The Fourth

IF I LIVED in the States, nearly everyone I knew would understand me if I said, "I'll see you on the Fourth." In the minds of many of my American friends, that could only mean the Fourth of July. I've been away from the States for every July since 1985 and that means I've missed replaying some of the most memorable events from my childhood. As a family, we would head towards a corn festival, a chicken corn soup supper, a fireworks display, a BBQ on the beach, or an airshow at the local VFW lodge. Those kinds of events might be a little foreign in Ireland (except for a beach BBQ along Lough Derg, the Irish Sea or the Atlantic Ocean). The biggest Fourth I've enjoyed happened in 1999 at the American Ambassador's residence in Dublin. It was a great gig and best of all, it was enough free food to last a weekend. I don't know if I could even fly an American flag above our Cashel home on the Fourth without being misunderstood by neighbours but I'd risk the raised eyebrows to raise Old Glory for a day if I had a flag as big as the one in the photo. For the moment, I'll think about friends in the States who are treating this weekend as one big Independence Holiday. And I'll have a Guinness in honour of the occasion.

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Previously written here on the Fourth:

From Kilkenny on 4 July 2004: "Celebrating Independence Day"
From Kilkenny on 5 July 2005: "Ridiculously thorough guide to making pizza"
From Cashel on 4 July 2006: "To Be American"
From Cashel on 4 July 2007: "My Independence Day"
From Cashel, with blogging affected by a toddler on 6 July 2008: "Qik Look at Sunday Tech"

Bonus Link: Explore Independence Day with Feedly.

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Music Test for Middle Age

FROM ERIC ZORN in the Chicago Tribune comes a musical test for readers who want to know when they got old. It's based on a playlist compiled by Mike Carniello of the top summer songs--from Stateside radio play--of each year dating back to when Barack Obama was three years old. By using this list, you can easily determine when middle age kicked into your life. Simply identifying the first song on the list for which you can't kind of hum the melody. (I know there's a fatal flaw to this methodology because the listing is hopelessly US pop-centric.) Nonetheless, I'm going to make this listing into a mixtape.

Have a go!

• August 1964 "A Hard Day's Night" The Beatles
• August 1965 "I Got You Babe" Sonny & Cher
• August 1966 "Summer in the City" The Lovin' Spoonful
• August 1967 "Light My Fire" The Doors
• August 1968 "People Got to Be Free" The Rascals
• August 1969 "In the Year 2525" Zager and Evans
• August 1970 "(They Long to Be) Close to You" The Carpenters
• August 1971 "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" Bee Gees
• August 1972 "Alone Again (Naturally)" Gilbert O' Sullivan
• August 1973 "The Morning After" Maureen McGovern
• August 1974 "(You're) Having My Baby" Paul Anka with Odia Coates
• August 1975 "Jive Talkin'" the Bee Gees
• August 1976 "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" Elton John & Kiki Dee
• August 1977 "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" Andy Gibb
• August 1978 "Miss You" Rolling Stones
• August 1979 "My Sharona" the Knack
• August 1980 "Magic" Olivia Newton-John
• August 1981 "Jessie's Girl" Rick Springfield
• August 1982 "Eye Of The Tiger" Survivor
• August 1983 "Every Breath You Take" the Police
• August 1984 "Ghostbusters" Ray Parker Jr.
• August 1985 "The Power of Love" Huey Lewis & the News
• August 1986 "Papa Don't Preach" Madonna
• August 1987 "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" U2
• August 1988 "Roll With It" Steve Winwood
• August 1989 "Right Here Waiting" Richard Marx
• August 1990 "Vision of Love" Mariah Carey
• August 1991 "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" Bryan Adams
• August 1992 "Baby Got Back" Sir Mix-A-Lot
• August 1993 "(I Can't Help) Falling in Love With You UB40
• August 1994 "Stay (I Missed You)" Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories
• August 1995 "Waterfalls" TLC
• August 1996 "Macarena" Los Del Rio
• August 1997 "I'll Be Missing You" Puff Daddy & Faith Evans
• August 1998 "The Boy Is Mine" Brandy & Monica
• August 1999 "Genie in a Bottle" Christina Aguilera
• August 2000 "It's Gonna Be Me" 'N Sync
• August 2001 "Bootylicious" Destiny's Child
• August 2002 "Hot In Herre" Nelly
• August 2003 "Crazy In Love Beyonce featuring Jay-Z
• August 2004 "Confessions Part II" Usher
• August 2005 "We Belong Together" Mariah Carey
• August 2006 "Promiscuous" Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland
• August 2007 "Big Girls Don't Cry" Fergie
• August 2008 "Leavin'" Jesse McCartney

