Planet Nonado

It must be a really bad month for Airbus with Air France Flight AF447 crashing with the loss of all lives, and Yemenia Flight IY626 crashing with the loss of all but one life.

Crash investigators have now determined from the debris that AF447 hit the surface of the sea largely intact, and broke up on impact - which raises the question: What went wrong? All previous theories suggested that the plane broke up mid-air due to flying too fast or too slow in turbulent storm conditions.

Secondly, I read today that the surviving 14-year old from flight IY626 has been told that her mother is in the next hospital room, and not that she is missing, presumed dead. Is that fair? If you were the 14-year old, would you want to know the truth or be protected from it for a little while so you could recover?

After some rethinking of my thesis timeline and a few prods from Caroline, I decided that it was ok for me to go with my family to France. Just for a short break, a few days away from computing, work, papers and stress. Despite the huge number of vacations I go on, this was the first one in 3 years where I did not bring any work, I did not think about work (ok well that one's not true, I stumbled into the odd stress-stream and pondered some research but for the most part I fought my way free again) and I attempted to forget that I was still in college.

A large part of my forgetting was aided by books. I've always been a voracious reader and this holiday gave me a chance to relax into a booklist that'd been piling up over the last 6 months. In some order, I read the following in the 10 days I was away:

Cross Country - James Patterson
Light on Snow - Anita Shreve
The Safe House - Niki French
Not That Kind of Girl - Catherine Alliott
We Need To Talk About Ross - Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
Flavour of the Month - Olivia Goldsmith
Wish Upon a Star - Tina Reilly
Are You Afraid of the Dark? - Sidney Sheldon
Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling

Cross Country, one of the Alex Cross books, is probably the only one of the series that I would no longer be interested in buying. I love the series, I have always found the books compelling (though some of the ones after Violets are Blue were a little too dull for me) but this was a real disappointment. It didn't feel like a Cross book, the characters often acted in ways that didn't fit and throwing in the genocide aspect felt like a cheap ploy to increase readership. I'll read the next in the series (assuming there is one) but I don't think that this installment is worth the read and it could lose him some readers.

As for Light on Snow and The Safe House, I happily left those books in the owners' lounge for others to find and suffer through. The Safe House contains a plot that defies gravity for the logic leaps taken by one of the main characters, whilst other aspects are staring the reader in the face. I'm amazed that I even noticed a page missing from the book, since the flow of narrative barely appeared broken. Light on Snow wasn't really a bad book, just not my cup of tea. I read it expecting a compelling writer in the vein of Jodi Picoult but my expectations were too high. Happily, I resisted the temptation to buy several by that author at once, so haven't wasted much money.

Red Dragon, Shutter Island and Are You Afraid of the Dark were decent enough thrillers, with Shutter Island piquing my interest in the upcoming adaptation. I'd heard about the movie but assumed it was a monster thing, just goes to show how incorrectly you can pick things up sometimes.

I found Flavour of the Month to be very enjoyable, although as with the rest of Goldsmith's books, a little predictable. Fame, while seeming appealing on the outside, really must suck sometimes. All that money and you can't enjoy yit the way a normal person would. As for Not That Kind of Girl, the character irritated me something terrible and despite the storyline being somewhat entertaining, I couldn't really enjoy it. Wish Upon a Star, however, was a nice pick-me-up. Complete fluff and with a mildly annoying character, it was still endearing and kept me occupied for a couple of hours.

Finally, I began the Harry series again. With the new movie out this month, not to mention the fact that it's traditional to read Harry whilst in France, I got stuck in and flew through the four in a day and a half. However, unlike the last 5 times I've read them, I found that I really enjoyed the books because I'd allowed so much time to pass without touching them. Books one and two, while previously seeming like torturous installments which I had to push through to get to the meat of the story, were light and fun again. Three and four were compelling and the pages flew as I took in all the minute details (and even some larger ones) that I'd forgotten over time.

So now I'm home again, with a stack of other books waiting for my attention, and I have to turn away from them in order to get this thesis finished. So, until such time as I can afford to plunge back into the fantasy worlds of Jodi Picoult and Phillipa Gregory, of Thomas Harris and Kim Edwards and even of John le Carré and Nathaniel Hawthorne, they'll wait, gathering dust and receiving regular looks of longing and desperation. Work comes first.

Of course, I'm still going to finish reading the Harry series. I'm not that dedicated.

Lulu-Ann posted to the general Open Street Map mailing list an announcement of theaccessibility mailing list .

From her posting, this mailing list will be focused on the discussion of

• How to create non visual maps for the blind and visual impaired
• New tags that allow to map objects of special interest for disabled persons
• New maps that contain information about barriers like steps for wheelchair users
• Special routing, like wheelchair routing or pedestrian routing for the blind
• New maps that contain worthful information like theatres with subtitles for the deaf or braille writing signs or acoustic traffic lights for the blind
• Data exchange to the navigation tool “Loadstone-GPS” for the blind

All very interesting.

I sent a post to the talk-ie mailing list wondering whether we should reorganise the “WikiProject_Ireland” page to be more useful for those of us that are interested with mapping in Ireland.

If you’re interested please chime in with your opinion so we can arrive something workable.

...I have created an account on Twitter, purely for scientific research purposes, of course. I have discovered the implications of @based and #based overloading and have already inexplicably amassed a small number of followers (no, I can't understand it either... perhaps cynicism and bitterness is the new comedy gold... who can say?)

Being the technology enthusiast that I am, I suggested we make better use of social networking and information dissemmination tools at our upcoming conference and besides, I can't justifiably mock things until I try them now, can I? ;-)

Last weekend I caught up with Mary-Kate Geraghty (MayKay) and Jamie Fox (Pockets) of Fight Like Apes (homepage, Wikipedia, myspace) for a chat. The audio (MP3, OGG & FLAC) and text of this interview is licensed under a Creative Commons, Attribution, No-Derivs License.

