Possibly of humourous interest to many around the time of Valentine’s Day. If you’re having problems with your dating life then maybe, just maybe, basic electronics holds the answer… source: Boing Boing

Another good tip from John Chow dot com: When creating your webpage links on your site/blog always remember to fill out the meta data associated with your links (such as the title attribute). It’s better for search engines to help rate your site and use your site as a top result. Best information = top results! Simple formula, worth doing. source: John Chow dot Com

I’ve all but had it with this country’s minister for justice: on the news today I hear him pompously attacking Pat Rabbitte for his party’s policy on reducing the lower tax band, describing Rabbitte as hypocritical and it being a very sad moment for him. Big words indeed from a minister for justice that somehow managed to build a three storey, one-off development, holiday home in a rural area and win a controversial case against the county council of the area despite his own builders stating on record that they did not adhere to planning regulations. From a minister that leaks information to the press when he sees fit to sully somebody’s name. From a minister that jumped on the stamp duty band wagon in order to gain popularity. From a minister… you know what, the country knows your record minister. Let the election speak and let’s just hope that the population is not afraid of your bark as it is only too true that you have never bitten! Nobody wants to hear what you have to say anymore, quite frankly everytime you open your mouth you just pi** me off and many others, so please shut the f**k up!

IFTA as in IFTA was something else on, nobody would watch them. Sadly as I lay here still recovering from a long illness, obviously still too sick to reach the remote, I reluctantly admit, nay confess, to watching the IFTA show on RTE. Having just seen the ceremony all the way through I can without doubt say that for a show to honour the greatest from film and television it is the most awful production that I have ever witnessed. In addition to make contrasts to other award shows, the only difference between the IFTAs and the Oscars is, at least those receiving awards at the Oscars know how to fake surprise at having “won”.

The constant chat in the background during acceptance speaches, the constant reuse of clips from movies showing up just how limited the production crew must have been, the barrage of bad jokes and so much more. The only saving grace of the ceremony was that the nominated and intolerable Martin King did not win an award. Up Waterford Martin! Perhaps you didn’t get the award due to a failed geography assessment of Irish cities? I’m just too sick to write any more but I’m sure that my resting dreams will no doubt torment my recovery process that is already going far too slow for my liking…

Earlier in the week Bernie Goldbach and Paul Watson set me up for the mail that I too was dreading for a long time. That mail arrived on January 31st, the same day I read Bernie and Paul’s postings but for some reason I put off reading the mail until tonight. I had hoped that somehow by ignoring it until everyone else was unhappy then I would get the golden ticket, sorry Charlie, chocolate factory is closed today.

For anyone completely lost this mail was with respect to the merger of Yahoo and Flickr accounts. Yahoo bought out Flickr some time ago and now they are forcing all members to ‘avail’ of Yahoo ID’s to log into the service. Like many out there I have had a Flickr account for a long time, although only keeping a permanent stash of photos online recently, I am an “old skool” member who had to use the backdoor login for the last number of months. I’m also a paying “pro” user as I just loved the service so much, it’s one of the very few online services I have ever paid for.

Now I am being told that I can no longer login with the e-mail address I used to register. Instead I will be required to create a Yahoo ID and use that to log in. Am I annoyed? OH YES! I certainly am! As Flickr screen names are unqiue you’d think the simple solution would be Yahoo ID = screen name. Sadly Yahoo has been around for a long long time and your screen name is, well, not available, not matter who you are. Even cheesynun4fun will be disappointed. On top of this, it means that the fee for my pro account will no longer be going to great service developers but instead to the corporate blood wagon that is the parent company who will no doubt start pushing things onto my Flickr account that I really don’t want there. Oh the annoyance of it all! Well I better go register TickedOffOldSkoolMemberWithaVendetta before somebody else nabs it.

Without doubt, the summary of anyone working outside of R&D in the computing world coupled with the sad reality of it all… Dilbert 03-02-2007

The news has broken over night with respect to the disastrous online system provided by the CAO for leaving certificate students filling out their college choices. Seemingly the website has been frequently inaccessible causing much distress to students who are already on nerves end with their approaching exams and confusion as to whether or not their choices will be good ones. In addition the students have now been told to post their applications and pay the Eur 10 fee for doing so – insulting to say the least. What makes this case completely inexcusable is that unlike many other websites where the number of users in indeterminable, the CAO already knows exactly how many students are registered to sit the leaving certificate. Not having the hardware/software combination to scale to this number is completely ridiculous. Especially when you consider that this is Ireland and we really can’t have that many people sitting their leaving certificate this year! Shame on you CAO, shame on you…