Trust Tommy

For those of you who couldn’t make it down to Cork last Saturday, or those who simply weren’t interested, now you can view the part where I went on stage and asked could I take the Heineken that was part of the prize. :)

I talk about the IBA so nonchalantly, people have felt the need to ask me:

You were proud to win that, right?

Maybe I come across too nonchalant. I was honoured and humbled to win, and I count it as one of the highlights of my life so far. It was so fantastic.

Having said that, whether I won or not wouldn’t have changed the few hours after that which were awesome beyond measure. Fantastic stuff.

Haha. The internet at Collison HQ has become increasingly bad. I don’t know if it’s the fault of our provider (digiweb) or something with our routers. Think it’s the latter, because when I’m in the kitchen or almost anywhere that isn’t my bedroom there’s no problems!

Being Saturday, I should probably be getting out of bed sometime soon. Need to be out of here at 12:20 to be over at LIT for 1. Meh, what do I have to do? Shower, breakfast, the usual. Since when did that take an hour and 20 minutes?

…And now I’m rambling. Terrible thing to do :-P

What I’m basically doing is trying to combat a stint of a condition that, according to the Internet, is called ‘blogger’s block’. It’s a brilliant name for something that should never have existed!

It started on

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For the sake of keeping everything as it was, I didn’t edit the last sentence. I’m writing this on my iPhone as it can get wifi in my room fine. I exited WP to find out what day my blogger’s block started, and noticed the time. It was 12:01. I had to be out of the house in 20 minutes, and I was still in bed.

I hopped out and got ready in record time. It’s now 14:15 and I’m on my way home from Centerstage.

This whole post is about the fact that I can’t get the same inspiration for posts that I could before. This is, I guess, blogging about blogging, or ‘metablogging’ which John tells me is always a bad idea.

Wait, if I’m (bear with me) blogging about blogging about blogging, does that mean I’m meta-metablogging?

Now I’m confused.

Hehe. I love Fridays so much. For some reason this week has really flown by. For some reason, I only realised today was Friday as I was heading for Spanish. I was counting the times I had to set my iPhone alarm for 07:40, and I realised that I’d done it 5 times, which meant today was Friday!

There’s a dilemma I face. I used to set my alarm for 25 past, which gave me 15 minutes to grab my laptop, check Twitter/feeds/emails. Maybe I’m addicted, but I’ve done this for ages. Then, recently, I started setting my alarm for 07:40. This meant I got more sleep, but couldn’t check feeds.

Then iPhone came!

Now, I check Twitter/feeds/emails on my iPhone in between mouthfuls of Weetabix! It’s brilliant.

OK, I’m addicted. Addicted to the internet.

It’s true, but where’d it all start?

I’m using to being a computer user, as it obviously runs in the family. I remember this rickety Windows 95 I had when I was nine that I browsed wikipedia with, and played with Windows Media Player’s (big bag of fail) different skins, even though I only had about 2 albums.

Or back when Mum’s company operated out of our house, when everyone went home at 5, myself and my brothers would run in and boot up Age of Empires II and play against one another until I went to bed. Ahh. Good times.

Yeah, early computer usage was limited to Age of Empires II until I got a laptop when I was 12. This was around or maybe just after Patrick went to MIT, which means it was around or maybe just after I began blogging.

My early blogging was a fail because of two main reasons:

A) I was crap at it

B) No one read me

You can call me all the names under the sun that encompass ‘attention seeking’ or whatever, but you do need a readership to blog. As someone who has about 10 old blogs, I know :-P

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Anyway! It’s Friday! Wahey!

Haven’t done this for a while.

Saw this in the paper today. The word ‘tweeting’ caught my attention, as did the caricature of the bird saying ‘tweet tweet’.

Getting peed off at the iPhone’s bad quality. Missing the 2MP camera of my Nokia

Actual, wordy, thought-provoking post comes later

I set up a new blog yesterday.

Don’t worry!

Trust Tommy isn’t going anywhere fast, it’s just that the whole chocolate thing me, Damien, Lexia, Alan, Livies and co. have got going was seemingly getting shown exclusively on TrustTommy, which I didn’t feel was right. Then again, I’m the only one here with a brother who replaces my toothpaste and shampoo with chocolate. Lucky for Damien and Alan, they’re only kids! Don’t have to deal with their own, personal Johns :)

So, instead of me grabbing the spotlight and the attention, I’ve decided to shift all chocolate related lark onto it’s own blog.