Interview:

I also (with permission) recorded their gig, which is currently being hosted from Skynet, but hopefully it’ll be up on archive.org’s Live Music Archive soon. The gig is available in four formats with files for each individual song (low MP3, high MP3, OGG and FLAC), plus the entire show as a single file (low MP3, high MP3, OGG and FLAC). Copyright of the music remains with the copyright holders.

Full Gig:

I’m quite fond of one of their new songs, Jenny Kelly (high MP3, low MP3, OGG, FLAC). This is the first public recording of it, as last Friday was the first time they played it.

New Track - Jenny Kelly:

dd: Were here in Electric Avenue with Mary and Jamie from Fight like Apes. How’s the tour going so far guys?
mk: It’s great, I suppose we haven’t really been doing much of a tour at the moment. We’ve had a pretty strangely easy couple of months. We’ve been writing a lot, we’ve been rehearsing a lot. Getting back to what we started doing, just hating a lot of things and writing about hating a lot of things, writing for ourselves and having fun. There have been a few gigs…
pk: When we started we never really got a break, we got a bit of a break over the last few months, just the odd gig and stuff. So now we’ve finally got new songs and we’re going to start trying them out in the shows now. We’ve got a new lease of life I suppose.
mk: I reckon Waterford marks the start of the summer, officially, because next weekend we’ve got Glastonbury. Every weekend from here on is all Festivals and really fun gigs. If you have a tour coming up you often have one that you pick out and go “Ugh, I could do without that one”. But we’ve pretty much got a solidly exciting three months ahead of us.

dd: Great, so you guys are really starting to get into the swing of things?
mk: yeah, and its an amazing place to start. We haven’t had a Dublin gig for a while, and we’re not going to have one for a while, and so many people have traveled down from Dublin, which is such a massive compliment, young people who’s parents have dropped them off.

dd: You said a minute ago that for the last while you have been in a Haunted Mansion of some kind?
mk: I’m sure it was haunted, someone touched my bum.
pk: Apparently three people were hung in the Green room upstairs. It’s pretty haunted.

dd: Were ye recording there?
mk: We recorded some demos, nothing at all to be released, just for ourselves kind of thing, writing away and seeing what came out. It was really nice, if you’re rehearsing in a studio you’ve got a set time, and you have to be really conscious constantly of the time limit, how much you’re paying and stuff. It’s so nice to be really relaxed and not really give a shit, eat and drink at your leisure.
pk: If somebody doesn’t want to make music, they can just stroll off as opposed to if you’re paying for a room for a certain number of hours, that’s not really cool.

dd: Sticking with music, one of the things I’ve heard about you guys is that you’ve put down the Pixies as an influence, is that mis-attributed?
pk: I don’t know where that came from, we love the Pixies but I suppose…
mk: I can understand where people get it from, but we’ve never…
pk: I think there’s second hand Pixies influences, but nothing we intentionally did, but we do like the Pixies a lot and with Toms bass-lines I can defiantly see the Pixies. But it’s never something we’ve consciously done at at all, but I can defiantly see it in the Music.

dd: Rolling on from that, do you have your eye on anyone for a collaboration?
mk: Shane McGowan.
pk: Shane McGowan. It’s an odd one, but we’ve decided that we want to do a collaboration with Shane McGowan.
mk: We’ve got the song done and dusted
pk: We’ve just got to show it to him
mk: I think it’d be amazing, we need a kind of gruff voice that’s seen to much of life. I think for you, Steve Malkmus has always been…
pk: Yeah, but i think if we did work with someone like that we’d just be too in awe of them to do anything ourselves, and it’d just end up being a Stephen Malkmus song.
mk: I’d love to do something with Il Divo but I think I’d just end up loosing complete faith in myself and the rest of us, “I can never be like them”. I’d love to do a bit more of that, start working with people and stuff. I think it might be too early to be doing any serious collaboration, you don’t want to give the impression that you’re running out of ideas yourself. We’ve got so much that we want to work on ourselves. I think maybe on the third album we’ll defiantly want to…
pk: start collaborating a lot more.

dd: New stuff you’ll be playing tonight, do you have any of that penned down for a future album?
mk: I think, I hope so.
pk: Hopefully, we’re trying not to think about it in terms of the the album, just to write 20 odd songs and see what the best ones are. But at the moment I can’t see them not being on the next album.

dd: Sticking with the songwriting, one thing I’ve noticed about your songs in the past is that at time your lyrics can be explicit, to say the least. Where does that come from? Is that you [Mary] or the band as a whole?
mk: It’s me and Jamie really. When we started writing if I’d ever considered my mother hearing it, or the local priest hearing it, or my old teachers hearing it, I’m sure I wouldn’t have written the likes of Digifucker, I’m sure I wouldn’t have said things like that. But I think that’s the beauty of where we are now, and something that was really important for us. When we’re writing we just need to remind ourselves that we’ve never written for anything but for our own self amusement. I think that’s where it came from. Digifucker is actually a pretty simple song, the lyrics are very simple, there’s nothing that every girl or guy doesn’t think about when they’ve been hurt, but it’s something that no one would every say out loud.
pk: Especially not on a record I suppose. We never thought we were the type of band that would play many gigs, never mind get on the radio. If we were doing that in the confines of our own personal space, it didn’t matter, that allowed us to properly vent, and cater for some sort of radio play.

