Saint Patrick's day weekend is a three day weekend here in Ireland (hey, we don't get president's day), combine that with Paula still being sick and we had plenty of time to just vegge in front of the boob-tube. All we needed to do was find a good batch of entertainment.

We bought Revenge of the Sith about six months ago but we never got around to watching it.  We couldn't, of course, just start with episode III, we had to start at the "beginning", episode I (as painful as that would be to sit through).

Watching the whole series in the space of 5 days brought up a few of questions. 

1. When Obi-Wan dies he vanishes, leaving just his cloak.  When Yoda dies, he vanishes leaving no clothes at all.  When Darth dies, he leaves everything behind, clothes, meat-sack and all.
2. Why did Leia set out to bring Obi-Wan and the death star plans to Alderaan?  The rebel base was on Tatooine.  You're going to great lengths to find this guy, why send him on a wild goose chase?
3. At the end of episode VI when glowing Obi-Wan, Yoda and Anakin show up to watch the end party, why is Obi-Wan all old and Anakin all young?  Sure, George had to make his re-edits... but that one is just dumb.
4. If Obi-Wan and the rebels were going to such great lengths to hide Luke from his father why didn't they change his name to something other than Skywalker?  Combine that with stashing him on Darth Vader's home planet with Darth's step-brother and it makes me wonder how many brain cells Anakin had left functioning after being given the oven-baked ham treatment.

I guess it doesn't take a genius to poke holes in George Lucas's writing.  But honestly now, how were the Jedi able to keep peace in the galaxy when all it takes to defeat them is persistent taunting?

Jedi: "Stop you fiend! Put down those stolen power converters!"

Thief: "Oh no! The Jedi! Say, how's your mother?  She still mad that I dumped her and dating your sister?"

Jedi: "Oh!!! Why you! Grrr!! .... Aw nuts.  Let me help you carry those."

Thief: "Thanks"

Saint Patrick's day for most of the US (except for perhaps, Boston and New York) is much like Saint Valentine's day: serious stuff... provided you work at Hallmark.  It was, however, a bit surreal for Paula and me... being our first year living in Dublin, Ireland.

 There were a bunch of events going on in downtown Dublin this weekend, but since Paula is still recovering from being sick we decided to just go to the St. Patrick's day parade.  There were a ton of people downtown and it was fun to check out the scene.  Talking to my Irish co-workers it was interesting to find out that many in Ireland view Saint Patrick's day as a minor, artificial holiday.  That said, the Irish people are a social lot and love an excuse to get together (which also explains the third-floor party with a chicken and cow... sort of).

Given the crowds, we couldn't really see the parade all that well... but we're both a fan of people watching, so that provided a ton of entertainment in its own right.  Here's an interesting fact: the first Saint Patrick's day parade wasn't in Ireland, but in America (in New York or Boston, depending on whom you choose to believe).  I suppose that explains why the majority of people in silly leprechaun hats didn't have Irish accents and hotels which normally charge 90 Euro a night were charging 300 this weekend.  Moichandising!

Food Note:

When we got done with the crowds we were having trouble picking out where to grab some lunch.  I have a weakness for good pie (especially blueberry) and so when I saw the restaurant "Delish", which billed itself as a "pie cafe & juice bar" I had to drag Paula in to check it out.

Turns out that "pie" means "pot pie"... and I also love a good meat pie.  Paula had the beef and cheese pie while I ordered the chicken, ham and leek pie.  Toss in a side of mash (mashed potatoes) with gravy and you've got some serious comfort food.  It was also seriously tasty.  I recommend it if you're in downtown Dublin and looking for a bit of nosh to warm your belly.

I get the feeling that a spanking might not be a deterrent.

Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.

Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.

Full story on BBC: Israel recalls 'naked ambassador'

Web pages are complicated.  People want to share their life stories and pictures, but learning HTML is hard (ask Trina).  So the world of blogging was born. 

