My photoblog, In Photos, has picked up the Best Photoblog award at the Irish Blog Awards!
Tag Archives: irishblogs
Xgl on a live CD
If you want to try Xgl to see what all the fuss is about, then you should download the Kororaa live CD. I downloaded the 441MB iso, burned it on CD and rebooted into Xgl.
Wow. All the eye candy looks great, the cube revolved when I switched desktops or dragged the background with CTRL pressed. Dragging windows from one side of the cube to another desktop was really cool, but not as much fun as watching a sticky window bend and deform as I dragged it!
As someone pointed out on digg, it’s not just eye candy. The openGL powered desktop uses my video card to move pixels around and feels responsive. I’m very tempted to upgrade to Ubuntu Dapper so I can install the Xgl binaries! (via)
Later… I updated my Ubuntu install to the latest Dapper release using apt-get dist-upgrade and after some minor fighting with a customized xorg.conf and following the instructions I have an Xgl powered desktop! Nice.
Slightly Later… I found a showstopper bug. It doesn’t do full screen image viewing. At least as far as gthumb or f-spot is concerned anyway. Gthumb just dies and F-spot displays a thumbnail in the corner of a grey screen.
Some people had the same problem playing movies and the solution was to use openGL as the full screen driver but I don’t think the same can be done with an image viewer, can it?
It’s alpha software so hopefully this will be worked around sooner or later!
Clashes in Dublin over loyalist march
Clashes in Dublin over loyalist march – burning cars, missiles thrown, vandalism and looting.
Yesterday a group of Unionists/Loyalists marched through Dublin in memory of all the victims of Republican violence. The Government hoped it would happen peacefully but I don’t think anyone really believed that.
I’m glad the Unionists didn’t march through Cork, it probably would have been worse.
If you recognise anyone in the footage or pictures, call Garda HQ on 01 6660000 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 250025. Thanks ElBlogador for those numbers.
This is covered in much more detail with pictures: 
- Indymedia, photo essay of the day (via)
- Dublin Riots on Flickr
- A picture tells a thousand words
- footage of rioters
- Dublin samples a Bite of Northern Ireland Troubles
- Three of those arrested aren’t Irish
- Todays Dublin Riots links to Dublin Riots Flickr pool
- I predict a riot (I’ve never voted for Sinn Fein anyway, this riot guarantees I won’t)
- Dublin Riot Photos
- Never been in a riot
- RTE reporter attacked and called “Orange Bastard”
- Video of a group of young men destroying a car. One wears the Irish flag over his shoulders as he smashes the side windows with a metal pipe. Very patriotic.
- The Dublin riots from a PR perspective
- Finally, a call for the return of the march to Dublin. See the comments there for a taste of how divided our nation is. I liked this bit: “an aesehole is still an arsehole, it doesn’t matter where he goes to church.”
A sad, sad day for Ireland.
The Sunday Times has coverage of the background and riots:
- Who let the mob run free?
- Under siege from ‘madmen’
- Torn and bleeding, Bird makes the news again – Charlie Bird, RTE journalist, was attacked by nationalist rioters and called, “Charlie Bird, you’re an Orange bastard”.
- Loyalists forced to retreat as riots halt Ulster love march
- Republicans told: ‘Do all in your power to stop it’ – “The text messages were sent out to republicans and sympathisers early yesterday: get to the GPO at 10am, they said. Between 150 and 200 people responded to the call, but they did not congregate so as to avoid coming to the attention of gardai.”
- Outcry over action of ‘thugs’
Here’s a video of rioters overturning a car and smashing it. Citizen reporting is alive and well. (via)
(links via Irish Blogs)
The Joker by kittens
This music video for the Fat Boy Slim cover of “The Joker” is brilliant! Featuring kittens, kittens and more kittens! So, so cute! (via Cute Overload!)
Ghostrider.. *gulp*
Holy crap, this guy is a lunatic! Driving at up to 290kmh and a little above sometimes, Ghostrider drove the 68km between Stockholm and Uppsala in less than 16 minutes.
In another video he chased a BMW Z3 and both drivers drove like maniacs on public roads. Did you see how the motorcyclist cut in on the inside of a car on a roundabout?
In related news, a new EU report due this week is critical of Ireland’s road safety record. 5 people were killed in one accident alone last weekend. It’s carnage on the roads.
Lost again
I just watched the first episode of the new series of Lost. Wow, very gripping, creepy and chilling. That scene with the young boy and whispers in the dark made my skin crawl!
Yes, I’m a week late, I had it recorded on the ol’ Sky+ and watched it tonight. The next episode is on in 5 minutes, but despite my curiousity about who Desmond is I’ll watch it in a few days time!
Much later… Lost Rhapsody is Bohemian Rhapsody by Wierd Al and the cast of Lost! (via)
Meteor Stealing From Customers
It would appear that Meteor have adding a surcharge for downloading ringtones off their website. Even downloading a special “free” ringtone priced at €0.00 attracted a delivery charge of €3.39.
Who downloads ringtones? Kids and teenagers mostly, but of course the parents pick up the tab.
Don’t get smug if you’re an O2 customer, they charge for delivery of their ringtones too but couldn’t offer a means of calculating the cost.
Want a ringtone? Use Audacity to edit your favourite mp3 to your liking and copy it to your phone. Copying to the phone is left as an exercise for the reader but could be as easy as purchasing a USB card reader. (via Dave)
Muhammad vs. the Holocaust
This morning, like a lot of people, I heard that an Iranian newspaper is looking for cartoons about the Holocaust. Reaction from Israel was expected, but where are the riots and demonstrations in Europe? Maybe later when people have had their breakfast.
Haven’t seen the comics yet? face of muhammed has ’em and a quick look at technorati returns many interesting posts:
- This is the kind of thing they should have done from the start rather than destroying stuff.
- The Bigger Picture from an article by Victor Davis.
- Yay! Someone who’ll be devoting “a few days to violent protesting, burning flags, torching embassies, and chanting death threats.” Finally!
- And Dugg says that “Arab newspapers already lampoon Jews, Christians, Europeans and the Holocaust on a daily basis. Having a contest on the subject would be sort of like the MoveOn.org having a contest to lampoon the President of the United States.”
Then there’s the hipocrisy of a peaceful religion acting violently against anyone who criticises them.
Later… Andrew Sullivan writes that it’s your taboo, not mine and, “Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.” (via)
Be careful, it’s a crazy ol’ world out there.
Rate My Post!
From a few brief searches on Google in the past I found that nobody had done a decent “Rate This Post” plugin for WordPress. This evening I went searching again, and came across the Post Star Rating plugin by O Doutor! It’s in Spanish which may cause some problems for English speakers but I figured it out so it can’t be *that* hard. 😉
After a bit of tweaking, I have it running on In Photos and it appears to work ok! That is, when I clicked the stars it worked, I haven’t stress tested it yet!
The Bearded Ray D'Arcy
Are you wondering what Ray D’Arcy looks like with a beard and after a shave, with a moustache? Take a look.
Sorry Ray, doesn’t suit you at all!