dd: Flipping back to the collaborative stuff, what are your views on other people on other people remixing your work, taking a bass-line from here, mixing drums from another track. Are ye open to it?
mk: Yeah, we’re defiantly open to it. Recently Jape did a remix of Battlestations for us and that was perfect, he came to us and he said he loved the band, he loved that song and wanted to do a remix. We were like “of course”. That’s a really nice way of doing it.
pk: At the same time we’ve had some terrible remixes.
dd: Sure, but you’re going to get that.
pk: When you open yourself up to being remixed by anybody you’re going to loose the control of what comes out of it. But I think that’s OK, I think that’s kind of nice. I mean, at the end of the day we sample stuff, so what’s the difference between someone sampling our music and we complain about somebody asking for money for a sample, so we’re not going to complain about somebody…
mk: I was out in a club in Dublin last night and I heard the Battlestations remix, which first of all was weird, because my voice is remixed, and I can kind of tell it’s me, but it sounds kind of weird. But then I saw people, friends of mine who I know aren’t that into the band, but are really into dance music. Afterwards they were like “I really like that song that way”. If someone else has a different take on something that we have, why the hell not?

dd: 2manydj’s do a lot of indie remixes In a a very dancy way, would you think of releasing stuff like that yourselves, even as B-Sides?
mk: I think as a B-Side, yeah, if we liked it enough. We wouldn’t release it just because it’s a remix and it might appeal to a certain type of people but if we loved it as a song itself and as a different version of a song I wouldn’t see a reason why not.

dd: Taking it on from remixing, sampling, and not paying for samples, what are your views on piracy in general, and where do you see the industry panning out on that?
pk: With music piracy?

dd: Yeah, not commercial piracy, it’s pretty much accepted that if you’re selling 10,000 copied CDs and the band are getting no cut, it’s not on. But for fan’s downloading themselves, I mean I will honestly admit that I was coming here tonight to listen to you guys and I had [How am I supposed to Kill You If You Have All the Guns] but not [Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion], so I said, “I’ll grab that”, just to listen up and be familiar with the songs. Now obviously it’s not ideal, it would be much better if there was some method in place whereby I can download it, and if I like it I can pay you fair compensation, I can give you a tenner that preferably goes into your pocket. It’s slightly unrealistic to say that all the money should go to a band and not a recording studio or a producer. Where do you see it panning out?
pk: At the moment we’ve got Spotify which seems to be the fairest to me. It’s a streaming streaming website which looks like it’s going to overtake iTunes in a few years. It’s really cool, money goes into the artists pocket and you can stream anything. At the end of the day, we’re not going to be the ones complaining about not getting enough money, we’re not that cynical about the industry. We’ve grown up in this industry, as opposed to growing up as Metallica, turning around and complaining that the world’s changing, saying “Oh god, my ‘07 Jaguar is the old model”. At the end of the day, any money is a bonus.
dd: But this is still your 9-5, so you’ve got to make a living out of this.
pk: Absolutely.
mk: We’ve talked about this so much, especially since we’ve realised that this is the thing we’re hoping to make money from. We have really quite casual chats about it, anyone who says they haven’t downloaded something illegally is lying, I don’t accept this moral high-ground thing that people take, that’s why I think Spotify is such a good idea, because it’s a way of taking something for free without owning it for free, without pissing anyone else off. I think if someone downloads our album and likes it, they might come to a gig, buy a T-Shirt, and that’s where we might earn money from them downloading something illegally. Someone might listen to it and not like it and that’s fine. When we released our album first we put it on-line, streaming for free for a week. I think that was our way of saying we just want people to hear the music, we’re not going to make our fortune off records, we’re probably never going to make a living off record sales alone, that’s why I don’t really mind. If they like it and download it I don’t really care.
pk: Plus I watch Internet TV every day so I’d be a hypocrite.

dd: So, free culture in general, you can see it going further?
pk: Yeah.
mk: I think it has to, I don’t see a way of stopping it.

dd: Do you see a market in the future for the likes of the Universals and the EMIs?
pk: No.
mk: Not the way it’s going, not right now, and especially with the way Spotify is setting a trend.
pk: look at big bands and big record labels at the moment, it’s very temperamental: one album, maybe. Even if they’re doing significantly well they’re going to fall somewhere. Its a waste of time, big labels are going to fall, it’s all about indies at this stage.

dd: OK, so then where do you guys sum up the money to pay a producer and pay for recording studio time?
mk: We were really lucky with the label we’re with, Model Citizen, they’re a totally independent label, we’re the first band on the label. I think the best part is that we have a very personal relationship with them, so we can all see very clearly where it’s going to come from and where it’s going to go. I’m sure from their point of view they’d rather make sure we make a good album, with better potential for making them money back than give us pittance to make a crap album. So I think we have been really lucky. There’s never any… well there probably is a lot of under the table stuff, but nothing that we’d every be worrying about, we’ve a very honest relationship with them.

dd: Brilliant. So, what does the future hold for you guys, beyond your album and gigs in the next few months.
mk: That’s pretty much it. If you had said two years ago, where are you going to be in two years, I certainly wouldn’t have said where we are now. I mean that in a good way, I’m really happy with how things have been going. I think we’ve been so excited this week writing that we just want to…
pk: Get working on another album as soon as possible.
mk: Yeah, and make sure next weeks gigs go well, then next week we’ll worry about the ones after that. If you look at it as a bigger picture you really will just melt down and freak out.

