#“Watch out Bear Grylls, here comes Oscar Wild”

Our 12 y/o son, named after the Grouch, not the playwright, has been making lots of funny short videos in the past year with his friends in the estate. But today’s deserved a blogpost all of its own.

Watch and enjoy.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lf0_5CvcKY

Tech notes: He uses a Sanyo Xacti HD Camcorderon a cheap tripod I got in Argos years ago. They then edit on a low-end laptop using Pinnacle Studio Ultimate. The lack of welly, memory and dedicated GPU in the i3 laptop is starting to become an issue for him so I’ll probably be donating my self-built quad-core Phenom desktop later in the year. Particularly if they keep up the quality like this.

Also, not a bad English accent for a jackeen blow-in to West Cork aged 5.

#“The most ridiculous thing I’ve read this year”

The Revenue lawyers must have been wetting themselves with laughter putting this one together. From the new Form EII 1:

The amount of expenditure on research and development incurred by the qualifyingcompany in the specified relevant period ending in the year of assessment precedingthe year of assessment in which, in relation to the subscription of eligible shares, arelevant period ends, exceeds the amount of expenditure on research and developmentincurred by the qualifying company in the specified relevant period ending in the year ofassessment preceding the year of assessment in which the subscription for eligible shareswas made.

Given that my brain is engaged in actual work which generates income which pays taxes which…..you get the point, can anyone on a coffee-break translate that for me?

#“Celebrities read tweets about themselves”

Some of my fave comedians and comic actors in there. Very smileworthy.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBoPveyETc

#“They’re just jealous cos my toes are models”

Well I laughed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLyTvYSBSzA

Hat-tip to the great peeps at barefoot.ie

#“The ever improving XBMC just released v11.0”

Its been over a year in the works and today we are excited to announce that XBMC 11.0 is finally ready and available for download. You can find XBMC 11.0 here.

XBMC’s ability to play every file we throw at it, perfectly, is a daily joy. It is riddled with lovely useful touches like a slider to adjust the audio offset when your DVD rip didn’t quite work perfectly.

Its XBMC Flicks plugin for Netflix works pretty well on US Netflix but we actually just exit out and run Netflix in the browser for the more reliable UI.

If you have a PC which can connect to your TV with VGA/DVI/HDMI, XBMC should be the first thing you install.

#“Mophie Juice Pack Air is perfect for Marathons”

One of the niche problems with the iPhone 4 is full-length marathons. If you, like my wife, run 26 miles with music playing and Runkeeper recording all your stats, you will get to mile 25 and the battery will run out. Annoying to say the least.

I have tried a few el-cheapo chinese add-on battery packs that plug into the bottom but they rarely last more than a few weeks before going kaput. So a few months back in Dixons in Stansted I bit the bullet and handed over some serious cash for the 1500mAh Mophie Juice Pack Air.

She used it last weekend in Maratona di Roma and it lasted the full race and well beyond. A big big thumbs up from her.

Now all we need are the phone arm-band makers to up their game and start creating interesting ways of carrying these phones. The generic large Tune Belt strap we both use can barely fit a HTC Sensation or the iPhone+Mophie.

Sidenote: Mophie, blocking the right-clicking of images on your site because they are copyrighted has to be one of the most stupid anti-online-marketing things I’ve seen in years. Also, it doesn’t work.

#“Get your Torrent of the Mahon Tribunal Report”

Yes there are perfectly legal uses of Bittorrent. Like when the site hosting the Mahon Tribunal Report melts down under the load and even the Irish Times struggles to serve it up.

If you download it via bittorrent, please seed for a while after completion to assist others. The more who seed, the faster it is for everyone. Thanks.

Torrent File

#“My App Inventor post about our kids’ school is now on the MIT site”

You have no idea how proud I am of this. The lovely people in Google CS4HSand MIT have put my blogpost about our experiences with App Inventor in a rural Irish school up on the MIT site.

Now to tell all the kids in 5th and 6th class. They’ll be chuffed.

#“Anyone want paddysvalley.org and .com?”

I’ve been renewing those two domains since 2007 despite the fact that I never actually went on the trip.

They come up for renewal on April 19th for $20 for the pair with GoDaddy. Nameservers and hosting are with Blacknight.

I won’t be renewing.

If you want them for free, let me know. I dunno how to transfer domains but I’m sure it’s not that hard.

#“The End of Awesome”

What have the following words got in common?

• Awesome
• Amazing
• Incredible
• Huge
• Mind-blowing
• Gigantic
• Phenomenal
• Shocking
• Horrific
• Horrendous
• Staggering

So now that everything is amazeballs, nothing is.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8I9pYCl9AQ

I watched Top Gear last night and Jeremy interviewed Kimi Raikkonen. One of the more boring interviews I’ve seen. Kimi gave one-word answers to many questions. Previously I would have said “The most mind-numbingly awful TVmomentever, a new nadir for the BBC”.

It reminded me of a business trip to Nokia in Finland in 2005 for EMC. I was sent a travel advisory ahead of time and it noted that Finnish people dislike small-talk. A problem for most Paddies. I arrived and struggled to keep my chatter to a minimum but then I found the local EMC people to be very chatty indeed. I realised that they had probably got a travel advisory on me which said that Irish people love small-talk :-)

I bring it up because I’ve realised that since we have hit a language dead-end, we will have to start heading in the opposite direction where language is stripped back and we possibly start taking the Finnish approach of “just enough”.

My part in this movement will be to awesomely kick-ass on superlatives. Sorry sorry, there I go again. I mean Iwill make an earnest attempt to tone it down.

What do you think? Will we just keep piling on the exaggerations where a normal cup of tea is mega-super-awesome-supercalifragilistic? Or will we revert to nice, good, decent, not-bad?