Author Archive

If you like Spiritualized, try Burning Codes for 4 euros

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Belfast band Burning Codes (I’m cogging all this from Indiecater) released a physical album back in October called Burning Codes and now Indiecater are offering it in digital form for a whole €4. Seriously. 4 quid for an album that I must say I was quite impressed with. I’m a fan of Explosions in the Sky, Spiritualized and all those types of bands so Burning Codes appealed to me. Don’t ask me to name what those genres are, music I like is what it is.

You can listen to some of the songs on their mySpace too.

Random pic to add colour to this post:
sketch0111
Photo owned by hayashi yosuke (cc)

Not such a leap forward

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Keith pointed to a doc from the Irish Institute for European Affairs called The Next Leap. I barely agree with any of it. Too much blueskying and sound bites. Too much investing in talking shops and new industry bodies.

Some of the “key action points” from the report and my thoughts.

Commit the funding required to provide sufficient connectivity and equipment to bring Irish schools up to the OECD average, and exempt all school ICT equipment from VAT
Laptops in classrooms is a waste of resources. Laptops outside of school as a policy is needed. Laptops in schools should not be a stepping stone for this. The new whiteboards in schools are already gathering dust in many schools because the basics aren’t being done right. How many Irish speakers do we have because of Irish in school? Putting subjects in digital format does nothing extra. Though it’s a handy number for the sponsors of this report.

Kids need to be thought (ironic I know) taught how to teach themselves, how to discover, how to analyze, how to think. That’s what will get us our knowledge economy. Not HP laptops running Windows.

Support “niche exploration” groups to investigate possible areas of national expertise
Quango quango quango.

Introduce weighted marks at Leaving Certificate level for ICT relevant subjects
Extra points for maths and other subjects to corrupt the system in favour of IBEC like industries? That will get us more kids under pressure to do these subejcts and do honours. More time spent on these than the “easy” subjects. We’ll be in SAT country next instead of a holistic approach. Maths is not education. It will also get more grind schools making lots more money for Maths classes and the like and from it all they’ll do is teach the kids tricks on how to do well in the Leaving Cert, not educate them on the subject. It’s a dog training school that will come out of this.


Establish a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) within DCENR

Cos they did so well with our broadband future. Why the hell should tax money be wasted on this?

Re-task RTE as an incubator & developer of media content irrespective of platform
Yes, cos we want the civil service to use even more of our tax money. Let the private sector do this.


Convene a taskforce to discuss an optimal national strategy to promote Ireland as a location for localisation services

Did Dell teach us anything? This is not high-level work. This is grunt work. It can be moved outside of Ireland quickly. Many of the tech companies are already doing so.

Fluffy Links – Monday 12th January 2009

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Go Naill and iFoods.tv people. Nice injection of cash!

Congrats to Pat Phelan for getting featured in the Business Post.

And congrats to Keith Bohanna and the lads in DB Twang for getting featured too.

Meanwhile Sharon’s Gordon aka the Husband lays into Homeopathy.

Via Stephen – An event for manager types that lost their jobs. Starting Today it’s called.

New blog. Fionn Murtagh.

Nice juxtaposition of the modern and er the new.

Great writing advice from Cory Doctorow. Doesn’t even have to apply to writing a book. It can be for anything.

I do like this opening hours sign.

Liking this t-shirt.

Via Aisle One: Massimo Vignelli has published a 96 page book on better understanding typography in graphic design. PDF here.

The Dodos – Fools

Posting a video on the Sunday to fill the content gap

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Animal Collective – Fireworks

Fluffy Links – Friday January 9th 2009

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Well count me impressed! 24 people signed up to web hosting packages with that mulley voucher code. Glad to see you were able to make use of it. Now they’re offering .ie domains for 10 euros for today only. Use the code: iefridayjan09

Looseville is done by a lad called Alan that lives in Cork. This is his blog. He was recently featured in the Indo. I like this comic he did.

Mucky boots and romance. Wicklow walks for singletons.

Thomas has a post on Online Methods for Online and Traditional Media

More sheer brilliance from Ze Frank.

Great great interview about packaging design.