dd: So you’ve no aims and targets and ambitions beyond tonight?
pk: If we play a good gig tonight I’ll be happy.
mk: Yeah, if we can keep doing this and then some day live off it, that’d be nice. We’d love a load of strippers as well.
pk: There are a load of strippers next door.
dd: You personally would like strippers, or the band?
mk: I think I can speak for the band when I say that…
pk: I think we’d all like a few strippers.
mk: Nice ones now, not…
pk: Not skanky ones. I mean, by default they probably will be…
mk: But you can see a bit of potential for a nice person, a good heart.
pk: You could work on them, take them out of that grotty lifestyle.
mk: Save them!
pk: Save them, yeah, be a saver.
mk: Like in pretty woman.
pk: And West Wing.
mk: Oh yeah!
dd: There was a stripper in West Wing?
mk: She’s a high class escort. They deal with all sorts in that, all sorts.

dd: Cool, well, great to chat to you guys. Anything else to say to fans, or potential future fans?
mk: Are you guys in UL? We’re dying to go back to Limerick. We played to the Limerick School off Art and Design in Dolans, it was amazing, that was such a fun gig. We can’t wait to go back, we love Limerick.
dd: You weren’t playing with Crystal Castles, no?
mk: No.
dd: That was another night, it’s all a bit of a blur.

dd: Cool, good luck tonight, and looking forward to chatting to you again.
pk: Thank you very much.
mk: Thank you, you too.

I was emailed this a short while ago - thought it worth sharing

<quote>
Five years ago, Packt published its first book, ‘Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management’. In the years that followed, Packt has published over 200 books on many different subjects and technologies.
We think it’s important to take the time to celebrate and thank the people who have made this possible. Therefore as our way of saying thank you for your support over the last five years, we have decided that over the next few weeks, Packt will be offering new and existing customers’ five exclusive offers.
The PEAR Installer Manifesto is one of the eBooks that we are offering to our readers. This book shows users the power of this code management and deployment system to revolutionize their PHP application development.
To download a free PDF copy of this book, simply visit http://www.packtpub.com/account and login to your account, or create one if you don’t already have one, and scroll down to your download area. Here you will see a link to the eBook, which you can download as many times as you like. In addition to this book, you can also download other eBooks on various technologies for free.
You can find more information on this offer by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/article/celebrate-with-us-as-packt-turns-5
</quote>

My favourite quote of this week goes to my roommate the cuban for the following email, the subject line of which was “Ok…”:

“All morning my vision is blurry, and it’s brothering me. I can’t read my cpu, etc. Go to CVS, buy drops, etc. Looking online about the impact of alcohol consumption on vision long term, etc.

Then it occurs to me that maybe I have put the wrong lens in the wrong eye…”

We are now having an argument about whether he can call looking at his screen reading his cpu.  He posits that “cpu” means computer to 95% of human beings and that therefore I am being overly anal. It is my conjecture that 95% of the world being inaccurate is nothing to do with me.

New York - it really grows on you. Like a fungus. Seriously though, I am really starting to like it here. New York will never be London, but its character is starting to appeal to me the same way London’s does, though for entirely different reasons.  I also have to admit that now that I actually have one, life is pretty amazing here. Downtown Brooklyn still feels like you are living in one of the greatest cities in the world, but it also has the space and the community that just doesn’t exist on the island.

Within one block of my house there is a gym, a wine shop, a supermarket, a subway station, a pub, a tattoo parlour, and a rather odd local theatre type building that occasionally has markets and juggling classes and whatnot. Not to mention that living with E is like having your own soap opera, or (as one of his friends put it) sharing a flat with a cartoon character.

I’m glad I didn’t leave when I first wanted to. I needed to give this place a chance, and now that I can do whatever I want without worrying about how much it would cost me to get  out of my contract or when I could move or whether the economy is a total disaster anywhere I want to move to, I find myself considering a longer sojourn here than I originally planned.  It’s not as easy and perfect as London was. But its not as hard as I thought it was.

Thanks to my boss for pointing out First Life, the refreshing high resolution, low latency alternative to Second Life.
Go on - try it out. Seamless reloading and rendering of backgrounds while moving from place to place, fully fledged tactile feedback interface and awesome refresh rates - compatible with all hardware ;-)

So yesterday I had a quick interview with a journalist from the Nenagh Guardian - my local paper - about this OpenStreetMap (OSM) mapping malarky.

As most of you will probably know OSM is to printed atlases from AA, Ordnance Survery etc, as wikipedia is to encyclopedias. People can contribute data to the project through a variety of activities: going out and actually mapping an area with a sat nav or gps unit [even a mobile phone with GPS in it such as an iphone, nokia n95 or whatever], tracing data off Yahoo [and other] aerial imagery, filing bugs on the openstreetbugs website or literally drawing in information via the walking papers map making website. And better again, this is about providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.

Anyway…I mentioned how the OpenStreetMap map of Nenagh is more complete than even the latest commercially available maps for Garmin and Google Maps and listed off a few ways how OSM could be used commercially: by real estate agents, courier companies, how being able to pin-point where all the amenities are would be useful for tourists, and so on.

Compare the Open Street Map of Nenagh with the Google Map of the area - as you can see, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done - Millers Brook needs to be marked as such along with the various groves, avenues etc that comprise that estate. Plus all the amenities, shops [perhaps even their opening hours] and the Shannon Development Industrial Centre still need to be added - as I’m sure are some other small portions of the town that I’ve unknowingly neglected.

It’s fair to say that this will never be finished - existing housing estates will be extended, there will always be urban development plans that when implemented would also need to be included on the map.

It would also be cool to have the new “Nenagh Cycling Hub” rendered on the opencyclemap.org website.

I discovered the OpenStreetBrowser site to be a great test of the data that myself and others have entered - it’s also a great way of demonstrating just what can be done with OSM data.

If you happen to spot something that I’ve missed please either drop me a comment or use the openstreetbugs website.

