Ken McGuire

Author: Ken McGuire

  • Crocodile Hunter Killed In Australia

    There was always bound to be a danger when you spend your life chasing crocodiles, wrestling them, popping your head inside theirs etc., but Australia’s favourite son – Steve Irwin aka The Crocodile Hunter – has met his maker.

    Was a bit mad listening to it in the van on the way to work – ‘Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin has been killed while filming in Australia’. The chap had become an absolute icon in Oz for his work in the outback, his films, his TV series and his Australia Zoo which “brought millions into the Australian economy through tourism”.

    Reports say that he had been diving as part of filming and underwater documentary when he was hit by a stingray barb in the heart.

    Mad.

    (via BreakingNews and Today FM’s morning news)

  • Go On The Cats

    Chalk down a 29th All Ireland hurling title for Kilkenny. Some craic and a great game. Delighted to see Cork stopped in their tracks for the three-in-a-row – pain in the arse, isn’t it Corkonians?

    Great game of hurling too. Even in the pub people weren’t giving Kilkenny much of a shot but going into the break with a slim lead seemed to calm a few nerves about the place. Hairy moments when that Cork goal went in but the lads on the field gave it their all and there’s a great win in the bag.

    Not too much interest in hurling to be honest (soccer and NFL being my sporting loves) but having had Brian Cody as a primary school teacher for a few years as well as being in school (primary and secondary) with some of the lads on the current panel, there’s always some sort of an interest there.

    Plus, you have to support your county, right?

    Anyway, fair play to the lads…. go on the Cats!

  • Creative Links for 2006-09-01

    • Written by Donal O’Connor, this should help all O2 customers avoid the grief of using the O2 website. Enter your mobile number and O2 site password and away you go, free to send text messages (tied to your O2 online account). Texts deliver fine and you’re
      (tags: sms)

  • iPod Video Convension Made Easy

    Videora is a “personal video downloading program”, labelling itself as a BitTorrent RSS Reader, picking out the videos that YOU want to watch.

    What they’ve also got is a fantastic and easy to use – and free – video converter. It comes in five different flavours, namely iPod video, TiVo, XBOX 360, PSP Video 9 and PMP format.

    Tested it out last night and I’m pretty pleased with the results of the conversion, my iPod now boasting a new episode of Weeds for the morning, along with a copy of The Frames video for Revelate and a feature length copy of ‘The Dark‘.

    Conversion for a 25 minute episode of Weeds originally at high resolution divx at 512kbps (video) and 128k(audio) at 320*240 resolution took about 10 minutes and zipped across to the iPod, with The Dark taking about 40 minutes to convert. Queue up all the videos you want, set the application to switch your machine off when its finished and away you go.

    After going through trials of various other commercial apps I’m got to give this one the thumbs up.

  • A Country Under Wi-Fi? Not us!

    It would be great to see it in Ireland.

    A haven for IT companies. A haven for foreign investment. A country under complete wi-fi access from Dublin Airport to the hills of Donegal, Malin Head to Mizen head blah blah blah.

    Whatever.

    At least in Singapore it looks like they have it right….

    By the end of the year, it will be possible to roam almost anywhere in Singapore and get a wireless signal. As part of its Intelligent Nation 2015 program, the island nation will be able to boast of countrywide Wi-Fi coverage in a few months, the exec VP of WISP SingTel said in a recent interview. “At the end of the year, Singapore will be one mega hot spot,” he said. “They are breaking Singapore into three regions and looking at ways to maximize coverage.” The Intelligent Nation program, officially unveiled last year, seeks to make Singapore a global leader in communications technology in a decade.

    Not only that but they’re looking at delivering broadband access to 90% of all residences. Let the Irish government take note!

    News.com with the story….

  • Some People Are Pure Stupid

    During the week off, you find a few gems to bring back to the office… this is one of them. Lessons to be learned – do not mix a merry go round with a moped, and for the love of God if you do – DO NOT get into the damn thing as well.

    Some people are just pure stupid….

  • Pooling Irish Blog Stats

    I like StatCounter, have been using them since the early college days and currently track a dozen or so sites and blogs with their free stats package. James Corbett (EirePreneur) is now looking for someone handy with a bit of scripting to aggregate stats from across all listed Irish blogs using StatCounter to track hits.

    Sounds all very interesting and I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the end result 🙂

  • Play.com Won’t Ship Posters?

