From the opening title sequence of the wool, the yoyo and the cut out paper men…
To the magic door leading to the zoo…
And then there’s Michael Finnegan, I wonder where he went?
Yes, if you grew up in the eighties in Ireland then you’ll know all about Bosco. Aren’t we lucky?
First spotted on the ILUG mailing list, it appears that a young 16 year old student has cracked the RSA encryption system and won 1st prize at the BT Young Scientist Competition 2007.
If it’s true then Internet commerce could be in for a rough time, but some previous winners have proven to be less than remarkable when seen against the cold light of day. This comment from the winner, Abdusalam Abubakar, seems to indicate that the method used might not be that effective either. Check out this ILUG thread for further discussion. Can it be true he wrote it in Visual Basic?
“It was great, unbelievable. I didn’t think I was going to win anything. I didn’t want to be optimistic,” he told The Irish Times last night. Abdusalam, whose name translates into “man of peace”, based his initial work on partially successful attacks on the world’s most widely-used encryption system, RSA, mounted by two mathematicians. He decided to take the best aspects of both and generalise a new approach, which he believes has the potential to tackle at least some less complex coding systems.
Gardai are investigating a video found on bebo.com made by two lads from Cork. They made a video of themselves driving at 200km/h through the Jack Lynch Tunnel and then posted it on the Internet for all to see. I wonder who did they think would watch the video? Has the video made it outside Bebo yet? Apparently the Gardai have asked Bebo.com to take the video down so it could be gone for good. Pity, it could go down in Irish Internet Folklore.
While we’re waiting, here are two lads who decided to drive at speed through Dublin city center, at least until they passed an unmarked Garda car. (via Blogorrah)
The video might not be playing, but you can view it here still. Not sure why but it’ll probably right itself eventually. Note the comment from the driver:
deloford (2 months ago)
They stopped us because it was an english reg in dub& they thought the car was stolen by a couple of nackers, also you cant see clearly but it was v. bad driving in rain,nearly ran someone down,run red light,speeding in bus lane,a guy videoing it in the front seat which they saw.
Normal cops dont threaten to shoot you and if it was normal cops we’d ave been in the shit. He started to search and got a call.
And this comment was definitely not made by an Irish person, like,
Why is everyone using like at the end of every sentence what ever the fuck that means?!!!
On January 20th I’ll be speaking at BarCamp South East on the subject of WordPress.com and WordPress MU. The talk is titled, “WordPress.com – running the biggest wpmu site in the world” which is vague enough that I could talk about anything but I’d like to know what you want to hear.
Public speaking isn’t my strong point, I prefer to be behind the keyboard, or looking through a camera lens but sometimes you have to push yourself to do unfamiliar things. Here’s my go at public speaking.
Talks will be in 45 minute slots and I would like to make mine more of a discussion forum like the WPMU talk we had at WordCamp way back in August last year. It went really well and everyone got something out of it.
Subjects I’m considering include:
So, if you’ll be there I want to hear from you. If you won’t, I still want to hear from you because I’m sure Bernie or someone will record the talk and put it up online.
Airtricity are running an advertising campaign on the radio currently in an effort to get businesses to switch to them from the semi-state monopoly electricity generator, ESB. They offer to save you 10% off ESB prices and they’ll freeze your energy prices until 2010. That’s very attractive considering that the ESB is getting yet another price increase this month from the rubber stamping regulator. Unfortunately when you click “Switch now” on their site all you get is an error message:
XSLTransform Error
XSLTransform: Unmatched end tag.
File: VCFile(N/E:0:[website]::/ireland/switch_to_airtricity/switch_now/index.xml)
Line: 288, column: 18
Context:
Oops. That’s a pity because I wonder if I qualify as a small business being a self-employed person working at home. I’ll have to check back later.
Twenty year old Joseph Mullally went missing last December 14th after he was last seen outside The Brog on Oliver Plunkett Street. An extensive search for the last several weeks went on involving volunteers and emergency personnel turned up nothing until this morning at 10am when 4 of the searchers found his body at the quayside in Tivoli, downstream of the city.
More on PRC, Breaking News, and RTE News.
Ar dheis De go raibh a anam.
The Irish Government will start the process of converting our traffic system to a right hand drive one in the next few months. The current system of driving on the left is a legacy of British rule in this country but now that we’re part of the EU this change is finally taking place. Grandad has more details on his blog.
I expect this will be a welcome change for tourists and foreign travelers to our shores, especially Polish people who will no doubt start businesses teaching people to drive on the wrong other side of the road.
Initially, all buses and articulated vehicles will move to the right to allow for a period of adjustment. Car owners may opt to make the switch themselves on an individual basis, depending on their level of confidence.
Starting on the 1st of August, all motorists outside city limits will be required to drive on the right. And finally on the 1st September, all city traffic will make the transition.
The second Irish Blog Awards will take place on the 3rd of March in Dublin. Damien wants to know if you’re going so leave a comment on his post if you’re interested. I have yet to make up my mind but there’s already a number of comments left and it will probably be even bigger than last year!
If your company is looking for exposure in the blogging community, there are a number of sponsorship slots still left to fill. More details on the page linked above.
Yawn. The mundane things in life are top of my agenda today. We’re looking for a new mattress and considering how much time is spent asleep in bed it’s criminal not to buy the best you can afford.
From research it appears that memory foam mattresses are the best to go for. I would certainly hope a new mattress would help my sore back! Tempura mattresses have been recommended to us but they’re hard to buy in Cork. Casey’s Furniture have them but they’ve always been over priced in their city center location. Another brand I have come across is Visco and it appears to do the same job. According to one salesperson they’re firmer than Tempura mattresses but I need to ring around a few more places before we make up our minds.
If you have one of these mattresses I’d love to hear about how comfortable they are. Try searching for any information on either brand and you’ll only find are online-stores trying to flog you one!
This page is better than most however. Here’s what they say about Visco-elastic mattress, which I presume applies to Tempura too.
Off to town shortly and out with the credit card..
January 3rd 2007 – we went into town this afternoon and tried a few places before buying a bed in Swan Beds. It’s a memory foam mattress. A bit pricey but less than Casey’s were looking for. Hopefully it’ll be delivered next Wednesday!
I’ve had a Nokia 6320 or something like that for well over a year so I think it’s about time I treat myself to a mobile phone upgrade on my Meteor account. My brother bought a Sony Ericsson K750i, I had a brief play with it and I’m impressed. This review from last year paints a rosy picture also but it’s only one of a number of phones available from Meteor.
What do I need my mobile phone to do besides the basic calling functions?
Decisions, decisions. I probably won’t get a chance to go into a Meteor store today but maybe sometime over the next few weeks.
Update! I bought the Sony Ericsson W810i. Here’s my mini review and initial impressions. There’s not much between it and the K750i that I can see except:
Initial impressions are good except:
Those are mostly minor problems, and some are from familiarity with Nokia phones. My first phone was a Panasonic and it had the space character on the # key too so I know it’ll become second nature to me eventually. I like the camera. It’s a 2MP sensor, adjustable exposure value, white balance and even has an illuminating light. Movies are stored in 3gp format but I’m sure there are ways of converting them to an online-friendly format if I look. The Walkman app looks promising and I’ll play wih it a little more once I’ve added a few mp3s to the memory stick.
The W810i has a handy panorama feature where the phone will stitch together 3 photos to make one larger image. It displays a semi-transparent portion of the previous image on the left of the screen for overlap purposes to allow you to line up the next shot. It works quite well too. Here’s a shot from O’Brien’s Sandwich Bar in Blackpool shopping center this morning.
