Author Archives: Donncha

Do I really need a phone line with Sky Digital?

Way back in 2004 i posed the question, Do I need a phoneline for Sky Digital? and I can confirm that yes, you do need to keep your Sky box connected for the term of the contract, usually the first year.

Last January I purchased a Sky+ subscription with the multi-room option. I didn’t connect the second box to the phone, mainly because it’s upstairs and I never got around to stringing a phone line to that room. Then, sometime during the last year the phone line to the living room died so both boxes were offline. Oops.

Sky contacted me several times, I bought 2 phoneline extension cables but there was always something more interesting to do than fix a phone line. Fancy that eh?

Last week Sky sent me this letter saying, “sadly, your entitlement to Multiroom pricing has been lost” unless I reconnect the boxes to the phone and ring them.

I’ve been on hold to Sky for the last 32 minutes, only another 30 minutes to go..

letter from sky

I want a free house

Cork student Shane Murphy is running iwantafreehouse.com and selling advertising on his homepage in €100 blocks. Unfortunately, it looks like the site is struggling under the load of a free plug on Today FM but I’m sure they’ll sort that out later. He’s also running a simple blog on there so be sure to check back there for updates!

Heh. If I had thought of it I would have tried it when I was a student, but it probably wouldn’t have been such a success 10 years ago..

Steve Irwin killed by sting ray

I just heard on the news that Steve Irwin, aka the Crocodile Hunter, was killed by a sting ray while filming a new documentary. Google news links to more coverage.

“Steve was hit by a stingray in the chest,” said local diving operator Steve Edmondson, whose Poseidon boats were out on the Great Barrier Reef when the accident occured. (smh.com.au)

Yes, he was annoying in his over-the-top way but he was entertaining and made wildlife interesting for youngsters who might never have watched a nature programme!

Darren Rowse recognised that bloggers can learn lessons from Steve Irwin about passion, individuality, optimism. Go watch his old programmes again. They’re sure to be shown again soon!

Here’s how he might have died, if the sting ray hadn’t got him first:

Experiences with 3

One person’s experienes with Ireland’s newest mobile phone operator, 3, are less than promising. Missed calls, no dialtone, bad coverage, ridiculous limits on the size of bills for new users. Doesn’t sound good.

3 are offering 5 cent text, picture and video messaging right now but if their service is bad, what use are they, even if cheap? (via)

Bush assassinated on TV

George Bush AssassinatedI wondered why I saw someone visit my blog by searching for this subject. It appears that a tv drama will depict the assassination of US President George Bush! They use, “archive footage, actors and computer effects to portray the president being shot dead.”

Why? They want to explore the effects of the War on Terror on the US apparently. Do they presume that the US President will be shot in an act of revenge? It’s on More 4 on October 9th. I’ll watch it. (via)

While we’re on the subject of wacky ideas, I watched Being John Malkovich tonight. What a crazy film, but definitely worth seeing.

Working at home, with children

I hope Ryan sees this, but 6 tips for working at home with children lists 2 good work habits that anyone working at home should follow:

  1. Maintain a good work schedule, and stick to it.
  2. Take a long lunch and enjoy your opportunity to work from home.

I haven’t been able to do either. I usually get up early (sunrise at 6.30 is quite spectacular from my office!), straight to my desk to post a photo, check email, irc, web stats, and then shower, breakfast, back to desk, bring the dog for a walk, work, break, work, quick lunch, work. Suddenly it’s 6pm and I’m wondering where all the time has gone.

That’s a normal day, but sometimes I need to get out and do some chore. Then I can be catching up the hours until late into the night.
Automattic is a 24-hour company. Podz and I are in Europe and the rest of the guys in the US, I wonder sometimes what it would be like to work on hours more closely tied to the other side of the Atlantic? The 8 hours difference between here and San Francisco is unrealistic, but maybe 4 or 6 hours. Then I laugh and think that Jacinta would kill me because we’d never see each other!

Working from home? It’s the best thing I’ve ever done! (via)

Gzip Compression or No?

mod_gzip, zlib.output_compression or whatever way you compress your web pages is a great way of reducing your network traffic costs but comes at the cost of increased CPU usage. Despite what you might think, it can be more expensive to send data over the network, especially to slow clients than compress it first of all and send a smaller burst.

Unfortunately this little server may not be up to the task of gzipping content at an acceptable rate to make it worthwhile. I’ll leave it run for another few hours and check the stats tomorrow.

More snakes than you can shake a stick at

Has anyone actually gone to see that Snakes on the plane film? The first I heard of it was woz-is-name reviewing it on Ian Dempsey’s show on Today FM a few days ago, although I remember Damien Mulley saying something about snakes a few times. I just thought he had a new hobby! Internet Hype? I must be on some alternate ‘net!

Anyway, it’s supposed to be crap, so I’m not going!

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