Archive for April, 2005

Booze Nation

Monday, April 11th, 2005

Ciaran’s Blog post about Ireland’s drinking culture. I must say it is quite embarassing working in a company that hires many non-nationals and being stuck for an answer when they ask “Besides the pub, what’s there to do here ?”

Ciaran linked to “Mark who is giving up booze for a year. My site has a few posts about my own challenge where I stayed off alcohol for 12 months as well as other “narcotics” as well as doing my best to stay off caffeine. 12 months off alcohol is dead easy. My first week off I ended up going to the beer festival with lots of muppets insisting I drink alcohol.

Here’s a better challenge: stay off bread and all flour based foods for 12 months and not starve ! Staying off alcohol is easy as it it not the main way to stay hydrated but the main ways to get food into yourself in this country seems to be via two slices of bread.

For my next challenge I think I’ll do something like train to run a marathon.

All Seven and they watch them fall…

Thursday, April 7th, 2005

Final scene of Seven reenacted using stuffed animals.

Wikipedia and Yahoo do a deal

Thursday, April 7th, 2005

Yahoo! is going to start using content from Wikipedia and wiki articles are going to start showing up in Yahoo!. Wikipedia was already hitting the big time. This is hitting the “even bigger time”.

From the WikiMedia Foundation website: “The Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/) and Yahoo! (http://yahoo.com) announced today that they have reached an agreement by which Yahoo will provide hosting capacity to Wikimedia. Yahoo will dedicate a significant number of servers in one of its Asian facilities for hosting Wikimedia’s free content websites. Jimmy Wales, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, says that this generous donation will be of particular benefit to the vibrant and growing community of Wikipedia users in that part of the world.

Yahoo!’s donation is a gesture of support for the charitable goals of the Wikimedia Foundation, and does not imply any ownership of the content. Yahoo! does not expect Wikimedia to host advertisements in return for this support.”

PlanetOfTheBlogs kicking IrishBlogs Ass

Thursday, April 7th, 2005

Planet of the Blogs is kicking the ass now of IrishBlogs.ie. But I’m just being biased as I have yet to be listed on IrishBlogs. I mustn’t meet their secret criteria for being paddy or something.

Meanwhile I’m enjoying the personal views of many in the Irish bloggersphere. Should we start calling it the boggersphere or the eiresphere or some other nasty word ?

Lots of the blogs and journals are awash with comments from Gerry Adams yesterday and the upcoming general elections in the North and UK. This election will be enchanced by the Guardian site on the election and it’s aggregating of blogs that talk politics. The UK also has the excellent Channel 4 factchecker which could sorely be used here and there are also TheyWorkForYou and Public whip. We need something like that before Bertie and co go for re-election.

Fake and proud of it

Thursday, April 7th, 2005

Telling it how it is: New line of bags honestly telling you they’re fakes. Cheap too. Now if only we could have people have the same attitude about tagging themselves. Begin endless folksonomy discussion.

14 defining characteristics of Fascism using the Bush regime. Totally and utterly biased but I liked it.

Funny

Slugger on Broadband

Thursday, April 7th, 2005

Just posted another trademark long-winded reply, this time in response to a broadband commentary on Slugger O’Toole

NI is definitely becoming more attractive for Broadband and telecoms infrastructure. The comment from the DCMNR saying broadband is available everywhere is quite maddening. I’ll send in an FOI request asking for their definition of available. And once again [b]Satellite is not broadband[/b]. Write it out 50 times on the blackboard please.

Double Edged Razor

Tuesday, April 5th, 2005

MSNBC Article on getting the best shave. Wet shave, shave *after* a shower, double edge traditional blade, hair brush for lathering in the shaving cream, glyercin based aftershave balm. Probably better than what I’m doing now. Shave before shower, wash face with exfoliating solution from Clinique, then put on Clinique shaving cream by hand, then shave using Mach3 blade and then AfterShave Healing Solution. I have to say though that since I changed to this regime from the old shaving foam and scrape with the blade, I’ve noticed a better shave, smoother face and less burn. I’m not a frigging brainwashed Clinique zombie I swear !

Skype Plugin for Outlook. Quite handy for those that use one of the most popular mail clients around. Integrates Skype with the Outlook Contact List.

Hey fucker. Careful who you spammed.

Tuesday, April 5th, 2005

Seems some Irish crowd comment spammed Bernie today. I was going to leave a comment on his blog but I’ll leave a trackback instead and prevent me from duplicating. Howya Bernie ! I got spammed by an Irish firm before by email, and it was the 2nd month in a row I got said spam after requesting by phone to be removed. I got on to the Data Commissioner about this. They emailed me today saying the investigation can take up to 6 months. I’m happy to wait but I do think it’s a bit much waiting that long.

And then tonight some crowd spammed me offering U2 tickets and all I had to do was text a premium number. Well firstly I’m getting on to their ISP – eircom.net, then I’ll chat with RegTel and then I’ll talk to the Data Protection Commissioners. Oh, just noticed they used MS Office to write the email. I’ll have a word with The Irish BSA too. Yeah, I’m a right prick at times.

This is the full spam that was sent to me:

April 2nd – The aftermath

Saturday, April 2nd, 2005

I want this pin clock. The digits are made by pins being pushed out. Trés funky and cheapish.

Apparently I’m now known as David Mulley on the Planet of the Blogs news aggregator. I’m sure that’ll change soon. 🙂 I think that site done by Dr. John “Making Boards.ie the Biggest Webste in Ireland” Breslin will become a very very important hub of activity in the next while. Citizen Journalism at its best it just might become.

What have the Brits ever done for us ?

Friday, April 1st, 2005

What have the Brits ever done for us ? The latest from Langerland is being sent around by mail and IM all day. It’s excellent. Also see their Dáil Resuffled video.

EPIC or the Google Grid. This is a timeline lookback set in 2014 when Google controls the news. It’s a really interesting idea though I don’t think Friendster is all that important. Yahoo360 might start to make an impact though. With Google almost promising limitless email storage webspace and online diskspace are just around the corner, as I predicted.