On a related note: it would be good to see a PEAR/PHP based client/component for interfacing with the OpenStreetMap server so that interesting apps utilising that data could be implemented on the LAMP stack - something to go alongside the Services_GeoNames package from pear

A while ago I was sent a review copy of “Learning JQuery 1.3” by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg, as published by Packt. I’ve now had a chance to read it objectively and compare it against the original “Learning JQuery” which Packt also sent me to review about a year ago. That earlier edition covered a much less mature version (version 1.1.3.1 to be precise) of this popular Javascript framework.

Aimed at web developers and designers with a basic understanding of HTML and CSS (and some level of comfort with Javascript), the later book is thicker than the original - it weights in at some 440 pages compared to the 360 pages that were required for the first. A new chapter, “Developing Plugins” covers how to write plugins for the framework and how to “share it with the world” - naming conventions, documentation style and other advice are included. There is also a new “Quick Reference” appendix which just begs to be reproduced in “Cheat-sheet” format for pinning up on your wall. Chapters already present in the earlier book are more detailed and read better.

The subject matter is expertly covered and unless you were aware of the changes in jQuery 1.3, compared to the older version that the original was focused it would be difficult to tell which portions of the book are new - the revision and updates to the original are seamless.

Quite rightly, Swedberg and Chaffer do not explain all differences between jQuery 1.3 and its predecessors - they rightly assume that if you’re reading “Learning JQuery 1.3″ then you don’t need to be informed of exactly how jQuery 1.3 differs from the version they previous covered. The book flows better because of this and remains very easy to understand because of this approach.

There is no hint of the selector engine in 1.3 being any different than what was already covered. The language used for explaining the different concepts to the reader is more precise, especially so in the Events chapter and this makes understanding the concepts being covered much more easy - for this reason alone buying the revised edition is well worth the money.

The book doesn’t focus on new additions that were freshly added to jQuery 1.3 but also ones that had been added to jQuery since the first edition was published; JSONP, which was introduced in jQuery 1.2 is covered in the chapter on AJAX, as is the more low-level $.ajax() method; it also mentions which features have been removed from jQuery since the first edition was published - XPath being one such example. The listing of development tools has also been reworked, as has the Online Resources section. These listings mention resources that are current and up-to-date.

I remember mentioning in my review of the first book (trying hard not to use the word ‘original’ again!) that until a later edition of it was released that you wouldn’t be able to find a better book on the subject. I stand by that assertion - the only book that covers jQuery better than the first edition of “Learning jQuery” is the second edition of the same.

Shortly after France brought in a three strikes rule for those allegedly downloading content in breach of copyright on the internet, it has been deemed unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Court.
Thanks to El Reg for the following:

France's constitutional court today deemed the Hadopi law illegal. Judges deemed that two parts of the legislation also nicknamed "Three Strikes" - the backers prefer "graduated response" - contravened two major areas of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, articles 5, 9 and 11.

I wonder if the out of court settlement Eircom agreed to, effecting the same punishment for alleged abuse of the internet - with equally little oversight and burden of proof required - will be deemed similarly illegal in Ireland. I very much hope so.

ANyone know how to disable a module (like ipv6) under Ubuntu 9.04? I thought I did, but it appears not. Firstly, ipv6 is now compiled as a kernel module, which is largely okay (except that Network Manager sucks and seems to like collecting multiple IPv6 addresses despite only one being routable. Of course, it gives the highest priority to the last one it discovers, so that means IPv6 is unusable on the network I'm now on...) But that's only the start of my issue...

I thought I could disable IPv6 by setting /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6 to contain 1. Nope - that does absolutely nothing. Awesome!

So I compiled the latest kernel and put IPv6 in as a module, because on every other network in the world I do want to use it - just not here (until Network Manager is fixed.)
You can disable a module from loading in Linux by editing /etc/modprobe.conf - but that file has been removed and replaced with an /etc/modprobe.d/ subdirectory. Still no modprobe.conf file in there, because why leave things the same... but there is a blacklist.conf file, in which you can blacklist modules.

Of course, Ubuntu being Ubuntu, this does sweet sod all (I'm thinking much more rude words) so I'm still at a complete loss as to how to kill IPv6 in the face on this OS. Fedora 11 has just been released, so I think I'm going to take a break from Ubuntu for a little while and see if RedHat has less 'features' than the current Ubuntu release.

Eduroam is an 802.11 wireless roaming service that allows students and staff of one acadmic institution to get access to the internet from another institution. Since I have an account in Ireland, I can use the eduroam network on the bus here in Spain. Someone suggested that we should get Bus Eireann to provide wireless on the busses in Ireland, but I'd prefer if they could concentrate on making their buses at least make a token gesture at following the published timetables first.

... from Rock and Roll... unfortunately that appears to have used our entire budget, leaving none for the video - sorry! How sad it is that one of the contendors for greatest Rock song in the world ever, bar none, has a video more remeniscent of UB40, while doing Elvis covers, on crack, with no budget and a special effects guy who has convinced the producer that no music video is complete until we've used all the transition effects available...
Sigh - it's a good job I'm not bitter ;-)
Just listen to the rocking-ness of Starship, and ignore the video:

Tonight we see the election of the first BNP (British National Party) MEP (Member of the European Parliament) - this is a big step for a party who purport outwardly to not be racist, but who only allow "indigenous Britons' to become members.
Nothing could top Nick's quotation on not being a racist party though, particularly his mention of Bradford:

"When you look at Bradford it's not immigration any more, it's colonisation." -- Nick Griffin, BNP Party leader, UK.

Courtesy of John Browne

These figures show a scary trend for FF and for the now deceased PDs. These figures are based on the tallies for the 2009 LE results and are subject to revision but the trend itself is quite interesting for a major urban centre. The second point is the sheer personal vote of Willie O'Dea if these figures reflect a `party' vote.

