It’s a clear headed decision. Every euro of it needs to be spent on infrastructure. We can’t fix the shit weather but we can try to bring the country up to modern standards.
IMO, fears of companies leaving are unfounded. We’re still the only native English speaking country in the EU and from a business sense, our culture most closely matches that of the US. The Irish government knows where the bread is buttered. There will always be attractive incentives for multinationals to be HQd here.
1- My desk was always covered in paper and I hated the mess. On this point, I am 110% satisfied. My desk is super clean.
2- I found it very hard to keep track of multiple projects, or discussions across notebooks, or pages in a notebook. On this I am still not quite there. It's better for sure but I really want to search for people, dates, or keywords, rather than being super careful and organised with folders and notebooks for every conversation, which then gets too messy.
The benefit of root access to the device be default is that I can build what I need. In the two weeks I've had the device, I've been able to automate finding my device on the network, syncing my notes, converting them to non-proprietary files and OCRing them. The next step is to implement nicer search and discovery UI which admittedly is a bigger challenge.
Anecdotally, I have seen decorative plates hanging on walls, spinning wheels, ships wheels, oil lamps, etc all used decoratively in contemporary settings.
Leeway: The "lee" is the area downwind of a vessel. A lee-shore is a shoreline that the wind blows on to, as opposed to a windward shore that the wind blows off. To give leeway is to allow enough room for a vessel to be blown off course by the wind and avoid danger.
Rig (noun): The mast and supporting stays on a boat. (oil rigs, "big rig" come from this I think).
Rig (verb): To put the sails up and tie on the sheets and other lines that control sails. ("Let's rig this up." == "Let's set this up.")
Posh (my favourite, though I doubt it's actually true): Port Out Starboard Home. When travelling from England to India around the tip of Africa, it was favourable to have a cabin on the port side on the way to India and starboard on the way back as it would be in the shade most of the time and a little cooler in the sun, with a view of the land.
See also: Change tack / try a different tack, right the ship, stay the course, (to be) swamped, "At a rate of knots" (very fast), keep an even keel, keel over.
I too doubt the posh etymology: If you’re sailing around the cape by definition you will have crossed the equator twice, meaning your calculation of the sun positions will change. Acronyms pronounces as words seem more a modern 20th century thing.
Wiktionary talks about posh coming from the Romani language, meaning half, in monetary terms, as in half a crown. Seems believable to me, a lot of modern terms come from traveller’s languages and argots and such. See also tory and whig.
Swedish (also picking a lot from German, of course) has the same word ("lä", and no I'm not going to try to describe the pronunciation) but our usage is wider in scope. In Swedish lä is simply "out of the wind", and not restricted to use onboard a vessel. Cool, didn't know that about English.
A "hitch" knot is typically used to fasten around a fixed object. So you might use a hitch to tie the boat to the shore, or tie a line around a wooden (or these days aluminium or carbon fibre) boom. I'm not sure if it's purely nautical.
You should still do that. And you should read the paper and pick the bits you think might be useful and iterate on them. The cutting edge isn't like a knife, it's more like a rotating barrel of blades that take little chunks out of the impossible, and come around again.
For me, when I see 'lol' used like this I read it as quite aggressive and offensive. I don't see it really an expression of surprise or shock, but with its original meaning used in a sarcastic way: 'I am laughing with incredulity at the fact that you actually think that'.
IMO, fears of companies leaving are unfounded. We’re still the only native English speaking country in the EU and from a business sense, our culture most closely matches that of the US. The Irish government knows where the bread is buttered. There will always be attractive incentives for multinationals to be HQd here.