Author: anthony

Categories
Web

Storm in a WordPress?

I’ve been reading this morning of Matt Mullenweg’s alleged attempt to fool Google’s AdSense program by placing hidden key words within pages on WordPress.org. The WordPress site has a great PageRank and as a result is quite coveted by advertisers. Apparently Matt entered into an agreement with HotNacho.com to hide the words in articles for a fee. While this isn’t illegal it is seen as unethical in the blogosphere. Matt’s currently away on holidays in Europe and I personally feel that the story should have been held by Andy Baio, who broke the story, until he got back. The guy should be allowed to respond to the allegations and explain his reasoning. He cannot do that when he’s thousands of miles away from his accusors. I’m reserving judgement for the moment, as a WordPress user from Day 1 (when it evolved from b2) I think I owe him that.

Categories
Football General

There’s only one Hugh Shine

I went to the Ireland vs China game at Landsdowne Road last night with Mark and have to say that it was one of the most dull matches I’ve ever witnessed there. Ireland seemed flat and couldn’t create much during the first half. I thought we had a good shout for a penalty in the first half but chances were few and far between. There were quite a few Chinese supporters there and they made the most noise throughout the match as the crowd was unusually quiet. I suppose we didn’t have much to cheer about. 😐 Clinton Morrison came on in the second half along with Roy Keane and Morrison got the sublime goal ten minutes from the end to win it. A through ball down the right was begging to be lobbed over the keeper and he duly obliged. Have to say it was the only good thing that came out of the match. Hopefully the performances will improve ahead of the Israel game in June.

Now to explain the title of this post. 🙂 When we were leaving Landsdowne Road under the east stand I spotted a mate of Dave’s who we hadn’t seen in about 4 years. Mark walked straight past him but I stopped him and we got chatting. Turns out that he’s going to Oxegen with a few friends so we’ll be able to meet up there. We’re also trying to twist his arm into going to Spain in August with us. The weird thing was we had only been talking about him the week beforehand and Dave was wanting to get in touch with him. 😀 Really weird coincidence when you think about it.

Categories
General

Faking It as a magician

Was watching Faking It on Sunday night and have to say it was one of the top things I’ve watched this year on tele. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, they take a person and train them to do a completely different job in the space of four weeks. At the end of the four weeks theres a test of sorts to see if an expert panel can pick out the faker. Except the panel aren’t told that there’s gonna be a faker in the group. There’s been 5 series so far but I only caught the odd episode. They’re trying not to exhaust the format but there was a special hour and a half episode on Sunday night about a physics masters student from Edinburgh named Kevin McMahon who was to become a magician.

He went to live with a professional magician and his family in London and also got trained by a comedy/magician who would be able to teach him a bit of banter for his gigs. The whole thing wasn’t going so well (even after going to Las Vegas to meet Pen and Teller) but they brought in a third mentor who has worked with all the major magicians. The first word out of his mouth after seeing his performance was “shite”. 😯 Kevin was stunned but got serious about what he needed to do. Anyhow, after the final test none of the judges sussed he would be a faker and he went back to Edinburgh to resume his studies. However, he decided on a change of career and is now a full time magician doing kids parties, dinner parties etc. Here’s his web site. I thought it was fantastic to see someone take up a new career as a result of a TV show. More power to him.

Categories
The Site Web

Trackback problem to Neil’s Blog

I read Neil Turner’s web log and by using the Trackback feature of WordPress, have pinged any of his entries that I have referenced. Unfortunately those pings haven’t been getting through and we’re not 100% sure why. He’s posted a couple of possible issues with it so I’m writing this test post to ascertain why it isn’t appearing on his blog. I’ve commented out a logging section which should see if WordPress reports any errors back.

Categories
General

Gamecon 6

Well I’m at Gamecon at the moment and have been for the past…..eeemmmm….14 hours. 😕 Starting to get really tired but the event has been really good. It’s being hosted in the CityWest Conference Centre near Saggart and the venue is nice and big. For the unitiated Gamecon is a LAN gaming event where punters take along their XBoxs and PCs to play against each other in various competitions. There’s quite a few prizes on offer but I haven’t been able to get far in any of the comps. Probably down to my lack of practice. 😆 Anyhoo, I’ll post pics to Flickr (I have already but I need a couple more) on Monday after I’ve recovered. 6 hours to go. 😯

Follow Up: The event was great as I said but I was exhausted the next day. My dad picked me up at 10am so I had been at the event for 23 straight hours. 😯 I got a couple of hours sleep when I got home and thenI had to go out to my auntie’s place for dinner. One of the lads mentioned another LAN event, Darkside, which is on next month but I’m not too sure if I want to go to another one so soon.