One more Blog Awards post… – more interviews

Posted by Niall in Awards, Celebrity, Cork, DJ, Dundalk, Links, Media, Personal, Radio, Technology, archive, blogging, blogs, podcast on 25-02-2009

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I should have had these clips in the “Irish Blog Awards 2009 – The Interviews” post, but didn’t get time to do much more (’cool’) editing … that is, until now:

This is John Williams… and no, he’s not the famous composer known for his movie scores, white beard and slightly Richard Attenborough -like looks… – although he has, like his more famous namesake, done work on television scores and various other audio productions in his capacity as a sound engineer.

He’s also one of Ireland’s most prolific twitterers. I nabbed him for a few words last Saturday night during a smoke break, and this is what he had to say for himself:

[2:54]

Also out in the smoking area (isn’t it always they way… the fun times happen out in the bleedin’ freezin’ cold!) was bubbly Cork lady, Catherine – from MyMunster.com – who spoke to me briefly about the site (they connect Munster rugby fans world-wide) and about why she was there at the Irish Blog Awards 2009.

[1:21]

Unfortunately, the only words I got out of event organiser and blogging supremo Damien Mulley (while the recorder was on, anyway), were the following:


[00:08]

… so I wandered off and interviewed Rick then.

… and yes, this is the last of these interviews (sadly)!

Irish Blog Awards 2009 – The Interviews

Posted by Niall in Awards, Celebrity, Cork, DJ, Dublin, Dundalk, Entertainment, Links, Media, Personal, Photos, Radio, Technology, Video, archive, blogging, blogs, controversy, podcast on 22-02-2009

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Sod the oscars – the rebel county was the place to be this weekend at the 4th annual Irish Blog Awards in the Cork International Airport Hotel. I was in attendance and it was a crackin’ night!

Massive kudos to Damien Mulley for organising an incredible event. There’s loads of photos online already, and I’m sure, plenty more to come.

I, along with many others, was posting updates and pictures to twitter (mostly under the tag #iba09) including the results as they happened! (Full winners list is now online). After the awards ceremony itself, I was wandering around with my recorder, looking for victims to be interviewed briefly – and I nabbed the following:


Suzy Byrne (Maman Poulet) – winner, Best News & Current Affairs Blog & Grand Prix winner, Best Blog
(05:23)

Grandad/Richard O’Connor (Head Rambles) – past winner & nominee for Best Personal Blog
(02:36)

Rick O’Shea – Past winner, 2FM daytime DJ and Irish Blog Awards MC
(03:26)

Thanks a million to these three for the interviews. To the others I was chatting to and recording, many many thanks also!… I just haven’t gotten around to editing that little mountain of audio down just yet.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting new people and catching up with people I’d met before. The hotel itself is awesome and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Jason is absolutely right to want people to write up a good review for it and, of course to vote for Rick in the Meteors!

I’m sure there’s loads of IBA’09 stories yet to be told – including the tale of the Ryanair plane-load of speed-tweeting bloggers stuck on the tarmac in Dublin – and the various anecdotes of the Twitster (Twitterers playing Twister) on a bouncy castle while the DJ pumped out the tunes … but I’ll leave those accounts for other bloggers to report on. I got a LOT of sleep once I got home today… now I’m off to get some more.

Dear RTE

Posted by Niall in DJ, Entertainment, Linux, Radio, WTF?, archive, controversy, facebook on 19-01-2009

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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!).

Breakages and Changes

Posted by Niall in Christmas, Dundalk, Entertainment, Girls, Links, Media, Personal, Radio, Technology, Video, WTF?, Website, archive, blogging, blogs on 13-12-2008

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(Posted under the influence.)

(of alcohol, that is.)

My blog has been intermittently offline for the past couple of days due to a combination of a> me trying to upgrade to WordPress 2.7 and b> my web host’s abject inability to understand what’s going on. To all the 10 or 12 of you who actually read this shit… sorry about that.

