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land of the giants
People might think there is no cross-over between geeks and fashionistas, but those stuffy stereotypes are vanishing. We’re all digital and cool these days. By Irish standards I’m almost a giantess, even though I’m not quite 6 feet in my bare feet. Most people see me wearing some kind of heeled shoe so generally I’m hitting into the six footer territory. Behold my new sandals, made by FLY London, in which I become even taller than normal. When I was younger I used to try to lessen my height. Now I embrace my tallness and am not afraid of heels any more (well, I’m not talking about stilettos, which are…
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by the light that never goes out
Last night I made the mistake of starting the update process on my Android phone rather late in the evening, or early in the morning depending on your point of view. It meant I had to leave my laptop and phone whirring away by the bed for a while as Martin and I were settling down for the night, and as a joke I warbled a couple of bars of “By the Light of the Silvery Laptop”. Inevitably, this resulted in a search on my newly-updated phone of YouTube videos for the original ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon‘, which is lyrically quite appropriate for playing in bed. Except,…
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everything is amazing
I’ve been meaning for some time to link to this video of comedian Louis C.K. when he appeared on Conan O’Brien Show in 2009. He discusses how ‘Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy’, which is a hilarious commentary on how fantastic technology is today, and yet how often people spend time bemoaning the tiny inconveniences it brings. It’s a good reality check, because I’m not immune from being irritated at how long it takes for a device to boot up, or the extra seconds for a web page to load (of course if I didn’t have a million tabs open in my multiple browser windows the computer might…
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sky confetti
Just before I landed last night Galway threw down some sky confetti to celebrate my return, which was a lovely thought but unnecessary. As we were in our final approach the plane had to pull up as the runway failed its ‘braking test’, and we soared back into the night skies. I admired the lights of Galway and pondered how they were going to help the runway pass its test again. I assumed there was a mighty grind session, or at least grit scattered about. It seemed to work as the plane was able to stop so we could disembark. Much to my surprise my bag was already waiting for…
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Seamus Online
Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, is giving a reading today at 1.05pm at the National Gallery in Dublin, organised by Poetry Ireland. Fear not, the event is being broadcast live over the Internet, so you can watch and listen from anywhere in the world. At times like this I must add: technology rocks!
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faster than the speed of bus
We live in a fast-paced world. Yesterday morning, while finishing up work before my trip to Dublin, I received an email query from Alison Flood, a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian. She wanted my opinion about the exclusion of women from the BFS In Conversation interview collection, and how the situation played out. I offered an assessment, and emailed it to her. Then, I scrambled to complete my tasks and get to the coach station. Yes, I’ve started taking a bus to Dublin partly because of the free Wi-Fi. (There is nothing quite as marvelous as using a bus’s inbuilt wireless system to connect to the world as…
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Zen and the art of upgrading
It’s funny how attached we become to objects. Generally, I’m not the kind of person who gets upset at the loss of things — they are just things after all — but my geeky side adores products that combine form and function in a pleasing whole. While at the gym during the week I started my Creative Zen V Plus MP3 player, as I always do at the beginning of my workout. By accident I turned on the recording function, attempted to stop it, didn’t do that so well, so I just shut down the Zen instead, planning to re-start it. Alas, alack, my Zen crashed. There is an appropriate…
