irish voting problem

I have a couple of issues with the way transfers are handled in Ireland.

The main problem I have is the way the surplus votes are transfer based on those last received pile of votes.

This leads to a random selection and not proportional representation at all. If we continue to use this method we need to change the name.

I found a very interesting paper on the Mathematical Aspects of the Irish Election that pointed out these problems and I'll attempt to visualise it as best I can.

Scenario 1
3 seater constituency, 39,996 votes and a quota of 10,000. And 5 candidates running.

The boxes are opened and the first count:



We know Dennis is VERY popular. So popular he has 2nd preference votes from ALL of Albert, Barry and Cian voters (28,990). The only people who don't like Dennis are Evan voters (2,006). They all voted exactly the same with Albert, Barry and Cian as 2nd, 3rd and 4th preferences.

Evan is eliminated and votes redistributed for the second count.



Albert is elected! Looking at his 12,000 votes, next preference candidates are Dennis (9,994 votes/83%) and Barry (2,006 votes/17%).

Count 3 and surplus of 2,000 is redistributed, but it is taken from the top, meaning that only the top 2,000 votes (which came from Evan) are redistributed, all going to Barry.



Barry is elected! Looking at his 11,001 votes, next preference candidates are Dennis (9,001 votes/81%) and Cian (2,000 votes/18%).

Count 4 and surplus of 1,001 is redistributed, but it is taken from the top, meaning that only the top 1,001 votes (which came from Albert, which came from Evan) are redistributed, all going to Cian.



Now Cian is elected and all 3 seats filled.

Having received the most 1st preference votes, and the vast majority of 2nd preference votes from the 3 runners up in count 1, Dennis fails to get elected.

Scenario 2
3 seater constituency, 19,996 votes and a quota of 5,000. And 4 candidates running.

The boxes are opened and the first count and John is elected on first count.



We know Paul is popular, almost reaching the quota.

Looking at John votes, the majority of 2nd preference votes go to George and Ringo for 3rd preference. But there is some support for Paul, giving him their 2nd vote. Perhaps 5% (300 votes) but they are hidden somewhere in pile of 6,000 votes.

Second count and the 1,000 surplus votes are taken from John's top pile and redistributed. Since this is random and just happen to be the last votes counted, these contain no votes for Paul.



George is elected! Like last time, the surplus of 501 votes, which came from John are distributed and all go to Ringo for count 3.



And Ringo is elected and all seats filled.

If you're interested in this I urge you to read the paper and question is this way of voting unacceptable?

how's your swedish?

This is a question I have been getting frequently ever since moving to Sweden 4 years ago, and coming home for Christmas I’ll get it a few more times. My go to answer has recently been “not so good”.

I have a long and painful history with language learning. It was never something I managed to grasp in school. While the English language, being my mother tongue was easy to excel at, Irish was a different story, but first a look at the language.

The Irish language 
Contrary to what some people think, Irish (or Gaeilge or Gaelic) is a completely different language to English. Different words, different language family. Example: An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas? To anyone not Irish that looks like gibberish. Everyone else knows it’s the first thing you learn in school.

The Irish language has always been a sore point in Irish education. We begin learning it on the first day of school aged 4 or 5 until we finish secondary school aged 17 or 18. Study of the Irish language is given the same amount of time as other main subjects such as English and Maths.

That is about 14 years of study of a language that the majority of the population will never use once they finish secondary school. We have Irish language programming on mainstream media as well as dedicated TV and radio stations yet currently there are 140,000 native speakers or 3% of the population.

My experience learning Irish 
Having being dragged kicking and screaming through the education system being forced for 14 years (or just over half my life) to learn something that I have no use for left an impact on me. I was not good at it. I went to Irish summer colleges for weeks at a time, trying to improve or get a grasp of the language, but all it did was raise my ability back to the bare minimum to scrape by.

On top of that, for the last 6 years of my education I had to learn French (and 1 year of German), which I also wasn’t good at. In the end I could probably speak better French than Irish.

