Well, five years and one day, to be exact.

Monday, 22 November 2004, there I was sitting in the corner of our little apartment in Dublin 8, tapping away on the keyboard of my little iBook G4. My first blog post, bellyaching about traffic or something. I started out with a blogspot site, and then two years later moved the whole lot down here to Laois.

There have been plenty of ups and downs along the way. Back then, blogging was a relatively new phenomenon and the blogging scene was quite small in Ireland. The first comments! Holy shit, someone was reading what I had to say! I remember being quoted a couple of times in The Sunday Tribune. The first time it happened, I nearly fell off the chair with shock. I was a bit shy at first and paranoid about keeping my identity under wraps. “What if”, I thought, “some of the millions of Sunday Tribune readers who see my site know me and blow my cover?” But once I pulled myself together, I remembered that it was the Sunday Tribune, which at that time had a readership somewhere around that of my blog. Probably still has.

There have been some fairly consistent themes about which I have written over the years. Rugby, of course. Driving on Ireland’s roads. Rants about the government and other politicians. Some tech stuff every now and then. The odd photo. Music. Being a Dad.

When I started up first, I was an avid reader and fairly regular commenter at Slugger O’Toole, as well as a few other Northern Ireland blogs within Slugger’s orbit. As a result, I did quite a few posts about NI and Irish identity in general. Even though I still read Slugger regularly (though I hardly ever comment there any more), I find I have no inclination to write about these topics any more. Maybe it was an itch that I needed to scratch at the time.

Blogging has changed a lot in the last five years and of course is now just one aspect of a vast array of social media. I’d imagine that there are many more bloggers in Ireland now than there were in 2004, but I doubt if there has been much growth in the number of regular bloggers over the last two years. The internet is littered with the remains of abandoned blogs, left behind in favour of Twitter and Facebook. I have never bothered with either of them.

So five years on, and I am still moseying along, getting anything between 50 to 100 hits per day at best. I have considered pulling the shutters down and closing the shop up for good a number of times. I have been through stages 1-3 of Kent Newsome’s Five Stages of Blogging, and hovered around the edges of stage four. But I know that if I did, I would miss it. It’s a hobby which I indulge in when I feel like it, and don’t bother with it when I don’t feel like it.

To those who visit here regularly, leave comments or have me in your RSS reader - thank you for taking the time to stop by. It’s much appreciated.

About two moths ago, I mentioned that I was working on a couple of new projects and this was why the blogging was so quiet. Happily, I can now unveil one of those projects.

Introducing The UnLaoised Photo Archive.


On the site’s homepage is a Google Map of Ireland, with a number of placemarks dotted all over the map. Click on these placemarks to see a sample photo of that place, and from there you can click through to a gallery of photos. Alternatively, click on the List of Locations tab at the top of the page to see all locations listed by county.

It’s still a work in progress, as quite a bit of it needs descriptive detail, but that’s something I’ll get round to over the next few months. And of course, I will be adding to it as I take more photos.

The site can be accessed at any time by clicking on the Photo Archive tab at the top of this page.

I hope you enjoy browsing the site, and I would be delighted to hear your feedback.

Going to take a break from blogging for a short while (both reading and writing).

Keep me in your RSS reader. I’ll be back soon.

Those were the words used to describe last Saturday night’s Irish Blog Awards.

Sadly, I wasn’t there, even though I was in d’Real Capital over the weekend. As my fellow bloggers were getting stuck into the champers and whatever else was on offer, I was in Musgrave Park watching Munster take Edinburgh apart. A 28-14 win saw them claim a four-try bonus point and consolidate their position atop the Magners League.

But anyway, back to the awards (we need a catchy name for the blog awards, I think. The Bloggies? The Waffles? The Mulleys?) I was sorry to see both Willie Joe and Bock come away empty-handed, as I felt that both were in with a good shout. However, it was gratifying to see Sweary get due recognition for her efforts.

Congratulations to all the winners, and well done to all the finalists.

I might even try to get along to it next time.

I blame Stephen Fry. He goes on television telling all and sundry about his Twitter account and suddenly everyone’s at it. Twitter’s been around for some time now, but it seems that it’s only in the last few weeks that it’s gone mainstream. Thousands of new accounts have been activated, and I have to admit, I was one of those that signed up.

The reason I did so was not because I thought it might be interesting to publish short, snappy pearls of wisdom and wit to a large and appreciative following. That falls down on two counts. The ability to generate short, snappy pearls of wisdom or wit is not one of my key strengths, and even if one did cross my mind, it would probably be as I was driving, and would be forgotten about by the time I got to tweet it. Also, the large and appreciative following bit would more than likely be something of a struggle to achieve. No, the reason I signed up was just to test a Twitter plug-in on Wordpress and install it on Willie Joe’s site. He uses Twitter to send live updates from Mayo GAA matches.

I got two e-mails recently informing me that I now have followers on my Twitter account. Sorry lads, but there ain’t going to be too much happening from my neck of the woods.

Besides, why would I need Twitter when I already have a dedicated follower? See below the fold.

Wait! There's More…

The finalists for this year’s Irish Blog Awards were announced in the wee, small hours of this morning, and I am glad to see that several of my regular reads have made the shortlist. (Needless to say, my own efforts fell at the first hurdle.)

