I have an expensive paperweight; a dead netbook. Dead is really the wrong word. The netbook itself is fine.
What happened is I plugged the netbook in to the sockets on the train on my way to the dot conf, and a little fuse somewhere in the charger blew.
An irreplaceable fuse it seems.
And a charger that Dell refuses to sell me a replacement for. Despite the fact that their current power adapter is identical, which is how it got its final recharge.
Fortunately that charge meant I could do a final complete backup.
It also means I haven’t been able to use it much since. Now this is you standard old underpowered netbook. Its hard disc is only 16gb. But I loved it. With its matching 3G dongle it had the convenience and connectivity for so much.
I didn’t realise just how much I used it until I couldn’t. There is a replacement generic charger somewhere in the post. And for the foreseeable future I can’t afford to replace it.
This is, however my first attempt to use WordPress for Android to do an update.
It sort of works. Links, while available are out of the question. My fat fingers can’t select a phrase finely enough. (If you’re listening android, can I have forward AND backward delete ).
Yes I have more to write, but I’ll need a proper keyboard, like the one on my netbook.
Exactly what it says on the tin. Here is a pretty wordle (OK, black and white, it should be in the new colours, but I’ll go with the 1963 style) of all the villains appearances in the TV series Doctor Who all prettied up. The Guardian created the Google spreadsheet (crowd sourced by a lot of fans naturally) of all the villains in Doctor Who and why they did what they did. Take over the universe is a fairly popular reason. Something to remember for your end of year review.
I took a much simpler subset of their spreadsheet, simply the name of the villain and the number of episodes they have been in. Wordle has an advanced setting where instead of counting the words themselves, you can format the list of words in pairs in a Alpha:10 Beta:20 type format instead of having to type Alpha out ten times. Works fairly well for visualising your analytics as to how people find a site. Its not pure data visualisation. I still want to drop the spreadsheet in to Pivot and do some of the “why” analytics.
This time is simply a homage as to how often the Daleks have been on Doctor Who. Click through for much bigger
And no, I’m not a rabid fan boy. I’d need to work on it more. Any other data sets I can play with?
First off the Lego based trailer for The Dot Conf in Dublin on July 22nd, I do like the very surreal schedule. Well what do you expect when there is a three eyes alien as your host.
And secondly, put together fifteen different pop hits vying for top spots this summer and you actually get a very coherent track called “Like OMG, Baby” and put together by DJ Earworm for the London based Capital FM’s Summertime Ball (and first performed at Wembley Stadium with all the acts in the video)
In case you are wondering, the track samples together
Alexandra Burke – All Night Long
Cheryl Cole – Fight For This Love
Chipmunk feat. Esmee Denters – Until You Were Gone
Dizzee Rascal – Bonkers
Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed
Jason Derulo – In My Head
JLS – One Shot
Justin Bieber – Baby
Ke$ha – Tik Tok
Pixie Lott – Mama Do
Rihanna – Rude Boy
Scouting For Girls – This Ain’t a Love Song
Tinie Tempah – Pass Out
Usher feat. Will.I.Am – OMG
The Wanted – All Time Low
Am I a podcaster? It should be a simple question to answer, but for me, things have gotten complicated.
You see I filled out the podcast listener and producer survey being conducted by Adele McAlear and Donna Papacosta. Actually if you listen to podcasts, go and do the survey yourself. But in the process of filling out the survey, I realised that I might be making podcasts myself.
I should know what a podcast is, goodness knows I love them. Technically, a podcast is a series of digital media files, audio or video, that are downloaded and made available through a syndicated feed, such as RSS.
For the stuffy amongst you, to have your podcast available for iTunes you need to supply iTunes with your RSS feed. The “pod” bit came about thanks to the iPod/ iTunes/ iPhone/iPad phenomena. If you can listen to it online, but can’t download it, then its a stream.
The unsure part of me is thanks to Audioboo. Audioboo is a website, and its an application for my phone. I start the app, record my thought in to the phone, hit a button and it sends the file off to the Audioboo servers. There the audio file is available for download (check one), or streaming and its part of an RSS feed (check two).
The thing is, it does not feel like podcasting. There is no microphone, there is no production (let alone production values). There is a minimum of action, but there is interaction. I follow people on Audioboo.
