It’s always been said that there are blogs about everything, every topic under the sun they say…
Probably for the first time I have come across a blog that covers a subject I had never in my wildest dreams imagined…
Archive for June, 2006
I thought I’d seen it all…
Sunday, June 11th, 20061,000,000th visitor
Sunday, June 11th, 20061,000,000 visits!
I know it doesn’t come from people who look at the latest entries, but the combined numbers of people who drop in somewhere on the blog, be it the latest entry, or the oldest one.
1423 days ago I started blogging, back when the blogosphere was a far different place. I never for a moment imagined that my blog would lead to so many things, meeting so many great people both in Ireland and around the world, amongst hundreds of other smaller things. Hundreds of debates, thousands of posts, thousands of links. The explosion of blogging in Ireland has been spectacular, and it was great to be there to watch it from the start.
Thanks to everyone who dropped in over the last 2,049,120 minutes! (I do love stats!)
1,000,000th visit recorded as:
Someone searching for “clipart + paris” on google.ch
From the city of Murten in Switzerland
Using Firefox on Windows 2000.
:-)
Philip Merrill does a Maxwell?
Sunday, June 11th, 2006He seems to have fallen over board too:
Rescue crews searched the Chesapeake Bay for a prominent publisher and diplomat Sunday, hours after his sailboat was discovered empty in the water with the engine still running.
The Coast Guard dispatched a C-130 aircraft, a helicopter and a boat to assist in the search for 72-year-old Philip Merrill, who had been sailing alone Saturday.
Senior Chief Steve Carleton said the Coast Guard was operating under the assumption that Merrill fell overboard.
“When we found the boat, the engine was running and his wallet was found on board the vessel,” he said.
Ken Turner, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources police, said Saturday night that two boaters found Merrill’s unoccupied 41-foot sailboat.
Acquaintance
Sunday, June 11th, 2006A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich and famous.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
A fix?
Sunday, June 11th, 2006Yes I am watching Big Brother again.
I can’t help but think that Susie’s addition was an out-and-out fix. Most of the housemates suspect it too. BB forums are awash with speculation. Endemol have denied that it was fixed, that she was chosen entirely at random.
Susie was entirely too unsurprised and comfortable for someone who just got on Big Brother, after seven years trying to get on the show, and her husband buying thousands of Kit Kats, and eventually paying £4000 for a ticket. She seems unphased and perfectly normal. Something’s not right.
I can’t see her lasting anyways, but the big question is how long more will Grace last?
Enterprise versus Death Star
Sunday, June 11th, 2006Finally the argument is settled.
And the winner is…
Ann Coulter loses the plot
Sunday, June 11th, 2006I have been closely following the furore created by Coulter’s latest book, Godless. In the book she makes a rather controversial remark in relation to some 9/11 widows she dislikes, amongst many others. Click here for the video.
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”
Some on the right have expressed shock at her comments, while others have sought to defend her.
Now we have the rather obligatory satirical and definately not work-safe blog about Coulter. (413 comments and counting) It’s not exactly quotable, but I did like this bit in relation to the tax-cuts. I edited it for, eh, work safety.
A stock’s value is even now only partially tied to the actual value of any publicly traded company. But who’s going to profit from inflated valuations when stock prices swell irrationally from the forced, artificial injection of capital?
…
‘You might as well shoehorn billions of dollars into the Baseball Card market. The price of a Derek Jeter rookie will be driven up to hundreds of thousands of dollars—before the bubble bursts and the whole market crashes massively.’ It was getting hard to stay on point as she tongue-fucked my shitter vigorously.
…
‘The top 1% will sell stocks at the inflated valuations to the novice investors-by-necessity, the market will swell and crash, and the same 1% will come back and re-purchase their holdings at pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, Social Security will go bankrupt and all the novice investors will be eating catfood for the duration of their “golden years,’’ barring a massive Federal bailout several hundred times in excess of what the Savings & Loan scandal cost us.’
In relation to Coulter’s original quote about the 9/11 widows she dislikes so much, it looks to me more like jealousy. Here is her quote again:
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.
Or you could say:
Coulter is a millionaire, lionized on TV and in Time magazine, reveling in her status as a celebrity right-wing pundit, stalked by left-wingers. She spent years working to get into that position and is jealous of women who got the spotlight by simply being widows of victims of terrorism.
Olbermann’s criticism of Coulter is well worth watching:
Vanity searching
Sunday, June 11th, 2006For years now I have watched where my first name is placed on the Google index. Yes it’s vain, but it also gives me an insight into Google’s indexing methods. Earlier this year during a Google Dance, I was completely dropped from the index for 3 weeks, for no apparent reason.
