Net-not-work security

Omani mentioned that he turns off his wireless router at night.
I do the same thing (although if I do go down the Fon route I'll need to rethink this).

Why?

1) I unplug everything when I go to bed. Stops fires (in theory) and is one less thing to worry about

2) Security, turning the internet back in to a sneaker-net. I don't really worry about someone piggy backing my connection (contention is contention).

3) I have something off-line to do. The web is a bloody siren call. Since the router is in the hall and the comouter isn't (the call no place to do any business unless it's shooing a candidate from the doorstep).

4) I'm not using it. Why leave it on? Energy saving and all of that...

Do you?

tags : router, wireless, safety, security, network, Fon

And it's over for Cork

The plan this morning was to get up early, head over to Cork City hall and take over from Stephen. however leaving Mallow last night I heard about Dan Boyle of the Green Party loosing his seat. But the counting continued. I woke up early to hear that counting had finished in the small hours of the morning.

So no need to take over.

Pity, I would have liked to compare them.

At the moment the figures are that Fianna Fáil has won 78 seats, Fine Gael has 51 seats, Labour got 20 seats, the Greens took 6 and Sinn Féin ended up with 4, the Progressive Democrats' vote saw their seat total reduced to 2, while Independent candidates took the remaining 5 seats.

84 is needed for a majority. I'll let you do the sums while the trading continues.

take care,
Will

tags : Mallow, Cork, politics, MySay.com, IrishElection, irishelection2007

Oh Goody

The disadvantage of having a laptop with a live feed of the election results (yes I'm streaming RTE live in the count centre) is that people rush over to hear what's happening.

Is McDowell gone? asked one elderly lady over my shoulder.
"Yes"
"Oh goody" and off she goes smiling.

Was he really THAT hated?

So far in Mallow, Michael Aherne and Ned O'Keeffe (FF) elected, with Sean Sherlock of Labour and Paul Bradford and David Staunton of Fine Gale left in a 4 seat consitituency.

Will

tags : overheard, Mallow, politics, MySay.com, IrishElection, irishelection2007

Excluded

Independents Chris Carr and John Cronin along with Green Party's Sarah Irenmonger have been eliminated in the first count.

tags : Mallow, politics, MySay.com, IrishElection, irishelection2007

Cork East Count Centre in Mallow

See MySay.com for audio reports on results in the Cork East count.

Mallow, politics, MySay.com, IrishElection, irishelection2007

RTÉ's view from Cork

MP3 download of RTÉ Radio's The Constituency: Rachael English and Nick Coffey look at Cork East

Smiling faces no more

Walking through Fermoy last night I was wondering why it looked so different.
It took a few moments for me to figure out that all the posters had been taken down.

Yup, the town looks a lot less cluttered.

Anyway I'm intend to be audio reporting for IrishElection.com for the Cork East (and whatever else you're having) Consitituency.

take care,
Will

tags : Fermoy, politics, MySay.com, IrishElection, irishelection2007

Transforming

Personally I'm glad that the new Transformers movie (the International trailer, with different jokes to the US one). Not for the actually movie. Blarneyman points out that the script (or at least the first draft) is a load of... blarney.

However, I've see the toys based on the movie. Just look at the new Optimus Prime which will be hitting the shelves in the US on June 2, despite the fact that some of them are on sale already.

I want. I want. Needless to say, you probably don't want to see the toys, which are of Alternator quality, if you don't want spoilers.

However could someone let me know which toys are going to be on sale in Ireland so I don't have to do the e-bay search again?

p.s. I don't know if the musician Deceptikon has anything to do with the toys

tags :
Transformers, movie, toys


toys

Boom and latte

Robin Blandford has a link to Channel'4's coverage of Open Coffee London. I suspect the the link will only be active for only a week so look now.

