Damien's Irishperson in Exile Diary

...And I Feel Fine

2009-07-10T09:31:00.010Z

Image by Damien Ryan via Flickr

While browsing Recommended Titles on Amazon UK, I came across this. Does Amazon's recommendation engine know something we don't?

Links for 2009-07-08 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-09T00:00:00-07:00

AndroLib
, Find all applications and games available in the Android Marketplace

Links for 2009-07-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-07T00:00:00-07:00

Truck 12 Line-up Sheet
Plan what events to see at Truck 12 in Steventon

Big Read

2009-03-01T18:35:00.006Z

Image by jakebouma via Flickr

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton X
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Ronald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(via My Own Little Region of Space)

Links for 2009-06-15 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-16T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2009-06-11 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-12T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2009-06-03 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-04T00:00:00-07:00

50 Great Examples of Data Visualization
50 of the best data visualizations and tools for creating your own visualizations out there, covering everything from Digg activity to network connectivity to what�s currently happening on Twitter.

Links for 2009-05-29 [del.icio.us]

2009-05-30T00:00:00-07:00

Doctor's diary: Sleep surgery
Tips on how to get a good night's sleep

Links for 2009-05-05 [del.icio.us]

2009-05-06T00:00:00-07:00

I thought I saw a Tweetie Bird

2009-02-24T11:11:00.003Z

Image by phxwebguy via Flickr

With the spate of celebrity Twitter stories in the media at the moment there's always been some debate as to whether these accounts are real, fake, or just an intern working at a publicist's office. When Shaquille O'Neal tweeted that he was eating at a Phoenix diner, Jesse Bearden and a friend decided to see if it really was Shaq.

Returning to our hushed whispers I asked Sean, "Should we go talk to him now?"
"I don't know, should we?"

"Yes, you should" a very deep voice entered our conversation from 2 booths over.

My own twitter account is here, though I can't promise to be in any diners.

Happy Emergency Christmas

2009-02-21T21:31:00.005Z

In the Crisis of Credit visualised, media design student Jonathan Jarvis takes a simple approach in showing how the US banking system has plunged the global economy into recession. How long will it take before all the Obama supporters start calling for his resignation because he took too long to undo years of greed and short-sightedness?

Happy Emergency Christmas everyone.

ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers

2008-12-23T11:23:00.004Z

Via Metafilter, Typealyzer reckons the Myers-Briggs type of my writing appears to be INTJ:

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Oddly enough, I usually test as INTP.

Saturday Night at the Movies

2008-12-16T13:18:00.003Z

Image via WikipediaJason Kottke links to Film Addict which takes a list of the 250 top-rated films on IMDB and scores you on how many you've seen. My score is 47.6%, what's yours?

The world's in a state of chassis Juno

2008-12-05T09:43:00.003Z

A couple of nights ago we were settling down for the night when this thing on the left started dive bombing the bed. With no clue as to how an insect managed to survive this long into the winter or even that night, when the outside temperature was a couple of degrees below freezing we assumed that it came back with us from a week's holiday in Malta. Turns out it was a Peacock Butterfly and was probably asleep in a cupboard somewhere but thought it was spring when the heating came on.

I'm nervous about what else might be lying dormant...

"An bhfuil tusa ag leabhairt lomsa?"

2008-11-01T19:50:00.007Z

Image by jodimarr via FlickrHere's a great video about a bored Chinese shop worker who learns Irish before moving there, without realising that very little Irish is used in day-to-day life.

Highlights include the Taxi Driver reference and a cameo from Frank Kelly (better known as Father Jack in Father Ted) and the result is a touching short film that's equal parts hilarious and shaming. Maybe I'll try and find my old Inter. Cert. course books and have a refresher before I start Cognitive Psychology.

Flipping Great

2008-09-14T01:03:00.002Z

Demitri Martin presents the findings from his life's research without needing to resort to Powerpoint or indeed data measurement.

Write on

2008-08-06T17:14:00.001Z

Rob Caron points to a great post from Dumb Little Man, a Lifehacker type blog.

If only it could be enforced before anyone is allowed to write anything.

How can so much awesomeness exist?

2008-06-26T16:23:00.002Z

Joss Wheedon, Neil Patrick Harris, Super Heroes, Super Villains, and a theremin.

This only way this could get any more awesome would be if it tied in with How I Met Your Mother.

Yeah boyee

2008-06-20T15:59:00.001Z

From our US correspondent:

So, in a bar in Millbrae (town next to SFO) a visiting drunk guy (DG) was waxing lyrical about the fact Obama will be the democratic choice. Conversation with drunk local guy (DLG) went like this:

DG: This is just what America needs!
DLG: I hear ya bro
DG: To have a black president will be momentous, unreal!
DLG: Sho' fuckin will! Imagine that motherf*cker gettin' all up on that podium with the clocks and shit screaming "Yeaaaah Boyeee!"
DG: That's exactly the crap we need to get away from
DLG: Whatever dude, "Yeeah Boooyeeee!!!"
DG: There really isn't a need to do that
DLG: Flavor Flav in da HOUSE!
DG: Fuck you
Rest of bar: desperately trying not to titter.

