How to find cocaine in Ireland

It’s easy to find cocaine in Ireland:

I wish the how to make cocaine video was still online.

Here’s the Podge and Rodge interview with Katy French from earlier this year. I remember this. I didn’t know who she was either!

More discussion on Politics.ie, An Fear Rua, and Peoples Republic of Cork.

Here’s my favourite quote, and a short poem from the PRC forum.

heres a better tip.dont touch the shite fullstop.then you wont have any worries and wont have to crouch in a toilet cubicle sniffing fuck knows what off a piss and shit stained toilet

My name is Cocaine – call me Coke for short.
I entered this country without a passport.
Ever since then I’ve made lots of scum rich.
Some have been murdered and found in a ditch.
I’m more valued than diamonds, more treasured than gold.
Use me just once and you too will be sold.
I’ll make a schoolboy forget his books.
I’ll make a beauty queen forget her looks.
I’ll take renowned speaker and make a bore.
I’ll take a mother and make her a whore.
I’ll make a schoolteacher forget how to teach.
I’ll make a preacher not want to preach.
I’ll take all your rent money and you’ll get evicted.
I’ll murder your babies or they’ll be born addicted.
I’ll make you rob and steal and kill.
When you’re under my power you have no will.
Remember my friend my name is ” Big C “.
If you try me just one time you may never be free.
I’ve destroyed actors, politicians and many a hero.
I’ve decreased bank accounts from millions to zero.
I make shooting and stabbing a common affair.
Once I take charge you won’t have a prayer.
Now that you know me what will you do ?
You’ll have to decide, It’s all up to you.
The day you agree to sit in my saddle.
The decision is one that no one can straddle.
Listen to me, and please listen well.
When you ride with cocaine you are headed for hell !!!

The US Dollar is now worth

The US Dollar has been steadily falling in value against practically every other currency for the last few years. This is the 5 year chart for the Euro vs US Dollar. Depressing isn’t it? If you’re selling into the US you would have to raise your prices by 30% just to make the same income you did in 2003, and that’s ignoring inflation. That Google Adsense cheque is worth less and less every month!

usvseuro

In preparation for the day when the US Dollar is worth practically nothing, a new bill will be introduced. The Zero Dollar bill will make it easier for US residents to realise how much buying power their currency has.

zero

It’s the perfect currency really. The Fed can print billions of these bills and it won’t affect the Forex markets. It is expected that the US will attempt to adopt the Euro as it’s primary currency shortly afterwards but will be rejected because their national deficit is above the 3% required for membership. (via)

Blogs in Plain English

What’s the big deal about blogs? Haydn rang me this morning because he’s doing research on blogs and I remembered Joseph mentioned this video on IRC. This is a reminder from the Common Craft folk that not everyone knows what a blog is, or why they’re a great communication tool.

If you’re reading this and thinking about setting up your own website, watch this short three minute video and you may well decide to start a blog. Nice to see WordPress.com get a mention too!

Wacky Waiters

Wacky Waiters was one of the first games I played on the Commodore Vic-20. Hands up if you ever played it? No. I’m not surprised. I’m sure there are people reading this post that were born after it was released in 1982 ..

  • John Breslin lists some of the Web 2.0 Corkonians! I wouldn’t go so far as to say I cofounded Automattic, I was the first employee though!
  • The old and new testaments compared.
  • Treasa’s amazing photo of a kite surfer flying over her head.
  • Walter announced Self Notes, an online note taker. Here’s my obligatory Hello World message.
  • Haydn wonders who has time to explore social software like Facebook.
  • I went down to the gallery in Kinsale recently and signed a few more prints there. It’s wonderful what time away from the prints does. I get a whole new perspective and appreciation for them all over again. They look wonderful! (even if I do say so myself!)
  • Asok died but they brought him back. Good thing he studied shape shifting ..
  • How to create your own planet with the GIMP or Photoshop. (via DSLR Blog)
  • The days are getting shorter as Winter sets in. Here’s some interesting ways to use shadows. That inspired me yesterday to take a couple of unusual shots.
  • Acquia is a new startup focusing on Drupal development. Another GPL project gets corporate support. Great! Good luck with the venture.

Net in China domain spam

Early this morning I received the following email from Chinese domain registrar, “Net in China” regarding the camera club I’m a member of, Mallow Camera Club. It looks suspicious, but harmless. The worst they could do is tempt me to buy those domains through them, or could they have squatted on the domains and extracted a higher price?

Curious, I went searching, and found this post from a few days ago. It seems I’m not the only one receiving these emails. Either they’re trying to scam people, or business is going very well for Net in China!

I don’t have any interest in those domains, but I did finally register mallowcameraclub.org through Namecheap so some good came of this domain scam email!

Dear CEO,

We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in china. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Dec 10, 2007, we received an application formally. One company named “Xingye Company” wanted to register following
Domain names:
mallowcameraclub.biz
mallowcameraclub.info
mallowcameraclub.cn
mallowcameraclub.com.cn
mallowcameraclub.net.cn
mallowcameraclub.org.cn
mallowcameraclub.tw
mallowcameraclub.com.tw
mallowcameraclub.hk
mallowcameraclub.mobi

Internet brand keyword:
Mallowcameraclub

Through our body.