If it floats, it’ll get it’s own domain, but for now, it’s living at TheChocolateWar.wordpress.com. I’ve given the keys to all who are off choc at the moment.

I’m going to import the shampoo post onto TCW but only to get the ball rolling. I’m determined not to be the single poster on this, even if I do have the monopoly on these things :)

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All this talk of chocolate reminds me. Lots of people have been coming up to me recently and asking:

You know that chocolate thing you’ve got going? Well, you know the way it’s lent, yeah? Does that mean you can give up giving-up chocolate?

No. No it doesn’t. This wasn’t some thing I started for the laugh. No, this was a serious commitment :P

Wikipedia is known almost worldwide, known not only as a research tool but also as something you can happily waste 3 hours clicking away, jumping from article to article just reading through. XKCD had it perfect, in fact

So, why limit your researching and time-wasting activities to when you have wifi?

Good question. Well, thanks to Steam Heavy Industries, a lack of wifi no longer stands between you, and researching/time wasting.

What Steam Heavy Industries (AKA my brother Patrick) have done, is created a ‘dump’ of en.wikipedia.org. They’ve taken it, stripped away images, external links, userpages, Wikipedia:pages, discussion pages and the kitchen sink. Basically, taking everything out, leaving you with the text. Best of all it fits snugly on your iphone at, um, 2GB.

Still! 2GB is a small price to pay when what you’re getting in return is basically the sum of all human knowledge on your iPod Touch/iPhone (herein called the iPone)

Also, while 8€ may seem like a lot for an app, think about this:

If you had a 5€ note, a 2€ coin and two 50c coins in your pocket, would you consider it to be a lot of money? It wouldn’t be a vast amount. OK, you’d get 8 things from McDonald’s €saver but if you went into HMV with that amount what could you really buy? You could get Home Alone 2 after you spent 50€ but that’d involve spending 50€, wouldn’t it?

On top of that, a percentage of the profits gets donated to the wikimedia foundation, so by helping yourself to some offline-browsing goodness, you’re also directly supporting Wikipedia itself.

So what about the actual download itself?

Well, if you go into the app store, Steam Heavy Industries’ version of offline wikipedia is the first result when you search for ‘encyclopedia’. This is what it looks like:

Click ‘buy app’ and it’ll download to your apps folder. Sync your device and get all apps on your iPone. On your iPone’s screen, you’ll notice a brand new logo:

Open that, and this will be the screen:

Click ’start download’ and just leave your iPone switched on, auto-lock off and connected to a network and a power source. When it’s done, go surfing!:

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Overall, it’s a fantastic app. Yes, it’s crummy that you can’t copy it over and open it immediately to play with ala all the other iPone apps, and the fact that you now have 2 GB less music space, (you could fit 50 versions of Super Monkey Ball Lite in a GB :P), but at the end of it all, the next time you’re in a remote area with no coverage, you still can check what the capital of Nicaragua is*, or who was president between Taft and McKinley**.

Thanks, Steam Heavy Industries! A genuinely useful app!

* it’s Managua

** Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt

Slightly late, but better now then never.

First up, my offering for the introductory videos for each category:

My interview

Borrowing the blogger’s term for the media today. I thought I should :-)

Spin South West, a radio station based from Raheen in Limerick City and broadcasting to County Kerry, County Limerick, County Clare, North Tipperary and south-west County Laois, called me last night and asked if I’d be interested in doing an interview on Wednesday night. Don’t know whether it’s live or not but I’ll tweet it as soon as I do. Lovely girl to talk to, which was cool.

Then, this morning, literally as I got into the car to go to school, Tubridy Radio show called and asked if I was willing to be interviewed about my recent win. I said that it was OK, only I had school. The guy I was talking to was an absolute legend, very funny and easy going, but still being professional. He seemed genuinely interested in me, which was great too. He asked if I would be able to take a call at around 10. So I did! Spent 5-10 minutes talking with Ryan Tubridy, who is fantastic. Too many presenters are all stuck up and have an ego the size of a small planet these days. Tubridy is way different to that. He genuinely connects with people and tries (and succeeds) to make himself out to not-be-different, that he’s just a normal guy.

From my experience with people, I find that Tub gets way more shtick then is deserved. I found the same with Pat Kenny back when I met him after he interviewed the langers lovely brothers of mine when Auctomatic got sold. However they may come across, when you actually talk to them, they’re great guys.

