Sunday afternoon odds and ends
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Must try to get back into the swing of things. To get going, a collection of thoughts and links:
Apple and Greenpeace have contrasting takes on the former’s environmental impact. I’m interested in exploring the environmental impact of computing, but its difficult to find reliable statistics — just look at those first two links. How significant is computing’s impact? Does paying attention to this type of thing really matter in in relation to higher impact industries like air travel? And why are we waiting for a software company to drive change in this area?
It’s conference season. I went to Barcamp and Blogging the Election. Thanks to the organisers of both.
New (to me) music: The Books’ Lost and Safe, The Clogs Stick Music. Both great.
Some links: David Byrne on Sufjan, CR Blog on the aesthetics of MySpace, Anne Galloway on Pulse Laser, History of the Button on… buttons.
We’ve moved house. All of the observations that get me every time I have moved before apply again this time. Despite my ongoing attempts to pare down my material possessions, I still have to cart half a room worth of stuff around behind me. I’ve realised that (apart from their practical uses), a lot of this stuff serves as an anchor; a day after moving into a strange new building and already spreading our familiar items around the place starts to make it feel like home.
Irish broadband service is still painfully poor, so I’ll be online less often for the next few weeks that it will take to get connected in the new place. It’s pretty much accepted here that Eircom did their best so slow the rollout of broadband in order to hang on to their phone line customers for another couple of years. This week they made a decent stab at shutting down their main competition.
Can people recommend nice cafés or quiet pubs with free wifi in Dublin? I’ll map them if I get enough for it to be useful.