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\/__/ \/__/ \/__/ \/__/ three.one
17.12.03
1 Million Hearts Overclocked
www.1mho.com
by Hugh mT
====================================================================
IMHO's back! You may have seen some posters around the place
announcing The Return Of The King. And this time it's Number One!
That's right, due to intense corporate branding pressures - and also
because some drunk teenagers told us it'd be cooler - we've
relaunched as 1MHO. PLEASE NOTE numeral '1' instead of first person
singular 'I'. You'll need to make that distinction when you're
typing in the URL to our in1mitable new popup-free website at
www.1mho.com. Reading online is easier, kids, and saves the trees.
Follow those links at http://www.1mho.com.
Due to the historic nature of the occasion, the 1MHO board of
directors considered it appropriate to Bump Up The Volume. Welcome,
therefore, to the special one-issue-only Volume 3 of 1MHO,
guaranteed 1rish and wr1tten in a rush... Think of it like the
Beano 2003 annual for grown-ups. Sorta.
====================================================================
Please FORWARD this to anyone you think might be interested: if
that's how you received this, then please SUBSCRIBE by sending mail
to subs@1mho.com with the word 'subscribe' in the subject line.
Special 1MHO thanks to the appropriately-anagrammed EON, who opened
our freelancing eyes to a whole new scary Matrix of real world
work(TM), and one of the reasons why we've been silent so long. On
that subject, we also want to express sincere appreciation for the
"Anybody there?" communications from Djdafweecha, Silas el Hobito
and Ronan McK - you roused us from our dogmatic slumbers, lads, and
for that we thank you. If memory serves, we also owe a salutation
to Alan X B, competition winner from our last ish; we'll sort out
that trip to Florida early in the New Year, alright Alan? Cheers.
====================================================================
You never read 1MHO before? Or you've forgotten all about it in the
long months since its last glorious incarnation? Do your revision
at http://www.1mho.com. All back issues now online! [Linkrot is
highly likely, though. You just had to be there, we guess.]
But make sure to SUBSCRIBE!
====================================================================
AR AN LINE....................................And On The World Stage
Escorting some invited VIPs to the official 1MHO relaunch in Aras an
Uachtarain, Bertie takes a moment to reflect on just how far he has
come:
http://www.1mho.com/pics/bertie.jpg
Frankly, we're a little surprised: as a major Hollywood star, you'd
expect Bertie to be accustomed to the high life. After all, he even
has an entry in the Internet Movie Database:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Ahern,+Bertie
(Note that there's currently no pic of the great man in the IMDB:
but for $10, anyone can add one! Any takers?)
*
Since we're doing a sort of 2003 round-up, it's appropriate perhaps
to cover such ongoing Irish controversies as the inexorable
continuing property boom, perhaps best exemplified by this wonderful
bargain accommodation advertised in Dublin during the year:
http://www.1mho.com/pics/dub_box.gif
But then again, such insanity seems only appropriate for a country
which now *generates* the "Weird News" for humour pages in the
foreign press:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2003/09/05/177514-ap.html
As The Irish Times might say, "headline hereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee":
http://www.1mho.com/pics/times.gif
*
But we're nearing the end of the year, and more important things
remain to be done than bash the, ahem, competition. Yes, Virginia,
there ARE some things more important than even that laudable aim,
and one of those is to make sure that U2 don't even show in the
Cluas.com reader's poll: http://www.cluas.com/poll/vote_2003.htm.
It's your democratic duty!
If by any chance you've forgotten what horrible rubbish was being
foisted upon us in the name of pop during the year, take advantage
of the very generous offer made at
http://www.geocities.com/weirdandirish/Download_Eiretop30.html,
where you can download free MP3s of songs in the the Irish hit
parade! Okay, it hasn't been updated since January, and there's
really only a few available, but the intention is honourable. At
least, we're sure IMRO would see it that way:
http://tinyurl.com/z8og
(Gosh! 2FM have to pay EU3.63 *per minute* to play that rubbish?)
*
Irish community sites: we need all we can get. But hey
"sassysista", no cheating in the Am I Hot Or Not poll:
http://www.1mho.com/pics/sassy.jpg
Come in no. 54, your time is up! Only one entry per person! You'll
just have to accept the first score, even if you don't like it! etc.
*
To be honest, we were ready to get all sarky and condescending on
http://www.houseoftheorangemonkey.co.uk/monkey/trips/trip33.htm,
which at first glance recalls South Park's mostly-tedious Mr Hat
gags.
But then we thought, what the hell is wrong with us? By God, what
have we become? What we have here is an ambitiously educational
website with a cheery, all-age approach, dammit. And the quality of
the photographs is uniformly impressive. Who cares if they all
feature a toy beanie monkey dominating the foreground?
