A special FX test shoot that turned itself into a mini short, by good friend and partner-in-crime at Kilkenny Music and My Music, Ross Costigan and featuring another partner-in-crime, Alan Dawson.

Hopefully some of those scripts he talks about come to light soon. Better be a part in there for me. Or you’re fired.

Go enjoy The Game.

All of a sudden it seems that I’ve come from a family who like to travel a lot. I’ve managed to get away twice this year, most recently to Portugal at the end of the May. My brother has just returned from there. My grandparents are just back from Poland. One cousin has just left for France for the summer while my parents are currently driving around Italy until the middle of the month.

I’ve a sneaking feeling they’ll not have brought my MAXroam sim but if they do get to catch up with the blog today, they’ll be happy to read (as will a lot of people) that the new cap on roaming charges comes into play from today including

• Receiving a call capped at 19c p/m
• Making a call capped at 43c p/m
• Sending a text capped at 11c p/m

Whatever about the call charges, I’d certainly be happy with the reduction of the text charges as (at least in Europe) I would tend to rely a lot on them for the usual light communication chit-chat (”there in a minute” etc.). That said, unless anything changes at the last minute or I take a notion, the next stint away within the EU will be Paris next May.

You can read more on The Guardian’s site, with details of pricing in UK sterling.

With London supposedly entering into a heatwave and the temperatures here over the past week, and again this morning, indicating the possibility of sunny weather this Wednesday, we’re aiming to meet up in the outdoor area of the hotel with plenty of seating available overlooking the river.

I’m not sure myself whether wi-fi access will extend to the outdoor seating but no doubt there’ll be a few laptops and mobile broadband connections available if you’re truly stuck. Kick-off is 11:30am as always.

KilkennyOpenCoffee.com is currently in development and will be used for announcements like this in the future along with providing information on those who attend, where to find us etc.

My evenings have been occupied this past week with rehearsals for two stage productions. Next month I’ll be stepping onto the Watergate stage in Kilkenny as Eddy in Willy Russell’s Stags And Hens. This weekend, however, is in complete contrast as I, along with some of my fellow deviants, stage a performance called Shakespeare In Bits as part of the Shakespeare In The House festival in Kilkenny.

The festival, now in its second year, sees Dreamstuff Youth Theatre (the theatre wing of Young Irish Film Makers) perform abridged versions of Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy Of Errors. Cartoon Saloon will be on hand to provide a Shakespearean animation workshop, there’s a 60-second Shakespeare film competition and then there’s our programme, which certain deviates from the norm.

As part of Shakespeare In Bits were bringing performances from The Tempest, extracts from The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a monologue or two from Hamlet, The New Yorker’s take on the recent Christian Bale rant (transformed to Shakespearean times), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (above), culminating in a sonnet-off akin to the rap battles of 8-Mile.

Each day starts around 11am (this Saturday and Sunday) and it all takes place in Rothe House on Parliament Street, Kilkenny. Admission is free.

For the moment, however, the sun seems to have vacated Kilkenny completely, but hopefully the rain will disappear to make way for the sun once more.

The Lions Mane, one of Kilkenny’s rising progressive rock acts, released their debut album ‘Strands‘ online last Friday. The 12-track album is available to buy here for just €10. If you like what you hear in the preview above you might also like to hear that I’ve got two copies of the album, digitally, to give away.

To win, all you’ve got to do is leave a comment here tell me you want a copy of the album.

Simple as that.

Competition closes 4pm on Friday and winners will be announced shortly afterwards and sent their copies of the album (at 320kb MP3).

Saturday night was spent in the company of the Vultures cast and crew in Kilkenny as a select bunch of us hit one of Kilkenny’s taverns for the premiere of the latest installment of the Vultures webcom, The Adventure of The Hidden Microfilm. Watch it above via Blip.tv or check out VulturesPI.com.

The Pinkertons are closing in on the increasingly frazzled and paranoid detectives of V.P.I. when a mysterious fugitive shows up on their door. The fugitive has stolen a microfilm from the Pinkertons. This fugitive is in possession of a secret microfilm belonging to the rival Pinkerton agency. Except he doesn’t know exactly where he put it. Although he suspects it might be inside him. And it could be a floppy disk or a USB key either. He’s really not sure. Can V.P.I. strike a blow to the Pinkertons before they’ve even opened? How do they get the microfilm from the fugitive? And really, who is this Natalie Blaise we keep hearing about?

