Archive for March, 2008

Dead Prez makes me hate the white man

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Been a fan for years but played their debut album again. The first track is a spoken word piece/sample called Wolves, spoken by a dude called Chairman Omali from INPDUM (International Peoples Democratic Uhuru Movement). These are the lyrics:

I’m not a hunter but i am told,
that, uh, in places like in the arctic,
where indiginous people sometimes might, might, hunt a wolf,
they’ll take a double edged blade,
and they’ll put blood on the blade,
and they’ll melt the ice and stick the handle in the ice,
so that only the blade is protruding,
and that a wolf will smell the blood and wants to eat,
and it will come and lick the blade trying to eat,
and what happens is when the wolf licks the blade,
of course, he cuts his tongue, and he bleeds,
and he thinks he’s really having a good thing,
and he drinks and he licks and he licks,
and of course he is drinking his own blood and he kills himself,

thats what the Imperialists did with us with crack cocaine,
you have these young brothers out there who think they are getting something
they gonna make a living with,
they is getting something they can buy a car,
like the white people have cars, why can’t i have a car?
they getting something they can get a piece of gold,
white people have gold, why can’t i have gold?
they getting something to get a house,
white people have a house, why can’t i have a house?

and they actually think that theres something thats bringing resources to them,
but they’re killing themsleves just like the wolf was licking the blade,
and they’re slowly dying without knowing it.
thats whats happening to the community, you with me on that?
thats exactly, precisely what happens to the community,
and instead of blaming the hunter who put the damn handle and blade in the ice
for the wolf,

that what happens is the wolf gets the blame, gets the blame for trying to live,
thats what happens in our community,
you don’t blame the person, the victim,
you blame the oppressor, Imperialism, white power is the enemy,
was the enemy when it first came to Africa,
and snatched up the first African brothers here against our will,
isss the enemy today,
and thats the thing that we have to understand.

Mobile Broadband in Ireland – Muck

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Well we all knew that right? Anyway, Blacknight’s Speed Test have been logging speed tests for a long while now and have given me some raw data for the Mobile Broadband Providers. A complete and longwinded extensive explanation and full raw data is at the end of the post with a quicker summary here.
The gist of it is that speeds on all of these networks are terrible but Three performed the worst in terms of download speed and Quality of Service. Here’s a quick chart showing the results of people who believed they were on a 3mb broadband package, clicking on the image will give a larger table with more details. All speeds are in kb/s (that’s kilobits, not kilobytes; 8kb = 1kB) So really they should be expecting to see 3000 in download but many only get 300.

Mobile Broadband Speeds Ireland

Full explanatory note from Blacknight:
I have to attach a huge caveat to this data. I can’t comfortably say that the speed data has any claim of authority because there’s no way we can currently verify that the people using Irish ISP Test gave the correct speed for the plan they’re on. The data on Quality of Service, on the other hand, has a much better case for being authoritative, and in real terms, it’s the information you’re really interested in.

First, I have to make sure you’re able to interpret the data correctly. Three files are attached.

“qos.csv” reports the Quality of Service the mobile ISPs are giving per month.
Mobile Broadband Speeds Ireland

Quality of Service (QoS) is a measurement of how reliable the connection is and varies between 0% and 100%, the former being no service and the latter being perfect service. If a service provider is providing a good service, they should be hitting an average QoS of around 90% or more. As you can see, O2 give the best QoS, giving roughly 65% QoS on average. Vodafone follow closely behind, with Three trailing quite badly, though the trend is that they’re catching up, with their competitors as the QoS their customers are getting has risen consistently since September where it was below 25%, to close to 50% now.

Quality of Service can be thought of as a measurement of how close they’re hitting the speeds they advertise. A high QoS means that they’re approaching their advertised speeds, whereas one around 50%-60% compared to the kind of intermittent reception you get on your phone when you’re going through a tunnel. By way of example, we have an 8Mb/s line in our office. I just did a test on it and managed to get just over 6Mb/s out of it and the QoS reported was 85%, which means we’re getting close to the speed we ought to be getting at 100% QoS, and it matches the speed we’re getting pretty closely.

