March 2007 – Page 3 – Something Odd!

My home from space

If I were in the house buying market it just got a little easier to spy on the neighbours of your possible new home. My home.ie added a satellite mapping service to their site which allows one to zoom in closer than other online maps, although I don’t think you’ll be watching anyone skinny-dipping..

It’s not quite as smooth as Google or Yahoo’s offering. You have to click the direction arrows instead of dragging the map but it’s not bad for scouting around.

Finally, my map on Useamap links to a spot in Blarney a few hundred meters down the road from where I now sit. They offer driving directions and distances just by clicking on your destination on the map. It’s not perfect. It likes the main road to Cork a little too much, but I guess if you didn’t know an area it’s probably better to stay off the side roads eh?

MyHome.ie

Google Maps

Craic agus ceol ar an gCeadaoin

My brother Donal who I mentioned a few days ago is going to Lesotho in mid-April to help build a school and raise funds for the ISPCC here in Ireland.

As part of his fund raising effort there will be a charity trad gig on Wednesday night, that’s tomorrow night! Sounds like a great line up and I’m going to try get in for an hour or so. Watch out for the guy in the WordPress tshirt with the camera. That’ll be me!

Performers on the night include The Fuchsia Band, back from their travels and who always put on an energetic and entertaining show; Cork singer Ger Wolfe singing some of his distinctively Cork ballads; Dan O’Callaghan, a piper from Cork who has travelled around the world playing music; Tommie Cunniffe on accordion, who is currently recording his debut album; and, last but not least, John Mitchell on flute accompanying Donal O Caoimh on the uilleann pipes.

Update! The gig was great. A huge crowd gathered to watch and listen and we even had a few dancers! I hope to post some photos tomorrow if I find time to work on them tonight.

Who wins the iPod?

When I originally mentioned Paul Walsh’s viral competition to win an iPod I thought he would pick out the winner, but no. He makes me do the dirty deed.

I haven’t announced a winner yet, mainly because my phone line is all crackly and my DSL dies within 10 minutes of going online and then doesn’t come back for hours, but also because it’s difficult to pick one winner:

Do I pick someone out at random? That’s the fairest way for all involved.
If I pick a winner at random that doesn’t reward people who frequently comment on my blog. Out of all the comments received only three “regulars” participated.
My brother commented, and Frank, a friend from school commented. Do I stand accused of favouritism by rewarding one of them?

In the end it was today’s Dilbert cartoon that swung it. My brother Donal gets the iPod. He’s a music nut as you can guess from all the concert photos on his blog, but also a keen musician too. He was best man at my wedding and there was no job too big or small that he couldn’t do to make preparations for that day easier. Thanks Donal and thank you all for participating!

I’m just glad the rest of my family didn’t leave comments or I’d be in a whole heap of trouble picking the winner…

Yet another twit signs up

Yes, I’m on Twitter now. No. I’m not a pregnant goldfish but the first thing I like about Twitter is their support for RSS. Conor’s twitter popped up in my meta search a few minutes after he twittered.

twitter+flickr+webcam+stockpix=flussgeist via Topgold on Twitter. Pretty cool. Listen to that Trocaire Ad banned on Today FM and other non-RTE radio stations.

At the mercy of Eircom

Connectivity has been very flaky for the last few hours as my phoneline has degenerated into crackle hell. Making it worse is the fact that I dared move from the incumbant telco, Eircom, and became a customer of UTV Talk some time back.

UTV took my complaint after I waited for a customer representative for only a few moments. They checked my line and it flagged red so they passed on the complaint to Eircom to fix the line. That nagging feeling that I would be offline for a long time only got worse..

About an hour later someone did ring the house phone, and through the crackles and interference I think I was told an engineer would be out to check the line. Rejoice!

I’m still waiting, hours later. A call to 1901 proved fruitless – the automated voice said my line wasn’t an Eircom one so he couldn’t do anything else and shouting “agent” at the phone put me on hold waiting. I put my mobile on speaker and waited about 10 minutes before hanging up. Aren’t monopolies great?

I hope an engineer calls tomorrow.

How I know who's talking about me

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but Scott Adam’s post about using Google Alerts to find people talking about Dilbert prompted me to put fingers to keys this afternoon.

