Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

Hugh Macleod Business Cards – Every asshole should have one

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

I’ve been bitten by the Macleod bug and have shelled out for a few business cards from Streetcards.

Side A:
Damien Mulley Business Card

Side B:
Damien Mulley Business Card

The reaction has been interesting, some people laugh out loud and pocket the card. Some laugh out loud, pocket the card and then you can see them saying “What a fucking wanker” to themselves. The 3rd kind look at the card and tell me it is not funny and business people should take business seriously yadda yadda yadda. The 4th kind laugh at the card and then tell me I’m an asshole. I can work with these people the best.

Still, whoever I give the card to, there’s always a reaction, unlike when I get cards from most people where it’s a mechanical movement from one wallet to the other without any brain cells being stimulated. That’s the good thing about Hugh’s work, it always fires up those neurons, be it cards, suits or wine.

At least it’s not like the scene from American Psycho:

Edit: Howdy Hughsters!

What’s that gobshite doing on the television?

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

So a few days after the blog awards it was my 30th birthday and I really was too tired to go out for it but got dragged out the following night by my friends. Even though I didn’t want to.

Then they gave me my present. Which was a red jumper. You can tell my gratitude with that overjoyed expression on my face.

Big Red Jumper

I was then made wear this jumper without any sleeves. Still not knowing what was up. Thought I was going to get slippers and a pipe next or something. So I start opening the next present.

More present opening

And then it clicks with me when I see the cutout of a TV:

A line from Father Ted where Jack is giving out about Dougal being on the telly: “What’s that gobshite doing on the television? ” which is what one of them said when I was on the news talking about blogs.

Gobshite on TV

So then with my red jumper on and the cut-out of a telly, they made me re-renact the scene from Fr. Ted. Which was helpfully printed out in neat type on the back of the telly. Not that I could read it without my glasses.

After that they gave me a cake and had me cut slices from it. It was then I discovered that…

Cake Jumper

They had baked me a cake jumper. A Father Ted reference that I actually failed to get.

Oh yeah, here’s the cringeworthy YouTube of it. Warning, excessive Cork accents:

How to use Google to get a girl and get laid

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006


This article is about using the many Google sites and applications to get yourself a girl and get yourself laid. In it we’re going to use a guy called Johnny McCool. Johnny is a 22 year old Internet nerd. He works as a programmer with some megacorp, went straight from the computer labs in college to the cubicle farm. He needs to get out more and he needs a girlfriend.

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1. Google Search

Getting Laid with Google

a) Getting yourself found.
b) Profiling the person

Getting yourself found.

The Google search engine is a very powerful way of getting yourself found. A good way to get yourself found is to create your own website with lots of details about yourself on it. Or rather lots of untrue crap that you hope some girl will find appealing. Since Johnny McCool is using his real name then it makes sense for him to register JohnnyMcCool.com. To get yourself found you will need to structure your site in such a way as to make it “search engine friendly”. This means a few things such as figuring out what words you want people to use when they search for you and then seeding your webpages with those search terms. Further to this, the more you update the site, the more Google will visit and the higher up in search results you’ll be. Google rewards you for fresh content. Therefore set up a blog on your site.

Now, it would also be good to create content that women like and use this as the honeypot to get them to your site. Have lots of links on every page to your profile on networks such as Orkut (more below), have lots of good pictures of yourself (see the piece on Picasa below) and have contact details for you readily available. Think of articles such as “Why as a man I think it is ok to cry” and “I can be tough but emotional at the same time”. Don’t forget to sprinkle with trigger phrases such as “modern man” “strong but sensitive”. Don’t go too far though, or your male friends might beat you up .. in Second Life.

Profiling the person

Profiling is researching someone so you are better informed on how to woo them. Woo, not stalk. It’s a thin line folks but a line nonetheless. Google will allow you to search forums, sites and blogs for people looking for their ideal man. It is best to search for phrases with the names of local places so that you don’t have to travel 100s of miles to meet women.