The second and third files, “stats-by-isp-speed.csv” and “stats-by-isp-speed-month.csv” break this down by ISP and speed, and again
by month. This data isn’t really as interesting or accurate, but here’s an explanation of what it means.

The ‘Speed Given’ column reports the speed in kb/s (that’s kilobits, not kilobytes; 8kb = 1kB) that the user reported. For instance, 56 is the same as an old 56k dial-up modem, 128 is roughly the same as an ISDN line, 1024 is roughly the same as a 1Meg DSL line, and so on. ‘Download Speed’ refers to how fast a data (such as a file, page of a website, image, video, &c.) can be downloaded and is, again, given in kb/s. ‘Upload Speed’ refers to how quickly something can be sent from your computer over your connection to somewhere else, such as sending an email, submitting a form on a website, putting a photo on Flickr, and so on. This number will always be less than the download one as people tend to download more than they upload and ISPs use this heuristic to share the connection in a way that’ll give the best experience for the customer. The when an ISP advertises a connection speed, they’re usually talking about the download speed.

You’ll notice that the upload and download columns come in pairs. The first one give the average speed the speed test got, and the second gives how much this speed varies between tests (the standard deviation). An average by itself is meaningless because it tells you nothing about how spread out thenumbers that were averaged out were, or if they cluster around the average. If you have a standard deviation that’s close to zero, then the numbers averaged are all close to the average, but the closer the standard deviation is totwice the average, the closer the data is to being completely chaotic.

So lets say that two ISPs provide a 1M data package, and all both their users manage to get an average of 500k and 650k. Now, lets say that the standard deviation for ISP-A’s customers from the average speed is about 50, but the standard deviation for ISP-B’s customer’s is 400. You’d want to go with ISP-A because even though you’re not getting a slower speed, you’re getting it far more consistently than ISP-B, where it’s pretty much pot luck whether you’ll get full speed or a trickle.

Again, the QoS columns are what you really want to be concentrating on in these datasets.

Fakeblogging wakeup call to Irish PR/morketing companies – Shane’s turn

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

There’s one of these a week at this stage. This time from Shane. Seriously guys when it comes to blogs and fakeblogging and fake campaigns the truth will out at a much faster rate than in traditional media. Anyways G’wan Mr. Hegarty. Fresh from crowdsurfing at the Irish Blog Awards, Shane has sharpened his bit of glass and is gutting the people behind some fakeblogging peanut campaign. When it got bad reactions they deleted the comments too.

However, not everything goes to plan. Comments come in telling you it’s not a real blog, and wondering if Glenda Gilson deserves any more publicity. They go up, but they’re taken down again.

Now here’s a Fake bag:
Fake shit
Photo thanks to SubliminalPudding

I was laughing away at this and then Shane updated the post to point out it’s my buds Thinkhouse PR that are behind it. The ones that fibbed about the Data Protection Commissioner apologising to them after I made a complaint (which was upheld) that they spammed me. It seems Pareto 3D are the ones that regged the fakeblog though. Loving the blurb from them:

Pareto 3D is an experiential marketing agency that commences a dialogue between your brand and your consumer

And then there’s ThinkHouse PR:

We are in touch. We understand the culture of Irish media. We have embraced new-media and use it as a key component of all our PR campaigns

Arghhh. I’m cringing here. I know Thinkhouse don’t like me and justifiably so but mon dieux (as he channels Delboy) could they not talk to real bloggers who know how this stuff can work without resorting to this. Talk to Elly Parker or Deborah Hadley or Lentil Bohanna or Tom Raftery or Brassy Dent about using a real blog to pimp wares which will not get any blowback. Fakeblogging simply won’t work in Ireland. Sabrina and Lucky Oliver are a good casemodel on how to do it right. At this stage I’d be willing to hold some kind of masterclass to all these companies for free if they promise to listen to the advice given over the day and to NOT try these stunts again. I’m deadly serious here. Am sure others feel the same too.

