Category: Blog

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I’m struck down with a cold, blurggh. That’ll teach me to go to the Botanical Gardens in the middle of January. Until normal service is resumed, here’s an article I wrote a while ago, about a similar predicament:

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

In the UK, broadsheets are now tabloid, and I’m not just referring to their editorial policies.

Late last year, first The Independent and then quickly The Times started producing issues of their papers on tabloid-sized paper, specifically aimed at commuters struggling to turn broadsheet pages on a crowded train.

I got the chance to check out a copy of the Independent while I was in England over Christmas, and I think it’s great – much more manageable even if you’re not hemmed in on the 7.45 to King’s Cross.

There’s obviously a design overhead in laying out two versions of the same paper, and the smaller size performs so much better from a usability perspective, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the broadsheet version was rapidly phased out.

Which leaves us with only one question – what do we use instead as a derogatory term since we can’t just slag something off as being ‘tabloid’ any more.

– Guardian coverage of the Independent’s switch

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

So I’m converting my old tapes to digital format in preparation for the arrival of my iPod (which is somewhere between LA and here, most likely in the corner of sorting office under a pile of other forgotten Christmas presents).

I’ve got a tape player downstairs, but for some reason the tapes were lurking upstairs in a dusty box. I think it was an attempt to forget the wayward music tastes I enjoyed in secondary school.

And it’s great to be reunited with albums that meant so much to me as a 17 year old. Steeltown by Big Country is still stirring stuff, and Outlandos D’Amour by The Police has some cracking tunes, but some inexcusable fillers too (’Be my girl – Sally’: a love song to an inflatable doll, I kid you not).

There’s also something satisfying about the process. (From the tape deck through an amp into the Mac, digitised in open source program Audacity, and converted from .aiff to AAC in iTunes.) Seeing songs as wave forms is probably as close to synesthesia as I’ll get, and the repetitive work is a rewarding combination of science fiction and manual labour.

There are plenty of tapes to get through (but I think I’ll pass on the Chris de Burgh ones), so I’ll just keep pulling the odd tape out of the box whenever I’m working on the computer. Next up, Suzanne Vega.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

So I’m fascinated with medieval saints, enjoy reading Latin and Old Irish, and should probably have been born around 1900.



But there’s another part of me that’s a complete geek, and loves the latest gadgets and gizmos. And this is the part that’s having fun with my new camera phone.

The built-in radio is a simple but brilliant feature that turns my long walk to work into a much more pleasant experience, as I drift along Mary St in my own world of classical music.

The camera seems like a useless feature, but I’ve started using it to capture tiny moments that ordinarily I’d remark on to myself, and then promptly forget. Like the mad colours of the veggies on the Moore St market (shown), or a nice sunset over the Four Courts.

Looking back through the spontaneous pics, Dublin looks different and better than the pessimistic view I tend to have of it now. How’s that for a feature – ‘this phone makes you like your surroundings more’.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Last night I rode my bike through the Phoenix Park, on my way to Blanchardstown.

On the way up, at about 5pm, the light was fading, and a layer of mist was gathering on the grass. With the moon rising behind me, it was a lovely scene.

On the way back, at around 6:30, it was dark and very foggy. On the bike track along Chesterfield Rd, you couldn’t see the tarmac beneath your wheels, and the fog prevented you seeing the way ahead. The lights from cars coming the other way made things worse, creating a bright white duvet to ride into.

With my front light illuminating nothing but the fog, I just kept the bike straight and picked my way along. It was great. Across the road I could just make out the ghostly lights of cyclists on the other track. Even the tearoom close to the Parkgate St entrance was fogbound and scarcely visible.

As soon as I was out of the Park, the fog disappeared, and you’d never have known there was such adventure to be had.