Rest assured that a> the blog is now back online (and I won’t try “upgrading” again without having a nice fast “downgrade” plan in place should things go wrong)… and b> I’m looking into changing hosts.

In other news, as you’ll have noticed if you follow my twitter, I’ve decided to start being more … eh … cool (by – among other things – going to cool events like this one where I get to meet cool people),- oh and yeah – to grow a beard… just to, as I said to a friend, “try it on”… as I told her, “it’s like going into the changing room in a clothes shop, seeing if something suits me… except I’m in there for two weeks”. Yes.

A few girls in my past told me that they’d find a beard a total turn off. For some reason, in my “happy being a singleton” state, that spurs me on all the more.

Incidentally, I’m totally impresed with my one day’s growth,… it says a lot for my face that it can shove out THAT much hair in 24 little hours since the last “razing”

Yeah, my face rocks! :)

Good work, fellahs!

Posted by Niall in America, Awards, Celebrity, Comedy, Competition, DJ, Entertainment, Football, Links, Media, Personal, Radio, Sport, Video, Wikipedia, World, archive, blogging, blogs, controversy, election, politics on 04-11-2008

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I’m impressed with a few people actually…

I was impressed with the people that turned up at football tonight in our local sports centre – enough, finally, that we didn’t have to call it a day and not play any more. I was impressed with how well they played – and somewhat impressed with myself that I made it through the night, could still hack it with the youngsters and that I actually managed to score a few goals! Good work football playing fellahs!

I was impressed with RTÉ’s new 4-part documentary, Bertie, (or what little I saw of it, at least) which documents the life and times of our last Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. It was made by the same (also impressive) team (Miriam O’Callaghan’s company) who made “Haughey” – about our most infamous Taoiseach. Part two goes out next Monday night. Good work, telly production fellahs!

I was even impressed to learn that there’s an Irish version of Wikipedia… although I guess I should have realised that ages ago… Good work, language loving online encyclopedia localisation fellahs!

I’m somewhat impressed by Barack Obama (as, it seems, are both Damien and Fergal) and would like – and expect – to see him become President Elect of the United States within the next 36 hours. Good work, America’s first black President fellah!

Incidentally, I’m also impressed with Damien himself, in all honesty – with the incredible work he did as Ireland Offline chairman – as well as his creation of both the Irish Blog Awards and the Irish Web Awards. Good work, hard-working comms consultant fellah!

Speaking of awards – well done to Michele Neylon, who won two of the gongs at the NetVisionary awards recently – those being the awards for business blogging and Internet marketing. Good work, ISP running net visionary fellah!

I’m impressed by a few radio DJ’s too… particularly with Today FM’s Ray Foley and his sensible stance on the Brand/Ross controversy. Honestly – it’s a ridiculous situation that’s been blown out of proportion by bandwagon jumping complainers who, for the most part, probably never even listened to Russell Brand – or possibly even to the excellent BBC Radio 2. Seriously – read Ray’s blog post on the issue – it’s clever and well written, and while the story is still unfolding and we have yet to see the results of the BBC’s investigation into the incident, I find myself agreeing strongly with him… so good work, just-a-bit-of-fun-for-your-lunchtime fellah!

At the same time, while he doesn’t want to comment on the controversy itself, Rick O’Shea brings up another point that’s well worth considering… where do we draw the line? How far is too far in comedy? What rules should there be? How should the BBC react? … and so on… Good work, hairy-whiskey-drinking-good-point-making-DJ-slash-blogger fellah!

Finally, more DJ’s I’m impressed with are these two lads from CKY Radio, Montreal – who prank called Sarah Palin in a way that helped showed off her… erm… “qualities” even further. (Good work, prank-calling Canuck fellahs!) As if everything that Saturday Night Live has done to her (not to mention her own performances) hasn’t walloped her credibility hard enough, here she displays her incredible (and I mean “in-credible” in the literal sense) intellect when she believes she’s talking to President Sarkozy of France.

Canada seems cool…

(Yeah, this has just been a post of links… sorry.)