BTW, I do appreciate the linklove for the Blog Awards and Gastronom.ie sites though. Chairs.

Genius

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Ryan Whalley deserved that Special Recognition Award so so soooo much. If you need someone to make you look good, Ryan is just ace. He’s a genius with a camera. Hire him to do the clicky clicky thing. He’s a photo ninja. The rest of his photos from the Blog Awards are up now and they’re pretty amazing.

Damien Mulley and the Mulley look

El Rickisante:
Rick O'Shea or El Presidente

El Rick with his haul. Smug? Yes.
Rick and the trophies

Brendan and a cuppa:
Brendan Zen Master Kehoe

Colm Modern InFactah Cadence:
Colm Bracken

Steven and Deargh:
Some of the Blog Awards behind the scene folks

An event isn’t a real event until Una dances on some tables. We win!
Una dances

Una and her friends. Trés hot:
Una and her posse

Yeah. Ryan suggested it, I swear:
Lick El Rick

Fluffy Links – Wednesday March 5th 2008

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Darren has a nice post about meeting his biological mother.

SoggyJazzBiscuit is back, he was never gone away you know and has this excellent Gormulator comic.

This is a rather excellent post from Declan and deserves a read. So do. Oh and leave a comment. He wuvs comments.

And then Richard has a nice piece too on the state of journalism in this country and blogs.

By the by, have you checked out the new look LouderVoice?

Via Mick The cat probably topped itself.

Not using your old mobile phone?

See what else Craigslist brings.

Attention audio fascists.

Kylie does it for money.

Big Pimpin’ Hosting

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Yes, that is our very own Michele Neylon from Blacknight with some Playboy Models. I hope Blacknight doesn’t mind the hotlinking.

Michele Neylon is just short of a hat with a feather and he'd be Snoop Dogg

Irish Blog Awards 2008 – Intro Videos

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

My Little Ponies

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

I mentioned I wanted a pony in a recent post. So what did I get? First a lovely card from Sharon from 1169 and counting and these ponies:

Ponies

And then Elana and Michael gave me this:
More ponies

Fluffy Links – Tuesday March 4th 2008

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

This is how I Fluffy roll. People were wondering where I get the stuff. I generally have 20-60 tabs open in Firefox and towards the end of an evening I pick the best of them and put them into a Fluffy Links post.

My mate Stephen started a blog after 4 years of badgering. Say hello.

Jazzbiscuit has the scoop about my next project, the Irish Web Awards.

Bid for a Vote For Rick poster.

UK ISPS selling customers browsing habits? They doing it here? Why not?

More Blog Awards 08 photos.

Really love this one.

Loving Jonathan’s Blog Awards vid.

Follow the shafted trophy.

Via Everson Catholic.ie is not what you think. Or is it?

CNet says blogging ain’t big in Ireland. Why am I still hungover still from Saturday then? Clueless.

Yay for badges.
Badges

Jackie Moon commercials:

Another Blog Awards superstar

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Every year my philosophy for the Blog Awards is to improve it as every year I realise we need to fix things for the next and the other thing is to add a surprise. Always have something in reserve to exceed expectations. Last year it was goody bags and champagne. This year the surprise was the election theme and the videos. Myself and John did a test run in a Starbucks on the Friday and it all went well. With my Dell laptop and WinDVD it worked fine. Sometime Saturday I realised that I forgot my power cable for the laptop. With about an hour and a bit til the show started I dumped the DVD on Alexia and went off to worry about something else. So what did she do? Well she saved the day. Sat behind Rick and manually fought with the DVD and Windows Vista to get it working. If it wasn’t for Alexia we’d never have seen the masterpiece that John put together.

Alexia Golez - Blog Awards superstar

Elly created stickers at the Blog Awards that stood for What Would Mulley Do? Without Alexia he would have been rightly screwed on Saturday night. Thanks Alexia. See, she is one to watch.

What Would Mulley Do?