Alexia Blogs

Okay, so I’m sick. I feel nauseous. I have had strange digestive rumblings. So what do I do? Go to see Feist. I bought tickets some time ago and I’m not really one for wasting money. My mother always said that once I put away money it never saw the light of day. Kidding, of course. I’m actually quite a generous person. Oh, and modest too. So I couldn’t let the evening slide without popping into the Tripod to see Feist.

Feist is one of those strange artists that inhabits the Regina Spektor-Tori Amos territory without resorting to strange tone poems or yet another twisted story of violence and loss. She’s ethereal, jazzy and altogether a more pop-friendly tunester. And that?s not to cheapen her range. The hooks she appends to her songs construct a strange audio sculpture of dichotomy. They imprison you with their down-home sensibilities and set you free with delicate embelishments.

I?m not the biggest Feist fan in the world, but I love the clarity of her sound. I bought the album a couple of weeks ago and I have listened to the whole thing twice. Feel It All is a permanent fixture on my work playlist, so that gets me brownie points, right?

The night kicked off by meeting up with friends at the Odeon. That place is a ghost town mid-week, but their was something else stirring in the air. And it was decidedly not Feist.

As I got ready to enter the Odeon, two Master Chiefs jumped out of a MPV taxi and were quickly admitted to the POD. I should have asked for a pic, but they were on a mission. The Halo 3 launch party all MacGyvered up and ready to go right next-door at the POD, while Feist was ready to sing her little heart out. Yes, I was feeling extra inventive and nerdy as I fumbled for my Feist ticket.

Feist was much better than I expected. I?m a pitiful fan really. I knew the words to just about two of her songs and played Nodding Doghead game to the rest. The Tripod was very busy. And please, would the tall people of the world with massive hair move to the side, when a vertically challenged lady of manners and good standing is trying to bask in the beauty of talented performers that she can’t see. Oh and to the pair of girls to my left that persisted in playing bumper cars during the encore, I could have played back, but brusing could have resulted.

Feist played all of her songs flawlessly. Swapping from guitar, to piano accompaniment just the once. The irony was not lost on me as Feist performed 1, 2, 3, 4. As an encore, Feist played a Broken Social Scene song (correct me if I’m wrong here..). Anyone @ the gig catch the title? [EDIT: Thanks to Paddy who pointed to Fucked Up Kid as the song in question].

All in all, I had a great night. The music as enjoyably light and balmy. Feist is a consummate performer, that I’d love to see again.

I clicked a couple of snaps.

I see that Damien has posted about the usage of bad language in blogging. I really don’t have a problem reading posts that use expletives as they do in natural language - like a running conversation. Damien?s style doesn?t rub me the wrong way. In fact, I feel like I can actually hear him speaking. If bad language be colourful splashes on the blogging canvas, then Damien is Pollock.My tolerance level tops out where I see bloggers using bad language to deliberately grab attention. This amounts to abusing their readership. People will very soon drop those feeds from their reader.

I don’t generally use expletives when I blog. It’s not a conscious decision I make, but rather, I like to spend time on a post. Spending time writing and reworking a piece, inevitably, robs some of my posts of that heartbeat immediacy. That dangerous spark where an expletive could find itself in my WP edit box. I have been known to use the odd expletive in mblogging or on IM, though.

There are too many conventions already in the manner of modern communications. Imagine what our forebearers would think of our sanitised language today. Think of Shakespeare and the glorious ripe language he used.

I say let expletives in blogging stay. If people want to distinguish their blogs as havens of expletive-free expression then they can brand their sites using a Parental Rating like Curse-free. Let people opt in. We shouldn’t squash someone’s right to use bad language, just because their perception of acceptable differs from our own.

Irish gamers and 80s TV superfans are going absolutely ape over Richard Dean Anderson’s (or RDA) planned appearance at the Halo 3 launch party in Dublin this evening. It?s a great way for Microsoft to generate buzz about the launch. Short of the Hoff, Shatner or JR Ewing, I can’t think of an 80?s TV superstar to get the blood pumping as much as RDA.

The event is invite-only and very hush-hush - I can find zero details on the web about a time and venue. Anyone have any sightings or pics? Perhaps RDA in Starbucks, RDA in Dunnes, RDA doing the Robot dance on Grafton Street with the painted James Joyce mime. Drop a comment and/or URL.

Halo 3 is set in the 26th Century where humanity battles an alliance of alien races known as the Covenant. The game is the final part of current Halo trilogy for Master Chief, the souped-up super soldier who fights the good fight for humanity.

Halo 3 was created by Bungie Studios - subsidory of Microsoft Game Studios out of Kirkland, WA. Localisation work on the game for markets around the world has been done at the Microsoft Ireland campus by the XBox team in the HED division.

