#“Facebook Places Check-ins in Ireland really kicking off”

Over the past few months, I've watched Facebook Places functionality get closer and closer to properly live for those of us in Ireland.

#“Introducing \“Curation by Me\” - A simple tool to filter Twitter Lists”

Sometimes you have to stop blogging and you have to start coding to scratch a persistent intellectual itch. Last week I said I needed self-curated news for the Irish General Election. This week I have it.

Curation by Me is an incredibly simple tool I lashed together (using the Programming by Google Search method) over the past two nights. It takes the URL of a Twitter list and a hashtag/keyword to provide you with a filtered list of tweets.

By default it shows a simple list I made of Irish politics related tweets and shows those tagged with the #ge11 hashtag (used to identify Irish Election tweets):

Here’s an example using Suzy Byrne’s list of Irish Election Candidates filtered by the word “Martin” to show those tweets mentioning the name of the new leader of Fianna Fáil:

But of course it’s not just for politics; any list or filter can be used. The only proviso is that you have to login with your Twitter account to use it, due to Twitter rate limiting.

Maybe I’m the only person on the planet who needs Curation by Me. Even if I am, the itch has been scratched. Would love your feedback, problem reports, thoughts and suggestions.

#“Why does Posterous multiply my pageviews by 22?”

Looking at your stats in Posterous could lead one to be very cocky indeed. Unfortunately they are complete cobblers. That curation one I posted 20 minutes ago supposedly has 226 views already. Here is what Posterous says about one of my recent posts and then what Google Analytics says.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Why the spoof numbers?

#“I need self-curated news for the Irish General Election #ge11”

So I'm lashing together a quick General Election list on Twitter for my Dad to follow. He's not on Twitter but he loves politics and I think he'd get a kick out of it. I started with some of the obvious MSM accounts and then some peopleI know who are interested in politics. Then I looked at some of their lists. I've put a simple one together that I think he'll like. It's nowhere near finished yet but it's a start.

#“Hexapod Monster great - apart from the soldering”

One of the pressies that Santy gave to our 11 y/o son was a Hexapod Monster robot. It’s a self-assembly kit that should result in a robot that can walk around and avoid obstacles. The youngfella has had plenty of experience building ever more complex Lego so this looked like a good next step before perhaps considering Lego Mindstorms.

Once we looked at the kit, we realised he couldn’t do it on his own and I’d have to help. Specifically, what sounded like a couple of quick solder joints on the box was actually a full circuit board that had to be put together.

We made a good team with him taking care of the mechanical assembly and me doing the soldering. It took 3-4 hours before we had it in a decent state. We checked the basic mechanics by applying battery power directly to the leg motors and a few tweaks were needed. Then we did the final electrical assembly and IT LIVES. Except it only did so for a few seconds and then stopped.

It has sat there for the past few weeks with me going at it to no avail. Sometimes it moves, sometimes it moves on one side and goes around in circles but most of the time it sits there sullen and immobile like a teenager.

It’s obvious that my crappy soldering is to blame and therein lies the problem. I have a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering. My soldering iron is nearly 30 years old because that’s when I started soldering for the first time (ZX Spectrum add-ons) but even I struggled to get all of those components on correctly without either shorting connections or melting the components.

Soldering is not a skill anyone really needs or wants unless they are totally hardcore into hardware. The only thing it teaches smaller kids is that it burns when you accidentally touch your finger.

The Hexapod is a cool project that could be interesting to a much wider range of children. My 7 y/o daughter sat and watched us doing the assembly for the entire time. So they just need to junk the soldering and replace it with some sort of component push-in system. A custom breadboard thingy I guess. As it stands I can’t recommend it to anyone except those who are very familiar with the inside of Maplin.

#“From Zero to Web2Ireland using Wordpress on Digital Mines in 15 mins”

#“Can anyone remember the name of this phone testing tool?”

I’ve had this for over ten years. It’s a brilliant phone-line testing tool with some other bits. I’ve lost the instructions and would love to know what the other bits are for. But for the life of me I cannot remember what it is called.

Anyone? Google Goggles was completely useless.

#“I look a bit like a mentalist with this Standing Desk setup”

After talking about it a few times over the past few months, I finally decided to try working whilst standing today. The buzz around the idea on Twitter today presumably came from Gina's post on Lifehacker. Well worth a read.

#“O2 HSDPA with 19% signal faster than 7Mbs Eircom ADSL at night in Ireland”

I despair.

See the full gallery on Posterous

#“Tweetcaster - First Twitter Android App with Decent Filters”

via androidguys.com

As opposed to Decency Filters :-)

I've only just started playing with the feature and amazingly, it isn't just the best implementation on a mobile, it's the best implementation anywhere.

Your can mute people, hashtags or keywords.

Tweetdeck, Seesmic et al should be ashamed of themselves for the lack of progress in this area on the desktop.

Speaking of which there is a Chrome plugin for Twitter which does filtering called Slipstream. I tried it out but it only allows one exact word/phrase per filter and only works on twitter.com. Worth a look tho if that's all you need.