I need a “book review” category! This, the first book from Jon McGregor, is a brilliant story! Most of the way through it I wondered why I bought it, as it’s about the mundane lives of the people living in a street of flats in some city in the UK. There must be some dozen characters there, from the old couple who walk to the bus, to the twins playing cricket, to the main character whose life we follow throughout. I guess that’s what attracts so many people to Soaps – everyday life.
The remarkable thing? I’ll leave that up to you to find out. It’s a good yarn, and cleverly mixes the past with the present. This Google Search will lead you to more about this book.
Author Archives: Donncha
Merry Christmas to all!
This is the time of year that you either love or hate. I’m indifferent to it to be honest, especially this year. To those who know, well, nothing else needs to be said.
To all reading this, enjoy your holiday. Eat and be merry and be with your families!
Police can't touch you?
So, what do you do if you drive a Northern Ireland reg car that the Southern Ireland Police can’t trace? Double park in front of some poor guy’s car and wait for the Gardai to come along and scratch their heads wondering what they’ll do..
I took the above photo from the no. 10 bus, using my mobile phone so please excuse the quality of the shot!
More
Wow, what an excellent short movie! More is a 6 minute movie that’s well worth a look at! (via /.)
Webalizer – hide the groups!
Note to self: When grouping objects in the Webalizer config file please remember to Hide them too!
The Irish Iraqi Soldier..
Q. What’s the name of the Irish Iraqi soldier who ran away?
A. Abdul Abhaile.
*groan*
Thanks to Ryan Tubridy for that one…
Trouble in France
Via Keith comes this link to a scathing “overview of France”. Some of the comments are hilarious! Some are so full of hypocrisy that I want to vomit, but it’s irresistible stuff! Finally, here’s one comment that got me thinking:
The bombing (October 3, 1980) was at a Jewish synagogue on the Rue Copernic and killed four people. As I recall, the Prime Minister was outraged, not that Jews were targeted, but as he said at the time, that “innocent Frenchmen” were wounded. Pigs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t those people French too? Is a person a Jew first, then a member of their country? Should I change the by-line on my blog so it reads:
The weblog of a Catholic Irishman, Donncha O Caoimh.
All about PHP, web development, Catholic and Irish news and other stuff.
To be honest, I couldn’t care less what religion any particular person is as long as they live by the law of the land and treat people fairly. Terrorism from any side should be abhorred.
I agree that there’s trouble in France, but the same exists in every country – the rich get richer, and the poor just survive and watch the divide between them ever expand.
I like reading sites that challenge me, that are so completely different to my world view that I need to wrap my head around it and think carefully about what I’m reading. That’s one reason I like Keith’s blog! He’s a good techie but if we ever met we’d have an interesting conversation about politics!
Photos from the gig
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After that lovely comment below from Owen, I thought I should post some of the photos from last night.. Click on the thumbnail to view the larger image!
I like the first image, even though it was the first I took, and a test shot. The original was a bit dark and had to be lightened in the GIMP. The other two were taken without flash, and at a distance of about 5m. That’s very tough to do with stage lighting – conditions go from excellent (bright/yellow/white light) to bad (red/blue light) to downright difficult (performer walks into a shadow) within seconds of each other!
More photos to follow!
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Santa – the true story..
You probably don’t want the kids to see this animation!
Idea: Blog Gallery
Here’s something I sent to the WordPress dev list this morning…
Anyway, this morning after a hectic night taking some 250 photos of a friend’s band at a Christmas party it I was wondering how best to blog the best of them. Here’s what I thought of:
The blog entry will have a number of thumbnails (could be automatically created when the large size images are uploaded), and a space underneath, perhaps filled with the first image.
If a user clicks on one of the images then that image is displayed below the thumbnails via javascript. It’d be handy to have a “display all” button too (“dummy” <IMG src..> tags could load “blank.gif” or something until needed)
The Javascript bit is easy, it’s just changing the image src attribute, the PHP is easy. Making it easy for the potential user could be the most difficult bit. Hmm, that custom fields plugin could be handy!