A handful of stores are opening at midnight tonight just for the Halo 3 launch including the Gamestop in St. Stephens’ Green. I hear that Master Chief will be roaming the city this evening especially around Grafton Street, Stephen?s Green and Dawson Street. Happy gaming!

I?m reading this morning that a Charm Academy has been founded in the UK in an effort to give social skills to geeks. In typically flippant fashion, The Times opens it’s article saying Computer geeks beware: your days are over. The cheapening of journalism is a pet hate of mine. If I want read something dumbed down, I?ll pick up the Mail, not the Times.

Yes I concur with Education Editor Alexandra Frean, that the social and business skills of IT graduates need to be improved. However, a measley course that runs in thirteen institutions will, however, do little to staunch the bleeding wound of flight from computing courses and the social ineptitude of grads. What needs to happen here is a repositioning of learning goals amongst our education planners.

In a way, our educators are creating these social hermits. Isn’t sitting on one’s own endless programming and debugging the most socially isolating experience? Imagine spending three or four years doing that most of the time. No wonder IT grads find it difficult to socialise in a business context after finishing college. They’re been battery-fed an education for their entire college lives. Yes, there is an element of group projects, but these tend to be cut and run affairs. Most comms can happen online, cutting off real one-to-one interaction.

So, what would I do if I was an educator? Well as a first step, I’d like to organise a year-long project and get a team of students together to form a mini company. Someone works PR, another Marketing, perhaps another on Project Management. Ancillary careers that link into IT. Give them a business problem. Let them brainstorm. Bring in someone from the Toastmasters and teach how to speak and present. Let it be challenging and fun.

Science and technology educators ought to learn that one cannot live on bread alone. And computer geeks cannot survive just on technology.

Some time ago I wrote about Clinique’s All About Eyes Rich. I used it in an attempt to banish the Panda-Eye syndrome. The results were slow, but I could see a difference after about two weeks. Grand I thought. Dandy. I might give Clinique a go. A friend of mine evangelised their products to me some time ago, so why not give them a shot.

As my stocks of Lancome dwindled, I decided to take plunge. Off to House of Fraziers in Dundrum Town Centre I went. Credit card in hand, eager to sample the Clinique system.

I browsed around. It’s amazing how quiet the cosmetics department in HOF is. I’m always astonished by how quiet it is. I, naturally, mention my observations to the girls at various counters. I used to work in retail during college and that line of work has absolutely saints in it. The girls engage nicely, they smile on hearing my observations and say it’s busy at the weekends.

I’m a very easy customer to sell to when I’m interested. I shop like a guy when I know what I want - bung everything into a basket and the job is done. This was something different, however. I needed advice. Good advice. Someone that I could trust with my hard-earned cash.

I’ve got sensitive skin, you see. Sensitive and quite dry. When my skin gets over-dry it gets blotchy and the condition of it takes a nose-dive. I chatted to the cosmetics girl, explaining my skin type. What do I get? Well, in Clinique there isn’t such a thing as skin types. Argh. I should have seen this as the first alarm. Okay, I didn’t buy it. My interest was piqued, but I prodded a bit deeper and listened on. It’s just Cleanse, Tone and Moisturise? I asked after a cleansing lotion. I hate using water on my face. It just plain dries my skin out. No, they didn’t have one. I was told that all that Clinique could offer me was soap (I’m not going there) or facial gel. Okay, I said. Hook me up with the gel.

Next, I ponied up for Toner. A big bottle - cos you know toning is ‘vital for the skin’. Yea - I’m not a five year old. And the the day-cream. Could I get something with SPF, I asked. Of course, she said. She recommended the Super Defence cream w/SPF 15. Grand, I thought. And then I decided, sure why not add a face mask too. I plomped for the Pore Minimising mask too.

You are thinking at this stage, I’m a cosmetics shopoholic. I’m not. I really don’t mind paying for skincare cosmetics as they always do their job to the tee. That’s the clincher.

Like a child ripping open her presents on Christmas morning, I tore through my boxes when I got home. First up came the facial gel. It’s went on with plenty of soft suds, but the smell left little to be desired. Imagine the whiff off a petrochemical factory that has just exploded and magnify that by a hundred-fold. As I rinsed it off, I noticed a small flaring of the skin. I wasn?t allergic, but rather the soap had sapped all of the moisture out of my skin and my face didn’t like that one bit. Not one bit.

