The Irish Hate Christmas

Happy Birthday Dr Who

This day in history:
At sixteen minutes past five on 23rd November 1963, a British television institution was born. Doctor Who would go on to become the longest-running science-fiction programme in the world, eventually spawning twenty six seasons of adventures from 1963 to 1989. In total, eight actors have played the part of Gallifrey’s most famous Time Lord. From the very first – William Hartnell in 1963 – to the very last – Paul McGann, in the 1996 TV Movie – the Doctor has wandered through time and space in his trusty time machine, an old type-40 TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space). Although appearing to be nothing more than a battered blue police box, it is in fact vastly bigger on the inside than on the outside, and always departs with its familiar wheezing, groaning sound.

The BBC are “No Longer Updating This Page

We have To Get a T.A.R.D.I.S. for Blue Mars, but what am I thinking Blue Mars Is bigger on the inside than on the Outside it is a Time And Relative Dimension In Space

T.A.R.D.I.S.

So I made A Start

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The Day The Word Fuck Disappeared

by Michael Scully

The day the word fuck disappeared
Every print of Scarface melted.

The day the word fuck disappeared
The Oxford English Dictionary
Became obsolete.

The day the word fuck disappeared
D.I.Y. enthusiasts
Wore black bandages.

The day the word fuck disappeared
The word shit
Went into hiding.

The day the word fuck disappeared
Hiberno-english
Mourned an amputation.

The day the word fuck disappeared
A worrying proportion of the population
Were struck completely dumb.

The day the word fuck disappeared
Docks, building sites, housing estates,
school playgrounds, sports stadiums
and pubs were eerily silent.

The day the word fuck disappeared
The Amalgamated Union of Asterisks
Went on strike for higher wages.

The day the word fuck disappeared
The prim and purse-lipped
Had a weak tea party and an early night.

The day the word fuck disappeared
The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin became
The Selected Poems of Philip Larkin.

The day the word fuck disappeared
A million prayers (what the fuck are you doing to me now)
Drifted a little off course.

The day the word fuck disappeared
Sex was a little more decorous.
Less fun.

Mick

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a concrete barrier erected by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (East Germany) that completely encircled the city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The Wall included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses.

The separate and much longer inner German Border (the IGB) demarcated the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Prior to the Wall’s erection, 3.5 million East Germans had avoided Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and escaped into West Germany, many over the border between East and West Berlin. During its existence from 1961 to 1989, the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated the GDR from West Berlin for more than a quarter of a century.[1] After its erection, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between around 100 and 200.

During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern Bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.

Wikipedia

I remember November 9th 1989. I cried and cried tears of joy. One of the most abomiinable features of Human Society, A Wall built solely to divide, was being torn down. I was there in spirit with bloody nails ripping at the hateful concrete, with my brothers and sisters.

Lassen Sie Gott mein Richter sein, ich stirbt, um es zu stoppen wieder geschehend.

Ich bin ein Bürger von Berlin auch

Philip

But The Future BECKONS!

The Bamboo Tower

Does BABEL spring to mind? Lol, But we are not thrown into confusion by our structures. Let us continue to tear down the old ones and REACH FOR THE SKY!

The Burj Dubai

The Internet

Hi Graham, Hi Gill, Hi Inty
Change Your Mind ~ Change The World

Alan Emtage, (born November 27, 1964) conceived and implemented the first version of Archie, a pre-Web internet search engine for locating material in public FTP archives.

• The author originally wanted to call the program “archives,” but had to shorten it to comply with the Unix world standard of assigning programs and files short, cryptic names such as grep, cat, troff, sed, awk, perl, and so on.

A native of Barbados, and the son of Sir Stephen and Lady Emtage, he attended high school at Harrison College from 1975 to 1983 (and in 1981 becoming the owner of a Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of memory), where he graduated at the top of his class, winning the Barbados Scholarship.

I cycled across London to get 16k of RAM upgrade

In 1983 he entered McGill University in Montreal, Canada studying for an honors Bachelor’s degree in computer science which was followed by a Master’s degree in 1987 from which he graduated in 1991. Emtage was part of the team that brought the first Internet link to eastern Canada (and only the second link in the country) in 1986. In 1989 while a student and working as a systems administrator for the School of Computer Science, Emtage conceived and implemented the original version of the Archie search engine, the world’s first Internet search engine and the start of a line which leads directly to today’s Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google.

