donal's blog

So I just watched the first episode of the new series of other voices and I'm really pleased about the direction the programme is going... When RTE axed 'no disco' in April 2003, there was much anger among the music fans and musicians of Irleand. Nearly 3 years later and I think it's safe to say that Irish music programming is enjoying somewhat of a comeback. Other Voices started off as a very rough vision and this season seems have got the mix just right. The show has the buzz of 'no disco' along with excellent musicians and an understanding of what fans want: the RTÉ site is a far improvement on previous years; shows are available online to watch; the opinion pieces insightful and inline with popular belief. other programmes that have drawn a good following: pop4 has gone down a huge hit with the younger generation of music fans that can still understand the irish language but also a attract an older audience who enjoy the interviews which usually involve a ...

One of my pet interests is in writing standardized code... Today I came across http://www.prestigeproperties.ie/ and was horrified to find that people were still creating websites this bad for their business. I maintain a few websites and I try to keep them validated to at least one HTML / XTML standard. But as far as I know, having valid HTL/XHTML/CSS is fairly low on most webmasters priorities... and here's some quick stats on websites i visit often... BAND SITES http://www.theframes.ie/ (passed) http://www.mundy.ie/ (passed) http://www.markgeary.com/ (passed) http://www.micchristopher.co.uk/ (passed) http://www.turn.ie/ (9 errors) http://www.paddycasey.com/ (3 errors) http://www.roadrecs.com/ (56 errors) http://www.u2.com/ (23 errors) http://www.mikescottwaterboys.com/ (15 errors) http://www.irishmusiccentral.com/ (207 errors) http://www.bellx1.com/ (17 errors) http://www.ash-official.com/ (7 errors) http://www.damienrice.com/ (11 errors) http://www.damiendempsey.c...

about six months ago i decided to check out some more google products - one of them being ' orkut '... orkut is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends. it's a pretty groovy experience and i'm recently been using it quite a bit... When I originally tried it out, I invited a few people but they didn't sign up for whatever reason and i didn't find it much use - a case of being donal 'no friends'! ;) I've been playing around in the past week and found that lots of irish people i know have accounts - so i have added them as friends. once i found one person i knew, i found more people that they also knew and added. i now have ~ 10 people who have accepted my request to add them. Other things I like - you can specify communities so i've signed up for communities such as Redbrick, Pixies, The Frames, Josh Ritter and more... and created a few too for Mic Christopher, Mundy and a few other Irish bands... anyway - fe...

So I've just got my first ever filling... not too bad so far - left side of my face is still pretty numb. I think i got a double dose of anaesthetic which meant i didn't feel a thing (though i did feel a bit like lisa simpson wearing her "braces" at one point! :) Anyway - just wanted to point out the good service that the Dental Hospital provide... They've nice modern facilties and it's all done very professionally. It's cheap too! So far my appointments have been first thing monday and last thing friday which is very convenient i must say...

so i was in trinity for graduation yesterday (sinéad was graduating, not me!). boy, was it boring! i know these things can be naturally boring but trinity do know how to suck the fun out of what should be a joyous occasion. so yeh - if you like listening to latin for an hour or so trinity graduations are the place to go. if not, avoid!

first off - i'm not a manager, don't really have a desire to be a manager in the traditional sense managers conjure up and don't have many managerial skills (imo). However, more and more I'm having to manage people, projects and tasks. Cokane mentined this website a few months back and I listened to a few of the podcasts in the following weeks: http://www.manager-tools.com/ Some of the stuff mentioned I won't ever use, but a lot of the things mentioned I agreed with and I find I use the methods in my day-to-day work already. So it's nice to know that I'm doing some things right. ;) now to check out some of the newer podcasts on the site - the coaching one seems interesting.

so i tend to do this a lot: [command to grab output] | awk '{print $1}' | xargs to get a list of space seperated items. this is fine but something always niggles at me that i should just do this with awk. ;) so i found i can do this: [command to grab output] | awk '{printf $1" " this is fine but it doesn't add a new line at the end. so i can do this: [command to grab output] | awk '{printf $1" "} END {print ""}' so i have what i want... but now xargs is still shorter! is there a simpler solution?

so I just booked another flight today so I can get back to dublin in time for a dentist appointment and the christmas party. I see far too much of dublin airport in this job! Anyway - on my last trip back to dublin I was running a little late! It probably didn't help that i was sitting in a pub drinking beer with less than 2 hours before the flight took off (8.45 != 8.15 it seems!). thankfully the city had good public transport so I could still make. quick dash back to the hotel to pick up my bag. hit the train station. where does one buy tickets? lots of ticket dispensing machines but none seem to do the right tickets! anyway - find a helper dude and get a ticket. grand - 1.25 hrs left to make the flight. get to the platform and a train arrives. nice! the train is wedged and there's no chance of getting on it. damn! wait another 7 mins and another train arrives. no people on this one so i'm on my way. arrive at the airport's train station and suddenly realise there...

so the last time i started this blog it was to test out how useful it would be for bands to use. As usual i found it quicker to write some quick scripts to do what i want then conform to a particular product (getting other products to work with an existing template is always hard!). Anyway - let's see if i can keep this one current!