return to pearse

Today while browsing on a site that had absolutely nothing to do with photography, there was an Amazon banner ad down the bottom offering me lenses.

So it knows I like photography, so what?

• These are Canon lenses, to fit my camera
• These are lenses I was already interested in

Amazon already knows what I want, now they just want to convince me to buy from them with low low prices.

Before everyone goes screaming Big Brother and putting on their tin foil hats, I’m not at all worried by this. In fact it leaves me with positive feelings. This can only be a good thing.

• Amazon only offer me stuff I want and stuff I’m interested in - I don’t mind looking at ads for things I like
• This means they save money advertising things to people who don’t want them. They can pass these savings on to the consumer (while also maximising profits)
• Imagine the amount of computing power used to do this for all of Amazon’s users & products. Now imagine all the rest of the computers powering Amazon’s competitors and every other service on the web. Higher demand for computers is a good thing - more innovation, more progress - means better computers for use in non-commercial fields like medical research, science, etc. Yeah, there’s negative side-effects. But what problem can computers create that they can’t fix?

No.. not today, The Election

Despite 1212 people signing the petition against it, Bertie has announced that polling will take place on Thursday 24th May.

And via Irish Election comes this extremely relevant quote from the man himself (from 2002, after polling date for Nice Referendum was announced):

Interviewer: Why did you pick Saturday as polling day?
Taoiseach: The view of the government…was we should give Saturday a chance…We have never done that in this country so hopefully we can maximise a very high vote. There is a lot of third level institutions in this country now and Saturday brings them home. there is a lot of other people around the country working all week and Saturday will bring them home to their constituencies
Interviewer: Isn’t that a risk with so much apathy?
Taoiseach: This should help them, young people particularly the students unions and others have said they need to be facilitated…by going on a Saturday it gives them an opportunity to turn out

So the Cheeky Little Divil (© Blogorrah.com) can’t claim he didn’t know the effect of holding voting on a Thursday…

My local DART station, Greystones, was recently named the Best DART station in Iarnród Éireann’s annual Best Station Awards.

According to the Press Release, “Joe Gunning [with whom I have had several unsatisfactory customer experiences] accepted the award for the ‘well maintained and welcoming station’”.

In defence of the station, I can see how the judges thought it was a welcoming station, as, since it opened in 1999, the electronic information diplays on the platforms have only ever displayed the message “Welcome to Greystones”, instead of providing details on arriving & departing trains, as they are designed to, leading to a common confusion over whether your train is late, or has already left. Personally, I would rather be well-informed than welcomed.

Continuing on the theme of lack of information, it’s almost always guesswork as to which platform your train will arrive at/depart from, leading to hordes of confused commuters bustling from one side of the footbridge to the other, attempting to predict which platform they need to be on today. And strangely, when people need information, the sole staff member at the station’s ticket desk seems to disappear.

Again, I would agree partly with the Press Release, that the station’s facilities are “well maintained”. The few facilities there are, that is. Recently, to increase the efficiency of the maintenance process I suppose, the toilets were closed temporarily. Shortly after a notice of this closure was put up in the lobby of the station, the word “temporarily” was Tipp-Ex’d over, presumably to permanently save the staff from this maintenance.

At least the staff are proficient in the job they do. So proficient in fact, that one particularly experienced employee is able to print your ticket, take your fare, and give change (though, amazingly, not able to answer queries), all without looking up from the movie he watches on his portable DVD player.

Getting there?. My Arse.

</rant>

There’s a lot of people not happy that God Save the Queen will be played at Croke Park today. In fact, a drunk man on the DART yesterday warned me to stay away from the match. I’m not sure if he was suggesting I boycott the match in protest, or to avoid any possible trouble over this obviously controversial match.

As suggested on the front page of today’s Irish Times, this will be a test of our maturity as a nation. I sincerely hope all the Irish fans at the match will respect the anthem and people of England, and remain quiet during the anthem.

I’m going to do one better. I’ll be singing along.