First up I am delighted to see Willie Joe’s Green and Red get to an All-Ireland Final. He has been shortlisted in the “Best Sport and Recreation Blog”. Followers of Mayo’s footballing fortunes are hardy types, used to walking away from Croke Park with the cheers of the opposition supporters (usually Kerry’s) ringing in their ears. Having endured such disappointment in the last twenty years (five All-Ireland finals contested, five All-Ireland finals lost), most other counties’ supporters would have difficulty getting out of bed ever again. But Mayo’s followers never give up on their Magnificent Obsession. This September, fifty-eight years will have passed since the Sam Maguire was last hoisted by the arms of a Mayoman (that man was Seán Flanagan, who later went on to be a Fianna Fáil TD and cabinet minister), and every true Mayo supporter believes that this day will come again.

If you have never visited Willie Joe’s site, or even have no interest in Gaelic football, just go over there and have a look. Click on the Results Archive tab and there you will find something quite special. The results, teams, and scorers of every single match Mayo’s senior team has played in the National Football League and Championship for the last fifty years. This archive was not copied and pasted from the official Mayo GAA site, because it doesn’t exist there. Nor was it lifted from any other single source. It came from painstaking research, trawling through national and local newspaper archives to find that information. This is then transcribed and uploaded onto the site. Neither is it complete, as Willie Joe intends to go back as far as possible to find all the results he can. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is dedication to the cause.

Hopefully, he can now go one step further than his subject and land the big prize.

[I should disclose at this point that WJ and I know one another in real life, and I occasionally offer technical advice for his site.]

My other regular reads that I will be keeping an eye on:

Conor’s Pricewatch in Best Blog from a Journalist

Lar’s Sour Grapes in Best Food/Drink Blog

Irish Election, Slugger O’Toole and Cedar Lounge Revolution, all in Best Political Blog

Pat Phelan in Best Technology Blog/Blogger

Bock in Best News/Current Affairs Blog

Jim’s On The Record in Best Music Blog

Sweary’s Arse End of Ireland in Best Humour Blog (if she doesn’t win something this year, they’ll have to create a new category next year, the ‘Is It Because I Is Blog? Award’ )

Twenty Major in Best Humour Blog

Bock again in Best Blog Post

May the best bloggers win!

I just discovered this new theme, called Aqua, from Elixir Graphics. It’s easy to customise, and I think it looks quite smart.

Like nearly ever other Irish person who has clicked the “Publish” button on a blog publishing platform in the last 12 months, I have been nominated in the first round of the Irish Blog Awards. I’m in the Best Personal Blog category, along with 83 others.

Thanks to whoever it was that nominated me.

Speaking of the blog awards, I see that the winner of Best Blog for the least few years, Twenty Major, has returned from his self-imposed exile with a redesigned site. The space on my blogroll page, left empty since he retired has been filled once more. Sweary is back in her rightful place too.

“IBA nominated” logo above by Eolai

My first ever blog post, way back in November 2004, was a rant about the misuse of headlights and foglights in winter. Just looking back over the archives, I realise that I revisit this subject quite frequently, usually around this time of year.

In summary, my main bugbears are as follows:

- Use of fog lights (front or rear) when there is no fog.

- Driving on full beams on a motorway. This is especially a problem on the new M8, which has a concrete central barrier. Some drivers seem to think that this shields oncoming traffic from their full beams. It does not, nor does it prevent the drivers of cars in front from being dazzled by the full beams in their rear-view mirror.

- Not dipping headlights until the very last moment.

- Faulty brakelights, or no brakelights at all.

One more, which seems to be more prevalent this winter is the incidence of faulty headlights. It’s a fact of lights that bulbs blow, otherwise bulb manufacturers wouldn’t be able to make a living and their children would starve. When this happens, the ideal course of action is to replace the blown bulb as quickly as possible. But what a lot of drivers do is drive with their front fogs on instead. So you have one dipped headlight, the other one with a faint glimmer, and fogs on full blast. The worst, though, is when one headlight is completely dead. Driving against this is very dangerous, as you don’t know what’s coming at you, a motorbike or a four wheeled vehicle with a dodgy headlight.

I’ll have to think of another one for next year’s rant.

So, out of the blue, Twenty Major has folded up his tent and sneaked off into the night.

I suppose it was inevitable that the day would come, and it’s best that Twenty should quit blogging while he was still on top of his game. (Unlike, say U2, who should have split years ago and haven’t made a decent album in 21 years.)

I think it would be fair to say that 20M was Ireland’s first blogging celebrity. By that I mean he was the first blogger that achieved a degree of fame, not just within the blogging community, but also on the wider media scene. (Hmmm… Celebrity Blogger, now there’s another one of those ideas.) There are other Irish bloggers that have a huge readership, like Mulley or Arseblogger, but the unique nature of Twenty’s blog made it stand out from the crowd. Go back into the early archives and you’ll find a lot of the ”Do you know what I think is funny/strange/fucked up…” type of posts that a lot of Irish blogs start with, but it soon became clear that he was defining a style for himself. It wasn’t long before the stock of characters like Stinking Pete, Ron, Dirty Dave and Jimmy the Bollix had become fully formed. (Incidentally, I have often wondered of Jimmy’s name came about as a result of The Commitments. During auditions for the band, Jimmy Rabbitte meets Joey Fagan, who introduces himself as “Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan”, to which Jimmy replies “And I’m Jimmy ‘The Bollix’ Rabbitte.” )

What was clear from the start was that Twenty couldn’t give a shite about what anybody thought of what he wrote. In that sense, he was probably one of the first Irish bloggers to completely understand the freedom that the blogging platform gave to a writer. He could swear, rant, abuse or rail against whatever he wanted, safe in the knowledge that his alter ego separated the guy at the keyboard from his readership. So far so good, but what made Twenty stand out from the crowd was the fact that he is a very, very good writer. It’s easy to start a blog up and start calling all and sundry a bunch of cunts, but you need a certain style or panache to blog like Twenty did.

