Author Archives: Donncha

If LOTR was written by someone else..

What if Douglas Adams wrote Lord of the Rings? These extracts made me grin 🙂

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of Eriador lies a small unregarded countryside.
In this land is an utterly insignificant little green town whose men-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think smoking is a pretty neat idea.

iRiver H320/H340 – personal music player

Now, this looks like a nice music player. dpreview has a concise feature list. As well as mp3 files it also plays ogg files, and it can display jpegs, and I could plug my camera into it and it’ll make coffee while I watch tv (no, only joking about the last bit!)
It’s not out yet AFAICT but I might be able to afford one in a few months time if reviews prove positive!
Later… ipodyourbmw.com – Owen mentioned this last night, I’d forgotten it, but Stewie reminded me a few minutes ago. And the The Register has more in a slightly easier format to read.

Are you still going to the pub?

On the day that publicans report a 7m pint drop in beverage consumption, I see that Will was in Galway at the weekend and had a great time!

The pubs were packed, but on the summer’s day, the streets were packed with the over spill, all chatting away.
It’s the smoking ban that did it!
Before, the pubs would be packed, and the merriment would all be out of sight behind darkened doors.

Don’t they know the customer is always right? A vast majority of Irish people don’t smoke, it’s the price of the pint that’s driving people away!

Reasons to Work at Google

While there are really great reasons why one should work at Google, Kevin puts it best..

why work for google? think about it. people are always searching for a better job. no matter how much you like a job at first you get sick of it after a while. unhappiness is caused by not having found what you’re searching for. if you get a job at google, your job is searching. once you dislike it, what are you going to do – go searching? no. you hate searching. so you don’t search, so you don’t get unhappy so therefore you stay happy. the perfect job.

Of course, there were replies to that..

<khismetix> jaypers
<DoC> Well, you could also blog for a better job. Or mail for a better job with lots of capacity.
<paul> kevin: that’s your worst joke yet 🙂
<DoC> Or secret underground laser for a better job.
<kevin> paul: it makes perfect sense.
<DoC> Wait. That’s probably covered under my NDA. Look into this apparatus for a second, everyone.
<Minus1> kevin: i’m sorry… you are *really* reaching.
<kevin> DoC: ah yes, but you aren’t searching then are you?
* paul tries to recover from having read kevin’s google-job-searching joke
<pron> paul: was it a joke ?
* pron thinks kevin wants a google job

Why the lure of logos wears thin

Here’s an interesting article on the the current trend of free advertising that brand name clothes are. I wonder if I can dig up the excellent article from the Sunday Times about this. Must look later.

Brands are nothing more than “stories attached to objects,” says James Twitchell, a professor of English at the University of Florida who has written widely about branding as a cultural phenomenon. “Sometimes we just go through periods where we’ve heard the story too much,” he says. “Or we’re hearing the story being told by too many people.”

Now, everyone with a Burberry handbag should repeat after me, “We are induvidhuals! We have a distinct style and taste in clothes! Baah! Baah!”

More to be found on nologo.org.

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