Jonathan Clarke @ Beilabs.com

So what have we learned this year?

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:13:38 +0100

So the Lisbon treaty was passed finally by the people of Ireland this weekend. I’m not entirely sure how I should react to this news. I’ve been abroad for both the initial referendum as well as for Lisbon 2, yet I’ve been keeping track of the arguments for and against for some time.

As an impartial observer (I have no allegiance to any political party mainly due to the fact that I’ve been traveling for so long) I find it incredibly interesting that nothing has changed in the Lisbon Treaty since it was last rejected. So what is different?

12.6% unemployment throughout the country was announced in September. That is a huge number. It’s a number that has shocked people with many talking about being reminded of the 1980s, having to leave the country and seek better lives. For the past number of months there has been a huge media campaign by various organizations pushing for a Yes vote. Will voting yes bring back jobs? I have no idea. Lets wait and see.

Ireland was once heralded as a low cost nation, manufacturers flocked to the country to set up shop to reap as much profit from a skilled workforce as possible. People wanted what their neighbors had, (house extensions, cars, holidays), got easy loans from the banking sector without realizing their neighbors also had debt coming out of their eyeballs. It was party time in Ireland, everyone had their hand out looking for grants, “free” European money for their own pet project and live was awesome.

So now the hangover has kicked in. The manufacturers realized that the Irish were pulling the piss (low level job positions looking for crazy money), got fed up and moved out of the country. People have been watching over their shoulder, wary that their job is on the line (of course only I can do this job) forgetting that EVERYONE IS EXPENDABLE. Anyone can be trained in any position, in any industry.

The next step for Ireland? Well, now we seem to think the country is the darling of Europe again, by saying yes to Lisbon we’re back in the club and everything will be magically better once more. We need to take a long hard look in the mirror, focus on our strengths and aim on being a world-beater.

I’m proud to be Irish, I’m proud that we’re always considered the underdog but I’ll be prouder when we stop feeling sorry for ourselves, sorry for our past and concentrate on our future. Lets hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes and please god learn from them.

Some questions that are being asked in Iran...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:23:00 +0100

When will the recount occur?
Why were there more ballot papers issued than were counted?
Why did areas loyal to the opposition not get enough ballot papers?
Why were the polling stations closed early?
Who will perform the recount?
Does this recount null and void the previous result?
Why is there not more about this in the mainstream news?
Why has the current regieme imposed harsh restrictions on communications in and out of the country?

The worlds innovation hubs mapped out. Sad that Ireland is not...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:35:41 +0100

The worlds innovation hubs mapped out. Sad that Ireland is not even mentioned on this map.

See the full article here from the Guardian

Jonathan Clarke's Shared Items

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:57:00 +0100

So the world and their mother should now know that I have a brand new Google Ion/HTC magic phone. It’s seriously kickass. Anyhow, one of the applications I have fallen in love with is NewsRob, it allows me to sync all of my unread google items, read them offline, add stars and share them at will, once I come back into wifi it uploads all unread/shared items. So I’m finding myself on a train without wifi for about 3 hours every day I head to work and I’ve been getting through my enormous set of RSS feeds.

The articles I’ve been thinking are the cream of the crop are now being shared at this link, if your one of my contacts in Google you should already be getting it. If not, just check it out and subscribe here.

Git acts weird when trailing whitespaces are involved.

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:45:06 +0100

So here i was commiting webrat to git when I came across the following error

All is once again well in the world

Ireland should be ashamed of itself…not for the faint of...

Tue, 26 May 2009 11:02:28 +0100

Ireland should be ashamed of itself…not for the faint of heart.

O’Reilly Webcast: How to Build a Lean Startup, Step by...

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:05:27 +0100

O’Reilly Webcast: How to Build a Lean Startup, Step by Step

The Irish Broadcasting Bill 2009 - what a rip off...

Thu, 07 May 2009 04:29:00 +0100

From http://stochasticgeometry.wordpress.com”, The Broadcasting Bill 2009 (currently in the last stages of becoming the Broadcasting Act 2009 and then being commenced into law in Ireland) has thrown up a rather unpleasant little nugget for broadband users in Ireland. It now defines a television set as being an electronic apparatus able to receive TV signals or “any software or assembly comprising such apparatus” which would mean that even if you haven’t got a television set, even if you don’t watch streaming content from RTE.ie (the state broadcaster’s website), you’d still have to pay 160 euro a year for a television license for your iPhone, or netbook, or laptop or desktop if you have fixed or mobile broadband.”

I’m not a particular fan of this happening. This makes the assumption, that if you are in Ireland and use the internet, do not watch television and RTE’s crap content, then you are going to still have to pay for a television licence. How the hell did this get under the radar? This will also mean that should you have a tv tuner on your laptop you will also have to stump up for a licence.

Frankly, Ireland should be completely up in arms about this. People have been talking about rip off Ireland for years, this is yet another nail in the coffin of its citizens.

Quite addicted to this song lately. Getting great airplay in...

Wed, 06 May 2009 05:33:00 +0100

Quite addicted to this song lately. Getting great airplay in Ireland, might be getting sick of it if I was living there though…

Rails Lab .:. Expert advice on tuning and optimizing your Rails app

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:41:51 +0100

Rails Lab .:. Expert advice on tuning and optimizing your Rails app

Erin Go Broke - NYTimes.com

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:40:49 +0100

Erin Go Broke - NYTimes.com:

And the lesson of Ireland is that you really, really don’t want to put yourself in a position where you have to punish your economy in order to save your banks.

