irishblogs – Page 100 – Something Odd!

Who wins Irish Linkbaiter of the Year?

A number of Irish blogs and sites attracted a great many links and attention over the past 12 months but I think I can safely say that the Irish Blog Awards deserves the much coveted “Irish Linkbaiter of the Year Award”. If Damien didn’t delete his own blog from nominations he’d certainly be up for a gong or two!

Not to be left out, I’ve linked to the Awards site too, and I noticed that I’ve been nominated in three categories:

This blog is nominated in the best technology blog category.
I’m nominated in the “Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere” category
Finally, In Photos has been nominated in the best photoblog category.

I voted a few days back and I remember nominating In Photos (hey, why leave things to chance?), but thanks to whoever nominated me in the other categories. Now all that remains is for everyone to vote for me! Go on, you know you want to!

I won’t make it to the awards ceremony this year either but Ryan will be on hand to take a few photos. I look forward to seeing his brilliant black and white shots of the event. My reason for not attending are the same as last year, but thankfully, this year it’s under much happier circumstances!

The voting page doesn’t link to the participating blogs and personalities, but Jason Roe came up with the goods and has linked to them all. Fire up your browser and open them tabs! Ah yes, the Red Cardinal has done the same.

Meanwhile, in typical Rebel Cork style, the Gamma Goblin is holding his own alternative blog awards where, “I’m gonna have my own awards and give ye all nothin! I’m gonna print up flyer’s and stuff, and have cake, and pop… and then maybe a raffle. None of you cretins will get any of the tickets, I’ll keep all the tickets, that way I will definitely win the spot prize’s, which will consist of, a collection of items, and a pile of things.” Go on GG, blow your own bugle, you’ll enjoy it!

How to make free international calls

Fellow Corkman, Pat Phelan has launched the Irish version of his All Free Calls service. It’s now possible for Irish people to make international calls at the price of a local or national call.

I’ve covered getting cheap calls in Ireland and abroad before but All Free Calls is a price that’ll be hard to beat. If your telephone provider offers a free calls package you’ll be able to make international calls for free! Eircom, UTV Internet and others offer free local calls so this should shake up the international calls market quite a bit.

Anytime free minutes bundles or packages are available from several Irish providers including Eircom, BT, Perlico etc. When you use the number shown on the website AllFreeCalls.ie the international part of your call is then free.

Disclaimer: I’ve met Pat twice, I’m subscribed to his blog but other than that I’m impartial!

Update: It’s not all free, 1890 and 0818 numbers are excluded from free call packages unfortunately. Pat clarifies the situation today. Still, local call is better than the silly amounts the incumbant charges for international calls.

Fundraising table quiz for Lesotho tonight

My brother and his girlfriend are heading to Lesotho in aid of the ISPCC charity. They’re going over in April but still need to raise funds for the trip so there will be a table quiz tonight at the Fob and Gill in Mayfield starting at 9pm.

I won’t be there tonight unfortunately but the last table quiz was great fun so if you’re wondering what you’re going to do tonight drop in and support a good cause!

I forgot to ask the midwife

We’re just back from our first ante natal class and I forgot to ask the most important question that every dad wants to know,

Can the prospective dad get a few gulps of the gas and air?

I did remember to ask another important question.

When the baby is upside down in the womb, does the blood run to it’s head? Is the baby in a constant state of wooziness?

Apparently the unborn baby’s blood runs in the opposite direction to your’s or mine. When a baby is born two valves close off in the heart and the blood flows in the right direction! So much happens when a baby is born, they must start breathing for themselves, they have to heat themselves.. Complicated business.

Brenda Power writing in the Sunday Times has a very positive article about older mothers. This is a subject close to my heart because my pregnant wife will be 42 on her next birthday, although if you met her you’d hardly know it! I would link to the article but the Times Online website has been redesigned. They’re looking for feedback so here’s mine. I don’t mind the new colours, it’s not as cluttered as other news sites, but some of the database and archive functionality could be improved. When I tried to view last Sunday’s Sunday Times content the drop down didn’t work, and searching for “Brenda Power” in the search box returned zero results! Does she still work for you? Looking forward to seeing those problems fixed because half the enjoyment of reading the newspaper is that I can blog it later!

