A photo on Flickr has got a lot of people talking. It’s the one below by Flickr user punimoe. It was the 4 billionth - that’s photo number 4,000,000,000 - photo to be uploaded to the site. Pretty awesome, eh? Flickr which launched in 2004, was bought by Yahoo! in 2005 and only came out of beta in 2006 has over half as many photos on it as there are people on the planet. That’s a whole lot of camera snappery.
Imagine my surprise, me, a so-called self respecting pTerry fan, when walking into Chapters yesterday I saw there’s a new Discworld book out. A full novel. Unseen Academicals. The 37th in the Discworld series. A hardback. €19.99. A book I didn’t know was due out so soon. Woot We’re back in good old Unseen University for this one, with Ponder Stibbons, Ridcully, the Librarian and the rest of the wizards up against a rather unexpected challenge not from the Dungeon Dimensions this time… Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they’re in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match … There’s more
The Apprentice Ireland - Week 4 Click here to launch in a new window
SILENCE!! I KILL YOU!!! Batten down the hatches, lock away your virgin daughters, remove the bins from the street and check under your car with mirrors - we’ve just been told that Achmed the Dead Terrorist - the terrifying terrorist - is coming to Dublin next year for the first time, bringing his friend Jeff Dunham, who also happens to be the highest grossing stand-up comedian in the world, with him. Don’t know who that is? Not one of the people who have seen this You Tube video at least one of the 96,615,200 times (at time of writing)? Tickets on sale this Friday 16 for Dublin’s Olympia Theatre and cost €44.50. Gonna be a great one!
Like OMG, seriously? Good girl Hannah Montana Miley Cyrus. Quit twitter in an effort to keep “her private life private“, because she is done “trying to please” and all of that by posting a video - and on a particularly good one - on You Tube. As you do. I loved Chris Matyszczyk’s take on it.
This is Barnardos Ireland’s new 60 second TV ad for their ‘Help Change A Child’s Future’ fundraising campaign. Harrowing, isn’t it? It ends with the warning “What happens to us as children changes who we become”. What though do you think it’s about? Hear the name “Barnardos” and you’ll know they do great work with children, you’ll know they are one of Ireland’s top charities. You may not know though that they have a current funding shortfall of almost €1.2 million of the €5.9 million they need to keep their services going or that of every euro they spend is spent directly on their work with children. What you also won’t see from that ad is that it’s quite simply a major public appeal for support to prevent the closure of services across Ireland. This, to me, is quite a big failing in the ad, as emotive as it is, … There’s more
This landed in the inbox and I thought it perfect to share. The ‘Dublin: One City, One Book‘ choice for April 2010 is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Casting Ireland are looking for cast someone in the role. We are looking to cast our own Dorian to have his full-length portrait painted for the exhibition and to launch the book festival. Costume fitting and the portrait needs to be completed before Christmas, and the festival runs for 3 weeks from April 6th. Dorian would be required to open the festival and to appear around town on the Saturday afternoons to promote the event. The Dorian we are looking for has to resemble the character in the book - someone who looks 22 years of age, tall, slender, short blonde hair(or prepared to go blonde), charming and very good looking. This is a non-speaking role and therefore … There’s more
Culch has challenged me to say why I think you should watch Who Do You Think You Are (WDYTYA) instead of the Apprentice tonight. OK, the Apprentice is easy viewing for a Monday night, engaging, etc, but WDYTYA gives so much more than easy entertainment. It has history, personal stories, mystery, wonder, tragedy, discovery, excitement, fantasy and more. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, WDYTYA is a reality documentary looking at the genealogy of famous people. For this side of the world there’s been 8 UK series of WDYTYA and RTE is currently mid way through its second year. Canada is also in its second year and America is due to start too, but has been delayed. There’s not much online by way of video clips so I’m just going to give you some interesting things I’ve learnt from WDYTYA over the years: Vitamins were discovered, by Carol … There’s more
You may remember me talking about the stage. You may remember the playwright talking about the play. You may have entered to win tickets. You may have seen it mentioned as we talked about the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2009. What you should do though is go see The Tales of Ballycumber by Sebastian Barry and starring Stephen Rea at the Abbey Theatre, playing until November 7 2009. I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening night last Wednesday and one of the most gratifying things was to hear the gasp of amazement and impressed silence as people saw Mike Britton‘s set for the first time. I realise the irony of course of including the photo above but you really have to know that the set without actors, without lighting, without that expectant hum of the audience, without the opening strains of the song at the start … There’s more
In the second week of this year’s Irish Apprentice, the task was made harder for our two teams (in fairness, anything had to be tougher than selling ice cream on a hot Summer’s day). They had to design an outdoor campaign for the new Samsung Jet mobile. Once again, the girls’ team, Platinum, won out with the lads’ team, Cuchulainn, completely missing the brief. Cuchulainn’s team leader Ginger Stephen brought Depressed Donal and Harvard Boy Breffers back to Bill Cullen’s boardroom and Bill send Donal home. I’m not quite sure what the show’s producers were thinking with week three’s task. It was another advertising campaign, but this time it was for something very uninteresting – Big Red Book’s accounting software package. Ok, they can argue that it doesn’t matter what the task is and that the contestants make it interesting, but…an accounts package. Come on! [Comment from Sinéad] when do … There’s more
Here’s a sneak peak at this evening’s Irish Apprentice. Is Aoiffe getting a bit stressed? For more clips, check out TV3′s Apprentice website and make sure you join us on the Live Blog here tonight to watch Week 4.
