Inside View

Fronting the Sunday News

NOTHING UPSETS ME MORE on a Sunday than to discover I've been shortchanged by the crews who deliver newspapers throughout Ireland on the weekend. Their trans-shipment policies are slipshod because when they are pressurised by time or weather, they often fail to provide the centre sections of the newspapers to the local shops. So once again, I'm paying more than €2 for several papers but I'm not getting a fair deal. It's not just a regional thing. This cut-and-run standard of newspaper delivery afflicted me in Dublin when I tried to buy the papers before the cover dates. For those who live more than 30 miles from the main shipment points, it's a crapshoot whether you can get everything you paid to read. I'm tired of giving out to my local newsagent. (I'm headed down to see him in the photo.) I'm going after the main supplier on the grounds of defrauding the public with a service that epitomises Rip Off Ireland. Now, for some of what I spotted in the Sunday newspapers in Ireland today.

Floating Tip

I USED TO FLY over the world's largest rubbish tip. You can see it outside your airplane window when flying from Tokyo to Honolulu. This "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

According to a story in the Independent, the vast expanse of debris - in effect the world's largest rubbish dump - is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Silent LinkedIn Generation

UPDATED 10 FEB 08: Facebook offers one of the best shop windows for people online.

SEVERAL IRISH PUNDITS dismiss LinkedIn for the vampires of Facebook or the herd factor of the latest flavour of social networking. Their dismissive approach papers over their youth. Because many of the social networking gurus strutting their stuff did not use e-mail before 1990. I have a collection of e-mail addresses that stretch back to 1987 and when one of those light up my in-box it means some life event has occurred. I put some of those occurrences on my blog and today I would note another legacy contact who dropped a short note my way--this time via LinkedIn. He runs a data warehouse that serves a region of the US health care system. Like three other long-lost friends this year, he dropped by via LinkedIn, connecting to my profile.

Thinking of Meaty Coffee

WE HAD A productive Limerick OpenCoffee today but one of the reasons I draw that conclusion is that we heard several well-founded criticisms of the Irish OpenCoffee architecture. I am sketching a wire diagram to show what I mean as we add meat to Irish OpenCoffee.

Let's Go to London

FOR CLOSURE ON a blog post from yesterday and because there's a press conference offering a free flight to Heathrow, I'm headed over to England to listen to a Nokia pitch while fondling new pink phones. But first, I'm reading what fellow travelers on Dopplr say about London town. I scraped their comments below the break, and noticed that there's a big surge in visitors to London during March. I wonder what's scheduled. And I wonder if Euan is back from Italy by Monday next week. And I wonder whether I'll have time to stop at the front door of Benjamin Franklin's London flat.

Em Remembered

FOUR YEARS AGO, peacefully and in her sleep, Emma Candy lost her battle with cancer. I knew a day later when I saw a spike in blog traffic from "May I Be Frank," the blog Em wrote during her last year of life.  I first encountered Em, a woman I never saw, by following her 3AM clicks back to her blogroll. She visited in early mornings from her London flat. By reading about her struggles, I learned how terrible it feels to puke black slime and to have your insides suck away your strength.  She died of cancer on Thursday, aged 36 years in London Bridge, about a year after my dad died of the same disease. Early detection of cancer makes the condition more operable and today, Two Tits and A Vote gives a louder voice to an issue that needs to remain on the centre stage in Ireland.  The picture at left was shot by a friend along the Thames at London Bridge following a bout of shoe window shopping. Her friends Meroë, Colin, Linda, Ernest and Rob wrote,  "She was tempted by some furry boots but felt they were a little extravagant. Candygirl was a tough cookie till the end...telling us off for being upset and ordering the nurses around. " Candygirl's blog made her happy during her last months on earth. "She loved getting everyone's posts as I know you loved reading hers. It would be great if people would like to post their thoughts." Knowing how Emma, the virtual Candygirl felt about blogging, makes me realise there's a valuable social connection that we foster when writing online. I'm glad I still have the opportunity to read what Emma was thinking--Six Apart graciously permit her blog to remain intact--and I often wonder if anything I wrote might have entertained her, especially during her last few weeks. Her friends said, "She had talked about you when I saw she had linked to your blog. We like the way you hammer out the facts like news (but probably more truthful). We were both interested in the same things you are and both worked in this so-called "high-tech" world." The torch has been passed, burning with Em's lovely memory.

