Archive for June, 2006

Are National ID cards a good thing?

Thursday, June 29th, 2006

Take this London School of Economics survey and help them decide.

Hears a clue, its a bad idea. How bad? I like Spengler’s description from GhostBusters.

Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Total protonic reversal.

Yep, that bad.

How cycle lanes end in Dublin

Wednesday, June 28th, 2006


IMG_0729.JPG

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole.

This is the end of the cycle lane on the North Wall Quay. Yes it does end abruptly, yes it does dump you down a signficant curb and yes that is one of the busiest roads in Dublin on the left.

Dublin corporation, you should be shot to death with balls of your own shite!

Skype blocked by latest Microsoft Update

Wednesday, June 28th, 2006


SkypeBlock

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole.

I see Microsoft has started blocking skype after the latest security update. Ladies and gentlemen, you may start your conspiracy engines…

Will you blog for software?

Wednesday, June 28th, 2006

Richard Rodger is making a sweet offer on his blog. Download his software (it does CSV amd XML file mangling), blog about it and get a free license.

He says,

You can write whatever you like. Tear us to shreds or sing our praises. It’s all good. We just want links :)

Go on, you know you want to…

My new carving set

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006


I got a present of this last year, but between much tooing and froing it only arrived today. This is a handmade carving set made by a craftsman called Rory Connor. He is based in Ballylickey, West Cork and he makes the most amazing handcrafted knives.

This is his standard carving set, but I upgraded to Damascene Steel (think samurai sword steel). The handles are made out of snakewood. my standard knife sharpness test is to hold the blade horizontal and drag it laterally over the back of my thumbnail to see if it can lift a small amount of nail material. Well that just won’t work with this knife, it just digs in, its is definitely the sharpest knife I have ever owned.

More photos in the flickr photoset.

Arrgghh – Solicitors, Lawyers….

Monday, June 26th, 2006

… God save us from Microsoft Word Morons (typically legal types) who type in headers manually rather than using proper heading levels.

Washing Symbols

Monday, June 26th, 2006

All you ever wanted to know about washing symbols (the strange hierorglyphics on that white tab inside all your clothes) is here.

Chupa Chups – Don’t get me started

Friday, June 23rd, 2006

IMG_0717.JPG

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole.

Innocent enough looking. Until you try to unwrap them, it often requires heavy work with a knife.

Some day I’m going to line up all the CEOs who use infernal packaging, and the last one to successfully open their product will be subjected a public flogging.

In case you wondering I’m talking to you blister pack sons of bitches!

Watch this new paradigm for Desktop Interaction

Thursday, June 22nd, 2006

Here is a cool paradigm for desktop interaction. The use of physics to model desktop interaction is right up the street of a local company based here in Dublin, Havoc Havok.

You can watch the video here. I tried posting it inline, but WordPress’s utterly shite editor keeps scrambling the HTML.

Cease and desist – del.icio.us link spam

Thursday, June 22nd, 2006

For all you good people out there (you know who you are) who use this hack to create a daily posting of your del.icio.us links, stop it, please stop it!

If I want to see your del.icio.us links I’ll subscribe to your del.icio.us RSS feed or add you to my network.