The UK media are looking at the boom as a repeat of the dot com boom (which bombed). However their coverage is a bit off-putting. I do want to hear (in detail) how the UK trip of the Cork Open Coffee crowd did.

take care,
Will

tags : Open Coffee, Cork, London

Shine no more

A news report which caould get me scratching my head... a cure for baldness which actually works. Yes I'm shiny and cromedome-ish, and factor 50 on the head feels nice in weather like this, but despite my use of the number one blade, or even the full blown head shave, I'd like to get the hair back.

It works by getting the genes to activate the follicles in damaged skin. So I'm scratching now.

Knowing my luck, if it does come back it's going to be completely white.

tags :
hair, bald, medical, do we really need this

Why not

"Some things haven't been done before because they are difficult. Some things haven't been done before because they are stupid. the trick is telling the difference." -- John Handelaar explains things at Cork Open Coffee on Friday

tags : overheard, Cork Open Coffee, Open Coffee

Re-education of a gambling angel investor

Would you gamble in a horse race? The area now known as Silicon Valley had a history of horse racing and gambling on horses. If you are willing to bet $10k on a horse, why not gamble on a start-up? €10k is quite literally a SSIA money amount. A pittance in the Irish property arena. Not that much in the horse breeding industry either. It is a risk, but so is a horse race. So where do we send the cheque? There isn't a place.

It's not just the punters (in more than one meaning of the word) that need to be educated in investment. college students leave with the technical know-how (other discussions aside) but they don't get thought about looking for investment.


Is there a need for a convention to get the investors to attend? Actually Damien Mulley is looking in to arranging a big pitching event some time in September, so this might happen soon. However there is an opportunity to have an "Open Coffee" style informal session at an IT@Cork, which is not a pure technical event, as investors don't know where to go. Assuming that investors are out there.


There is an election on. Stamp duty (which canvassers confirm that no one cares about) is being talked up in the media. Can we talk up

Could there be a start-up lobby group? In Cork there is the NSC (and soon a NSC 2), UCC, Rubicon, WebWorks and probably a few we didn't know about. There isn't a central organisation. Not always joined up to the media thinking either. For example, Walter of Sxoop and Pixenate moved into the Rubicon building. That's a press release opportunity which helps to show the creation of a start-up culture in Ireland! Which gets attention in the off-line media world. Sales and marketing of a company beat technical skill when it comes to funding. It's sad but it's true.


All IT start-ups are looking for investment. They have to chase the money. However there is no history of investing in technology in Ireland, except for the Eircom share issue. An education which has not been forgotten. An early start-up is a risk, a gamble. Care to bet?


However investment in property (an investment area with a lot of positive education) is declining, so why not take up investing in start-ups? Does Cork (and Limerick and Waterford) need a 'face' so that investors look here rather than to Dublin?


It might be easier to get small investors too. The perception of computer technology is completely different now. Once computers were these big untouchable room sized machines. Now they are mobile devices with annoying ringtones. He mystique has gone. Few people are afraid of the technology, so they might be willing to invest in the companies looking in to the next technology.


tags :Silicon Valley, cork, start-up, SSIA, investors, Rubicon, Sxoop, Pixenate, start-up culture in Ireland, investment

Ginga

A while back I noticed a flyer in a shop window in Fermoy advertising Capoeira lessons. I thought "that looks interesting" and went on my way safe in the knowledge that work would get in the way of my doing anything along those lines.

Well that reason is gone for now. But when I went looking, I couldn't find any sign of it. So the closest I got was playing games. Then roaming around a shop in Cork City I spotted a poster and realised that the lessons were in full flow.

The group is called Candeias Ireland, linked to Grupo Candeias and they do lessons in Cork and Limerick too.

It's fun and it's knackering. Look for yourself.