** UPDATE 21:41 - New chart reflecting actual first count figures rather than tallies. **

Colmmacc is really as good at cropping photos as he is at taking them. We were driving around Galway at the weekend, and I was snapping away as he drove. He's put some of my snaps up on his flickr, and I'm surprised at how well some of them turned out. Maybe I should by a *cough* SLR *cough*

...that really good French Pain-au-chocolat becomes lessgood when it's two days old - however, judicious use of a microwave can convert it back into perfectly passable, delicious breakfasty goodness.

Also, I've observed that meringue tastes nicer when its pink and shaped into a little pig face.

I was out in The Forum during the week, at a Heineken Green Spheres gig. The head liners were Friendly Fires (homepage, Wikipedia, Myspace) and I managed to grab an interview with their front man, Ed MacFarlane, after the gig.

As always, the audio is up in MP3, OGG and FLAC formats. Unfortunately I didn’t have the Zoom H4 on me, so I had to record it on my phone. The audio and text of this interview is licensed under a Creative Commons, Attribution, No-Derivs License.

We got chatting about:

• Why upcoming bands should keep their hits under their hats, don’t throw your best song up on Myspace, use it to woo a record deal
• How live acts change when people know your music, putting your energy into quality
• Their label XL Recordings (same label Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Beck, and a plethora of others signed to)
• How comfortable they were working with producer Paul Epworth, how he became an extra band member
• Piracy, remixes and sampling

Here’s the full text, enjoi!

DD: I’m here with Ed from Friendly Fires, how did the gig go tonight?
Ed: The gig was great, it was more than I expected it to be, the crowd reaction was fantastic, especially for a place I’ve never heard of. [Waterford is] a town that, to the eye, looks very small.

DD: How is the tour going?
Ed: It’s been never-ending for quite a long time now, but it’s been really good, it’s been great. We’ve had maybe one or two shit gigs, but every band has that. It’s really good to see our fans and to see how we have an impact on the general public.

DD: How long have Friendly Fire been around for?
Ed: We’ve been around since we were 14, now we’re in our mid twenties, I was 25 on May 15th.

DD: Cool. You signed to XL recently…
Ed: That’s right, that would have been last August.

DD: Other bands who have signed to XL; The Prodigy, Bassment Jaxx, Radiohead, Beck, Peaches, Dizzee Rascals. You guy seem to have a different sound, you use less sampling and you have more of an indie, prog sound.
Ed: I don’t know about that.

DD: Oh, so how would you describe yourselves, as a band?
Ed: I would describe us as a pop band, and I like describing ourselves as a pop band, because pop doesn’t really mean anything. The way I see pop; good pop is full of catchy hooks and catchy melodies, stuff you can latch onto. That’s our main goal… we’re influenced my lots of music that isn’t pop; post-rock, house, techno, ambient. We listen to lots of music, and we’ll latch onto little elements we really like, but we’ll try and force them into this very concise three minute pop song.
DD: Yeah, one of the influences you guys have previously said ye had was Prince.

DD: Who would you guys like to collaborate or work with, artist or producer?
Ed: It’s been hard enough for us to start working with a producer; we’ve only just started working with a producer, Paul Epworth. We did “Jump in the Pool” with him, which is the last track we recorded on the album. We’re very used to doing things our own way, working on our own. I don’t know, there are artists who I’d love to collaborate with, but realistically… Foals are a band I’ve been meaning to collaborate with, we share a lot similar tastes in music, we got on very well when we hang out. If I could choose who I could collaborate with it’d probably be Big L but he’s dead.

DD: What advice would you give to upcoming bands?
Ed: If you have a really good song, and you think it’s great, be wary of putting it on Myspace, and opening it up to the general public. I feel like when we wrote Paris, we put it up on our Myspace, and everyone had kind of heard it. If you put music on Myspace or stream off certain websites you’ve kind of released it already. I think if you have a really good one, and you think it’s really good and you think it will take off, just hold onto it. If you’re on the way to signing a deal, make sure you release it as a proper single, and make sure you hype it up really well, do something good with it.

DD: One of the things I’ve heard about you guys is that you’ve very selective about who you want to remix your music, or who you allow to remix your music. Why is that, why so choosy?
Ed: I suppose we listen to a lot of dance music, there’s a lot of shit dance music out there, and good dance music too. We get a lot of offers, suggestions from people in the label saying “you should get remixed by such and such”. We know who they are, but it just isn’t the kind of music I would ever dance to in a club. But the kind of people we do like, and do appreciate, we try and get and get in contact with them. It’s a but unexpected because it’s not expected for [indie bands] to like dance music, or give a shit who they’re remixed by.

DD: You guys use samples in your songs, so it’s a bit strange that you’re selective about who samples your music.
Ed: Naa, people can take samples of us and write their own music from it. But if we’re going to be remixed by somebody, we want to be remixed by somebody who we think is good.

DD: Ok, leading on from that, in terms of remixing and mashing up, what are your views as a band on Piracy? I’m sure as teenagers, you guys downloaded your fair share of songs off the net [ED: right], but now that you’re on the other side, now that you’re actually releasing music, what are your views and how do you see the music industry panning out?
Ed: You can’t fight against it, you’ve got to work with it. It’s a pointless task, pissing and moaning about people downloading your music. I mean if I don’t have any money I’ll download an album, simple as that. Most of time I’ll download stuff off iTunes or Beatpop (?) because I don’t want to install some program onto my computer that will fuck it up and give me a load of viruses, that’s one of the only reasons I don’t illegally download music. IT encourages bands to spend more time creating good artwork, becoming a good live band, because you can’t make any money from selling records. So it forces you to focus on other aspects of the music industry.

