Sick of these ads? Of course you are… Well what if you could avoid them altogether?

Here’s a simple tip that heps you do just that,- stopping images and pages from a long list of notorious web sites from being displayed on your browser. These particular ones are hosted on the domain “content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net” and link to a url at “ad.adperium.com” – literally just a couple of sites among many which are purely for shoving advertising and spam down the viewers throat.

One easy way to stop such ads appearing is to use customise your HOSTS file. This is basically like a local version of a DNS server (those servers that translate domain names into numbers so your browser can find web sites). In the HOSTS file, you’d have a list of all the sites you want blocked and have them correspond to 127.0.0.1 (also known as “localhost”) – so that your browser would try to load the images and pages from your own PC instead of the actual web site.

Handily, someone’s already written a customised HOSTS file for you to use and it’s pretty simple to install. First things first though, – better safe than sorry.. back up the file you’ve got.

Fair play, Grandad, Damien, Allan and a whole pile of others who pledged their support to Rick O’Shea (who is understandably staying tight lipped on the issue) and Nikki Hayes (who I’ve blogged about before) – who have been the victims of a “dumbing down” order in RTÉ Radio, essentially reducing them to “that was/this is” jocks who are no longer allowed engage the listeners in their brand of engaging banter.

Below is the email I sent off this evening to complaints@rte.ie. Here’s hoping that enough people do it that make them sit up and take notice (and action!).

I guess I “LOL”‘d when I saw this on Robot Chicken on Bravo TV tonight.

… and I’m enough of a nerd to wonder “shouldn’t Jack have said ‘AFK’ or ‘NN’ instead of ‘BRB’?”. Ugh…

Am I the only one to have gotten spam from the web site of “Living magazine”?

It reads like this:

Dear NIALL,

With Christmas almost upon us what better time to unwrap our brand new website [URL Removed]?

In case you hadn’t heard [URL Removed] is your chance to enjoy everything that Living Magazine has to offer – plus a lot more besides – on your computer.

At the site you’ll find the very latest Christmas edition of Living Magazine available to download. Plus, you’ll also to able to access recipes, tips and lots more.

And if you like what you see online why not register to become a Living Online member. That means you’ll receive Living Magazine in its online format from now on and will also be able to download coupons, enter fantastic competitions and take advantage of other exclusive member benefits.

Why not check out [URL Removed] and from all of us at Living we hope that you enjoy it and have a great Christmas too!

The Living Online Team

(I’m removing the URL ‘cos I’ve no intention of linking to them).

Why doth I protest so? – Well, I didn’t sign up for anything – this is pure unsolicited commercial email of the lowest tackiest order.

The site itself is pretty poor by any design standards. It’s particularly unattractive to look at, has an unfriendly navigation system and it forces PDF pages on you where it could have easily have used – *shock!* – HTML!

Also, it offers nothing to me – I’m clearly not their target market. By the looks of it, they haven’t done any market research, just send out a bulk spam. Oh, and it’s run by that massive and sneaky Unilever organisation (the one that puts loads of similar products on the market that ‘compete’ with each other) but the “contact us” link on their web site goes to carelines@fexco.com – Fexco being an Irish based financial services company (… what???).

As Michele has said before, companies do themselves a lot of damage by using e-mail spam as a marketing methodology, and as I said in an e-mail to Fexco, I will be recommending to people NOT to use the web site.

Howdy, hope you like the new clean and crisp Mac/Linux-inspired layout/design.

I was on the radio again today – on Today FM’s “Last Word”, talking about taxis with Matt Cooper and Tommy Gorman of the National Taxi Drivers Union.

Damien is looking for suggestions for categories for the 2008 Blog Awards. How about a “best whingeing/moaning blog” and nominating this thing?

Now Bertie’s saying he deserves his “modest” €38,000 pay increase because he doesn’t get given a free house for the duration of his term of office. Right…

No show this week – sometimes live sport has to take precedence…

Something crashes on your PC… You hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and wait for Windows to pop the Task Manager up. Then you click on “Process”, find the program and click “End Process” and maybe it will close. Forget all that, – get Task Killer. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

In case you didn’t already know… TV3 really is turning into “ITV Ireland”.

This, however, was great TV – the fight that broke out recently on Ireland AM:

…Mick, Mick, he’s takin’ me stuff!

Via Gav, here’s Bell X1 singing Flame (or “Bladhm”) as gaeilge: