iPhone 3GS GPS suddenly stops working? here’s the fix : via a forum on MacRumors — blow away the locationd cache. Worked perfectly for me after my GPS crapped out halfway through my holidays :( Requires that the phone be jailbroken first
(tags: iphone gps software 3gs reliability bugs macrumors jailbreaking locationd)
Justin's Linklog Posts
SoundCloud Developers Manifesto : ‘We recognize that only through your apps and hacks, can SoundCloud fully realize its potential as the audio platform.’
(tags: apps hacks soundcloud mp3 music hosting files json rest oauth apis http)Good volcanic-ash links : European air traffic control Twitter feed and NOC site, via Boards.ie. The thread itself is a good reference, too
(tags: volcano ash vaac twitter boards.ie threads travel air holidays)2-day volcanic ash forecasts over Europe : using SNAP, the Norwegian Meterological Institute’s nuclear-fallout modelling system. Very useful, much niftier than the UK version, and much more *publicly available* than the Irish version
(tags: europe volcano norway yr.no met.no weather ash snap modelling forecasts)
The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City « Viceland Games : interview with the guy behind the “Magnasanti” video. [Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi] ‘presented the world in a way I never really looked at before and that captivated me. Moments like these compel me to physically express progressions in my thought, I have just happened to do that through the form of creating these cities in SimCity 3000. I could probably have done something similar – depicting the awesome regimentation and brutality of our society – with a series of paintings on a canvas, or through hideous architectural models. But it wouldn’t be the same as doing it in the game, for the reason that I wanted to magnify the unbelievably sick ambitions of egotistical political dictators, ruling elites and downright insane architects, urban planners and social engineers.’ WHOA
(tags: whoa mental architecture culture gaming society video simcity urban vice)
New programming jargon you coined? – Stack Overflow : some nice coding neologisms here. aside from “Refuctoring” (see other link), I like “The Duck” (a sacrificial feature, used to distract cut-crazy bosses from useful features) and “Stringly Typed” (an implementation that needlessly relies on strings when programmer and refactor friendly options are available)
(tags: coding funny slang neologisms jargon stack-overflow the-duck stringly-typed)Refuctoring : ‘the process of taking a well-designed piece of code and, through a series of small, reversible changes, making it completely unmaintainable by anyone except yourself’ (via Mozai)
(tags: funny refuctoring via:Mozai coding tests tdd programming software)
UK Met Office: Volcanic Ash Cloud Maps : updated 4 times daily, maps of Europe indicating coverage of the ash cloud. I’m going to be F5’ing this constantly over the next week as I’m supposed to be flying on Sunday :(
(tags: airports hazards iceland travel maps weather volcanic-ash ash forecast europe met-office holidays ash-cloud)
The result of the IMRO & music blogger meeting | Nialler9 Music Blog : upshot: IMRO will think about it and get back to Nialler et al; in the meantime, everyone operates as before. one to keep an eye on, even if you’re not Irish; this will play out overseas soon too. Good call getting Simon McGarr along
(tags: music mp3 shakedown imro nialler9 ip)EU must break down national copyright barriers, says EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes : “There is a huge Digital Single Market for audiovisual material. The problem is that it’s illegal […] We have effectively allowed illegal file-sharing to set up a single market where our usual policy channels have failed.” “While the internet is borderless, Europe’s online markets are not. It is often easier to buy something from a US website than online from the country next-door in Europe. Often you cannot buy it at all within Europe.”
