Farmleigh seems to be one of those places where the Dubliners love to spend their Sundays and bank holidays. Parks, lakes and botanical gardens replace maybe what for us are the squares and the main streets. In the green spaces of this estate, where a magnificent Georgian building stands, previously belonged to the Guinness family and now owned by the Irish Government, various cultural events get organized during the year including art exhibitions and activities, concerts (mostly classical music, gospel choirs in this period), but also some less cultural event as the September Fest, inspired by the famous German festival but with local beer brands.

Certainly to not miss is the typical food market where you can sample and buy several typical products like muffins, fudges, cookies, whiskey cakes, Irish cheeses, burgers, mulled wine, many of them organic and locally produced. Foreign influences are not missing too, for instance German with the famous hotdogs, Italian with coffee and various preserves, or French with the typical quiches.

Below a little “taste” from last weekend, but just for your eyes ..

It’s time for me to taste a new “coffee blend”. The Java Update conference organized by Sun Microsystems takes place this Tuesday in London. Here is the agenda. The event seems to be interesting considering the topics, which include embedded, real-time (still skeptical about it), JDK 7, JEE 6, GlassFish 3 (the application server by Sun) and JavaFX. I will talk about it soon in this blog.

I voted for the Earth. I don’t really know if that will result helpful but I continue to believe that small gestures can over time achieve something significant. This time WWF are trying to bring our votes directly to the UN Climate Change Conference which is taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. The aim of this voting system is to quantify the global concern on climate change and to push world’s economic leaders to adopt and develop all the necessary countermeasures. Please join me in this cause by visiting this page (page removed).

“Earth Hour’s Vote Earth. It’s Time To Show Where You Stand”

Earth Hour Home – Just About The Vote – WWF Climate Deal – Google Earth Climate Introductory Tour

UPDATE 22/12/2009 – The result of UN negotiations as reported by Greenpeace:

Copenhagen, Denmark — Two years have passed since world leaders promised all of us a deal to stop climate change. After two weeks of UN negotiations, politicians breezed in, had dinner with the Queen, a three hour lunch, took some photos and then delivered what could only be described as the 24 hour Head of State tourist brochure of Copenhagen instead of a climate treaty. [...]

Here the detailed assessment.

I’m very disappointed.

It’s very important sometimes to focus on our History, the one with the capital “H”, because we should never forget about our origins and the values that have inspired the founding fathers of our loved Country. Today, as since 2 June 1946, Italian citizens (myself included) celebrate the birth of the Italian Republic.