Raiméis

I’ve been sitting on the following post for a week or two and wasn’t going to bother posting it at all until I read Gerry’s post on ‘Identity Crisis‘. He raises a very important point that (re)unification would be as painful for nationalists as it would for unionists (by “nationalists” I presume he means all uz green coloured Irish, personally I wouldn’t describe myself as a nationalist). The NI constitutional question always follows the same line with nationalists trying to persuade unionists of the merits of a UI and the arguments always take into account concessions which the Irish State would need to make. Ok, of course certain changes would be needed down South but just how far do they expect us to go? As far as redefining our identity to “to create an all-Ireland state which is in some way British”? How big a price are people down South willing to pay for a United Ireland? Do we actually want a UI that badly?

There’s only so much I’m willing to pay and this is where I twist the question around. What’s in it for me?
The delectable Jo recently asked the question Unity – why? and I’d also like to know why. Like most of us down South (I assume) my reasons for wanting a United Ireland would have been based simply on emotion but this emotional desire has been slowly eroded over the years, especially during this time that I have been living abroad and have had the chance to visit many countries around the world. The addition of a family to my responsibilities has also affected my position obviously. So for me it’s no longer a question of what price I would pay for a UI, I’m now in a position where I’d be asking what can Northern Ireland bring to the table? Why should I vote for a United Ireland? My support is not a given, as much as I’d be delighted to share a country with anyone from any community North of the border (with notable exceptions) there’s only so much I’d be willing to give and I would certainly be expecting something in return.
I like to think of myself as a reasonable buachaill, our flag, anthem, constitution – we can change those. It’s when we get onto issues such as the Irish language, national identity or economic issues that’s where we’d hit some stumbling blocks.

I work as a lap dancing assistant which basically means I get to wipe the sweat of a lap dancers pulsating bosoms and punch out guys who get too touchy feely (i’m actually a qualified exotic dancer but choose to work a less stressful position). Today I am 5 years and 2 days in the job which means I should get a small pay rise … which is small consolation for the fact that our club is closing down at the end of the year. We’re part of an international chain of adult entertainment clubs and HQ has decided they no longer need some of the clubs here so the one where I work is closing and most strippers, lap dancers, hoes etc will be laid off. Thankfully my sweat wiping expertise is required in one of our other clubs although it may be lap dancers of the dangling johnson variety which may require wiping down so I’m looking for alternative opportunities in related fields. There’s a rumour going round today that a competitor may take over this club so at least some of the best dancers and strippers will have a job to go to come January.
Speaking of jobs, the missus gets a magazine here called “Suuri Käsityö Lehti” which literally translates as “Big Handjob Magazine“. You just couldn’t make that up could ya?
Anyway, I just thought I’d mention that it’s my job anniversary, 5 years & 2 days today, sort of a biggish deal.

Last Thursday Notre Dame & Navy (American Football college teams) signed a contract to continue their annual battle for another ten years, keeping going the longest running college football rivalry in history. And it’s been confirmed that the teams will play in Croke Park on September 1, 2012! The last time they played in Croke Park was in 1996 when Notre Dame beat Navy 54-27. I’m not an American Football fan at all but it would be pretty interesting to see a live game. It’s a long way off though.

That’s it. Roy Keane has left Man. United. A statement released by United has confirmed that Keano, after twelve and a half years 480 appearances and 51 goals with the club, has left with immediate effect, he won’t even see out the season. Shite!
But what an asset Keane has been to the club, an amazing player & captain he has given so much to United and is surely one of the main reasons they’ve had so much success in the past ten years or so. He’ll be a hard man to replace but the search now intensifies.
Keane Bio
Keane’s career stats
Reaction to Keane’s departure
Keane’s spats & silverware

Update: Any chance of Keano getting the Ireland job? Or Celtic? (thx for the reminder JL)

My GGF still hasn’t arrived yet and i’m quite cheesed off about that. It would have been nice to have it for the weekend. It was shipped on Thursday last week, how long exactly does it take to send a package from the UK to Finland, does it really need more than 8 days? It’s less than 3 feckin hours by plane and maybe another few hours to/from airports, so what happens the rest of the time? Bastards.