(tags: copyright piracy neelie-kroes quotes eu ec music ip)Cory Doctorow: Persistence Pays Parasites : ‘Falling victim to a [phish] isn’t just a matter of not being wise to the ways of the world: it’s a matter of being caught out in a moment of distraction and of unlikely circumstance.’ +1, that matches with the personal phishing stories I’ve heard from others
(tags: phishing cory-doctorow security anti-phishing scams distraction twitter)
Dutch forum thread on splitting analog signals from a UPC Thomson DCI-6221 DVR : I’m trying to figure out how I can rebuild a MythTV box with new UPC equipment. this claims that you can split the cable before it enters the Cisco cablemodem, and get analog TV off the basic cable that way. hmm
(tags: analog tv upc mythtv dci6221 mediabox cable-tv)the world’s largest DVR : SnapStream’s 100TB rack which records 50 analog TV channels simultaneously
(tags: snapstream video tv storage hardware analog television)Comparing genomes to computer operating systems in terms of the topology and evolution of their regulatory control networks — PNAS : ‘we present a comparison between the transcriptional regulatory network of a well-studied bacterium (E. coli) and the call graph of a canonical OS (Linux) in terms of topology and evolution. … both networks have a fundamentally hierarchical layout, but there is a key difference: The transcriptional regulatory network possesses a few global regulators at the top and many targets at the bottom; conversely, the call graph has many regulators controlling a small set of generic functions. This top-heavy organization leads to highly overlapping functional modules in the call graph, in contrast to the relatively independent modules in the regulatory network. … These findings stem from the design principles of the two systems: robustness for biological systems and cost effectiveness (reuse) for software systems.’ (via adulau)
(tags: via:adulau papers toread genetics genome call-graph linux kernel e-coli operating-systems transcriptional-regulatory-network)
A fast, fuzzy, full-text index using Redis : quite easy, using a Metaphone sound-like indexing scheme to provide the fuzz
(tags: metaphone sounds-like indexing python redis search full-text fuzzy)Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit : yay, Red Hat beat down patent troll IP Innovation, L.L.C. (a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies), in East Texas no less
(tags: ip law legal novell linux open-source patents redhat swpats uspto acacia-technologies)article on the IMRO-vs-blogs LOEL spat : by an ex-Hot-Press staffer. interesting: Hot Press ‘also publish MQ, the IMRO members’ periodical.’ well, that would explain a lot
(tags: hot-press ireland music mp3 loel imro shakedown)Indie music mogul: The net’s great for us : Martin Mills of Beggar’s Banquet. thought-provoking interview, and he nails it on this: “People who in their 30s a few years ago who may have stopped listening to new music, or were listening to iterations of music they heard in their late teens or early twenties, are now able to discover entirely new things. You’ve got new artists being discovered by 30, 40, 50 and 60 year olds. You’ll now have a group of friends talking about music and sending links.” That EXACTLY described my situation a few years back
(tags: martin-mills beggars-banquet music record-labels xl mp3 filesharing)
Facebook | Save Irish Music Blogs From IMRO! : join this group to add your voice
(tags: facebook imro shakedown blogs ireland music mp3)the torture garden: On Hot Press and My Place In The Real Economy : it seems Hot Press have come up with some Paul-McGuinness-esque pro-IMRO one-sided turdery masquerading as journalism. shock me
(tags: imro shakedown hot-press tat journalism ireland dublin)Two bands pull out of IMRO show in blog protest : fair play to The Cast Of Cheers and Mia Sparrow, cancelling their show in response to IMRO’s actions
(tags: imro shakedown bands music ireland the-cast-of-cheers the-richter-collective)Why Our Civilization’s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA : incredible. Almost every single modern camera capable of recording video now requires that you obtain a license from MPEG-LA to use recorded footage for commercial purposes. These clauses are currently not enforced, but could be. Horrifying (via Tony Finch)
(tags: via:fanf patents mpeg2 codec compression consumer-rights copyright legal law mpeg h264 mpegla codecs)
Make your own sourdough | Life and style | The Guardian : more recipes. This one looks like a good guide to creating a starter culture, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while
(tags: sourdough bread recipes food guardian)Thomasina Miers’ simple Mexican recipes | Life and style | The Observer : some pretty good “ports” of Mexican recipes to ingredients available over here, must try these
(tags: mexican food guardian recipes tortas tlayudas ceviche tacos burritos)Stephen Walter’s The Island : truly amazing artwork, as featured in the BBC4 documentary ‘Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art’ last week. ‘The Island satirises the London-centric view of the English capital and its commuter towns as independent from the rest of the country. The artist, a Londoner with a love of his native city, offers up a huge range of local and personal information in words and symbols. Walter speaks in the dialect of today, focusing on what he deems interesting or mundane.’
