Okay. Away is putting it lightly. I now realise I haven’t touched this blog since July 1. Funny that – I thought my last post was about 6 weeks ago. Serves me right for messing with the space-time continuum.

So what was I up to? Bugger all of interest really. Work mainly. Lots of it. Too much at times. Not only was I messing with the space-time continuum I also managed to get the whole recession thing arseways.

There were loads of topics I wanted to rant about and stories I was gagging to tell. I could have. That wouldn’t have taken much time. But a blog is a funny beast – feedback can trickle in over weeks. A blog with unacknowledged feedback isn’t a blog.

I offloaded a lot on Twitter instead. Quick, short bites. Replies immediate. Done and dusted there and then. Move on.

If a blog is a wife, then Twitter is a hooker.

What now? I’m not sure. I’ll see how things go. The plan is to at least post something on Sunday mornings. I think this marriage just might be worth saving.

Work has been mad busy for the last while. A great complaint in a recession you’d think. Well not really. Not when extracting payment is consuming more energy that the work itself.

Maybe it’s just my luck. I’m the kind of guy who goes to a singles party and ends up paired with Ireland’s one and only recovering nymphomaniac.

I’ll be back soon. I’ve loads to tell. Not least the fugitive’s latest pastime – deep water diving … without diving gear.

As  a past pupil and the local web-head I’ve been asked to award a small prize in each of the four categories. In return, I get to put my logo on the main school website and, get this, I am to be the judge.

Now I’ve no experience of judging and the only experience of a judge I have is one I try to forget. So I’ve been doing some research. As you do

After an exhaustive trawl and numerous emails to contacts I was finally pointed toward a website that answered all my questions: StatCounter.com

Turns out its dead easy. All I have to do is look at the first page for an average of about 20 seconds. If I accidentally click on a second page or inadvertently scroll down then so be it, but it isn’t necessary.

If I’m judging the My Family category and see something that comes under Nature then I tut-tut a bit and rule out that site.

Not that any of this matters. I’ve already decided who the winners are. David Nolan has to get the Sports award because I know his dad since we were kids. Kate Maher is getting the Music one because I don’t know any of the other entrants in that category.

I suppose I’ll have to go through the motions though.

PrimalSneeze.com is all packed up and ready to move to Carlow. Well, actually it will be just over the road from where it is now, but since that space was invaded I’m getting out. I suggest you do the same and follow me up to Carlow.

We’ll be heading her for Mt. Leinster and minute now. So if you leave a comment here it might get left behind. Or I might come back and get it. We’ll see.

But I won’t be blogging for the next day or two. Not that I have been the last week or so.

Just about everyone and their granny wants everything (except their granny) done before the Yuletide break up. I am up to my ankles in work and standing on my head.

Plus the word got out that I don’t do Christmas and a bunch of other clients are handing off work to me today and tomorrow to have done by the time they return to work in January. Great! you say.  There’s only one thing better than having work thrown at you during a recession and that’s Jolene Blalock throwing herself at you in a passion.

Yeah, great. But no crinkle crinkle^[1] until the work’s done. So not only could blogging be light, portering^[2] could be too. That’s a far greater worry. So bear with me. (Jolene can bare with me).

Translation for Yanks:
[1] Money/notes/cheques
[2] Guinness = Porter

A real money spinner if there ever was one. Way back some professional event organiser thought to himself “hey, no one’s ever ran an award for being a plain old fashioned Irish mammy”. So he started making a list of what products old fashioned Irish mammies use and he came up with cookers – they cook a lot. He phoned up Calor and pitched them. They handed over ten grand and threw in a cooker and a barrel of butane. The Calor Housewife of the Year was born.

He organised a big gala event with celebrity judges, high profile MC, TV cameras, the works and Molly Brennan was presented with a brand new 6-ring hob, an oven you could fit half a heifer in, her own gas pipeline from Kinsale and a bunch of flowers. (Always the flowers. Millions upon millions of flowers die every day to keep women horny happy).

It cost him 8 grand to run and he pocketed 2.

Down the years the numbers of awards exploded. There was money to be made telling people how great they were. Even more money if you got the nominees to pay to enter. And even more if you charged them to come collect their awards. For a few quid the mediocre could be The Best.

Ireland being Ireland, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. “Join the civil service – you’ll have a job for life”. “Open a golf course – people will pay anything to play”. “Get into computers – that’s the coming thing”. “Buy overseas property – that’s where the money’s to be made”.

And pretty soon there were awards for everything. Things to have awards for were running out.

All seemed stagnant until some bright spark thought of the Internet. “Let’s have Internet awards”, he told his boss. “What? For the lads that make them websites?” “God no”, he explained, “for the companies that have them made. Shur they’re the ones with the shillings!”

And so The Golden Spiders was born.

For the right money, a company that doesn’t trade online could be Best Retail & Home Shopping Website. “You want to win something? You don’t actually do anything on the web other than look pretty, but eh, let me see … how about the Best Broadband Application Award? Maybe you’d prefer Best Broadband Content? No, hold on – no other car crowd has entered so you can be Best Motor“.

It didn’t have to make sense. It was all about money.

All this stuff about paying money didn’t suit the real Internetty people. Real Internetty people like free stuff. The Internet serves up free software, movies, books, sex, kittens, sex kittens – paying for stuff is bad.

An alternative, the Golden Crab Awards, kindly disorganised by Silver Haired Internet Technology, tried make its mark. And failed.

As well as free stuff, real Internetty people like blogs and so a bouncing baby Blog Awards was born. The rules were simple made up on the fly you had to be rumoured … Fuck it, what am I saying? I never seen any.

