James Galvin

Any Irish bloggers hosted on Blacknight, be warned that they have decided to clamp down on the issue of servers getting overloaded by popularity surges on Wordpress-based sites.

As far as I can tell, Blacknight have always been good on traffic spikes, and whenever some guy gets dugg or stumbled it was well handled. Michele recommends using a different blogging platform like Movable Type, or else installing a cache plugin. One thing to note - I had Wordpress wp-cache plugin enabled in my installation for a long time, even upgraded it when there were new versions. Didn’t realise that this isn’t enough, and I had to edit a line in the wp-config.php to actually activate the caching.

As per our Acceptable-Usage Policy, we might have to suspend any site that causes issues like this. Putting it simply - if you’re not being a considerate neighbour we might have to shut you down until you behave.

This is definitely a fair policy, but Michele, I hope I don’t need to point out what is wrong with this sentence from a “how to win friends an influence customers” perspective.

Any Django heads should scoot over to Django People, a new community website centered around the popular Python web framework. Nice site - I love how your location is shown in a strip of Google maps on your profile page. For example, my profile (here) has a ~100px high strip of Cork City extending as far west as Dripsey and east to Barryscourt on my wide 1440×900 resolution. Apparently I’m 1 mile away from John Handelaar and 0 miles away from a guy called Dan, and that’s about all the Django guys in the immediate area for now (I know there are more than that!) Great use of Google Maps, and overall a very nice resource for Django, it will be a huge benefit to anyone looking for a local freelancer.

For some reason probably known to everyone except me, months will pass with no significant Irish tech-related events, then a bunch of them come together at once. Like Bus Éireann, if you’re lucky. Looks like the end of Feb/early March is one of the hotspots this year - Web2Ireland has all the latest news on upcoming events in Ireland. It might be difficult for me to pick and choose which [un?]conferences to attend. I’m considering Creative Camp (well done on the new website) in Kilkenny Castle. I suppose Blog Talk will have to be on the list, seeing as it’s being held in Cork.

If it’s not bad enough that I’m attending a conference about blogging, well I have to admit to skulking in the shadows of the social media darkside this month, caught in the maelstrom of Twitter. Never thought I’d get hooked on it, I always assumed it was just a big club full of narcissistic attention-whores who liked to bash Robert Scoble in 140 characters or less. Good for tracking events like the Irish election. It made more sense to have everyone migrate over to the technically superior Jaiku.

I was going to write a big long post apologising for having doubted Twitter, trying to convey what is so great about it, and to get a few more Irish people using it. But Damien has summed up enough just now on his blog. If it’s all about the conversation, there is no doubt that Jaiku has failed, there is no buzz. Also, there is something superior about the non-linear flow of conversation on Twitter - while it is more difficult to accurately follow what’s going on, it is easier to dip in and dip out with the added advantage of not having to read through a string of boring posts like a forum (chez Jaiku). I can’t help feeling that reading in 140 character chunks is somehow affecting my brain - not just the way I read and write but the way I talk and think. Who knows what evolution is going to throw up in a few decades if we keep this restriction.

All Twitter needs now is more normal people; dentists, fishermen, students, accountants… anything other than the same old “early adopters” that you see popping up everywhere droning on about the latest additions to the Facebook API. It will be great when there are hundreds of Cork people bopping around in the Twittisphere spewing their thoughts on Munster rugby or traffic on the South Link. My profile is here (jgalvin) so add me and I’ll reciprocate (as long as you’re not a bot or a spammer or something).

On a completely different note - kudos to all involved at Two Tits and a Vote, an armchair campaign to advocate for better women’s health care in Ireland. Starting with postcards to Mary Harney.

I used to think that it wouldn’t matter if my bank details got leaked, because that would only enable people to put money in to my account, and not take it out. A friend of mine who worked in a bank told me it is not quite so straightforward, and advised me not to broadcast my personal details on the internet. This is funny.

TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column.

The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people’s personal details on two computer discs.

He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.

But Clarkson admitted he was “wrong” after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.

Inspired by Adam’s repository of silly domain names (verbo.se, foot.ie, explic.it, …) and others like pix.ie, I am now the proud owner of galv.in. Unfortunately jam.es was not available.

It must be the laziest day of the year. I hooked up the Nintendo Wii and downloaded a few old NES games:

• Excite Bike

  Browsing through the titles, I was hit by nostalgia for the excite bike theme tune. Turns out the game is not very exciting. Don’t think I played it much to begin with. Waste of credits.

  

• Megaman

  I couldn’t believe it - I beat Megaman from start to finish in under 2 hours. How could I have spent weeks (months?) struggling with this game as a nine year old. Today I beat Iceman without losing a life! I always assumed that kids were as good if not better than adults at console games, but I must have spent every waking hour playing the NES in 1988-1991 and still I would die time after time trying to get past the first part of Gutsman’s level. I confess, I did cheat twice in the final stages just like in the old days (keep pausing and unpausing really quickly to do extra damage), just to save a bit of time.

  

• Punchout

  What a classic - I was disappointed that they didn’t have Super Punchout in the Wii store, since that is even better than the original. Can’t believe I lost to Piston Honda…

  

• Ice Hockey

  I think back to all the fun I had playing this at my friends house. Choosing your team - a mixture of fat guys for strength and skinny guys for speed. Not quite as good as I remembered.

  

• Zelda II

  Still one of the greatest games of all time. Can’t wait to get back into this one. Didn’t have time to play it today, because Zelda always requires commitment. Maybe, like Megaman, the game will be much easier this time around. It feels a bit weird playing Zelda II on the Wii when I never even made it out of the village in the current Wii version.

  

Via Fence I found this preview for the new Batman movie: “The Dark Knight“. Looks really promising - very much a follow-up to Batman Begins as opposed to “a new Batman movie”. I was saying just yesterday how much I love the atmosphere in the films directed by Christopher Nolan, and how great Christian Bale was in The Prestige and Batman Begins, so I’m delighted to see that this configuration has remained in tact. IMDB lists Cillian Murphy in the credits, so I assume the Scarecrow will be making a return (good stuff).

Here is an idea for a variation on one of those premium phone number scams:

• Register a premium phone number, one of those super expensive ones where you set the price - €99 per minute or however high the phone company allows you to go
• Print the number onto a “How am I driving?” sticker and stick it on the back of your white van/SUV/small truck.
• Drive like a lunatic for a few days - undertaking people in the hard shoulder, driving 30mph in the fast lane, randomly slamming on the breaks, etc.
• Record all phone calls and make a compilation CD in time for Christmas

Dunphy was on form on RTE last night. Accusing the FAI of “flying kites” in the media to soften the impact of the appointment of Terry Venables as Irish football manager, Dunphy comprehensively hammered Venables and urged the public to shoot down this kite before it is too late. The 21 minute segment can be viewed by Irish residents online here. Note Bill O’Herlihy’s crafty contribution towards the end.

I’d love to work for one of the companies that thinks up ads for TV. I imagine them all sitting at a big round table deciding what kind of campaign to go with. They talk about the brand, and brainstorm a bit, trying to think of something clever but direct, debating the merits of each approach. But somewhere at the back of their minds, everyone at that table is thinking “Or… we could just use Shatner!”

And so Blizzard have played the Shatner card as part of their latest advertising campaign for World of Warcraft. [via]

Following in Shatner’s footsteps on the slippery slope of embarrassing self-parody is Mr. “Snickers: Get some Nuts!” T.

Blizzard missed out on the grand slam, because they were unable to land Chuck Norris for this campaign, allegedly because he already beat the game. Either that or he’s too busy endorsing Mike Huckabee and making ads for Mountain Dew: