Category: irishblogs

“TTC – Trying To Conceive” Book Launch today

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Fiona McPhillips’ book “TTC: Trying to Conceive – The Irish Couple’s Guide” is going to be launched today at 1830 upstairs in the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton Street. Fiona is the award winning blogger who blogs from the heart about fertility issues at The Waiting Game and now with a new website she also has a discussion forum for those that read the blog and visit her site. The whole site, like the book is a fantastic resource.

Trying to Conceive

I only got my review copy yesterday but even though I don’t think a gay man would fit the target audience, I’m actually finding it fascinating. I’ve learned stuff already. Maybe I’m like the father in The Snapper who gets hooked on the pregnancy books? As well as clear explanations for the biology and biochemistry that goes on, the book from my take is the supreme resource for fertility information and it is also dotted with stories from men and women about the issues they had when they tried to conceive. Fiona has created a wonderful guide and in it has given a voice to so many others too.

Best of luck at the book launch this evening Fiona!

Fluffy Links – Tuesday April 22nd 2008

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Another week, another big loss of data. Bank of Ireland customer?

Have a looksee at the VRT Ireland website.

Via Sinéad Blogging lessons for Bloggers wanting to be Journos and vice-versa.

This is pretty mad. A market in Bangkok that sits on train tracks that trains still travel on a few times a day. When the trains come they move off the tracks and back on again.

Have you seen the new Skype deal? Unlimited landline calls for just over 3 euros a month.

Mobile broadband. Shit in the UK too.

CNN now does merchandise that you can put headlines on. More filtering might be needed.

dEUS – Architect
[youtube k2CFDsG_oxg]

This is still my favourite dEUS song: Suds and Soda [Update: actual vid now]
[youtube h3r7Oo0Fs-8]

Sweet Child O’ Mine
[youtube ng2fq0oY3eM]

SEX! Now that I have your … Facebook fan pages

Monday, April 21st, 2008

So in case you missed the memo, Facebook allows companies and individuals to basically create profiles for brands which they call pages. Instead of friending them like you do on Bebo or mySpace you “fan” them. What’s really clever (or maybe awful depending on your viewpoint) is that when someone friends a brand it shows up in the newsfeed of their friends. A nice viral way of spreading the world. BUT you can also run ads based on this action. Sinéad mentioned it before when a friend of hers became a fan of Phantom.

This is what it looks like:
Phantom Fan Ad

So anyways, I thought it would be a hoot, yes a hoot, to create a page called Cock so that you could see “Mary has become a fan of Cock” on news feeds. Alas, Facebook have a naughty filter. BOO!

Facebook no likey Cock

So screw it, I created the fanpage for Gnéas, the Irish word for sex. Aren’t I almost clever? Why not become a fan of Gnéas?

And this is how it’s seen in the Newsfeed:
Facebook fan of Gnéas

As well as that I have ads running too so when someone you know is a fan, you’ll see an ad like the one for Tim above, though it’ll look something like this:
Facebook Gnéas

Yes, it’s accepted I have too much time on my hands.

67 year old, taunted on video, falls over and is sat on

Monday, April 21st, 2008

But good ole Slugger O’Toole take the word of the makers of the heavily edited video of Prionsias de Rossa getting assaulted and decide that he’s a liar, it wasn’t an assault or an attack. Stupid old codger is just old. Oh no, they added a question mark, that’s ok then. Assholes? How very Ron Burgundy.

Prionsias de Rossa is by definition an old man. Whatever his build, (which apparently is crucial for the understanding of what happened) it is ignorant to taunt anyone, let alone a pensioner and if he tripped or was pushed it is a fact that when he fell they didn’t help him up but instead they fucking sat on him and taunted him further. It was an anti-Lisboner too who called the cops over this shameful incident. This of course is left out of the video but many witnesses were there to see it happen. If this was done to any of my grandparents or relations or neighbours I’d go mental.

[youtube ofg3_O77yJs]

With the lack of murderers blowing people up in the North, Slugger O’Toole obviously needs to reposition itself but it’s a shame they’ve decided to get all gutterpress about it with the way they presented this to their readership. The Cedars have gone and actually researched who these people are. That’s good blogging but then it is the Cedars, the best political and cultural bloggers we have in Ireland.

Jazz covers this too.

Chambers of Commerce of Ireland in cluelessness shocker

Monday, April 21st, 2008

To extend broadband to more of the country they want schools to open classrooms in the evenings and weekends so the greater community can avail of the broadband the school has:

In the context of leveraging resources, in particular technology for all of our benefit, Dr. Coughlan continued “One way to equip communities with the skill sets needed in the global economy is to extend the schools broadband service to enable all community stakeholders to enjoy the benefits of technology out-of-hours, thereby extending the footprint of broadband services throughout the country in a cost effective manner.”

Most schools have a satellite dish to provide broadband. It’s got a speed of 512k download. It’s almost useless. In areas where schools have proper broadband people themselves can get it at home. Why open the schools? It’s not as if there is a problem with convincing people to use broadband. The issue is availablity not demand.
Most schools don’t have good computers, the public adding wear and tear will make things worse.
Most schools don’t have the resources to pay someone to come in out of hours to supervise the public.