DD: So what are your views on fans taping your shows? If a fan wants to record you shows and post them online, are you guys for that or against that?
Ed: If they put us on a blog and write about us they’re helping promote us, so it’s fine. I think that’s great and cool. It’s different if somebody records a live show, and then sells it, that would be a little odd.

DD: No, I’m not saying anyone would make money from [the recording], purely non-profit. But if someone wanted to come along to a show, record a song, and stick it on their blog saying “I heard these guys last night…”
Ed: Well it’s just like people taking tracks off the album and putting it on a blog, I think blogs have really helped us, it’s a way of creating hype around bands. You can’t really do anything about it. If people are talking about you and writing about you, it’s a good thing.

DD: Cool, so are you looking forward to the future?
Ed: Yeah, *laughs* if I wasn’t looking forward to the future I’d be pretty depressed.

DD: Do you’ve anything big coming up?
Ed: Yeah, we’re doing to Istanbul in about three days, it should be fun, then after that we’re going over to America, we’re doing festivals, we’re going over to Brazil, doing a tour of Brazil.

DD: Do you’ve any new records coming out?
Ed: Yeah, we have this new single, we’ve been working with Paul Epworth on, it’s all traditional samba loops and samba rythms, it’s a really kind of euphoric. It’s the right song for a 45. We wanted to write something a bit more interesting and inspiring. I think with Jump in the Pool, we were kind of experimenting, and with this we pushed it aswell. It sounds different.

DD: What’s it been like working with Paul?
Ed: Really good. I can’t imagine working with anyone else to be honest. We’re kind of control freaks; it’s hard when you let someone else take control, you never know what they’re going to do. But Paul’s got the same opinion, what he thinks is good and bad, he’s kind of like an extra member of the band, more than a producer?

DD: What kit do you guys use?
Ed: When we record, I have a Universal Audio 6176 Pre-amp that I record into, that goes into my Apogee Audio Ensemble interface, that goes into Logic. It comes out very… I only have two pairs of speakers, when I get more money I’ll buy some more kit.

DD: Do you write for the band or is it a collaborative process?
Ed: I come up with most of the vocals. A lot of the time I’ll come up with the basis of the tune, I come up with the initial idea, and bring it to the table, and everyone and put int the it input, lime most bands, but we tent not to start with a guitar, but then some songs we have started with a guitar, but it’s not based around chords, with some songs we might just have a drum track, and then just write everything around that, or with vocals.

DD: I noticed that live you guys have quite a big display, with trumpets. Have you tried recording a live set? And would you think of releasing them?
Ed: Yeah, we’ve recorded shows we’ve done. Recently we did a show at the HMV Forum, XL funded and brought in a load of cameras and recording equipment. The gig was really successful, it felt so effortless, it was so nice, I felt like I was so in command of the crowd. Tonight was different, we’re in Waterford and who the fuck would know about us?

DD: This is one of the great powers of the internet; people hear about you, they hear your stuff, they get familiar with it, then they see you live.
Ed: It defiantly changes an artist, as you grow older. When we started and were playing small venues, we had to fucking prove ourselves, we had run up in peoples faces, and yell in their faces. But as the show got bigger you focus more on the details, on how well everyone’s playing. It’s not just about the energy, but how well it translates.

DD: Cool, well, thanks very much and good luck with the rest of the tour.
Ed: Yeah, good luck too.

It seems that pain-au-chocolat tastes nicer in France. Perhaps it's because of the nice weather, the lovely meal I had last night, the proximity of the 4 swimming pools + jacuzzi, or the fact that I don't have to turn up to the office for another week or so? Vive la France! ;-)

Things I have learned this week:

• I can drink a truly amazing amount of horrible white wine
• I am a very inconsiderate host, particularly after said white wine.
• It is possible to get bitten on the fucking cheek by a mosquito. The cheek. Twice.
• Not all trains to New Jersey stop in Hoboken.
• Jerkboy (aka the yank, aka my dreadful ex-boyfriend) is getting married in a few months.
• My roommate the Cuban is even more awesome than I had previously noticed.
• My roommate the Cuban is also batshit crazy. But claiming not to have noticed this previously may be slightly stretching it.
• Barbecues are fantastic, and happen approximately every 15 minutes in this country.
• The walk from Chelsea to Park Slopes is motherfucking long.
• Never take a taxi from Jersey to Manhattan.
• I am going to a pagan handfasting, in CT, as the date of a female friend. Time to dig out the tux and top hat.

“I saw you this morning, you were moving so fast…
can’t seem to loosen my grip on the past

and i miss you so much, there’s no one in sight
and we’re still making love…

…in my secret life

I smile when I’m angry… I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do to get by

but I know what is wrong, and I know what is right
and I’d die for the truth…

…in my secret life

I bite my lip, I buy when I’m told
From the latest hit to the wisdom of old.

But I’m always alone, and my heart is like ice,
and its crowded and cold…

…in my secret life”

Leonard Cohen

My sincere thanks to Kev for passing on the wisdom of a taxi driver he met earlier today. While discussing politics with this driver, Kev elicited a cogent explanation for the current state of Irish politics. According to our learned driving friend, women have too much control in Ireland, and when it comes to election time they vote for candidates based solely on appearances, voting - one must assume - for the good looking politicians. I feel Mssrs. Cowen et al should feel flattered.

I remain unconvinced, though this explanation did provide me with a good laugh.

The whole shoe painting idea that I suggested for Sunday got shunted to one side as I became the chick in shining armour at work (yet again) and went to Dublin to stand in for the regular producer on one of my programmes. This meant I missed out on the Summer (yes, kids, the Irish summer was on Sunday) but I did get to meet on of the absolute legends of Irish television, Mr. Jimmy McGee. He's awful lovely!