(tags: maps stephen-walter cool detail the-island london)
ScamNailer – Anti-Phishing Filter : a generated set of SpamAssassin rules containing known-phisher addresses
(tags: scams phishing spear-phishing spamassassin rules anti-phishing)Endangered sites in Britain and Ireland to see before they die : including Roundstone Bog, burned to a crisp last week :(
(tags: roundstone bogs ireland connemara tourism endangered)Irish music blogs under attack over royalties | Music | guardian.co.uk : ‘If IMRO goes ahead with its plan, targeting music blogs around the world, there will soon be legions of frustrated bloggers. And it will be much worse if other regional publishers follow suit.’
(tags: imro ireland guardian news blogs music mp3 shakedown)Vending Spree : ‘I am going to consume and review every item in my office vending machine and there is nothing you can do to stop me.’
(tags: vending-machines funny blogs food daily)Why We’re Siding With The Bloggers and Why IMRO’s LOEL Blog License Won’t Work : good post from online music marketing site Amp.ie
(tags: music mp3 blogging blogs ireland imro shakedown loel)On The Record » “This music blogger IMRO licence thing” : Jim Carroll’s blog post on the IMRO mp3blog shakedown. Comment thread has some good stuff from Irish music heads
(tags: imro mp3 blogs music ireland jim-carroll shakedown)IMRO propose massive increase in indie cinema fees : what are they up to? ‘1 per cent levy on the gross box-office takings of every cinema in the country … Smaller cinema operators who attended a meeting … said the proposal amounted in some cases to a five to sevenfold increase on their existing royalties payments.’
(tags: imro wtf cinema movies ireland shakedown)Nialler9’s getting the IMRO shakedown : Irish music blogs apparently need to pay a minimum of EUR150/year to the collection agency for “making copyrighted music available online” — and they intend to ask _all_ sites who offer music, Irish or not, to pay this fee (!)
(tags: imro shakedown nialler9 ireland music mp3 blogs blogging)
Mix Tape Amnesty : ha! ‘The amnesty was created in an effort to finally rid the country of illegally taped music. Although technology has evolved, the law on this issue has remained unchanged and these mix-tapes still constitute a threat to artist royalties.’ Remember: home taping is killing music
(tags: mixtapes funny history ireland virals music mp3 filesharing)
“Child pornography is great”, according to one EU music-business lobbyist : it’s the perfect ‘gateway’ to allow anti-filesharing filtering of the internet. ‘Start with child porn, which everybody agrees is revolting, and find some politicians who want to appear like they are doing something. Never mind that the blocking as such is ridiculously easy to circumvent in less than 10 seconds. The purpose at this stage is only to get the politicians and the general public to accept the principle that censorship in the form of ”filters” is okay. Once that principle has been established, it is easy to extend it to other areas, such as illegal file sharing. And once censorship of the Internet has been accepted in principle, they can start looking at ways to make it more technically difficult to circumvent.’ Via TJ McIntyre
(tags: via:tjmcintyre ifpi filesharing child-porn filtering internet johan-schluter anti-piracy-group sweden denmark eu)
How to setup your Wii to act as a media server : SMB setup details
(tags: smb files wii video mplayer networking)MPlayer CE – WiiBrew : ‘a homebrew media player for the Nintendo Wii. It was initially created as a fork of Team Twiizers’ port of MPlayer, combining elements of MPlayerWii, GeeXboX and other great homebrew contributions.’ recommended by conoro
(tags: via:conoro mplayer video wii homebrew movies)Evernote export script : this promises to make Evernote a good deal more usable for me, if it works
(tags: evernote export data silos documents storage)Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned [PDF] : good set of slides from Dropbox. traditional marketing and AdWords failed utterly; word-of-mouth (and a great product) was how they’ve succeeded
(tags: business dropbox lessons marketing pr presentation startup viral)spamtune.pl : ‘a Perl script that generates an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet which loads up SpamAssassin configuration and known spam and ham messages. Once loaded, you can tweak individual SpamAssassin scores in the spreadsheet itself and see their effect on spam/ham classification in real-time. The script also shows you the number of false positives and negatives for a set of scores in real-time.’ by Raj Mathur
(tags: spamtune spamassassin rules scores optimization tweaking openoffice)GameStation now legally owns the souls of thousands of online shoppers, thanks to unnoticed T&C tweak : “By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non- transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamestation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.”
