Alexia Blogs

This map is from the RPA’s website showing the preferred route of the proposed B2 extension of the Luas Green Line. It’s curious, isn’t it? Previous extension plans showed the Luas branching from Old Connaught Road eastwards towards the town of Bray. This make lots of sense. Bringing a mode of mass transit into a well-populated area.

But look at the branch heading west. Where is it ferrying travelers from? The great unknown? Or perhaps zoned development land devoid of houses at the moment? I’m purely speculating here. It could turn out that this preferred route is planning to connect land not zoned residential. In that case, will the west branch be ferrying cows in and out to Stephen’s Green? Perhaps they like shopping in Dundrum.

The west branch of this proposed extension doesn’t seem to make sense on the maps of today, does it on the maps of tomorrow? And who owns this land? Who stands to benefit here?

The RPA had a public meeting on April 4th to present their plans. The period of public consultation closed last Saturday, April 26th. Unfortunately, I only heard about this yesterday.

Anyone else find the map curious? How is this going to work in reality? Does a branched Luas route mean every Nth tram must follow a different route? Confusing solution, methinks. More details available on the RPA’s B2 Extension page. Here’s the B2 proposal map.

You a geek? Geek lover? Show me your passion.. and earn one of these babies. And yes, they are blood, blood red.

Maryrose talks about how the OpenCoffee clubs in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford will be hooked up and streaming in a unique conferencing event this Thursday.

The new CSS song, Rat is Dead. 

It hurts me to say, but some people should not own a Barbie. And others shouldn’t be allowed revel in her bloody death.

Verizon are reportedly launching the LG VX9100 enV2 later today. What a dodgy name, what a dodgy design. I’m sorry - having a feature that reads texts to you in a form factor like this? What were they thinking? Too business-featured for the vanilla user and too clunky for everyone else.

Details on Paul Walsh’s baby Wubud on TCUK, if you haven’t already read the piece. It’s a social network on a mobile phone SIM.

I really love this remix of Thom Yorke’s ‘Atoms For Peace’. Remixed by Four Tet aka Kieran Hebden. And that brought me to the great ambient track by Four Tet below. Yummy. Electronically.

Four Tet ‘My Angel Rocks Back and Forth’

A very cool New Scientist video of a robot that reassembles itself when torn apart. Via Marc.

Sick of the weenie flash memory space you use to augment your Eee ultraportable? Want to forgo using the ‘ickle trackpad for navigation? Lookee what Ebay has on it’s books - an inventive hacker has spliced together an Eee with 40gigs of solid space drive capacity and a touchscreen. It runs WinXP.

It still has the default 900Mhz Celeron processor, so we’re not talking space-age performance. More a talking piece. An expensive talking piece with a Buy It Now tag of $2,199.00 and shipping of $25.

Photo owned by janetmck (cc) 

Niall has some interesting things to say about the how discovery is the name of the game as opposed to web search. When connecting people on the web becomes de rigueur, yes, interesting problems like identity and trust will be solved, but that’s a long time away.

Even if the technology is available today, meaningful rollout to users beyond the pool of early adopters will take years. Ordinary folks are just coming to terms with booking flights online, watching videos on Youtube or Lolcat pic surfing. Habits are slow to change. Human nature is fascinating study in experiential toe-dipping. We love to try things out, but sweet coaxing can take hundreds of hours of meaningful web time.

Trust is not just a protocol that sits on the web and handshakes identified and verified partners; it’s a human act of faith. Sure, you can tell me you’ve solved a problem, but do I trust you enough to dip my toes?

People discovery is undoubtedly a driver for the future, but the calling death of Search at the cost of people discovery is short-sighted. Millions of people will continue to seek out and disseminate those search results found via Google or Live Search into the future, even when people discovery becomes a web reality. Habits, you see, are hard to break.

So, yesterday a cool little package arrived in the post bearing geeky goodness. I’ve got two flavours, ‘geek’ and ‘geek is good’. Time to show your geeky colours. Go on, no-one is watching. 

Edit: Apparently, these badges look pink. I suppose people see what they want to see.. Hmm, there’s a deep thought in there somewhere. Adding another shot to clarify things. These bad boys are red. Red, I tell you.

I think this is a neat idea - the Forever Stamp. Buy at a fixed price and it’s valid for First Class mail, regardless of future price rises.  

My Spidey dreams are slowly becoming a reality.

A new wine and foodie blog to me, the Dine and Wine Club Cork. 

Another day, another story about the pending 3G iPhone. Looks like 3 million will be ready by June.

Schedule tweets on Twitter for a later with TweetLater.

A very cool poster.

Glastonbury line-up leaked. Yawn. Even a PR stunt couldn’t make it interesting.

A very cool Rainbow London Mayoral mashup. Love it. Via Shane.

Okay, so I’m finally getting to do the meme that John passed onto me. I still have to do one that Pat tagged me with ages ago. I’m terrible at memes, and would rather read others. Pat, I’ll get around soon enough.

Me in six words:
Passionate - I tend to get worked up on topics I care about. Didn’t guess that, did you?
Geeky - I heart gadgety goodness and tech
Listener - Despite, my talkative nature I love to listen.
Stubborn - This sits beside driven. It really depends on the day.
Small - I’m the person in the gang who gets carded ALL THE TIME.
Cynical - Seen a lot, read a lot. You have to work hard to wow me.

Le Craic has made an online book of Irish Blog Award winners.

Metallica has green eyes for Radiohead. You mean downloading is good, Lars?

James Cameron talks about the future of 3D in cinema.

An aggregation of the Web 2.0 enterprise technologies that research firms Forrester and AIIM view as important.

NYT on how Flickr has forged a new generation of photographers.

It looks like ultraportables are still top of gadget geeks’ wish-list. Here’s a nice list of ultras on the market or due in the next few months. 

M83 channel My Bloody Valentine with ‘Graveyard Girl’.

Socialspark is a social marketing network. Yeah, basically it’s PayPerPost in the form of that over-used Web2.0-ism, a social network. Grrr… another chance for bloggers become ‘brand advocates’.