Irish Blog Awards 2008

Nominations are being accepted for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards.

Should you think Writing it down fills in Pieces of the Puzzle is worthy of a mention, I should be pleased if you would visit the Nominations Page at this link and follow the onscreen instructions.

Irish Blog Awards
"Go here to nominate your favourite bloggers. You do not have to fill in the form for every category. Just the ones you think you have a suitable blog for. Good luck to everyone.

"There are two judging rounds this year, so every nominated blog will be judged. No public vote means it is about quality, not the number of people who like you. Any nomination that nominates a blog for every category will be treated as spam and that nomination will be deleted. Choose wisely."

Sharon Shannon & Mundy - Galway Girl

Have to say, I prefer the Steve Earl and Sharon Shannon version of this, but this video is a good 'un too.

Hello Los Angeles!

Twenty two visits from Los Angeles today to the blog. I'm not sure if that's 22 people who suddenly decided Writing it down fills in pieces of the puzzle is a prime example of a school project on how not to maintain a blog, or one person who reappeared 22 times.

If it's the latter, does your boss have an Irish office? I want to work there. Reading a blog all day instead of doing work seems like a plan to me.

Of course, I have no idea if you are in the middle of the day when I am having my breakfast or brushing your teeth for bed as I poke the canteen scrambled eggs experimentally with a spoon. Maybe you are a dreadfully insomnia-afflicted individual, seeking the means to put yourself to sleep. If you came back 22 times, I'm glad it hasn't worked. Maybe I'm doing something right after all.

Another one stuck in my head

"Pukka-pukka-pukka-pukka-pukka-pukka...!"
"What?"
"Sorry. Tune stuck in my head. Pukka-pukka-pukka-pukka-pukka...!"
"Which tune?"
"That Van Halen song from the 80s.... 'Why can't this be love'..."

Since I joined up the blogmusik.net site, (also known as Deezer), I've been enjoying a nostalgic re-listen to the soundtrack of my mis-spent youth.

"Whee-whee-whee-whee-we-we....!"
"ZZ-top...? 'Legs'?
"Right on...!"

"Dee-dee-de-dee... de-de-de-dee-dee...!
"Europe...? 'The Final Countdown'?
"Definitely."

"You're talking to yourself again, aren't you?"
"Yes, we are."

Next week I'm making my second First Communion to the sound of T-Rex. Be warned. It may be quite a conversation.

New broom

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
For a moment, I thought the Blackbird was back, but it was a smoke alarm.
"Are you on fire?" I shouted down from where my nose was pinching itself as I poured fresh cat litter into a litter tray.
"There's black smoke coming out of the Hoover!" Herself shouted up. "Well, I don't know if it's smoke or dust."
I took the bag out of the monster and it was indeed warm, not to mention filled with black carbon from our unsuccessful attempts to clean out then light the ancient home heating boiler.
"Maybe some bits of fire lighter got too hot in the dust bag."
"Will I buy another one?" Herself asked. She'd been itching to buy something all day, although to be fair it was something to finish off the kitchen, or, more bluntly, to get me working on sawing and hammering and making rude noises on the floor again. As vacuum cleaners don't necessarily imply agreement with the need to finish off the kitchen project right now, I said I thought it was a great idea. So off she went, the slightly warm and definitely knackered Hoover in the boot of the car. We didn't think it would light up in the boot, but we've had the car a few years now so what the heck if it did, right? The insurance would cover it and Nissan would probably knock a few quid off a late 2007 model for a half charred shell by way of trade-in.
The new model vacuum cleaner is one which is not only made by a famous electrical tool company, it looks like it was made by an electrical tool company. There are shades of Dyson rip-off in its cyclonic, no disposable bag, suck-it-all-up-into-a-glass-jar system. It has several clunky bits which are genuine, no-nonsense, definitely designed by a man features. The heaviest part appears to be the chromed suction tube, which I suspect is a reworked leaf-blower part. It also purrs, which is something new to us and, it transpires, is deceptively disarming. When one presses the huge on/off button, it begins to whirr quietly as the hamster-wheel innards kick into life. Then it starts to pull the framed photographs and curtains off the wall.
"It certainly sucks," I say.
"It certainly does," is the reply.
We shall need a new carpet, I think. I shall have to see after I pull the old one out of the cookie jar it keeps dust in.
I am also missing a slipper.
And I haven't seen the smaller of the three cats in a while. In fact, I wonder if that is the purring noise? She certainly did like sitting on that carpet.

Irish Blogs let-down

I run (or have run) a couple of sites in the past in which I know other browsers (the people, not the IE/Firefox thingies) have felt they've invested some time and energy in supporting. And I know what it's like to feel a need for change, modernisation, a revamp of the whole set-up.

I've also been a frequent visitor to an online site or service over which I've had no direct control but have enjoyed and made a part of my browsing day.

Irish Blogs.ie is one of those sites that has insinutated itself into that contented part of my online mind. It is usually the second or third stop on my browsing schedule. This blog is listed there and it shows up when I update. Love seeing the title and the first few lines of text among all the other, more popular blogs. And, of course, enjoying the read of interesting topics that comes up in the list by other bloggers.

Over the past few weeks, the Irish Blogs site has been radically altered and is no longer the plain but beloved destination it once was. Instead of a no-nonsense list of fairly-recently updated blog posts, the aggregator is now divided into "Popular" and "Latest" and "Other". It also doesn't appear to update towards the end of the week at all. And the "Popular" posts don't cater at all for the likes of me: a non-conformist, erratic who likes to pick and choose what he finds interesting, as opposed to being told what it is he should be reading.

I hope that the tenent of "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" will sink in and some of these changes be reversed. I'm all for changing things about and I know one cannot please everyone. But this is just a bit too radical a change.