Has anyone else noticed that the new generation of gif based stock-trading spams are getting really hard to read? In the last one I had to squint and look really carefully to find out what stock was hot and a sure-buy today!
For a moment I was reminded of the times when I left comments on a Typepad or Blogspot blog before hitting J to junk the thing. Pretty backgrounds too.
News from Keith is that plans are underway for a BarCamp to be held in Waterford sometime early in the new year. After their positive experience at the BarCamp in Cork, he and Tom Corcoran are planning it, and they can make available, “the facilities of the WIT centre in Carriganore – a superb building situated on its own campus.” Sounds good!
Plans are at an early stage yet, but I think I’ll be able to make the drive there for the day. I haven’t been to Waterford in ages and it’ll be nice to see the place again. Would anyone like to hear about WordPress, WordPress MU or WordPress.com? I’m not saying I will, but maybe …
Check out the Wiki too. That will probably have the most up to date information.
Small Pleasures – sometimes the small things in life are the best.
Update! (2009-10-28) 3 years later and the Do Not Delay website has been updated. Thanks to this comment for pointing it out. Their About the Project page gives a detailed account of what they do in Lithuania:
Six years ago, the Lithuanian rate of deaths caused by breast cancer was the highest in Europe.
DO NOT DELAY, a breast cancer awareness program, was initiated by Agn? Zuokien? in 2003. Today, the number of deaths is significantly lower.
The Do Not Delay team includes professional doctors – specialists of their field who face breast cancer cases on a daily basis.
The Pink Bus travels to the most remote locations in Lithuania to deliver the message to all women – “Take care of your health, pay more attention to yourselves for your own sake and for the sake of those who love you!”
It would appear from this that “Do Not Delay” are in fact a charity in Lithuania. They’re not registered as one in Ireland or the UK however. This report by the Fermanagh Herald covers some of the same concerns I have and I will repeat my advice below. You’re better off handing your clothes in to a local second hand shop. At least then you’ll be certain the proceeds from the sale of those items will go to registered charities in your locality.
The original post continues below:
It’s not unusual for junk mail to be delivered to my door. Thankfully there’s a lot less of it than the electronic equivalent. Over the summer a number of flyers made their way to my doorstep, supposedly from charities looking for old clothes to sell to raise funds. Unfortunately only one of those was from an actual charity and they collected the clothes at a local carpark.
The latest one is from donotdelay.org. I was going to let it pass but my neighbour had a bag out for collection this morning which prompted me to grab the laptop and show them this page on letterbox spam. That page points out that donotdelay.org redirects to nedelsk.lt, which asks for donations to be sent to this bank account in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Azzara Vš?
Enterprise code 124013046
Account no. LT267044060001204079
SEB Vilniaus Bankas
Bank code 70440
There’s a phone number too, 0044-28-3084-9971, which is a UK number and not exactly encouraging for an Irish person.
How do you spot the fake charity flyers?
If you do have old clothes to give away, pop them into a bag and bring them into one of the charity shops in your local town or city. They’re always looking for quality saleable items. Here’s a list of Irish charities if you want to donate money. Some well known and reputable charities include Trocaire (they even have an rss feed!), Bothair and Simon Community.
If you live in the UK, this page has some useful information including how to report a fake charity.
“Do Not Delay” collect money for breast cancer research but you would be better off making a donation to The Irish Cancer Society who will put your donation to good use.
I’ll update this post from time to time with thumbnails and summaries of flyers that hit my door. Check back often!
Just as I was wondering when donotdelay would collect their clothes I spotted an old blue van parked outside. It’s a Dublin reg vehicle and quite old, given that it’s a van and presumably used for business. The reg is “97 D 45516”. I spotted a man in denims walking down the road. He ducked into a house at a corner for a moment then walked up a hill out of sight. I waited a few minutes and he returned with a woman. Both got into the van, drove down to the end of the cul-de-sac and about 5 minutes later drove past again. On closer examination of the photos below I recognised the top of the heart shaped flyer they had in their hands. One was delivered here a few weeks back. I might have it arond here somewhere.
Update: Another blogger received the same flyer. Hopefully someone will search online for “Clothing Collection For Breast Cancer Prevention Programm”.
2006-11-21 – a new leaflet was dropped in the door a few minutes ago. It has an Irish mobile number, 0876815133, and reg. no. 382101. No sign of a charity number.
Not every family in developing countries can afford to buy new, often expensive clothes, footwear and household things.
If you search for their reg no. the first link is a pdf file (view as HTML) from Dublin City Council. Councillor Naoise O’Muiri asked, in a question to the City Manager, if he can
confirm that the following agencies currently engaged in collections in the City Area have all applied for and received Permits: …
“Unwanted Clothing Collection”, no Reg No given, 087 0552513
He replied:
The Collectors referred to by the Councillor do not have a waste collection permit from Dublin City Council.
