PhD Feelings

Why is it that its either one of these images that are best evoked when it comes to my PhD ?


For more visual delights from the Gothic Nightmares exhibition at the Tate which is showcasing the work of Henry Fuseli and William Blake as they describe it "in the context of the Gothic – the taste for fantastic and supernatural themes which dominated British culture from around 1770 to 1830". Its running from the 15 February to the 1st of May so if you're in London, this is a stop to add to your visit.

Scully rejoins the FG fold

The Mayor of Limerick, Cllr. Diarmuid Scully is back into the Fine Gael fold according to today's Limerick Leader (see jpg or pdf).

UL YFG candidates take gold

The UL branch was showing a large growth in its powerbase this conference with 4 UL or ex-UL YFG members being elected to the national executive. The top job was landed by Lizzy Munnelly 78.1% to Fitzpatrick 21.9%, Barry Walsh had a close call for vice president but scraped ahead, Catriona Burke was unopposed for Euro South and Liam made the panel election. A very successful election and they're all top notch people so looks like they'll be some good UL touches to the YFG general election strategy.

Enda's Speech

Enda's Speech
Originally uploaded by bluepelican.

Enda's first act was to call on a motion of condomnation of the events in Dublin.



The national language is owned by all and Enda's speech touched on many of his earlier releases on this topic. "More than ever we need an open debate on it, Find Gael will hold a conference on March 11th to debate this topic with speakers from national, international and linguistic fields. The introduction of scales of competency on the language is one of Fine Gael's suggestions for this debate".



Enda touched on the issue of trust on the economy, the plan to reign in Stealth taxes, public trust of ministers who serve the people not themselves. The buck will stop on the desk of the minister. Government can deal with the issues of competition and the troubled waters of international world changes.



Fine Gael's message is clear and will be heard by the electrate. Effective and responsible leadership was another keystone of the speech. The choices of the people are not for the next election but for the next generation.

Warm up to Enda

Warm up to Enda
Originally uploaded by bluepelican.

Hearing about the events in O'connell street, its a shock and its resonating in the speeches this afternoon. We had very serious law and order stances but with an open balanced regard for the culture and opinions of all people in this state. Its a destruction of all true nationalistic principles to let what's happening in Dublin occur. The narrow viewpoint of other parties who pay lip service to true principles is shown today with the dark spectre that hangs over O'Connell street today.

Saturday At YFG Conference

Saturday At YFG Conference
Originally uploaded by bluepelican.

O'Regan and Sheenan enjoying the morning coverage at the Young Fine Gael national conference. Motions varied from Judical reform, Globalisation, Bullying to Health and Food Safety. It was a slightly tamer set of motion when compared to last year but still important. The bullying in secondary schools perhaps hints at the teaching roots of the current president. The main event today is the party leader's speech at 16:00 with rumors of Enda dropping a new part of our Irish language policy. More to follow.

Lectures, Projects and stress

Its a bit mad here with 4 weeks to a serious application for the project I'm on with loads of integration underway with all that entails.

I'm also up for Mikael's Interactive Media lectures this week - so we have Affordances, Gestalts, Mappings, Semiotics and the relevant models from HCI and ID to frame everything in the proper context.

A book recommendation, "Micro ISV - From Vision to Reality", if you ever thought or would like to sell software as a single developer or small company, read this book. Its brillant, it offers a wide coverage from blogging for customers, to source control, to planning your software as well as the necessary legal steps in several countries where you could setup a business. Its a hybrid startup business book with a lot of interviews from people in the trenches living the life described here. It has a good historical basis for where shareware came from and how this kind of development is more than possible today with all the nuts and bolts you'll need to get started. It isn't the bible on source control or project planning and does sometimes offer a wider rather than deeper view on the topics but for the audience its being pitched at it is a perfect fit.

Inhabitat have some cool stuff today with the treehouse I always wanted, one solution to cracked pavements. I only wish look at WorldChanging that the Irish government could think about a decent study on the future of infrastructure in the large scale of things but that won't happen with our absent minded government. Another interesting article is the hidden world of the military world often divided from civil society by fences and prohibitive signs.

As its Thursday, why not ?

Free Speech

See here for making the banner above the corner image on your pages. Image from http://www.supportdenmark.com/.



Image from http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com/.

Reading all the Pope's Children and thinking about those spineless comments from our president Mary McAleese on the whole cartoon affair.

I think these two quotes from Samuel Adams are apt,
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your consul, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget ye were our ountrymen."

and

"The Love of Liberty is interwoven in the Soul of Man. "So it is in that of a Wolf;" However irrational, ungenerous, and unsocial the love of liberty may be in a rude Savage, he is capable of being enlightned by Experience, Reflection, Education, and civil, and Political Institutions. But the Nature of the Wolf is, and ever will be confined to running in the forest to satisfy his hunger, and his brutal appetites; the Dog is inclined in a more easy way to seek his living, and fattens his sides with what comes from his masters kitchen."

It's just a pity, we've decided to be the dog and follow the ideal of transnational hiberian middlemen without morals or comprises to some standards of integrity.

Wednesday Ramblings

Starting light and funny we have a 100 years of music using the London Underground map and the Interactive Tartan weaver. Two good podcasts over at ITConversations on Advanced Audio Editing Techniques and What Do We Know - The Scandal of Prediction. Speaking of scandal's Wikinews have used their special access to give us an update on those wikipedia rewritings over at the US Senate.

As I'm currently having lots of fun writing XCode apps here is a useful one, on using PackageMaker to create your installers for Mac OS X.

Big brother is watching. Really watching. So we got DemocracyNOW's interview (MP3) of Robert O'Harrow, writer of the book "No Place to Hide", which talks about the changes since the Patriot bill and the whole post 9/11 data collection and mining of private data by technology companies and by government anti-terror initiatives.

On a less creepy note we have two interesting peaks from the fringe getting mainstream media coverage with an interview of two Canadian Singularitarians ( and the whole bit on a friendly, superhuman intelligence etc ) and the Guardian talking about Transhumanism. As well as more on NGO in a box, which I've mentioned before but is now gearing up to finish its stage two.

Technologies at the edge

A few random bits from the ether today. We've got the RFID Zapper (bets on how long before it starts hitting the annoying neighbours and their bin ???). On a more useful note we have Bill Clementson's computer keyboard and desktop setup for preventing / reducing RSI, which I think I might be convinced to part a few euros for.

I'm really sick of those tacky timber frame houses they keep putting up around, if only they could be a little more creative I might be convinced about them but probably not. Also from Inhabit we've got how-to turn a parking space into a park. Hhhhmm a break for coffee I think ....

Annette's coffee is sure strong .... ;-)

A interesting project using GPS to create narrative geodocumentary to represent the dairy trade between Latvia and the Netherlands. On the podcast front from ITConversations we got the secrets behind Rails by David Heinemeier Hansson, Hiring Techies and Nerds by Johanna Rothman and Roy Osherove which leads nicely to .....

Robert Trivers on What Do We Know which is a talk about the evolutionary basis of deception which links nicely to how congressional staffers in the US are rewriting Wikipedia and other online repositories. The example of Representative (Rep) Marty Meehan staff wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge and information regarding his campaign budget was given in the Lowell Sun's article.