Trust Tommy

My new year’s resolution is..

GIVING UP CHOCOLATE

From Dairy Milk to Cadbury’s, it’s all gone.

Laugh all you want, but this is what I’m doing.

EDIT ~ Let me set the record straight. No chocolate includes:

-Bars
-Things like Roses/other selection box stuff
-Ice cream of the chocolate variety
-Confectionary
-Cakes
-Hot Chocolate
-other misc. stuff

I’d love to be able to say that it’s all because of Christmas, but we both know it’d be an utter lie.. :/

My “Media Whore” badge and my “I Trust Tommy”. The badges are magnetic, see.

So, today, myself, Klara and Alexia got together in town and went to Eddie Rockets. Om nom nom. We stayed in there for about 2 hours. Talking about stuff like the recently opened Irish Blog Awards Nominations, or how Klara should work in the new Apple store, or how she should get an apple macbook. Alexia was almost killed by a falling poster, which we attributed to Klara, as she’d made a previous attempt on Alexia’s life earlier in the meetup :)

Met Livies, who’d come in to ‘Rocket’s to grab some lunch.

Me and Klara:

Alexia:

‘Twas a badge-tastic meetup :)

BTW, just in case you think this is all I do, it’s not. I do other things other then blog related stuff. This just takes up.. 80-85% of my time.. :P

After which I caught the bus home. Came just on time. Arrived at the stop and extracted €2 from the mass of receipts and headphones in my bag. Bus came just as My Alcoholic Friends started playing through my 5310.

Got on, bought my ticket and arrived outside Kilmurrey at about 16:30. Turned up the music and started off. I could have taken two routes, but just decided one because it seemed shorter. I just looked at them on GoogleMaps. One is 3.1KM, the other is 3.3KM.

Got a text from my best friend, turns out I’m not back to school on Monday! Not back til Wednesday! :D

Om nom Nominations have opened for the 2nd annual Irish Blog Awards, organized by the charismatic web-god, Cork blogger Damien Mulley

There are 22 categories, as follows:

**

* Best Popculture blog
* Best Blog from a Journalist
* Best Food/Drink Blog
* Best Crafts Blog
* Best Arts and Culture Blog
* Best Political Blog
* Best Group Blog
* Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog
* Best Technology Blog/Blogger
* Best Designed Blog – Buckley
* Best Sport & Recreation Blog
* Best News/Current Affairs Blog
* Best Specialist Blog
* Best Newcomer
* Best Business Blog
* Best Music Blog
* Special Recognition Award
* Best Personal Blog
* Most Humorous Post
* Best Photo Blog
* Best Blog Post
* Best Blog

**

Looking though those categories, I immediately can think of some blogs to nominate. What about you? Any particular post from the blogosphere had you in stitches recently? Maybe that deserves Most Humorous Post. Have a think about it and come back and nominate your favourites.

Some rules:

A Blog can be nominated in any category by anyone, but the Blog owner can only accept nominations in one category (with the exception of Best Blog Post) to move the blog forward into the judging rounds. To be nominated the Blog has to have been actively blogging between July 15th and December 15th 2008. Winners of each category will be sent forward into the Grand Prix category where they will compete for the title of “Best Blog 2009″

Nominating a single blog in multiple categories will result in your nomination being voided.

So, with all that in mind…

Why not go nominate some blogs? Click HERE!

Plum pudding on fire from a few days ago

Twitter is a social networking site that I’m part of. It’s very successful and very popular. Most people think of Bebo and people wasting their lives on it. Twitter’s not like that. Twitter is successful social networking.

It’s good, but there’s bugs, and room for improvement. Here’s the top two things that would increase my love for Twitter.

Number ONE: Integration with AIM

AIM was gone before I joined Twitter back in February, so I’m not sure exactly what it did. Anyway. If you have three windows open in your MSN client, with A, B and C. If I could code, I’d make something so that Twitter was a fourth conversation window. A “D”, as it were. When you type something into that conversation, it updates your status in Twitter, and your friend’s updates come in as replies too.

I screenshotted an IM conversation with Klara Golez. Then blanked out the messages, and replaced them with tweets. This is a rough idea of how my vision would work. Yeah I’m scrappy, and yes it’s only with me and @Klaraflame, but you get the idea (hopefully):

Number TWO: Text message integration

OK. OK. This is the fantasy wish. This probably won’t happen. Before August, Twitter would send you your follow-ees’ updates, and you could also tweet via SMS. This was awesome especially for my mum and dad – who, little known fact, are both on twitter -, because they never liked the web interface, finding it complicated. So, they used to use Twitter on their iPhones. Very low maintenance, very low tech, very simple. It was great for them.

Was great for me. I love twitter, and could follow the conversation when in company inconspicuously.

Then they removed it without warning, which, from reading people’s comments, annoyed people as much, if not more then the actual removal of the service. They said (and this is probably true) that it costs them 1000£/user to run the service, and they couldn’t keep it up.

I miss it. I want it back. I miss my day being punctuated with little tweets. I would even pay for the service.. anywhere up to.. 50 a year..

Last night was of the epic win variety. Had my first blogger meetup.

Wasn’t quite a BarCamp or anything, because I don’t think they involve so much food and/or brandy. Never know though..

Decided that since it was my first, so I kept it very low key and invited those only who I’d met before. Also, seeing as it was, kind of, in my house, I couldn’t exactly have 100 people.

OK. The main reason this post came into existence was to clear up some inaccuracies you may have from either Damien’s tweet or either of Enda’s tweets.

I was not drunk. Unless you can get drunk on a mixture of Coke Cola and pink lemonade. And they weren’t even in the same glass at any one time!!

The picture that Enda took had me on the ground after John (@collision) shoved me over I tried to Qik (app that allows people to take videos on the iPhone) Damien (@damienmulley) drinking Bailey’s.

Complete list of people who came: –

@DamienMulley, @Lexia, @KlaraFlame, @EndaC, @Czajkowski, @Livk, @Lilinator, @DenisCollison, @Collision, @Patrickc and @SilvanaK.

There was only one person I hadn’t met before last night on the guest list. Klara. Then again, I’d chatted to her on MSN a lot so it was OK. She was awesome. She could even tell what Anime film I was referring to when I gave a very rough description!!

“Erm, it had this monster that bounced around. He was round, and blue. There was also a flying bus..”

Does that sound like any film you know?

It did to Klara. My Neighbour Totoro, anyone?

She also keeps a fantastic blog to boot :)

In short, BEST NIGHT EVER!

EDIT ~ Alexia got a Qik of it.

Sitting here with @damienmulley, @endac, @klaraflame, @lexia, @silvanak, @patrickc, @collision, @deniscollison and @lilinator eating dinner. @Czajkowski just left. @NiallHarbison was meant to be here but his car broke down :(

Had starter, then dessert. Thus is the way of the Collison household. Dinner is by no means a strict affair. Same thing happened with Christmas dinner. :P

Full report later on, folks :)