Damien Mulley

Two new pairs.

Ahhh vanity

This is the 1.2kg rib-eye steak a co-worker had the other day. Notice his phone next to the plate. Yes, big plate, bigger steak.

This is the small 850gram rib-eye steak I had. Yeah it was a bit fatty.

And this is the trout I had a few weeks ago. Yes of course I ate it all, including the eyes. Mmmm, jelly.

EDIT: Forgot to add that I had a sing-a-long with the fish and had it opening and closing its’ mouth as it sang with me.

The loud-mouthed, write about everything and anything, highly opinionated bloggers should be the ones promoters look after.

I just got another one of those Hotpress free passes for a movie emails today. Because I’m not in Dublin I never get to see the movies. I’m not up on this whole deal but I guess Hotpress gets money for promoting these movies and additionally they get goodwill from their readers for giving them free passes. The payoff for the movie promoters is to create buzz about the movie and get people talking about it as well as having an advertisment for it in Hot Press. Could they get a bigger bang for their buck with bloggers?

Why not allocate a percentage of these tickets to bloggers? People who by their nature talk and share their thoughts with others. People who are opinionated, people who might just write really good reviews if they see a movie. Reviews that will quickly be indexed by Google. The same goes for new up and coming bands who tour the world. All these early tours are there to generate hype, to create interested, to grow fanbases and to get the word out. Shouldn’t bloggers who are into music be given free tickets to gigs, bloggers such as the In Fact, Ah massif? I’d welcome opinions on music, drama and movies from a lot of the bloggers out there who I’d give more trust to than some of the folks that write “fantastic” reviews of the latest disney shite that gets released.

But what happens if someone says the movie is shit? Well that’s quality control in a manner of speaking isn’t it? Doesn’t it encourage the movie studios to make better movies? If people are genuinely into making great movies then they should be genuinely soliciting unbiased feedback. Let the bloggers be part of the Quality Assurance programme. Not that you have a choice as they’ll still give their opinions whether you bring them to a movie or a film or not. The first entity to spot this market and link up bloggers to promoters could make a nice living out of it. The big issue too should be that there is a no obligation agreement. Nobody should have to blog a review, it is up to them if they want to write one.

Fixer asked me to let you all know that one of the doyens of social software and open standards – Marc Canter is coming to Dublin and if you can make it you should dine with the guy on April 26th in the Market Bar. Marc is over for the Web 2.0 conference in Dublin and you should go to that too. Marc’s enthusiasm for everything is infectious and is well worth hanging around the guy and talking about everything and anything. More details from Conor O’Neill. I wish I could go but I have college exams a few days later. Oh yes, and I’ll give good odds to anyone that can party harder than Marc. Check out this podcast of Marc Canter with Tom Raftery.

And don’t worry precious, the lowly bloggers thing was just to annoy you enough to read this. 🙂 You’re not lowly you’re remarkably fantastic. Mind your ego fits through your door now.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

Quote from the Sandman by Neil Gaiman.

Tomorrow night is the night!

What a great song. This is Owen Pallett. He helped do strings for Arcade Fire. I loved this song the second I heard it. Already ordered his debut album. Pitchfork Profile. The great news? He plays Whelan’s on May 14th. So so so soooooo there.

Anyone know if there are any Irish blogs on agriculture or rural life?

I’m currently trying to get someone to build a coverage map for broadband in Ireland. It will list every enabled exchange and have a 5km radius around each exchange to show max coverage. I have the locations of all exchanges but need someone to plot them on a map of Ireland now. Can anyone help with this? Looking to have this done by Thursday if possible.

UPDATE: I’ve posted what I’m looking for here.