As well as finding specific women, you can also use Google to find out what women want. A few simple google phrases will deliver you lists of things they want in a perfect mate. There are 1000s of websites out there devoted to women saying what they look for in a man. Go Google them.

2. Google AdWords

Google AdWords allow you to advertise on search results pages and on the 100s of 1000s of websites that run Google Ads. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This means that if someone is searching for something you can choose to have an ad appear for that search phrase. Johnny McCool can have an ad for his website JohnnyMcCool.com
when someone searches for the phrase: Does mr. right exist? and when the results page appears, the ad will be on the right hand side:
Johnny McCool

3. Google Mail and Google Talk

Google Mail
Finding someones gmail is easy enough nowadays and with Google making us all be adult and use firstname.lastname style combinations it should be easy to guess the email addreses of people you’d like to date. GMail and GTalk conversations are stored in your GMail account too so it is very easy to search over past conversations to “remember” what her interests are.

But the important thing about GMail is that it is a conduit to open a chat window with the person thanks to the full integration with Google Talk. You got her GMail then you can chat with her. Always have another browser window open with search results for her name and another window with search results for “non-schmaltzy chat-up lines”. Get charming.

Google Talk

4. Google Video

She found me because I was viral.

Google Video

Years back Ze Frank created a video on how to dance properly. It soon got passed all around the Internet and made him famous for a while. You too could do the same. Stick your gmail address and website address into the video so you can be found and contacted.

Or you could do what famous Sligo Tourism Representative Aine Chambers did and talk about something like tourism while highlighting all your own best features. Here’s Aine: Aine Chambers

You just need to be creative. But you wouldn’t be reading this if you were, right? Thought so. So instead, create a video of you saving whales or helping old ladies across the road. Again stick your email address and website url into the video. Maybe include a few videos of you shedding some tears. Women love to see emotional men. But they also like jerks. So also have a video showing you can be a total asshole.

5. Google Alerts

Google Alerts
You’re going to piss women off. It happens when you are unskilled in the woman-dating game. It’s ok. However, it would be good to know who is pissed off and writing about you online. Thanks to Google Alerts you can get email alerts when anything new is found by Google with the search criteria you set. But don’t stop at your name. Also have searches for potential dates by including names of Girls you’ve found on Google. As well as that include the names of the bars and clubs in your city, town, village, truck stop so that if someone mentions they were out clubbing at “The Dancing Donkey” last night, you’ll know about it. Alerts help you to find local people. It might be good too to just have a Google Alert to notidy you if the local stalking laws in your area get updated. Just saying, is all.

6. Google Maps

Google Maps

Well Johnny is a nerd and a man. There’s no need to go the extra mile and email her the Google map. She’ll make it there by asking for directions if she gets lost. Yes, that’s what women do. Really. Google it if you don’t believe it. Arranging dates and finding locations using Google Maps is a good idea. Knowing where she lives or roughly and then using Google Maps to pick a nearby restaurant and bar is a better idea. That way you can walk her home and maybe just maybe she’ll invite you in for a coffee.

Also make sure the places you go and her place are not near your place. While you are happy to go to he place, you do not want her to be horrified if she visits your lair. All the cartoon posters and pizza boxes might put her off. Women also don’t like Thundercats bed sheets. Additionally, if it all goes pear shaped and she takes out that court order saying you are not to be within 400 feet of her, it would cut down on the embarassing moments when you bump into her in the local grocery store.

7. Google’s Orkut.

Another social networking site. Orkut is ancient Brazilian for “place to find people who will have sex with you”. This is why Orkut is full of Brazilians.

Google's Orkut

Like all other social-networking aka cruising sites, you can take other parts of the Google dating plan and integrate them into this. Use your google email, google talk, use the “improved” photos from Picasa and link to your soft and bastard videos.

8. Google Calendar

Google Calendar

You need a central place to remember the birthdays and times you are meeting the girls. Yes, girls. Plural. There’ll be more than one. Google is so powerful it turns you into a player. In fact, it’s even more powerful than that and you can go from a player to a playa. No, we don’t know the difference either. Thanks to the Google Calendar you can keep track of all of the dates and all of the times. Thanks Google!

