Its not very often I have to thank comment spam for something, but in this case its giving you this picture.
This year has been hectic, and a few days ago I dumped the contents of my camera’s memory card on to a stick before bringing it with me out in the cold. For the record I was worried about corruption in the frost, naturally the camera never got used.
Anyway, I got a change to glance through the pictures taken since September. And I discovered the later shots taken as part of a photowalk in Cork. Not the ones from the start of the walk, but only the later ones.
I was convinced that I had lost them. Then I had to go in to my comment spam, only to discover a comment on one of my photos from the walk. Turns out I had uploaded them, but left some of the later ones on the memory card.
I still have three months of photographs to process, but I haven’t lost anything. Except my mind of course.
2009 has been a year of mess and hassle. I’m hoping for improvements in 2010. But thanks to early morning traffic mysteriously vanishing off the roads on the run up to Christmas, there is already a small improvement; five minutes extra in bed.
I mentioned one of his BTW (Blogger, Tweet-up, Whatever) events before, and I think this s his fourth.
The idea is that us lot shouldn’t only communicate behind screens, since Ireland isn’t that big a place. So meet up and actually hold someones hand. Or at least give a real wave rather than a “*wave*”
The new BTW is going to be in the Kudos bar is the Clarion Hotel in the ISFC, Dublin on September 3rd at 7pm. That’s room for 150 people.
My last post has generated a lot of comments, and mails.
Some have asked why I did the transcript.
Sometimes, when I do a search there is a video clip. A stale non-functioning video clip. it may be the nature of the internet, but things change.
Sites, links, images and embedded objects move about like stones on a beach. They will stand unmoving for years, but the right tide or the right storm, and all the markers shift. The links change, the sites are reorganised and embedded videos point to an empty page on their parent site.
Text survives.
Text can be copied and pasted. Text can be put in e-mails, on t shirts, in books and survive by being spread out across the world. Nowadays text is the viral source of a meme. It can remain silent in an old print out for years, only to unfold the flower of an idea years later.
Text isn’t strong however. Often if needs a voice to be spread, a video to be seen.
Text however is the king of the internet. It drives the search engines to make an idea findable. Until technology gets to a point where it can determine an image or a video or a sound clip without surrounding text to explain it to the search engine, it is what remains after all else has moved on the ebbing tide of time.
And some tales need to remain to be told through the years just like some songs need to remain to be sung after the singer has moved on.
And partially because around the time that the caricaturist, artist and t-shirt maker Allan Cavanagh was being interviewed by George Hook on Newstalk about the reaction to the Cowen/Casby scandal, I was being interviewed by Fianna Fáil (*waves at the appointment panel monitoring this blog*). I actually brought up the painting/apology and the reaction (seconds later) on Twitter and in the Irish blogging political sphere in the interview.
They were aware of it. This was 20 hours in to the anger.
Since then there has been front page coverage in the Irish newspapers, and coverage across the UK, European and American news. Anger at the apparent change in Garda resources to investigate the hanging of the paintings. Cried of state censorship and stifling of free speech. Questions attempted to in the Dáil.
It’s gone from being a (admittedly distasteful if you are in the Cowen family but) mildly amusing “And Finally…” style story to a major news story which its unlikely that RTÉ will want to touch with a bargepole.
The reaction, well I did a bit of Twitter trending and here are the results from Stream Graphs
If I could access this graph for an earlier time the graph would be scary around 21:30h on March 25th when the apology was read out. Twitter exploded for a little while then. It hasn’t stopped yet. It looks like its easing down a bit, not going to completely die down.
The internet changes things.
Once, if this happened you would have a number of very upset people. Maybe they would ring each other. One to one. And agree in their anger. Now, they can communicate many to many. Pass the latest news to each other behind the mainstream media. React, repeat, retweet the latest information until everyone knows. Dig a story left along by the mainstream media back in to the harsh light of international news coverage.
So if you are going to react, you had better monitor and react quickly.
Things have changed. Its good to talk/type/tweet. Communication behind the scenes will ensure information gets out there, in the same way that the internet treats attempts at censorship (be it a blocked site or bad news) as damage that it routes around. This isn’t always an automatic thing. Often people keep that which they deem important alive.
From the fevered brain of Rick O’Shea, comes the story of a boy, a blog and an open grave.
no that’s wrong. Its Rick’s fault, he had an idea. A group pop culture blog, and he asked a few people to join in.