Its a audio twitter, where business and passion interact. And replies pass through members.
There is also an ambient category. Take out the phone and record where you are. Thanks to GPS info, it could be an audio Foursquare. What am I hearing now?
Its also useful for correspondents. Only temporary files are on the phone. In an “interesting” area you can record your piece and (with iOS4 and Android) upload the audio in the background. If you are stopped and searched, the evidence has already been uploaded to a server outside the jurisdiction. Expect to see it feature in a remake of “The Conversation“.
It is podcasting made easy. So yes, I am a podcaster! My studio lives in my pocket. And right now, I have no idea what to say.
A procedural drama might be easy, but there are a few catches. Only a few squads work throughout Ireland, homicide naturally is one of them, but most murders probably won’t attract a lot of tourists. Actually that isn’t true, deaths, even fake ones attract crowds, but would they spend?
Instead, let’s look at romance. Supernatural romance. Vampires are very popular when it comes to romance at the moment. Look at True Blood or the Twilight series for proof. However, the vampire area crowded. So let me think of a different set of supernatural lovers.
Fae.
Fae, Bean Sí, leprechauns, the fairies. Those stories that lasted a long time in Ireland, and in the Irish legends they were mostly human adult sized and frequently mistaken for beautiful men and women (there are a few children sized ones too). Eoin Colfer is still writing about them in his Artemis Fowl series. His is a coming of age story for a master teenage criminal who keeps crossing paths with the fairy police force responsible for covering up the existence of the mystical folk, the L.E.P. Recon squad. I think this story should be about someone human discovering that the tales of the Bean Sí and the changelings aren’t fairy tales.
Fae Play. Cute name. The building works on the Hill of Tara that came about through the M3 should be a nice starting ground. What would happen if the people in the fairy tales, from Tír na nÓg, from the Fenian Cycle, from the stories of the Tuatha Dé Danann showed up. Them or, more sensibly, their descendants (the really odd thing about the ancient Irish gods was that they could grow old and die. Eventually, even if it takes 300 or 900 years, so descendants it is).
The series would be set in modern day Ireland, and with creatures across the land and tied to nature, they would naturally be set in places able to show off some of the country’s beauty. I can almost see selkies surfing in the North West. A kelpie in Killarney. A kiss in the moonscape of the Burren.
Could it work? Goodness knows, but given that “supernatural romance” now has its own section in book shops, it worth knocking together something to make in to a web series at least.
This is a personal blog, just saying. That means, to me, that I blog because I feel like blogging. But when life offers you options that make blogging hard to do, it makes blogging hard to do. Simply put, I’m not too sure what to put here.
Anything that stops the merry-go-round of a need to write will stop it. Part of this is of course that I write on Culch.ie and I’m doing some work for WRF2.com. And part of it is that this particular itch hasn’t needed scratching.
I haven’t even been photo-blogging (most of the photos taken over the last few months were either for relations (and not to be disseminated beyond cousins) or for friends to put on Facebook (usually under their accounts).
But the itch is returning. There will be cross postings (of course) , but expect to see this blog rise up.
Part of it is, its Summer. I feel a little bit better. My life is still in a state where I don’t want to write about it, but I’m looking around more. Feel like writing more. Getting my fngers to write for me anyway.
There will be shuffling. But I think this blog is going around once more.
“I stopped and bought a case of scotch.” said Ralph Morse, “I knew people might be reluctant to talk to me, and I knew that most people were happy to accept a bottle of scotch instead of money if you offered it in exchange for their help.” Remember folks, you can get further with a kind word and a drink than a kind word and cash.
Ed Thompson,LIFE’s managing editor at the time decided not to run the story, so the pictures have been filed away until a few days ago.
They are playing Edinburgh in August and I’m sure their arm could be twisted to include a Dublin date. The download section of their own site includes a lot of music videos so you can get an idea of just what they are like. They sound line a ruder version of the Flight of the Conchords and this Australian band might be your thing if you can’t get the New Zealander’s tickets.
Cork’s Saint Patrick’s Parade was today. I still have to go through all the photographs but on a spot at the parade’s end I’ve managed to catch a few shots.
The theme was supposed to be about maritime history, but most of the floats went for the pirates theme. Sometime it works and sometimes,
its a little stilted
