Damien Mulley

Javier Bardem looks like he has the best part in this. Based on the book by Cormac McCarthy.

Friend told me a story over IM yesterday evening. I asked could I blog it and he gave me permission. I never ever email friends things and ask them to email it on but if you could, maybe copy and paste this story and share it with your friends? This is how Ireland works right now. That child has no rights under the constitution but the mother does and despite an Oireachtas committee suggesting changes, it was shot down by Bertie. It is very very difficult for the State to take this poor child of his junkie mother because of the current way things stand. I’m sure there are dozens or hundreds more stories like this one too.

You can choose your friends

A woman got on Dart in Bray before I had time to properly go to sleep. Rather ok looking pram with child in it. On closer inspection, said child had Downs Syndrome. Downs Syndrome children are really affectionate, attentive and loving. The mother had pushed the pram half way up the carriage. Not ideal for ease of access or exit.

She proceeded to try to give the child its bottle of orange juice. On noticing that she had no bib, she asked two of our local Dart passengers, if they had some tissues. Kind passengers give woman tissues. It became obvious when the woman jumped up twice for the wrong stop, once at Glasthule and once at Dun Laoghaire that she was stoned.

I hadn’t judged her for her accent. I hadn’t judged her for looks. I hadn’t judged her for neglecting to carry a bib. I hadn’t judged her for rather roughly inserting the childs bottle. At the Dun Laoghaire effort to get off the train, she said ‘I ain’t really with it, Im gettin’ off at Tara’. My heart sank.

She then proceeded to meticulously arrange and fold two fifty Euro notes, that were in the end of her handbag. She wrapped the notes in an old train ticket. I could only think she was destined to ‘score a fix’. My heart sank more. Young Downs Baby, no more that one and a half, looks at me and waves. I felt SICK.

Congrats Senator Hannigan.

Nice coup. Podcamp have gotten Neville Hobson signed up.

Like Intel, Google is investing a lot in Indian startups.

Meanwhile here less and less want to be programmers.

Apple screws customers more, this time on power leads.

Modest Mouse – The Ocean Breathes Salty:

God’s Army has a show on technology. Yup a tech gadget show from the Jesuits talking about the Nabaztag:

Didn’t do it again so it was not won. It’s getting silly now so I’ll do it on Saturday. Move along now.

Great post from Niall Larkin on the arrogance of Google where they seem to think they have a right to scan and index anything digital or convert anything to digital, without permission. Google book search would be an example in my view.

Congrats to Kieran who will now be contributing to the Irish Times.

Is this *really* a Garda snorting coke? Or someone pretending to be a Garda snorting a line of baking powder. See, this is what Blogorrah should be looking into.

Back seat driving on a plane. Safe.

iPod tax for Canada? I’m sure IRMA might push that for here too.

Make yourself into a Simpsons character.

The 4am conspiracy.

I want water towers like these.

Paul Weller & Graham Coxon – This Old Town

Friday Night Lights, just started watching this and it seems promising, meant to be very good drama:

I need your help. We all know that Ireland is an expensive place to go on holidays but I am looking for examples of bad value and bad service for a series that we’re running in The Irish Times throughout August. Actually I am also looking for examples of good value and good service now that I think of it.

Leave a message on the Pricewatch blog.

So it appears that Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher are in town in Dublin for a while this week. Kara was nice enough to link to some IrishBlogs.ie posts on the iPhone too. I’ve been asking around on Twitter and via email about who they are here to see and so far no journalists I know were aware of the visit and no tech companies I know were aware either. Odd, no? Anyone know anything about this? They are here on business.

It would be nice if Walt and Kara met some of the new breed of tech startups.

Muchos muchos gracias to Mr. T for the image.

Via Timmy Worstall : A fat man tells us not to be fat. He’d be the chief medical officer in the UK. Be nice to see Health Ministers also lead by example.

The blog of author and TV writer Paul Cornell. He wrote that excellent Doctor Who episode The Family of Blood.

Fold a sail boat into a backpack and bring it with you.

The Hunting Monsters blog covers the film “Battle for Algiers”. Good movie. Brutal events and ruthless characters in it.

BT in the UK is considering fibre to the curb.

Metafilter covers Bill O’Reilly’s war on Daily Kos and how he harassed JetBlue so much they withdrew as sponsors for the DailyKos convention and apologised. Some are crying foul but Kos was the site that waged war on Joe Lieberman and got an inferior ticket on the democratic ticket instead of Joe. Joe still won as an independent though. Right back atcha time for Kos?

