Dolly mixture: Cork, Copenhagen & blogging

Cork

Randomly, a feature on the Blog Awards of a few weeks ago appear in today's Evening Echo in Cork. A bunch of photos accompany, including mugshots of myself, my sis, and fellow X Comms-ers Darren & Sarah. Damien has some snaps here.

Copenhagen

Kev is reporting that the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) will be enrolling students once again this year for their masters degree in Interaction Design. He's currently loving the pilot year of the programme & the work they're doing looks fascinating. Applications need to be in by April 1st so jump quickly if you're interested. Info is all here.

Blogging

So my new site, www.iamsteph.com, is far from being moulded and tweaked to perfection so for now I'll be blogging my little head off as usual here with the more design-related/nerdy stuff going over on the new site. Don't forget to keep an eye on the delightful www.downwiththatsortofthing.com for snippets and snapshots of Ireland's protests & strikes.

American Idiot

Could someone please tell me who the F "St.Patty" is? Not even going to get started on the fact that the photo above is not likely to be anywhere in Pattyland nor would any girl in their right mind consider leaving the house in that getup on Paddy's Day.  By the way, American Apparel is coming to Dublin. Here's all the informations on the American Apparel site, Rosemary McCabe blogs about it here.

I've lost my hat

I left my lovely warm and toasty hat on the top deck of the 83 bus this morning, right when the second winter is hitting the country. Lost property/garages don't answer the phones this early but I've a feeling they may just laugh anyway. If you've any ideas on how I might be reunited with my hat (pictured above), leave a comment or tweet me @cloudsteph. 

Update: Lost Property office of Dublin Bus will know tomorrow if said had was found by driver. We live in hope. 

Energy prices to be cut

The Commission on Energy Regulation has just delivered the good news that gas and electricity prices are to be cut - 10% in ESB PES Tariffs, 12% in Bord Gáis Tariffs (on average). And about time too.

Shame the commission's website isn't up to date - all the "click heres" go nowhere. Here's the source anyway, hopefully details of precisely when these price cuts will take effect will be added later.

Hope?

One of the great buzzwords of the Obama campaign last year, "hope". The New York Times did a poll to find out what were the hopes of the American people for the Obama administration. Some lovely visualisation of the results along with sound clips from individual participants can be found here at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/15/us/politics/20090115_HOPE.html

Joaquin Phoenix - don't give up the day job

And then he fell off the stage. Seriously lad, you do a fantastic Johnny Cash tribute but I'm really not sure about the rapping. 

Eamon Ryan putting Muckinish on the map?

The National Broadband Scheme was unveiled today by Eamon Ryan & partners Three Ireland today. Apparently under this scheme Ireland will have 100% coverage by 2010. Wow, happy days if this is so but, I have my reservations being a girl from the fair countryside of north Co. Clare who up until about 6 months ago, could use only dial-up Internet when visiting the folks. Not the end of the world you say until you see your dad trying to download forms from the Dept. of Agriculture website for his day to day business at crawling speeds, my sister trying to fill out her CAO application praying the connection won't die & my mum telling her college lecturers she can't receive the course notes by email as the connection is too crap to receive anything bigger than about 50kb. I purchased a 3/Three dongle (seeing my mobile was getting their 3G signal) despite warnings from the sales rep that our area wasn't covered. Popped in the SIM and viola, a guaranteed minimum 1MB download for €20, quite a bit less than the 4c per minute from Eircom dial-up. They're like pigs in poop since. There's plenty others in the area and wider areas who aren't so fortunate and are still in an age where email is non-existant, booking a flight, concert ticket or renewing insurance means a drive to the nearest town/city. 

But, according to RTE it's only 10% of the population that's without cover so it can't be that bad, right? "While Ireland has over 1.2 million subscribers to broadband, approximately a third of the country is without coverage." Ok so that means Ireland has a population of about 1.3 million people? That doesn't seem right. And a third of the country without coverage? Are we talking geographical now? Huh? Broadband in Ireland has a long history of dodgy claims on stats and we're heading into more of the same if you ask me.

While 3 winning the competiton for the job hasn't been the most popular decision (and indeed maybe not the best decision) it might be a bit of a kick in the arse to Eircom, who being the owners of most of the fixed line system in Ireland should have a lot more broadband rolled out than they have thus far. I'm a firm believer in the notion of not bothering to do something unless you're going to do it right but in this case, any progress is progress and if means 100 people being able to check their email without re-dialling 5 times, I'll be content with that. 