Moving to Sweden and Swedish 
Fast forward to 4 years ago and I move to Sweden and begin to register for my personnummer so I could register and attend SFI classes (svenska för invandrare or Swedish for immigrants) and 6 months later I find myself sitting down attempting to learn my 5th language.

I started really well, but as I approach the end of my first year at it, I reach a plateau and nothing new seems to be sticking. I scrape by my final exams completing SFI in the year. I felt if I continued in full time Swedish language education the effort required would only increase exponentially so I decided instead to start looking for a job.

A few months later I land in an English speaking role where all my colleagues speak English throughout the day. This didn’t help my Swedish speaking skills.

The job did however help with my study of the Swedish language. Being around people speaking Swedish improved my understanding. I was able to follow conversations picking up the gist of what is being discussed by being helped with familiar words and English words that have bleed into Swedish. I still never spoke Swedish since I can express myself perfectly to everyone and they understand.

Getting work in Sweden (without Swedish) 
It’s difficult. I have a background in Business Information Systems and Teaching. I do not have Secondary School Swedish which is the level needed to teach in Sweden, so that rules teaching out. On the Business and IT side, there are companies that have a working language of English, but also require fluent Swedish. So that rules me out of a chance there too.

If I did have Secondary School Swedish, there would still be the hurdle of not having “Business Swedish”? I’m guessing this would be similar to “Business English”. I notice that there is classes for “Business English” where Swedes go and learn English (beyond the already fluent English they all speak) for a business context. I assume that those people don’t feel comfortable with their Secondary School English and want a course to prepare them for the English speaking workforce environment. How would the Swedish workplace be with just basic Secondary School Swedish and not another level of professionalism on top of that.

My only hope is to find that elusive job that will utilize my experiences and education while being in a fully English speaking environment.

My situation summed up. 
I don’t speak Swedish, but I can follow along conversations in Swedish. I can communicate with 99% of people in Sweden who I need to talk to. For me going back to school to learn Swedish for fluency would be like pulling teeth with no anaesthetic.

Also published to Medium

hbo nordic

I've been a HBO Nordic subscriber for the past year, but I'm going to stop today.

According to their website (only those in Nordic region can view this), they support the following:
1. Computer 
- PC and Mac only
2. Tablet/Mobile 
- iOS and Android only (I'm grouping these together since the lines between tablet and mobile are blurred anyway)
3. TV (three weak options)
- HBO is available as a 24 hour linear channel. More information will follow. (I've been waiting over a year, still no infomation)
- A small set of Smart TVs - Samsung TV's Series 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (2011-2014)
- Running a HDMI Cable from your computer (I think this just confirms you can watch HBO Nordic on a computer)
4. Xbox 360

That is it.

They don't support any modern way of viewing TV.

• No Chromecast Support
• No Apple TV* Support
• No Playstation 3 Support
• No Playstation 4 Support
• No Xbox One Support

*While they have support for AirPlay Mirroring on Apple TV, it is far from ideal. You have to play the show on your device and then mirror it to the Apple TV. This drains the battery on your device since it is playing on it and then displaying it on screen. I've also tested it and there is some lag, and blurred lines. It isn't a enjoyable viewing experience.

The only way I can watch HBO Nordic is on my Xbox 360. Even then I run into this problem:

@HBOse sick of seeing this each time try to play anything. Have to retry a couple of times to get it to play. pic.twitter.com/of3qCOsQJg
— Darran Crowley (@darran) March 2, 2014

I've been told many times I have to crawl under the TV where all the plugs are, unplug my Xbox, wait and replug it. It works sometimes, and other times it doesn't. What it always does it return back to the same Video Player Error screen after I finish an episode.

The year is 2015. It is a lot to ask for some proper device support? I can watch Netflix on every device mentioned in this post with no problems, as well as my LG Smart TV.

Finally, I have a post from February 2013 on the HBO Nordic Facebook page:

"Hela AirPlay" which was translated here as "All the AirPlay", I would understand as Full AirPlay still isn't here. Still only the mirroring option. Still no PS3 option, I guess their talks with Sony didn't go too well.