Which makes me wonder. Out of all the people who think Kenny or Tub are crummy presenters, how many of them have met and had a discussion with either of them? How much of the dislike is founded, and how much is “well everyone else says they’re crap”?

Might be something to think about. Of the people we dislike, how much of it is deserved, how much of it is based on personal experience and how much is based on prejudices?

BTW, Tub show wasn’t live so don’t panic if you didn’t catch it, it’s being broadcast on tomorrow’s show between 9 and 10. If you don’t catch it then don’t panic still! In a fit of being-modern unlike anything gone before, RTE now release all radio shows in podcast! If you can’t figure out what a podcast is or how to get them, still don’t panic! Email me and I’ll send you blow-by-blow, step-by-step instructions! :-)

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Speaking of putting my mobile number on the Contact/Feedback page, I got an awesome text this afternoon:

Happy trust tommy tuesday!

Unfortunately, their phone number wasn’t in my contact list so I’m unsure who sent it, but it certainly brightened up my day! :-)

The Business Post reported on how mobile giant Eircom plan on blocking file sharing/P2P (peer-to-peer)/music pirating websites in an attempt to put a stop to music piracy.

The news was greeted by bloggers and folk alike with generally the same reaction: they were unhappy that their internet usage was being policed in such a fashion.

Music giants are complaining that billions are being lost every year because of pirating music. I don’t doubt that. But the truth is that the world is changing. Remember my Moore post a few months back? He was complaining that the new Bond flicks were edging slowly away from the early formula.

This is true, Casino Royale was miles away from Thunderball, released 30 years previously. What I said about the change is true to music piracy.

Bond needs to adapt to today’s audience

So does music.

Music is now available in ways that weren’t even a twinkle in the postman’s eye 30 years ago. There was no YouTube-ing songs to see if I liked them, there was no leaving something on overnight to finish downloading.

Basically, to own a song, you had to buy it. Whereas now, everyone and their mothers can get Human by The Killers just by opening LimeWire.

Music giants are trying in vain to cling to this old thing of forcing people not to torrent, but it’s as if we have a dam that’s 100 miles across, with a million tiny holes with water seeping through, and one guy (record people) trying to halt the flow. It’s physically impossible.

I remember when the smoking ban in public places came into effect. I asked my dad. “Wait, if they’re willing to ban it in public places, and it’s so bad for you, why not just ban it outright?”

It’s because crime rates would soar. People would smuggle them in and find alternative methods of getting smokes to the people.

It’s the same with music.

OK. Imagine a different dam. This one is smaller, and we have the same one guy. He is now armed with a roll of sticky tape. One leak appears. He tapes it up. 2 more spring out. He manages to tape them up but 4 more appear. Every time he tapes a hole up 2 burst in their place.

Again, same with music. Every time record people block one method, people will find 2 more of bypassing the rule.

I’m not sure where I stand on music piracy, but I do believe that banning it isn’t the way to go about it. I’m not sure whether I support the plugging of holes in dams or sticky-tape-guy just standing back and saying “ah feckit”.

Maybe I would think differently if I was U2 and it was my money being lost. Then again, U2 are billionaires already, right?

Sitting in the front seat of the car as we glide along the motorway at 55KM/h.

I guess I should start writing that post on the awesome night that was last night, the Irish Blog Awards 2009, which were held in the Cork international airport hotel.

I was announced as 2008’s best newcomer, which was fantastic. I was humbled and honoured to accept the award. It was great.

Now, I’m against thank-you posts as a whole, because I invariably forget people, but there is one guy for which it’d be a sin not to thank. Last night started with one guy. If it were not for Damien Mulley, the IBA would not exist. You rock dude, plain and simple :)

Now, I’m on an iPhone at the moment so no pics, but I do have two or three really good ones I’ll share with you when I get home.

Well done and congratulations to the other category winners and special applause for Suzie Byrne, who nabbed Best Blog.

Before I forget it, I guess now we should come clean. Stephen Fry was not actually at the ceremony last night. We lied. :)

So after the award ceremony, we were shoved out of the main room as the top secret surprise was unveiled.

Inflatable Twister.

OK, so we’re all familiar with bouncy castles, yeah? Likewise, we’re all familiar with the game Twister?

Combine them and then you get Inflatable Twister!

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Right, that’s about as much as I can say about it without digging into the hoards of compromising information and events, including but not limited to something Darragh Doyle said But we’ll say no more, eh Darragh? ;-)

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I’ll my computer this evening so I’ll get those pics up later on :-)