For three years on the trot, Twenty Major won best blog at the Irish Blog Awards. He did this because he kept his standards up. I remember remarking before that it must be a serious effort to come up with something original and worthwhile to post every day. But that’s what he did. That’s not to say that everything he wrote was brilliant - you simply can’t come up with a masterpiece every day of the week. Most of his posts were definitely worth reading to the end, and among them were works of absolute genius.

Some people didn’t get him, and others didn’t care too much for all the swearing. But for those of us who did appreciate his style and humour, Twenty was a vital voice, and one who wasn’t afraid to forego the laughs and have a go at the great and the good of society, as he did in his open letter to Bertie Ahern in May 2006.

Every now and then, there would appear a rather long short story, if you see what I mean. As it unfolded, characters would be developed beautifully, and the narrative would follow a logical path. But you knew what was coming - the most groan-inducing pun imaginable, usually based on the title of a hit song from the 1980s. Like this one. Or indeed this one.

It came as no surprise really when 20M got his book deal. (I offered to do the artwork for the cover, but sadly someone had beaten me to it.)

So best of luck in your retirement, Twenty. It only remains for me to move your link from my Blogroll page to the Resting page. No doubt the lads in Ron’s will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, now that they know their every exploit won’t end up on your blog to be read by a sad bunch of cunts like us.

I have just done a bit of a tidy-up on the Blogroll page, adding in some blogs that I have been reading for a while but forgot to put in. Also moving some which haven’t seen much activity recently to the “Resting” page.

If a blog hasn’t been updated in two months, I consider it to be currently inactive. I keep them in the Resting page in case they start up again.

Also I have tidied up the Links page, removing dormant links and adding in a few new ones.

If you would like a link to your blog, or you would like to recommend a site for a link, leave a comment or drop me a line. I can’t promise all that much traffic, though!

This blog is long overdue a bit of a freshen-up, so I have tweaked the theme a bit, added in a new header image, etc. I think it brightens it up a bit. I’ll probably be sick of it again in a month’s time.

I had a quick look at my Technorati reactions page this evening, and it was showing a new referral:



14126 days ago? Using the method I discovered a while back, I calculate 14126 days ago to be 1 January 1970. Good Lord, have I been blogging for 38 years?

You may have seen this already, but if not, enjoy.



Guy “Mr Madonna” Ritchie has a new movie out soon, which by all accounts is the same as his last two. This classic Fast Show sketch sums it up.



Was in Lidl the other day, and they had a display on the wall by the checkouts of their own brand logos. They seem to be following a pattern for quite a few of them. Goes like this:

Draw an oval, and fill it red. Choose a three-syllable name, preferably ending in a vowel. Type that name in white text into your red oval. Use a font like Optima and italicise it. Hey, presto! Your own low-cost, discount supermarket brand.



Apply to packs of pasta, boxes of washing powder, tins of sauerkraut or packs of incontinence pads. Hordes of recession-maddened punters will queue up to buy them.

We’re all used to the phenomenon of lazy journalists copying and pasting content from blogs and then passing it off as their own, but this is taking it to another level.

Thieveing feckers at The Herald (Pricewatch - Conor Pope at The Irish Times.)

Over at Irish Election, in a comment from some dude called ‘Future Taoiseach’:

A once democraric union of cooperating nation states has crossed the line into coercion and dictatorship. As in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, your vote is not respected unless you vote ‘the right way’.

Indeed. Why, only this evening, I saw a marauding gang of veterans of the Maastricht and Nice campaigns burn a family of “No” voters out of their home in Bracklone Street here in Portarlington.

Tags: lisbon treaty

Realmac Software have released the latest version of Rapidweaver, the app I use to publish this site.

The overall usability of the interface has improved hugely. Basic editing tasks, such as font selection, text alignment, links and HTML are now available from buttons under the main text pane, instead of having to go to the Format menu.



Themes and inspectors are now available as buttons as well. Overall it has a “native OS X” feel to it, and would not look out of place in either iWork or iLife.

There’s also a very slick Cover Flow-style effect to show publishing progress, and the overall speed of publishing seems to have improved immensely.

I think a new theme for UnLaoised will have to be deployed to mark this auspicious occasion!

Rapidweaver 4.0 is available as a free upgrade for registered users of version 3.6. Upgrades from version 3.5 or earlier costs €20.49, and a completely new licence costs €40.28.

He's back!

Nat King Coleslaw, author of Curry Chips walks among us again after a brief I Ate Us. And not only is he back, but he's in cracking form too. Check out his take on Gormleychinatibetgate.

Speaking of the Observer, a few weeks ago they ran a feature entitled "The 50 Most Powerful Blogs". It featured mostly the influential American political sites like Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, etc; as well as the gossipy ones like Perez Hilton and Gawker.

But up there at No 8 was none other than "I Can Has Cheezburger?", the world-famous Lolcat site. Now I can understand it being in a list of popular sites, or it being recognised as an internet publishing phenomenon, but as a "powerful blog"?