There are far better ways I can view HBO Nordics content, I tried the legitimate route, but they are forcing me to seek other ways to get the content.

sudocrem in sweden

I noticed a post today on Reddit about Sudocrem.

Sudocrem 1931 invented by Dublin pharmacist Thomas Smith. Sure where would we be without it? Every tub of Sudocrem sold worldwide is still made in Baldoyle.

Well holy god! Isn't that great!

That little grey tub that works wonders on nappy rash and is the leading baby cream in both Ireland and the UK was an Irish invention. I wonder if they sell it here in Sweden? I quick search on Apoteket.se for blöjeksem and blöjutslag shows 3 products available for that purpose. None of them Sudocrem.

• Inotyol - 54kr for 50g (432kr for 400g)
• Bepanthen - 55kr for 30g (733kr for 400g)
• Generic brand Babysalva - 49kr for 60g (327kr for 400g)

Inotyol and Bepanthen seem to be the two favourites talking to a few people and looking at some of the forums. 

I put the price per 400g for a reason. The big 400g tub of Sudocrem on Boots.co.uk is currently £6.25 or about 64kr. Go back and look at the price per 400g for the options available here in Sweden.

Now imagine paying over 10 times the price of Sudocrem for something you're going to rub on the arse of a baby.

Welcome to Sweden.

darran.info

Every website and service online asks me to input a web address in my "profile" and I always found it difficult to pick one. Do my mad ramblings on here get higher precedence over the obscure that I post to Tumblr or on Twitter or perhaps I want you to add me on Facebook? A personal landing page is perfect if you're looking to unify all your online profiles. And I have a few profiles.

For the past few years I've used flavors.me which served me well, but I never liked the design and there was a few options you had to pay for to tweek the page exactly how I liked it. There are others such as about.me and dooid.me which preform a similar function too.

I needed a domain for my new landing page, and eventually realising that the furniture store, who has without fail for the past 15+ years re-registered their domain darran.com on time, it is time to move on. Also the fuckers at the Irish Domain Registry only allow first and last names, plus the cost for an .ie domain (and cost of registered a business in my first name) is ridiculous, I'm quite happy to not buy Irish.

Last year while renewing and changing domain registrars from GoDaddy to NameCheap I decided to splash out and purchase my one first name domain, perfect for my own personal landing page.

I was inspired by a business card I saw a few years ago which had something similar to the image below. I loved the simplicity of it all.

After a year I finally got around to putting something on it that I'm not ashamed of. The design is from John over at TentBlogger, where he has loads of reasons why you should have a page like this and a few designs you can use. I modified his version using the iPhone image, but since there is a new version, I had to make a few more images to update the site! After all I do love my iPhone 5!

So for all things Darran Crowley visit darran.info.

scout doodle

Subject: Not one Scout on your doodle team?
To: proposals@google.com

Greetings,

The worlds largest youth organisation celebrates the Birthday of it's Founder, Lord Baden-Powell today 22nd February. Yet again I notice a non-scouty Doodle on the homepage (sad face)

As I look at the Google homepage every day of the year, I notice all the birthdays, festivals, anniversaries, elections, national and independence days and out of the ordinary days. Last year on this day you celebrated Heinrich Rudolf Hertz 155th Birthday, (fun fact, he was born the same day and year as Baden-Powell) and the only previous doodles to be featured on February 22nd was in 2002, 2006 and 2010 for the Winter Olympics. I'd place a safe bet that on this day next year there will be an Olympic themed doodle on the front of your homepage.

So the Scouting and Guiding community world wide, all 38 million members (not including past members!) in 217 countries will have to wait until at least 2015 for the next available window and a possibility to be celebrated on the worlds most viewed homepage.

