Keith Shirley

My wife, Sylvia Shirley, will be taking part in a Special Olympics Ireland fund-raising event this coming weekend. The Mind Body and Spirit fair will be taking place at The Dolmen Hotel Carlow – 1^st March 2009 12 – 5 pm

I see a hot towel shave listed…..I wonder will Sylvia allow me to grow a stubble to test how good it is. I have a special kind of beard that seems to defeat electric razors – so I’d love to see how good a job a real cut-throat does. In addition there are all sorts of people/activities such as:

• Beautician (Completely unbiased I can say Carlow’s Best Cosmetic and Wellness Atelier will be there)
• Health Food Suppliers
• Clearing and House Blessings
• Homeopathy Practitioners
• Animal Healers
• Tarot and Angel Card Readings
• Yoga
• Body Massages
• Acupuncturists and herbalists
• Angel Healers
• Reiki
• Crystal Healing
• Personal Coaching
• Tai Chi
• Manicures

The Special Olympics Ireland – Carlow Fundraising Team has a fundraising target of €100,000 by the end of May 2009. The Dolmen Hotel have waived the room hire fee as their own donation to the campaign.

The organisers also have other events arranged including a Tug of War between County Carlow and County Kilkenny.  A Nintendo Wii Fit competition, a Treasure Trail in May, a Garden Party in the Delta Centre and a Carlow Garda Dinner/Dance on 3 April 2009 at the Seven Oaks Hotel.

Further Information about Special Olympics Ireland & Special Olympics (Co Carlow)

Note: This is copied from their distributed info

Did you know 58% of people with a learning disability in Ireland have no friends of their own?

Special Olympics Ireland is a national charity based in the 32 counties in Ireland and  will run a major all-island fundraising initiative from January 5th to June 5th 2009, called `Changing Lives’.  The money raised during our short campaign will support the 12,000 athletes and 18,000 volunteers in 420 clubs and also enable the recruitment of NEW athletes so we can realise our goal of reaching out to more people with a learning disability.

There are 943 people with an intellectual disability in County Carlow/Kilkenny but only 160 of them are County Carlow athletes in Special Olympics Ireland. Money raised will go towards providing sports training and competition for those athletes and to reach out to the clearly significant number of people in County Carlow not already involved.

The Special Olympic Athlete’s oath is “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt”  and in our brief 5 month campaign period we in County Carlow intend to work very hard to provide children and adults with an intellectual disability who participate in Special Olympics to develop improved physical fitness and motor skills, greater self-confidence and a more positive self-image. They grow mentally, socially and spiritually and, through their activities, exhibit boundless courage and enthusiasm, enjoy the rewards of friendship and ultimately discover not only new abilities and talents but “their voices” as well.

Special Olympics Ireland changes the lives of people with an intellectual disability by giving them a real opportunity to achieve in life, through sport.  Belonging to Special Olympics has a powerful impact, not only on people with an intellectual disability but also on their families, volunteers and the wider community.

The World Games are held every 4 years – 2009 will see the Winter Games in Boise, USA and the next Summer Games are in 2011 in Athens, Greece. To be eligible to participate in Special Olympics, athletes must be at least six years old and identified by an agency or professional as having one of the following conditions: intellectual disabilities, cognitive delays as measured by formal assessment, or significant learning or vocational problems due to cognitive delay that require or have required specially designed instruction.

Whilst athletes can commence training at six years of age, they must be eight years old before participating in competions. Our Irish athletes participate in Alpine Skiing, Aquatics, Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Bocce, Bowling, Equestrian, Football, Golf, Gymnastics and Table Tennis. In addition there is a Motor Activities Training Programme offering cycling, kayaking, pitch & putt and tennis.

Special Olympics Ireland is sponsored by The Irish Sports Council and Eircom however in today’s tough economic conditions Special Olympics Ireland – Co Carlow Team couldn’t meet the needs of our own potential athletes without the generosity of supporters like you. Many Thanks!