Vultures, written & directed by John Morton & Paddy Dunne, is the story of three private detectives who run a small scale private investigation agency in small town Ireland. The moderately successful business is called Vulture Private Investigations and specialises in dealing with divorce cases, fraud, missing persons, animals and plants and occasionally, just occasionally, they’ll be served up something that approximates a mystery.

Ross, as director, has more here.

This one was screened before the Vultures Episode 5 premiere last night in Kilkenny… it can only mean one thing - the next installment of Vultures hits the web later today. Keep an eye on VulturesPI.com for the release of what is quite possibly the funniest episode to date. Bless that Noah Hennessy.

photo credit: Mykl Roventine

The next Kilkenny Open Coffee takes place in Kilkenny City today at 11:30am at the rear of the Kilkenny Cafe, Market Cross Shopping Centre, Kilkenny. Unless a super cool open-air coffee venue appears on the map between now and 11:30am, that’s where we’ll be (the weather in Kilkenny has been hitting 26/27 degrees).

Maybe we could change it to Open Picnic instead?

For more on dates, maps and to find out who’ll be there, you can check the Open Coffee Ning group here, or by visit IGOpeople.com.

photo credit: girolame

So, I’m in Portugal, and have been for the past few days to celebrate John getting hitched. Vilamoura is the current location, then it’s on to destination Faro and Dublin tomorrow morning.

They’ve got the sun. They’ve got the sea. They’ve got great food and cheap alcohol. But internet access leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m sitting in Sete (a bar part-owned by Figo) where you can grab wifi access for the price of a dinner (ten euro for 5 hours access). The hotel I’m in (the sign above the door says it’s a four star) is charging 9 euro an hour for shit quality access through a very restricted Vista-based kiosk in the lobby. If you need anything that requires javascript access (Hotmail, Gmail etc.), forget it.

While I’m away, I rely on internet access. Dubai was easy as there was great access in the apartment and I was never far away. I was mad enough this trip to pay 50 euro for 50mb data access on my office mobile to pull headers via the Gmail app (S60). Two sessions on the laptop in the bar makes it a total of 70 euro, plus another tenner in the hotel brings it to 80 euro. For 80 euro, I happily get FOUR months of mobile broadband access at home.

For 80 euro here I could also get in the region of 20 bottles of wine. And for all our going out, I know I haven’t spent 80 euro on alcohol.

There an internet cafe / kiosk type place up the road from the hotel that’s very much chained up, broken down and left with wires hanging out of the walls.

Yet while they’ve got everything else here, the one thing I’m not seeing is an internet cafe, of any description. Plenty of bars, plenty of TVs to watch Barcelona whip Man U around the place last night, but no internet cafe. The resort seems extremely popular with Irish and English tourists who I’m sure wouldn’t say no to getting online to check things out, or their kids hanging around Bebo and MySpace for the day (give them the option and they’d likely take it).

The description of the hotel touted laptop connections in the room. I must have mistaken power points for ethernet points.

That said, who am I to complain. It’s 33 degrees, possibly in the shade too and the wedding was the business.

Maybe I’m one of those people who just can’t unplug.

Anyone in the market for opening up a chain of cheap internet cafés in heavily populated Irish and English tourist resorts in the south of Portugal?

One of my alter egos is involved in the running of The Devious Theatre Company in Kilkenny. We write new works, produce and direct in house, run a great rotation system on all of our productions since our launch in 2006 and this weekend we’re getting set to announce the first part of our 2009 program of theatre.

When things go right, they go very right. When things go wrong, they’re usually followed by “the C word”. At least that used to be the case. The word has lost all meaning and is now a total Devious Theatre term of affection.

We’ve been plugging a string of videos from a production of Trainspotting we did last year (one of three productions of 2008) over on DeviousTheatre.com and we’ve just released the final video aka The Cunt Cut.

Needless to say, it was a very popular word in Trainspotting… can you count how many are there?

The Vultures series, produced and recorded here in Kilkenny is almost to a close. Filming wrapped at the start March, the final episodes are almost done in post production and as a teaser to the release of episode five on June 7th, here’s a light-hearted trailer for your viewing pleasure.

Don’t forget to check out the series by visiting VulturesPI.com or check Vultures on Blip TV for previous episodes.

Check out SeaRoam.com.

Having enjoyed BarCamp Belfast loads at the end of April, I know the setting, people and topics would make it another great day to attend. If you’re traveling from “the South”, it’s possible to hit Belfast from Kilkenny in around 3.5 hours when you’re constantly moving. The spin back from Belfast for me to Kilkenny was a breeze thanks in large part to roads around Carlow and Newry, in between it’s pretty much motorway all the way.

If you’re driving up for the day, you’ve to pay for on street parking in a lot of areas or you can get multistorey parking about 2 minutes walk from the venue, though expect all day parking to be in the region of £20 or so. If you’re overnighting and don’t have car park access (as happened me when I stayed at the Premier Inn on Waring Street for BarCamp), parking is free on the streets after 6pm and all through Sunday.

Travel notes aside, some of the talks you can look forward to include

• Launching a classic car website with Michael Beeney
• Towards Beta with Keith Bohanna on dbTwang
• Expanding your business in a downturn with Russell McQuillan
• From Freelancer to Entrepreneur to Millionaire with Michelle Gallan
• Setting up a niche search engine with Caelen King

If you need a map, check here, and if you want to sign up, visit BizCampBelfast.com.

photo credit: reality-check

The fifth Kilkenny Open Coffee gathering takes place later this morning. Myself, John Keyes, Keith Bohanna, Frank Bradley and Katherine Nolan have become the regulars there and hopefully will all be there again this morning. Each meeting to date has thrown up a few new faces, people using it as a chance to get out of the house or the office and meet people in a likeminded space, see what others are up to. If you’re in Kilkenny, working from home, working in a web / tech / business background and want to get out of the house or the office and introduce yourself to people in a similar space, do drop down, either today or at any of the Open Coffee mornings down the line.

We haven’t set a structure on the gathering i.e. no specific themes or guest speakers or anything like that but each morning has thrown up some great topics of conversation and thoughts to get your own moving.

This morning’s Open Coffee takes place in the Kilkenny Café at Market Cross Shopping Centre (map here) on High Street. For those driving, MCSC has a large multistorey car park, with parking also available in the nearby Dunnes Stores car park. The meet is on at the back of the café where you’ll also find free wifi.

To keep up to date, check the IGOpeople group here.

It’s Tuesday Push time again, this week seeing Revahealth.com get a nudge - and well worth it too. I first heard of Revahealth when it was announced they had secured a €1.25m round of funding through Mianach Venture Captial, supported by Enterprise Ireland as a HPSU. That was back in January, when at the time the site currently had information on over 60,000 clincs in the UK, Ireland and 50 other countries worldwide.

The site helps people take control of their healthcare choices and find the moist suitable clinic and treatment for their needs.

At BizCamp Dublin back in March I sat in on the talk shared by Johnny Beirne and Caelen King where those of us in attendance were treated to an insight of the development of Revahealth.com, the ups and downs of changing the design and function of your company’s website, where the site aims to generate revenue and what it can do for those seeking healthcare options. Caelen also recently presented at BarCamp Belfast (where I still haven’t managed to shift my thoughts from the notepad to the screen) on monitising your web applications, which you can see below.

If you’re looking for a dentist in dublin, a cosmetic clinic in Galway, or plastic surgery clinics in Ireland, you’ll find them on Revahealth.com.

Clinics and providers can also sign up for free and setup a Revahealth brochure. For additional services to boost your profile online there is also a premium-level €50p/m option to help you get even more patients, access a patient management system and brand your brochure in your own style (removing third-party branding).

You can also follow RevaHealth on Twitter here.

I’ll admit I left it until the last day to cast a vote myself so if you’re like me, click here to vote before 6pm.

Last year’s awards saw Pat Phelan (MAXroam / Cubic Telecom) announced as the overall Net Visionary. The awards this year have been brought in line with the IIA Congress and will be held on May 21st at the Crowne Plaza Dublin Northwood.

Parking gripes aside BarCamp Belfast kicks off later this morning, registration underway in just under an hour, talks from 9:30pm to 5pm or so and it all takes place at the York Street campus for University of Ulster. Looking at the site this morning there’s over 370 people registered to attend 36 or so talks, panels and breakout sessions throughout the day.

At least I remembered to bring a notebook with me. If you’re in the vicinity, drop in, if we’ve not met yet then say hello. No tricks to identifying me but I’ll be there all the same and I’m looking forward to it. Rumour is there’s drinks afterwards in McHugh’s or the John Hewitt bar but I’m sure all will be revealed later.

The blurb…

The partnership with Cubic Telecom will see Qik give its users the opportunity to purchase Qik-branded SIM cards enabling them to stream video live from all corners of the planet - without coming home to an astronomical phone bill. The Qik SIM also provides massive savings on voice calls, email, web browsing and texting while they travel. Under the tagline “Go mobile, not broke,” Qik is offering its users a simple, inexpensive way to share live video no matter where they are. The Qik pre-paid SIM cards with full voice and data can be purchased from http://qik.com/roam. This is also where customers can manage their accounts.

“Travelers can now share their world journeys with videos, photos, text, and calls from their mobile device without it costing the earth.” said Pat Phelan, Cubic Telecom CEO “We’ve heard of the horror stories of travelers returning from a trip abroad to cell phone bills in the thousands of euros. The Qik SIM eliminates this worry for our customers.”

“We are excited to partner with Cubic Telecom to offer Qik SIM cards to our users,” said Ramu Sunkara, Qik CEO. “With the Qik pre-paid SIM cards, Qikkers across the world can now share their moments when they are traveling without having to worry about voice or data roaming costs. It’s like sending a live video postcard to your friends and family from wherever you are.”

Post-blurb…

I gave an outline of the Qik service to a potential client last week as a means of using live video streaming and interacting with an audience during a presentation, which got me to thinking why am I not Qikking the gigs that I’m involved in running in Kilkenny and elsewhere. For those not on any kind of stellar data plan or those operating outside of a wifi area, the partnership with Qik and Cubic Telecom, particularly when roaming out and about, could well breed a whole new line of Qik.com users.

I’ve got plenty of trips lined up this year where I would like the opportunity to stream from my handset without blowing an incredible hole in my wallet - Amsterdam, Belfast, Portugal, Dubai… where do I sign up?

What is it?

Mocks.ie is an affordable online exam and correction service that gives you an easy and effective way of ensuring you are ready for the Junior and Leaving Certification Exam. With Mocks.ie’s unique service you can practice exams, monitor your progress, improve your exam performance and technique so that you achieve the results you desire.

I’ve never gone down the grinds roads but did take an easter revision course in Waterford the year of my leaving cert (2001), aimed at one side of the honours maths paper. Between everything I was doing that year and getting involved with theatre at the time, I was leaving things a bit late to get the head down and focus on the subject I needed for my course. While the revision course was good, it lasted a few hours, or maybe over two days, I can’t remember at this stage, and that’s it. For €40 with Mocks.ie, you could sit the maths paper as often as you wanted over the course of a month, get your results, get your feedback, something that could prove quite valuable to students, and possibly something I would have taken up myself had the opportunity presented itself (though the revision course did the trick).

Junior cert topics start from €13.95 per subject, with leaving cert topics starting at €19.95. In the case of the maths paper, the results are instant once your exam paper has been received by email / mail, with up to a seven day wait on other subjects.

If you’ve got a junior or leaving cert student in the house or the family and they’re looking for an extra bit of help in the run up to June, it might be worth a look.

photo credit: Frankie Roberto

I stumbled across LocalElections.ie last week via KCLR 96FM, the station running the site as a means to get information to the masses on the local elections in Carlow / Kilkenny for 2009.

The site itself is heavy on the information side of things with plenty of information available on the structure of the elections, the breakdown of the councils within Carlow and Kilkenny, the power of councillors and lists of all current sitting councillors and those standing for election come June. While the names are there, it might be nice to get some profiles added on the actual councillors themselves - pictures, key election points etc. - something I’m sure will appear on the site before the election date in June.

One thing that is happening is that they’re getting blogging. Sue Nunn, who heads to Brussels today in advance of a live broadcast tomorrow with the current Ireland East MEPs, is blogging. There’s also two hustings blogs running, the Kilkenny one packing a bit of a no-holds-barred approach to the local elections while the Carlow one has just gotten off the ground.

Sue’s show is live tomorrow from 10am to 12pm and you can catch the stream via the KCLR website.