Vacation 2019: Galway to Derry

Monday August 12 took in Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal, and Derry. We visited a holy site in Knock, a sheep farm in northern Sligo, and took a tour of a small part of Derry.

Vacation 2019: Clare and Galway

Sunday August 11: we set off from Killarney, north across County Kerry, and took a ferry to County Clare – avoding the long drive around County Limmerick. The three main items of the day were the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and the medieval part of the city of Galway. The day started off moderately rainy, but cleared up for us as the day progressed.

Vacation 2019: The Ring of Kerry

Our Saturday Aug 10 tour was the Ring of Kerry (An Mhór Chuaird), a loop around the high hills of County Kerry. It was a somewhat shorter touring day than most of the others, leaving Killarney at 8am and returning close to 4pm. We found out that busses are required to circle counterclockwise around the loop, lest two of them meet going in opposite directions. The roads in Ireland are very narrow by North American standards and typically have no shoulders, with hedgerows of 3-4 metre high “hedges” (more like trees!) growing right at the edge. At least in most of the country; we later found that western Ireland has drystone walls instead. Occasionally there is a 1-lane bridge. Even if driving weren’t on the unfamiliar left, I don’t think I could manage.

Vacation 2019: Cork

Friday August 9 we left Waterford and entered County Cork, visiting the towns of Cobh (pronounced “cove”) and An Bhlarna (Blarney). Road signage in Ireland has both the Irish and English place names. We learned several town name prefixes: An (the), Baile (village of), Cill (church), Dun (fort), and Glen (valley).

Vacation 2019: Wicklow and Waterford

Thursday August 8: Our tour is proceeding clockwise around the coast of Ireland. We started this morning in Dublin, County Dublin, and headed south into County Wicklow and later County Waterford.

Vacation 2019: To Dublin

The next few blog posts are about my 2019 vacation. Two years ago I went to Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention, when it was in Helsinki. I skipped last year in San Jose, and decided to go this year when it is in Dublin, Ireland. A friend from the WXR cruises organized a bus tour of Ireland the week before. I had no chance to write about anything for the first few days, but now I'm sitting in a comfortable hotel in Cill Airne, othewise known as Killarney, with an hour to go before dinner, so I'm going to start catching up on my reporting.

Victory Conditions

When you play a game, there are normally rules for how somebody is judged to have “won.” In my favourite genre of city-builder games, this is typically some combination of achieve a certain population and treasury, produce so many of some particular resources, rule some number of of other cities, and build certain monuments. Some games let you create your own “scenarios” where you set your own victory conditions, which you can make as hard or as easy as you like. When I download scenarios from the web, they’re usually aimed at the most experienced players, who want the most possible challenge. But it’s also perfectly OK to want less difficulty: to combine some degree of accomplishment with a level of concentration and stress that’s suited to your temperament rather than the high-end of your abilities.

That principle applies to a lot of other kinds of goals in normal life, too.