Raiméis

The new Reserve Defence Force is being launched [registration cheat] today in Limerick. Yes today is the official inauguration of the new Reserve Defence Force and the formal standing down of an Forsa Cosanta Áitiuil. The new force (na hÓglaigh Cúltaca), which replaces the generally poorly-trained & under-used FCÁ & Slua Muirí, will have exactly the same roles as the PDF including, possibly, participation in peace-keeping operations. The RDF Implementation Plan [.pdf - 17Mb] is available from the Defence Forces web site.

Personally I think this is fantastic news. I spent 10 great years in the 17th Inf Bn and loved every minute of it. Where else can you get paid to spend a week on a shooting range blasting off sub-machine guns or two weeks in scenic Wicklow learning to hit targets a few miles away with a mortar? There’s no other ‘hobby’ like it.
There were some faults though. When I joined we had just started using the venerable FN FAL, a decent weapon but we were still stuck with some older weapons such as the Gustaf SMG (good fun to shoot but a dangerous weapon) & the Bren (as old as the hills). Uniforms were poor, it was late 90′s before we got proper combats. The FCÁ was also an awful waste of money. Uniforms, pay, ammunition, transport, food etc etc all cost money and the most we ever did was guard duties. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have been doing cash or explosive escorts for example, or even border patrols. Most reservists with a few years under their belts would have been well capable for such tasks.

Some minor things have changed since I left, they are now using the Steyr AUG plus they finally have the same standard of uniforms as regulars. But as of today the force will see massive changes; in structure of the organisation, in training, in co-operation with regular units, in equipment and also in roles & responsibilities. Read more about the changes in the report released [.pdf - 17Mb].
It’s just a pity i’m too old to re-join the ranks [the RDF website puts the age limit at 35, which is higher than what my home unit told me, which means I still qualify!], and my old unit is no more, it’s going to be a Cavalry Squadron. Still, I think i’d look good in a Glengarry.

Co. Limerick is to get her first first Irish medium secondary school, Gaelcholaiste Luimnigh, which will open in September 2006! The opening of any new Irish medium school is good news for the language IMO.

That’s what it looks like. On a MUTV phone-in Keane said:

“I would like to play another year or two but I do not think it will be at Manchester United,”

His contract is up this summer and if he doesn’t get a new contract before then he’ll already have made up his mind to go. I suppose it was expected but i’ll be sad to see him go. There’s only one Keano … well, except Robbie but you know what I mean.
Celtic the obvious destination?

…or even Deep Impact. No roughneck oil drillers dropping nukes down holes, no Morgan Freeman “Life will go on” speeches, no quirky one-liners by American heroes on a suicide mission to drive their shuttle into the side of a big hairy rock, and no fucking Aerosmith songs. Nothing like that at all, but not far off. The European Space Agency have announced that they have selected two target asteroids for a planned mission to impact an asteroid in an attempt to deflect the asteroid off course by a ‘measurable amount’. The mission “Don Quijote” [to be renamed "oh holy Jesus fuck" when scientists realise they have pushed the asteroid onto a collision course with Earth] will send two spacecraft to a target asteroid, one of which (Hidalgo) will impact the asteroid while the other (Sancho) will orbit the asteroid for a few months, observing it before and after the collision. It might be no harm to start learning how to drill big holes in floating rocks because someday, when ya least expect it, that call might come…

*brrring brrrrrrrring*
maca: “Talk to me!”
Prez: “Maca, it’s the President”
maca: “Awright big lad, what’s the craic?”
Prez: “Maca, we have a rock, it’s a big one, we need your help”
maca: “Have me shuttle warmin up, i’m on my way”
*muffled*
“Nora, can ya make a few hang sangwiches an’ a flask a tae … now love, i’m in a hurry …”

p.s. Just wondering, many of these asteroids have been floating around for yonks. They have carved out a nice little path for themselves over time, cruising around the solar system. Then we pop off a wee blast sending the asteroid off on a new course. Do we know where it’s going to end up or what effect a tiny deflection might actually have?

Returning to the subject of the space elevator because there was an interesting development over the weekend. The LiftPort Group, the blokes wot are developing a space lift, tested a robot climber, which crawled up a length of “ribbon” which was attached to a high altitude balloon.

“The test run, conducted earlier this week, is seen as a precursor experiment intended to flight validate equipment and methods to construct a space elevator.”

The test was only performed to an altitude of 1,000 feet (305 meters), so they still have a bit of a ways to go … roughly 62,000 miles! Still, it’s a start.

I was just browsing the BBC web site and came across “A letter with a lingering message“. It’s the 50th anniversary of “From Our Own Correspondent” and Feargal Keane looks back at a contribution he made to the program 10 years ago. “Letter to Daniel” is a letter Feargal addressed to his newborn son about his thoughts and memories of his life as a foreign correspondent and of becoming a father. It’s very touching, I highly recommend listening to it. [direct link to .ram]

Well that’s according to the report which General John de Chastelain is to hand to the British & Irish Governments tomorrow!
What confuses me is Dermot Aherns statement today that he was confident complete decommissioning would happen, and Gerry Adams statement this weekend that it would happen in the “near future”. I just would have thought they were aware the final act (let’s hope) was happening today. Wouldn’t their intelligence sources be monitoring the situation?

Via Slashdot, the IFPI have released new software called the Digital File Check [not worth linking to] which checks your computer for file sharing software then launches a wizard to disable or uninstall the software. The program will also search for illegal music, movies and even images! Danger on TCAL makes an interesting point;

It should also delete your email and web browser programs, and disable your cdrom drives and floppy disk drives. In fact, why not just blow up the processor, because I’ve heard computers can be used for illegal file sharing.

I just had to post this. Via Slashdot I came across this very cool homemade “sentry gun”. It’s basically an FN P90 ‘BB’ gun, set up on a camera tripod with a few servo motors & servo controller and operated by a home coded program which accesses the images from a digital camera for the firing system. Simple, yah? I could have many hours of fun with something like this.

Some big[-ish] news from the browser world this week, Opera have made the decision to offer their browser for free. This is a huge move for Oslo based Opera who before this charged $39 for their browser (there was also a free version with annoying ads at the top). With 100,000 buyers per year the $3.9m was a big part of their $28m annual sales which makes this move so surprising. Some investigation from Om Malik has uncovered that Google is behind the move. Apparently Opera have signed a “referral-for-dollars” agreement with Google (amongst others). Mozilla have done the same and they earn about $30m per year from the deal!!
I always thought it was ridiculous that Opera was charging for their browser, even more so with the emergence of Firefox. Opera’s a decent browser but in all honesty you get fuck all for the $39.
Other browser news, the current browser war is heating up. Firefox has just had to plug another security hole (and a fairly serious one at that) adding to the row over browser security. This one has really dented Mozilla’s claims that Firefox is more secure than IE Shit Six.

One to watch out for; some ex-Mozilla guys (afaik) are developing a new browser called Flock. I haven’t managed to get a copy yet though, still waiting for my invite.

Also: it didn’t occur to me when posting yesterday but I recently installed K-Meleon and it’s immediatly become my no.2 browser. It’s a basic web browser but is extremely fast, customizable and lightweight, and a fine little program worth trying out [Windows only].