No.1 the day I was bornOldie but goodie: what was #1 the day you were born? For me it’s ‘Band Aid: Do They Know It’s Christmas’. Can you top that? Leave yours in a comment & we’ll see
Stu’s ‘Songs Reimagined As Alert Boxes’ is currently at #3 in the Infectious chart & closing in on the #2 spot.
Tickets are on sale for the fabulous Gardiner Street Gospel Choir gig at The Helix, DCU on June 6th. Highly recommend going along, amazing bunch of singers & musicians – you’ll leave grinning ear to ear with a smile in your heart
And finally, I’m handing in my iPhone to be sent off to some foreign land to be hopefully fixed. In the meantime, Stu has kindly allowed me to borrow & unlock an N95 he had spare. I can’t get texts sending from it, everything else working fine so if you can shed any light on it I’ll buy you a pint or something suitably rewarding!
Jason is taking the BTW event to Cork today at the Boardwalk Bar & Grill at 6pm. I was at the last one in Dublin and it was a fantastic informal meetup of a great mix of people from various walks of the online world most of whom I probably wouldn’t have met ‘offline’ otherwise.
There’s some tasty badges on offer too if you need further reason to attend Would love to have been there but Cork will have its’ claim over me next weekend instead for the International Choral Festival which I will be posting about later on. Directions for how to get there. Have a great evening all!
So I’m finally hitting my first ever BarCamp on Saturday in Belfast and I can’t wait. Here’s a little guide on logistics of getting there, particularly if you’re travelling from Dublin.
Registration is from 8.30am and talks will start around 9.30am so it’s a sprightly early start for all. Travel options:
Bus Aircoach is probably the most comfortable bus option, leaving from Dublin Airport at 7am arriving in Belfast at 9.25am. €22 return/€15 single. Bus Eireann do a bus service through the night (shocker!) so you can grab a 6am coach that arrives at 8.30am if you like. Same price as Aircoach.
Train
First train up from Connolly to Belfast leaves at 7.45am arriving at 9.45am. If you book online in advance you can get it for a lovely €20 return as opposed to the €80 I’ve been quoted previously.
Night before
If like me you’re thinking that’s an awfully early start on Saturday to be primed for learning & proper enjoyment of nerdy talk, consider travelling up the night before. The more budget friendly options appear to be Travelodge, Days Hotel or Park Inn. You might be able to take in the pre-camp meetup in the bar on the ground floor of the Premier Inn on Waring Street for drinks at 8pm also.
If anyone has useful info to add whether it be about parking, travel or places to stay/avoid or whatever, leave a comment or email me steph@iamsteph.com and I’ll add it in.
Stumbled across this photo the other day – it was one of the first I took with my little red camera that my dad got me for my 21st ChristmasBirthday (born 26th Dec, this is what it has become). The beach at home in the month of January. Nature is stunning.
Des wrote a lovely post about the death of the ‘desktop metaphor’ over on the Contrast blog.
Stu is climbing the viral charts in the Buzzfeed competition with his fantastic ‘Songs Reimagined as Alert Boxes‘. You have got to check them out!
Got my tickets in the post for the closing gala concert at the Cork International Choral Festival yesterday. It’s taking place on the May bank holiday weekend and there’s loads of international choral music on all over the city for the long weekend. As if you needed a reason to visit Cork anyway.
Create Ireland, a start-up incubator type affair that’s now enrolling for 2009.
An article in The Examiner today that seems to be essentially saying that newspapers are better than blogs amongst other bizarre and questionable things. Get ready to face-palm.
I was up and out early this morning for the filming of a dance scene for Ireland’s first bollywood movie today (awesome fun, post coming later). Glancing in on Twitter during rehearsals I found out that the posts I had written about the Fine Gael website had made page 2 of the Sunday Tribune.
Fine Gael are still sticking to their guns and now claiming that all sorts of research was done into finding inspiration for their new online face. My favourite quote from the unnamed FG spokesperson:
“What has been asserted is not correct; there are grains of truth in this thing but they would get a life of their own on the internet,” a party spokesman said.”
Their lack of understanding of the issues surrounding the website now outweighs the seriousness of their actions. Their lack of engagement with the online community on top of the poorest of efforts in delivering a suitable, usable and useful website is the basis for a total failure in the management of their identity and image online. As Suzy said earlier:
“Above all this incident is about the second biggest party in the state and another example of it’s lack of serious commitment to on-line engagement with voters in the country, a lack of faith in Irish based web developers, and no imagination in the excuse making department either!”
I’m still disappointed and quite annoyed with how the party have handled the incident. FG don’t realise that they’ve missed the boat completely in terms of communication with voters & getting their message out there ahead of the local elections and in time, maybe even a general election before long. Their attitude towards the Internet and the online community (from bloggers to developers) is archaic and worryingly ignorant. I’d normally wish someone luck at this juncture (considering the mountain that they have to climb) but the feeling of disrespect is now a mutual one so they won’t be getting any best wishes (or votes) from this citizen.