There is actually a big event and workshop series coming up over the June Bank Holiday weekend which means a lot to the capoeirista due to the caliber of Mestre due to attend

I think I need to practice a kick or two.



take care,
Will

tags : Fermoy, capoeira, Candeias, Candeias Ireland, Grupo Candeias

Building blocks

Expectations are disappointments under construction -- Marian Keyes

tags : overheard

The power of words

Donncha published his blogs top 10 Google keyword referrals so I thought I'd do the same.

Usually I just look at the MyBlogLog stuff, so I've ignored this up to now...

Based on the results for this week...
At number 10...
richard macilwraith Who I mentioned in a gig listing (when I did them) way way back in January 2004.

At number 9... elaine crowley tv3 who appeared in an annotated press release / event during the Cork 2005 thing.

At number 8... dog track race form for curraheen park which was from an overheard cycling comment in August 2006.

At number 7... african people in cork.ie. Huh? Even the search shows that it's separate words in different posts from an archive in February 2005. The bit which gets me is the cork.ie thing... it the site for Cork City Council.

At number 6... sponsored cycle cork The searcher got my sponsored cycle trips in 2004. However I think (s)he might have been looking for the Imokilly Charity Cycle which goes through Fermoy on May 19th (70 mile route from Youghal - Tallow – Fermoy – Rathcormac – Watergrasshill – Carrigtwohil – Midleton – Castlemartyr – Killeagh and back to Youghal in support of the Cope Foundation, Midleton Hospital and Brú Columbanus).

At number 5... a singular collection: best of hazel o'connor cd windows Again my old listing days (this time in 2003) gets me. I'm sort of glad that I have the Shared Google Calendar for gig listings now. Which reminds me.. I should update it tonight.

At number 4... shannon garda station street The parsing does not make sense. I mean, Shannon Street (unless there is a Station Street in Shannon). I assumed that ShanDon street (my caps) was the right search... however the search shows up a Garda press release to do with the Bush visit to Ireland in 2004. Which might be what is being searched for...

At number 3 ... english/slovakia dictionary. Apparantly there isn't one. The post you get is to do with Slovakia entering the EU (and Cork being twinned with it at the time). The archive is actually topped by the "Twelve STI's of Christmas" which shows just how bad my grammer is, and a search I've seen too many times on my logs.

At number 2... smacky productions A good old fake movie trailer creator (who is now on MySpace. Cool fake trailers.

And at number 1 is... Letter from the Idiot. Actually this is the number 1 keyword, but I've filtered it out from the countdown...
the real number 1 is george tennent and the variant george tennent cia. I know why he's showing up. His book At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA came out recently and is kicking up a storm in the US political arenas. On my site he shows up due to the Bill Clinton interviews with Fox.

So searches on my blog reveal politics, fake films, cycling and music releases. Proof that I cannot be pidgeon-holed.

And now some labels to tags me with...
take care,
Will

tags : top 10 Google keyword referrals, gig listing, cycling, Cork, Imokilly, Youghal, Tallow, Fermoy, Rathcormac, Watergrasshill, Carrigtwohil, Midleton, Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Cope Foundation, Slovakia, smacky, george tennent

Calling Senator Norris

"I love BarCamp. I'll support anything with camp in it." -- Joe Drumgoole

Late in the day, so I don't think he knew how it sounded.

Well that's the last of the BarCamp quotes file (unless you want to send me something!)

tags : Barcamp, Barcamp Dublin, Joe Drumgoole, overheard

this is not the droid you are looking for

"The first 10 guys who hit on me also went out with my brother. Thats not homophobic, thats just creepy" -- Ryan Alexander

In fairness they do look alike.

tags : Barcamp, Barcamp Dublin, Ryan Alexander, bears, overheard

a moment on the lips

"Chips are better than lip balm." -- Ellybabes

I wonder if the Beaut.ie ladies know about that one.

tags :
Overheard, Ellybabes, chips, food

names changed to protect the mother

Tell him about alochol and fruit -- E
9 years old. Shitfaced on my mothers fruit punch -- G

tags :
Barcamp, Barcamp Dublin, overheard