I took the test and came up with two nodes of middle age in my life. I'll accept sometime in the late 80s being an accurate musical result.

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I am topgold on Last.fm, the place that shows the evolution of my musical preferences.

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What if a blogger could be bound to the peace

THE DISTRICT COURT in County Carlow heard a case involving a town councillor who addressed a colleague with a more civil demeanor than some Irish bloggers use online. The newly elected Fine Gael councillor has been bound to the peace for calling a fellow party member "a fucking scab." This is an offence under the Public Order Act because the comment was uttered on a public street. I doubt more than a dozen people heard the comment. So what should we make of Irish tweeple, Irish bloggers or long-time residents of Ireland who hurl profane invective into a public stream of commentary that is followed by thousands and cached by Google? If such tweeple have a pattern of insulting commentary, perhaps calling people "cunts", "assholes", "bastards", "fuckin twerps", or more family-oriented insults such as "dimwit", "Judas", or "traitor"--should the court also entertain a case for public order?

EU Meeting Laid-off Dell Workers

EU COMMISSIONER for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Vladimir Spidla is in Limerick today to meet community representatives involved in the Moyross Regeneration Project and workers made redundant from the Dell plant. It would have been interesting to connect with the MP during Limerick OpenCoffee yesterday (at left). In an Irish Times report, Mr Spidla said he was "aware of how hard Limerick an dits region had been hit b the recession." He wants to get "a fuller picture of the situation on the ground" to help understand "what people are going through and the situation they are facing." Spidla has seen the application for assistance that Limerick has made to the European Globalisation Fund for workers made redundant by Dell. He is "committed to processing this application as quickly as possible." In my past experience, it's important to press the flesh with decision makers like Spidla if you want to ensure best treatment for EU requests. It's too bad Deputy John McGuinness isn't involved in the process any more. I would have more faith in the effectiveness of his actions over those of Minister Mary Coughlan.

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Kathryn Hayes -- "EU Commissioner to Meet Dell Workers" in the Home News section of The Irish Times, 3 July 2009.
Previously: "Dell Shuts Down Limerick" and "Bring Back Cocky Irish Swagger"
Click on the image to get a 25-second video clip from #locc.

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Nokia E71 Exchange Services

ONE OF OUR UPGRADE options is the Nokia E71 and we may get one if we believe we can hook it into a tightly-controlled Exchange email account. With Nokia's Mail for Exchange software, the E71 becomes a true push email experience. You need to download free business software to get the official Mail For Exchange support page by Nokia. I think there will be issues with Microsoft Server ActiveSync because the network administrator must have granted access to the IP block used to access the server from our home. It will probably mean the IT admin should revise some of the settings under IIS > YOURSERVER >WEB SITES > Default Web Site >Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync. The Microsoft Technet site also has some very detailed advice. Although the upgrade plans in our lives normally allow us to slip into the best new technology, the E71 is priced below the €100 mark. Its E72 brother has some features we'd like, including a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, easy geotagging, real Bluetooth 2.0, memory expandable to 16 GB via a MicroSD slot, and a standard headphone jack.

