had been pointed out as an old school on the Viking tour on Monday. Amusingly this was the first of three times in Dublin we enjoyed refreshments in a building that had a previous purpose but was turned into a restaurant and bar. Instead of mixing things up, my dinner also ended up being Guinness, beef and potatoes – although in the less traditionally Irish form of a cheeseburger and fries.

Thursday ended up being full of Guinness, Jameson and prison, but luckily not in that order.

Filed under: travel

Leprechauns and Howth

Tuesday, Oct 19th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

After the zoo on Tuesday, Laura and I headed over to the Google Dublin office to meet up with a friend of hers for lunch (and got to have lunch with MJ too!). From there we split up and she headed over to Trinity Capital Hotel to do her second Ubuntu Open Week presentation while I headed off to the brand new National Leprechaun Museum.

My walk to the museum gave me my first proper walk down O’Connell Street, home of the Spire of Dublin, the famous General Post Office. the O’Connell Monument, and loads of big chain stores.

But the Leprechauns were my destination!

The Leprechaun Museum was an interesting one. The tour starts out with an admission that the museum does not actually have any leprechauns, and it ends up being an experience in Irish Folklore. It’s somewhat guided, beginning in a room loaded with all kinds of leprechaun-related books and goodies.

From there you walk through a series of rooms, each taking you through portions of leprechaun and other Irish folklore. The first couple “shrink” you to the size of a leprechaun and bring you into a room where the table and chairs are big enough that you feel like you’re 1/3 the height of a regular person.

From there it’s on to storytelling rooms (real storytellers and recorded audio), a well, a pot of gold, and a classic leprechaun story decorating walls of another room. Throughout you are reminded of the light and dark sides of Irish folklore, fairies who are not always fair, flawed and powerful heroes. In all, a delightful little museum.

When I wrapped up at the museum I met up with Laura again and after a drink we headed out to the town of Howth on the coast.

I love the ocean, and growing up on the coast not too far from several local fishers and some major tourist attractions I have a soft spot for towns like Howth, and we arrived just in time for a magnificent sunset and took a walk down along the water and two a couple of lighthouses.

We rounded off the evening by having dinner at The Oar House in Howth, where Laura graciously put up with my want for seafood and I ordered a giant plate of mussels. My favorite!

I’ve got at least 3 more posts about Ireland before I’m done! But I have to say now, I loved Dublin. It’s extremely easy to get around without a car, extraordinarily tourist friendly and for once as an American visitor in a strange land I didn’t feel brushed off by the locals (I’ll never forget the guy in London who cheerfully informed me upon making a train ticket purchase that he, at least, doesn’t hate the yanks, gee thanks?).

Wednesday I headed off to the Wicklow mountains…

Filed under: travel

Dublin Zoo!

Monday, Oct 18th, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

I love zoos (no, really?!) so when I learned that Europe’s 2nd oldest zoo was the Dublin Zoo (est 1831) it was only natural that I’d spend part of my trip there! So on Tuesday of my trip I met up with Laura bright and early so we could get there when the zoo opened at 9:30AM.

Aside from being the 2nd oldest zoo in Europe (the oldest is in Austria), one of the tour guides happened to mention that one of their lions, born in 1919, was one of the many filmed to be the MGM lion and that they’ve had a highly successful lion breeding program. My primary interest was the elephants, since they have a young one and increasingly zoos in the US are having to close their elephant exhibits due to lack of funds to expand them as needed for humane living conditions, both the Philadelphia and San Francisco zoos had to get rid of their elephants in the recent past, I hear Oakland Zoo still has some though!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first stop on our visit was their “World of Cats” and “World of Primates” – the primates were a delight as always, especially the lemurs.

Unfortunately the cat exhibits proved to be a bit of a disappointment, the exhibits had glass windows for up close viewing into their habitats, but Dublin is a very damp place and on a typical misty morning these windows fog up terribly and you can’t see anything. Luckily they keep their lions on the other side of the park and I got a great view of their lovely lioness.

From the cats it was on to the California Sealions! They were as far away from home as I was, and one of them helpfully hopped out of the water so I could take a picture.

Their African Plains exhibit was a real treat, it’s large and you get to see giraffes, oryx, zebras and ostriches all hanging out together. Apparently the ostriches rule the place though, one of them kept chasing a giant giraffe (see, even giraffes think birds are scary).

The rhinos have their own exhibit right next to the others.

And of course there was the obligatory visit over to see the penguins, Humboldts at this zoo.

Now, due an unfortunate attack the San Francisco zoo has signs up all over the place telling you not to taunt the animals. There was one sign at the Dublin Zoo which was similar, but caused me to chuckle:

Please do not irritate, annoy, bother, irk, harass, badger, tease, torment, provoke, madden, taunt, anger, displease, pester, bully, exasperate, rile or vex our animals.

Finally, our visit wrapped up with a quick stop inside the Meerkat Restaurant. It’s the big cafeteria of the zoo and while you eat your lunch you are in the company of meerkats whose exhibit is connected to the restaurant.

The venue wouldn’t have been a good place for a release party (typical zoo cafeteria food, required zoo admission to enter, not really hang-out friendly), but it sure has quite a name! And the meerkats were adorable.

I still have so much to write about my trip to Dublin! But for now it’s after 10PM and I think I’ll finally surrender to the jetlag induced exhaustion.

Filed under: animals, travel
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »