Archive for March, 2008
Fixed Easter?
Apparently an Irish business group has got together to propose that Easter should fall on a fixed date each year. Now this is just brilliant! The article is citing that the group wants all manner of altruistic causes to be served by a fixed date for Easter but why would a business group want things that don't benefit business or at least don't appear to on the surface? Personally I think that this is just another way of trying to force the Irish workforce to be more manageable drones with less variation from year to year. Ireland is a Catholic country that has always abided by major Catholic [...]
You too could be a star
Tip of the hat to JazzBiscuit for showing me this first and as such I'm trailing way behind the world of recent events by posting this but the more I think about it, the more it is worth a post. Many out there will be aware of the name Sophie Merry, who at this stage is Ireland's leading lady on youtube with nearly 2.2 million views, making it one of the most popular video entries of all time. That's a fair achievement! Now I sadly have no dance or artistic background so forgive me Sophie if I wrongly describe your work as original interpretive dance, whatever title it should have, the bottom [...]
Arthur C. Clarke RIP
Nothing but death in the last couple of days. This morning I learned of the death of Arthur C. Clarke, the famous author of "2001 a Space Odyssey". Arthur's imagination and understanding of the vaguely known gave rise to an entire generation of devoted fans to his work. I first encountered him in the context of his "The Mysterious World of Aurthur C. Clarke" before I saw 2001. His conviction for bringing the mysteries of the world out into the open was on a parallel to David Attenborough's passion for publicising the animal kingdom. Sadly missed he will be. source: NY Times
Organised Spammers
I have posted on occasion when spammers have made me laugh and today is no exception to that pattern of my behaviour. We are all so used to getting spam in one form or other, be it suspect medications, lottery wins, traditional 419'ers or any other number of things. Today however, there was something new in my inbox - a Google Calendar invite... from a 419 spammer. Don't tell me that these guys have gotten so busy that they are now scheduling victims of their elaborate scams? Anyway I got an invite to meet with them in Lagos at 1700h today. Sadly I only got the invite late and couldn't get a [...]
The finest Cod fillet
In sad news today, Captain Bird's Eye has passed away at the age of 86, well the actor who played him anyhow. Probably the most iconic Captain of an entire generation, if not two. The memories of the ads will live on. Adieu! source: BBC News
Something is rotten, in this state!
We live in a time where our country's leader is on trial for corruption and yet is still allowed to run the state and to look into passing legislation that will stop people trying to find out if the claims of corruption are true. That's Ireland in a nutshell sadly; at the current moment in time. We also have a media situation whereby certain newspapers act as the last bastion of all that is true and factual and are allowed to publish such even if nobody else in the country is aware of the statements that they make.Readers of my blog will be aware that there is a massive push on, in the South [...]
Getting published
Recently I sent four staggered e-mails and most recently (last week) I sent a written letter by regular post to the Irish Times on the issue of a university for the South East. For some reason, none of my requests to be published in the "Letters to the Editor" section fell on the right desk. Hence, I have decided to bypass the Irish Times and publish my letter here instead, where I don't charge people to read it. I never thought that my right to reply would be so difficult to attain but after five attempts I can only conclude that my points were not of interest to the editor, nor were my [...]
Just how ridiculous is this?
We now live in an age whereby the complete over-reaction to terrorism, that has always been going on but never highlighted, ensures that we live each and every day in fear. Whether we step on a bus, wait for a flight or any other daily activity, we have seen some media campaign that makes us think, "what if...". This plight of media delivered, politically-driven sensationalism is striking fear into more parts of the world than terrorism has ever reached. There's no such thing as a plane crash any more without the press release stating that so far terrorism has been ruled out, why not just an [...]
links for 2008-03-05
Linux.com :: Five fun ways to use a Linux webcam useful links for webcam recording using linux (tags: linux web cam camera software record recording media mpg avi compression video4linux)
Silverlight 60
Apparently, Nokia are to embed the Microsoft Silverlight client into their S60 handsets. The often feared symbian OS is now getting a pseudo-Flash client that will allow developers to make applications for S60 phones easier than they have been able to do so in native Symbian code. However, the combination of non-Flash posing as Flash on a platform that is widely acknowledged to be difficult to interact with sounds to me like it's a last ditch attempt to keep S60 developers happy before symbian is dropped once and for all. It can't survive much longer, can it? source: The Register