Over the few weeks I will be trying out a service called Searchles Discovery. The idea for me is that is will automatically cross reference some of the previous posts that I have written and display links at the bottom of new blog posts.

Why?

It’s become clear to me that a lot of blog posts that are extremely well written and useful get lost over time as new community members seldom go back more than a few posts. I’m talking about all blogs – not just this one. If someone reads one of my posts and there is something related – I’d like them to know about it.

Initially the related content will be empty or not very good but over time I hope it can become a useful resource.

My current concern is that it might just make everything too busy.

Twitter Mosaic is one of those head smacking ideas that makes you think – why didn’t someone think of this before. Twitter is a messaging tool that allows you to broadcast short messages. It’s different than normal instant message tools as it’s less intrusive – people decide to “follow” your updates because they want to keep an eye on the things you have to say. Commoncraft have made a video about it – Twitter in Plain English.

Twiter Mosaic was developed by Sxoop Technologies and allows you to get a mosaic of who is following your updates on Twitter. In itself that’s a bit of fun but the clever bit is that they’ve linked up with Zazzle so that you can get the picture printed on a t-shirt, a bag or a mug. They also do cards but I’m not sure how good that would look. I’ve just ordered a t-shirt – hopefully I’ll get it in time for the Blog Awards next week. I currently have 245 followers which is enough to have a good mix. I can hardly imagine what Stephen Fry’s mosaic would look like – he has over 150,000 followers.

The picture below is my Twitter Mosaic – It’s updated live so will change depending on what pictures my followers are using.

I’d love to see the option to create a new photo based on the twitter followers – eg Take my profile photo as a basis and redraw it using the linked in photos.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Tuesday Push is an effort to help promote Irish Tech ideas by writing a short review each week. I keep meaning to do one but the schedule generally does not allow me to. Even though I’m publishing this on Thursday – better late than never.

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Todays post was going to be about a non tech invention that I thought was a maximum of 10 years old. From the company website I find out it’s been around since the sixties and has sold over 200,000,000,000 units. Then why oh why don’t we know how to use it properly?

What am I talking about?

The simple Tetra Rex package is something we are all familiar with from milk and juice cartons. It’s much easier to use than the old cartons where you had to squeeze the “wings” just right to get it open. With this package you just unscrew the top and pour.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well – The milk goes glug when the air goes back into the package and regularly causes some to splash over the edge of the glass. The reason is we’re doing it wrong. Special thanks to PomeGreat for printing the correct way on their cartons. We need to turn it around so the pouring spout is on top / away from the glass. This allows the liquid to flow and the air to get into the carton. No glug. No mess. Happy people.

Why was I not taught this in school? Didn’t my teachers realise how much hardship and wasted paper towels this lack of knowledge has caused me?

My scientific study (I asked 3 people) shows me that I’m not the only person that did not know. So – for the sake of humanity as we know it – I wrote this post.

Below is a very rough sketch of what I mean about turning the carton around.

It’s been a nice week for getting comments on how the blog is proving useful to people. Early on in the week I discovered a small review of the blog on the Silicon Republic site. I’m not sure how I missed it before. Then I got some comments via mail which always cheers me up.

On Tuesday the list for the 2nd round of the Irish Blog Awards was announced and I was very happy to see that I’d made it. This round will be judged by volunteer judges and the next (and final as far as I know) round will be judged by the public.

Let’s be honest however – with the caliber of people I’m up against there is not much chance of getting to the next step.

Let’s be really really honest and admit that I still want to! So fingers crossed that the judges deem my efforts good enough.

The nominees for:

Best Technology Blog/Blogger – Sponsored by Bitbuzz

• Keith Shirley
• Pat Phelan
• Karlin Lillington
• Contrast Blog
• Ken Mcguire
• Liquid Learning
• Justin Mason
• MJ
• Bernie Goldbach
• Donncha O’Caoimh
• Michele Neylon
• Robin Blandford
• Digmo
• eWrite Cork
• Digital Darragh
• John Braine
• Cormac Moylan
• TechCentral
• Gadget Republic
• Web2Ireland

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