Transport cuts - who cares?!

Following on from a post at An Spáilpin Fánach regarding the rather quiet coverage of the job cuts at CIE, I decided to have a look around to find out what routes and services would be affected. So far I haven't found very much.

Dublin Bus website: 

CIE website:

So are we going to be finding out the hard way by being left at the bus stop for an hour longer? And what about timetables? The annual re-print was only distributed in the past few weeks, will another lump of cash will have to be doled out on re-printing the? If CIE don't seem to be bothered about the cut-backs how the heck do we expect their customers or the media to be? 

Nissan.ie fail

Wow, what a way to advertise the 2009 models, really selling it to me. No wonder I was changing a button that was to say 'View our 2009 range' to 'View our cars under €12000' on a client's website today :)

Opposition doing what it does best

From today's Irish Times. Good to see they're doing what we're paying them for at the very least :)

Metro epic fail

The headline accompanying the photo was along the lines of "Forced to eat floor covering". At the bottom left of the sticker there's a prompt to 'peel here'. Well done Metro.

Black and white

Not just two men but two white men. Could be just me but I found it a little odd that the article began with this description.

Protest City

A lively day in Dublin 2. From AA Roadwatch website:

"Updated: 22/10/2008 12:13:28
*MAIN TRAFFIC* * Kildare St & Molesworth St are closed off in advance of a protest taking place outside the Dáil. The area should be avoided as there are very large crowds in attendance. Traffic is heavy on Leeson St from before the Canal on to St Stephens Green, Dawson St and Nassau St. Also very slow from College Green. * Also very slow on Pearse St approaching the South Quays. * A second protest will take place from 2pm, assembling at Parnell Sq and then traveling down O'Connell St, D’Olier St, College Green and Nassau St, before marching up Dawson St, Molesworth St and arriving at the Dail on Kildare St. Expect delays along the entire route. "

IDI Awards - Winners Lists online

A rather excellent night for all of us in X Communications - Stu Curry managed to bag us Commended, Highly Commended and Design Excellence for 3 different projects, namely McDonalds.ie, NCH.ie and Childline.ie
Full list is online here, photos are to follow. Some fab work on display and winning deserved awards, congrats to all involved!

Scroll - new magazine for website makers

"Founded by long time web industry figures Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp in 2008, Scroll is a print, PDF and online magazine for web professionals." The logo and overall design for the project is taken care of by one of my favourite designers, Veerle Pieters. The printed magazine will be around $10.95 (ex shipping), $3.99 for the PDF and full articles will appear gratis on the website 3 months after the printed publication. Nice.
Get more info and have a poke around right here.

Stuff that's happening soon that's potentially interesting

...and some of which you might see me at.

The Mighty Boosh coming back in January 2009. Boyzone continue to flog the dead and downright embarassing horse. Electric Picnic early bird tickets will be available from next Friday the 10th, including some family early birds. The Festival of World Food takes places in Marlay Park, Rathfarnham this weekend on the 4th and 5th, free in. Mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins will be at the NCH next month. The annual Cork Jazz Festival is on the October bank holiday weekend. Gardiner Street Gospel Choir are back doing the 'Gig in God's Gaff' at the church of St.Francis Xavier on Sundays at 7.30.

IWA - tickets almost gone

Tickets are almost all snapped up for the Irish Web Awards which happen in less than 2 weeks time. Get your ass over there and sign up before it's all too late.

See y'all there!

Demand for Golden Spiders entries through the roof

Or so we're told. But then again at €150 per online entry and €300 to put your bum on a seat sure it's bound to be out of this world.

Shame I've already decided to spend some of my pocket money on the Web Awards instead (€30). If you haven't booked your spot already then go to and do it, tis filling up. Not sure if there will be any lukewarm roast beef on the go but I'm sure we'll get by.

Funky Fables on BBC from Friday 29th

The delightful masterpiece that is the Funky Fables series from the Dublin gang Jam Media is on air from tomorrow on BBC at 3.30. Whoopla!

If you want to be in with a chance of featuring in the show yourself, check this out.

A List Apart Survey 2008

That time of the year again, have your tuppence worth:
http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2008