---

From her friends -- "Goodbye Candygirl" on February 5, 2004. And goodbye from fellow courseware developers.
Emma Candy -- "I dream of popsicles. I dream of popsicles." January 26, 2004.
Emma Candy -- "Tonight and every night" January 26, 2004.
Emma Candy -- "Attachments" January 25, 2004.
Emma Candy -- "54.50kg" January 11, 2004.
Bonus Link: Emma Candy in her ID cards.

x_ref125mw obit

Those Irish Roads

ONCE AGAIN, IRISH mainstream media joins the conspiracy to blame inert roads for the actions of high-speed drivers. "A horrific 24-hour period on the roads over the weekend save seven people killed in three smashes" says the front page story in the Irish Examiner today. And although the bent metal, engine ripped out of the car, and flattened roof suggest a high-energy impact, no one dares suggest that the vehicle involved in the fatal accident might have been traveling above the posted speed limit. And no commentator, even when armed with photo-documentary evidence, is willing to speculate that the inicident driver might have been traveling too fast for conditions. Hours later, the talk show hosts get streams of text messages and callers berating the condition of Irish roads. "You get caught behind an articulated lorry and when the road straightens out, you're sometimes pressed into overtaking when the conditions aren't perfect." Right. Pressurised into pulling out on a narrow road, these drivers feel compelled to accept the risk of meeting me head-on while traveling Ireland's paved cow trails. A week does not pass by without someone approaching me driving with one set of wheels either on the centre line or with wheels over on my side of the road. A fortnight does not pass without someone with a Cork-registered car driving up my tailpipe on a national road, pedal to the metal and speedometer pegged at least 40 kph over the posted limit. These behaviours are part of the collision culture in 21st century Ireland, a culture guaranteed to produce bent metal and broken hearts across the country until someone gets serious about making people who drive carelessly learn the beauty of restraint. In some corners of the world, you can experience this beauty while walking to work when your driving license is revoked. But in Ireland, it's up to the driver to surrender his license if he exceeds 12 penalty points. All the traffic regulations can do is direct a driver to stop driving. The driver has to turn in his documents and serve out is driving suspension in a self-nominated way. And that carefree attitude about safe driving is one reason Irish car insurance costs so much and why high-speed driving fatalities will litter the Irish landscape for years to come.

---

Stephen Rogers -- "Roads claim seven victims in 24 hours" on the front page of the Irish Examiner, 4 February 2008.
Kathryn Hayes, Jimmy Woulfe and John Fallon -- "Friends on way to rugby match killed in head-on crash" in the News section of the Irish Examiner, 4 February 2008.
Kieran Keohane and Carmen Kuhling -- The Collision Culture ISBN 978-1904148616

x_ref125mc

Superbowl Video

IT'S SUPERBOWL SUNDAY again and my EPG says "this telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." I'm watching the action since it's a Day of Obligation in my world and I'm sure that merely posting this this copyright warning on my blog to get a little bounce from the trademark wardens. In the past, the copyright bots have sniffed out pirate videos and generated a Takedown Notice under the DMCA. I could probably increase my visibility by including a few logos.

---

x_ref125mw

Review of Trend Micro Internet Security

Trend Micro Internet Security. This venerable program detects threats even when throttled back down to its quietest level of watchfulness. When allowed to inspect everything, Trend Micro can effectively block all internet access, making it a handy little internet gateway as well. It flagged a phishing problem related to my online bank account (below).

Snowy and Windy Sunday News

OUTSIDE MY WINDOW a winter storm pelts the side of my home as a brown river of eroded silt flows behind me (seated in chair at left) for 300 meters down the street and into a storm drain where it will certainly clog the drainage system and ensure we have another week of an interpretive pond in the middle of Golden Road. Modified cars blow by, some boots covered with snow, some driven by unemployed plasterers. That's Ireland of the Builders, a country hanging up its reflective vests and reducing its consumption of Breakfast Rolls as the economy downshifts and settles into watching Ireland achieve well below its skills on the world rugby stage. But you won't find all of those stories on the front pages of the Sunday newspapers here, although ten different ideas pique my interest and reverberate inside the titles I buy.