Inside View from Ireland

McDonagh Junction

YOU CANNOT WALK along the old train platform at the Kilkenny Railway Station without crunching glass underfoot. Vandals have trashed the fixtures that once served as a ticketing office and waiting area. All this will get a facelift if Chesterbridge Developments starts its  EUR 100m project at the Railway Station Site. The ambitious plans call for an anchor store, 40 retail units, a 120 bedroom hotel, office space and 138 residential units. The project will give a new lease of life to the Goods Shed and former Kilkenny Work House on Hebron Road.

---

Sent mail2blog by Nokia 9210i O2 TypePad service from McDonagh Station.

x_ref267

Spam attacking my filters

KILKENNY -- I am sure most of my work colleagues do not understand why I don't respond to them. They might not experience the level of spam attacks that I'm feeling. At the moment, no more than 1 out of 20 legitimate e-mails are making it to my in-box. I have restarted a practise of sending hard copy letters to most people involved in projects with me. That adds two weeks on to every timeline since many of those letters are pigeonholed in mailboxes that are checked no more frequently than once a week.

The latest setback to my e-mail comes as one of the Spam Lists used by SmarterMail for spam and content filtering is currently undergoing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. This causes many of my legitimate emails to be blocked or sent to Spam folders created within SmarterMail.

I never thought e-mail could become so unreliable. I hope Instant Messaging is never compromised in such a fashion.

---

Sent from The Rivercourt Hotel, Kilkenny, as mail2blog using Nokia 9210i O2 TypePad services.
Adam Curry works around the spam problem by transmitting in the blind via RSS.
x_ref1482

Hyperlinks and FOI

TECHNO-CULTURE -- Alerted by Karlin Lillington's pointer to the Department of Communication's policy of identifying all Freedom of Information (FOI) requests on the Web, I have decided to make a FOI request that is heavily laced with hyperlinks. I'm curious to see whether the department will retain the links as it posts the FOI details on its website and whether they're published as active links. The way I figure, the more links to an item the merrier and the government isn't charging such a burdensome fee to get the link into its domain.

I do think the whole idea of posting each citizen query to the Web is burdensome. That practise would dampen many requests as the inquirers might not want their names, address and query flashed about on an international website for all many of voyeurs to see. I get enough spam through the letter box, fax machine, e-mail and mobile phone without the government stoking the fire.

---

Karlin Lillington: "Openess and transparency only go in one direction" in The Irish Times, 22 August 2003.
x_ref261519

History flow

HERE IS A logical and colour-coded way of viewing Wikis and other collaborative documents during their continual evolution. An essay may undergo dozens of revisions; source code for a computer program may undergo thousands. And as online collaboration becomes increasingly common, we see more and more ever-evolving group-authored texts. IBM's researchers have fielded a preliminary report on a simple visual technique, history flow, that provides a clear view of complex records of contributions and collaboration.

Much of the research focuses on wikis -- web sites that are freely editable by anyone who visits them. This technology was invented by Ward Cunningham in 1995 (Wiki Wiki Web). The idea behind such sites is to create truly communal repositories of knowledge where the contribution cost is so low as to allow novice and expert users alike to act as active members of a community. This “open editing” paradigm is a powerful and, sometimes, problematic venue for community collaboration as it invites both valuable contributions and flat out vandalism.

---

"Wiki-wiki" means "quick" in the Hawaiian language.
Image from IBM -- "History Flow: visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors"
Joi Ito -- "History Flow"

x_ref26121 x_ref153 x_ref125mw

What with Wi-Fi power and parabolic antennas

CLONMEL HOTSPOT -- Sometimes you have to put things in perspective, like in the area of wireless connectivity. We finished a nice job of shooting traditional Irish music over 802.11b last week in support of the Clonmel Fleadh. Having done all that, it's all the more remarkable to know that researchers in San Diego, working with move than 100 puny milliwatts of power, have bounced a 72-mile wireless hop between San Diego and San Clemente Island. The link uses hopped-up 802.11b WLAN gear, two foot parabolic antennas, and operates at the maximum allowed 1-watt output.

