Author Archive

● Fluffy Links – Friday February 8th 2008

Friday, February 8th, 2008

Fluffy

If you’re coming to the Blog Awards on March 1st, please register. 25 people regged so far. Most of them have not been before, this is great.

Nialler points out that Holy Fuck have remixed Paper Planes by MIA. Such a great band name. Guarantees it won’t get on to 2fm.

Like rain on your wedding day. Rob pointed this out. Cix.ie’s big red door for competent people.

Last chance to register for the Blogger’s Dinner on March 2nd in Cork.

Johnny Beirne has a personal blog now. He also has bifluffyionic eye.

Sinéad’s fluffy Intel bunny suit.

MaxRoam’s party at 3GSM is going to be a blast. If you are in Barcelona around that time, try and get there.

Kottke points out another reason why Matt Webb rocks. This end of year post from him really got me thinking about technology and made me realise I’m such a novice.

Via Twenty Adopt a child that matches your blood and tissue types, just in case you need a new liver or kidney. It’s the new in-thing!

Speaking of the King, what he’s do if he won the Euromillions. Two words: Assassination Market.

The song you hear at least once in some awful bar each weekend. Play it loud in the office now.

Fluffy pics

Friday, February 8th, 2008

Claire.

John.

The Waiting Game wins Best Blog at the Digital Media Awards

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

Congrats to Feebee from The Waiting Game for winning Best Blog at the Digital Media Awards.

In Dublin (again)

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Up to my neck in meetings. The fluffy links and the torturing of poor souls will return on Friday.

Crowdsourcing Irish Grannies – Send in your recipes

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Via Kieran and via Eoin is a new website that will be used to create a book and some money will go to charity. Mercier press have done Our Grannies Recipes.

The blurb:

A site that gathers together the recipes that have been favourites of Irish families for generations. Using the recipes posted on the site, Mercier Press will publish a book called Our Grannies’ Recipes in October 2008 as a hardback priced at €14.99. For every copy sold Mercier will donate a royalty to Age Action Ireland

Nice idea.

Hilary Clinton on Desperate Housewives

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

● Fluffy Links – Wednesday 6th February 2008

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Fluffy

So there’s a bloggers dinner in Cork on March 2nd. If you’re in Cork, do try and go. I was organising it but Alexia is now the boss of this. So chat to her about it.

Sweary is writing eurovision songs again.

Fluffy! Matty! Badgey!

Fluffy Kitty!

Fluffy Pancakey!

Yikes. LetsHost.ie are getting undue attention.

Thrillpier suggests ways of improving Phantom 105.2fm. I agree with 2, 3, 4, 6 I think 14 should be part of the Government’s Finance Bill. 12 is really annoying. I actually switch off the station for some newsreaders in particular who flub every line. Most annoying.

MGMT – Time to Pretend (original vid does not allow embedding, eejits)

Neuromancer (The Book) Concept Design set to DJ Krush- Road To Nowhere:

Mary Hanafin launching Internet safety classes for parents and teachers

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

From a press release. Mary Hanafin launched a new Internet safety programme for kids, parents and teachers today. It seems to have a heavy slant towards social networking sites:

This new initiative focuses on promoting safer and more effective use of social networking websites by children in Ireland

What will be done:

· Nationwide Internet Safety seminars for parents
· Nationwide in-service training for SPHE teachers
· Classroom resources for use in teaching the SPHE curriculum to first, second, and third years in post-primary schools
· Nationwide Social Networking workshops for primary and post-primary teachers

More of the blurb:

This new programme has been developed by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) in partnership with the Social Personal Health Education (SPHE) Curriculum Support Service and the National Parents Council – Primary (NPC)

This is good:

One of their key recommendations is that parents and professionals need to acquire a better understanding that children and young people live in a world of ever increasing sophistication of technological means. The findings recommended that measures be taken to close the widening gap between parents, teachers and children in relation to the use of these new technologies and to Internet safety awareness and safe practice.

That’s the best bit: “measures be taken to close the widening gap between parents, teachers and children”, they should do that for everything, not just Internet usage. If they do this right I’d be delighted. It might make parents and teachers less technophobic too.

The people assigned to decide Ireland’s Broadband future – International Advisory Forum on Broadband

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

All expenses paid, of course.

So Lieing Ryan has called in the mercenaries. He’s formed the International Advisory Forum on Broadband to talk about the next generation of broadband. Always good to look beyond the horizon, especially if there’s a huge mess around your feet that you don’t want to deal with.

The Forum will be facilitated by Mr. Eddie Molloy, a consultant with Advanced Organisations. The Forum members are:
Mr. H. Brian Thompson, Executive Chairman, Global Telecom & Technology.
Mr. Ken Carter, Senior Consultant, wik-Consult GmbH, Germany.
Mr. Martin Cronin, CEO, Forfás .
Ms. Isolde Goggin, Independent Consultant, Former Chair of ComReg.
Dr. Michael Nelson, Senior Professor, Georgetown University, USA. (and Obama fan)
Dr. Frank Sanda, CEO, Japan Communications Inc..
Mr. Tony Shortall, Economic Advisor, European Commission

ComReg have advisory panels like this too. In fact I think they have one on NGN, no? With the International aspect to it, you can take it for granted that the expenses of these folks will be quite large. I must dig out some FOI’d documents from ComReg but I know one person expensed over 20k for travel and stays when he flew in to attend meetings. Can we expect 100k to be spent to decide on our broadband future? 100k that might have enabled two exchanges for people in the present? Eamon says that availability is sorted.

Here’s the PR spiel from the Minister:

I have established an International Advisory Forum to advise on next challenge ahead – how we can get higher speed broadband at lower costs

Here’s the lie about availability:

The availability of broadband remains an issue for many consumers. The National Broadband Scheme will, in the coming months, begin to address the final piece of the availability issue. The competitive tender process for this Scheme is underway, which will serve the remaining parts of Ireland currently without access to broadband.

More words, more reports, more taxpayer money, more waiting for a lot of people.

Getting Creative er maybe

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

CreativeCamp

So CreativeCamp is on March 8th in a castle in Kilkenny. You should go. You should also participate.

So how many folks from Paddy’s Valley are presenting at Creative Camp? Oh, so far one. That’s Joe who is always good with sharing and contributing at every BarCamp/CreativeCamp. Alexia though is on a panel about how sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. (Men are allowed attend this talk but must realise they’re bastards.) 🙂 I would have thought those that went to the Valley learned about the community over there of sharing experiences and knowledge and would have jumped at the chance of presenting. Still time folks. And it doesn’t have to be about tech. I’d love to hear a talk from Jessi on healthy living. Maybe expanding on this article she wrote on getting kids to eat veg. (Not once in it did she mention violence or the threat of it, I can’t see it working :))

Maybe (Blog Award nominated!) Niall Larkin could give a presentation on online communities and how people interact, without giving away the recipe for the Relevant M secret sauce eh? Niall has massive insight to how humans work with tech. We could all benefit from his thoughts on that.

TechLudd was huge with a massive attendance by tech people in January. Maybe Anton could nudge some of those folks to go along too and give some talks?

There are tonnes of people who could give great talks and maybe they need a little encouragement? CreativeCamp is the place for shy people and will be very welcome. It would be a shame to see the old faces once again giving presentations, though while always good it would be good to see new presenters.

Nice to see BarCamp regulars Walter and Bernie do a panel discussion called “How Friends Communicate” too.