If by powerful, you mean ability to set the narrative or break a story of national or international importance, then ICHC is anything but.


moar funny pictures

A couple of readers have been in touch with links that might be of interest to my readers (all three of them), so here goes:

Tim Kelly from Concert Travel first:

"I am contacting you as I thought you might be interested to know Concert Travel are now servicing Portlaoise (and Laois in general).
We are a Limerick based company running dedicated bus services to concerts and events in Dublin and around the country.
We want to enable small groups of people, couples, children etc to travel to events without the worry of driving and having to park etc.
If you would like to know more please dont hesitate to contact us on the email above or on 061 384422."


Also, Ronan O'Keeffe of Mediacontact.ie asked me for a shout-out.

A big milestone in my working life today - I finished up in my current job, ending an association going back 11 years. I had been working for the same employer since November 1996, except for a 22-month hiatus from June 1999 to March 2001. When I started with them originally, I was only taken on as a temporary staff member in the run-up to Christmas.

I start a new job on Monday, with new challenges to get the blood pumping again. My focus will be outside of Dublin, which suits me perfectly.

Someone else who has been ringing in the changes is my good friend Willie Joe, who has moved his Mayo GAA blog onto its own Wordpress-powered platform, just in time for the start of the inter-county action. If you are anyway interested in Gaelic football matters, particularly those related to the fair county of Mayo, you should keep his site in your RSS reader or bookmarks folder.

And speaking of sport, I was supposed to be going to Belfast this evening to see Doug Howlett make his debut for Munster versus Ulster, but the weather conspired against this plan. Which is probably better in the long run, as the inclement conditiions might have made the record try-scoring All-Black legend rethink his move to the Northern Hemisphere.

Back in June of this year, in response to an item on the late lamented Blogorrah, I created this -



I caught the tail end of an interview on The Last Word this evening, and it would appear that a magazine along these lines is indeed about to be published.

What can I say?

Fake Steve has been hacked - by his good friend Fake Bono

How To Dismantle An Atomic Blog

When I started blogging on 22 November 2004, things were quite different. We were living in Dublin and our daughter was a twinkle in my eye. My site was hosted on Blogger.

I remember starting out blogging - so many questions. Would anybody read it? If they read it would they comment? If they commented would they forcefully disagree with what I had to say? If they forcefully disagreed with what I had to say would I be able to come back with a witty retort?

I suppose the big question should have been - would I still be at it three years later. Well, here I am, still plugging away.

If you have been missing your regular dose of Raiméis, the good news is Maca's back after an eight-month hiatus.

Stephen Fry's blog is also a repository for his weekly Tech column in the Guardian. This is good news as it saves me from actually buying the paper, thus reducing my carbon footprint somewhat, which seem to be all they ever go on about in the Grauniad these days. (Also the fact that I can never find it on the Graun's website is a pain.) He has also just written a long piece about the perils of trying to have a full-throttle, no-holds-barred, fists-banging-the-table debate with Americans. It kind of reminded me of the criticism Carole Coleman came in for after her combative interview with President George W Bush a couple of years back.

(As an aside, I find it hard to forgive Fry for coming up with the awful neologism "Blessay.")

The Kindle… hmmm… I'm not so sure. Reading a book is more than just scanning the words on a page. There is the tactile experience of handling the book, turning the pages and so on, that I would miss if I were to go all electronic. There is also the $400 (or whatever the Euro equivalent will be when/if it ever makes it over here) I would miss too. Is it the iPod for books? John Gruber doesn't think so.

I was away in England from Friday to Monday and so only caught a glimpse of the tabloid headlines following the McElhill tragedy in Omagh. One paper ran with a front page headline along the lines "Sex perv Dad torched them all!" Now, whatever were the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these poor unfortunate people, some of the tabs were well out of order in their coverage of the story. These headlines were being printed as the family were still lying dead in the burnt-out ruins of their home. Their relatives, friends and neighbours would have still been trying to get some sort of grip on the awful events, so to run these lurid headlines even before the bodies were removed from the scene of the fire was insensitive in the extreme. The tabloid editors will no doubt defend their headlines by saying that they are only reporting the news that their readers want to read. But are the readers of Irish tabloids really that interested in such sensationalism? As I said, I was away last weekend. Was there any debate or discussion about the behaviour of the tabloids in the aftermath of this tragedy?

The Department of Revenue and Customs in the UK has managed to lose the details of every family that claims child benefit - all 7.25 million of them. I'm so glad that I'm not the poor sod that decided to call the courier.

Just installed a new theme called badNas from seydesign.

Changing themes is what I usually do when I have little to say.

Must get working on the new rugby site though, as the Heineken Cup starts this weekend.

