Archive for February, 2013

Fluffy Links – Thursday February 21st 2013

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Digital Marketing Strategy Workshop from Dena Walker on Feb 27th taking bookings for the afternoon version of it now. Selling out fast,

Samsung may be selling a tonne of phones and taking more market share but Apple dominates on profit share.

What Colm learned so far from his WhoIsMyTD web service.

Hilary Claire Woods‘ new album preview sounds lovely.

How Paul got 1000 likes on a page of his.

Iran captures a US drone. Reverse engineers it. Releases video the drone had recorded of the flight. Military propaganda comms from Iran now. Israel are amazing at this.

The history behind Siri. So much more to come from Siri it seems. Also, shocking that this appears to be original content on the Huffpost that isn’t a list.

Terry O’Neill exhibition in Wandesforde Quay ends this week. Go see it. Meanwhile the man himself has an iPad app called Goddesses.

Eirigi show you how to sabotage a water meter and get your neighbours in trouble. I think.

Fluffy Links – Sunday February 17th 2013

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

Karl says get rid of the 100s of Millions in R&D grants in order to fire up real innovation.

Fascinating comment. Netflix – “Become HBO Faster Than HBO Can Become Netflix

Opening up charity data. UK only right now. Be nice to have here given so many orgs say they’re charities when they are far from it and not even registered.

Bridget Megarry on preparing for her death:

Take out long-term serious illness cover. We didn’t. Having a terminal illness is expensive. We have been saving hard over the past few years for our retirement so I have no hope of a medical card.

One huge KMZ file for Google Earth of all electoral divisions in Ireland. (Pay to access)

The Moves app tracks the steps you take, distance traveled, locations etc. etc. Free. Soaks up battery though.

Via Dangerous Minds: Baby Metal. J-pop death metal.

Sweet Brown ain’t got no time for a toothache.

Never knew who she was, just liked the ad. This is how she became famous. Reminds me of reactive marketing like that now legendary Oreo in the dark tweet.

Stories.ie – March 21st 2013

Friday, February 15th, 2013

Update: Stories.ie website is now live.

I’ve wanted to use Triskel Church for an event for a while now. Been to some great concerts there. So I’m doing so.

It’s a beautiful location so I didn’t want to do something overly commercial.

TriskelVenue

So hello Stories.

Stories is where people talk about their business or organisation and share their experiences. No “turning corners”, no “projections”, it’s a relaxed atmosphere where we share and learn.

Speakers lined up for this so far:

Will McInnes who wrote Culture Shock.
Richard Seabrooke who runs Offset.
Daragh Murphy from Hairy Baby.
Pat Phelan from Thai Chef to telecoms company owner to TrustEv.
Caroline Hennessy – Bibliocook and 8 Degrees Brewing.
Jo Mangan from The Performance Corporation.
Cathleen O’Neill from Kilbarrack Community Development Project.

And more speakers to be announced too.

It’ll be on from 10am til about 4.30pm. Lunch included.

Ticket Pricing: Still waiting on catering costs and then I’ll announce them but tickets will probably be around the €65-€70 price.

Pre-sale interest list
If you want to reserve a ticket, fill in this form. You are entitled to say pass come the time the tickets do go on sale.

Official hashtag is: #storiesCork

That Night Follows Day

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

That Night Follows Day was in the Everyman way back in November and I’m finally getting around to writing a piece about it.

That Night Follows Day - Everyman

It’s been around for years now but seems quite modern at the same time. A bunch of 16 kids, talking about how we adults see them, judge them, look after them, ignore them and so on. Spoken by kids, content is for adults. An hour’s play that’s just factual statement after statement:

You feed us. You wash us. You dress us. You sing to us. You watch us when we are sleeping. You explain to us the different causes of illness and the different causes of war. You whisper when you think we can’t hear.

Written by Tim Etchells. This play is actually intimidating for those in the audience. Being called out for bullshit, the way we treat young people, the way we interact with ourselves. Silences and stares making you uneasy in your seat. It’s excellent. Funny moments and serious and dark tinges.

The audience when we were there were mostly the parents of the kids and were laughing and clapping at many parts of the play. Kids saying fucking and motherfucking seemed to have gotten a shocked and hilarious reaction from the crowd. Naturally a whopping standing ovation at the end. And warranted.

A very talented bunch of kids. Some amazing performances from some in particular. Worth seeing when it comes back into your town.

