Cut The Rope, Airport Mania, Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies all feature in a new music video by HeyGeronimoMusic. My favourite part is the dog in the Cut the Rope scenes but the Plants vs Zombies bits come close!
Great fun!
Tag Archives: irishblogs
WP Super Cache Scheduler and Admin Bar Link
I made a few changes to WP Super Cache over the last week. The garbage collection user interface received an overhaul and it’s now possible to schedule the those jobs using a timer or a clock. It can also send you an email each time it runs!
Another major change was the addition of a “Delete Cache” link on the admin bar for logged in users. This may seem strange, but it will only show if you have disabled caching for known users. Unfortunately this is needed because of the security measures required. It only deletes the supercache file(s) for the current page, not any legacy files associated with it.
If you’re feeling adventurous go download the development version from this page and give it a whirl. I really need feedback that this works well so please leave a comment if you try it.
The version number won’t change and when the next release comes out you’ll still get the upgrade notification!
What is radiation?
Here’s the first part of an excellent talk given by Professor John McInerney, of the UCC Physics Department on what exactly radiation is, the different types, the effects they have on the human body and what creates it. Do you know where most radiation comes from? You might be surprised.
Early in the talk, John dispelled with the idea of non-ionising radiation being responsible for detrimental health effects. ”Microwaves in general are not harmful, including the ones in cell-phones and radars. Unless you cook yourself. If you stood in front of a 10KW radio antenna it would be bad for you. It would serve you right. That’s Darwin’s principle at work”.
The video was filmed at a Cork Skeptics session in Blackrock Castle last May. The second part of the talk goes into nuclear power and you can watch it above.
Ubuntu: ALT TAB between browser windows?
I’m still using Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, which is saying a lot as I switched back to Gnome within a week or so of the previous release of Ubuntu.
One of the remaining bugbears I had with Unity was the window or task switcher. It was impossible to switch between Chrome browser windows. I had to click on the Chrome icon in the Unity sidebar and select the window I wanted. It felt like Ubuntu had tried to emulate what Windows 7 did with their taskbar, but Windows did it better because the window previews are close to the taskbar.
I’m not the only one to have this problem. You can either change window switcher in CCSM (oh oh, watch out when using CCSM!) or use ALT-`. That character is the tick character which normally sits above the TAB key on UK/English/US keyboards but may be elsewhere on other locales. I now need to get used to it like I did with Mac OS X.
The 2011 Irish Presidential Ballot
Today Ireland goes to the polls to elect a new president. The job isn’t as important as in other countries, but one of the primary roles of the President is to veto new laws if they are unconstitutional. Nevertheless the election campaign has been downright dirty and negative as the hopeful candidates can’t really attack each other on policy issues.
It was the same last time. Skeletons are dragged out of closets, old events rehashed and exposed to the light of day again. There must be a better way of electing the first citizen?
I know who I don’t want to vote for: Dana, Sean Gallagher, David Norris, Martin McGuinness or Mary Davis. The remaining candidates, Gay Mitchell and Michael D Higgins, haven’t made any impression on me. A random number generator would make more sense than trying to decide among that lot.
Last I heard Sean Gallagher was in the lead, contrary to opinion on Twitter, and to this ballot taken by expats.
What’s more important for the country are the two referendums. There is the referendum website but since I guarantee that it will be gone by this time next year here are the two questions being asked of the Irish populace:
Referendum on the pay of judges
This referendum is about whether the pay of judges can be reduced in certain circumstances. At present the Constitution does not allow for the reduction of the remuneration of sitting judges.
Referendum on inquiries by the Oireachtas
This referendum proposes to give the Houses of the Oireachtas (the Dáil and Seanad) express power to conduct inquiries into matters of general public importance and, in doing so, to make findings of fact about any person’s conduct.
I think I’ll be voting no to the first amendment, and possibly no to the second one but I’m undecided about that. That’s the amendment I’m most interested in but have heard the least debate about on radio. This post seems quite clear on the changes, admitting that some aspects are still vague and letting the chair of a committee decide the rights of witnesses is worrying. Will this second amendment bring us “broadly” in line with other countries?
Here are the two amendments, for history:
Proposed amendment – judges’ pay
At present, Article 35.5 of the Constitution states:
“The remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office.”It is proposed to replace this with the following wording:
5 1° The remuneration of judges shall not be reduced during their continuance in office save in accordance with this section.2° The remuneration of judges is subject to the imposition of taxes, levies or other charges that are imposed by law on persons generally or persons belonging to a particular class.
3° Where, before or after the enactment of this section, reductions have been or are made by law to the remuneration of persons belonging to classes of persons whose remuneration is paid out of public money and such law states that those reductions are in the public interest, provision may also be made by law to make proportionate reductions to the remuneration of judges.
Proposed amendment – Oireachtas inquiries
At present, Article 15.10 states:
“Each House shall make its own rules and standing orders, with power to attach penalties for their infringement, and shall have power to ensure freedom of debate, to protect its official documents and the private papers of its members, and to protect itself and its members against any person or persons interfering with, molesting or attempting to corrupt its members in the exercise of their duties.”It is proposed to renumber this as 15.10.1° and to insert the following subsections:
2° Each House shall have the power to conduct an inquiry, or an inquiry with the other House, in a manner provided for by law, into any matter stated by the House or Houses concerned to be of general public importance.