One more criticism of the new Sunday Times website – not all articles are available there. The two I wanted to blog about this week are missing in action, presumed lost in the server somewhere. Please fix it! *sob*

Halifax Ireland under attack

I saw this advert over the weekend and fell about laughing at it. Yes, it was a quiet weekend in Kerry but it’s a good ad nonetheless! I wonder if we’ll see disgrunted bankers barging into the Cork branch of Halifax looking for a fight?

Thoughts on returning from Killarney

Random thoughts that have occurred to me this Sunday evening after spending the weekend in Killarney, Co. Kerry in the south-west of Ireland.

Too much driving to the Black Valley. It’s not recommended that you drive through the Gap of Dunloe, but I’d like to see any heavily pregnant woman walk those hills!
Ross Castle is so close to Killarney yet I never knew about it until I saw Brid’s photo at the camera club.
The Randles Court Hotel is excellent.
I need to dump stuff to DVD to make way for 3GB of RAW files, bracketing shots suck space.
It’s great to be away for a few days, but it’s wonderful to get home too.
Waterproof nappies for the baby might be useful next year. Do they work?
Most Kerry people we met and all the foreign workers and hotel staff were very nice.
St. Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney is huge and impressive. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before with bold, bare rocks decorating the columns and walls. I was self-conscious about the click of my camera until I noticed a couple brought their dog into this holy place and stood in front of the alter in admiration, with dog standing behind them.
Supervalu hotel breaks are great!
And finally, the proverbial honey glazing on a great weekend: Only 100 spam comments moderated. Over 5,000 caught by Akismet.

Topless Speed Bandits cause traffic pile up

It appears that the Danes have been just a little too good at slowing down traffic by employing a new method of attracting the attention of speeding drivers to speed limit signs. Drivers are literally queuing up to watch the young beauties holding the signs. Oops. The following video might be viewed as NSFW so click through with caution!

Continue reading “Topless Speed Bandits cause traffic pile up”

Death and Divorce Unix style

When you break up with your significant other you go through the motions of living your life, but in a daze. At some stage you need to let go and move on, no matter how hard it is. (from xkcd)

PS. Congrats Elly on the move to WordPress! A pity this cartoon wasn’t published before your talk at BarCamp!

PPS. But seriously, a friend just broke up with his girlfriend of over 4 years. She was cheating on him, I hope he listens to how to dump a cheating girlfriend!

We are live from BarCamp South East!

Here I am blogging away at BarCamp South East. It’s been a great day so far. My talk was scheduled for 10:50am which was a relief to get out of the way. Feedback has been positive too and horrors of horrors, I actually enjoyed the talk! Video and podcasts will be online eventually and I’ll update this post when they’re available. Elly left Bernie’s dictaphone on the seat next to me, Joe and Conor had video cameras so I’m sure you’ll get to hear or watch me talk about WordPress one way or another if you’re interested!

Thank you all for the comments on yesterday’s post. I’m hopeful that things will return to normal sooner or later on inphotos.org!

Now, I’m off to look around and mingle with the rest of the attendees!

Just spotted on Lifehacker, is How to manage kids in the home office, a topic brushed upon in my talk.

I’m sitting in the Drupal talk now by Alan Burke and Stephane Corlosquet on the laptop. John Handelaar is showing off his voter site written in Drupal. It’s a great presentation on the power of Drupal and it’s plugins.

Ken McGuire has a review of the day, and apart from everything else, and it was great to talk to Justin Mason finally.

Great day. I think everyone’s looking forward to the next one in May!

Conor O’Neill has posted videos of my talk on his blog. I could embed them here, but he went to all the trouble of uploading them, so go visit his blog and check them out. There are bits there about scaling WPMU by hashing blog_ids and partitioning databases, as well as how to get past the 32,000 file limit of ext2/ext3 in the blogs.dir files directory. Also, if you work from home I discuss my experiences doing the same, and communicating within a virtual company.

Bernie has posted the first podcast of my talk. He’s posting the second half tomorrow about working from home and in a virtual company.

The second part of Bernie’s podcast is online today! In this part I talk about working from home and balancing work and home life. Should be of interest to everyone working from home!