Well the nights they get longer.
And I can’t switch off my head.
I was always so much stronger;
Now I can’t get out of bed.

So now I lie here alone
And I just can’t think straight anymore.
This wasn’t the plan, I can’t be your man;
Cos baby you opened the door.

My eyes are heavy,

lead weights pull my eyelids down.

But I won’t sleep.

I’m so very tired,

but the distant call of sleep has no power here.

It seems it knows no end.

Fingers tapping,

In time to music in the background.

I snap back to write;

but moments earlier,

My mind was floating a thousand miles away.

Its taking too long;

Trying to sort everything out,

Head is far too cluttered with things I cant remember.

It’ll be hours yet;

Before I close my eyes to rest,

And even then I’m not quite sure I’ll find the peace of sleep.

Hi folks,

I usually sit on the fence when it comes to policies and procedures; it’s just not my thing. However, I am a self-confessed nerd, a gamer, an IT Nut and a comic fan; so when I heard the following story I thought it was time to step off the fence and just write a bit of a rant.

So the San Diego Comic-Con has been running since 1970, which I suppose makes this its 40th Anniversary. I’ve got a lot of friends who are into comics (comes with the territory) and friends in the states who’ve attended this conference before and the general feedback I’ve got is that it is a very cool conference run by comic fans for comic fans, and it is because of this feedback that I was extremely surprised to hear the following story:

My friend Grace (@GracePearl) was all set to attend Comic-Con, tickets bought and payed for; flights bought and paid for; flying all the way from Ireland to San Diego for the Comic-Con conference. However, there was a snag; Grace’s tickets were ordered by one of her friends and the wrong name was put on the ticket (I know this was a mistake; but I’m sure not a unique one). Unfortunately to attend Comic-Con an attendee must have ID that fully matches the name on the ticket; however as this was not possible both Grace and I contacted Comic-Con to see if they could assist us with this issue.

We sent emails to the general information email address listed on their website  (cci-info@comic-con.org) however, we received absolutely no response and waited weeks for a follow-up. In the end I reached out to some of my ex-colleagues from Google and managed to get an inside contact who might have been able to assist us with this issue.

Unfortunately Comic-Con were far from helpful; they basically said Tickets are non-transferable so you made a mistake and if you wouldn’t mind it would be very nice if you went away now… Comic-Con’s website says that Comic-Con can provide official authorization to transfer Comic-Con tickets to another party; so I can’t possibly see how with everything taken into account they refused to assist here. Their exact text states:

“By registering for a badge, paid or complimentary, you agree not to sell, trade or give your comp code, barcode confirmation or badge to anyone else without written permission from Comic-Con International“

So all we need is for someone at Comic-Con to confirm that the ticket can be transferred and everything here would be right as rain. The flights can’t be cancelled and everything has been paid for and spending the week of the conference in San Diego without attending, having flown all that way would be heart breaking.

Comic-Con you used to be cool; you used to be about the fans, the nerds and geeks without whom you couldn’t afford to exist so I am sure that there is something that you can do to assist Grace here; don’t be another corporation thats forgotten its roots and gotten to big for its boots. It’s not a difficult thing to change the name on a ticket when you consider the effort that is being made to attend here.

So to those of you reading this (outside of Comic-Con; if they ever read this), who like me believe Grace deserves the right to attend; this is what I’m asking. If you want to help the underdog (and c’mon everyone loves the underdog), re-tweet this story, link in on your Facebook profiles, send a nice little tweet to @Comic_Con and see if they can help out here. On their website it states that they can provide official authorization to transfer ticket ownership; so surely they can assist.

As always I appreciate any help you can provide and any comments/feedback as always greatly appreciated.

- Ken

Heres a few examples of some of the stuff I’ve put up. The Original project has been recently named “Right from the Start” (Thanks to my cousin David O’Dwyer for helping me with that one):

Anyway, I’m hoping to do a lot more of these in future and more originals too. Let me know if you can think of any creative suggestions

Its been far too long. The last year has been quite a rollercoaster ride and I’ve only just fallen off it. So a quick and nondescript recap is in order.

I got hit by the recession and ended up job hunting in the middle of last summer (09), then I found a job, then I was offered a better job and now that everything is settling back into place (kinda).

With all this in mind I thought it was time to blow the dust of the blog and get back into doing what I do best (can you feel the modesty?); waffling about my various meanderings on the internet, hobbies, technology, music and whatever else crosses my path or is travelling in  the same general direction as me.

So here goes….

I’m sure at this stage you have all read well written, deeply interesting, and to the point articles relating to the Jason Roe / Ryanair debacle. For those of you who haven’t here is a quick summary:

Jason Roe an Irish web designer found a minor issue with Ryanair’s online booking site that made it appear that you could book a flight on Ryanair for free, however this was just a session issue and as such not really a valid cause for concern or a method that could be used to avail of free flights.