(tags: funny eula terms-and-conditions legal clickwrap via:risks gamestation shopping)
Nick Clegg – Conservapedia : Conservapedia gold. “His father was half-English, half-Russian. His mother was dutch. He speaks English, Dutch, French, German and Spanish. His wife is Roman Catholic. Aged sixteen, Clegg was arrested in Germany and charged with arson. He and his friends destroyed a priceless collection of rare cacti while he was drunk.”
(tags: nick-clegg funny conservapedia wingnuts right-wing teabaggers lib-dems uk politics)
Rhizome | Soviet Sci-Fi Animation in the 1980’s : Soviet animators’ cartoons based on classic sci-fi
(tags: movie scifi video russia via:boingboing)NoSQL at Twitter (NoSQL EU 2010) [PDF] : specifically, Hadoop and Pig for log/metrics analytics, Cassandra going forward; great preso, lots of detail and code examples. also, impressive number-crunching going on at Twitter
(tags: twitter analytics cassandra databases hadoop pdf logs metrics number-crunching nosql pig presentation slides scribe)
RFID “zapper” constructed from disposable camera : also, an RFID “jammer” to block reads of RFID chips within range. related: the Israeli govt is considering voting cards with RFID chips, apparently
(tags: rfid via:risks security hardware rf radio jamming israel)computing a rank by combining user rankings with a Dirichlet distribution : interesting
(tags: ranking algorithms recommendations datamining dirichlet scoring rank)Kohsuke “Hudson” Kawaguchi leaving Sun : and starting a new company around Hudson
(tags: hudson ci sun oracle acquisitions startups build)GetitKeepit.com : free e-bill aggregation/archival service from an Irish company, for Irish users (right now at least). looks very useful
(tags: bills aggregator ireland webapps via:jdrumgoole archiving)
Major labels go bragh? Irish judge allows 3 strikes : ‘The justice refers to legal alternatives to illicit downloading, such as “an I-player system,” when he’s writing about the BBC’s well-known iPlayer catch-up service [which is not available here]. He refers numerous times in the order to “DetectNet,” a company which can find P2P infringers, when he really means DtecNet. A strong grasp of the technical details won’t be found in this ruling’
(tags: ars-technica ireland dtecnet legal law three-strikes eircom filesharing)Lonely Planet offers free iPhone guides to stranded travelers : free (excellent) city guide apps for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Vienna until April 22nd; normally $10-$15!
(tags: lonely-planet free iphone apps travel europe cities)
Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, in the course of his judgement on EMI Records & Ors -v- Eircom Ltd is quoted as having said the following:
‘ There is fundamental right to copyright in Irish Law. This has existed as part of Irish legal tradition since the time of Saint Colmcille. He is often quoted for his aphorism: le gach bó a buinín agus le gach leabhar a chóip (to each cow its calf and to every book its copy).’
As many have already noted, Colmcille didn’t say that at all; his opponent did. If anything, Colmcille invented copyleft.
Manus O’Donnell’s account:
Do inneis Finden a sceila art us don righ, ass ed adubhairt ris: “Do scrib C.C. mo leabhur gan fhis damh fen,”ar se, “aderim corub lim fen mac mo leabhur.”
“Aderim-se,” ar C.C., “nach mesde lebhur Findein ar scrib me ass, nach coir na neiche diadha do bi sa lebhur ud do muchadh no a bacudh dim fein no do duine eli a scribhadh no a leghadh no a siludh fan a cinedachaib; fos aderim ma do bi tarba dam-sa ina scribhadh, corb ail lium a chur a tarba do no poiplechaibh, gan dighbail Fhindein no a lebhair do techt ass, cor cedaigthe dam a scribudh.”