I urge you to read up on Baden-Powell, Scouting and Guiding world wide and make a note in your calendar for 2 years time! I know I'll be excited to wake up and see if Scouting will get the celebration and recognition I believe it deserves.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

Kind Regards,

Darran.

microsoft online password length

Last month Microsoft released an App for SkyDrive, however I couldn't log in because my password was longer than 16 characters. I contacted support and their response was:

Would you please change your password to be 16 characters or fewer? That way will help you to sign-in on iOS device successfully. Link

I left it go for a while, put it down to app teething problems. This week however I noticed that to sign into my hotmail or outlook (as it's known as now) I was welcomed to this message:

Microsoft account passwords can contain up to 16 characters. If you've been using a password that has more than 16 characters, enter the first 16.

I had a quick look on the official forums and found this response from a Microsoft Employee:

Windows Live ID passwords have always been limited to 16 characters.  What has changed is the login page now gives you immediate feedback to ensure you understand your password is not more than 16 characters.
To avoid this error message, do not enter more than 16 characters.
We are working on increasing the maximum password length. Unfortunately, for historical reasons, the password validation logic is decentralized across different products, so it's a bigger change than it should be and takes longer to get to market. Link

This is also going to be a problem in Windows 8. So I tried to find an official policy from them on passwords and their length. On the official Microsoft Safety and Security Center, on a page titled: Create strong passwords, it clearly shows an example password 28 characters long: ComplekspasswordsRsafer2011.

So what I want to know is why Microsoft doesn't want us securing our accounts with strong passwords. I stopped password reuse as part of my new years resolution and now use KeePass (syncs with Dropbox/KyPass on iOS/KeePassDroid on Android) to save all my passwords under one strong master password. All my other passwords are 32 characters, Upper, Lower, Digits and special characters.

Speaking of passwords, check out this awesome password tester, and nice master password generator.

TL;DR: Microsoft limiting your password to 16 characters, thus doesn't care about your online security. correct horse battery stable

Edit 2017-04-08: The link to Microsoft's Security Checker is broken as they seem to have taken it down. And if the password tester above is too complex for you, try this one.

back to normal-ish

I left re-registering this domain name to the last second, and also wanted to move it away from the default GoogleApps registrar, GoDaddy. So I experienced a bit of downtime and visits to the site have halted to a stop (obviously!). I'm back now on blog.langersblog.com for your viewing pleasure.

scouting ireland on twitter

I couldn't let the year to by without a small post, you know, to get the 2011 date activated in the blog archive! I decided that I'd talk once again about Scouting Ireland and a topic close to my heart, Twitter.

Timeline of Events:
September 2007: I started the @ScoutingIreland twitter account. I planned to use it to publish the news from the website onto twitter.
October 2008: I managed to get the account set up to tweet news from scouts.ie. It took a fair bit of work to figure out how to get the news from the static page to an RSS feed and in turn onto Twitter.
October 2010: New website and RSS feed launched! (Which I blogged about here!) After my hard work, I could change the RSS feed to the official one.
April 2011: I handed the account over to National Office. I was contacted and gave up the account to the Communications Team. Up to this point I gained about 1,300 followers.
April 2011: I set up another account, @IrishScouting and began the process again of pulling the news from the website into twitter. The account provided me (at least) with the official news from the site.
December 2011: @ScoutingIreland (the official account) has about 1,900 followers and steadily growing each day. @IrishScouting (unofficial) has about 80 and not gaining many each week.

I've looked at both these accounts and took a snapshot of that last 3 months to compare how well Scouting Ireland is looking after the account they made me give up. I was promised they had a plan and was told the account would be put to good use as part of the new Communication Plan.

Stats from @ScoutingIreland over the last 3 months:
Total Tweets: 64
Direct news from the website tweets: 15
Retweets from other accounts: 2
Test Tweets: 1
Replies: 1
Random, not official news Tweets: 4
Tweets from Group Leaders Conference: 41

Number of official news items from the website that was not published on their official feed: 22


And yes, those 22 were published on @IrishScouting!

new scouts.ie website

Before I begin, this isn't a dig at anyone in particular. This is me talking about Scouting Ireland. I'll also state that I'm not perfect nor is neting I do!

