I’ve been reading Dave Winer since he wrote for Wired Magazine, followed Scripting News since its inception, and used many of the tools that he and his companies have shift. I’m slowly weaning myself the last of them, RadioUserland. Dave’s periodic rants about Apple are amusing, though occasionally off-base. The only thing I would consider a lock-in, and it’s only a bit of an inconvenience really, is the DRM in in iTunes. And that’s an RIAA/MPAA issue; I’m sure Apple wouldn’t complain if they didn’t have to add DRM to the content in iTMS. You can’t convert music downloaded from…
Bush Says Anthem Should Be in English
The Chimp in Charge has put his two cents in on the issue, and states, “I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn English”, and “One of the things that’s very important is, when we debate this issue, that we not lose our national soul.” Sorry Georgie, too late. We lost it when you took the oath of office. I’m going to have to buy myself a copy of that CD now. This story from Yahoo contains an interesting fact – that the Star-Spangled Banner?s melody was lifted from a British drinking song. I…
José Can You See?
A group of Latino pop stars record a Spanish ‘Star Spangled Banner’ to support immigrants. Boy, a touchy issue, for sure. Apparently many people are outraged about this, including a descendant of the author. My first impression was, why should anyone be offended by this? I’m certainly not. However, I don’t know how I’d feel if someone took “Hawai’i Pono‘?” (our state anthem) or “Hawai‘i Aloha” (held with the same reverence) and performed them in English. That being said, I am looking foward to hearing it, and it certainly is certainly going to bring even more attention to one of…
First Irish Podcast to Achieve Radio Syndication
Congratulations to Conn at An tImeall, who will become the first independent Irish podcast to cross-over to traditional radio. An tImeall begins a syndicated run on Galway city’s college community station, Flirt FM today. I was approached by a web radio operator who wanted to syndicate my Nahenahe.net podcast in his streams, but needed me to secure releases for the music and had stipulations that made it less than attractive for me do it. If someone was able to do it without requiring me to do any additional legwork (or fingerwork) and broadcast the podcasts as is, I would definitely…
I have to find myself a pint of this…
Or perhaps a quart. Leave it to Ben & Jerry’s to create a Black & Tan Ice Cream. I hope they poured the stout properly.
Mac OS on non-Apple Intel Boxes? I don’t think so, Tim.
Or Todd. I usually leave commentary on the State of the Mac to my Celtic Cousin Scott, but need to chime in here. It doesn’t matter that the OS is what makes Macs sing, Apple is still a hardware company. Even iTunes Music Store is simply a vehicle to sell iPods, though I’m sure SJobs revels in hanging out with rock stars as well. Several blogs I read today have pointed to Cringley’s post on Boot Camp. Does anyone believe that Apple would push back the release of an OS for six months to placate a hardware vendor and cut…
Speeding fine dropped over Irish
A Co Donegal builder who was accused of speeding last year will not be prosecuted because the authorities failed to meet their constitutional obligation to deal with him in Irish. I love it!
Conversion complete!
Aloha Culture Hack fans (all three of you) and welcome to the new WordPress-powered Culture Hack, featuring my Irish Flag WP theme. It still needs some work, but eventually will release it for public consumption.
Bottoms up, bubbles down
Though this is from a few years ago, it is always worth another look on St. Patrick’s day. “Scientists have finally proven what beer lovers have long suspected: When beer is poured into a glass, the bubbles sometimes go down instead of up.In this video,chemists Richard N. Zare of Stanford University and Andrew J. Alexander of the University of Edinburgh explain the frothy details.” Slánte!
Signs, signs, everywhere signs.
If this had happened tomorrow (St. Patrick’s Day), I probably would have fallen flat on my face… One of our Hawaiian Studies majors came into our office with a young part-Hawaiian woman, perhaps 20 years old. He introduced us, and she explained that she had lived in Cork off and on from when she was eight until she was about 16. Apparently her father is from Cork and she has many relatives still there. We talked about our experiences there, and her eyes grew large when I explained that I was considering pursuing a Ph.d. at either UC-Cork or QUB.…