When someone anywhere in the world mentions my name in a blog post or even a comment, on Flickr, on Zooomr or anywhere with an RSS feed I know about it within a few hours. Occasionally it might take longer, maybe a day or so, or even a few months sometimes, but that would be unusual.

How? I use a “news aggregator” called Bloglines to track my favourite websites. Bloglines also has a search engine to search through their database. Nothing extraordinary there, but the magic happens when you subscribe to that search. “Subscribing” is just like subscribing to a magazine. You’re sent updated news and information as it happens at the source. When you subscribe to a blog, every time that blog is updated their new post appears in your aggregator. No need to fret about missing the latest news any more.

Instead of having to reload a search page every few hours Bloglines does that job for me automatically. The Bloglines feed list reloads periodically. A quick glance at it’s page in my browser window shows me if someone mentions me. It’s less stressful than checking my email all the time and news is delivered into my browser where I want it.

To be sure I search as much of the Internet as possible I do the same search on Technorati too.

I wonder will Scott find this post or comment on it? Probably not but hopefully someone else will find this useful.

Too Frickin’ Cool

Twenty gets go maith

Twenty Major got the Go Maith treatment on Saturday. Click through to the blog post to read the English version. I previously mentioned Go Maith here.

Congrats to Twenty on his wins at the Blog Awards!

The moon will be blood red tonight

A lunar eclipse is expected tonight at 10:44pm here in Ireland, all over Europe, Africa and elsewhere. I’ll be outside with my Canon 20D and 75-300 zoom so hopefully I’ll get a shot or two I can post here later. NASA has a great page on the eclipse which is where I got these two images.

I checked Astronomy Ireland too but unfortunately their site is basic and at a glance isn’t very informative. They definitely need a blog to update their events and provide more information. If one were cynical, you might think they want you to ring their premium rate numbers…

Never fear, the blogosphere came to the rescue. Daragh’s post on the subject has the times of the eclipse and how long it’ll last. I’m subbed to his blog, read that post this morning, and only thought seriously about the eclipse this evening, long after forgetting where I had come across it.. Thank you Darragh! Hope you enjoy the Blog Awards tonight!

Edit: I wrote a short post, how to photograph a lunar eclipse which might be useful to you if you’re out on this cold night. It’s getting foggy here in Blarney but I hope if clears up in the next hour!

9:46pm – a shadow can be seen at the bottom of the moon.

Matt has some excellent shots of the eclipse:

(Matt – get off the phone! Jacinta just rang and the line is busy!)

More photos of the eclipse:

You didn't hear? Upgrade now!

On the off chance that you haven’t heard the news yet. You should upgrade your WordPress install straight away. Don’t hesitate, do it now. Don’t pause to grab a cup of coffee. If you’re just waking up then rub the sleep from your eyes and jump to the download page and grab WordPress 2.1.2.

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Users running from svn code aren’t affected, but then you probably already knew that already didn’t you? You should be subscribed to Hackers and Testers lists.

Don’t worry if you’re running a WordPress MU site. That isn’t affected, although you should upgrade to the latest 1.1.1 release as that fixes a number of problems with 1.0 as well as merging in some security fixes from WordPress core.

WordPress.com users have nothing to worry about.

Counting down to the 2007 Blog Awards

It’s not long to go before the Blog Awards on Saturday. Damien says that there’s extensive media coverage of the event including interviews on radio and spots on RTE news. I’m looking forward to seeing who wins what on the day. I’ll be keeping an eye on Irish Blogs.ie for updates that evening, but I’ll be staying at home here in Cork while everyone is partying in Dublin!

Meanwhile, Blarney suffered yet another power cut. This one lasted for well over 2 hours. Have laptop, have dvd player, watched “United 93”. Frighteningly real and shocking film. I still remember being in my boss’s office watching on a little portable TV as the smoke poured out of the World Trade Center that day and later hearing from clients on that campus that they were ok.

Edit: While on the subject of Irish blogs, Haydn Shaughnessy asked if Irish blogging is about to peak just as blogging becomes mainstream elsewhere? I never got around to commenting on it, but if I had I would have asked, “Does it matter? People have been nattering and gossiping forever and a day and they’ll do it in whatever forum they can.” His article appeared in today’s Irish Times, so go buy the dead tree version, or read the comments on the post above.