Still haven’t got the inspiration for a full post, so here’s a few more bits that caught my attention over the last few days.

—————————–

Today is the day! After the slippy-sliding and pandering from the government & police 8 months ago, the law banning 2nd provisional licence holders from driving alone came into force at midnight last night.

… all learner drivers will have to be accompanied by an experienced driver who has held a full licence for at least two years.

No doubt the bitching & moaning will start again today, as people who have been unwilling or unable to pass their driving tests will find that they are liable for penalty points, fines, increased insurance costs, etc. If you’re one of them, don’t bother moaning to me, I have zero sympathy for you!

I know many people who have used the last 8 months to get off their ass, pushed their testing authorities to give them a test date (many within 2-4 weeks of asking), took lessons, practised and passed! (Congrats Niamh!!)

———————————-

I’m going to assume at this point that you’ve seen even a little of the publicity machine that was 4DayMovie. But just in case you didn’t:

In a rare and potentially fatal feat of cinematic daring, Darklight will present a feature length film on the evening of June 29th – the last day of this year’s festival – shot entirely on June 26th – the first day.

The film will be shot by multiple filmmaking teams or individuals between 12.01am to 11.59pm on Thursday, June 26th 2008.

Director Lenny Abrahamson (”Garage”) will curate the film and remix the edit.

The film will be an eclectic, multi-authored impression of Dublin (within the M50) as it lived, died, breathed, made love, filled up and emptied, consumed, wept, was rained or shone on, grew bright and then darkened again … Whatever is true, however big or tiny, static or dynamic, animate or inanimate, in this place, over this time is fair game.

I queried them today to see if they were planning to release the movie online, as I wasn’t able to make the preview screening in the Oak last night. The good news is

“Yes it will be online, as soon as possible! Each individual film, the whole thing and eventually the opportunity to mix and match your own Dublin Movie.”

Keep an eye on their blog and Twitter account to get more details on the release.

——————————

Wal-Mart & Costco have redesigned the gallon milk-jug, benefiting the consumer, the environment (and of course their bottom-line).

The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.

However, some customers are complaining that the milk is harder to pour. Sam’s club has now installed public training stands in-store, luring in customers with cookies and showing them how to pour from the new containers.

… described the pouring technique … as a “rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.

Robin had a brilliant idea to run his resume (CV) through a Tag Cloud generator, and perhaps to use this as a visual guide to the dominant themes running through other people’s CV’s.

Here’s mine:

Firstly and most importantly, the long awaited day is here! Moo.com have just announced their latest product - full size business cards! All the same rules apply, up to 50 different images per pack of 50 cards, customisable text on the back (which can be done in horizontal or vertical orientations) and best of all - they have a green option:

There’s 2 paper stocks to choose from:

• * MOO ‘Classic’, is just like MiniCard stock or
• * MOO ‘Green’ is 100% recycled, 100% recyclable and bio-degradable

They’ll cost £10.99/€15.09/$21.99 for 50 cards - and look at the dinky holder they come in! Sign for the moos-letter and get a 20% discount code when they go on sale soon.

——————————

The new house is finally beginning to come together, however progress is likely to slow now that we have our broadband installed and home media centre set up. Thanks to Magnet we’re getting 8MB Fibre to the Home - although check the difference in the results between me being directly connected to the net VS via my VPN! How cruel!

——————————–

I’ve also begun to get my head around my new kitchen and wanted to try a new recipe. I found these Cheesy Bread Wedges courtesy of English Mum in Ireland and thought they would be perfect to sate my savoury/carb craving. Brill recipe, nice & simple - just be warned, you probably won’t need all of the milk/egg mix, about half was well enough to bring the dough together for me. I’d show you a pic, but they were all scoffed by the hubbie & myself!  Gorgeous served with caramelised red onion relish.

——————————–

My little herb garden is doing well, the fennel has grown about a foot in the last three weeks! Sine I reckon I’ll end up with more herbs than I actually need, I’m planning on making some Herb Butter (recipe from Chew On That) and freezing it for the winter months - mmmmm, just the thought of it melting on a steak has me drooling!

——————————–

Finally, CruchLudd last night was a blast! The setup was excellent, with mini-demo stations set up for each company, so that we could mingle around at our leisure and grill them about their products. Wireless was having issues, but who can remember the last tech event where that didn’t happen? Congrats to Anton on setting up another great event.

However, some of the people doing the demos could have been better, here’s a short list of some tips and tricks for the next time.

• Have a poster or something to indicate who you are as I approach - having to peer into tiny laptop screens to try & find your logo is a PITA!
• Welcome each person as they approach, even if it means briefly breaking off conversation with the previous person to have arrived - I floated away from at least 2 tables as they refused to acknowledge me standing there. Even a quick “I’ll be right with you” would have got me to stand around longer.
• Practise, practise, practise - use cheat sheets if required. You have about 2-3 mins of my attention to explain all the major points of your product and keep my attention. Know exactly what you want to say and how to say it.
• Following on from that - if you can’t explain your product in one sentence, then that’s a FAIL. Give me the concept, then the features and finish up with why it is good for me.
• Have lots of business cards - if you can’t afford Moo cards, then jump over to Vista Print and get some cheap ones. Make them stand out and easy to read. Give me one as soon as you’ve said hello. With the sponsored bar, it might be the only way I’ll remember who you are the next day!

