Well I feckin’ never.
Seems the gloves are well and truely off as Eoghan McCabe has offered 2 grands worth of design work to a lucky feed subscriber or blog reader sometime between now and the Blog Awards. All you’ve to do is subscribe to his blog. Would it be really mean to substitute your own link in for others feeds? 😉
I was happy with my pint from winning round one but this is taking things to a whole new level….
First there was breaking 100 subscribers via FeedBurner, then there was breaking 5,000 spam comments blocked, now I’m delighted to say that the 1,000th Sound System Podcast has been served by KilkennyMusic.com. Might mean small figures to more regular podcasters but we’re new to the game and reaching 1,000 downloads has put a great smile on my face!
We’ve slowly begun to put what we feel is a good shape to the shows and we’ll be developing it further during the year (have about 26 more podcasts or so to record over the course of the year).
Notice to politicians… call to my front door, try flag me down in the street or have a word with me at a gig but keep comments like these off my Bebo page, blog, MySpace…. you get where its going.
If this is going to be the “in thing” now in the run up to the elections I’m gonna be mighty pissed off….
Here’s an idea – custom CSS for Grazr (see the sidebar on kenmc.com). Was looking into it last night and stopped short of going all out – I figure, download the javascript, host it yourself, download the existing Grazr stylesheet and all associated images and bundle it into your own WordPress template and then style as you so desire.
Has anyone attempted this previously? I think it would be nice to be able to style all elements of it, don’t you?
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to effectively use stylesheets to manage the layout of a web page then head over to Johnnypez.com. John is back in the blogging game (apart from Roaddeaths.ie that is) and has started off with a beginners guide to CSS layouts, followed up with an advanced guide.
Tip – the three letters stand for ‘cascading stylesheets’ 🙂
Yes, its pretty off topic, yes there are excessive capital letters in the title but I”m looking for help – does anyone, anywhere, have or know something with a piano who would be willing to part company with it? Someone who has been using the piano simply to prop up flowers, a few pictures, let the cat walk over it – whatever. If its been gathering dust in the sitting room or you’ve gotten out of playing one I want to know.
Why – easy, I want to buy it! Or if you’re giving it away then all the better. If its within reasonable travel distance from Kilkenny I can arrange to collect it. I’m not looking to go mad pricewise though, I’ve seen upright pianos knocking around eBay up to 200 euro so thats my limit right there.
I fell in love with the piano again (I played for a while YEARS ago) and its a promise to myself (not a New Years Resolution – a promise) for 2007 to start playing piano again so if you know of anyone at all who has a piano they’re looking to offload then please let me know. If it needs tuning thats not too bad, I don’t mind in tuning it myself (not that I’m a qualified piano tuner but I think I would do a good job) so long as the thing isn’t beyond playing!
Drop me an email, leave a comment or contact me through the blog.
I’ll give thumbs up today to Apple’s address verification in the Apple Store. I made my first purchase today from the store, picking up a new Apple mouse for the MacBook Pro. Why do I give thumbs up?
Well, when I put the office address down as the shipping address, they said they couldn’t verify the address and I had to enter another one. So I changed a detail or two around, still no joy, another problem verifying the address. Now, rather than be really stubborn and make me enter it again, the screen basically prompts “if you’re sure, then we’ll ship it here”. Presto, address accepted, the mouse is on it’s way. Why can’t other sites follow suit? Always hanging up on postal codes and zip codes and likes.
That and the fact that it took about three or four clicks from finding the mouse to finishing the order, I’d say it was a good shopping experience 🙂
Bless Akismet and its spam blocking ways, yesterday kenmc.com saw its 5,000th spam comment blocked 🙂
Question: is there a free broadband package in Ireland for people over 70 i.e. those who already qualify for free line rental and a certain amount of free calls. If there isn’t, is there a discounted package availability?
Reason being is that my grandfather (over 70) is a daily internet user, still sits on various boards and is involved in various groups (there is no such thing as pure retirement in this country) so needs regular use of email, sends a good bit of photographs to family far and wide etc. While he would love the speed of broadband, the various costs are off-putting. He’s not going to be a massive broadband user who needs to crawl for videos, download torrents, share gigabyte files etc – just someone who wants to do things faster and more efficiently.
While dialup is still of use to him I know broadband access in the house (which is readily available all around him) would be a more ideal scenario. So I ask, are there any special deals available from any broadband provider for people aged over 70?
I’ve steered away from using iTunes on my Vista install having found it was taking a small eternity to copy files to my iPod outside of iTunes. Turns out I’m on the right track anyway as Apple have announced that, for the present, iTunes and Vista don’t mix.
Apple outlined the compatibility issues and suggested workarounds for those already using Vista in a support document on its website.
Some problems listed were: failure to play music and video purchased from the iTunes store; poor animation performance; and a failure to automatically synchronize media, contacts and calendars.