Scouting Ireland relaunched their new Scouts.ie website yesterday. This new website will be the public facing, what's scouts about and how do I join for the public to view and get information. This website has also been finished for the last number of weeks, waiting a whole big unveiling at a Group Leaders conference this weekend. So they should be well prepared for their 16:15 launch, which eventually went live at 16:45ish.

I have seen many new websites go live, been involved in many go lives and even had the pleasure of testing, breaking and proofing website before launch. Standard practice, get people to test and look over your website, usability test etc etc. It seems that there wasn't many people left into the inner circle of testing this new website. I will go through some of the things I came up with on a 30 minute quick look through the site last night:

Typos typos everywhere

I found a total of 25 typos on a website that contains about 30 pages. In no particular order:

1 & 2 - On the National Management Committee page.

3 to 6 - On the Professional Staff page.

7 - On the Parental Information page.

8 & 9 - On the Campsite Locator page.

10 - On the homepage page.

11 & 12 - On the Join Today page.

13 to 15 - On the History of Scouting Ireland page.

16 & 17 - On the One Programme page.

18 - On the Cub Scouts page.

19 - On the Scouts page.

20 & 21 - On the Venture Scouts page. 

22 & 23 - On the Benefits of Join page in the Leaders section. 

24 & 25 - On the Why become a Leader page. 

Broken / Formatting Errors

Here are some of the things that I found didn't work as expected or there was a formatting issue

1. That Huge Banner doesn't link correctly. On the home page it links correctly to Beavers, Cubs and Scouts but click on the Ventures Banner and your directed to Rovers and click on the Rovers links to Leaders. The Leaders Banner is usually the first one that loads and it doesn't link anywhere. Also If you miss the banner, there is no way to go back, you have to wait until it goes around again.

On any section page, for example Venture Scouts, the banner rotates with different Venture Scout images and click to find out more (Why would I want to click when I'm on the page?), but they say Ventures and then link to the other sections, Beavers Cubs etc..

2. Section or Recent News. Every section page, Beavers to Leaders has their own Recent news box, which should contain news for that section. In this example, Cub scout news contains Venture Scout news. There is also a Read more Section News, which should bring you to loads of other Cub Scout News, but it fails and just brings you to the article about Challenge 2010.
Ok, there is a lack of news as the site just launched, but there could be a place holder Cub news for their section?

3. Formatting in Other Links. Again, a little formatting hiccup that should have been picked up straight away.

4. Contact Page. This is perhaps the worst designed page on the site. First off they seem to want to SHOUT about GROUP and CHILD PROTECTION POLICIES. Then there is a nice map, but no location placed on it. Sure National Office is somewhere there, but where? Then I only noticed it out of the corner of my eye, there is a contact form (with an missing image). There was no mention of filling out a form on the page, it is just there!

5. Group Locator page. When you click on a group, you get a nice balloon popping up with details of the group. It is however butt ugly with scroll bars. Format it correctly please!

Final Thoughts

On the design of the site, I think the banner is too big, the duplicating of the groups and ages on the main page takes up far too much space. There is no RSS for the latest news and no social media integration (HUGE opportunity missed here). I believe the correct term is Scouters not Leaders as National Office has drilled up for the past few years, but decided to let it slide on their national website. 

Ok, it is a website for the general public and we will have to wait until next Wednesday to see the amazing my.scouts.ie website for actual members to use. Overall it does its job but there is a lot of really bad mistakes. I've been trying to look at it in the mind of a potential youth member or parent and hopefully it will increase members and raise the profile of Scouting.

nct

My car is due its NCT on Wednesday morning. I had a look at the NCT website and they publish their test stats, showing how many tests took place and the pass rate. What I found really interesting was that it doesn't change from one year to the next. Take a look at the graph I did comparing their data and the consistency between years:

I have about exactly 51% chance of passing first time. If I fail, I will have about exactly 90% chance of passing.
It will be interesting on Wednesday if I am in the lucky 51% or the unlucky 48% (±1%)

bye bye rte

On Friday I handed control of all the RTÉ twitter accounts back to RTÉ.

