Monthly Archives: June 2007

Health food firms told to "Prove it!"

It’s about time for this to happen. Food companies have been claiming X, Y and Z about their products for long enough. An article in the Sunday Times goes on to say that, “FOOD companies that make false or unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits of their products will be forced to withdraw them under a new European Union crackdown.”

One of those products listed in a table that accompanies the paper version of the article is the baby food Aptamil. There is very little proof that it helps a baby’s immune system. Looks like Milupa were quick off the mark changing their packaging.

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The prominent label, “Supports your baby’s natural immune system” is now missing on the new packaging. Score one for consumers!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Adam needs annother feed. Typing one handed takes ages!

While on the subject of feeding babies, there is an Islamic Fatwa that says adult men can be breast fed. Strange, but read more here

I am legend – last man standing?

This reminds me of a book I read a few years ago. A man off hiking in the country hurt his leg and recovered in a remote log cabin. When he hiked back down everyone was dead. Almost. Eventually he found other survivors of the plague, and the story follows his life and the lives of his children as they descend from civilized community to half naked hunter gatherers stumbling away into a new and threatening world.

I found this trailer for the new Will Smith movie, “I Am Legend” via Anthony’s blog and it could be rather good. As is my want to do these days I checked Youtube for a trailer and found a fan made film and rehearsal clips from the movie. After watching the following movie, check out the comments. Not too many people are happy Will Smith will be playing the lead role! To be honest I though I was watching Independence Day all over again!

Rehearsal clips seem to be shot by local people in New York, not any “behind the scenes” videos by the production staff. Here are a few: video 1, video2 (Will Smith makes a brief appearance in this one), and this one has it’s good moments.

I’m going to look for the book first.

PS. Want to download the trailer? There are probably plugins to do it, but I found that running strings on the .mov loader file displayed the actual movie file. ‘Course I’m only going to watch it once or twice so why bother downloading it? Ho hum! Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to do something, just because we can do it! I will say it looks very impressive full screen.

PPS. Wikipedia page on the book, and the film. Don’t read if you hate spoilers!

I'm not the only one to love the Alfa 147

This evening I watched an old Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson put an Alfa 147 GTA through it’s paces and compared it to a VW Golf and Ford Focus.

Despite the fact that it will break down, something will fall off, and it’s slower than the other two cars, all three presenters would still buy the Alfa. If you’ve ever owned or driven an Alfa 147 you’ll know exactly what they mean. I read a review of the Alfa 147 in a paper and then months later had the opportunity to test drive one. I fell in love immediately. How could I not buy it? It was a love/hate relationship almost from the start.

The famous Alfa build quality made itself known early on:

  • My Alfa’s dashboard died for absolutely no reason while driving to work one morning. I had to pull over, switch off the engine and start her up again to get things working again.
  • The ABS or Traction Control kicked in going over small potholes. If you know Irish roads you know there are a lot of potholes.
  • Three of the bulbs in the headlights went at exactly the same time and had to be replaced while I was away from Cork.
  • There were other problems with it and I had to bring it back to the garage several times.

I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it but would I buy another Alfa? I’d be awfully tempted..

Here’s what the Top Gear guys think and judge for yourself. Sheer lunacy?

What car have you absolutely adored? What car made your blood boil with passion to drive? What car would make you enjoy a long drive along bumpy roads? Mine’s the Alfa Romeo 147, what’s yours?

Google just killed the ad click tracking industry

It would appear that Google stopped displaying the “Go to ….” message in the status bar when someone clicked on Adsense adverts.

What’s the big deal with this? Unfortunately it means that it’s impossible to track what adverts are being clicked, with the aim of removing low paying or MFA adverts using the competitive ad filter.

eCPM is up today, possibly because Google stopped arbitrage accounts. I hope it’s a sign of better things to come and Google will improve their filter to the extent that it would make the competitive ad filter redundant except for filtering out competitive adverts, like it was supposed to!

Dump Javascript at the end of your page

You’ve seen it plenty of times before. A website loads but only the sidebar appears. The loading graphic in your browser is still spinning and there’s that “contacting …” or “loading …” message at the bottom of your window. Why?

The most common cause of this is because the site uses a chunk of Javascript loaded from a remote site. Think of those fancy chat widgets, Snap.com popups and even hit counters. If those sites are slow to load, they could make your site slow too. The best place to put that code is right at the bottom of the page, after all the content, if you can and it’s appropriate.