Why let the Thriller vids end? Another:

Then there’s Bad:

(I have serious business people reading this blog so I’m turning my back on saying “fuck off” in blog posts.) *

First they tried to do it with 3G phones as part of the DCMNR. Fell through. Then they were worried about terrorists I think. Now it is scumbags in prisons who are using these phones. Nevermind the wardens who helped them sneak the phones in. As well as budgies and flatscreen TVs. Ever get the feeling there is a company out there that is just waiting to run this “registry” that is a friend of someone? Noooo, that could never happen. The Civil Service always want to put as little trust in the people as they can, just in case one day they rise up and demand a reduced place in Government for them. Now they want to issue licences to use mobiles? If you’re against the idea then you are against freedom or for terrorism, drug dealing, fearinducingissueofthedayforDailyStartReaders etc. That’s what the new Minister for not dealing with drug issues in any real way says. What would the Minister do to deal with FF councillors snorting coke and it being on YouTube? I’d ban YouTube for glorifying drugs/politcs.

TJ has some good things to say about the latest act of stupidity and even quotes an official Govt email which says the idea is too difficult to police. Daithí makes sense too. Fergus too. Update: Adam too. Antoin freisin.

Reminds me of Yes, Minister or maybe the latest clone of it: The Thick of It:

This is definitely a : Minister says “I need a new iniative. I need a spectacular like Micheál’s smoking ban or Noel’s plastic bag tax, what have you got on file lads?” “Er, cracking down on dole scammers?” “No, nobody is unemployed any more” “Oh I know, a registry …”

Here’s an old gem:

* Actually Twenty already used the blog post title I wanted.

Jeff Jarvis points out that the Guardian are going to stream the TV series “The Wire”. More here on the Media Guardian site (use BugMeNot.com for a pass). Jarvis points out it was the Guardian who did the Ricky Gervais podcasts too which generated a nice few quid for everyone when they went a pay-to-listen model. I think the Guardian more than most are getting the idea that they are a media org not just a newspaper and as people want podcasts and videos, they should cater to that. The New York times does that a little with their YouTube channel with original content such as David Pogue and the iPhone musical number.

Over here, the Irish Times are apparently doing video though it’s shite. I’d expect over time that they might actually get their own little mini studio for things like this besides outsourcing. The Independent and the Examiner will also have to get into more media forms. I have a feeling the Indo will do this soon but again, not using in-house people. The Examiner will come along to the party eventually. The Irish Times has recently invested in Entertainment.ie which is a good enough site but very yesterday in what it does. They also sought to look into buying the Irish interests of EMap which include TodayFM and Dublin 104FM. It’d be a shame if they didn’t leverage the fantastic talent they have in there to do podcasts and videos, though I suppose that might actually mean paying them money for all their extra work. I’ve heard from some sources that the current Irish Times bloggers are doing it out of a love for writing and receive sfa from their employer to do it.

It’d be very interesting to see whether a media company that owns both print and radio assets would cross-link them and whether that’d be allowed. Everything is going from dead trees to electrons and it makes sense for an organisation to feed the new appetites of those that exclusively read online. I’m almost one of them.

I haven’t mentioned RTE yet. Best til last? If RTE don’t change their gameplan soon they could be a runner-up to lots more websites. They need to stop streaming their video using the godawful and much hated Realplayer and allow people to embed clips on blogs and websites. Just stick it all up on Youtube for goodness sake. Perhaps they’ll use the online medium to launch their mooted 24hr news channel? Would make sense I suppose. Like the Irish Times there’s some fantastic talent in that organisation and a lot of waste too. It would be nice actually to see their current affairs sections expand massively online. I’d listen to Morning Ireland, all morning and evening. They’ve butchered 5-7 live so much now that I rarely tune in. Morning Ireland especially is jam packed and a lot of the reports could probably be left in their original expanded form online. It’d be great to hear more interviews online.

Or perhaps with the Denis O’Brien acquisition of the Irish Emap stations, shows like the Last Word on TodayFM might expand their coverage too and do a little video segment which will have longer interviews of guests?

So will we see IrishTimes.tv and IrishIndependent.tv? I think we will but I wonder will Setanta have beaten them to the punch? They seem quite progressive. Meanwhile here’s some nice stats on online video advertising, the past, present and future of it. Gold in them dar hills.