They seem to be missing the one where Mr Monkey gets mugged on
O'Connell Street, though. (Blast! Why do we always have to go and
spoil it?)
*
A new report from the Information Society Commission "concludes that
there is market failure in the broadband sector" in Ireland, it says
here... well duh! Of course there is! We're all still desperately
trying to figure out how to use Eircom's amazing ADSL offering,
"brand.gif":
http://www.1mho.com/pics/eircom.gif
Part of the problem might also be that "there are only a few web
design companies in Ireland", apparently:
http://www.1mho.com/pics/lies.gif
This is clearly a FILTHY LIE: even Doras.ie has 137 listed, and
anecdotally it's well known that if you gently jostle a small bush
in a Limerick housing estate, at least five Frontpage experts will
fall out. Ahh, the knowledge economy.
* * * * * * * * *
MY LIFE IS A JOKE............................Eats, Shoots and Laughs
I was sitting in a bar in Kilkenny when Werner Heisenberg, Kurt
Godel and Noam Chomsky walked in. Heisenberg looked around the bar
and said, "Because there are three of us and because this is a bar,
it must be a joke. But the question is, is it funny or not?" Godel
thought for a moment and said, "Well, because we're inside the joke,
we can't tell if it's funny. We'd have to be outside looking at
it." And Chomsky looked at both of them and said, "Of course it's
funny. You're just telling it wrong."
(Feedback to whatthehellwasthatsupposedtobeajoke@1mho.com)
* * * * * * * * *
EDITOR'S CHOICE(S):...........................Forgotten But Not Gone
There will probably be a next issue. And our pick of the coolest
tech events, jobs, competitions, media and all that other craic will
probably return in that one. In the meantime, why not, erm, surf
the web some more?
* * * * * * * * *
EDITOR'S CHOICE: THE NET...............It Hasn't Gone Away, You Know
Since we sometimes forget we're supposed to be a geeky newsletter,
here's a sick nerd quiz: can you tell the inventors of programming
languages from the serial killers? A quick, smooth, surprisingly
easy - "You'd spot Hannibal Lecter in seconds at an Open Source
conference", it told us - Flash quiz.
http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz/
*
Wow - http://terraserver-usa.com now has the entire US covered,
including aerial photos of both coasts. Check out brilliant shots
of where you spent that drunken student J1 summer back when you were
an overprivileged little brat...
*
We've long been admirers of the 'Going Postal' mailbag page at
Attrition.org, so it's about time we brought it to your attention.
Attrition - basically a non-profit, voluntary group which mirrors
short-lived site defacements for those interested - inevitably
attracts a whole lot of weirdo correspondence. This ranges from the
totally clueless ("please cancel my internet connection because i
don't really use it") to the misguidedly bellicose ("You are going
to pay for what you are trying to do!"). The latter invariably
attracts the wrath of the frighteningly aggressive post editor, who
writes demeaning, horribly sarcastic replies, designed solely to
make the recipients cry, it seems. Our favourites though are the
hapless goons who think the Attrition crew serve as a kind of free
hacking A-Team, existing only to carry out obliging personal online
vendettas against ex-girlfriends, bosses and businesses ("please
crack ftp.hotelroyal.ro and give me the password").
It's at http://www.attrition.org/postal and it's guaranteed funny,
once you get past the characteristically feeble Dilbert cartoon at
the top.
*
It was 25 years ago today
Taito taught the invaders to slay...
Even by our standards, that's an absolutely brutal introduction. In
case it isn't abundantly clear, it refers to the welcome news that
SPACE INVADERS is returning to arcades (in the US, at least):
http://tinyurl.com/xwq7
At 50c a pop, it's like emulation never happened... still, we can
only approve. Hopefully next year we'll get silver anniversary
editions of Asteroids, Galaxian and Lunar Lander: "You created a
two-mile crater" - yay!
*
You know how some years you wish you could totally ignore Christmas,
pretend it simply isn't happening and carry on oblivious to all the
madness? But you just can't. It completely overwhelms you. There
is no escape.
Well, when you have a newsletter, you can at least ignore it there.
So we have.
Oh, alright then, let's have one seasonal snap:
http://www.1mho.com/pics/nativity.jpg
(With full acknowledgement that this is originally from B3ta.com's
wondrous front page, which we can't recommend enough - we just
didn't want to direct-link and maybe slashdot 'em :-] )
* * * * * * * * *
COLOPHON.............................................It's Geek To Us
We're concentrating as much as possible on the IRISH Internet, mar a
bhfuil, but unfortunately we've been barred. So we could really use
YOUR help. Mail us your topical Irish net news, your high-profile
.ie failures, your worthy Gaelic successes, your hilarious local web
misadventures, anything that seems messed-up, inappropriate or
insane... or just mail us your feedback.
But whatever you do, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send this on to as many
people as you can.
Apres vous, la deluge.
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