Tag Archives: irishblogs

The Elysian

If you have driven past the construction site on Eglinton Street you may have noticed all the expensive looking posters promising something, “better than you expected” and calling it “Ireland’s Biggest Secret”. Right, maybe the marketing department went overboard, but this evening I spotted a URL on the posters: http://www.theelysian.ie/

The brief was simple, create a landmark building for Cork which shows the positive energy of its inhabitants, make it a show piece for the way City Centre development should go and most importantly create stupendous homes where all manner of buyers will be proud to live.

I think it’s going to be a high-rise building with offices, appartments and a shopping centre. Should be a hell of a view from the top of it as it’ll have a 17 storey tower! That’s taller than anything else in Cork.

I've had more fun in a road digger

Jeremy Clarkson reviews the latest Volvo digger, sorry, the BMW Z4 M coupé, although you’ll have to scroll down to the end to see what he thinks of this “hard-top, hardcore version of the Z4 M convertible”.

If you want this sort of car, the Porsche Gayman is an obvious rival. It goes harder but is deeply embarrassing to be seen in. So what I’d do is buy the soft-top Z4 M instead. Or if you want something really fun for the weekend, buy a digger.

Is this really Jeremy Clarkson’s myspace blog? Somehow I doubt it as one astute reader noticed he spells colour without the u.

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..

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.

More Linux eye candy: CGWD Themes

If you’ve seen my desktop machine at home you’ll realise I’m a big fan of the Xgl and compiz stuff and now thanks to a Linux Journal article I’ve discovered the CGWD Themer.

Installing it in Ubuntu is as easy as adding a new site to your apt-get repository list and firing up apt-get in the usual way and grabbing the binaries from their repository. Then either launch it from the command line using the command “gcompizthemer” or go to System->Preferences where a new menu item called “CGWD Themer” can be found. The themer does nice things to the borders of and bars of your windows. I love the glow of the min/max/close buttons that spills over the side of the window!
Oh, and just because I bought a Mac laptop doesn’t mean I’m abandoning Linux. I fell in love with my Gnome+Xgl desktop once again when I came home from San Francisco!

Later – two articles features on digg and delicious which might be of interest:

  1. An Overview of modern fancy Unix desktops – good summary of the competing technologies that make the 3d and special visual effects possible
  2. The Linux Desktop Myth – a long essay on one man’s experience with switching to Linux and GPLed software.
  3. Suse Compiz page – has lots more info and lists all the options and configurable bits! (via)

WordCamp Pictures and Words

WordCamp went really well yesterday. I’m a little hungover today so I’ll point you in the direction of others who blogged the event:

Later – I uploaded my images to Zooomr and created a smart set there. That was a nice experience, the uploader is slightly better than a regular HTTP upload and the smart set feature is like virtual folders in Thunderbird. If they had upload by email I’d be there every day!

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