Deploy Your Rails Application in 2 Minutes with Heroku // Elijah Miller

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:39:54 +0100

Deploy Your Rails Application in 2 Minutes with Heroku // Elijah Miller

Integrity | The easy and fun automated continuous integration server

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:32:53 +0100

Integrity | The easy and fun automated continuous integration server

Stefano’s Linotype » Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:32:35 +0100

Stefano’s Linotype » Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design

Finding a cure for cancer...

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:01:30 +0100

I find it ironic that Einstein wrote “The only possibility...

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:41:07 +0100

I find it ironic that Einstein wrote

“The only possibility of preventing war is to prevent the possibility of war. International peace can be achieved only if every individual uses all of his power to exert pressure on the United States to see that it takes the leading part in world government. The United Nations … will be effective only if no one neglects his duty in his private environment. If he does [neglect it], he is responsible for the death of our children in a future war.”

Quite sad right now. All politicians are idiots. By ignoring the problem will not make it go away.

Posting this just because we had a Sound of Music party last...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:04:11 +0100

Posting this just because we had a Sound of Music party last night….oh the things we students do…

Internode needs to review their datablock policy.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:45:08 +0100

So last night I found out that I had exceeded my cap on the very last day of the billing cycle. It is Internode s policy to throttle bandwith once the cap has been exceed.

So with umpteen assignments due and the internet pretty much unusable I decided to fork out $5 for an extra 2 GB of bandwith. Unfortunately it has become internodes policy to only allow datablocks to be used up until the next billing cycle, which gave me a grand total of about 4 hours to use my newly purchased 2GB data.

I shudder to think what I would be thinking right now if I bought the 25GB block. To be honest, this is a bit of a con and Internode should seriously review this policy.

Startup Camp Melbourne

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:19:00 +0100

So the Startup Camp scene is alive and well in Australia, this weekends turn was in Melbourne where the University of Melbourne undergrads set up a business in under 48 hours. I participated in startupcamp Sydney in early January and had a blast, it’s a great way to appreciate how fast it can be to set up a profitable business.

ConversionSpace - http://www.conversionspace.com/
ConversionSpace was created as an answer to the common but extremely frustrating problem of finding a reliable, easy and free method of converting files to PDF which is an increasingly common requirement for assignments, job applications and other purposes. It’s founding team includes Mark Parncutt, Roshni Govindaraj, Grace Sia, & James Ramsey.

OneOffJobs - http://www.oneoffjobs.net/
OneOffJobs.net help facilitate job seekers and individuals needing one-off tasks completed. It’s founding team includes Daniel Lim, Akshay Sachdeva, Mel Brunner, Shanika Kuruppu, & Mick Charuwichitratana.

iBrewIt - http://ibrewit.com/
iBrewit.com connects home brew enthusiasts to share their creations with like-minded people. It provides a comprehensive listing service with rating system and tag/search functionality. iBrewIt was created during the 2009 Student StartupCamp Melbourne. It’s founding team includes Arum Sugiono, Tian Yang, Alistair Roche, Dam Ogundeji, Gaurav Dadhania. Special mentions to Ricardo Escalone, & Bart Jellema.

RateMyGuts - http://www.ratemyguts.com/

RateMyGuts.com is a community forum aimed to promote open discussion of daily consumption in relation to food, health and nutrition. The business was developed during the 2009 Melbourne Start-Up camp held at the University of Melbourne by Andrew Buono, Christian Camilleri, Nick Chadwick and Tom Greenaway.
RateMyGuts.com has become a useful tool in the self-evaluation of members’ consumption – improving their lifestyles by allowing them to: view contributions by members, sponsors and nutritionists on diet plans; rate them; revise and adapt them; and adopt them as their own!

ChoreCop - http://www.chorecop.com/

ChoreCop is a web application that sends reminder emails for chores that are required to be completed. It was founded during the 2009 Start Up Camp, held at The University of Melbourne by Gerard Deffenbaugh, Mathew McBride, Tom Rose, Jaque Qian, and Anshul Vijay.

MicroJobs - http://www.microjobs.com.au/

Microjobs is a website that connects job seekers and finders for micro jobs. It was founded by Daniel Leong, Anthony Barnett, Vaishnav Sundara Rajan, Bhathiya Wickremasinghe, and Julie Nguyen.

RateMyGuts had no information which I could directly access, sample diets were not yet available.

ConversionSpace is exceptionally clean looking, too bad that Linux provides instant conversions using the PDF printer tool but many using windows do not have this ability.

One Off jobs is a similar concept to MicroJobs but it simply looks terrible, with so many free templates available on the web it would make sense to find one and use it correctly, always remember that less is more.

iBrewIt is an interesting concept, I love the fact that they offer premium home brewed beer for the first 50 members which is a great way to get quite a few users onboard.

ChoreCop works well. I created a house, added a chore and marked it complete. It is quite pointless unless this is accessible via a mobile interface. They should be aiming for a Remember the Milk type of system. Perhaps also a simple twitter integration to get the reminder a few hours before it is due, etc.

My favourite of the whole lot has to be Microjobs, it has the ability to gain traction amongst students, I would recommend future integration into Facebook in order to target the student marketspace.

It is really nice to see students actively participating in these types of events, I hope that the auction in the following weeks works well for all groups involved. Best of luck. If you want to see the demos in action just come along to UStream at 9pm (Sydney) to watch them present them to the world live. The URL is:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/startupcamp-australia

If Your IM Buddy List Was Honest via Holy Taco.

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:41:38 +0100

If Your IM Buddy List Was Honest via Holy Taco.