My Calendar Says

I was sitting at my desk one day, bored, when my eyes settled on the calendar on my desk. Usually, the advice or saying seems to mean something but mostly it’s rubbish.

Then I wondered about all the other calendars out there today? Calendars in other countries, other cultures? And that’s why this blog exists. Hopefully it’ll also be a bit of fun.

So please take a moment - your calendar is right there beside you on your desk - and enter what advice you got today.

http://twotitsandavote.com/ (from http://sabrinadent.com/)

Two Tits and a Vote is a political action campaign, designed to get women to use their muscle as voters to take action around a single issue at a time. Men are very welcome to take part; the platform is merely aimed at mobilising women.

It’s built around the concept of “armchair activism.” Armchair activism enjoys reasonable take-up online, but is often decried as ultimately being rather useless because it rarely translates into the real world. I started to think a lot about how to merge all of the good stuff about armchair activism – it’s fast, it’s accessible, it’s not a big ask, and it delivers a feel-good factor to the participant – with actions that could actually take form in the real world.

The law of unintended consequences! (wiki)

I’ve written two posts (one, two) previously complaining about NTL Ireland’s poor customer service. Others responded but it seems like NTL Ireland may have the last laugh. And it’s based on a true story!!

The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.

Telemarketers make use of a telescript – a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.

Is that a record?

P.S. This is pretty cool. I’m writing this from The Moorings Pub in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. Eircom has a scheme where you can get free wi-fi (until next April if you’re a customer) in various locations around Ireland. The Moorings is one of those places. It’s a nice bar (it does food too) and it’s even better now that they have internet access.

Actually, I wasn’t asked for any passwords etc so I think The Moorings had free internet access anyway and maybe they’re just piggy-backing on the Eircom scheme??

It’s Sunday evening and I’m wondering what programme will caress me gently into sleep mode before tomorrow’s return to work. Hmm, Channel 6 have a listing for “Law and Order” at 9.30pm. Now I like Law & Order, but there’s so many repeats on so many TV stations that I like to check in advance what episode I’ll be watching.

Channel 6′s website is weird and very non-functional. For example, their main page advertises ‘The Airfield Sessions’ (live music) but doesn’t tell me when it starts or when it’s on*. Crucially, I can’t find any info on what tonight’s episode of Law & Order is about.

Heck, they don’t even have listings for Sat or Sunday…but they do have pretty girls** who present the music videos. So that’s alright then!

* Update – There’s no link on the main page but there is this page but it’s effectively a dead link!
** Are there any male presenters (not voiceover) on Channel 6?

Maybe they should call the station Chanel 6?

Joe1234: Eircom net Breaking news
Just seen on the eircom.net homepage the “Breaking News” that a young girl died after falling fron her bicycle. The time posted was today at 00.42, but she actually died on Thursday. My deepest sympathies go out to her family but I wonder about eircom’s defination of “Breaking News”.
Reply With Quote

RainyDay (4,385 posts): Re: Eircom net Breaking news
So 43 minutes after Thursday isn’t ‘breaking’ then?

Clubman (33,245 posts): Re: Eircom net Breaking news
Today is Saturday.

The main advantage of squible was that the current information was ‘above the fold’ (to use a newspaper analogy) while the ‘back story’ (flickr, lastfm, facebook etc) was beneath ‘the fold’. Using ‘above’ and ‘below’ the fold, I’m talking about the user having to scroll down the page. A viewer would visit my blog and see the ‘current’ news (posts and comments) on the main page. ‘If’ they wanted more info, they could scroll down the page (beneath the fold) and find out more info about me. This approach made sense to me?

Now, I’ve discovered the talian theme by Steve Arun. On first view, it looks really promising but I’ll have to customise it a bit. For example, I prefer ‘weighted categories’ rather than a simple, straight list of categories because a simple list really ‘lengthens’ the page and it doesn’t allow the viewer to see what’s important to the blogger. One advantage of this talian theme (which it shares with squible) is that it shows the recent comments at the top of the front page. In other words, it’s easy for visitors to see what’s interesting and what’s not. I’m just going to add a gratuitous emoticon here to see what happens because squibble didn’t handle them properly….

P.S. Talian handles emoticons ok but it may not handle italics (italic test) ok. More testing required…