After what happened in the previous post, I didn't want the same happening to all the other accounts. I counted that there was over 15,000 people following all the different accounts I had running. So after a quick tweet or two to Mr. O'Shea, I found who I should be contacting about the transfer of details.

I got a two sentence email back from them four days later:

Dear Darran,
Thank you very much your email. We are happy to take over the ownership of these accounts and will appreciate if you send us all necessary details.
Best regards,

After over two years of providing the service and not abusing the names or the accounts for my own gain (quite easy to embed my own advertising into the feeds) or just holding onto them and doing nothing with them, all I got from RTÉ was that two sentence, poorly written email.

I sent over all the log in details and after a couple of days downtime the accounts have started spewing out news once again. Already there are problems with their new account feeds, which I would have picked up on and fixed straight away... lets see how @RTE_WebDesign handle it :-)

P.S. Can you change the email address on all the account or I might forcefully take them back!

worldscouting on twitter

So I created the Twitter Account @WorldScouting in July 2008 and had a custom RSS Feed to update it from January this year with any World Scouting News from the WOSM Website. It gained a number of followers, from the emails I received, over 1,350 Scouters started following the account. I even noticed that there was a link on the official scout.org website to follow them on Twitter, linking to that account.

This evening I received an email from Twitter themselves:

Hi
It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/worldscouting
is in violation of the Twitter Rules:
* Trademark: We reserve the right to reclaim user names on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those user names. Accounts using business names and/or logos to mislead others will be permanently suspended.
In this case "trademark" is the issue. To avoid confusion regarding brand and/or official affiliation with the business/company in question, we've removed your profile from the site.
Thanks,
Twitter Support

That is fair enough... I put my hands up, it was me, I broke the rules. However my issue is the way this happened. Was it a request from WOSM to close the account or did Twitter come across the account themselves and act on their own? Was I given a chance to answer why I did it and if I wanted to transfer ownership over to WOSM?

A few weeks ago I did notice that a new account has been set up as @worldscouting2 and that account seems to have taken the place of my @WorldScouting. This new account has a classy new low resolution JPG instead of a PNG as an avatar giving a poor quality effect. They also don't capitalize their name properly (@worldscouting should be @WorldScouting)

That's only a little thing that annoys me, but the biggest annoyance is the fact that over one thousand people on Twitter who were getting frequent updates and retweeting them (over 140 retweets) now have no idea that the account that they were following does not exist anymore and they have to re-follow the new @WorldScouting to start receiving updates!!

My message to the guys in Geneva, I'm sorry I provided a service that you didn't offer at first. It wouldn't have been very hard to find out who ran the account. A quick tweet with "@worldscouting who runs this" would have gotten a reply from me. I would have happily handed over the log in credentials and you could have kept all the followers, after all I am a good Scout! Instead you went running to cut off the head, losing over 1,350 followers!

(On a side note, this gives me food for thought with all the other accounts I have... might go on a deleting spree!)

avoid ryanairs credit card fees

Mr. O'Leary will love me for this but I just booked a flight and saved paying the 5euro each way/per person charge for using my credit card. It is simple and here is how:

1. Head over to entropay.com and sign up. Create a virtural card and leave it at that for the moment.
2. Start booking your Ryanair flight.
3. Don't add any extra's or bags, just pay for the flight and the web check in fee of 5euro each way/per person.
4. When you get to the payment screen, select Visa Electron and watch as the total doesn't increase!
5. Head back over to EntroPay and load your card with the required amount, down to the cent. You will be charged a loading fee, but I will talk about that below*
6. Copy the details of your new virtural card and paste them into the Ryanair website where they ask you for your Visa Electron Card (I used my own address).
7. Click Pay!
8. Once the flight is confirmed go back to the main Ryanair homepage and click manage your booking using Option 3. You can then choose to add more bags or extras. You can use your main Credit Card now as it won't be charged the 5euro handling fee!

