Raiméis

The headline on Reuters caught my attention … Ireland debates switch to right-hand driving. Really? We are debating this?? I think not.
How did they get from one politician voicing his opinion to the country “debating” the issue? Their reporting of Donie Cassidy’s suggestion regarding a reduced driving limit for foreigners is also poor.

As for Donie’s suggestion to switch ala Sweden in the 60s, well he’s obviously a bit special if it takes him 5-6 days to adjust to driving on the other side every time he goes to the States.

Just found this quite handy tool this morning …

“Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.”

At first glance it looks quite interesting; it’s certainly worth a test try anyway.

Blogging is slow I know and I do apologise though can’t promise it will improve at all in the 4c-able future. What limited free time I have these days is given over primarily to dreaming about how I will spend the 100m I’m sure to eventually win on the Euro lotto. The rest of the time I’m either 3D modelling or surfing around all the social network sites I am a member of thinking “this is an absolute pile of shite, why do I keep coming back here?”.

Re 3DCG: I found a handy tutorial on YouTube for modelling aircraft and while serious modellers would frown at the techniques used it did allow me to actually complete a plane model for the first time to an almost acceptable level so currently I have some renewed interest in modelling and am working on a number of planes and perhaps even a short animation. I won’t post any images here cos they’re crap but any images I create will be posted to my flickr page if you are curious. Just don’t be expecting anything high quality.

That’s what I’ll be at though I will try to post more.

p.s. while searching for plane reference images I came across this site with some damn interesting aircraft. I can’t believe some of these actually flew.

A while back I got ripped off by a guy on ebay (‘Jamie Power’ from Wales who uses the handle Redpower30, powercom1@msn.com/powercom1@ntlworld.com … you’ve now been warned, watch out for this scammer). We agreed a price for a particular item but I made the incredibly stupid and naive mistake of completing the purchase outside of ebay. The cunt sold the item to someone else and sent me an empty package.

Prior to that I bought a 3D modelling DVD course which was advertised as new from the UK … turned out to be a copy from Pakistan!

Lesson 1: Don’t trust people, people are cunts. Except you, I like you.

It’s then that I discovered just how utterly fucking useless Paypal are; you have ZERO buyer protection in reality because once the seller has a shipping number then Paypal will side with the seller; irrespective of whether they sent you your item or not.
Thank god for Credit Card purchase protection though!

Lesson 2: I wouldn’t rely on Paypal as any kind of insurance if you get ripped off. Plus their customer service in the US are very impatient grouchy folk, you won’t get much understanding from them.

Last night I went shopping for a new USB key; the one I bought upmteen years ago in currys has served me well but at only 128mb I barely have enough space for my animal porn. So last night I bought a 2Gb key which should keep me going.

I was advised by a friend to buy a key from Hong Kong; but if it’s anything like China, thought I, you just can’t trust the hoors! They take a 256Mb/516Mb/1Gb key then reprogram and repackage it as a 4Gb or 8Gb key so when you put it in your computer it looks like a 4/8Gb key but of course you won’t fit anywhere near that amount of data on it.

And sure enough when I went looking for keys I can across this page warning about this very issue.

It got me thinking, why don’t Ebay do more to prevent fraudsters and scammers on their site??? Perhaps they are just scared of losing money but a quick browse of the forums will tell you that there are many members continually getting ripped off through ebay and it seems both ebay and partner paypal are completely useless when it comes to offering their customers (buyers) any decent level of protection.
I really don’t understand why sellers & buyers are allowed to use fake names/addresses and multiple handles; why isn’t some from of identity proof such as a credit card required of each buyer & seller?

When I purchased an item of Pixmania I had to forward a scan/copy of a picture ID PLUS then confirm what I sent over the phone to their customer service before I could complete the purchase. An article recently questioned why Ebay’s business was stagnating, perhaps it’s because the site is riddled with cunts selling fake products or ripping people off.
Surely it would be in Ebay’s best interests long term to insist on some proper proof of identification for all members. Wouldn’t a buyer/seller be less likely to rip someone off if they had to provide a validated name & address/photo ID such as a passport/a bank account number or credit card details? I think so.

Lesson 3: Don’t trust anyone on Ebay! Be aware that you’re taking a risk every time you use the site and don’t rely on Ebay to protect you.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some very decent honest sellers on Ebay, but get ripped off once and it can put you off online shopping for a long time.

Here’s the deal, Monopoly are creating their first ever “world edition” and you have a chance to vote for the top 22 cities you would like to see appear in the game. Dublin is the only Irish city which has a chance, it’s currently ranked at number 6 so let’s make sure it maintains its position in the top flight.

Come February 29 voting will begin for the top 20 wildcard cities; Cork is at #4 but will have it’s work cut out to reach top spot. So on the 29th start getting your votes in for the Rebels.

Get on over there now and get your votes in!

It constantly amazes me how many people use their company email to send personal mails without at the very least removing their contact details from their signatures.
I’ve heard of people in the past being suspended or even losing their jobs due to ‘mis-use’ of their company’s mail system.

In the past couple of weeks for example I have received, in forwarded jokes, the full contact details for people working in companies such as the Bank of Ireland (multiple branches), Tesco Ireland, Deloitte & Touche, Hewlett-Packard, Goodbody Stockbrokers, Barclays and about a dozen smaller firms throughout Ireland. Are none of these people concerned at all that their mails might come full circle and be seen by someone else in the company potentially landing them in a spot of bother? I’d be concerned.

Ok it’s old news now, I has this post in my drafts for the past week and forgot to publish it … Will Ferrell, yeah THE Will Ferrell, the American comedian/actor, was out and about in Longford the weekend before last!

My sister is absolutely sickened because not only is she one of his greatest fans but he was drinking in her local pub and where was she? Swanning off around the globe on holidays.

Apparently Will was researching his roots (Ferrell/Farrell … O’Farrell’s stronghold/Longphort Uí Fhearghail etc etc) … what else would an American be doing in Longford in fairness?

Some bloke on a building opposite, snapped this afternoon on the phonecam.

O2 and probably other gsm service providers too offer you free text messages through their website. With O2 you get 250 free messages per month, the only pain in the ass is that to use them you need to log on to the site to access the message form. For that reason I only use around 10-15 per month.

That’s no longer the case since I found a neat Italian mobile application called goText which lets me access these free messages from my handset.

Ok, it’s not as seamless as sending normal text messages, they need to do some work on the UI, and of course you have to pay for data transfer but it works and means I can send messages for on average €0.01 as opposed to the normal charge of €0.11 (€0.13 to non-O2, €0.25 international!!)! That’s a heck of a big saving even if you only send a small number of text messages.

GoText works with O2 and a number of other service providers throughout the world but I have no idea if it can be used with Vodafone, Meteor or others here. Check out their configuration page for a list of service providers and their page on GetJar for a list of compatible devices (but download it from the goText homepage for latest version).

p.s. I should mention that for those of you who can’t use goText there are a number of alternatives such as smsBug which will cost you €0.03 (plus data transfer) per text. Check out GetJar for other options.

Just bought my first .ie today. They wouldn’t let me have inailedbbbaskin.ie so I went for emcguinness.ie instead. Not very exciting I know but it will have to do. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it, perhaps a portfolio!

In other news I have more or less given up on Facebook, all those feckin vampires, rockstar cars, daily babes, flirt, blackjack, iq tests invitations .. I just don’t see the point. Instead I’ve moved on to LinkedIn … it’s nice and peaceful and quiet over there.