Chances are they’re collecting ilegally in Cork too.
2006-11-29 – “Thank you for help” – another flyer appeared this morning before 8am, they’re out early! Identifying text includes the above badly constructed sentence and: “we urgently need clothing that you and your family may never wear again” and “Company Reg. Nr. 5655565A”, “Phone: +353851670878” – another mobile number. No landline, address or charity number.
2006-12-05 – “We support Orphanages.” just fell in the door. Here are their details: Reg. no. 9027839, phone 085-1337528. That’s a mobile phone number.
Update! I have set up a new site, Clothingcollection.org where I post details about all the fake charity leaflets I get. I’m sure you’ll recognise a few of them!
A garage down the road sells chocolate covered flapjacks. I’ve bought a few in the recent past and savoured every bite but the last time I was down there they only had plain ones! What would I do? My life ground to a halt and in desperation I contemplated droving all over the country looking for the hidden chocolate flapjacks! Alas, it was not to be.
Instead I fired up my browser and quickly came upon this simple recipe to make flapjacks. Ingredients and recipe couldn’t be easier – two cups of porridge oat flakes, a few blobs of golden syrup, a lump of butter, salt and sugar and over a heated saucepan the mixture melts and oozes together. Melting chocolate over boiling water has the added bonus of scraping out the left overs after. Yum! I’m going to do make me some flapjacks this weekend!
I can finally lay the rice crispy cakes or buns debate to rest. It’s “rice crispy cakes”. I saw a packet of rice crispy cakes clearly bearing that proud name in our local shop, so it has to be cakes, not buns!
My brother Donal and his girlfriend Celine are heading to Lesotho next April as part of a charity effort with the ISPCC to renovate a school and build a playground for kids there. They’re holding a table quiz tonight in the Spailpin Fanach to help raise funds.
Donal’s also looking for spot prizes. They have a few already and sponsors will be mentioned on their charity.ie page. I want to make it sweeter for people to help. If you run an online company and would like a link on the sidebar of this PR8 website, with traffic of almost 3,000 page views a day for a month, drop me a mail at donncha @ ocaoimh.ie (or ring me if you have my number) – we need to have the spot prize tonight, in about 6 hours time.
Time is running out. You have six hours. That’s 6pm Irish time, or mid-morning EST! Thanks for your help!
I’ll be there, with camera in hand of course, although I’m useless at quizzes so I don’t know who’ll want me on their team. Don’t tell anyone ok?
Many moons ago, Jason’s Customciser was released onto an unsuspecting WPMU forum. It’s a small plugin that allowed one to change the value of some of the CSS elements in a theme’s style sheet.
Before you get too excited, it’s in rather a raw format, can cause problems and needs work to be usable. The original plugin used some PHP5 conventions and functions which limited the audience who could use it. I’m posting this because people are wondering where the PHP4 port I wrote disappeared to. It’s still here, but please link to this post instead of linking to the zip file.
Download Jason’s Customciser-doc – this plugin needs a lot of work to be usable. I’m not joking!
If you’re wondering, this is not the same plugin that is used on WordPress.com to allow editing of CSS files. I just wonder why someone doesn’t write a simple templating system in Smarty or something that loads through the traditional WordPress theme files? It’s a no-brainer. It may not be the most efficient way of doing it, but it’s one simple way.
Every time I want to go to the cinema I search for Cork Cinema and generally end up in the same sites looking up titles and times. If I’m feeling tired and don’t want to go into town, then there’s always the Reel Cinema in Blackpool to find. Enough is enough, for future referene here’s a few cinema related links Cork people will appreciate:
What will we see tonight? I think it’ll be Borat. It’s quite probably over-hyped, and I’m not expecting anything but the usual silliness that Sacha Baron Cohen excells at.
Michael Crook is a shady character who convinced men on Craiglist to reveal photos and personal sexual information about themselves which he published afterwards to embarrass them. He sent a fake DMCA notice Boing Boing in an attempt to stop them publishing a photo of him but they’re laughing at him. Others have now taken up the cause including Thomas Hawk and Fark have a great photoshop contest! Thomas points out that his his real name could be “Scott Vogel”.
The DMCA is supposed to be used for copyright infringement, and he is being sued by the EFF for improperly using it for trying to silence critical sites. Good luck to them!
It’s great when a bully gets what’s coming to him.
News this morning is that elected politicians in Ireland “will receive more than €1,000 for every day they sit in the Dáil.” Not bad eh?
“Get Elected” was one of the 30 ways to spend your SSIA on Eddie Hobbs’ show recently. He suggested that investing your €20,000 in an election attempt was a great way to invest your lump sum. Given that a TD will earn more than €103,000 that’s a great investment if you have the hair and height for it!
According to today’s Irish Independent, the average basic wage for a TD will increase to more than €103,000, while a golden handshake, amounting to €4.7m, will be paid to TDs and Senators who lose their seats in next year’s general election.