What's Scary About Halloween?

I made this video for Dublin City Council and Dublin Fire Brigade as part of their campaign to make Halloween a safer event for everyone.
It's aimed at 5th and 6th class in National schools and has been distributed throughout Dublin.



Happy Halloween!!

Microsoft ate my facebook

Microsoft has paid $240 Million for a 1.6% stake in facebook which is valued at 15 Billion; that's a lot of illions.

Google have responded by saying "We don't feel we need to own everything that is successful on the Internet."

Spin

This runs about 10 minutes but it's really worth it, it's the best youtubey thing I've seen in ages. I got it from tut.sulk.tut.

Farewell iTunes Store (I never really loved you)

Well, not quite yet but soon (I hope)
Anyone who regularly buys music from iTunes will know what a complete pain in the burn digital rights management is. Those three little nasty letters are what lock up the music you download so you can't "share it with your friends". Now in fairness it's not really apples fault, as Steve Jobs has pointed out, the record companies won't let them sell the music unless it's copy protected, though the same record companies happily sell CDs in stores that are not copy protected.
iTunes + was introduced recently through a deal with EMI and lets you buy shareable music from iTunes for a slightly more inflated price of €1.29 per song instead of €0.99, but the catalogue is fairly limited.
Now I know it's "easy enough" to just burn an audio cd of your purchases and re import it in mp3 format (which is much more flexible) but it's also a monumental waste of time especially if you have just bought 1 song.
I live my life between 3 computers - 1 PowerBook G4, 1 G5 Mac Pro and a hybrid PC, I think Siemens and Dell are both involved - 3 iPods - an old shuffle for the gym, a 5th generation video ipod and a communal nano (2nd gen) for upstairs- and a previously mentioned k800i.
If I buy music, I like to be able to play it on whatever I want, after all I have paid for it. The whole situation is so annoying to me that I have recently reverted to old school CD purchases, and for the most part it's made my life easier, though I can't buy individual tracks..
And so it was, while searching for something on Amazon I came across amazonmp3 Beta Before I could get too excited I realised it only works for US customers (off course), but it has a fairly meaty selection and certainly things that are not available on iTunes Plus.
Maybe, just maybe, by the time it is available here Apple will have sorted out all the licensing issues, or maybe it will run into the same problems as apple, but maybe not. Either way, my loyalty will fly straight to the first to offer a decent catalogue of DRM free tracks for my dollar.

The Facebook Song

Ray Lamontagne and other things

I went to see Ray Lamontagne in the Olympia last night, thanks to Betty who had a spare ticket. We were up in the Gods, and it brought back fond memories of Midnight At The Olympia (and a monumental Melissa Etheridge gig circa 1995!!!!)
He gave a fairly solid performance, including a spine tingling rendition of Trouble, and some Country style reworkings of material from Til The Sun Turns Black, though I prefer the more jazzy sound on the Album. He complained of one deaf ear throwing him off (something to do with his body temperature rising and shutting it down apparently) but he seemed in tune to me. What really threw me was his speaking voice - he said very little- which was really shy and frail. I had expected something a little more Mountain Man.

I took these shots with my Sony k800i which has miraculously survived the last 10 months in my possession. It is officially the sh*ttiest mobile phone I have ever owned, that position being previously held by a Blue Nokia 6100 which met its end by being hurled the length of Collie Murphys camera truck and smithereening on the dark-room door in 2002. The K800's days are numbered.....

We ate in The Market Bar beforehand, it's ages since I've been there and it was really good.

In other news I got a mystery email from Ticketmaster thanking me for purchasing tickets to Ian Brown in The Big Top in the Phoenix Park. Not me, no siree, and no thank you. I've checked my Visa and there's no money debited by Ticketmaster so I reckon it's a mistake but I'll be keeping a close eye on things.....

Make sure they see my face

Kennas new album has been postponed again and is now due on the 16th of October Guaranteed (yawn at this stage dood), I blogged about it before here, I am not sure what the latest holdup is as the guy talks very abstractly on his myspace so it could be any number of reasons (maybe it's not so great?)
Anyway I came across this Time Magazine picture of supporters of left-wing groups setting fire to containers in San Sebastian, Spain in and thought one the hooded one looked vaguely familiar.

Fight For Kisses

I think this has been around for a while but I only came accross it now. It's a little over long, but it's funny nonetheless.
You can download a game from the Wilkinson Website but my gamer pal Sam tells me it's not so hot.

Ho Ho Ho

I have had days like this!!!

Straight Lines.

I'm quite fond of this track from OZ Rockers, Silverchair.
It's ticking the same box in my life as The Fray's How To Save A Life, I expect that means it will show up on Greys Anatomy at some point.