Living and Loss at the Glucksman

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

I was in many minds about this exhibition. An art exhibition about illness and death is always going to get you thinking about these topics. That’s the idea surely. The Year of Magical Wanking has left me thinking for years after seeing it. Selfish introspection bit warning: When you’ve been diagnosed with MS in about a half a second you think about your illness, death, impending death, helplessness and knowing what you always suspected deep inside you: that you will not live forever. So let’s go down to the ballgame (or art exhibition) and reexamine all of this. *And we breathe in as we start walking around.* I gather that those that are ill and are post-illness are going along to this too and maybe it’s cathartic for some of them.

Living Loss Catalog

The Damien Hirst stuff to me is boring, I like his sliced up animals in formaldehyde and some of his other works but he’s far too commercial and mill school for my liking these days. There are some in-jokes for his posters of medicines, for those that work in pharmaceuticals or the medical profession.

The two most powerful pieces to me are the paintings of Cecily Brennan and the photography of Jo Spence.

Cecily Brennan’s paintings here of the skin of children: psoriasis on a baby’s hands and chest, eczema etc. pains you that such fragile beings are hurting from this. It certainly makes you feel powerless and protective. Other paintings of post-op skin grafts and stapling are still quite impactful.

Living Loss Glucksman - Cecily Brennan

Jo Spence’s photographic self-portraits of herself and her breasts and the changes pre and post-operation while she deals with breast cancer get to you. Her looking out, cold clinical, factual, something unseen trying to change her life. Giving something a name gives you power over it and Jo writes “Property of Jo Spence” on her breast. Her pieces in this exhibition bring you from the start all the way through to the end of this. I’ll be going back again just to see her photographs.

Property of Jo Spence at Glucksman

There are works too from Martin Cree, Laura Potter, Mary Rose O’Neill, Paul Seawright and Thomas Struth. Local Cork artists The Project Twins also have a few more modern pieces that have a bit of fun with the ideas of pills and medicine. Worth seeing too.

When you compare the topics and content of an art exhibition or any kind of content to your own life, you’re knitting them around your own thoughts about your life This exhibition and Jo Spence for certain will be remembered by me for much longer perhaps more than some watercolours of fields in some art museums.

On the topic of touchy feely stuff, I’ll be on a men-only panel (How this Week in Politics!) at Banter about men and their feelings. I’ll be talking about “coming out” with my MS and the positive and negative results of putting it all out there. Living and Loss runs until March 10th 2013.

Pork in every fucking dish

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

There’s a bit in Tremé where someone complains in David Chang’s restaurant that there was pork in the broth of one of his dishes. A veggie. They’re apparently livid and are going to sue. So David Chang does a David Chang/Anthony Bourdain/Chefs we want to channel and says “Let’s put pork in every fucking dish.”

In his series “Mind of a Chef”, (which is ok, could be way better given his creative genius), he visits Wilensky’s and orders their fried bologna sandwiches. If you want them without mustard they charge you ten cents more and you only get served one of your orders at a time. Chang loves this idea of charging more to remove something. Of course he does. I think its great.

And I like this too:
Sil Vous Plait

So no, no student discounts for those doing MBAs, no discounts for charities, no discounts if you are a struggling startup. Measurement.ie is on Wednesday the 13th of February.

Update: Remembered my own example. There were a few complaints about the bad language in the first Mulley Comic so for the second Mulley Comic I purposely added more in. #fuckoffier

Fluffy Links – Saturday February 2nd 2012

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

Dylan Varian has a new iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app out for those doing the Junior/Leaving Cert. All the papers and marking schemes in one app. Examie.

Only a few more days to get tickets for Measurement.ie, speaker lineup pretty much locked down now. 8 talks, 4 workshops.

I really really love the 8 bit signs for free Dublin WiFi.

Three short plays by Samuel Beckett in the Everyman. The week I’m in Dublin of course…

Conscious Capitalism from the CEO of Whole Foods.

Consultation on implementation of the Charities act. Ban chugging please.

Getting started with User Acquisition Marketing.

Still trying to offload the Money Grabbing Machine from the Web Awards.

Follow tells humorous and moving stories and experiences from the Irish Deaf community through live music, light, ISL, (Irish Sign Language) and traditional story telling.

Paul Brady – Trust In You (Live at Kinine) from Steve Mogerley on Vimeo.