Archive for the ‘blogs’ Category

What’s that gobshite doing on the television?

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

So a few days after the blog awards it was my 30th birthday and I really was too tired to go out for it but got dragged out the following night by my friends. Even though I didn’t want to.

Then they gave me my present. Which was a red jumper. You can tell my gratitude with that overjoyed expression on my face.

Big Red Jumper

I was then made wear this jumper without any sleeves. Still not knowing what was up. Thought I was going to get slippers and a pipe next or something. So I start opening the next present.

More present opening

And then it clicks with me when I see the cutout of a TV:

A line from Father Ted where Jack is giving out about Dougal being on the telly: “What’s that gobshite doing on the television? ” which is what one of them said when I was on the news talking about blogs.

Gobshite on TV

So then with my red jumper on and the cut-out of a telly, they made me re-renact the scene from Fr. Ted. Which was helpfully printed out in neat type on the back of the telly. Not that I could read it without my glasses.

After that they gave me a cake and had me cut slices from it. It was then I discovered that…

Cake Jumper

They had baked me a cake jumper. A Father Ted reference that I actually failed to get.

Oh yeah, here’s the cringeworthy YouTube of it. Warning, excessive Cork accents:

Satisfied Mind

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

Covered by Jeff Buckley, Johnny Cash and a whole heap more. Buckley sang this at a tribute to his father in and around 1991 and his recorded version of this was the last song played at his own funeral just a few years later.

how many times have you heard someone say
if I had his money, I would do things my way
but little they know, that it’s so hard to find
one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind

money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old
friend when you’re lonely, oh peace to your soul
the wealthiest person is a pauper at times
compared to the man with a satisfied mind

my life is over and my time has run out
my friends and my loved ones, i’ll leave these no doubt
one things for certain, when it comes my time
i’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind
i’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind
my life is over and my time has run out

my friends and my loved ones, i’ll leave these no doubt
but one things for certain, when it comes my time
i’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind
one things for certain, when it comes my time
i’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind

200,871 spams since June 06

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

Installed Askimet in June 06 and from then til now it has stopped over 200k spams. God bless WordPress.com 🙂

Update: Nothing compared to Techcrunch though. 15,000 spams a day!

St Patrick wasn’t a Saint – Next we’ll hear God is make believe

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Via the Blakester.

Yeah I dunno why I called him that either…

I’m reminded of Dougal questioning his faith.

More Irish Election candidates on YouTube / Boards.ie gets an Election Forum

Friday, March 16th, 2007

The Western people reported on two Mayo Dáil candidates doing YouTube campaign videos. Fianna Fail’s Frank Chambers and Fine Gael’s John O’Mahony both have videos on YouTube but they’re quite different. Chambers’ video takes place in his kitchen whereas O’Mahony’s is a medley of photos and screens listing his promises and contains music from the Saw Doctors and some other Irish band.

This is Frank’s – “Be Frank, Vote Chambers”.

Not a bad video apart from the looking down too often.

Frank then has local people giving their video support but the trouble is it looks staged. Maybe it’s just nerves but it does feel like the guy is reading from a script.

All Frank’s videos can be accessed here.

This is John’s – Vote John O’Mahony

Slicker, more like the usual political TV spots. No video of the man himself talking to the people. I’d prefer the human touch of Frank’s.

Here’s an interesting fact. Frank’s video was uploaded around the same time as the Labour Party’s “But, are you happy?” video and the Labour video has been viewed 639 times. Frank’s has been viewed 891 times. O’Mahony’s was uploaded two weeks ago and has been viewed 486 times.

Meanwhile Boards.ie now has an 2007 Election forum.

Finally press released about the ShareIT day in Cork

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

BusinessAdvisory.ie press release about ShareIT finally out the gap. Let me know if you want to go along to it and please pass it along to people who you might think would be interested in going too. So far takeup has been fairly slack but I’ve not had time to promote it well, what with other things but I’m sure people will be sick of mention of it by next weekend.

More New Twits on the Block – March 15th

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Aidan Finn

Paul Walsh.

Matt Verso.

Fluffy Links – March 15th 2007

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

The Kazak version of Baywatch.

Well done Salim Ismail. It almost feels like he’s a Corkonian with his frequent visits here and his work for Bupa a few years back.

The Colin1 discovers the Brit TV series Ultra-violet. Was a great bloody show I must say.

Congrats to the McGarrs.

Ralph points out there’s now a Yahoo! Group for ex-Moto Cork employees.

Kottke says blokes spend a lot of time looking at the crotches of other blokes and even animals. Very weird.

Via my father:

Then don’t fucking subscribe

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Michele doesn’t like Twitter it seems:

It’s probably the biggest waste of time I’ve come across in years.

Does anyone really give a damn what other people are doing all the time.

Michele says:

While we may all do interesting things a lot of what we do is incredibly boring. This is why I own a DVD player, a TV, books etc.,

(Keep in mind Michele blogs about special-edition soundtracks that he buys from Amazon.)

Someone telling the world that they are sitting on a bus isn’t going to improve my life. If I wanted to know where someone was I could ring them, email them, IM them .. you get the idea..

If I want to know what you are planning to do I can check your calendar / diary (if you have a public one)

The best bit:

If it was “hip� to jump of cliffs would you all do it?

I do believe that at one stage or another, all of these arguments were used to knock blogging too. Simple way of not getting worked up about Twitter is don’t fucking subscribe, then you won’t have to read about what people are doing on the bus, what people are eating now or what boring fucking soundtrack they just bought. The same goes for blogging. Don’t subscribe if you don’t want to read about whatever. It isn’t forced on you. Don’t want to read about what people are doing with blogs, don’t read. If you don’t like that people are blogging about Twitter, then unsubscribe. RSS empowers you, you control what you read and who you read. Nothing is forced on you.

There was a lot of hype and relentless chatter when GMail started a few years ago and that was just bloody email with a little bit of AJAX and a lot of space. Twitter is no different in the revolution game and is not something special. People seem to think that just because the volume of people talking about Twitter is great, that it automatically means they think it’ll change the world. Quite a silly assumption to make.

Twitter is Gomi, it is shite, it’s called Twitter for a good reason. So what if it is a fad, nobody is saying it’s the next big thing, nobody is making you use it. The usual tech snobbery is again happening here. “Oh gawd, you use a PC”, “Oh gawd, you use Windows and not ubuntu”, “Oh gawd my shit don’t stink, yours does”

As a social experiment, I find Twitter interesting but what I like more is that people are getting creative and having fun and coming up with useful and useless things to do with it. What you can do is quite restrictive yet many people are working with these scarce resources and having a laugh. I’ve seen more focus and creativity from the Irish tech bloggers over this than most stuff in the past few years. Twitter is tech play-doh but I guess some would rather us keep quiet about us making messes.

Twitter patter of little Tweet – New Twits on the block – March 14th

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Conor Power of Blog Awards Second Life video operator and getting mistaken for a journalist fame.

Tom Murphy. This Tom Murphy. His Twitter profile was new to me!

I see Bernie is getting lots of his students to play around using Twitter. Too.

Here’s the Educast Twitter.

Bill Burke‘s Twitter.

Stephanie O’Shea’s Twitter.

Imelda Morton’s Twitter.

dlaoc’s Twitter.

Waider’s Twitter.