The Original Sims

2008-06-05T16:03:00.001Z

Alter Ego was a video game released by Activision in 1986. The brainchild of psychologist Dr. John Favero it allowed players to play out an entire lifetime as if it were a Choose Your Own Adventure novel by playing out events based on hundreds of interviews conducted with people about their lives. Now you can play a very faithful reproduction online.

A Brief History of Meme

2008-06-01T11:55:00.003Z

Weezer are known for their inventive videos, from Buddy Holly (which was included as part of Windows '95 to show off its multimedia capabilities) to Islands in the Sun.

The video to Pork and Beans the single from their soon to be released Red Album contains a potted history of some of the more pervasive internet memes. If you're having trouble finding them all Fox Australia has a nice little cheat sheet.

A Screen that Ships without a Mouse Ships Broken

2008-05-08T22:25:00.009Z

Clay Shirky's talk from O'Reilly's 2008 Web Expo points out just how much free time we actually have to "waste" on social participtation projects. The next time you roll your eyes at someone for editing Wikipedia or Musicbrainz or for playing about on Facebook remember, at least they're doing something rather than contributing to the billions of hours of free time spent in front of the latest reality show.

"And then they bring out Maria..."

2008-05-03T12:21:00.004Z

Angharad has been going to the gym for a couple of months and in some sort of masochistic way has been enjoying it. Of course when one enjoys something the first thought is to share it with your friends and loved ones which is why the little darling gave my name and phone number so I could have a free trial.

I found out about this today when Roberta, the peppy Spanish fitness instructor, called me to bully me into going down.

Me (confused because my phone is ringing on a Saturday afternoon): Hello?
R.T.P.S.F.I: Hallo Mr. Ryan, this is Roberta from L.A. Fitness. You have been referred by a friend who thinks you need to go to the gym. How about a free session to see what you need to do.
Me (battered by the combined attack of peppiness and Spanishness): Uhm. Yes. That sounds like a good idea.
R: Great. Can you come down in five minutes.
Me: Woah there lil horsey. I can come some time next week.
R: I don't think that's enough motivation, why don't you just skip along right now.
Me: No. Really. Next week.
R (Showing her true alien side, for all fitness instructors are from a dying alien planet come here to steal our hard earned flab): Now really Mr. Ryan, don't you want to be fit. It's in your best interest to come down tomorrow.
Me: But it's a three day weekend. I'm being lazy!
R: That's not good enough. You have to make an appointment now.
Me (starting to sob): Okay okay. Tuesday evening.
R: That's better. We'll see you at 6pm on Tuesday. Don't forget, we know where you live...

Help.

Doomed to repeat its mistakes

2008-04-15T10:20:00.003Z

Never one to pass off the excuse to post without writing anything substantial, I give you the history meme:

history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s\n ",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head

   105  p4
    51  cd
    39  ls
    30  perl
    30  lastfmfpclient.exe
    29  for
    28  grep
    10  export
     9  wget
     9  python

Skins in its present form had its final episode last night. True to form it was a rather stylised presentation of an A-level results day with some smashing music and a hard hitting performance from Larissa Wilson. Next year's series will feature a while new cast of rowdy teenagers with Sid and Cassie popping in occasionally. I'm not sure how it'll work as, for me, it was the characters that made the show, but I'm prepared to give it a chance.

----------------
Now playing: Malvina Reynolds - Little Boxes

All Roight Moi Luvvers?

2008-03-31T13:54:00.003Z

In lieu of any proper content, have a gallery of images from our recent trip to Cornwall. Included are Tintagel (the alleged birthplace of King Arthur), Land's End, and Goonhilly Earth Station (site of the first parabolic antenna in the world).

In other news, the RSS feed for the site has changed. Please update your readers to point to here.

Godwinned

2008-03-20T16:06:00.003Z

Wikihistory is a wonderful short short story which portrays time travel as a Wikipedia edit war.

Happy Easter folks. I'm off to Cornwall.

Elbow Patches, Redux

2008-02-25T21:35:00.006Z

This is the time of the year when the excitement of a new set of books and a new course with the OU fades with the onset of the first Tutor Marked Assignment. For the past couple of years, I've been leaving these to the last minute, which has ended up with me writing all night before it needs to be in and trying to buy time travel delivery from the local Post Office. This year, however, I'm trying to be grown up so I've decided to get cracking a week and a half early. I've used Mind Maps before when taking notes so tried this open source application. I've managed to create my entire outline in the time it's taken the boss to have a bath. Maybe I won't be sneaking envelopes through my tutor's door this year.

Bob the Angry Flower tells you how it is

2008-02-20T13:17:00.002Z

Required reading for anyone who intends to write on the Internet.

You Don't Sing me Love Songs

2008-02-04T12:13:00.000Z

Has the magic gone?

Even Stevphen - Drinking

2008-01-14T14:03:00.002Z

Her indoors thinks I have a new drunken twin. Who agrees?

Home, home on the range

2008-01-08T12:56:00.001Z

My Mini City allows you to create a little hamlet which will grow as people visit it. Please click through and make my empire grow.

Update: Now we have an unemployment problem. Please open a factory by clicking here.

Update 2: The transport network is creaking. Please donate some roads.

Happy 2008 to you all.

Little Boxes

2007-12-05T14:18:00.000Z

Which one are you?