After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other aims to buy these domain names. Now we have not finished the registration of Xingye Company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Zoey Wu
——————————————————-

Sponsoring Registrar: China Net Technology Limited
Tel:00852-30593099
Fax:00852-31771520
Website: www.netinchina.com.hk
Website: www.china-net.hk

Baby's first tooth

On Friday I felt Adam’s first teeth as he bit down on my small finger but they were still under the skin. This morning as he laughed in my arms I saw the tops of two tiny front teeth poking out of his bottom gum! And yes, baby teeth are sharp!

So, from what I can gleam online, we can expect the next teeth to appear in a few weeks time. Teething hurts though. To calm him down, we used the ever useful Calpol as well as two homeopathic products: Nelsons Teetha and Gumeze.

Despite the reservations I might have about homeopathic remedies I can recommend Teetha granules. A screaming crying baby transforms into a happy smiling baby within seconds. The packaging declares that, “each 300mg sachet contains 6c homeopathic potency of Chamomilla”. It also contains Xylitol, lactose and starch. 24 sachets cost €7.25. I’m not sure how that compares to the price of Bonjela and other products.

Gumeze is a liquid gel with a long list of homeopathic ingredients, including Chamomilla. It works, but I feel that Teetha works better.

Further reading for new parents:

  1. Teething Tots
  2. Developmental milestones: Teething

JFK visited Cork in 1963

John F. Kennedy, visited my home town Cork, during his trip to Ireland in 1963. This is a photo that popped up on the “Cork” tag Flickr stream last night and I had to blog it.

Different times, he’s completely exposed to the crowd. Patrick Street is thronged with people. They’re practically hanging out the windows trying to catch a glimpse of him. If anyone wanted to take a pot-shot at him it would have been simple to do so but at the time the country was swept up in a tide of pride and joy. “Kennedy had near-legendary status in Ireland, as the first person of Irish heritage to have a position of world power.”
This was only a few months before his assassination in Dallas later that year in November. The Wikipedia page on him has a paragraph dedicated to the visit, and links to this article from the BBC archives.

Image hosted at Flickr.

This town needs an enema

“This town needs an anema”. That was a line from last week’s “A town called Eureka” and I knew I recognised it. It was a line in the original Batman movie! I couldn’t find a clip of this scene, but here’s the first level of Batman the Movie on the Commodore 64!

How We Met

A short movie shot on the human body. Cool idea and nice story. Here’s the “making of” video.

  • A long list of WordPress MU plugins.
  • I’m sure not everyone knows about the recent activity page on Flickr. Check it out and subscribe to the feed to track comments to your stream.
  • So, you’re comfortable with the web, you can find your way around. Take it for granted? Of course you do. George Barr explains the significance of the web for photographers.
  • The Expressive Moment in Street Photography – this is so hard to accomplish. Many of my street shots lack that expressive moment. Must try harder.
  • Funny photography videos. Love that myspace one!
  • Elly and Tom both ask if Blognation is in meltdown. Seems that wages have not been paid in some time. I see Conor’s last post was yesterday. Hope things get sorted out.
  • Oh great! Another story to reinforce the stereotype of the drunken Irishman!
  • The Sociability plugin for WordPress displays a nice message to Digg and Stumbleupon visitors encouraging them to add a vote for your post. I haven’t looked at it yet. I wonder if it’ll work with Super Cache?

PS. Looking for a Budget 2008 calculator? Try the one at tax123.ie. Via Keith.

The end of Homeopathy

The end of homeopathy? – a very lengthy and critical article looking at the alternative medicine of homeopathy. 456 comments and counting. (via Mink Toast.)
After the birth of our son Adam, my wife was told to take Arnica C30 by nurses and doctors. After reading the post above, I searched for Arnica C30. The first result is a double blind test of homoeopathic arnica C30. The summary results aren’t encouraging,

73 patients completed the study, of whom 35 received placebo and 38 received arnica C30. The placebo group had a greater median age and the arnica group had slightly longer operations; nevertheless, no significant difference between the two groups could be demonstrated. We conclude that arnica in homoeopathic potency had no effect on postoperative recovery in the context of our study.

On to the links …

  • Christmas Spirit – lovely photo and story.
  • In the middle of November, Google changed the clickable area on Adsense adverts. Jonathan noticed a large drop in revenue, but I haven’t. Click through rate is much the same as before, although I did compensate by making the advert URLs more prominent.
  • Sometimes bosses misunderstand tech jargon, in amusing ways. Oh, don’t ask an engineer to talk to your class. He might be a bit blunt!
  • Google Analyticator is a small WordPress plugin that adds the necessary Google Analytics Javascript to your blog. It also has a neat JS function to track outbound links in Analytics. Just make sure you create two conversion goals, “/outgoing” and “/download” to do the tracking.
  • How many famous people?
  • Will the real Googlebot please stand? 208.113.160.20, you sit down. You’re a fake.
  • Jeff’s The Two Types of Programmers essay sparked such a response, he wrote a follow up. I definitely know a few 80% programmers. Many of the people I went to college with fall into that category unfortunately. No, none of them read this blog! 🙂