*EntroPay charge a fee of 4.95% to load the card. Booking your flight without bags etc will cut down the EntroPay charge as it is a percentage of the amount you are loading. You can pay for the bags with your normal credit card without any fees once the flight is booked.

Please note, this method is only beneficial if the cost of the flight and online check-in is under 202euro per person (404euro for two people etc..), mine was 77.32euro. I believe my maths is sound. Here is what I just paid for my flight using EntroPay:

I know it is only a 6.17euro saving, but because it is Ryanair it is even more sweeter!

On a side note, it has been a long time since a post here, but there have been many over on tumblr! I am also in a position to talk once again about the Amazing Teaching Council of Ireland.... but that's another post!

somas album

I got an email from Soma a few weeks ago, but i'm only getting around to listening to it now.

Three of my friends, Mezer, Eric and Walshy are in the Band and unfortunately I have only been to one of their gigs so far. I've been listening to their songs all evening, and they're not so bad!

< Begin Press Release >
Soma’s album, “The Somatic LP” is now available to buy for just €5 at the following outlets:

• Music Zone, Carrigaline, Co Cork
• Plugged Records, Washington Street, Cork
• Tower Records, 6-8 Wicklow St, Dublin
• For digital download at downloadmusic.ie/soma
• From the locker/boot of any of the band members!

There are 11 songs on the album cites influences from The Smashing Pumpkins, The Foo Fighters, Ash, Death Cab for Cutie, Jessica Alba and My Bloody Valentine.

The album was recorded from Nov 08 to Feb 09 in various locations in Cork. The album was mastered in April 09 by Richard Dowling in Limerick who as previously worked with such greats as S Club 7, Rachel Stevens, Steps and Busted. (He has also worked with some unknowns such as David Bowie, The Foo Fighters, The Undertones, Jools Holland and Interpol…ahem!)

Try before you buy, you can listen to the songs at: myspace.com/somamusiccork
< /end >

There was a load of free copies to people who knew them, but apparently I don't get one (something about not trusting me...)
Anyway, if you were wondering who is who on the album cover:

• Mezer would be the same as Cindy in the lower left
• Eric is the same as Marcia
• Walshy is where Bobby is
• And lets not forget Dave who is in the same spot as Greg

Head over to their website anyway and have a listen to a few songs!

A mission

Sometimes it feels like it is a test to see how long I can go without updating this.

Lots happening on tumblr!

modernize

So here is what I've been up to this January

• New Years in Kandersteg
  
• Skied and sledded a bit
• Been working away at Musgrave
  
• Got my car repaired, twice
• Sent away all the details about my degrees to be assessed by the Teaching Council of Ireland
  
• Weekend in Tramore for Teoiny and Sandys Birthday
  
• Started a Wakoopa account
  
• Caught up with a lot of US telly
  
• Managed to see every The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for January
  
• Figured out why he says Repor (It's like there is a silent T like in Colbert)
  
• Started using Twitter a lot more
  
• Been to the cinema
  
• Watched a load of movies
  
• My contract has been renewed till April
  
• Didn't get to play as much Call of Duty as I wanted to
  
• Posted over 170 items on my Tumblr
  
• Been to a few Scout meetings

How has it been for you?

2008

A bit late, but here are the stats for 2008. More of an Irish base compared to last year, more subscribers and Mac on the up as well as Firefox. A huge chunk of traffic came from search engines.

Posts: 50
Comments: about 100

Total for 2008:

• 14,460 - Page Loads
  
• 10,964 - Unique Visitors
  
• 10,129 - First Time Visitors
  
• 835 - Returning Visitors
  

On average, each day:

• 40 - Page Loads
  
• 30 - Unique Visitors
  
• 28 - First Time Visitors
  
• 2 - Returning Visitors
  

Top 5 posts this year:

• free priority boarding
  
• iphone prices worldwide
  
• subcard
  
• our next chief
  
• 20 pixels
  

Traffic Sources:

• 63.25% - Search Engines
  
• 26.74% - Referring Sites
  
• 9.97% - Direct Traffic
  

Top Countries:

• 39.28% - Ireland
  
• 18.55% - United States
  
• 14.38% - United Kingdom
  
• 3.59% - Canada
  
• 1.97% - Germany
  
• 22.23% - Other (96 including: Australia, Netherlands, France, India, Sweden, Switzerland, etc..)
  

