Inside View

Jeanette Doyle's Eurojet Art

DUBLIN -- Several months ago, I enjoyed a preview of Jeanette Doyle's Eurojet work before its current placement in the Royal Hibernian Academy. Doyle's work perfectly captures the cult of celebrity. Her small canvases on the walls of Studio Six where I saw them in April and they steal the Eurojet Futures show now. In The Sunday Times Culture, Cristin Leach agrees.

Packing up Kodak moments

KILKENNY -- Most of this weekend involved packing boxes for our move from Kilkenny and throughout the sifting and shifting process I thumbed through dozens of Kodak moments that I scanned into Photoshop album. Some of them also went to my Flickr photostream but most went from an unfiled box to a filed digital collection.

I felt a little irony in my process of throwing away around 100 Kodak prints the same week that Kodak laid off 10,000 workers. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic. My first digital camera was a Kodak DC-240. Now the only film camera in my life is an artefact.

Hot blog

ROBOT WISDOM -- Jorn Barger fingers The Raw Feed as his "hot blog" of the week. It's a good find.

Top of the feed: Google Hybrid Maps and hacks to get more sex in Sims.

---

Jorn Barger writes Robot Wisdom.
Mike's List has been "chronicling technology's lunatic fringe since 1997"

x_ref1256

Your cameraphone and the Met

POLICE.uk -- British police have set up a website where they appeal to the public to send in "any photographs, video footage, or mobile phone images" taken at the scenes of the July 7 and July 21 attacks. The site includes an online form for uploading images and a number for sending in MMS images.

Perhaps you should send your images there before Sky.

---

Met -- Police appeal for images
Technorati -- "London Bombings"

x_ref125mc

Reinventing Radio

IT CONVERSATIONS -- I've spotted several very engaging discussions of Reinventing Radio, including a presentation from the Emerging Technology Conference. Biddulph, Coates, Hammond, and Webb explain how listeners use radio in various ways. Tom Coates wrote a PDF that lays down the main points.

McDowell curtails due process

EXAMINER -- Two inches of newsprint above the front page fold of the Irish Examiner makes simple reading for people today. Just read the headline: "Last week, Michael McDowell gave the CIA the power to interrogate you in secret and see your bank details--and you may not have even broken Irish law". This front page article is the only public discussion of the bilateral instrument between Ireland and the United States. It raises questions about protections for the rights of individuals.

You might not appreciate the long reach of US law unless you have been held inside a wooden box, given sleeping accommodation that amounts to no more than a horse blanket on concrete, or been flown across the ocean in an unheated windowless plane. These are common ways used by those who transport detainees for the CIA today. Goverments receive transport requests in channels (police-to-police) and may not know they are acting in the interest of intelligence specialists. Little details like joint interrogation and landing rights normally get sorted in channels--that means police-to-police or embassy-to-host government. Those processing the requests don't know the real players who are asking for permissions. I can speak from first-hand experience as a transport co-ordinator and as an aircraft commander who spirited people from the sovereign territory of several nations. These movements fall outside the civilised methods used by the Irish government to repatriate asylum seekers. The Irish government is now complicit in executing these movements. It all happened without debate. Michael McDowell certainly doesn't agree with this, as he explains during an interview with RTE. I don't see things the same way and that's because I was on the inside looking out. Any formal process that lubricates the detention and investigation of citizens is one step removed from judicial restraint. The treaty lacks clarity and transparency. It is endorsed by the minister without debate. It removes restraints and philosophically leads down a path of eroded personal liberties.

Hot or Not on Maps

FROZEN BEAR has glued together a way to display "Hot or Not" people with their zip codes, thanks to Google Maps and the Hot or Not API.

---

x_ref125ws

Use Google Maps to Escape Fines

GEAR LIVE -- So you're in court and discover a weak Wi-Fi connection that you can use to fly over to Google Maps. Then you show the judge a Google map image with road markings that proves you're innocent. It happened in court already--saving the defendant $150 and 50 points--and with a little more OpenEir and confluence mapping of Ireland, we might be able to read about the same success story in an Irish courtroom too. Edwin explains what he did:

RIP James "Scotty" Doohan

The first Scottish voice I ever heard died today. Actor James Doohan, better known as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the chief engineer on the Star Trek spaceship USS Enterprise,  passed away. He leaves behind a legacy of catch phrases, including "I dannae if she can take any more, Captain!" and "Beam me up, Scotty!" I cannot fix a jammed machine without drawing on Doohan's inspiration. I was one of millions of viewers who learned that it was okay for men to love their technology because Scotty loved his Enterprise. He knew her like the back of his hand--and even that metphor earned him a cinema moment. He was idolised by Trekkies and he enjoyed fan gatherings where he would often sing for crowds.  Doohan was among the first of "Star Trek's" accidental icons to realize that it was better to embrace that universe than resist it. He had too--he was trapped in a cult figure's body which made it nigh impossible to find other work.

Happy Blogiversary Gavin

GAVINSBLOG -- Light three candles Pull three pints for Gavin Sheridan because today is the third anniversary of his first blogging post. I remember long conversations with Gavin around the time he was figuring out ways to get Slashdotted--and his ideas normally worked! But I think he generated an even greater splash when he forged out and wrote incisive things that became part of the leading edge of discussion--stuff like the baseless claims of WMD in Iraq, his investigation of author John Gray and several other items that would have filled pages of weekend Irish magazines. It's good to see Gavin Sheridan on the speaker's circuit whenever Irish radio or television covers the topic. We can all learn from the stories he shares.