45 years old in a couple of weeks.

Some Stats:

• 105,170,327 active web surfers in the US
• In Europe 105,096,093
• Asia 704,213,930 Internet users
• Latin America and The Caribbean 175,834,439

I make that 2,180,629,578 oh, and I’ve got two computers so 2,180,629,579.

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To Get The Ball Rolling……

To Get The Ball Rolling……

C O N I F I G U R A T I O N

Ha Ha Twitter Ha Ha

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JANET, ARPANET & Gaelic :)

I came across this rather remarkable review of Dr Nahum Goldmann’s book “Online Information Hunting” in Gaelic (with English Translation) . If you liked “In The Beginning Was The Command Line” then this little 3 page gem will take you to the beginning of The Internet. Truly a little bit of history. I am doubly fascinated because I am studying Gaelic ~ Wow what a wierd and wonderful mix! I wonder if Goldmann’s book is still in print? Though it seems a bit long…….

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It is truly amazing what a Google search will pick up (well I am amazed). Just wait I will practise a few obscure sentences and toss them in to Gaelic speakers ~ ha ha that will ruffle a few feathers ( I did the same in Japan from a great book : ” Modern Colloquialisms ~ Japanes – English” e.g neko-ni-koban – “like casting pearls before swine ” lol) Any traveller will tell you that a few well-chosen words in the local language works wonders, breaking ice and creating an instant rapport (sorry but “Gomen nasai, watashi no nihongo wa totemo heta desu ” ~ “I am terribly sorry, my Japanese is very poor ” delivered with perfect inflection, tone and emphasis in Samurai style wowed any Japanese person I met > of course a great opening line to speaking English…..)

Life is so much fun though

Nunca passa nada a qui

THE GOVERNMENT IS READING YOUR EMAILS

Paranoid? Need a Secure Server? Well here is your solution: http://irishsecure.com/isis.

Heard of ECHELON? They are reading your emails. They are watching YOU through SECURITY CAMERAS. They have a file on you, a DIGITAL FILE. They know who your friends are, they know who your mistress / lover is, THEY KNOW WHAT YOU DID ON SATURDAY 3rd NOVEMBER OUTSIDE CENTRA IN PATRICK ST AT 2AM.

…….they know your I.P. address, operating system, browser, cookies, java. THEY KNOW HOW BIG YOUR SCREEN IS., they know your resolution….

……trust me, I am your friend, I can help, just give me your password and I will encrypt it for you, just between us, I don’t usually do this but you are special..

Hey! I could encrypt your credit card details too, just fill out this simple form……

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Archives 1997 to 1999

The Celtic Tiger ~ 12 years ago we owned CelticTiger.com. This was our site. [sorry I was really into Japanese at the time - can't remember what it had to do with Ireland, lol] It is now owned by Heartland Solutions, Inc. a Florida company making electrical transformers.

The Cyber Café ~ We started our own association, country wide, IICA > Irish Internet Café Association. We would have monthly meetings, hosted by a different café each month. We would make rules about pornography and such things. There were 19 of us. (Not a bad site for 1998.)

Y2K ~ [WARNING : THIS SITE CRASHES FIREFOX 3.5] Remember the scare 10 years ago? Every computer in the whole wide world was going to die in the first minute of 2000. Ha! We were ready!

Pubs ~ Fancy a pint? Pubs were beginning to get on line. Have a look > chintzy wallpaper and reflecting leprechauns but it did use a database.

Anatolia ~ ” is an area of Turkey famous for its outstanding physical beauty hospitality, excellent food and wine. ” My first restaurant site, owned by a very nice guy.

NADAS ~ Native Acquisition Data Services. Wow serious stuff, using “Open Query” no less. VMS, server/client C++, Tullamore and Bond St, London. Took me weeks to get the open query/ triangle graphic sorted.

Cairde ~ “I assume that I am speaking to Englishmen who value their freedom…Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more than anything else in the world” – Patrick Pearse. Hope I don’t get told off for this. Really sorry about the layout but it was designed for 800×600.
Just an Englishman trying to make amends……..Philip

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There is more to come….but this is a start

P