Jim's playlist:

Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (CBS)
These New Puritans “Colours” (Angular)
Tiger Force “Beat This” (Marquis Cha Cha)
Tokyo Police Force “Citizens of Tomorrow” (Paper Bag)
Health “Triceratops” (Lovepump United)
Can “Moonshake” (Spoon)
!!! “Yadnus” (Warp)
Jape “Christopher & Anthony” (V2)
Les Savy Fav “The Lowest Bitter” (French Kiss)
Hooray For Humans “‘06 Forever” (Out On A Limb)
Blitzen Trapper “Devil’s A Go-Go” (Sub Pop)
Deerhunter “Strange Lights (Kranky)
Secret Machines “Better Bring Your Friends” (Reprise)
Carmel “More More More” (London)
Eight Minutes “Here’s Some Dances” (Numero)
The Supremes “My World Is Empty Without You” (Tamla Motown)
Voice Of The Seven Woods “Valley of the Rocks” (Twisted Nerve)
Adele “Hometown Glory” (Pacemaker)
Cat Power/Karen Elson “Je t’aime moi non plus” (Barclay)
Kraftwerk “The Model” (EMI)
Giorgio Moroder “The Apartment” (Polydor)
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan/Eddie Vedder “The Face Of Love” (Columbia)
Mark Hollis “The Gift” (Polydor)
Vic Chesnutt “Wallace Stevens” (Constellation)
Michael Nyman “To The Edges of the Earth” (Virgin)
Roscoe Holcomb “Man Of Constant Sorrow” Smithsonian Folkways)
Fairport Convention “Farewell Farewell” (Island)
Coldcut “Autumn Leaves (Irresistible Force Remix)” (BMG)

My out-of-touchedness:

One point awards: Carmel, Giorgio Moroder, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan/Eddie Vedder, Vic Chesnutt, Michael Nyman, Fairport Convention

Five-point awards: The Supremes, Kraftwerk

Ten-point awards: None

Twenty-point awards: Bob Dylan

Total: 46.

What the fuck is all this about?

Jim has published his Phantom playlist from last Saturday night. Twenty nine tracks, which gives me 580 points to aim for.

One point awards (Heard of artist in question, but know little or nothing about them):
Cathy Davey (good old Cathy, good for a point every week. Maybe I should get her album and that one point increases tenfold straight away.)
William S. Burroughs (assuming that this is the writer WSB, not that I have ever read anything by him.)
Vic Chesnutt
Josh Ritter (I have heard his stuff played on the radio many times, but nothing has ever stuck.

Five point awards (Know at least one song by the artist in question):
Grace Jones

Ten point awards (Own a recording by the artist in question, or have seen them live, but not both):
None

Twenty point awards (Own a recording by the artist in question, and have seen them live):
Cowboy Junkies (I have six of their albums, and have seen them live four times)
Also, I'm going to correct Jim on the name of the song - it's "Dreaming My Dreams With You", and for that little bit of pedantry, I'm going to claim another ten points.

Total for this week: 39

Explanation of the Oldfartometer

Back in my youngster days, music was very important to me. I bought new music constantly, read Q religiously and went to gigs on a regular basis, sometimes to go see bands I had only ever read about and had never heard. That all changed as I got older, and I tended to stick with what I liked. These days if I find only one new act in a year that I really like, I think I'm doing well.

I realised I was becoming an old fart when I would hear something on the radio and think to myself "Jesus, is this the shite the kids are listening to nowadays? When I was a youngster, songs had a tune you could whistle and lyrics you could sing. These days, it's just bang bang bang!"

So I have devised a method to quantify my out-of-touchedness, which I call the Oldfartometer.

Each week, Jim Carroll of The Irish Times does a show on Phantom FM, a Dublin station that is apparently popular with the young folk. He then publishes his playlist on his On The Record blog. Now Jim is obviously down with the cool kids, so I'm using his weekly playlist as a barometer of what is out there right now. Scores are assigned as follows: for every artist I have heard of, but wouldn't recognise their music, I award one point. For each artist I recognise and know at least one song of theirs, I award five points. If I own a recording by one of the artists on Jim's list, or if I have seen them in concert, I help myself to ten points. And finally, if I have seen that artist live and own at least one recording by them, I award myself twenty points. So with a maximum of twenty points per artist on the playlist, a twenty song playlist has a maximum potential score of 400 points. Anything below 100 points would indicate chronic oldfartedness.

Let's look at this week's playlist:

26 songs on the list, so there are 520 points to play for.

1 point awards: Cathy Davey
5 point awards: None
10 point awards: Nirvana, Billie Holliday (it's my wife's CD, but I'm putting it in anyway), Ennio Morricone (We have the DVD of Cinema Paradiso)
20 point awards: Mary Margaret O'Hara, Emmylou Harris

Total: 71 points. Not too bad, but mind you the acts where I score would be within the bounds of an old fart anyway.

Last week's playlist:

27 tracks - 540 potential points

1 point awards: Cathy Davey
5 point awards: None
10 point awards: None
20 point awards: None

Total: 1 point. Oh dear.

September 15 list:

28 tracks - 560 potential points

1 point awards: King Creosote, Bat for Lashes, PJ Harvey, Robert Wyatt
5 point awards: Captain Beefheart, Robert Johnson, Ennio Morricone, Herbie Hancock
10 point awards: Tim Buckley,
20 point awards: None

Total: 34 points. Better.

How's about you? Will you take the Oldfartometer challenge?

What with the rugby and all, my blogging activities here and elsewhere have been very quiet of late. The World Cup finishes this weekend, so my blogging will probably return to its previous level of activity over the next couple of weeks. You will do well to notice any difference.

I've gotten off to a start at least, and have written a post for CmdNotCtrl that I have been promising myself for a long time. It's all about image editors for the Mac, so if that floats your boat, you might enjoy it.

In the meantime some linky stuff:

via Karlin, from her technology slot on Newstalk's "The Right Hook" - youconvertit.com. Convert document formats, audio formats, video formats, even units of measurement. I hope that whoever is behind this site has worked out some way to monetise it, cos it's a winner.