Apple has also offered Vista users a downloadable tool that will “repair permissions for important files,” but does not specify the precise nature of the incompatibility.
Has anyone experience similar difficulties? Either through iTunes directly or in using a video iPod as a removable drive under Vista?
It sounds like lots but still, every pint counts. Round two of the ‘free beer at the Irish Blog awards’ or call it what you will looks like it will be cemented (figure-wise) tomorrow and I’d say you’re still in with a chance. All you’ve got to do is give details on your current FeedBurner subscription figures (subscribe to mine here) now and again just before the blog awards. The free beer goes to the person with the biggest percentage increase in subscribers over the month.
Its a fair competition and a good way at getting yourself to look at your subscribers and the way you approach your blog. (At least for us blog minnows anyway)!
For anyone interested, John featured on RTE‘s Drivetime show on Friday last, February 2nd. The segment of the show is archived on RTE and available here (just sroll down to ‘Road Deaths concern prompted by local designer’.
The overall segment really hits home in terms of deaths on the roads and it should be listened to by everyone. Delighted my own father didn’t wind up on the list recently, effectively writing off his jeep in a dangerous-weather collision with a tree recently after over 25 years free of accidents. Lucky to walk away without a scratch despite the massive damage to the jeep – other people simply aren’t, whether it comes down to causes of nature, speeding, or being a pedestrian in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jacqui Corcoran (reporter) actually speaks to some of the families as well who have found some comfort in RoadDeaths.ie itself so if you’ve got five minutes to spare and have Real Player installed, give it a listen.
The “world’s largest wifi community”, FON, celebrates its first birthday (via Vecosys). Though I haven’t taken any part in the sharing of WiFi (namely as I still don’t have a wireless setup at home – update: that is an FON setup) I’m fully behind the idea of FON and think its a great movement for web users.
And for only EUR29.95 its not a bad price to start the sharing process. La Fonera can be split with a public (for sharing) and private (personal) channel for access so even if you’re up for a cheap wireless router, there’s a good place to begin.
Vista is up and out and about and in case you already didn’t know – there are serious Windows Vista pitfalls to look at when purchasing a copy of of the OS off the shelf, plus don’t even think of downloading a cracked version online.
Highly rumoured and now a reality is the Vista registration system – fail to register your copy of Vista within 30 days and you’ll find that your Aero interface and any Vista-esque features will be disabled. Couple the fact that you will only be able to switch on your now highly restricted machine for only and hour AND the only thing you’ll really be able to do is go online and register, you’d want to make sure you get it done from the outset. I’m guessing that this applies to copies of Vista bought directly off the shelf as opposed to being bundled into a dealer’s offer (e.g. Dell).
User Account Control looks to be a pain in the arse. I’ve got the beta release dual booting on my home machine and have had so since Microsoft opened it up to the public (by my records, June 17th). The beta release was prone to UAC popups at every change you were making – deleting certain files, installing drivers, changing Windows settings etc. which made some of the more advanced operations a real chore. While it has calmed down due to complaints and patches, there is still a bit of working to live a long and happy life alongside the new User Account Control setup.
Other issues do exists, some of which you’ll find here. Has anyone yet bought themselves a copy of Vista and can say they’re enjoying the experience so far?
The gas thing is, you could buy yourself a 5 license copy of OS X (Tiger) for the Mac for the around the price of the basic Vista license. Go figure!
A challenge to increase your number of blog subscribers via FeedBurner in the hope of getting a free pint in Dublin in March has brought me to spend a while trawling through FeedBurner and really looking at the stats that they provide. The one thing I was happy to see was the overall continual increase in subscribers to this blog – my thanks to those of you who read it and pass comment now and again – as detailed in the chart below. There’s actually a lot you can garner from FeedBurner – daily, weekly, monthly, annual stats, average subscribers, most popular article via RSS, where the clicks are going, where the clicks are coming from etc. Here’s a gander at the increase…
The subscriber milestone challenge has now brought in Conor O’Neill, Robin Blandford, James Corbett, Aidan Finn and Tom Raftery. With round one out of the way thanks to a stealth bomb attack (actually I’ve no idea what brought about an increase in readership) by myself, round two seems to be open and its looking at the biggest percentage increase in subscribers to your feed (via FeedBurner) between now and the Blog Awards.
Paul is going for a yet-to-be-unveiled secret weapon and if you’re up for it (winner gets a pint at the awards) it could be a laugh. Nice way to increase blogger interaction and inject a little fun into the day.
I mean, its not the winning that counts….. 😉
Update…. How could I forget about Paul!
Just wondering Pat – you don’t happen to have a deal with Red Bull or anything? Must take some energy to launch a few business ventures within weeks of each other – AllFreeCalls.net, Roam4Free and now AllFreeCalls.ie!
Had picked up on word of the launch during the week and I guess now that it’s out on the Roam4Free blog the news is all official – AllFreeCalls will launch this coming week in Ireland, followed in two weeks by a UK launch. Not only that, but there are 70 destinations plugged into the Irish service. This, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing.