A playlist from YouTube.

…and a new house, but since I’ve been almost totally offline for 2 weeks, the getting of internet seems more important than the new house at the moment - totally sad??

It’s been a tough couple of weeks, lugging boxes around, packing, unpacking, putting together all the furniture (was there anything we bought that wasn’t flatpack?!?), DIY, cleaning and tidying. Grannymar has been down for the past week to lend a hand and measure up for our curtains and blinds - although she did keep finding excuses to run off and see her blogging pals and toyboys.

Now that I’m back online, I guess I’ll be spending the next few days ploughing through my RSS backlog (500+ items in my favourite blogs alone!). However there are a few events that I’ll be dragging myself out of the house for.

First up is the Firefox 3 Launch Party on Thurs 19th in CineWorld, Dublin 1. Hosted by Paul Walsh and a bunch of other organisers, there are over 200 people signed up for it, so it sounds like a great time. Not too late to sign up, nip over here and enter your details.

The following week sees TechLudd returning to the capital, this time partnering with TechCrunch to become CrunchLudd. Anton Mannering (congrats on the recent wedding BTW!) has done a bang-up job of organising these events in the past and this one promises to be a doozy!

Another event that I wish I could attend is BarCamp Belfast this Saturday. Attendees will get the chance to see Darragh Doyle and Grannymar tag-teaming to talk about blogging. As the first two winners of Irish Blogs: Blog Post of the Month awards, this will be an unmissable talk!

Blogging: what it’s about, how you should (and shouldn’t), how to enjoy it, sharing your stories, selling your brand and ideas, building your audience. Using blogs and social networking together for your benefit. This will be an introduction and conversation we invite you to participate in and share your own experience, expertise and ideas.

If you can’t make BarCamp Belfast, then you can watch the live stream here.

Back to the internet here - thanks to Magnet and Adamstown’s Fiber to The Home technology, I’m now currently enjoying 8MB/s (up AND down), so I’ll be back to regular blogging - good-bye NT-Hell!!!

Never…

Via Slashdot.

Stephen Dolan, a student from Trinity College has calculated the “Six Degrees of Wikipedia”. Based on the popular US college game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” - from Wikipedia:

The trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is based on a variation of the concept of the small world phenomenon and states that any actor can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon. The game requires a group of players to try to connect any film actor in history to Kevin Bacon as quickly as possible and in as few links as possible. The game was played across various college campuses in the early 1990s. Its name is a pun on the concept of six degrees of separation.

Stephen had the idea to apply this principle in order to discover the “centre of Wikipedia”, i.e. the article that is closest to all other articles. He has an interesting article that explains his methodology.

His initial discovery was that the article 2007 produced a average click rate of 3.45 clicks in order to access any other article on Wikipedia - I would guess this is only to be expected as the Wikipedia user base grows and adds articles about recent events.

Stephen then decided to remove any articles that are just lists, years or days of the year and discovered that the “real article” closest to the centre is:

United Kingdom (3.67 average)

Well they’ve always had the opinion that they are the centre of the universe - I guess this proves it!

Bonus link: You can test find the Kevin Bacon number of any actor here. Since there is a famous actress that shares my name - it turns out that I have a Kevin Bacon number of 2!

Yesterday I began to receive text messages from a number I didn’t recognise, from a person called “Jay”. These messages were full of descriptions of what Jay wanted to do to me - and they were disgusting! Normally when something like this happens, the first person that I would talk to is my husband, but he was very busy with work. So I turned to my other quickly accessible network - Twitter.

The reactions were quick and they ranged from supportive to advisory:

debbiemet @ellybabes Oh gross. Can you report the number and get it blocked?

lexia @ellybabes Sorry to hear. Time to call the guards, I think

PixieVonDust @ellybabes a friend of mine had that hassle. Reported it and gardai got address and went round to guy and gave him a talking to.

Tupp_Ed @ellybabes five messages would be enough to make a complaint, I’d feel. Success depends on whether the number is a bill or pre payone.

This morning I found myself thinking about why Twitter keeps us coming back, even with the large amounts of downtime and the current pagination and IM issues. Is it our need for acceptance and reassurance?

Personally, I use Twitter for several different reasons:

• A place to vent when I haven’t the time for a full blog post
• An answer to questions that Google can’t manage
• Advice on products, services or issues
• A path to reassurance when feeling low
• A method to track the movements and activities of my friends

There have been a multitude of blog posts from very influential bloggers on this very subject and also comparing the relative benefits of Jaiku/FriendFeed/etc. Yet there’s something about Twitter that nobody can put their finger on, that even when it abuses us, we keep crawling back for more…

Are we all suffering from Stockholm syndrome?