This would be the same Chambers that I met the EU with who were smug enough to suggest rural dwellers can always move into the cities to get broadband and rural dwellers should have to pay higher line rental because it was unfair on city dwellers to have to subsidise them.

And then the Chambers jumped on the Collison bandwagon:

Citing the example of the Collison brothers from Castletroy, Limerick who recently sold their web based start-up to Canadian company Live Current Media, Dr. Coughlan continued, “It is vital that we invest in communities to ensure that they achieve the very best of their abilities. Young people such as Patrick and John Collison remind us of the talent that there is in Ireland,” Dr. Coughlan concluded.

Hey Ican, I Better

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Bertie, Take Enda With You Facebook Group – 302 members
Iron Man Competition to go to UK Premier Facebook Group – 204 members
Mr Tayto for President – 296 members
Dear L drivers, shut the fuck up and take the damned test – 587 members

Hi Ican!

Twins
Photo owned by hownowdesign (cc)

Fluffy links – Monday April 21st 2008

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Going to the Open Coffee Club BBQ on July 16th?

So so many badges these days.

New Limerick blog, the Celtic Donkey.

Something every blogger needs to watch? Stephen Fry docu on Gutenberg and the printing press.

Stephen’s investigation combines historical detective work and a hands-on challenge. He travels to France and Germany on the trail of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press and early media entrepreneur. Along the way he discovers the lengths Gutenberg went to keep his project secret, explores the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors, and discovers why printing mattered so much in medieval Europe.

[youtube 91smRXrEPRs]

How fantastically analog. Muxtape -> Analog service. Russell Davies will put your muxtape on to a cassette.

Via JP is the brilliant BBC Sound Index on music popularity and it uses iTunes, Amazon, Bebo, mySpace etc. to guage popularity. Check how some are massive on Bebo and how that can generate sales too.

SSH into Mozilla.

Presidential candidates meet with right-wing anti-gay Christian college. No fuss made cos they’re Obama and Clinton and not McCain.

TinyURL, URL.ie and now ZombieURL.

Bruce Schneier at the NJ ACLU
[google 4780331430584933656]

M83 – Graveyard Girl (their new album is pretty damned good)
[youtube gY8iy8S0S4w]

Meanwhile Labour’s Kathleen Lynch writes a sicknote for a child rapist

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Kathleen should resign over this.

Trevor Casey from Closes Road, Fairhill in Cork was sentenced on Friday to 13 years imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of the two teenage sisters of his former girlfriend.

The girls were 14 and 17 at the time. The Courts aren’t finished with him yet. He’s up for the sexual assault of another girl too.

Labour TD Kathleen Lynch wrote to the Judge on behalf of his family as did Labour Councillor John Murray. Who fucking cares if his parents are good people. Many evil people have good parents. The parents were not on trial here, their son who raped kids was. There’s war in the Northside of Cork over this with Kathleen Lynch refusing to talk to the press for a long while. It seems Eamonn Gilmore when asked to comment on it would not til he talked to her and said he couldn’t make contact. Then Kathleen released this statement:

I have received a number of queries about a letter I wrote, which was referred to by Mr. Justice Patrick McCarthy when he was today imposing a sentence of 13 years on Trevor Casey for a number of extremely serious sexual offences.

I do not know Treovor Casey personally, as I made clear in the letter. I do know his parents as good and decent people and when his mother asked me to write a letter to this effect, I agreed. It would have been cowardly of me to refuse to do so.

These are horrific offenses, for which Trevor Casey has been found guilty and the judge has imposed what he considered to be the appropriate sentence. I have no issue with the court process or the sentence imposed.

I have always been an advocate of proper support for victims of sexual attacks and believe serious offenders should receive and serve appropriate sentences.

My letter did not and was not intended to understate in any way the offences committed against the two victims in this case. I deeply sympathise with them and hope that in time they will be able to make a full recovery from their ordeal.

Kathleen Lynch T.D

Not good enough. Kathleen Lynch needs to follow what her own party said when Bobby Molloy resigned. Will Brendan Howlin ask Kathleen to resign?

RTE coverage. Breakingnews coverage.

Green TD Paul Gogarty: Clap harder gays clap harder

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Update: Paul Gogarty has left his version below, which I believe and I’m altering the post to reflect this.

Via email from Deputy Gogarty:

I would suggest that the so-called quote be altered as it is factually incorrect and maliciously slanted. I never said keep putting pressure on the Green Party. ‘They’ refers to Fianna Fail, although the rest of that passage was not what I said.

It’s a bit like Peter Pan isn’t it? Apparently Paul Gogarty of the Green Party told someone that gay people need to make more noise if they want equal rights. He complained not enough gay people have been contacting the Green Party Fianna Fáil conservatives to beg and grovel for equality.

they (Fianna Fáil) as a party have had little input from members of the gay community, and that there has to be pressure from all of us in order for any changes to be made.

So we all clapped harder and louder to help tinkerbell so maybe all the gay people have to work that little bit harder for the hard of hearing Green Party Fianna Fáil. I know LGBT Noise are useless but they do what they say on the tin and Christ almighty David Norris never shuts up. How exactly should the begging letters be addressed to the Government? Glitter envelopes? Fabulous handwriting?

Scott
Photo owned by silens (cc)

Great work Indo!

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Via Elana. This is how you don’t protect an identity. Appeared in print and online edition.

Indo Screw up massively