    I like shopping with Play. Cheap and cheerful, speedy enough delivery and they offer a great returns/replacement service as well. I’ve had fun there in the last few weeks – namely three series of Black Books (with Bill Bailey, Dylan Moran), series one and two of Spaced and The Godfather trilogy (which I’ve enjoyed during my week off).

    So I go to the site today and it looks like they’re offering posters and tshirts now as well. Low and behold – they don’t ship posters to Ireland!

    Why??

  • Whats this? Techcrunch UK?

    So the Techcrunch empire continues to expand and has moved into the UK market, courtesy of London-based entrepreneur and blogger Sam Sethi.

    The blog, which launched today, will continue to focus on startups but from a UK perspective entirely. The design is a little different and the blog doesn’t carry the same heavyweight advertising as its US counterpart, but it will be interesting to see how it develops.

    —
    Update… bit of a slip there on my part…. 😉

  • Microsoft’s M4d Sk1llz

    Came across this article online this morning. Seems that Microsoft are keen on helping parents understand “leet speak” in case their children get wrapped up in the evil internet or they want to make sure their child isn’t involved in hacking the planet or something.

    The culture of leetspeak encourages new forms, and users award individual creativity. The result is a dynamic written language that eludes conformity or consistency.

    We’ve all seen it, its as bad as those cryptic text messages you see ten year old kids sending each other but Microsoft (with the article published in their Child Safety section back in March) want to make sure that you’re aware of how your child might talk on the internet!

    When you see a note on the kitchen table…. “M4m, g0|\|3 2 teh 5h0p 4 m1lk” you’ll know you’re in trouble….

  • Blogging For The Big Bucks

    Those of you who are WordPress users and still have your dashboard intact may have picked up on this already, but if not, it’s well worth reading ‘Blogging For Dollars‘ on CNNMoney.com’s Business 2.0 magazine. The article itself takes a big look at Mike Arrington, the name behind TechCrunch, as well as peering in at other companies generating high ad revenue.

    If you’ve got a coffee break coming up, or you’re just getting out the bed for some morning reading, give it a look.

  • 3D Desktop Prototype

    Cheers Sean.

  • On A Week Off

    So, I’m on a week off, on my second day into the week in fact. Left the office at 4pm on Friday to take my first break away from work since Christmas. Before that we didn’t take any time off either. Just feel like I should be there for the week doing something, hard to get out of the mindset.

    But in saying that, its nice to get the time out! Series one and two of ‘Spaced‘ arrived yesterday so that should keep me occupied in the afternoons and I’m doing a theatre production all this week, starting tonight in fact, in Kilkenny. The show, Heart Shaped Vinyl, is an original comedy about five unrelated couples in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and present day, looking at how their relationships change over the years and how music impacts and dictates their lives. Twelve of us in the cast with the show in rehearsal for the last 5-6 weeks (5 individual weeks and one intensive group week). Fingers crossed and all that.

    For anyone interested, tickets are €10 with the show 8pm nightly until Thursday of this week and it runs in Cleere’s Theatre in Kilkenny. Check DeviousTheatre.com or the Devious Theatre MySpace site for details.

    Agus sin é!

    Now… to recharge those batteries….

  • Vista Patches Rolling Out

    Looks like Vista, still in Beta, is already getting the patching treatment from Microsoft, according to Techworld. Microsoft also seem to have neglected to inform the Beta using public that IE7 and the Windows kernel are subject to exploitation prior to recent patches.

    I’m currently dual booting Vista and XP and at every boot I jump to the ‘Earlier Version Of Windows’ option. Has anyone actually fully adopted Vista as their OS?

  • iPod Accessories For Ken

    So you get yourself an iPod and you have to get yourself a few gadgets to go along with it…

    So first thing I did was buy a Peugot Partner van so I could put the iPod into it while on the road. Well, it was likely the case that the van came the week before the iPod but it sounds like a good accessory to have ;).

    Seriously though, picked myself up one of the iStation 7 speaker sets, like this one, though in black. Quite happy with the purchase as well. Comes with a nice remote control feature for leaving beside the bed and beats the hell out of the clock radio when it comes to sound quality. It got a nice run out last night and was there to wake me up this morning, quite happy with the sound out of it too, powerful enough for such a small set.

    Can be used as a docking station as well (takes the USB/Firewire cable you get with the iPod) and full charger which has its bonuses.

    Also grabbed myself a Griffin iTrip via eBay (not that exact auction) for just over €32 all in (postage) which thankfully is being made legal through its CE mark. Can’t fault that either.

    Also came across this site, iAccessorise, providing iPod accessories in the UK and Ireland. Think I’m in love with this iPod.

