Yesterday marked the passing of a great British comic, Jeremy Beadle. The entertainer used to crack me up as a kid, watching Beadle’s About, when he would spring the most surreal of events on the unsuspecting public. He then went on to bring the funny home video clips idea to the UK market which possibly inspired the early generation of Jackass type actors but no doubt was the first example of user generated media content that we saw, long, long before anything like youtube arrived on the scene. RIP Jemery.

Believe it or not a custom error message has been patented. Who’d have thought it? What next, the delay period between page loads? source: Slashdot

Just heard yesterday that a rogue trader working in France has cost a major French bank about Eur 4.9 billion. How come everytime a recession is forecast that a rogue trader is found out? Is it that everyone loves a rogue trader when they’re making money? source: Irish Times

It would appear that voters are currently undecided on whether or not the Taoiseach should resign after all this recent surface scratching has revealed. 44% think he should go and 46% say he shouldn’t. Hopefully this will clarify it for everyone: Jump Bertie! Jump!! source: Irish Times

That’s what Daniel Craig’s second outing as 007 will be called or so the official word, released today, says. Rumour is that the film will be out in November and I’m looking forward to seeing the continuance of Craig’s gritty Bond character and whether or not he will become less likeable as a character thereby being truer to the books or if he’ll mellow into a Roger Moore type Bond. I’m sincerely hoping that it’s the former. source: The Register

Every now and then in Ireland, the issue of counties acknowledging each other for what they are pops up. Dublin, being the biggest City in the republic, often has its residents stereotyped as not knowing the world outside of it (something I have come across sadly). Other counties are so bitter that they’ll do anything to be noted, constantly kicking up a stink about what they didn’t get. Counties in the West constantly have politicians campaigning for them with the poor mouth on, even though they have, in large, better infrastructure and funding than most of the rest of the country put together. Kilkenny feels so pressurised about its town status that it insists upon calling itself a city at every given opportunity even though that title of “medieval city” is only supposed to be granted for ceremonial purposes. And then there’s Waterford, the little known county residing in the Southeast of the country. The fifth largest urban area in Ireland yet rarely recognised. The city that the American tourists think was named after the crystal factory. When do you ever hear a peep from Waterford? Never is the answer. We’re a quiet bunch of folk here who like to get on with life and enjoy the wonderful countryside that nature gave us.

Last week we all heard the news of a plane crash at Heathrow in London. The Boeing 777 passenger jet seemingly lost power to both of its engines and only thanks to the skill of the pilot, managed to crash land just inside the airport fences. Anyone who knows me, will know that I haven’t flown in almost 3.5 years now and nor do I have any intention of leaving the ground by somebody else’s choosing, anytime soon. The theories are out on why this 777 lost power to both engines almost at the same time and the finger is being pointed at computer error; linked with examples from other 777 aircraft doing “odd” things in recent times. As a software engineer I know that no system is infallible and if I were to put my life into the hand of a surgeon or a computer to perform an operation I know that the surgeon with win without a second thought. So why do people trust computers to fly them around in craft that simply cannot stay in the air without uninterrupted power and perfect balance? source: The Register

Normally us computer users freak out over not backing up important data at times when we lose it. We always say that it will never happen again and we pontificate to others about the importance of doing so. Well the Irish government is now going to take that step for us and back up everything we do online in about a month’s time. This includes e-mails, chats and even just logging on and off of the internet (presuming you either have dial-up or turn off your broadband router regularly). From what I gather the content of transmissions may not be kept but the details of who communicated to who and at what time will be, for at least 3 years. One would of course have to question how that data is destroyed after 3 years and whether or not digital data ever really goes away. Deeply disturbing action on behalf of the Irish gov; seemingly there isn’t even legislation allowing them to do so at the moment and they are moving on this under a temporary statutory order. Now if only they’d back-up content and provide an access API for people, they’d have the perfect service! source: Irish Times

In Ireland we have a body called the HSE (Health Service Executive) that supposedly is there to manage the health sector and keep problems at bay. Straight away when you hear the word “Executive” you just know that no work is being done and with the state of our health system in Ireland you’d be forgiven for thinking such. Anyway over the weekend I saw an advert on prime time television reminding people that when dealing with health care professionals, they should always ask, as it is their right to do so, if they have washed their hands before attending to them. Fair enough, good point. However, this was not a 10 second clip with text and a voiceover, this was a multiple actor, professionally shot, long advert that must have cost an absolute fortune to make and put in a prime time slot. No prizes for guessing that the HSE put this ad into existence and no prizes for knowing that the logic of putting a 5 euro printed sign at the admittance hatch of A&E would undoubtedly target more hospital goers than this advert did. God knows how much money was wasted on this commercial, needlessly. That money would be far better spent dealing with the cleanliness and staffing issues of our hospitals. If this was an isolated incident then perhaps I wouldn’t be so harsh but it follows on from a string of things done by the HSE such as the heavyweight publication on proper parenting that was sent to households last year, again a total waste of tax payers money, in postage, printing and distribution costs. Actions speak louder than words and it’s about time that the HSE realised that the only thing the public wants to see them do is sort out the health service and not clog up our TVs and letterboxes with marketing fluff.

Well that’s not entirely true, I do have a bit of an interest in anything that the space pioneers get up to but the subject of this post would not have been so damning otherwise. Anyway a Japanese team are set to launch a paper airplane from the space station, coated with special heat resistant stuff and they expect that it will survive re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere. If this succeeds I expect that space travel will finally be within the reach of origami experts everywhere who have been waiting for their time to come. source: Boing Boing