And for some unknown reason, he asked me.
I’ll admit that I have a shed load of tracks to review and put up there, but I’m also going to be posting about the impacts of technology on culture, and the impacts of culture on technology.
I need to thank a few people to get this going. So Thanks to to AJ, Rick, Darren, Sinead and Pedro for doing all the heavy lifting in getting the systems running. And a lot of the early posts (oops).
Once, back when I was a child, St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t that special. True it was a little reprieve from Lent (which seems to be 46 days this year if I’ve counted correctly), but not much. The parade would be a few freshly frozen marching bands (all those shivering majorettes in short skirts being gently caressed by the Irish hailstones remain a memory).
Maybe it was confidence. Maybe it was cash. But thanks to the lesser spotted Celtic Tiger, the parades got bigger, brighter and better. Its a week long festival and no longer a single day. Now the photographs are worth taking.
Which brings me to Pix.ie. They have been working with the organisers of the Irish St Patrick’s Festival on a huge photo sharing project to help document this year’s festival in photos from the perspective of those attending.
That means anyone in the country with a camera as far as I’m concerned. But they mean any of the events (or the un-events) of the popper festival.
Anyone who brings their camera to this year’s events to can contribute their photos to the official St Patrick’s Festival group so that the experience can be shared with people from all over the world.
And to bribe you / make it worth your while… there are prizes.
Three lucky winners whose photos capture the spirit of the festival. Canon have offered prizes with a total value of just under €1,800.
And it doesn’t stop there! You see the pix.ie community and the Irish Blogging community (some are still recovering the the Irish Blog Awards) at large gets some love for the parade. (Not to be confused with the “Love Parade”)
20 bloggers and photobloggers will be invited to watch the St Patrick’s Festival parade from a vetted viewing area. Each will be given an official wristband to gain access to this exclusive VIP area.
4 bloggers and photobloggers will be invited to watch the parade from the Festival Grandstand.
2 photobloggers will be invited to join the world media and take photos of the parade from the elevated position from the official open topped Media Bus which is positioned on the parade route.
2 Pixie users will chosen (subject to a security check) and given a Golden Pass which provides exclusive access to the parade route on the day. Only 12 Golden Passes will be issued this year to the international media and this is the first time photographers outside of the national and international media have been invited on into the parade route.
Which I think you’ll join me in saying “these are bloody bloody good prizes”. Then throw in the party at the Guinness Storehouse, and it may be a weekend that you need the photographs to remember.
Even without the competition, this is a great way to share your experience of the festival and let the world see Ireland at its best.
See the Pixie blog for more details and follow @stpatricksfest and @pixie on Twitter for ongoing information and news about what is going on. (Hashtag for St Patricks’s Festival is #spf09)
Well according to O’Leary’s PR spokesperson, Stephen McNamara, we are “idiot bloggers” or “lunatic bloggers”.
Not to worry, as the company starts to limit their presence to online only, and as a lot of people type the URL in to Google (rather than the address bar) the negative rail against bloggers may bite them yet. Its is all very well being the name hat most people think of when they search for cheap flights. But they search, frequently when they don’t intend to (after all, Yahoo is a top search for term in Google, and vice versa).
However they didn’t say they won’t correspond with all bloggers – nor that all bloggers are idiots. But it sure is implied.
After the Blog awards I’ve come to take the Jack Kerouac approach. If we are the insane ones… we are a lot of fun to be with.
The only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk,
mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn,
like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…
I keep an eye on the Tuesday Push. The aim of the Tuesday Push is to get the bloggers of Ireland, usually the business bloggers or the blog of a business, to promote an other Irish company.
Those getting a push need to be offering a unique product or service, and should be taking part in the push themselves. Think of it as co-operative support. Creating a business community, one where ideas can be shared and have ideas bounce off each other freely. Or in internet terms, a meme gone sensible. Of course making the Irish technology community an actual community isn’t easy, but this helps.
That said, the key word is unique. Another template tweaked, off the shelf package generated on-line store, not for the push. I think new thinking might count, but you may have to explain what makes it innovative.
If you’re an Irish technology company that’s offering something new and have a blog (or other means to promote yourself and others), contributing to the promotional effort and putting your name forward for a Push of your own is worthwhile (just take a look at the feedback of some of those that have had a push). Or just join in, as some day you may be in the position of needing a push. By pushing now, you’re helping others, and may help yourself.
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