Roe posted about this issue in his blog, and the information that he provided was tweeted across the globe, however, in a case of chinese whispers, the message being conveyed was that the issue that Roe had discovered would allow visitors to the Ryanair website to book a legitimate flight with Ryanair for free. Prompting a number of people to try replicate this issue.

Shortly following the blog post, Official Ryanair tech staff started commenting on Roe’s blog. I won’t go into full quotes but the words ‘Liar’ and ‘Idiot’ were thrown about, not to mention that they made cheap comments about his personal life.

When this information reached the media, Ryanair confirmed that their technical staff had indeed posted these comments, however, instead of apologizing for their staffs’ behaviour they commented:

“It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers, and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves, as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.”

And this is the story thus far…

So here is my take on this situation, it may not be well written, nor deeply interesting, but it is an honest aparaisal of the situation as I see it.

Firstly, I am amazed and appalled by the public relations team at Ryanair. I can’t even begin to imagine the standards that their public relations officers must hold too, that they could condone the actions not only of their staff, but also that of the representative speaking on their behalf.

As a business that in the service industry, in the middle of an economic recession to handle a public relations issue so poorly is simply shambolic. I have worked for a number of large companies, and I know exactly the kind of damage that poor PR and bad media attention can do. As I mentioned above, considering the current economic situation, this is definitely not the kind of damage Ryanair can afford.

One would have hoped to see Ryanair at least portray a professional attitude in this case rather than resorting to unscrupulous and underhanded comments. However, even this seemed too much of a challenge. It was bad enough to see this kind of behaviour from staff but to make a public announcement of support for their comments really portrays their organization in a bad light.

For a company that has been around for 24 years, it would appear that Ryanair still has a hell of a lot to learn about good PR and good customer service.

Additionally I find the quote “Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves, as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel” particularly  ironic considering Ryanair staff seemed to find the time to comment on Roe’s blog a multitude of times .

If this is a new method of decreasing the cost of air travel, I’d really like to see how Ryanair has worked this theory out.

Secondly, I’m sensing that the blogging community on a whole have turned on Ryanair over this issue and seem to be convinced that the ‘idiots’ comment was directed at them. Which I don’t personally think it was, or at least in my case. I like to believe it wasn’t, as I don’t believe I’m an idiot (at least most of the time) and I don’t believe that any of you are either.

In this case I think everyone should take a breather, before we begin boycotts, petitions and mass protests. Maybe bloggers as a whole could show Ryanair how its really done and make an official statement to the media regarding this issue on behalf of the blogging community without resorting to the same underhanded comments that Ryanair has laid before us today (Just an idea).

As it stands these are my thoughts on the subject and we’ll just have to wait and see whether anything further comes of these events.

So today, it was with great trepidation that I visited the site JamLegend.com, however, I was very impressed and amused with what I found. JamLegend.com focuses around the same general concept as Guitar Hero in that you push certain buttons in time to music, however this game is free / web based / and the buttons in the case are 1-5 for strings and the Enter button for strum.

In this case, I was trialing it on easy where it presented me with 3 strings instead of five, it was a nice warmup but it does tires out your hand very quickly.

The game also seems to have a wide selection of songs such as the popular YouTube viral video ‘Canon Rock‘ by Jerry C and also various video game themes such as Metal Gear Solid and Zelda. It is free to sign up and use and unlike most free things, you dont need to sign up to play beforehand, so signing up is not mandatory.

A particularly cool feature is the ‘Showdown’ option that allows you to play against other Jam Legend users worldwide, it even allows you to create your own private showdowns that you can use to invite and play against friends. There is also a scoreboard included so you can keep tabs on your various wins and loses.

Another really nice feature is that they allow artists to submit their own music to have it included in Jam Legend. This could be a really nice collaboration as it would increase the song range of Jam Legend while also promoting the artist’s music.

Bottom line, this game might not be for everyone, but if you like guitar hero or anything that involves music you will probably like it. As a free applications its excellent and the fact that you can play against friends adds a nice social element too it. Definitely something I’d recommend.

This is my lastest Vlog where I’ll be going through some of the most recent G1 Apps that I’ve been using recently. Enjoy!

Discover (WiFi):http://www.androidforums.com/showthre…

Official Last.Fm G1 App:http://www.intomobile.com/2009/01/24/…

My Tracks: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/0…

Air Hockey: http://jjcgames.com/

The aim of this excercise is to create a completely random album cover. To see what you can come up with, follow the directions below:

1 – Click on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random the first random Wikipedia article you get will be the name of the band.

2 – Click on http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 and use the last four or five words of the very last quote on the page. This will be the album’s title.

3 – Click on http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days and use the third picture, no matter what it is, as your album cover.

4 – Finally use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

My resulting album cover came out looking like this: