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WE PLAN TO ATTEND the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in Dublin (11-13 Jan 07) and produce a few podcasts at the event. Last year, we cranked out several 40 minute episodes. This year, we will constrain each show to the satellite-friendly 24-minute limit and that ensures we can cram up to three episodes on a bog-standard CD.
80,000 WORDS. That's how many words Wiley the publishers think can be read between the covers of a book when aboard an aircraft flying coast-to-coast in the United States.
WE FILL OUR shopping baskets with the invention of Momofuku Ando, the man who invented instant ramen and founded Nissin Foods. He died today of heart failure at 96 years of age. From hungry space travelers to peckish college students Ando's quick noodles are truly manna from heaven.
FEEDBURNER AMAZES me because it just keeps getting better. I noticed something today--without doing anything, I could see outbound clicks. That's because Feedburner integrates some clever tracking with the "email this" link (part of "FeedFlare") on my posts. It's all part of the BlogBeat acquisition and it means that Feedburner's free StandardStats service now enables anyone using Feedburner scripts to track both feeds and site audience. The info is a click away from the Feedburner dashboard.
SUMMER BACKPACKERS to Europe should plan for a warm one. Global temperatures will rise to their highest levels ever recorded in 2007, according to meteorologists in Ireland and the United Kingdom. They believe there is a 60% chance that 2007 will top the previous hottest year, 1998. I burnt my feed on Greystones Beach that year.
BETTER THAN GOOGLE READER: Google Reader Trends. This very useful metric is a Digg Killer. This morning, mine told me, " From your 151 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,004 items, starred 43 items, and shared 0 items." Google Reader does not measure comprehension. Nor does it measure duplications--you get credit for two reads of the same thing if they're carried in separate feeds. I also believe you get credit for "reading" something even though you only see its headline. No matter.
I carry 90 different newsfeeds on my mobile phone and I have hundreds more on Bloglines but Google Reader serves up the most current flow to my focus window. I've only three tags in my cloud and one of them is my employer. Would that mean my reading of news is job-related?
IF THE IRISH BLOG AWARDS offered a prize for the lowest noise per character (highest S/N ratio), my vote would go to Fergus Cassidy. He's the reason I buy the Kilkenny Voice and the Irish journo with the best pedigree in the space of documenting social activism as a careful participant.
Looking for a Voice Newsfeed. Please don't just shovel the paper to the web when you've got natural blogging talent marking up the pulp.
See Also: Indymedia Ireland.
THERE ARE SOME reasons that we occasionally chance our arm and play licensed music on some podcasts and the most compelling justification comes from some major labels agreeing to license months-long play of podcasts containing big name artists in deals negotiated with consumer purchases.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, renowned for his expertise in all areas, advised young men on the sort of mistresses they should choose. "In all your amours, you should prefer old women to young ones," Franklin wrote. He adduced eight reasons in favour of mature mistresses.
NOT ONE for chain letters, I will take the bait tossed by Dervala to stoke the meme of five things people might not know about me. I'll even talk about it. This five things meme is a regular get-to-know-me item on Technorati. And because it comes from Dervala Hanley, it will attract more click-ons than a post written by any other Irish blogger. We cannot disappoint--here are my five things:
1. During the Christmas holidays of 2006, one of my Flickr images was Photoshopped and placed nearly dead centre on billboards next to the N8 around every 12 miles between Cork and Abbeyleix.
2. My glasses fog up whenever I flash back to the underside of a Northrup T-38 pulling 3Gs directly toward my seat.
3. I really do not like the assumption of a Full Irish.
4. For a 15-month period of my life, a series of flights I flew were disavowed by the US government, including one I finished with three bullet holes and another with palm fronds stuck in the right wing.
5. I once stood inside an ice cream truck when 72 people were dying outside.
WE'RE BACK from occasional sleet on the streets of Cork, successfully proving that you can maneuver around centre city, around the car parks and back out onto the Dublin Road without losing 3G connectivity to Cork street maps on Yahoo! Yahoo! maps cover a bunch of European cities.
Cameraphone photo of sleet pebbles on the Parade. Sleet towers were forming as eight-inch-high teepees under rain spouts.
ACCORDING TO PLACEBLOGS, Ireland boasts a new mountain range--the Poconos. But down to earth, it appears three locales are fixed on the Placeblog map and it's not really open for business yet. Those places include Cashel, Cork, and Dalkey.
That would be Placeblogger with another map of Ireland.
ANOTHER WRAP of a somewhat productive year. Thanks to all those who have commented, listened and shared inspiration along the way. It's off to 2007 where the emphasis is on real-world production, tactile actions that influence my expanding belly and connecting the dots into meatspace.
AT MIDNIGHT the Bank of England transfers $83m, the final payment of a loan the United States made to Britain in 1946. This closes a chapter in the story of Britain's alliance with America in the Second World War and makes military operations in the UK more expensive for the US.
LOW HOLIDAY READERSHIP of mainstream media means few people will notice Irish blogs being mentioned in Sunday broadsheets this weekend. Adrian Weckler says, "Blogging came as close as it will ever do to taking off among ordinary people in 2006." Not impressed by the raft of waffling he sees in the blogosphere, Weckler surmises, "Ireland appears to be one of the last western countries without any quality, readable blogs, though there is a tiny amount of them (e.g., mulley.net) occasionally worth looking at."
And in the Sunday Tribune, Una Mullally spins a few paragraphs for Blogorrah, while suggesting "other Irish bloggers of note to watch out for in 2007 are Slugger O'Toole, Twenty Major, In Fact Ah and Blather." Right so, let's see who's standing up front at the Irish Blog Awards.
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