Top Cities:

• Dublin
  
• Cork
  
• London
  
• Limerick
  
• Galway
  

Top Browsers:

• 50.90% - Internet Explorer
  
• 40.13% - Firefox
  
• 5.16% - Safari
  
• 3.81% - Other (Opera, Chrome, etc..)
  

Top Operating Systems:

• 87.55% - Windows
  
• 9.18% - Macintosh
  
• 2.30% - Linux
  
• 0.97% - (iPhone, iPod, Symbian OS, etc..)
  

That is who visited the actual website. The total feed subscribes is 65

Thanks one and all for contributing, taking part, subscribing, reading and commenting. Check out my Tumblr for daily fun stuff and my Twitter for daily what am I doing stuff :-)

kisc gmail gadget

If you loved the Kandersteg International Scout Centre Webcam Gadget for iGoogle as much as they did in Switzerland to even mention me on their webcam page:

NEW: ADD THE KISC WEBCAM TO YOUR iGOOGLE PAGES!

Use this fantastic widget to keep an eye at the Centre from your own personalized Google site! To insert the KISC Webcam to your iGoogle, click here! (thanks Darran for creating this widget!).

Well the you will love this! (Thanks for the kudos too!)

K.I.S.C. Webcam in your Gmail!

As you can see, a little version of the Webcam right there in your Gmail, which I have open way more than iGoogle! So here is the step by step guide on how to add it:

1. Click on Gmail Labs in Settings
   
2. Scroll the the bottom and enable: Add any gadget by URL
   
3. Click Save
   
4. Click on Gadgets in Settings
   
5. Paste in the address for the gadget:

http://darranc.googlepages.com/gkiscam.xml

That's it! If you want to move it around, like above chat, go back into Labs and enable: Navbar drag and drop.

Met Éireann Gadget
On the topic of Gmail Gadgets, Peter created a nice Met Éireann Gadget to keep track of the weather!

Add this line to the Gadgets page:
http://www.highonsnow.com/metgadget/metgadget160.xml

my opinion of irish opinions

Over two years ago I signed up for Irish Opinions. They take all your details and areas of interest and in turn send you surveys to complete online. Each survey has an estimated completion time, cut off date and reward. They usually last anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes and the reward is usually from €0.50 to €2.50.

This has been an easy deal with the amount of surveys increasing from 1 in 2006, 10 in 2007 to 15 so far this year. I have earned about €40 which I can redeem for HMV, Tesco or Amazon vouchers.

The last few surveys had really annoyed me. I got one this morning that was the final straw!

I received an email as usual telling me there was a survey waiting for me. I clicked on the link, nearly as soon as the email appeared in my inbox. Standard first question pops up; Age and Sex. When I fill it in I get this response.

Thank you for coming through to our survey, unfortunately we already have enough responses for this survey.
We hope to invite you to other surveys in the very near future.
Please wait whilst we register your participation...

This wasn’t the first time this has happened to me, several surveys in the past couple of weeks I didn’t fit the criteria or the quota was already reached. I fired off an email to them asking why they sent me a survey they knew I wouldn’t be able to complete due my age and sex (which they already know). I was fobbed of with a generic reply about sometimes the quota is reached on a survey.

I’m fed up with them wasting my time asking me to do surveys that they would know I can’t complete if they looked at the details and surveys about myself I’ve filled out.

I have decided to cash in my rewards and just stop. Once I receive them I’ll be closing my account. Thanks for Isabel… if that is your real name!

P.S. I sometimes lied on those surveys when they got too long and I just wanted to finish!