The Ugly Blog Ball miscarried (the parents may try again next year) but the Blog Awards’ baby brother, the Irish Web Awards, went full term. Like all second born tend to be, it was brighter. It even had a scorecard. And it was for the people, by the people, all the people, all the time, that kind of thing.

Apparently there is always room for another awards show. (Could have fooled me – I thought the awards space was bulging like Mary Harney’s knickers already). So in 2009 I will be running the very first Best Awards Awards to showcase the best Ireland has to offer in annual awards.

The rules:

• Awards nominated must have a strong connection with Ireland. Or a weak one. Or none at all.
• Awards must be for achievements in Internet related activities. Or running a county council. Or knitting. Or running an online knitting council. Whatever.
• Nominees must abide by the rules. Judges may or may not abide by the rules at their discretion. Note: This rule may be changed; dropped; reinstated. Nominees must not abide by the rules.
• Complaints will be dealt with efficiently, quickly and appropriately. Complaints will be ignored. Complainants will be assumed to be cry-babies whinging just because they didn’t win.
• Appropriate prizes will be given. e.g. Should the Best Soccer Player Awards be chosen the FAI will be given sliotars, rugby balls etc. so they can teach their members to play a real sport. Should the Best TV Personality Awards win, station management teams will be given anti-delusional counselling. There will be no prizes.
• Nominations may be made in comments below. The winners have already been chosen.
• Further rules will be published here. Or somewhere else. There are no rules.

If this goes according to plan next year Ireland’s Best Awards Awards could be in the running for the International Best Awards Awards Awards.

Homepages – Tales From The Irish Blogosphere, a collection of 100% pork-free stories and photographs by 50 Irish bloggers and compiled by Catherine Brodigan is now available to order on Lulu.com.

At just €14 and with all proceeds going to Focus Ireland (a charity providing support for the homeless) it’s unbeatable value and for a truly worthy cause.

Meas mór ag dul amach go dtí the contributors; the proofreaders; the cover designer; comedian, actor, author and almost-blogger, Pauline McLynn for penning the introduction; but most of all Catherine for all her hard work. You wouldn’t believe the work she has put into this – she probably doesn’t herself.

Buy it for your Granny – it’ll introduce her to blogs. Buy it for your kids – there are pictures. Buy it for the bus driver – because everyone should have a copy.

Well, whatcha think? Happy?

It’s okay I suppose. Not sure I’m happy though. It seems very cluttered compared to the old dashboard.

Ha! You’re the one to talk about clutter. Look at your theme – it’s shite! … and he rambled off to wake the sleeping dog.

But he was right. Too cluttered. Reason number 639 why I hate cats right there.

So I found these blog togs.  (Minimalistic like my wallet). After a long search mind you. Why does just about every theme on WordPress.org have to have everything scrunched up into the middle? And the search function on there is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

I had three options as I seen it:

1. Pull down a theme from another site.
   • But that means scouring the code for anything malicious and that’s a pain in the swoickles.
2. Code up my own theme. Start with Sandbox and work up. Or better still, the Carrington framework.
   • But Carrington is still buggy (trust me on that!) and I figured the cat would be back soon so there wouldn’t be time to go mucking about.
3. Use the best of a bad lot.
   • And that’s what I did.

And it’ll have to do. Hold on … ructions going on …

- What’s all the racket?
Dog: He was pushing me.
Cat: Was not. He was in my way.
- Now look here the two of you, I’m trying to talk to Internet people, so I don’t want any messing from either of you.
Cat: Yeah! Talk on your crappy cluttered blog.
- I heard that! Any more out of you and you’re not getting fed today. The sacrifices I make for you and what thanks do I get? Don’t you know how hard it is to find money for cat food what with the recession and the price of drink the way it’s gone? Now, be quiet. The two of you.

Sorry about that. Where was I? Oh yeah, WordPress 2.7. It’s very different. Anyone else using it yet?

On the plus side it hasn’t broken any plugins as far as I know. It’s pretty handy being able to customise the dashboard layout too – add, remove or just move. Uploading media without having to pretend to write a post was long overdue. The sticky-post feature will be handy for my next post. Best of all is the automatic upgrade.

On the not-so-plus side, it is like what I said about themes above – the workspace is scrunched into the centre. It’s a pity the right sidebar on the dash isn’t narrower, or at least easily resizable. I played around with embedding images and it’s still pure tat. Impossible to size and position properly without mucking in the HTML.

Overall, for the novice (not that I know of any blogging-nuns) I think it is daunting. There are too many features displayed by default. Nuns get confused and embrassed when you display too much.

My new theme might be uncluttered, but my dashboard is now like a maternity ward nine months after a nationwide powercut.

“Tempus fugit phonetic” – How much more phonetic can you get?

“Nais ass” (via the Lithuanian Department of Agriculture) – Define “nais”. Beef to the heels like a Mullingar heifer?

“Mayo motorbike test” – Let me see. Well I suppose if the reg plate said MO you’d be fairly sure.

“Licence for a pram” – Would that be a Mayo one?

“My bride had to pee” – Just a human thing – don’t worry about it.

“Things you” – Things you fucking what?

“Who was the first man to sneeze” – Me, obviously. I beat Adam by a snot.

“Farming in Ireland Wikipedia” – Just an idea … why not go search on Wikipedia?

“What payment will I get if I am made redundant from social welfare” – Relax! All jobs in the Social Welfare are safe.

“6 steps for making the magic last bringing baby home” – 3 in the door, 3 back out. Repeat indefinitely for long lasting magic.