Inside View from Ireland

Leo Laporte Audioboo Maybe

LEO LAPORTE POPPED UP in my Audioboo stream with an update, announcing he may use Audioboo during CES 2012. I hope he does.

Audioboo is the easiest way to publish high-quality social audio. Leo already has 1300 people following him on Audioboo and that means his audio clips automagically drop onto Android, iOS and Symbian handsets along with the Audioboo app on those phones. Leo used AUdioboo while walking about China and Korea a year ago. Even when under the watchful eye of the State security services, he could talk to himself through an earbud and the Audioboo app would upload the audio clip to the cloud with no other work on his part. I listened to most of those clips, including one from the Great Wall that attracted more comments than any other that Leo published. I like Leo's work and hope that an occasional thought from CES drops into my listening flow next week. If not, I've got the roaming micbud of Mark Rock bringing me his CES thoughts.

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Learning from Limerick OpenCoffee 5 January 2011

THE FIRST LIMERICK OPEN COFFEE meets in the Absolute Hotel at 11am on January 5, 2012, and I am looking forward to catching up on conversations that might continue from 2011.

I need a Mindful Productivity t-shirt for my real birthday. But first, I'd like to know how many colours of ink are used in a Mindful Diary. And are any visible under subdued light of an "after dark" session (#LOCCAD).

I'm taking a question to Miriam. "What is the youngest student you've trained with Superhands Baby Sign?

I think James Corbett will be near the coffee dock and I'd like to know MissionV's viewpoint on 3D video. Does it enhance the immersive learning experience? And there's a natural conversation about ICT in Education awaiting Pam O'Brien.

Christmas Letter to Santa Lost in the Chimney

MY KINDLE DELIVERED a story of the best Christmas letter I've seen written in Ireland. It's 100 years old this year, written by Hannah “Annie” Howard, to Santa.

From the Irish Times:

 

"The slightly scorched missive, dating from Christmas Eve 1911, when Hannah was 10 years old, was discovered up a chimney in a house in Terenure, Dublin.

"Sitting at home in Bangor, Co Down, while his wife read out details of the story, Mr Bartlem initially failed to make any connection between himself and the young girl in the story. Even when the address on the letter – Oaklands Terrace, Terenure – was mentioned, he put it down to coincidence.

"It was only when he heard the name Hannah that he realised the girl in the letter was his mother.

Christmas Advice from an American in Ireland

TODAY MARKS MY 16TH Christmas in Ireland and makes me qualified to suggest how a visiting American might ensure the most authentic Christmas experience in the Republic.

Start with a pub with a bar that is no more than four metres from an open fire. You cannot claim to know what Christmas feels like until you feel the warmth of an open fire in an Irish pub. If the pub you choose has a large dog sleeping next to the fire, you have arrived in a special place. If you lick your lips and it tastes of the wind-blown Atlantic breeze, you will be hard-pressed to erase the memory of a wonderfully authentic Irish experience.

I recommend finding a Scottish barman and asking him to recommend the finest Irish whiskey in the house. He should have to stretch to reach the bottle. It often hurts a Scot to recommend an Irish whiskey so you should offer the poor man a pour of his own. If your head still allows you to ask for a second drink, be brave and get some Bailey's Irish Cream, but not the traditional Bailey's. Go for one of the seasonal Bailey's creams.

Googleplus Twitter Parity Achieved

FOR A SHORT PRE-DAWN period accompanied by a little set of numbers, I achieved parity on both the Google Plus and Twitter social networks.

The numbers will vacillate for a fortnight because Twitter has a curious way of shedding and adding to the 4069 people on my timeline. It's slightly different with Google Plus because the numbers don't seem to fluctuate as they do on Twitter. It took me five years to attract 4000 people on Twitter and just over five months to reach the same number of people on Google Plus. And even though Google Plus is my preferred watering hole, I've discovered it's a space not shared by the most prolific tweeple in Ireland. I think it's a matter of social networking fatigue and human behaviour. There's simply no reason to move onto Google Plus if you're happy with the way conversation rambles on Twitter. I have a different perspective because of the diversity online inside Google Plus.

Stephanie Lower on the Memorial Christmas Tree

I PUT STEPHANIE LOWER on a memorial Christmas tree because of the memories the holiday season evokes.

I saw the joy of Christkindlesmarkts through Stephanie's eyes many years ago and I know that if she was still alive, she would enjoy the craic around the Irish Christmas pub scene. In Waterford, a lovely tradition exists where you can place a red bow on a big tree in John Robert's Square. The memory of Stephanie sits on the west side of the big tree, looking out towards New York City where she saw Christmas for the last time in December 2009. As in many remembrances, there is a back story to Stephanie's that causes me to pause whenever the meme of depression passes through my mind. And this year is no different than others--I read or hear about depression more during December than any other time of the year.

Research tells me that the suicide rate is higher during December than any other month. When I first arrived in Ireland in the late 90s, I felt a multitude of things in a country where loneliness was such a contrast to family holiday reunions.

Our Christmas and No Fire

THE BEST CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS pass by without a flashing red truck outside. So I read and heed the Twelve Days of Christmas from the South Tipperary Fire and Rescue Service.

On the 1st day of Christmas - Make sure you test your smoke alarm.

Christmas in Ireland

EVERY DECEMBER, hundreds of people visit my blog in search of pictures of Christmas in Ireland. I've a few hundred of them, shot with cameraphones I've carried around the Republic since 2002.

This year, I'm trying to push the low light limits of the Nokia Lumia 800 so I made a short video clip (below the break) through the dirty windscreen of our car as we watched the town of Cashel turn blue for the holiday season. I've also included some still images of the Dublin Chocolate Factory in the clip, a place worth visiting if you're under the age of ten. Our four-year-old wants to take the "big blue bus" (Aircoach) to Dublin to see the Brown Thomas windows and to walk under the overhead twinkling lights on Grafton Street (that's the shot in the image at left). This year, the local shopfronts have some very lovely windows that stay illuminated during the evening.

It's hard to tell whether the current winds of austerity are affecting the cash tills this Christmas season. However, the multi-story car parks are filling up every Saturday and our favourite spots are always occupied when we travel to Limerick to shop there.

Five Regrets

I NEVER GOT A CHANCE to talk to my dad when he was in hospice care, so I really don't know the regrets he had before he passed away nearly 10 years ago. But I have read what hospice nurses have said about their time caring for people in need.

Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care and eventually wrote both a blog post and and the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I'm one of the first three million people to have read her blog post. She shared the top five regrets people have in their dying days:

Talking About My PLN to OEB11

IN JULY 2011, organisers of Europe's largest e-learning event accepted my workshop on the OEB11 agenda. I had to stand to deliver my presentation because I could not sit to travel to Berlin in person.

The photo at left shows my Dell M2400 laptop, stacked on top of file boxes and art books. The stack makes the laptop's Logitech 910 HD webcam appear at the height of my eyes. I talked to a small group of interested OEB11 conference participants 880 miles away in Berlin. My campus infrastructure prevented me from using Online Meeting Rooms and that meant I could not queue up and serve nine video clips that were part of the workshop. Instead, we used Google Hangouts to connect thoughts. I talked for just under an hour, then answered questions from the Online Educa Berlin participants. We also had questions and comments from Mark Lynch (an LIT student in the Hangout), Gabriel T (joining from his laptop a continent away) and an Irishman walking on the streets of Blanchardstown with his Android phone serving up the audio-video hangout via 3G. As much as I like Hangouts, they bring distractions like audio bleed-through and offer more video latency than the robust Flash Communications Services of Online Meeting Rooms.