Move over Hallmark - alternative e-cards - someecards

Yay! Mac OS X Leopard will be released on 26 October. That's my wife's Christmas present to me sorted, then.

Aoife standing on her own two feet. She can take two or three steps at a time now, so full-on walking can't be far away.




The cooling tower at Bellacorrick power station comes crashing down:

Slim pickin' round here recently, and for the duration of the Rugby World Cup, it could be getting even more meagre.

The new rugby blog is off to a flying start, with seven writers signed up. The hits are coming in too. Here's how the visitor graph looks as of yesterday:



Yesterday topped out at 852 visits (not counting the 200-300 I made, coming back every couple of minutes to see how many more there were.) That's roughly four times the highest number I ever got here. Hopefully, it will get even better once the tournament starts.

I'll try to keep some content going here at the same time, but can't promise much.

Recently, I was accused of having an anti-Limerick bias on this blog. (Me? A paid-up member of the Munster Rugby Supporters Club?)

Just to emphasise my innocence of the charge, let it be known that tomorrow, I will be cheering on Limerick in the All-Ireland hurling final. I doubt they will have what it takes to get past Kilkenny, but I sincerely hope they do.

As you may know, I am involved in a new multi-contributor rugby blog called The Fear of God. Before setting it up, I set about gathering a new collection of RSS links from various rugby sites around the world in order to get a more global view of the run-up to the World Cup.

It's not as easy as you might think. Several news sites don't have any RSS link. Planet Rugby provides a link, but the clickthrough bring you to an error page. The Irish Times's special RWC content is locked down under a subscription. RTE have a rugby category in their sports section, but subscribing to the RSS link gives you the full feed for all sports news.

It's a bit of a pain in the aRSSe, to be honest.

As mentioned the other day, I have now gotten the new Rugby World Cup blog up and running.



It is called "The Fear of God" in honour of Paul O'Connell's famous words in the RTE documentary "Reaching for Glory"

(clip contains "strong language")



Thanks to Damien, I have a number of potential contributors lined up to add their tuppence worth. If you would like to come on board, let me know and I'll sign you up.

Come on, Ireland!!!

I'm in the process of getting a collaborative blog going for the forthcoming Rugby World Cup, and I'm looking for writers to contribute posts. So if you can write coherently, enjoy and understand the game of rugby, please drop me a line

Many years ago in London, I worked with a right-wing looper called Seth. Well, Seth wasn't his real name, but he was reputed to resemble a character in some soap opera or other, and so that's what he was called. Anyways, Seth was your typical Sun-reading reactionary. His response to anything he found objectionable could be summed up in two words - "Ban it!"

The Notting Hill Carnival? Ban it!
Trade unions? Ban them!
Football 'ooligans? Ban them!

Etc., Etc.

I was reminded of Seth last week when I was reading A Tangled Web. (I made a vow last year never to visit that site again, but it's just one of those things. It's like watching an excruciating scene from The Office, through your fingers, from behind the sofa.) Under a headline "Ban the Koran?" a writer called "The Fulham Reactionary" discusses the idea of treating the Koran as a hate text, and banning it the same way as other hate texts like Mein Kampf. The first comment came from the blog's publisher, David Vance:


"I say don't ban the Koran.

Ban Islam."

Now, maybe David was being a little tongue-in-cheek with his comment, but you don't have to delve to far into his own writings to conclude that he may well be serious.

So just for one moment, let's imagine that this was to happen, and Britain did indeed "ban Islam." (A Tangled Web is a hardline unionist blog, so the context here would refer to the UK.) What would happen?

For a start Britain would be isolated by all the international institutions to which it belongs. The EU, the UN, the Commonwealth and Nato would all kick the UK out. Now some 'wingers would be delighted at the prospect of annoying Brussels or the UN, but the UK would soon find itself in a lonely place. The Arab League would boycott trade with Britain, which would have a detrimental effect on the supply of oil. Inflation would spiral out of control and the pound would go through the floor in an instant.

Domestically, the situation would be out of control within days. Hundreds of thousands of previously innocent, blameless people would be criminalised overnight. Bradford, Luton, Birmingham and any other town or city with a significant Muslim population would be in flames. The police would be stretched to the limit as they struggle to cope with the unrest as well as clamping down on all of Britain's now illegal mosques. Islam would be driven underground, and those Muslims that were previously abhorred by the actions of those who committed atrocities in the name of Islam would be driven to the margins of society. When something is banned unjustly, the reaction of those affected is not to acquiesce to the new law, but to fight against it. Moderates would become hardliners overnight.

Then of course, Britain would become a major target for an attack by international Islamist terrorists. Every ululating nutjob from anywhere on earth would start making his way to Britain in order to attain martyrdom and the attendant 72 virgins upon completion of his mission. The population would live in a constant state of fear, wary of congregating in crowds in case it attracted the attention of a jihadist.

Basically, Britain would collapse as a society within a couple of weeks. And that would be a good thing, eh, David et al?

It started with this: 10 Things Your IT Guy Wants You To Know

which merited the reply: 10 Things The Techno-Retarded Want The IT Guy to Know

which in turn caused John C.Welch of bynkii.com to respond: A response to the Tecno-Retarded

All good geeky fun.

Things have been quiet on the blog front for the last while, for one reason or another. Work has been quite busy, with a lot of toing and froing. I have found that I have had a dearth of ideas for posts, and those that do crop up seem like too much effort to write up.