---

Bob Brewin -- "San Diego wireless net installs 72-mile, 2.4-GHz link"
HPWREN News -- "HPWREN Stretches 72 Miles from the Coast to Support Research Site on San Clemente Island"

x_ref125ws

ColdFusion and CrystalTech

CRYSTAL TECH -- One of the reasons I use CrystalTech is because Kevin Greene (the original Irish Webdev) told me that it routinely upgrades its services. It now has ColdFusion MX 6.1 running on its system.

ColdFusion 6.1 is practically a new build of ColdFusion. Macromedia has taken great pains to improve the performance, and feature set, of ColdFusion MX. From a development standpoint, 6.1 offers improved integration with Java and easier integration with XML. From a server administration standpoint, 6.1 offers the ability to run separate instances of J2EE on a server, allowing administrators to "pool" sites (i.e. run several sites in separate pools, so that one site does not affect the entire server, only those sites within its own pool). This, in and of itself, will improve server performance, stability and speed and maximize the effectiveness of MX in the shared environment.

---

Known problems are discussed on the Macromedia site.
ColdFusion powers Ireland's best online dating site.
Sent mail2blog by Nokia 9210i O2 TypePad service abord Kilsheelan, County Tipperary.
x_ref143db

Irish immigration policy

INDEPENDENT -- The Irish government plans to introduce a formal immigration policy by April 2004 and I don't think it will have John Robb's suggested three-year work permit option in it. At present, non-EU citizens like me can come to Ireland only on work permits or visas. These do not give permanent rights of employment or residence. As I discovered, this temporary status can lead to prison. I would llke better treatment.

---

John Robb -- "More thinking about immigration"
John Ihle -- "A threat to national security"
Brendan Keenan -- "Formal Irish immigration policy likely during 2004" in The Irish Independent, 28 August 2003.
Bernie Goldbach -- "Refused leave to land in Ireland" on 21 September 2002.
Sent mail2blog by Nokia 9210i O2 Typepad service aboard Bus Eireann in Callan, County Kilkenny.
x_ref26121 x_ref350 x_ref19

Visiting Inistioge

KILKENNY -- If there's an event where you benefit from listening more from conversing, it's a walk with the Kilkenny Archaeological Society. It meets with Michael Tennyson at 3PM on Sunday 31 August 2003 in the Inistioge Square.

Other events are running during Heritage Week, 7-14 Sep 03.

• Free guided tours of Dunmore Caves with Mary Whearty +3535667726
• Free guided tours of Kilkenny Castle from 1030 to 1730 on 7 and 14 September.
• Guided tour of 56 acres of Kiklkenny Castle Park on Sunday 7 September with Donal Croghan, starting at the Rose Garden at 3PM.
• Guided nature walk of Newpark Fen, leaving from the duck feeding area at 3PM on Sunday 7 September.
• Guided tour of St Canice's Cathedral at 4PM on 13 September with Naomi Baez +3535664971
• Guided tour of Woodstock Gardens on Sunday 14 September from 1430 with Claire Murphy +353567794000

---

Photos shot in Inistioge during the Vintage Auto Fair.
Sent from the Kilkenny Open Market as mail2blog with Nokia 9210i O2 TypePad service.
x_ref19

Summertime Ice Cream Memory

STANDING IN THE RELATIVE QUIET of a beat-up train station in Kilkenny, I will never forget the stunned silence that wrapped around my ice cream stand 15 years ago during Ramstein Flugtag 1988. I watched the formation in the shot at left maneuver towards me and it looked like another spectacular "pierce the heart" display. It didn't go well. Among the 70 who died was a young girl whose last taste was a lick of American chocolate ice cream that I served her. I no longer eat chocolate ice cream cones because of that searing memory.

---

Sent from McDonagh Station, Kilkenny, Ireland using mail2blog Nokia 9210i O2 TypePad services for irishblogs

x_ref26121

Web Apprentices in training

CLONMEL HOTSPOT -- We are burrowing inside some new course material that promises to produce better Web Apprentices with complementary skillsets as microcontent developers.

---

Using Moodle and Tipperary Institute web services.
x_ref125