It has returned, and now when searching for ‘Gavin‘ on Google.com I am placed at number three, while over on Google.ie I am now placed at number two.
At least I’m now higher than Gavin Friday. Who’d have thought that possible?
Triple suicide at Guantanamo camp
Sunday, June 11th, 2006I have to say I am somewhat dismayed by the reaction of the US authorities to the suicide of three Guantanamo inmates:
Rear Adm Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair.
“They are smart. They are creative, they are committed,” he said, quoted by Reuters.
“They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
It’s very smart and creative alright. They really do have no regard for their lives? It was an act of asymmetrical warfare?
It actually reads like something from the Daily Show. Even if these guys were cold-blooded murderers, would they still commit suicide as a method of ‘asymmetrical warfare’? I could understand if they took some of the guards down with them, ala suicide bombing, but what purpose does it serve by simply taking your own life?
In fact, given that these men are incarcerated without trial, without due process, without recourse, and without the normal system open to murderers on US soil, why would they do such a thing.
I have to apply a form of Occam’s Razor (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem)to this and ask, what is more likely the simplest reason? That they commited suicide as an act of war against the US, or that they were driven to it after 4 or 5 years of internment and extreme interrogation?
You decide.
The devil is in the detail
Sunday, June 11th, 2006
Rating: out of 5
So I went to see the remake of the 1976 classic, The Omen. I have always liked the original, and have seen it a number of times. The remake is an almost verbatim remake, with little in the way of additions or improvements. On it’s own it may have made it, but in comparison to the original, it is a pathetic recreation. It appears much of the script was lifted directly from the original, most especially noticeable in the scene where the photographer and Mr. Thorne are in the abode of the now dead priest.
But my venom is not mainly for the production of a remake, or of the quality of the remake. It is the laziness of the post-production. Did anyone, at all, involved in the making of the film, not actually watch it once if was finished?
You may not believe me, but the gobshites who made this film managed to produce it in a way that meant the microphones are visible in the early scenes. And no, they are not actually meant to be there, they are actually part of the making of the film. At first I thought it was a brief mistake, then it kept happening, until at one point I thought the lead actress was going to get clobbered on the head. As another reviewer notes:
When it first appeared I thought…hmmm are there reporters in this scene or is that just a little flub? No… the camera pans back, no reporters in sight. Must have just been a mistake. I figured it was a small mistake. But then, it appears in the next scene, and the next scene, and the NEXT scene, and then in almost every single scene from that point on. At one point it almost HIT the actress head while shes sitting on the couch yelling at the nanny to take damien upstairs. It got so bad that you could tell the producers even tried cutting it out of some scenes. Suddenly this dark black fuzzy line appears at the top of the screen attempting to hide the mic. Unfortunatly even the black fuzzy line couldnt keep this thing out of the shot. It dips down below the line many many times. How do you take a horror movie seriously when the microphone is in all the shots??
Surely someone spotted this? Surely someone suggested removing the mics with some digital wizardry?
It spoils the entire film, and there were mumbles of questions and disbelief from other people in the cinema. Some even laughed, and I don’t blame them. There is simply no excuse for it. It’s lazy and unprofessional, it’s rule number one of film making – don’t let the audience know it’s actually make-believe.
A is for Abdomen
Sunday, June 11th, 2006The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage.
A. Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.
Ambrose Bierce
Sunday, June 11th, 2006I will be sticking in some good Ambrose Bierce quotes now and then on the blog. You can read about Bierce here.
Greensdale on the blogosphere
Saturday, June 10th, 2006Incidentally, I found some of the links in the previous piece via Roy Greensdale’s blog. He has a comment piece in the Guardian today about delving into the world of the blogosphere. I might as well quote the whole piece, it’s worth it. I’ve added emphasis for good quotes.
I am at the bottom of a learning curve, a neophyte blogger nervously trying find my way around in a new world where everyone else who has been there for the past couple of years seems so at ease. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that I feel again like the trainee journalist of some 42 summers ago, continually worried about whether I am doing the right thing. Then again, I’m just as determined as I was then to learn, and to succeed.
Succeed? In a very real sense, that aim is no longer relevant, at least in the old sense. I realise that the meaning of “success” has changed, because one of the truly refreshing differences between the old journalism and the new is its democratic spirit.
Personal success in the old leisurely top-down form of journalism was, by its nature, individualistic. Success in the blogosphere, in the bottom-up form of journalism, is altogether more egalitarian.
It demands that we “professional journalists” understand that, whatever our knowledge, whatever our skills, we can no longer rest on our laurels. We must step down from the pulpit and move among the congregation. We can go on preaching, but we must accept that everyone else is a preacher too.
