Author: Rory

Last year I posted about the introduction of contextual advertising on Soylent Red. I’ve made one or two adjustments to the code since then. Essentially the advertising works by trying to attach ads only to pages that people reach from Web searches, so that regular readers who get here via bookmarks or feed readers won’t see any ads. It also means that anyone who gets here via a deliberate link from another site won’t see ads either.

In the year since I introduced the ads I’ve earned an incredible $22.22 in advertising revenue. Wow! That’s just over two months’ hosting costs in only 12 months. Sarcasm aside, I never intended to actually make any money out of this. I just thought it would be interesting to see how it panned out.

I’ll be keeping the ads in the hope that I eventually get that elusive $100 cheque, the minimum payment that Google’s adsense program will make.

The mobile phone network "3" has a billboard ad campaign at the moment advertising their roaming (using your mobile phone abroad) deals. The ad says "Now all 3 customers can [do something I can’t remember]". My first thought was that, yes, that’s a pretty good estimate of the number of customers they have. Maybe they should have gone with "Now all of our customers…"

And now, it’s mimememe time

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was behind you?

The bathrooom cabinet

2. How much cash did you spend yesterday?

About €30. Most of it on bus tickets.

3. What’s a word that rhymes with mist?

Kissed

4. Favorite planet, which you would live on, if you could?

Who’s ever going to say anywhere other than Earth?

5. Who is the LAST person you kissed?

The last person who kissed me wasn’t welcome, and the last person I kissed was so long ago I don’t think it even counts anymore.

6. What is your favorite ring on your phone?

My phone has spent its entire life on silent. Ringtones are unnecessary when the phone is in your pocket right next to your skin.

7. What is the last band shirt you wore?

I’m not sure I’ve ever owned one. The closest I have is wrestling T-shirts: The Rock’s "Layeth the Smacketh Down" and "Bring It On" shirts. "Bring It On" was probably the last one I wore.

8. What do you think of yourself?

I’m my biggest fan. Honestly, you people don’t know what you’re missing by not being me.

9. Name the brand of your shoes you’re currently wearing?

I’m not wearing shoes. The last pair I wore were Clarkes.

10. Night light or pitch black?

For what? Sleeping? Pitch black.

11. What do you think about the (previous) person who took this?

I swiped this from Neil Turner, about whom I know just about nothing. But I still read his blog regularly, so you can take that as some sort of endorsement.

12. What were you doing at midnight last night?

Reading about the fall of glam metal and the rise of grunge music at the beginning of the nineties. And ordering a Van Halen album from Play.com, since they appear to have decided that my money is worth taking again. There was a period during which they refused to let me place orders because they require a postcode on addresses, and putting in "-" or "N/A" made the address not match the address on y credit card. Seems to be fixed now though.

13. What did your last text message say that you received?

"Oh,u mean potatoes?Yeah ive got both kinds!"

14. Where is the nearest Valero?

Who knows? What the Hell is a Valero?

15. What’s something that you say a lot?

"What" ‘s something that I say a lot. I’m told I over-use the word "awesome" too.

16. Who told you they loved you last?

You’ve got me there. I haven’t a clue.

17. Last furry thing you touched?

A mouldy slice of bread.

18. How many drugs have you done in the past 3 days?

Zero.

19. Favourite age you have been so far?

Eight. But 21 and 22 are also good.

20. Your worst enemy?

Gerald, the baby with one eyebrow. Really, who has time for enemies?

21. What is your current desktop picture?

Gambit from X-Men on the laptop, Eurotrip on the home desktop in Windows, Penny Arcade’s Cardboard Tube Samurai on the home desktop in Gnome, and I don’t remember what the college machine has.

22. What was the last thing you said to someone?

I asked my mom to pick me up three bottles of Coke at the supermarket. They’re doing three for two. And no, I don’t actually expect to get it.

23. How do you like your eggs?

"Boiled or fried, I’m satisfied as long as I get my kiss."

24. Do you like someone?

I like lots of people. But in the sense that the question was obviously intended, yes. Elaboration at this point is not forthcoming.

25. The last song you listened to?

As I write this, If I Had a Rocket Launcher by Bruce Cockburn (It turns out this track was mis-labelled; it was actually a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix called Vaughandrix). But you can get an up to date answer from my recent music list.

I actually saw Syriana almost a week ago (last Thursday afternoon), but it was so uninspiring it has taken me this long to get around to mentioning it. With an Oscar-winning performance, and a cast that I generally like (Clooney and Damon are usually reliable, and it’s good to see Siddig El Fadil Alexander Siddig again after all these years since Deep Space Nine) I expected this movie to pull 2006 out of its rut. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t very good either.

I’m not sure what I was really expecting from the movie, but it just left me cold. The characters were far from compelling. I don’t think I was even aware of any of their names. As for the Oscar: Clooney wasn’t even the best supporting actor in the movie, never mind in the whole year. Matt Dillon, the only other contender for that award whose performance I saw, was much better.

Syriana is probably worth seeing when it comes out on video, but it’s not worth €6.60 plus popcorn.

Despite my evangelism earlier in the week, I didn’t actually go to much of the juggling convention last weekend. I went to the fire show on Friday. The plan to get the last dart home was promptly forgotten, as was the backup plan to get the first nightlink. Getting home at 5am on Saturday pretty much prevented anything useful or interesting from happening until that night.