Is ansin ruc Diarmaid an breth oirrdearc .i. “le gach boin a boinin” .i. laugh “le gach lebhur a leabrán.”
Or, translated to English by A. O’ Kelleher and G. Schoepperle:
Finnen first told [High King Diarmaid] his story and he said “Colmcille hath copied my book without my knowing,” saith he “and I contend that the son of the book belongs to me.”
“I contend,” saith Colmcille, “that the book of Finnen is none the worse for my copying it, and it is not right that the divine words in that book should perish, or that I or any other should be hindered from writing them or reading them or spreading them among the tribes. And further I declare that it was right for me to copy it, seeing there was profit to me from doing in this wise, and seeing it was my desire to give the profit thereof to all peoples, with no harm therefore to Finnen or his book.”
Then it was that Diarmaid gave the famous judgement: “To every cow her young cow, that is, her calf, and to every book its transcript. And therefore to Finnen belongeth the book thou hast written, O Colmcille.”
Soon thereafter, of course, 3000 died in the Battle of the Book at Cooldrumman, bringing a rather literal meaning to the modern term “copyfight”. ‘Colmcille and the Battle of the Book: Technology, Law and Access to Knowledge in 6th Century Ireland’ is recommended for more background.
A Clatter of the Law: ‘Graduated Response’ now de facto law in Ireland : excellent post on the ‘three strikes’ judgement
(tags: law ireland eircom mp3 filesharing copyright)
Digital Rights Ireland blog post on the secret internet-filtering plans : ‘it becomes clear that for some time now the Department of Justice has been proposing the introduction of internet blocking in Ireland – and has been doing this under the radar, without any public consultation or legislative approval. Indeed, it is clear from the list that the Department is not planning on introducing legislation but instead intends to introduce this new form of censorship without any legal basis, based on the now discredited Norwegian and Danish models.’ This is very bad news indeed
(tags: ireland censorship filtering internet great-firewall dri politics freedom)Irish Dept of Justice secretly plotting a China-style “Great Firewall” : according to DRI’s TJ McIntyre via Karlin Lillington. “Blocking involves censorship taken on no legal basis. There is no judge, no jury and no right to be heard if you are blocked,” says McIntyre. “The chances are it also will be used in unaccountable ways by unaccountable organisations.”
(tags: blocking censorship government internet ireland dri filtering great-firewall)ClamAV and The Case of The Missing Mail – Return Path Blog : version 0.94.x got end-of-lifed a year after the release of .95, to fix a bug that would increase bandwidth consumption on their mirrors. To mandate upgrades, the devs sent a kill-switch trigger to .94 installations in the field. chaos ensues, unsurprisingly
(tags: clamav filtering mail ouch upgrades end-of-life support open-source sourcefire return-path)
BlueRunner: Email in the Cloud with Cassandra [PDF] : interesting prez from some IBM researchers on using Cassandra as a mail store, via Jeremy
(tags: via:jzawodny mail cassandra database data ibm nosql performance presentation pdf)N7 Armour Stripe Hoody : too nerdy? it seems possible
(tags: n7 armour mass-effect geek clothing games)
Authentic Carnitas and Three Pounds of Lard : fatty pork deep fried in lard. oh yeah. thanks Ben!
(tags: via:ben pork carnitas mexican recipes food yum lard)Boojum Fresh Mexican Food : new lunch spot serving Mexican food in Dublin. hopefully good, haven’t tried it yet, menu looks promising though
(tags: mexican food dublin ireland lunch meals)Mirror Man of Los Angeles : whoa, amazing street performer outfit
(tags: street-art performance mirrors via:lcbo photos)Every Time Zone : “Never warp your brain with time zone math again.” Quite a useful javascript TZ conversion tool, although it could be more intuitive still
(tags: conversion javascript reference timezones time international)Compu b – 10% off all Apple products this Saturday : new Apple reseller on Dublin’s Grafton Street, sounds like a good deal
(tags: apple ireland shopping via:adrianweckler)
Internet Security is a failure : ASF’s Paul Querna: ‘Security on the Internet sucks, and it is only getting worse. The problem is systemic, with security researchers and developers not producing viable ways for the average user to live on the Internet in a secure fashion without excessive paranoia.’