But anyways, I'm on hols at the moment. I'm at home minding the little 'un. My sister, who looks after her during the week is away with her gang on their jolliers. My wife started a new job last month, so she can only get one week off, hence my status as a househusband this week. We will be on hols en famille next week.

The burtda went grand. I was working all day, but we managed to avoid the rain in the evening and get the barbie going. A nice piece of lamb was the order of the day, and we accompanied it with a nice bottle that we had originally planned to open last year on the 40th, but circumstances dictated otherwise. (Pontet-Canet 1966, in case you're curious.)

We were in Mayo last weekend, and took ourselves off to the beach on Sunday. Folly, you might think, but it was a lovely day on Cross Strand near Louisburgh. Not warm, as such, but very pleasant. I love the beaches around there, as the sea can be quite wild and dramatic, and also the fact that they are nearly always practically deserted. This weekend was no different, and with the exception of a few surfer d00dz, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. It was Babba's first trip to the seaside, and she even got to dip her piggies in the Atlantic. Back home on Monday, and since then thankfully the weather has been holding up. Walks at Emo Court are a regular feature of our days this week, and in this weather, it's a very pleasant way to pass an hour.

So what's been going on? I had planned to write at length about the Darren Graham affair, and may yet live up to that ambition. That sort of nonsense should have no place in any sport. Hopefully the GAA will use the opportunity to do something positive.

The recent Irish Times series about "Rip-Off Ireland" almost inspired me to put fingers to keyboard, but so far I have manfully resisted. Maybe next week. Or then again, maybe not.

On the tech side of things, Fake Steve Jobs has been unmasked. Apple have released new iMacs, so my machine is no longer cutting-edge. Still, I got ten months or so on the frontline, so it wasn't too bad a stint. Also, the new iLife and iWork suites have been released. I have ordered my copy of iLife '08 already. And to top it all, my .Mac account goes up from a measly 1GB to a much more respectable 10GB of storage. Once I install Leopard, I will use some of that space to back up all my photos (to go with my current backup regime of external HDD, Flickr and monthly DVD burn.)

Next week is Aoife's first birthday, so there will be lots of excitement to be had. She has a new little cousin as well, who was born just three weeks ago.

Then there's the preparations for the World Cup coming up as well. Loads to write about, just have to find the time.

So that's it. The babba is having a snooze at the moment, but is due to wake up any minute, so I'd better sign off.

As something of a cat-inclined kinda guy, it was probably inevitable that I would get drawn into the whole Lolcat thingie. I had actually never heard of it until Nat King Coleslaw did a brilliant adaptation of the concept for the election, entitled Lolpolz.

Anyway, here's the Lolcat video from YouTube:



And for more fine Lolcats, I Can Has Cheezburger is the place to look. It generates something like 30% of all the traffic to wordpress.com by all accounts.

Just fucking sick, I tell you!

via Segala:

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Click on the image to take the test yourself.

Meanwhile, Damien has started a campaign to "Bring Back Blogorrah", who have been off-air for the best part of a month. The reason stated for their non-appearance is to do with bringing us the next-generation Blogorrah. But surely that can be done in the background, and be unveiled when it's ready.

And finally, IBEC have reported a sudden and unexpected increase in overall productivity in the economy for the second half of June…

Treasa asked nicely, so here goes:

1. I have mentioned before that "Gerry O'Sullivan" is a pseudonym. The "Gerry" bit is a derivative of one of my forenames (Gerard), which may or may not be the name everyone knows me by. "O'Sullivan" is my mother-in-law's maiden name.

2. I have an unusual (real) surname. I have never met anyone, or have heard of anyone, with the same forename and surname combination as me. A Google search of my real name will only bring back results relating to me.

3. I have thought long and hard about sharing the next nugget of information.

4. I am related to Ryan Tubridy. He is a third cousin, through my paternal grandmother. I have never met him.

5. I spent a year in Alsace in the mid 90s, and as a result I now speak French with a marked Alsatian accent.

6. I have an unnatural memory for numbers. I can remember registration numbers of family cars from thirty years ago, and phone numbers of places I worked in twenty years ago, but I often have to go back and check if I have locked the front door, or turned everything off before I leave the house.

7. Even though I was raised in a strong Fianna Fáil household, I have never voted for the party.

8. My daughter was the eighteenth grandchild for my parents, and the first for my wife's. Both of my wife's sisters are pregnant at the moment with their first babies, which will also be the first grandchildren for their respective in-laws.

In keeping with my policy on bloggy memes, I will not pass it on.

[Click image to enlarge]



Context: This story on Slugger, and A Tangled Web's "Islam" category

…don't fuck with a high profile blogger like Damien Mulley.

The story starts here, then is followed up here, here and here, until finally we arrive at today's bizarre twist.

If you're a blogger, link back to today's post.

Tomorrow (17 June) is Fathers Day (never sure where to put the apostrophe in that, so I'm leaving it out.) It's the first one for me, so I'm looking forward to being spoiled for the day

Anyway, to all the following blogging Dads, I wish the best for the day:

Kav
Tom
Maca
Rambling Man
Mick, Gonzo, et al
Frank
Willie Joe
Conor

And apologies and best wishes to all I have left out!

Tags: fathers day, blogging

I was in SuperValu yesterday and saw this on the magazine shelves:



"Surely", I thought, "Blogorrah is onto this already." It had everything that ticks their boxes - vapid nonsense, a new publishing venture and a picture of one of Blogorrah's favourite Lovely Girls™ Pippa O'Connor. (See what reading Blogorrah does to you? You learn the names of all the "top Irish models." Incidentally, check out this guy's Bebo page, he's carrying something for the lovely Pippa.)