Choir's been cancelled today, which is a good thing, because I'm practically delirious with hormones today, and I won't be at rehearsal again til mid-June at this stage. I'm going to miss it so much. Anyone interested in trying a barbershop quartet to tide me over? I'll sing whatever you like so long as I can sing!

Tomorrow, I was looking forward to going to Stitch'n'Bitch (That's still going on in the Old Quarter of a Tuesday evening) and finishing off my soon-to-be-lovely bag in the company of some knittery fiends, but yet again work is ruining everything. This time I'm headed to Galway for some work in the vicinity of the Volvo Ocean Race. Hopefully I'll at least be able to spend some quality time with Galway peoples :-)

I was supposed to be going to a wedding this weekend too, but that's also not happening.

Seriously, kids... what's going on?

I'm off to Barcelona for the weekend after next, and I'm dreading the thought that something's going to happen to scupper those plans too. I'm deliberately leaving my Bank Holiday Weekend unplanned, so that nobody can ruin it!

That's the plan anyway...

For all you Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans and fans of its author Douglas Adams, today is Towel Day, 2009. For those of you who do not know where your towel is, shame on you!

To quote the Hitchhiker's guide itself:

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have 'lost.' What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

-- Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

With thanks to the towel day website for the quotation.

I've recently forced myself to find the time to play and record a little more music, to whit I've purchased a copy of Apple Logic Studio Pro and have dusted off a few of my mics and cables.



When I was starting to learn guitar, many many years ago, and playing music with a church Folk Group (Yes, the Folk Group, with capital letters!) I wrote music to the words of one of the Hosannas - specifically the Hosanna 64. Though it's been performed numerous times over the years, I suspect that this is the first time my version has been recorded. The Milford Folk Group in Limerick do a pretty mean version and if you wish to use my music as part of a liturgical celebration or event, please feel absolutely free. If you like it, or have suggestions for improvement, drop me a line at the usual address.

• Hosanna 64 by Gareth Eason, mp3 ~2.4MB

Recorded using a pair of Groovetube GT33's in a co-incident pair arrangement for the guitar parts, and an Audio Technica AT4033a for the vocal lines. AD conversion courtesy of my trusty Edirol FA-101 Firewire interface.

Dear Linux driver gurus and Intel, Please unfuck your drivers and make my laptop usable again. If I wanted to reboot this often I'd install Windows 95. Thanks, Gar.

On Sunday night I went to see Leonard Cohen in Radio City Music Hall. There are two very awesome aspects to this, one of which is Leonard Cohen, and the other of which is Radio City Music Hall itself, which is pretty goddamn impressive. I have mentioned my tendency to judge establishments on the calibre of their toilet facilities. Well, RCMH doesn’t just have a bathroom, it has a ladies lounge, complete with couches, mirrors and a lot of open space to just hang out in before you even get to the actual toilet stalls. In fact to find the toilets I had to walk through three rather large rooms, and was starting to wonder if I was supposed to piss on a suede-upholstered sofa.

However, RCMH milk their awesomeness to the absolute max, at a stunning cost of $250 to get a ticket in the stalls. Now it was a great seat, and an amazing venue, but in the normal course of things I would never ever pay this amount of money for anything short of a concert headlined by Led Zeppelin and opened by the Beatles, complete with all original band members (including those who would need to rise from the grave for the occasion) which took place on the fucking moon.

The obvious contradiction here is that I did have a ticket and did go. I can explain this with the following short tangent: my parents are awesome. Really. Obviously I did not think this as a 15 year old psycho held together by un-directed rage and death metal, but since reaching an age where I enjoyed discernable lyrics and obtained a modicum of self-control I realized I quite possibly have the best parents ever. In a complete surprise move then, when my father noticed that Leonard Cohen was playing Radio City, he decided to buy me a ticket as a belated 26^th birthday present (even though my father believes any birthday after you are legally allowed to drive and buy beer is not an event).

Naturally I gratefully accepted said ticket, particularly since Leonard Cohen is certainly getting on in years, and chances to see him might have been running out. Now, I have never been a massive fan, though I’ve always liked his music. But the man is fucking amazing. He is 75, and he dances onto the stage. He has a voice like honey drizzling over dark chocolate, it somehow sounds even better live than it does recorded, despite the fact that today we could make a screaming child sound like Tina Turner with the vast powers of studio sound manipulation. Though I suppose that particular example is not all that much of a stretch. I guess just because you can make shit smell kind of like roses it doesn’t mean you can improve what roses themselves smell like.

In any case, it was an exceptional show. The talent of just the female back-up vocalists would have put professional choirs to shame. Leonard himself is an incredible performer, and better than that he clearly enjoys every minute of the performance. He is one of those artists that puts everything into what they are doing, watching him sing live he makes you feel as if he’s singing better for your show than for any other one he’s played, like what he’s doing just that night is special to him. The fact that he has sung these songs a thousand times does not make him one iota less expressive or emotional.  It was a beautiful experience to be lost in that.

Resolution: go to more concerts. Even if they are not held on the moon.

Had I finally found love, or at least a truly overzealous stalker? Had one of my more contentious blog postings hit slashdot and elicited a flurry of responses from the internets?

Alas, no - a handful of e-mail addresses for one of my domains were abused as return addresses for spam originating in "SaudiNet, Saudi Telecom Company" - resulting in numerous poorly configured mail servers dutifully sending a flurry of backscatter towards my inbox. Fortunately, my spam filters caught most of it, though still allowing some 1,500 through.

Special bonus points for the likes of bmx.pvnet.cz who correctly identified the original message as spam, blocked its delivery but still felt it was appropriate to send backscatter in my direction. *sigh*