(tags: asf authentication infrastructure tls internet security)
Radisson Blu Galway – I’d avoid for events « Damien Mulley : Damien shares his atrocious experiences with a Galway hotel, and (naturally) commenters from the hotel’s IP address range pile on what looks like astroturf in the comments
(tags: comments astroturf radisson galway hotels funny events customer-service cluetrain)
Gizzard, a framework for creating distributed datastores : from Twitter. looks interesting
(tags: twitter gizzard database nosql storage sharding scalability scala replication)
“Crosaire” dead : the legendary compiler of the ‘Irish Times’ cryptic crosswords died on Saturday in Harare, Zimbabwe, aged 92
(tags: irish-times history crosswords puzzles cryptic crosaire)
City of Portland develops iPhone app to report city infrastructure problems : ie. take a pic of a pothole and it’ll be reported up to the appropriate office quickly and without hassle. wow. are you watching, Dublin?
(tags: portland cool iphone apps potholes infrastructure city)BenQ W600 projector : 600 euros all-in for an entry-level DLP home cinema projector capable of 720p HD. tempted, but stil a bit pricey
(tags: shopping tv video projectors home cinema dlp hdtv)
Grooveshark Mobile for iPhone : nifty, an official app for this music-streaming site — although for jailbroken iPhones only
(tags: jailbreaking iphone music grooveshark streaming mp3 apps)
Where Tcl and Tk Went Wrong : from David Welton. what, the lack of support for GNOME UI standards was *deliberate*? bad choice if so
(tags: gnome david-welton languages via:fanf scripting gui tk tcl)Gmail APIs and Tools: IMAP and SMTP using OAuth : ‘The Gmail IMAP and SMTP servers have been extended to support authorization via the industry-standard OAuth protocol.’ pretty cool, support third parties sending outbound as you, or filtering your inbound gmail
(tags: gmail mail oauth smtp imap api)creators of AMQP ditching it for ZeroMQ : ‘While iMatix was the original designer of AMQP and has invested hugely in that protocol, we believe it is fundamentally flawed, and unfixable. It is too complex and the barriers to participation are massive. We do not believe that it’s in the best interest of our customers and users to invest further in AMQP. Specifically, iMatix will be stepping out of the AMQP workgroup and will not be supporting AMQP/1.0 when that emerges, if it ever emerges.’ wow, massive downvote there
(tags: queueing amqp zeromq imatix mq protocols openamq via:janl)
BBC News – How spam filters dictated Canadian magazine’s fate : the Canadian mag “The Beaver” is changing its name due to broken filters’ false positives. Bennett Haselton reckons that there’s no incentive to fix FPs, which as Henry Stern notes isn’t the case
(tags: anti-spam false-positives beaver canadia canada bbc)TLS-encrypted spam : the Rustock botnet is now attempting TLS encryption of spam delivery sessions
(tags: tls rustock botnets anti-spam mailchannels ssl encryption)
Pictures from the Irish Blog Awards 2010 : I like the “blogging is dead” funereal theme ;)
(tags: blogging ireland iba blog-awards coffin)
pwnat – NAT to NAT client-server communication : ‘a proxy server that works behind a NAT, even when the client is behind a NAT, without any 3rd party’. nifty, by Samy “MySpace worm” Kamkar
(tags: samy-kamkar apps firewall ip nat networking pwnat stun traversal tcp sysadmin tunneling udp)
Bulgaria: Bulgarian City Struggles as Councilors Play Farmville on Facebook – Novinite.com – Sofia News Agency : ‘The troubled councilor, Dimitar Kerin, has defended himself by saying he was not the only one in the City Hall watering virtual egg plants. He said he had reached only Level 40, whereas Daniela Zhelyazkova, a councilor from the rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party, was already at Level 46.’
