Irish Blog Awards

Jan 31, 2008 by John    2 Comments    Posted under: blogging

That time of year again. The Irish Blog Awards. I went last year because The Missus was nominated for best personal blog, as she is again this year (well, she’s on the long list), congratumalations. It was a good laugh last year, no one one took it very seriously, and they seemed like a really good bunch of people. Was kind of the icing the cake for me to decide blogging.

The long lists are now out. One of the more interesting lists of nominations is best post. My favourite’s so far are the most exclusive prison cell in the world and Top 5 Scary Moments – #1. At the time, I can remember enjoying Fuck off Katy French, and she did.

Glad to see everyone I nominated on various lists including The menace.com for best design blog. The rest are kind of usual suspects, so I won’t mention them all.

Ooh look, I’m at the bottom of the very long long list of best newcomers, ha!

Amusing blog stuff in newspapers this week

Jan 28, 2008 by John    No Comments    Posted under: blogging, funnee

There have been a couple of amusing articles in the papers this week about blogs that I read. First of all, just who hasn’t written about Pat Kenny being a total plank? Grandad’s post about the exact same clip a while ago was pretty funny. Graham Linehan’s Why That’s Delightful blog isn’t much different . Albeit comic genius that he is, his blog is still fairly down to earth… waffling away like the rest of us about random stuff. So I think it’s hilarious to see such a po-faced article in the Independent about “Chat kingKenny letting the country down” quoting the post in detail.

Limmy’s show was one of the best at last year’s Fringe. And I really enjoyed his ‘magic pen sketch’. Have a look at the recorded version before reading on…

Then, in this week’s Sunday Mail, there’s an article about the clip. And it turns out, the newsreader really was doing a magic trick on the sly. Hilarious! Original Pengate post.

Get your rosaries off my ovaries

Jan 22, 2008 by John    3 Comments    Posted under: atheism, travel

I had to walk past this prolife march in San Francisco last Saturday. It went on and on and on. Its bad enough walking by the few no lifers outside the GPO but there were thousands of people in this march. *Scary*. Sickening. They mostly sang hymns and looked a bit blank. I walked by giving them the thumbs down. Thought I was alone at first but then crowds of the opposition came along the side on a path but very much in the minority… appropriately enough seeing as they were mostly lesbians, punks and Athiests. Saw a couple of banners for www.eastbayatheists.org. Not a great site unfortunately.

Incidentally I’ve been reading Graham Linehan’s blog lately. Pretty good. Fairly amusing, random web stuff and other bits and pieces, and he seems to be a flaming Atheist too. Cool!

Views from above

Jan 16, 2008 by John    No Comments    Posted under: random, waffle

How come you hear people going on about everyday views, like the view of Killiney bay from the dart, yet no one ever talks about the absolutely amazing views you often see from a plane. I sometimes think everyone tries to be too grown up. You hear kids on planes going “Wow – look at all the clouds!” while the all-so-grown-up folk snort and tut at their unsophisticated excitement. Planks.

I’m currently botched up in a hotel room for one week only, in the middle of not very much in Sunnyvale California. The eagerly awaited peace and quiet isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Aaaaaanywaaaaay… on the flight over, passing above Greenland, I saw the most breathtaking views I’ve ever seen. Miles and miles and miles of snow covered mountains, seas full of icebergs, and lands covered in pure undriven snow, for as far as you could see. I spent ages gazing out the window trying to spot a polar bear. Which was ridicilous. As it would have been the size of a teeny weeny freckle from that height. A teeny weeny white freckle on white snow. Didn’t stop me from looking. Especially when the alternative was a movie as dull as ‘Shoot Em up’.

I’ve had a look for other people’s photos and here’s what I found. Needless to say a photo of an amazing view captures about as much as a movie of a book. But if you look at them very closely, you might just see a polar bear standing on a block of ice eating a mint.

Bananal Antbird

Jan 16, 2008 by John    3 Comments    Posted under: art, design

I like making images. Was thinking of doing an image-a-week kinda thing. Here’s a good excuse for some image-making. I saw this idea on (the gorgeously designed) Sabrinadent.com recently but Grandad sent out an open invitation to join in. The idea is that you go to three different random link generators to get your band title, album title and album photo, then go makey makey.

Here’s the three random links:
• Go here. The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
• Go here. The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
• Go here. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

I got very lucky landing on that great photo and the title fits in by chance but the album title makes no sense whatsover!