9. Google Mobile

So you’re on the date and she is the well educated type. She uses big words like symbolic, quasi-judicial and laudable. Under the table just text Google Mobile and ask what she is on about.

Google Mobile

Unfortunately the profiling with Google search won’t reveal everything about your date so Google Mobile will allow you to find out the name of that pansy poet she mentioned that she likes and you can quote from his poems and make it look like you’re quoting it from memory. She may also talk about current affairs and so not knowing anything outside of World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons, you can google for that, right there from your phone.

10. Google Picasa

Google Picasa can be used for creating pictures of Johnny McCool which are very complimentary. Picasa is a quality picture/photo editing tool that Google provides for free.

Google Picasa

It allows Johnny to take his existing photo of himself:
Johnny McCool

And improve it with no glasses, bluer eyes, blonder hair and bigger muscles:
Johnny McCool

11. Google Base

Google Base

Google base is like the spare room in your house. Any and all kinds of shit are stored in there. Google sticks a search engine onto the front of it and will hire more PhDers to figure out what the fuck to do with the mess that is Google Base. It’s really like a Flea Market except you can also sell your soul to get some hole. Yes, Google Base allows personals. If you don’t like seeing naked pics of people then don’t click that … pointless finishing the sentence since you’ve left already with the naked promise. Just like Orkut, Google Base can be used to store your personal profile but it can also be used to store other content you create like podcasts and videos and pictures.

That’s all for now

These are just a few of the ways that you can get laid with the help of Google. There are many more and as time allows we’ll add more to them. Feedback appreciated.


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The hunter becomes the hunted – Interview with a blogger

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

The BBC had a radio show called Chain Reaction. The idea was that someone from the entertainment world begins the series interviewing a person of their choice. The following week the interviewee becomes interviewer and choses their own person to interview. And so it goes on. The series wrapped up with Alan Moore interviewing Brian Eno. Would anyone like to do the same here for Irish bloggers? Since we all got on so well at the Blog Awards and chatted with people we previously only engaged with online and from meeting them in personlearned a good deal more, I’m sure now there are a load of new people we’d like to talk to and find out more about. To me it’d be a nice way of humanising this Blog O’Sphere too. I’d like to kick it off by nominating two people who would then go off and ask people to be interviewed. That way we should see about two new interviews every week or so. Are people interested in taking part in this?

Few rules:
Interview someone that you don’t know really well already otherwise it’s a bunch of mates telling each other how great they are.
Try and mix it up too by interviewing someone outside the sphere you normally blog in. Techs interviewing techs is going to be boring as are Republicans interviewing Republicans.
If you interview someone so they can just talk up their business then you will ruin the spirit of this and I’ll call you names on this blog. Maybe even rude names.
Be civil to the person you interview. Don’t interview someone just so you can get a load of digs in because you have totally different political views. I think Tom Cosgrave’s open letter to Richard is probing enough without being antagonistic.
Email the person first if you want to interview them besides saying on your blog that you want to because they should be under no pressure to accept.
Not a rule as such but a suggestion – Don’t lay out a set of questions and let it at that. Send a few follow-up emails to clarify some points or dig deeper into certain areas.

Oh, just seen UI’s piece on Damien Blake. Nicely done.

Update: 16 March 06
Greetings MSNBC Clicked readers. Thank you for stopping by. If you want to read more about Irish Blogs then try IrishBlogs.ie and PlanetOftheBlogs. We’ve got a great community going here and we appreciate your patronage. 🙂

Blog Worms – Adding to the book hoarder chatter

Sunday, March 5th, 2006

Sinéad gives a summary of those recently posting about their book obsessions in the Blog O’Sphere. I actually would think everyone is into books. They do seem to go hand in hand. My book reading is suffering but the amount I read daily now outweighs the amount I ever read when I was not blogging and into books.