Update: It arrived this morning (21st), full critique coming in a couple of days.

It’s getting horrid close to the official 1.5 releases for Firefox & Thunderbird. The Irish localization teams would appreciate some feedback on the latest versions of their work. You can get 1.5 RC2 versions of Firefox anseo and Thunderbird anseo. It’s available for multiple platforms just make sure you download the Irish files (identified with ga-IE).
You can send your feedback to the official mailing list, make sure to highlight what platform you are testing on. Mac testers are hard to come by, any takers??
By the way, these builds are stable enough to use as your default browser/mail-news clients, I’ve been using RC2 for a week and it’s been more stable than the previous official release.
Also, if you need to change the language to English it’s easy to do (on Firefox anyway). Just type “config:about” into the address bar, search for “locale” and where it says “ga-IE”, double click that and change it to “en-US”, then restart the browser.
Get cracking …

Comment spam can be a bit of a problem. Although it doesn’t look like I have a problem on this blog, I do, the moderation system I have here prevents spam from showing up on the blog but my inbox is treated to a healthy dose of spam on a fairly regular basis. I’ve managed to cut down on it recently by closing some old threads which were the target of some heavy spamming.
Spam is a massive problem on a guest book which I run on one of my other sites (the ssi-developer domain has a few other sites apart from this blog) and even though I have disabled the guest book form inputs and removed the form “action” the spam still gets through … which shows how much I understand about how spam bots work.

To deal with this continuing problem I have decided on a course of action. Using whatever resources are available on the web I will trace the spammers back to their base of operations in the US or Russia or wherever they may be, pay them a visit and introduce them to my hurley (a fine hurl which I bought for £7 in Six-mile-bridge 5 years ago). Said hurley introduction will involve me smashing in their shins, knees, elbows, wrists and any other body parts that would prevent them from spamming me in future. They’ll get a beating any self-respecting farmer defending his property would be damn proud of. And I must point out that if the spammers don’t survive the experience i’ve no qualms about liquidizing their remains then flushing them down the jax.

Well, that was my plan until I found this handy htaccess code on Javascript.com. The code shown blocks known spammer bots & site rippers by returning a 403 error when they visit your site. If you’re not familiar with htaccess it’s easy to use, just copy that code into a file named “.htaccess” (the dot is vital so it is), place it in the root folder of your domain and it will apply to the entire domain. It won’t stop all spam but should stop most of it, I hope.
This solution isn’t nearly as fun as the hurley option but will save a ton on airfares.

Google Base has finally launched. According to Google:

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we’ll host and make searchable online.

Basically if you have any type of content which you want to make available to others you can submit it to Google base. So if you have a car for sale or want someplace to put your poetry GBase is the place for you.

The main benefit I’ve gained from switching to WordPress & using their templates is that the date is not as prominent as it was before and so it’s not as obvious when I don’t post for a week. A lack of energy and motivation is once again the reason.
I’ve found few things of interest in the news today … apart from “King Kong”, the giant ape which lived until about 100,000 years ago; Sacha Baron Cohen in trouble over his Kazakh character Borat Sagdiyev; and Kung Fu Hustle which won 5 awards at the Golden Horse awards, deadly film btw, go see it!
Anyway, while I try to build some energy for blogging sit back and laugh at Sony who continue to fuck things up with their rootkit.

Well as I highlighted in my previous post today is the day that Gaelic Games Football is released. My copy is in the post and I probably won’t get it until the middle of next week so I have been searching for reviews. This short review is rather positive:

“Great graphics, excellent gameplay,you can do it for the county”

However the review here isn’t so good, and a user on the following site thinks it’s “absolutely shambolic“.
Anyone come across any other reviews?