I just noticed this happening on Pro Blogger a few minutes ago. Darren’s c2.gostats.com stats are loaded just below the sidebar and because that site was responding slowly the main content part of his blog didn’t display immediately. This may be a storm in a teacup because the next time I refreshed it loaded fine but remember, first impressions count. You don’t want to keep a new visitor to your site waiting.

The ever pervasive Snap.com seems to suffer this sort of problem on a regular basis so be extra careful when you use their Javascript applet. If it takes a while to load, so will your blog.

To further confuse matters, there’s also a bug in Firefox that makes the “Transferring data from …” message appear longer than it should. The guys at Sphere noticed this after complaints their Javascript was loading slowly. It’s all a bit of a mess really!

What to do this weekend?

This weekend will be a busy one in Cork but I think we’re going to try to take it easy and not stress ourselves too much trying to enjoy it too much!

This weekend a Capoeira festival will be held in the city. On Saturday morning there will be a demonstration at 10:30 in front of Brown Thomas on St. Patrick Street, followed by workshops in Blackrock GAA club. Looks like a latin party on Saturday night and a BBQ will follow the workshop on Sunday! Not sure if I can make it but I’ll try to be there. I must dig up some more of my Capoeira photos next week.

In Blackpool The Festival of the Bulls will be held from 12pm to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday. There’s more info on the Whazon website but I’ll copy it here because they don’t have any archives unfortunately.

THE FESTIVAL OF the BULLS – Community Carnival

Saturday and Sunday 12pm – 6pm

STREET PERFORMANCES
Be Your Own Banana Company, That Man, Amani Acrobats, The Svetlana show, Bui Bolg, Mr.Cro, The Incredible Bull Circus and Cork Circus

MUSICIANS
The spectacular Burundi Drummers, Filipino dancers and drummers chorus, The 40 piece Youghal Ceile House band with dancers, Southern Brigade Army Brass band, The Mayfield Brass band, The Cork City String Quartet The Clubmen Swing band , The award winning Polyphonic Barbershop Chorus, The Christ Restoration Life Ministries Gospel Choir, Traditional musicians doing walkabouts, Blackpool Youth Club song and dance show, Isis Youth band

COMMUNITY EVENTS
Duck races , Blackpool Treasure hunt, Pub Quiz
Food Market, Arts & Crafts Stalls, Massage area, Balloon modellers, Face painters, Penalty Shoot outs Community Art exhibition, Programme of local film documentaries, Programme of Award winning Irish films , Exhibition of original drawings by Seamus Murphy, Amateur Photography exhibition, Re-dedication of the Grotto, Dublin Hill, Planet gym health club demonstration and Children’s games

The Bulls Mart
The market will feature over 40 local producers and slow food promoting traders along with local craft and jewelry stalls.

Sunday 3rd June at 4.30pm
BULL RUN
The climax of the festival will be the inaugural Blackpoll Bull Run. Although the bulls have long since left the streets of Blackpool the Carnival bulls will be out in force, creating havoc, making noise, inciting madness and generating excitement. It will be a riot of Brazilian carnival, freaky metallic bull bikes and puppet bulls, along with dancers, drummers, butchers, witchdoctors and warriors. All of them painted head to toe, shouting, singing and dancing crazy.

The public will be invited to participate in the event which promises to be an incredible sight and a fitting remembrance of what once was, of what built this city, this area, this people and this culture.

Sunday 3rd June
Bull puppet workshops
Dowtcha puppets will be holding puppet making workshops

TICKETS:
BOOKING/INFO:
VENUE: Blackpool Retail Park

I have a feeling you’ll find us at the beach if the weather is nice or even mildly ok. It’s been a while, before Adam was born even, and the pull of the ocean is strong!

Star trekkin' across the universe

Star Trekkin’ by The Firm

I can’t believe this song is 20 years old! My parents bought the original album on tape and we listened to it over and over. The other songs on the tape were more boring to my 11 year old ears but I remember they grew on me as time passed. I have no idea where the tape is now unfortunately.

What would we do without Youtube? Write original content? Gasp!

Star Trekkin’ is a song released in 1987 by a band called The Firm (not to be confused with the British rock group or the hip-hop supergroup of the same name). It is a parody of the original TV series of Star Trek.

Just in case that wasn’t enough, and on the subject of songs that get stuck in your head. The “Hold a chicken in the air” part of the Chicken Song by Spitting Image was stuck in my head for several years. Don’t press play. You’ve been warned!

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