Sinéad thought I might come up with some tech/geek suggestion for this. I’m more thinking why don’t we all bring a book to the Blog awards, one we have that we haven’t read but we would like to, and maybe do a secret santa kind of thing? How non-geek is that? 🙂

Thanks for the book

Monday, February 20th, 2006

Thanks for the book whoever sent it to me. Interesting choice.

Regulatory Craft

The sad fact is that I’ll probably enjoy reading this book on regulation. As an aside, anyone else think the cover is slightly Goatse-esque?

Self Harm – John was in the Business Post today

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Self harm is a blog by John which helps to explain what self-harm is and why people cut themselves and inflict other forms of harm on themselves. I’ve been reading the blog a while now and it’s educated me quite a lot about this issue. I didn’t nominate many blogs for the blogawards but I did nominate this blog in the Best Personal Blog category. This blog deserves a bigger audience in my opinion and it was great to see Markham write a piece in the Sunday Business Post about it and have John interviewed in it too. To quote a small piece from it:

John cuts himself. It feels like the sting of sunburn and a release of pressure. When his feelings get confused and his thoughts are clouded, he seeks solace in pain. The pain focuses him, it’s a pure sensation, a reminder that he can feel; that he has emotions and everything is alright again. It’s like hitting a reset button.

Refreshed, John patches the cut with a plaster, rolls down his sleeve and goes to sleep.

It is blogs like John’s that add quality to the blogosphere in my view. The tag line for the blog is “You are not alone” and thanks to John hopefully more people will indeed realise that there are others who they can talk to about this and there to help them remedy the situation. Well done John and well done Markham for writing such a piece and bringing it to wider attention.

Internet is for Porn – How I love thee Google Video

Tuesday, January 24th, 2006

Internet is for Porn – What a great song!

Roe Vs Wade is 33 years old today

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

From my limited knowledge of judicial history I know how important Roe v Wade was and how it started a new era of freedom for people around the world. It in effect struck down anti-abortion laws in the US citing a woman has a right to privacy and to do what she wants with her own body. Of late though this is being seriously eroded.

Roe v Wade inspired the McGee case in Ireland which deemed unconstitutional the ban on the sale of constraceptives and it in turn sparked the long and unending abortion arguments in Ireland. Mary Robinson was the Barrister for Mrs McGee and later was part of a pro-choice group that campaigned for legislation change on abortion.

Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese later campaigned with David Norris to remove the ban on homosexuality which was denied by the Supreme Court which amongst other things cited that it was a public health concern and so his privacy and what he did in his own home was less important than curbing homosexuals and their health risk. This was of course at the time when people were dropping like flies (or so it seemed) with AIDS. (1983-1984). Norris eventually went to the Eurpean Court of Human Rights and won (1998) but it took until 1993 before the ban on homosexuality was removed.

Now tomorrow comes a much leaked report, the conclusions of which seemed to have been decided on before a consultation process was even finished. The report is about changing the constitution to recognize more rights for children and a better more inclusive definition of what a family is. Right now a family is a married man and woman and who have or could have kids. Anything else is not a family and therefore does not have the same rights. The definition of a family will not change say the leak ks and that was made clear months ago but it seems to deflect from this rigged result they are making it a Gay Marriage issue.

It is true that if they changed the definition it may have provided for same-sex marriage but that was with one suggested definition but it would mean that umarried fathers would have rights to their kids, it would mean kids with two mummies would have parents who are equal guardians of their future, it would have meant unmarried couples would be treated better in the eyes of the law. Instead the family definition remains unchanged and the issue is turned into an emotive issue about gay marriage. Ugly spin tactics to hide the pre-Roe attitude that still exists amongst some in Ireland. There’s more coverage by Suzy and Potato. I’d be very interested in Fiona’s take on it.

New York in November

Monday, January 16th, 2006

So I’ve volunteered to go with my family to New York in November. So dear readers, please suggest cheap but comfortable places to stay in the Metropolis. There are 5 adults and one 13 year old going.

Please also recommend some good places to visit. By places I mean places for weird food and crazy bars. While the family shops myself and a cousin will be going a bit crazy, I hope.