    Now… where did I stick those KilkennyMusic.com podcasts…..? 😉

  • Good Luck Leaving Certers

    Today marks the fifth anniversary of when I picked up my Leaving Cert results in the CBS in Kilkenny. Jesus, the walk up the lane at the side of the school around to the front door was one of the longest I can remember, never mind being handed the results in that little brown envelope, teachers around you already knowing your result but waiting for you to react first. The only result I was worried about was the maths result (had pretty much lost interest until picking up maths again for two years in college). Same story with the friend I had taken the walk to the school with that morning. Two years of studying, cramming, a bit of fear, hint of panic, desperation, nerves… all lead to that moment.

    The relief then when that envelope was opened!

    Today then, its the turn of another 50,000+ students and again this year I know quite a few (some of who I’m working on a show with at the moment) and wish them all the very best.

    The maths numbers continue to be the big worry though with over 4,000 people failing ordinary level maths and a bit of a cockup in the honours paper leading to lower results as well. Maybe a review of the delivery of the maths course should be on the cards. Either way, knowing that there’s a few fifth years and leaving cert people who read the blog, the best of luck to you, enjoy your new found freedom and everything you get to do in life!

  • Don’t Send Your Computers To Africa….

    …because now it seems they’ll rob you blind.

    Tommy Tiernan makes that joke about countries taking all the priests out of Ireland and leaving nothing in return. Now it seems that sending your old computers to Africa will leave you nothing in return.

    I think we’ve all gotten the emails at one stage from the lonely wife of some dead Nigerian warlord or Minister for Finance or President Unga Mumba Wazoo asking for a few bank details so they can wire you twenty million euro for a few hours just to get the money out of the country with trails of “the money was only resting in my account…” echoing somewhere in the distance.

    But according to the BBC it seems now that thousands of UK residents have been hit by fraudsters in Nigeria who are scanning computers when they arrive for bank details. Clever too. A lot of people are unaware of information they leave on their hard drives when throwing a computer in a skip or giving it to a charity and wouldn’t think twice to delete any data on it. Likewise then there are people who will think to delete a few files or even wipe their hard drives but a little bit of work can go a long way in terms of getting all that data back and if you’re living in Nigeria, twenty bucks will give you access to that said data.

    The report issued around this story found that many of the computers sent out came from local government recycling points.

    With all the news lately about data retention and data leaks, do you think there should be some initiative in place to protect people who are giving away computers? Maybe a leaflet programme on showing people how to erase data, or for a small fee (like a fiver), have a location at local government level where someone will “wipe while you wait”, thus ensuring that there is no personal data on your machine before you ship it off to Africa?

  • Dublin Crime Mashup Launches

    Picked this up via a trackback to my post earlier in the year about mapping crime in New York… Matthew Sammon has launched Dublin Crime with the main site here and their blog here.

    At the moment the map displays details of homicides that were discovered in Dublin from 2004 onwards; information about these crimes has been taken from Irish news reports.

    As well as including the details of future homicides after they occur, it is possible that more data will be added to the map, for example:

    • Homicide data from before 2004
    • Locations of Garda (State police force) stations
    • Armed robberies
    • Non-fatal shootings
    • Large seizures of illegal narcotics

    The blog is in simlar vein to RoadDeaths.ie, set up by friend and colleague John Butler earlier this year which is providing crash reports and an excellent Google Maps set up of all road death locations in Ireland from earlier this year as well as Garda press releases on the same.

    Great to see how this new resource will develop over time.

  • My First eBay Sale

    So, those two Tool tickets I mentioned last week, have sold 🙂

    Mind you, they didn’t sell the first time around on a 3-day listing so eBay kindly told me on Saturday that if I relisted them once and they sold they would refund the listing fees…. and they sold and I got the fees back.

    No fleecing people on prices (face value + booking fee) and offered free registered mail – can’t stand most people’s postage prices on eBay!

    Being someone who likes to shop and browse and AWFUL lot on eBay, it is quite easy to sell on it and I picked up the sale on a Buy It Now purchase, so to the customer – who happens to be from Waterford – my many thanks 🙂

  • Breaking My iPod Cherry

    So, I finally gave in. She comes dressed in black, silky smooth to the touch, bright and colourful character and as a great memory.

    I also treated myself to a 60gb video iPod, in black.

    Decided to pack in my Creative Zen Jukebox and move over to the dark side. Next stop is that Macbook Pro I’ve got my eye on. 🙂