3° In the course of any such inquiry the conduct of any person (whether or not a member of either House) may be investigated and the House or Houses concerned may make findings in respect of the conduct of that person concerning the matter to which the inquiry relates.
4° It shall be for the House or Houses concerned to determine, with due regard to the principles of fair procedures, the appropriate balance between the rights of persons and the public interest for the purposes of ensuring an effective inquiry into any matter to which subsection 2° applies.
(First image via this Reddit thread)
Citibank Proud?
I honestly have no idea what’s happening here. Were the customers inside there closing accounts? Is that reason enough to close the branch and lock them inside?
Why would security guards drag a woman into the bank? Was it because she was attempting to take names while she was outside the bank? Can they be charged with common assault? I presume she wasn’t trespassing as she was on the pavement.
It makes no sense.
Meanwhile in Spain, tens of thousands can peacefully protest without any police in sight.
More: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Dame Street.
Man hit in the head with a basketball
Poor Phil, star of his own Youtube video, “Man hit in the head with a basketball”. Sore head?
Yes, I just watched that episode of Modern Family. Great show. I hope they got their stop sign …
Oh look! There’s Jupiter!
My wife called me out to the back garden tonight to see the bright object in the sky near the moon. She thought I might know what it was you see. I, uh, didn’t. I thought it might be Mars because of the colour but I knew how to find out! Google Sky Map to the rescue!
I quickly installed the app on my phone, pointed the device at the moon and hey presto! Instant astronomer! Ok, maybe not but it’s still a very cool app. The last time I tried it I found the map was a few degrees off which might have been something to do with the GPS on the original SGS. On the SGS II however it was accurate and a pleasure to use.
Thanks Google!
How open is Android?
The Android Wikipedia page is quite a read. I’m particularly taken with the research into how “open” it is (not really, compared to other projects) as I’ve never seen a commit log or discussion of patches for it.
Moreover, our findings suggest that Android would be successful regardless of whether it is an open source project or not, to the extent that the vast majority of developers working on the project (the platform itself) are actually Google employees.
The section on Linux is intriguing too. Linus Torvalds says that Android and Linux would come back to a common kernel but that presumes Google will open it’s development and “innovate” in the open. I’ll just leave this here to check back on in 5 years time..
Meanwhile, there’s the Replicant project, an effort to make a completely Free Software version of Android. They want to remove proprietary device drivers and discourage the use of Google Market. Their list of supported phones is limited but I was surprised to see the iPhone listed there!
I did wonder what the difference was between Replicant and CyanogenMod. Various posts I’ve read on the XDA forums have stated over and over again that the project was more interested in open source solutions rather than using proprietary software but this thread on LWN shines some light on the issue.
Found the official line:
“CyanogenMod does still include various hardware-specific code, which is also slowly being open-sourced anyway.”
So, they’re being realistic about their efforts. They’ll use proprietary software when necessary but they’ll work towards replacing that software. At the rate that handset hardware changes I applaud them for taking this pragmatic route. The only phone the Replicant project fully supports is the relatively ancient HTC Dream. Yes, open source drivers should be released by manufacturers but that won’t happen.
Android isn’t really that open in terms that an Open Source advocate would understand. The traditional public CSV or SVN repository and a daily changelog is nowhere to be seen. It’s definitely developed in a cathedral rather than a bazaar. Does it matter to the vast majority of its users? Probably not, but I for one am happy it is Open Source and the code is out there. Without the (admittedly late) release of source code it would be much more difficult to use other after-market firmwares on Android phones.
Samsung Galaxy S II Blues?
So you just bought Samsung’s new Galaxy S II smart phone. Nice isn’t it?
One of the first things I noticed when I turned it on was the unusual blue colour cast on the screen. It’s impossible to capture in a screenshot but I soon found out how to fix it and promptly forgot about it again. I was only reminded of it by the Ars review of the phone. Oddly they found the phone to have a yellowish colour cast:
But the screen has a very warm cast to it even at the brightest settings, so whites look yellowish-brown, like you’re looking at the phone through sunglasses. Samsung may have tuned it this way to mitigate the AMOLED’s brightness, but we found it off-putting. This isn’t an obstacle that can’t be overcome, and we’d likely get used to it after a while—some people prefer warmer-toned screens. But every surrounding phone’s screen will always look bluish and undersaturated by comparison.
It’s easily fixed by going into Settings->Display->Background effect. In my experience, “standard” looks a bit pale, blue and cold, “movie” looks a bit yellowish and warm. I finally selected “dynamic” and that looked the best. Whites look white. Persil would be proud.
Oh, the phone is fabulous. The default launcher sucks but it’s simple to change that (Go Launcher EX, thank you!). Google had all my settings already recorded so it was only a matter of logging into Google and it sucked down all the apps I had previously from the Android Market. Same with contacts. Definitely the easiest phone upgrade I’ve ever done.
Also check out this lengthy Anandtech review of the phone. Quite a bit of reading!