Tag Archives: irishblogs

The Silent City

Remember Fifty Percent Grey? I briefly mentioned it a couple of years back, little knowing that it’s creator, Ruairi Robinson, would be nominated for an Oscar for his work on that short film.

Ruairi’s back, and thanks to Ruairi Roddy I found out about his new production. This time it’s a very cool short film called “The Silent City”. Ruairi (Roddy) likens it to Starship Troopers but I think it’s more evil than that, maybe not as blood thirsty, but I’d love to see what happens after the film ends. Who or what answers the call for help?

I wrote/directed/edited/storyboard this and did 95% of the visual effects myself. The film stars Don Wycherley (Batchelors Walk), Cillian Murphy (28Days/Later/Sunshine/Batman Begins/Breakfast on Pluto) and Garvan Mcgrath.

This is the film that finally got me an agent in Hollywood, where an Oscar nomination failed, and hopefully might help me secure one of those “career” things I keep hearing people talking about. I’ve had many many feature film scripts sent to me in the last couple of months from big fancy hollywood studios, which is utterly fantastic (but would be nice to be able to pay my goddamn rent in the meantime, before I get ahead of myself) so a big thanks to me in the past for finishing the film. I couldn’t have done it without past me. Future me, you better not fucking fail present me in my hour of need. Kudos to Nick Ryan too, for producing the thing for me. And the cast/rest of crew of course. I owe a lot of favours that I hope to *actually* repay some day.

Continue reading “The Silent City”

Writing Perl, the Vista way

Perl is complicated enough as there are a half dozen ways of doing any one operation, but what if you used Microsoft Vista’s speech recognition to type? I was only watching and wanted to stop the movie after 32 seconds, I don’t know how he kept going for 10 minutes! I dare you to watch this and not laugh! I wonder how well Vim would work? (via Richard)

PS. Richard increased the Linux userbase by 1 by converting one of his coworkers using the Ubuntu live CD. I used that CD last week and it’s really impressive. A bit strange when the live desktop appears, but the Install icon makes things obvious. Grab the latest Ubuntu live CD and give it a whirl if you’ve never used Linux. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Self diagnose with Google

Everybody and anybody who has an illness, a pain in the leg, a hurt somewhere, will use Google to find out what ails them. There is an inherent danger in that, but if you use a search engine that way, and believe the first result, then good luck to you, The Darwin Awards may need another category.

The rest of us go to the doctor, the dentist, or whatever health professional is appropriate. What if your company health plan depended on using Google to diagnose? That’s what Catbert, the evil director of Human Resources did today in this Dilbert cartoon. Arc Welder anyone?

If by chance you do suffer a tooth ache, then a Google Search could pay dividends, at least for short term relief. My toothache post has been insanely popular for a couple of years now and a few people have learned something about dealing with the pain. I found that swishing Vodka around in my mouth helped a lot. It says it on the Internet, it must be true!

I wonder what Britney Spears Googled that told her to shave her hair off? Poor girl.

Is Flickr under attack by spam?

Has anyone else noticed an increase of spam comments on Flickr lately? I noticed my first spam comment there only last week, complained about it, and the comment and user were both deleted shortly afterwards. I thought nothing more of it.

This morning I got an unwelcome shock when I checked my Flickr comments through Bloglines. More spam comments. There’s a screenshot below. When I clicked through to the photos in question both comments had been deleted but later on another spam comment appeared and I now suspect any comment left by users with usernames starting with “a” with a mixture of upper and lower case characters and digits. Maybe it’s time they invested in an Akismet license for Flickr.com? Thanks Lloyd for the reminder!

Continue reading “Is Flickr under attack by spam?”

Gomaith: cartuin as Gaeilge

tuesdayirish.jpg

Gomaith is an online cartoon in Irish that is yet in it’s infancy but promises to provide, “an irreverent look at the world from the high stool.”

Not all the cartoons are funny but there are a few nuggets of gold in there. Oh, and there’s an English translation too, so don’t be afraid to click the link! (via)

How to graph your Adsense Earnings

adsense-graph.gif

Michele blogged about a new simple and easy to use Adsense earnings graphing tool this morning that generates nice graphs.

Besides graphing the average earnings per day it also displays two moving averages which are useful as another indicator of growth. Finally, the gold line is a trend line for the future based on the data submitted.

Before you try it, read the blog post with a more detailed explanation and instructions, then give it a whirl for yourself.

What I would love to see are width and height parameters so I could resize the graph before it’s generated. Resizing afterwards antialiases the text and makes it difficult to read.

Yes, as you can see from the graph, December was a good month.

Voting in the blog awards is easy

How to vote in the Irish Blog Awards in three easy steps:

  1. Visit the voting page at http://www.awards.ie/vote/
  2. Enter your name and email address.
  3. Scroll down to “Best Photo Blog” and select “In Photos” from the drop down list.
  4. In “Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere” select “Donncha O’Caoimh”
  5. In “Best Technology Blog/Blogger” select “Donncha O’Caoimh” again.

There, no confusion. No wondering who all those people and blogs are. Hope that helped and thanks for voting!

PS. Thank you to Damien Mulley, the brains behind the awards, and to the sponsors of the above categories: Pixenate, First Partners, and Bitbuzz!

PPS. Damien will enter everyone who votes into a draw for a copy of “Vista Home Premium”. That of course might not be to everyone’s tastes, but you can always give it away to your worst enemy if you win..

Top Gear attacked by rednecks

This is pure comedy. What did Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May expect when they drove through Alabama in the deep south of the United States, with the intention of antagonising the local populace? They’d welcome the stars of a car show from the UK with open arms? Watch the video, it’s hilarious, and scary! (via Matt Thomas)

Youtube unsurprisingly took down the clip but you can still watch it on craveonline thanks to kiwibiker for the link.

PS. James May writes about the episode on the The Top Gear blog. Thanks again to Matt for the link.

Continue reading “Top Gear attacked by rednecks”

Another reason to hate cats

Cats play rough, they like to be bad, they like to be slapped around a bit and they lap up the punishment! Watch this video and be convinced at the deviant ways of our feline pets. It’s disgraceful!

Of course I’m joking. I love cats and this video is so funny it made me laugh out loud. That cat really seems to be enjoying itself being slapped. A sadistic and masochistic cat perhaps? (via)

PS. the world would be a much quieter one without Youtube. Shudder.

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