Sunday Observations

SUNDAY OBSERVATIONS, starting with Bruno (at left) [0], the Firefly [1], big black projects in the UK [2], cyber-terrorism that demands readiness [3], Chris Anderson's thoughts on everything being free [4], and the demise of Kodachrome. [5] The grimacing sound from the two-year-old was the word "Mia" which is a command to "show me my Flickr photostream" and you might enjoy that better than the two-minute Qik video that I shot today. It's probably faster to simply read my Twitterstream and absorb the gist of this Qik clip because the little girl in the background is kinda tedious. Show notes are below the break.

Sunday Business News

FT WEEKEND and the Sunday Business Post provide me with several hours of business news worth reading and on many weekend, those two newspapers are better than the Sunday business radio shows on national airwaves in Ireland. That's because many of those broadcasts feature people advocating a position, not informing public judgment. I enjoyed the Undercover Economist's view of weather forecasts [1] and the photo essay book review of Shop Class as Soulcraft [2], both topics covered in the FT Weekender Magazine. I lead off a 6-minute Qik video clip with these short items and cover a range of tech and business things as I page through those mainstream newspapers. I wish Donncha O Caoimh was writing some of the product reviews of digital cameras that the Irish newspapers print because his blog and photosets rock. (He's also on Twitter.) I'm determined to create a "corrections" category on my blogs because the newspapers inform me about the incorrect assessments I've made. I'm not wrong about wanting to visit Chicago again [3], this time with my Maxroam SIM installed.

Leadership 4 Growth and Walking Rodeo

ENTERPRISE IRELAND runs a Leadership 4 Growth programme that puts chief executives into California for a series of seminars. After chatting with a few of the privileged attendees, I learned that on weekends, it's possible to journey south for a walkabout of Rodeo Drive (at left, location of one of our favourite corner coffee shops) and to catch a wave along the southern California coastline. The 12-month leadership programme is delivered by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and that guarantees participants face time with some top-class technology, software, life sciences and medical services companies. The annual programme, run by Enterprise Ireland in partnership with the Irish Software Association, Irish BioIndustry Association and Irish Medical Devices Association covers a range of sectors such as engineering and is spawning another node for the construction industry. That programme will run in partnership with Duke Corporate Education in North Carolina (located approximately 3950 miles east of the photo). Stanford has some excellent coaching sessions for company executivies and the programme gives invaluable access to senior staff in an era of belt-tightening and market challenges.

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Wireless SCART at Home

AFTER ONE DAY of using the €66 wireless SCART transmission system (at left) that I got at Back to the Future in Dublin, I'm happy to report that it's working through walls and through floors.The salesman in the shop told me that he had sold 10 of the little numbers before I bought mine and no one had returned with a complaint. It's early days in my use of the wireless VID-TANS150KN system but I've discovered the 2.4 GHz signal does detect some FM interference from an item in my home (probably my wifi router). The small 7.5V power blocks that run the transmitter (on my DVD player) and the receiver (on my TV) get warm to the touch, suggesting a need to put them into separate switchable mains sockets. The owner's manual says the wireless SCART adapter can wok up to 80m in open areas and 30m through walls and ceilings. I'm going to try to power a TV set sitting on the third floor from a my Nokia E90 outside in my car. At the moment, I haven't used the unit's IR remote control feature, nor have I used the transmitter on my 5-in-1 SCART set-up. My first impression is that the wireless transmission system is the easiest thing I've ever used to fill my 32" television screen with information. Its ease of use makes me more likely to buy into Digital Living Network Alliance items, such as the SonyEricsson Walkman W995 mobile phone. We're already addicted to Bluetooth connectivity with the A2DP profile (streaming music over the air through the house) and that phone is DLNA-certified Wi-Fi (b & g) chip on-board. This means I will have at least two ways of connecting the W995 to my television for music. I'm now keen to see if I can line-out its video playback across my newly-christened wireless SCART network.

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Back from the Future is at 77 Aungier Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. +3531 475 7177
König Electronic has some excellent items that deserve to be on my wishlist.

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