I wasn’t overly impressed but moved onto toning. I opened the large bottle of toner and had to close it again immediately. The smell of alcohol from the toner was dizzying. I wasn?t sure if I should use it on my face or throw a few ice cubes into a glass and add a splash of soda. Nonetheless, I braved the stench and dabbed on a little on my face. If the soap hadn’t done the job of sucking the vitality out of my skin, the toner did it. I got that crawly, tight feeling that all dry-skin survivors know as an old, unwanted friend. Bah! That’s two I wasn’t impressed with.

Next up, came the Super Defence. I didn’t hold out much hope at this stage. I felt robbed and just a little grumpy. The texture of the cream is surprising. It was tactile and almost stringy. I liked that. It went on well, but was a tad greasy. It reeked, though, and in the worst way. Every had Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It’s fine to chew after a batch of garlic bread or when you have that hangover breath. Imagine that smell concentrated in a face cream. It’s fine to chew and spit out, I really don’t want that whiff hovering like halo of banana smell off my face. Well, Super Defence smells like that to me.

Needless to say, my 1, 2, 3 - Cleanse, Tone and Moisturise regime didn’t go to plan. Those products are still sitting on my shelf after the one use. A friend has volunteered to adopt them and give them a new home, so I’ll be taking them on a trip to Limerick next time I go. On the bright-side, the Pore Minimising mask is a dream. It’s a decadent cream that I like to slather on at least one a week.

So, I’m back to Lancome - HydraZen cream day (for dry skins) and night, coupled with HydraIntense mask, Tonique Confort and Confort cleanser. Next time, I may try Shiseido.

[Photo: Courtesy of Patti]

Great news this evening from St Lukes’ Hospital where Bernie and Rose Goldbach welcomed little Mia Rose to the world after 16 hours of labour. I’d like to extend my congratulations to the proud parents and my wishes to little Mia Rose. I wonder how long will it be until she’s co-hosting a podcast with Bernie.

It’s nice to see the flurry of microblogged births on the web. Makes for a sweet record for the kids when they grow up. Remember those baby books with swatches of hair and poster paint footprints? Microblogged births are those for the Web 2.0 babies?

Find that the SocNets and blogs are full of ‘Argh..matey’ speak today? Well, it’s International Talk Like A Pirate. The idea sprang forth from an innocuous game of squash twelve years ago to become a global day of acting the maggot by speaking a la Long John Silver.

TalkLikeAPirate.com has all of the details, including the top ten Pirate pick lines. My favourites are:

I’d love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

Prepare to be boarded.

Har har har!

I’m loving the Politics In Ireland redux. The new theme makes post text so much more readable than before. You can search by politician, party and you can even subscribe to updates via email.

What I really love about this site is the variety of blog streams that it pulls and aggregates for the blog reading public to digest. There’s so much to read and not enough time to do it in.

Now, that the Dail is almost back in session, the Politics In Ireland blog will be jumping back up my reading list. Silly season, be damned.

Last Thursday night, I went to the FOWA Road-Trip/DemoBar event at ElyHQ. It was melting pot of tech people - academics, engineers, business-heads and geeks. A nice mix of people. Downstairs of Ely HQ heaved under the strain of sustaining the crowd. I met lots of interesting people, all eager to engage and was impressed with quality of the attendees.

Mixing with the startups made me think of the challenges that startups face when going to market. Having come from a household where the main bread-winner was a small businessman himself, the biggest issue that I see most startups face, is understanding their business.

First off, I am very happy in my job and I am not thinking about moving on, but suppose for a minute I want to set a up business that searches banks of data. Perhaps it’s a search engine. It doesn?t matter what kind of data I’m compiling, I just want to offer a meaningful discovery service to the user. I might also want to add an advertising stream to my cash-flow.

The biggest issues facing my imaginery startup is trust and relevance.

Trust in that user privacy is being protected, and isn’t being compromised for profiling to my advertisers.

• How can my business play both sides of the equation and stay honest to the end user?

As user trust is the bedrock of my imaginery business, the relevance of search results is key to its success. Users trust my business to give them a reliable, consistent and meaningful service.

• So, how do I ensure that they get delivery of these expectations?
• How do I stop nefarious manipulation of my service to warp search results?

Also, a much bigger question is, how do I distinguish myself from the big players who produce something similar to what my business does? They have much deeper pockets than I do, and it would be easy for them to divert a small percentage of their investments to blow my imaginery startup into oblivion.

By looking at these issues, I’m not only protecting the business IP of my imaginery startup but also instituting branding. I’m distinguishing my service as one that keeps the user in mind and can respond to moves by the big players.

If startups can successfully swim the shark-infested waters of business, keeping these principles in mind then they are certainly on the road to success.

Thanks to the all of the folks involved in organising the FOWA Road Trip and DemoBar. I hope this is the beginning of a new era of events like this being held in the Ireland. Thanks to all of the sponsors, including Microsoft for supporting the event.