We’ve all done it before:

“I’m meeting this guy, not sure if I like him, give me a call at 8:30 and if I need out I’ll use you as an excuse, right?”

Except what if your mate forgets to call?

Then you need this website - getmooh.com - “Get me out of here!”

Getmooh is an automated call back service. It is designed to help you escape a variety of situations by calling you automatically on your phone at a pre-specified time and playing you a recording which will either instruct you on what to say to elude your tormentor(s), or which will simply give a convincing sense of you being on an important call.

They should take this to the next level - allow users to record their own message and use it as needed - you could set a pre-record to tell your wife to get her ass out of the pub, or remind your hubbie that he should be leaving for home now.

Oh yeah, and it’s FREE!

Go here.

Put in your choices, click generate.

Post your Evil Plan!

Your objective is simple: World Domination.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Sadistic pleasure

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first expose a pope. This will cause the world to swallow nervously, bewildered by your arrival. Who is this evil genius? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in a supervillain costume with gimmicks?

Stage Two

Next, you must seize control of the internet. This will all be done from a corporate tower, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will gibber like madmen, as countless hordes of mean english teachers hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must unleash your doomsday device, bringing about an end to sanity. Your name shall become synonymous with blood, and no man will ever again dare refuse to be your prom date. Everyone will bow before your dashing good looks, and the world will have no choice but to give you control of the planet.

donnybrook \DON-ee-brook\, noun:

1. A brawl; a free-for-all.
2. A heated quarrel or dispute.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for donnybrook

Turtlehead presents:

MASER versus GAETAN BILLAULT

with free beer!

Image pinched from Turtlehead blog

Those rocking t-shirt designers Turtlehead (”touching cloth since 2006″) have done it again with their latest Versus. Local graffiti star Maser will be dueling it out with Gaetan Billault hanging, spraying and sticking and drawing directly onto the walls, ceilings, floors and windows.

Date: Oct 2nd 2008

Time: 6:30pm

Location: 1/2 Smock Alley, Temple Bar, Dublin 8 (I think the map below is right, if not, someone please correct me!!)

Map

then this is it! Just go and read it!

She came home to meet my parents.

I think it sums up exactly why I’m proud of “me mammy”, in words that I’ve never been able to string together.

Go and vote it for Blog Post of the Month via the link here.

I was checking out Cuil.com tonight, the new search engine from some ex-google employees. I decided to test it against Google, and I searched for the term “ellybabes”.

Whilst Cuil (pronounced “cool”) does return more results than Google (12,929 vs c.12,300), I think its ranking algorithms could do with some work yet. As Twenty commented, you would expect the domain names containing your search term to be reported first, ranking over brief mentions or links from other people. On Cuil, my domain only turned up towards the end of the first page of results.

By contrast, Google knows that my blog (blog.ellybabes.com), even on a subdomain, is more important and gets more traffic than my homepage (ellybabes.com), and ranks them accordingly. On the first page of Google results I get the following:

• My blog main page
• One of my blog sub-pages
• My domain homepage
• My Twitter homepage
• A link from my husband
• My P45 forum account
• My mobile Twitter homepage
• My Tumblr
• My Jaiku account
• My Stumbleupon account

Not perfect, but a good capture of my digital life, and certainly enough to help you find me.

However, on Cuil, it’s a very different story…

• Onlinemeetingrooms’ Jaiku account
• A half-dozen Technorati searches for other people
• The “Memories” category on my blog (a category with only 1 post in it)
• My Twitter account
• My Touristr profile (barely used, sorry Jan)
• The “About” page of my blog (very bottom of first results page)
• My account on DotNetKicks.com (I don’t even remember registering for one)

Cuil.com is certainly something to keep an eye on, but I wouldn’t be relying on it to compete with Google yet.

Oh, and the title of this post? Well that came up when I visited Google for some ego searching. Apparently someone has decided to bid on “ellybabes” as an AdWord, in order to return sponsored links for “Alibaba” - weird, huh?

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.

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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!!)

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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!