Anyways, they did not let me down. So it got me thinking, if a magazine about the Debs could be a success, so too could one about the annual First Communion circus. So here's where I make my fortune.



(Incidentally, the "Court Injunction" gag is based on a story I heard recently about a woman in Naas who demanded of a shop in the town that they withdraw from sale the same dress her daughter was going to wear on her big day. The woman had gone to Dublin especially to buy the dress, and was distraught that a local shop could have the cheek to source the same one.)

Tags: debs, Blogorrah, magazine

I have just upgraded to the new version (3.6) of RapidWeaver, the site creation tool I use for UnLaoised. Things haven't gone entirely smoothly, as I can't use the old theme in the new version.

So what you see now is just a temporary look. I'm looking for new themes and hope to have a more interesting one in place before long.

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blog, Themes

Just back from a couple of days R&R down Cork and Waterford way. We left the little 'un with her granny for the night and scuttled off to the lovely Blackwater Valley for a relaxing night away. Great to recharge the batteries.

I have just tidied up my fancy Blogroll, adding a few new links into the mix. If you would like a link from there to your site, drop me a line.

Una kindly recommended this site in her piece in the Tribune's election coverage. I'll have to start writing something then, I suppose. Hmmm, maybe tomorrow...

via Treasa:



Seen here first.

If you don't have Kav's Blog in your RSS reader, then you're missing something special. This is a guy who can make your sides split with laughter one minute, and then the next smack you between the eyes with something really personal and poignant.

To give you a taste of his style, this is his account of the birth of his daughter. Having recently been through the experience myself, I almost pissed myself reading this.

Like the Swearing Lady, Kav is from Galway. Maybe it's something in the water. Does cryptosporidium foster great blogging talent, or something?

Sinéad announced Twenty's major news [see what I did there? (as Kav might say)] to the world last night, and when I read of it, it inspired me to get that Photoshop icon in my Dock a-bouncin'.

The fruits of my toil are below the fold (as some might not consider it safe for a work environment).

Wait! There's More…

While we were waiting for the ferry at Dún Laoghaire last weekend, my wife was reading Hello! magazine's account of the break-up of Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan. I said to her that I reckoned that Grant and Liz Hurley would probably get back together before too long. She shot me this withering look, before informing me that Liz Hurley was actually getting married that weekend.

Oh well, there goes the plan for a showbiz gossip site on the gerryos.net domain.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to the Blog Awards bash this Saturday in Dublin. We're going away to England for a few days, and I will have to see if I can sneak onto the net to see who's won what.

With so much media coverage in recent days, it looks like blogging is heading for the big time in Ireland. I wouldn't be surprised if some of our more talented writers (yes, Ms Swearing Lady, you in particular) got offered gigs by the mainstream press. Whenever I read the weekend papers, I despair at some of the turgid shite that gets published from columnists that are a bit too comfy in their little niches.

So best of luck to all that have been nominated for awards. I'm looking forward to seeing the Flickr sets next week.

And congrats to Damien for another magnificent achievement in organising the whole thing.

The shortlist for the Irish Blog Awards has been published, and UnLaoised …… (pause for effect) …… is going home.

To be honest, I was delighted to even have made the long-list under the Best Designed Blog category. It wouldn't have been right if I had gone any further than that, because it would have meant that someone who actually went to the trouble of designing their site might have lost out. I did very little actual design work on this site. The photo montage in the header is about the only thing in it that is original. The rest is just a modified template.

But thanks to anyone that voted for me. It's much appreciated.

This is what happens to a humble blog like this one when Slugger O'Toole comes a linkin'

I was delighted to learn that this blog has been nominated under the Best Designed Blog in the Irish Blog Awards.



Many thanks to anyone who nominated me (I know Kav did).

A couple of years ago, I did up a simple website for my sister, who was getting married. I used a Blogger template, and put a load of links in the sidebar for things like accommodation and wedding list. I hosted the photos and a couple of movie clips on my .Mac account, and overall, it looked fine.

Today, my wife's brother and his fiancée have announced the date for their wedding, and I have offered that I would do something similar for them. Things have moved on a bit since 2005, so I reckon I could do a much better job this time round. What I plan to do is as follows:

- Set up the site in Wordpress, with a blog as a home page, for them to update as they wish.
- Use Google Maps for directions to the venue
- A page for accommodation details (including nearby hotels and B&Bs)
- A link to wherever their wedding list is kept
- A special Flickr account for their photos.

Any more ideas?

Never content to rest on my laurels, I have just added to the burgeoning publishing empire that is gerryos.net.

This time it's about Apple and the Mac (well, it will be), and it labours under the title CmdNotCtrl.



Once again, I have gone the WordPress route.

One of the earliest entries on my old blog was about Newgrange, written this day two years ago. As today was the winter solstice, you might like to have a read of it again.
Wait! There's More…

Going through the referral list from your traffic stats is seen by some as a lazy way to get material for a post, so it should come as a surprise that this is my first time to do it.

Some that caught my eye recently:
Wait! There's More…

It's great to see talent get recognition, as happened today when The Swearing Lady from The Arse End of Ireland was described thus in today's Irish Times:

Wait! There's More…

This is what Gerry's new blog will look like.