Damien Mulley

Up until this week in a lift in a hotel in Lisbon, I had never met Haydn Shaughnessy which is shameful since we’ve been at at least one BarCamp together and we’re both in and around Cork county. I wish I had met Haydn way back at BarCamp in Cork last year because the conversations we had in Lisbon once we met were really inspiring and covered tech, business, our frustration with the lack of motivation to have a startup culture in Ireland and art. In case you didn’t see the mentions on other blogs, Haydn has put a lot of work into starting his own art gallery in Kilbrittain called Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery for Innovative Contemporary Artists. I need to get myself down there soon.

During one of our conversations I was telling Haydn how I’d love to do what he did. Start a gallery and get some not well-known (locally) but good artists some attention that they deserve. This is what Haydn is doing now. It seems to be a total labour of love and maybe when I have the time I might do the same, that or organise some shows for artists. I’d love to bring some bands and singers I like to Ireland and show them off here. I think Irish audiences are fantastic and greatly appreciate quality music moreso than other countries.

Haydn also mentioned that his office which is next to his gallery would make a great spot for those who want to escape their own environment and go on a work-type retreat to a scenic location while still connected to the world. Having your office in an Art Gallery overlooking the sea would certainly be a way of relieving stress and helping your creativity.

Oh God, he’s still talking about Twitter. Thanks to Google Reader, here are some trends on my Twitter subs:

From your 77 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 3,255 items, starred 0 items, and shared 0 items.

Top 20 noise makers:

Subscription Items/Day
Paul Walsh – 13.5
Conor O’Neill – 13.4
Bernie Goldbach – 7
Matt – 6.7
Damien Mulley – 5.8
Brian Greene – 5.1
Uldis Bojars – 4.9
Don Crowley – 4.1
Ken McGuire – 3.6
Elly Parker – 3.5
Olivier Ansaldi – 2.5
Tom Raftery – 2.5
AlexiaG – 2.5
Gareth Stack 2.5
Robin Blandford 2.4
James Corbett 2.2
Liam Burke 1.9
Laura 1.8
Conn O Muineachain 1.6
Walter Higgins 1.5

Back in Ireland and the Fluffy links are back.

Macdara is moving to wordpress. Good. Blog looks much better already.

Pink champagne Sorbet. 20 quid a tub though! Yeah I still will buy it methinks.

Via Clare Dillon is news that the NUI Maynooth team that won the Irish Imagine Cup showcased their entry on the Microsoft Island in Second Life. Nice boost to them. They’re off to Korea now in the world championships. The product they built was an 0ff-the-shelf product that uses webcams to teach people sign language. Very clever in my view. You can read more on their website: www.signal.ie

Oh bollards!

I don’t have interesting neighbours, unlike some.

Flirty has moved to www.irishFlirtySomething.com. Update your bookmarks, if you are all old school and still use them.

I never realised video games and games consoles were banned in Greece. The EU are not liking it either.

7 Hours sitting on the tarmac before their plane set off. Delta are loving this video:

One dead iPhone:

Sufjan, Sylar and John Wayne Gacy Jr.:

John Collison added me to his Twitter this evening and with a lil clicking about, I found his blog and his brothers’ blog. Seems these two Irish lads are working at a startup in San Fran called Auctomatic along with a few other people. Auctomatic plugs into eBay and makes the life of a seller easier, I think. Auctomatic is funded by yCombinator and some Angel funding.

Auctomatic are: Harjeet Taggar, Kulveer Taggar, Patrick Collison and John Collison.

Patrick won the Young Scientist in 2005. He only reinvented LISP, dontchaknow. 😉 John is in transition year in school , is that right John?

Update: They have investors that include Paul Buchheit, he of building GMail fame and he of suggesting the “Don’t be evil” Google motto. Imagine having Paul as an investor. Nice.

If Paddy’s Valley happens, we should call in. In fact, maybe they should give us classes?

Forget paper, when I got my new computer, I consciously decided not to install any Microsoft Office software or OpenOffice. The past 6 months of writing for the Tribune and ENN, I’ve been using Google documents to do so and it has worked out really well. Lots of stuff needs to be fixed to make it a little more usable but for someone that doesn’t need anything complicated but a little bit of formatting, it’s fine. Well it is, until you get this error, which I’ve gotten a good few times in the past few months. When that happens, I fire up Notepad.

Not been paying attention to those who added me as a friend on Twitter. It seems there’s been a bit of growth of late of those people signing up to Twitter from Ireland. I’ve now added the following to my Twitter feeds in Google Reader:

Eamon Leonard.
Eoghan McCabe.
Maryrose Lyons.
HeidiPJ.
Bill de hOra.
John Ward.
Niall Byrne aka Nialler9.
Paul Campbell.
Stewart Curry.
Triona Carey.
Paul O’Mahony.
Niall Larkin.
Update:
Aisling Coppinger.
Update again, a few more:
Manic Mammy.
Fiona O’Neill.
Marcas O’Duinn.

Hi everyone! Also, here’s my public Google reader feed of the Irish people I know that are on Twitter. Happy to send on my OPML file too. This is me on Twitter.

Representing Carlow I believe. Nice to see gender equality has reached the Miss Ireland show.

Bit late to the game on this but on Monday evening Paul Walsh is hosting a very interesting and what looks to be a very impressive evening called Curry 2.0 where a bunch of folks will compete with each other over good food by pitching their idea, not to a suit, but to a waiter. Sounds fun. There’s a nice lineup too. It being a school night, I won’t be able to go up there but were I able to I’d be going to this networking event. I think a few journalists might go along and I’m emailing a few I know to see are they interested.

Now back to Cork and on the topic of booze. Tom Raftery is hosting an OpenDrinks event on Saturday July 14th at which Jennifer Pahlka, one of the organisers of the European Web 2.0 Expo, will be attending.

Then there’s all those OpenCoffee events in Cork, Limerick and Dublin. Great to see more and more good networking events happen.

I got your reg number and I got your taxi licence number and so does Angelsea Street Garda station now. I cannot believe that you carried on going after you scraped the side of your cab off the parked car. Yes everyone, the troublemaker is back.