We have to admit to ourselves that we don’t know everything. We never did, of course, but we affected to do so. After all, we enjoyed the luxury of speaking through our daily megaphone and rarely, if ever, bothered to listen to the voices in the audience. Indeed, we were only faintly aware that there were other voices, and surely there were none worth hearing.
A characteristic all journalists seem to share is an overweening sense of certainty, a belief that we understand every problem (and usually know every solution). Now, in only my second week of blogging, which includes an intense reading of other peoples’ blogs, I can see the flaws in that autocratic attitude.
Perhaps my greatest insight is the realisation that technology – the form – does have a profound effect on content. It should have been obvious. Every previous development of communications, from print to telegraph, from telephone to radio and television, has had a dramatic effect on content.
So what change has the net wrought? Most obviously, it transforms journalism from a largely didactic activity, in both the selection of material and the manner of its transmission, into a conversation. The immediacy and the intimacy of the internet allows everyone to have a say.
I know that it’s easy to abuse the freedom by insulting, swearing, ranting and libelling. But my experience thus far has been altogether more positive. I have been challenged to explain myself better. My assumptions have been questioned. I have been forced to accept that my supposed expertise in journalism is not universally respected. Oh yes, and one particular discovery (doh!): there is no liberal consensus after all.
None of the people who have contributed their thoughts to my blog has been abusive, though doubtless by saying this I am offering a hostage to fortune. That’s freedom, folks, and I accept that there are downsides. Overall, however, I am buoyed by the tone and content of the conversations.
Talking is only one aspect of my blog. Its focus is to act as a kind of noticeboard, pointing people towards journalistic events and developments across the world (in net jargon, it’s called aggregation). Just as importantly, I want to publicise what’s happening across Britain, an ambition not yet realised.
Whenever I attend conferences involving regional newspapers I am told, often with great passion, that national newspaper journalists remain unaware of the fact that good and responsible journalism is alive and well in Britain’s cities, towns and villages. Fair enough. Come on then, regional and local editors, tell me about your campaigns, crusades and scoops.
O’Reilly versus Murdoch, are newspapers worth it?
Saturday, June 10th, 2006O’Reilly has again been trumpeting print newspapers this time calling them the “ultimate browser”.
The response of Independent News & Media, the owner of The Independent and The Independent On Sunday, to the march of new media had been measured and thoughtful, he said.
Sir Anthony said he believed we are in another period of wild stock-market overstatement for a certain class of media assets. Although this period would pass, in the meantime conventional media – terrestrial TV, cable, radio, newspapers and magazines – had been relegated in many investors’ minds to a “show me your model status”.
Speaking at the company’s annual meeting in Dublin, Sir Anthony said the multiplication of media devices which concentrate on the individual’s needs at any given point had made it much more difficult to aggregate large audiences.
In these circumstances, TV, newspapers and magazines, and to a degree radio, remained the best and the only way for mass audiences for goods and services to be created. However, the internet could yield an extraordinary opportunity to the newspaper industry on the production side in putting together its products at a much lower cost.
“If we exempt newsprint, the real cost of newspapers lies in putting them together – writing them, editing them, producing pages, getting them camera-ready, producing plates, printing, and finally in distribution,” Sir Anthony said.
Asked after the meeting whether he would sell his London-based titles, which are loss-making, he insisted: “No, absolutely not.”
Now this debate has been raging since before I started putting pixels online. What is the place of newspapers in a world where the Internet offers a far cheaper, and some would say more efficient means of distribution?
The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, recently mounted a robust defence of journalism and of printed newspapers, dismissing reports that the death knell has sounded for “old media”. This is at the same time as the Guardian becomes the “first British national newspaper to offer a “web first” service that will see major news by foreign correspondents and business journalists put online before it appears in the paper.”
The Guardian has blazed the trail for blogging, all the way back to the first Guardian blog awards in 2002. The new commentisfree portal now boasts 50,000 reader comments and 2 million montly page impressions since launching in March. Rusbridger also says things like:
“What we’re doing, which no newspaper has ever done before, is to take your elite stable of columnists, who are paid, and pitch them into the same space as people who aren’t paid,” he said.
“What is professional journalism and what isn’t, and how do they share the same space? We’re making this up as we go along.”
Have a listen to Rusbridger speak at an RSA lecture here too.
So what is happening? I’m waiting to see, but I think O’Reilly has the wrong idea and is taking an unnecessarily defensive line with regard to new media. I will be posting more about this topic.
Blogroll renovation
Saturday, June 10th, 2006For the first time I am probably going to have to start breaking up my blogroll to distinguish between bloggers in different parts of Ireland, Cork, Dublin bloggers etc. It is a testament to the the growth of blogging in Ireland that I have to do this, and something I am thrilled about. There are now more bloggers in Cork than there was in Ireland not too long ago. :-)