Alexia Blogs

Comment trolls, don’t say I haven’t helped ya. Mashable are in the final week of a competition to reward the best troll comments on their blog.

Cubic Telecom’s MAXRoam wants to give you an iTouch for your mobile carrier horror story. Worst story wins the schwag.

Two competitions.. Woo…

Uncov thinks Amazon’s SimpleDB is the dog’s bollocks for distributed data store (of course with a few caveats).

Meet Google Profile. It’s Google’s push for bundling more branding on products and services by allowing providers to add profiles.

Research into converting carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide for producing fuel. Nice idea. Like to see the economic and resource costs too. Sustainability is the name of game.

I’m hyper busy this week, up and down from Dublin like a maniac, so posting will be erratic. Is it ever regular? I ought to be a little more organised, but meh! Hope to be back in business come the weekend.

Thanks to Em, Kitty and Patrixmc for coming over for Christmas dinner last night. All the work was worth it. Kitty brought mulled wine and Sill, while Patrixmc made an apple fruit pie. And Em jumped into action with washing up. Thanks guys.

Fievel, brussel sprouts, Radio One’s ‘Santa From The North Pole’, fugly Christmas trees, mandarin oranges in stockings, trying to find 30 yo crib in the attic, Christmas clean, arguments, Irish Coffees, Scots Clan toffee, in town on Christmas Eve just as desparate shoppers lose hope, birthdays, visiting grandparents’ graves, peeling potatoes, sending text messages, big open fire, sleep.

In country, where capitalism shines through, I was still shocked by the level of homelessness in Silicon Valley during my Paddy’s Valley sojour. In a hub of technology, where millionaires zoom by in flash motors, the streets were filled with those that sleep rough. Their worldly belongings in trollies wrapped with black plastic.

I guess in a country where the dollar is number one, the divisions between the rich and poor are even more pointed.

These boyos were MIA last week. Lots to do after PV and finishing up bits and pieces for Xmas.

I’m going to Anton’s TechLudd. Are you? Yes, us Paddies from the Valley will be there.

Talk of a January Open Tweetup. You in? Got a comment on venue or date?

2008 Headlines that O’Reilly Radar would like to see. Via Geewiz.

Homemade vid of Boards of Canada with ‘Satellite Anthem Icarus’

Okay, so there was some talk about a December Open Tweetup happening in Dublin, but plans kinda fell off track with Paddy’s Valley on the table and all the Crimbo shopping and such. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t start planning for the January meet, now does it?!?

I’m thinking about mid-January.. In the future, also, I’m hoping to have it at a regular night.. e.g. like the 2nd Thursday of every month or something.. We could alternate at weekends every second month. I believe that more predictable we make it, the easier it’ll be for everyone to plan..

Also, in the spirit of TechLudd, Paddy’s Valley and Open Tweetup, I hoping to kick off some informal coffee meets for bloggers in Dublin. Somewhere where a couple of us can meet up and just chat. Tweetups tend to be evening events, an event where people travel to a pub or restaurant. Let’s be even looser with our organisation. Perhaps this could spark off new conversations. I’m thinking this could be a weekend. Any thoughts?

So, after a jaunt about San Francisco and a meal at the ‘Empress of China’ (who apparently was calling us), the group retired back to Palo Alto. Some decided that the night was still young and promptly went out, the sensible remained at the Cardinal. I was settling into a quiet night of packing and sorting through photos when the electricity went out. A snoop outside my room, poured forth the distinctive smell of burning. Typical, I thought, on our last night at the hotel, it decides to burn down. Could it not wait until Sunday night? The weird irony is, that the hotel had just performed a fire drill the Thursday before. Guests got naff ear protectors during the test.

Creeping through the Shining corridors,I met with a couple of PV-ers and the hotel staff. Apparently, some ruffians thought it would be funny to set the transformer, below ground, on fire. Of course, this set off an explosion, the force of which, killed electricity to our block and others around it. There was laughing heard around the time of the explosion. Smoke was billowing up under some PV-ers windows. Nice. I love the smell of chemicals and asbestos on a Saturday night.

With just a skeleton PV crew in the surrounds, we, being complete and utter nerds, decided it would be cool to document it. We hung out with the police officiers until the fumes got too bad. By then the brigade was on the scene and a section of Hamilton Ave to the south-west of the block was closed off. Given that my camera was out of power, I struggled with my mobile cam. Mulley, ever the video nerd, ran for his vid cam. Niall took some pics on his spanking N95. Oh no, the hotel in danger of burning, can you please get out of my frame, kthnxbye.

Power was promised to return on Sunday afternoon. Alas, too late for the majority of PV-ers.

The fire will be televised.

Bollards closed off Hamilton Ave.

Fire Brigade rush to our rescue.

Priorities, priorities. The Christmas Tree needs to run on emergency power, else Christmas is cancelled.

Repair truck the morning after

I’ve just finished uploading my cache of Paddy’s Valley photos (Facebook, Palo Alto, San Francisco) and here are my favourites..

Damien and Marcus outside Photobucket on Hamilton.

Apple’s Palo Alto Store with Soldier Theme on Kipling and University.

Shane and Helene messing about.

Niall and Eoghan swapping top secret plans.

Conor relaxing in the SocialText offices.

EDIT: Fixing the formatting and tagging mess..

So, it’s true. After all of the hearsay and rumour-mongering, Robert Scoble is leaving PodTech. TechCrunch reported this lunchtime that Scoble is moving to Fast Company to help establish their TV side of the house. Scoble already writes a monthly column for Fast Company. Scoble confirmed as such by commenting on the post saying that he would be doing something new come January 15th.

I will be doing something else on January 15th, but still am not finalized on what that is. I will let everyone know on January 15th what I do.

Is this the end of PodTech? He was certainly the main reason I visited the PodTech site. Although I used to dip in now and then to see Irina Slutsky.