(tags: farmville funny slackers bulgaria plovdiv games facebook)Pivotal Tracker : hmm, nice-looking Scrum tool
(tags: scrum collaboration dev management project-management tools agile)
Guinness‘ latest product, Guinness Black Lager, gets a panning in the Irish Times today.
I’m not a fan of Guinness. It’s a good beer, but monotonous when it’s the only thing available. This, from the old Dublin Brewing Company website, makes some interesting allegations as to why that may be the case:
In 1996 the Dublin Brewing Company was set up in Smithfield, in the old James Crean soap factory. As the only other brewery in Dublin to Guiness, Dublin Brewing Company represented a small but real challenge to the Guinness monopoly. Initially [Guinness’] reaction was “it won’t work because, Irish people were brand loyal” and wouldn’t change to anything new.” However by November 1997 Guinness could see an increasing threat from a number of new microbreweries which were opening up around Ireland; it built its own microbrewery called St. James’s Gate Beers. In the words of their Weekly News No: 44 “the four unique and distinctive draught beers are designed to meet perceived demand amongst ale and lager drinkers over the age of 28 for a wider choice of tastier draught beers.”
The project team had spent 18 months conducting exhaustive R & D into the Irish drinking palette before the launch. This research included taking samples of Beckett’s and D’Arcy’s from public houses in Temple Bar and returning it to their citadel of brewing science for further analysis. Just exactly how do those “Fun Lovin Brewers” in Smithfield make beer? The code word for this return to basic brewing was affectionately known among company staff as “Operation Wolf”.
The Dublin Brewing Company, amongst other small breweries was going to be lambs for slaughter. Of course, when you have a virtual monopoly on tap space in most bars, it’s no problem launching no less than four beers in twenty pubs in Dublin overnight. Luckily drinkers in this country know what they want, and if they want a real beer they support the increasing number of microbreweries in Ireland, not a monopoly brewer masquerading as a small producer. The attempt at what was called “full taste” beers turned out to be a disaster. By October 1998 the operation was quietly closed down. However, now that St. James Gate is no more (£3-5m expenditure), we have its latest treat, Breo, being launched with the usual bravado Guinness display on these occasions – 10/15 kegs of beer free for every publican that takes it in. The pub gets the higher number of kegs if they take something else out. As the only other brewery in town, the Dublin Brewing Company is back on the firing line. The Dublin Brewing Company would like to dedicate D’Arcy’s Dublin Stout to the memory of those old Dublin breweries.
Sadly, whether due to Guinness’ tactics or not, the DBC appears to be no more. There are a few microbreweries around Ireland, but generally, the pub taps in this country are dominated by low-quality lagers, and Guinness. At least Paulaner is becoming widely available on tap, imported by Heineken…
Heathrow security man “ogles” female colleague’s breasts using full-body scanner : ‘John Laker, 25, allegedly copped an eyeful of Jo Margetson, 29, when the latter “entered the X-ray machine by mistake”. She was “horrified” as Laker “pressed a button to take a revealing photo” and remarked [on the size of her breasts].’ as Conrad says, “who didn’t see this coming?” Wonder how many other “revealing photos” are on that hard drive
(tags: privacy scanners heathrow the-register uk via:cjodea)
OSSBarcamp : this year’s open-source BarCamp, in Dublin, April 17th. no way I’ll be able to get a talk together (again) but hopefully I can attend ;)
(tags: ossbarcamp open-source dublin ireland barcamp)How to get Google Voice working in Ireland : hacky, but I’m very tempted — GV looks nifty and there’s no indication they’re bothering to roll it out on this side of the pond
(tags: google google-voice phone ireland hacks skype)
alleged Jolley Gang super-ligger chokes to death on a canapé while gatecrashing : wow, incredible irony
(tags: death humour observer ligging jolley-gang gatecrashers irony)