I went to the public show in the Ambassador on Saturday night. Apart from the venue being ridiculously cold this was actually one of the better shows I’ve seen. There was juggling, milnary manipulation (that’s a fancy name for hat tricks), yo-yoing, and a peculiar Dane nude in a (thankfully opaque) balloon.

By the time the renegade show (essentially open stage for jugglers) started, it was becoming clear that lack of sleep was going to become a problem for me. To be honest, I think I would have been better off not going to that show at all.

Chuck Norris reading a list of Chuck Norris facts.

I was pleased to find out that Apple is now offering episodes of The Daily Show for download in in the iTunes store. I’m as big a fan of Jon Stewart as you can be living in a country with no Daily Show. The first time I saw him was in the (reportedly entirely ad libbed) exchange he has with Will Ferrell in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (the news interview scene). The last time I saw him was in the few clips of him hosting the Oscars that were left in RTÉ’s abridged (read "shitty") coverage of that event. Essentially I’ve seen enough of this guy to know that I’m missing out on something great, so I welcomed the news that I would finally be able to see The Daily Show, even if it was going to cost $2 an episode.

Apparently Apple (or the TV company selling it to them) is less keen on me seeing it. It’s only available in the US iTunes store, and my Irish account doesn’t work there. Boo. Let me get this straight: I live in a country where American political satire will never have enough mass appeal to get onto TV. I’m willing to pay real money, right now, to the producers of that content to let me download and watch it, using an infrastructure that is already in place. And they won’t let me.

These are the same people who complain that distribution of their content on file-sharing networks is damaging their businesses. They have no-one to blame but themselves.

It’s that time of year again. It seems there are juggling conventions happening all over the place right now, but the one I care about (and you should too) is the Dublin convention. It’s on this weekend, Friday the 10^th until Sunday the 12^th. Remember that this isn’t just for jugglers. There are two shows on Saturday, both of which will be awesome. Here’s the details as I understand them:

Friday

Fire Show

8pm – 10pm, Meeting House Square

Beginning with a performance by Firepoise, followed by random jugglers doing their thing.

Saturday

Registration and Workshops

10am – 6pm, Larkin Hall, Cathal Brugha street

€15 for a student, €20 for worthwhile people

Public Workshops

1pm – 3pm, Temple Bar

Free public juggling lessons for adults and children. If you’ve ever wanted to learn to juggle, this is for you. It will really make you appreciate the difficulty of what you see in the public show.

Jugglelution (Public Show)

8pm (doors 7:30), Ambassador Theatre

I expect this to be a great show. It has at least a few performers who i’ve seen before and who rocked on those ocassions. I’m reliably assured that all the other acts rock equally hard.

Tickets are €15 for adults, €10 for children, from the Temple Bar Cultural Information Centre from today. Ticket is included in the overall convention price if you’re going to everything.

Renegade

10.30, venue to be confirmed (a pub of some kind, though, of course)

If you’ve been to a renegade before you know what to expect (in as much as you can know what to expect at renegade). If you haven’t been, then I can only ask why not?

Sunday

Workshops and Games

Larkin Hall

Same as Saturday afternoon, only with more hangovers, less energy, but more games. And hopefully more prizes for me.

As planned, there was some role-playing this weekend. I dredged up the old box of Warhammer Quest and dug around to find all the half-painted and mostly broken miniatures to go with it. None of the rest of the players had played the game before so I had to spend some time explaining the rules. Thankfully it’s quite easy to pick up. It has layers of rules, so you can learn to play the basic game and then add complexity as everyone gets more familiar with it.

Unfortunately the dice gods were very much against us. By the end of our fourth game I was creating my fourth Dwarf character, the last surviving member of the once-great Redbeard clan. His father and brother had been slain by minotaurs. Duran son of Ceallach Redbeard’s death was particularly unfortunate. He had successfully hit a wounded minotaur (one of three that attacked us in the second last room on our way out of the dungeon), but my damage dice came up a double one. Duran tripped on his beard and had to spend the rest of the turn getting up. Since this gave the minotaur +2 to hit on his attacks on Duran, needless to say Duran didn’t get up at the end of that turn. A shameful end to his quest to avenge his father.

If we play again, it will be up to Pygar Ceallachson (yes, my Dwarfs’ names are from Barbarella) to avenge his father and brother.

I’ve added a new page to Soylent Red: music. Right now it displays an automatically-updated list of my ten most recently listened-to songs. (Update: Apparently what it considers recently listened-to only includes tracks in the last few minutes, so there won’t be anything listed much of the time. Fixing this may require work.). The information is supplied by Last.fm and an iTunes plug-in.

Hopefully in future I’ll have more stuff on there, like links to music-related posts (once I have post categories, which has been on my to do list since approximately the fall of Babylon). I also intend to re-use some of the code for that page and put a summary of the same information on the front page. But now it’s time for dinner, so that’ll have to wait. (Update2: This is now done, though subject to the same restriction as I mentioned in the previous update.)

I’ve also made a tweak or two to the comments interface. You can try it out and feed my ego at the same time by heading over there and posting a comment. You know you want to.