Conor blogs about the Foodtalk programme. Foodies should tune in!

Nice offers from the Hilton Hotel chain. Cheers Sonya!

Kottke pointed this intro to 3,2,1 Contact. Wow, I am that old:

Tycho – The Daydream

Can we get James to be an intern in Apple?

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

(Spoon feeding Steve his vegan yoghurt or whatever interns do)

James Foley is a UL student who dreams about working for Apple. He asked me to help out to try and get him an internship in Cupertino next year. I’m sure there are some that read this blog that might know someone that knows someone. So can you help?

So as you know at this stage, U.L makes a big deal about sending it’s students on work placement during their degrees. Most people doing my course (Business) get placement with local firms, some even venture as far as Dublin in search for work. But I really want to make use of this opportunity, I want to work somewhere relevant to what I want to do after college. I want to work for Apple, and have made it my number one priority this year to get an internship there starting in January of 2010.

Why Apple? It’s a company I have a genuine passion for, every computer I’ve had since I was a child has been a mac and I think that working for a company where culture and design are held in such high regard would make the early mornings and late nights all that much easier. There are probably people out there that are more qualified than me, that know more about the software and silicon that make computers work, but I honestly don’t think anyone else wants this as much as I do. I want to learn how to make great computers, how to write great applications and to help innovate and turn really cool ideas into really cool products.

So, can we help the guy? Be nice to see Irish people work in the Valley and *cough* get us contacts.

mymac_steve_jobs_icon
Photo owned by BALLISTIK! (cc)

The assault on Blacknight’s coffers is working!

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

I’ve heard that 13 people signed up to new hosting packages with Blacknight already thanks to that last blog post. Not bad in 24 hours. You have until midnight tonight to use the 25% off shared hosting voucher, the code is: mulley

You don’t need to be a blogger to avail. 25% off is a pretty damned fine discount.

Knights.JPG
Photo owned by ralmonline (cc)

Fluffy Links – Thursday January 8th 2009

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Delighted to see SourGrapes.ie doing well on traffic. It’s a great website. Consider bookmarking or subscribing.

If it ain’t Cork, don’t fix it. Limerick is the blogging Capital of Ireland.

Digital Marketing roadshow in Dublin on the 29th. Free!

Bodies is coming to Dublin. Via Mr. P.

Gig of the year. Event of the year. Via ThrillPier.

Type Nuts. Type-themed & type-inspired iPhone & desktop wallpapers for typenuts.

The Daily Mail Headline generator. I love this one: “IS THE METRIC SYSTEM KILLING BRITAIN’S SWANS?”

Cool t-shirts and only £5 including delivery.

I do love his style.

Clever app. What should I read next?

Nintendo Wii is now a TV network of a sort.

The housing bubble hits Second Life too!

Recession. Hah.

Via Tom

71 Million views on YouTube. 71!

Chris Cornell and Pearl Jam – Hunger Strike

Labour politician playing runaway knock in Meath

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Labour politician Mick McLoughlin has been brazingly playing runaway knock at the Garda Station in his locality. If you vote for Beverly Cooper Flynn, the cow, then you have to vote for someone with a website called Mcloughlin4Dunshaughlin. Genius.

You can just feel the “Bring it on Garda mofos” attitude as he Mick presses the bell. Check out that pose:
Bring it Garda bitches

And does he leg it far? No he does not! Here he is down the street, not even running that far. Bring it!
Bring it MORE!

and if it wasn’t bad playing mindgames with the cop shop, he’s doing the same with the County Council. Not that they’d answer it. Not their job according to their union rep:
Come on County Council, bring it!!!

The young, the scientists

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Our Tommy is at the BT Young Scientist & Technology this week. If you’re about, pop along and say hello to him. A few bloggers are going along on the 9th after BT Ireland sent them invites. I’ll be about tomorrow and in and around on Friday too. The lovely ladies from Beaut.ie are talking about the BT Young Scientist & Technology comp too. Ben has the best post ever about the Young Scientist.

Best of luck to everyone taking part at the BTYS.

Banana Man and Scientist
Photo owned by Lorri37 (cc)