See my original post for details on AllFreeCalls.net or check the links above.
Thought we were going to be in for a blood bath in the race to 100 FeedBurner subscribers, yesterday seeing Paul Browne on 83 and myself on 86. Wake up this morning and the counter says 105. Just waiting on the FeedBurner dashboard to catch up – maybe I’ve spoke too soon! As it happens, Paul has a table up in the original post now.
Once the dashboard picks up I’ll give you that one too 🙂 Actually… come to think of it, this is the first time across any of my blogs I think that I’ve passed 100 subscribers. In fact, I’d say that it is. Maybe Saturday will be a good day so, little blogging milestone for myself 🙂
Don’t be afraid now…. are you a blogger who plays online poker? You know, the Paddy Power kind or Full Tilt kind? One thing that I haven’t seen coming across any blogs that I read on a daily basis is the mention of online poker. Now, either some people don’t tell others that they’re playing or some people would rather keep that kind of information to themselves or Irish bloggers just plain don’t play online poker.
Now, I’m not much of a poker player, I rather keep my money firmly in my pocket or in the bank where I at least know that the money is still mine. Sure enough, if you’re any way good at cards you can win a few pennies for yourself but I’d rather play it for the laugh.
Now, there’s only so much you can take before you have to try your hand at online poker. All I hear day in, day out from one source or another (namely around work) is poker, poker, poker. “Won a fortune”, “cleanened such and such a person out”, “almost had it”, “head is wrecked”, kickers, trips, hot flushes, cold flushes – whatever. When I say there’s only so much you can take, that pretty much translates into me saying I tried online poker for the first time on Thursday.
I got into a play money game and it was obvious from the outset than nobody gave a rats ass, everyone firing all their chips off in one go. Not being familiar with the on screen options I suddenly found myself out of the game, ticking the wrong option for playing the hand. The second game however, beginners luck or whatever you might call it I went on to win. Only thing is, it took the guts of about 90 minutes to get that far, maybe a bit longer. Seen as poker is one of those games where you’ve got to be paying attention to what goes on around you, I reckon that if you’re into a game you don’t have much time for anything else – that includes blogging.
Now, I also know people who will spend hours online in the evening playing poker, as it happens none of them are really bloggers. People who run poker blogs don’t count either. But I know that if I got into online poker seriously there would be no time at all for blogging.
So I ask, is online poker popular with Irish bloggers? And don’t be afraid to admit it either, its a genuine question. Whether you’re in it for play money or you’re in it to win it. For something that is so popular through the online world, I read little about it through blogs – or is it something that just isn’t worth blogging?
Walter Higgins put out a call for tyre kickers for Pixenate and I figured seen as I got the photo blog back in some kind of structured form that I would lash into Pixenate to resize the photos a bit before uploading them to the blog.
Impressive stuff. The K800 delivers a 2048*1536 shot at around 800kb average, upload was relatively quick and playing around with the basic tools was a breeze. Slight bit of cropping, cropped well. Slight bit of resizing, nice to maintain the aspect ratio. Honestly it was the first time I went to PXN8 with the intention of using the finished photo online as opposed to toying with photos there to see what can be done.
Knowing that, and also knowing that I’m extremely particular about photographs and quality I’ll say that I was impressed when working in colour but a little disappointed in the grayscale and sepia conversion as the image seemed to lose quality around areas close in colour (become very pixelated, grained out). The preview window works really well though Walter, fair play. Good to be able to check everything out without having to do the whole “apply and undo if unhappy” trick.
The final image was cropped at a width of 470px and when saved to disk clocked in at 160kb. One thing I would like to see, unless I missed it, is the ability to compress the photo further. 160kb isn’t ideal if you’re looking at ten posts on a blog homepage, each with a minimum of one image so I’ll confess that I brought the two photos back into Photoshop to drop the size to about 40kb.
Honestly, if I wasn’t a stickler for well compressed web images and I didn’t have access to Photoshop, I think I’d find PXN8 ideal, particularly if you’re blogging your photos and want to make a few adjustments to them. Usability is great, no problem doing anything, uploads well, saves back to disk well plus, the fun effects are actually fun 🙂 Let me compress those photos even more and I’d be real happy with it…
See the finished post (contains two images), here on the photo blog.
Paul Browne has thrown down the gauntlet in a race to 100 subscribers. Now, I’ve never been one to gloat about how many people read the blog – or even pass any comment in my desire to increase readership via FeedBurner – but the chance of a free pint in Dublin at the blog awards in March is good 🙂
Loser buys the winner a pint.
Of course, if there’s other people getting in it could be loser forks out a hundred quid for a round but I’m game for the pint anyway! Must actually check out about accommodation, its not that far to March and a good night out in Dublin…
Mine’s a Heineken if I beat you to it. Think you could spring for a packet of salted nuts as well?
