Verbo.se

Gymkhana???

27/04/2009

Whatever happened to good old auto-testing? I’ve been to an auto-testing meet in wesht Cork, and it was way cooler than this drifting-style twaddle!

…of the Labour Party. If you send me another piece of campaign literature on Senate headed notepaper or in an Oireachtas prepaid envelope, you’ll be guaranteeing your non-appearance on any ballot card of mine.

I’ve heard all the excuses and had a discussion with Mike Allen about it in 2004, and my opinion remains the same: What you’re doing is theft, right out of my pocket and the pockets of every person in Ireland.

Have a bit of respect for the people and the party you’re supposed to represent, for fuck’s sake.

UPDATE 08/05 11:37: Received another letter in a Dail envelope this morning, with my (renewed) Labour membership card. An incorrect membership card at that. I’ve asked them to send a replacement in an envelope paid for with my membership fee, not my taxes, or a refund.

UPDATE 09/05 15:58: Maman Poulet has received a letter from Green Party candidate David Geary, lobbying for Mr. U-Turn, again in a prepaid Oireachtas envelope. MP takes the time to point out the following section of the Code of Conduct for Office Holders:

Official facilities should be used only for official purposes. Office holders should ensure that their use of officially provided facilities are designed to give the public value for money and to avoid any abuse of the privileges which, undoubtedly, are attached to office.

Lobbying is private party business, not official goverment business. Should we be voting in people who break the rules before the election, never mind after?

UPDATE 13/05 11:37: Phone call from Labour, telling me it’s my fault they didn’t update my constituency when I provided my new address, and that it’s ok to use the Oireachtas envelope because it’s Eamon Gilmore’s. I don’t even understand the logic of that. They also admit that the envelopes are handed over to a private company for the purpose of distributing their membership cards.

Bull in a Super Valu

24/04/2009

I can’t not repost this. It would be morally wrong.

(Thanks Damien!)

KildareStreet.com

23/04/2009

Well done to the brilliant John Handelar for launching a beta of KildareStreet.com today, where you can apparently:

Read a dramatically-more-legible version of the DÃ¡il Record going back to January 2004,

Search that record using a fabulous search engine which I didn’t write – you can restrict searches to speeches or written questions, or by speaker, or by date or date range,

Sign up for email alerts for when a search query you’re interested changes, or whenever a TD of your choosing says something or asks a question which generated a written reply, and

Subscribe to RSS feeds for individual TDs or for search queries.

And in the next few weeks you will also be able to “inspect the past five and a half years of TD expenses, and the register of members’ interests”, plus an API is in the works. And then he’s moving onto the Seanad!

Of course this all should have been done years ago, by our government with our taxes, but you couldn’t really expect proper accountability with Bert and Ernie in charge, now could you?

Just one complaint: .com? Kildare Street is in .ie John! You tell me the name and I’ll register it for you boy, FOC!

Your Firefox Add-ons

22/04/2009

Go on then, what gems have you that I haven’t heard of yet? Here’s my lot, with the ones disabled until I need them in italics.

Adblock Plus – Should be obvious. I disable in on sites I support. And so should you, on Foot.ie!
Add Bookmark Here 2 – Bookmark directly into a folder.
Download Statusbar – Downloads in the statusbar rather than Downloads Window, for easy access.
DownThemAll! – For downloading sets of files.
FireFTP – In-browser FTP client.
FireShot – For taking screenshots.
IE Tab – Load tabs in Internet Explorer, or send links to IE. Useless Irish banks.
Iterasi – For archiving web pages.
Menu Editor – New to my collection, what it says on the tin.
Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.0 – Can’t uninstall it. Typical MS.
Mouse Gestures Redox – As on the tin.
Nightly Tester Tools – I use this fella to load deprecated Add-ons. Must check I still need it!
Property Bee – Monitor properties on Daft.ie.
Tab Mix Plus – Tweak the hell out of your tabs.
Uppity – Lets you pop up a folder in the website tree.
Web Developer – For, like, web development dude.
Xmarks – Bookmarks synchroniser.

Sliding House

21/04/2009

You’ll be seeing more of this kind of thing from now on, as I gear up to buy a house in the next year or two. Obviously this is pie-in-the-sky for someone on my current income, but the ultimate aim is to self-build something unique, for life. We need to buy something in the interim to get ourselves on the ladder though, if possible something that will prove we can actually self-build! :)