Blog software has made it very easy to set up and maintain your content, whether it be a running account of how all your cat's hairballs look like past presidents, or something much, much less significant.  Blogs do, however, have the problem that they often get abandoned for great lengths of time (Dick's blog comes to mind :D).

So, what's today's generation of zero-attention-span kids to do?  Sign up for twitter, of course.

Twitter is, Don MacAskill appropriately called it, a service for microblogging.  It's optimized for very short, simple posts.  It will even prompt you periodically via SMS or IM to find out what you're doing.  After a quick setup you can add your mobile phone number and Twitter will send you an SMS every 24 hours if you haven't updated (a reply to the SMS will post right to your twitter log).  You can also add twitter as an IM buddy if you're using the right service.

It's a fascinating little toy, with all the needed components to make it entertaining for all of about a week (friends lists, ease of use and cool little widgets to add to your other web pages).  For me, however, the signal to noise ratio is way too high to be useful.  There is a public timeline which is sure to get crowded with legitimate and illegitimate spam (when I checked there were two posts within minutes from BBC sports) and switching to a private timeline will require a set of friends as exhibitionistic as yourself.

Still... entertaining enough to play with for a while... though I won't be able to afford to have the SMS notifications turned on (the closest local text is the UK).

My mind is just way too literal sometimes...

I spoke to BT today and they had me re-run the speed test.  It's way better than it was a little over two weeks ago (2543 kb/s vs. 649 kb/s).  I still have no idea if it was contention, line noise or what. I suppose I now know who to call if the issue comes back (and that they're responsive).

Last November when Paula and I were in Rome we saw a fascinating thing: a swirling cloud of birds which, viewed from a distance, looked more like smoke or a swarm of insects than a flock of birds. 

Around dusk Paula and I were walking along the wall of Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome when we saw a massive flock of birds, all seeming to converge on the same location.  The birds looked as though they were heading towards a plume of smoke coming up from one of the city's parks.  The "smoke", however, was flowing both up and down.  The best way to get a feel for what it looked like is to check out the video Paula shot with our pocket camera.

Video: Swirling flock of birds in Rome

We still have no idea what was going on.  Our best guess was some sort of feeding frenzy, catching insects which were coming out as the sun went down... but the flock was way up in the air and I think of insects as sticking closer to the earth. Perhaps there are some amateur (or professional) ornithologists out there who can shed some light on this.  Or maybe I should just ask an Italian.

FYI: Castle Sant'Angelo is a huge mausoleum built for Emperor Hadrian.  It was later fortified and used as a defensive position on the Tiber River.  If you're in Rome we highly recommend visiting the castle in the afternoon as it provides wonderful views of Rome.  As sunset approaches grab a table at the little cafe located on the monument's wall.  If you're lucky you'll get one of the tables facing the Vatican and get some great pictures of St. Peter's Basilica with the sun setting behind it.

Web 2.0 isn't a technology, it's a concept: enhance the software (programs) with wetware (humans). WikiPedia, YouTube, Flickr and the like are thriving because the users are part of the equation; creating, editing, organizing and managing the content.

Michael Wesch, a professor of cultural anthropology at KSU created a fantastic video which artfully illustrates Web 2.0.  It's a fantastic romp through today's digital landscape... but I'll warn today's TV generation... some reading is required.

 Via information aesthetics

The Irish government has generously acknowledged that we all work too hard and have declared today, March 1st, to be "Work Life Balance Day".  In order to help us out they have... thank the maker... created a web site!  I feel much better now.

The Work Life Balance web site has lots of information, but the most helpful thing on the site by far is their 142 page report which includes qualitative results for employers and employees.  Having a very short attention span, I jumped straight to the Policy Measures/Interventions on the employee section.  I examined the 10 bullet points find the holy grail of... uh... doing stuff to not work too hard while keeping up the respect of coworkers and continuing to earn promotions...  and took away these two things from the list that I'll need to address:

1. "Change in the culture of organizations, i.e. male attitudes [...]"
   
   Given we have no women on our team as of yet, I'm going to work with my coworkers to rotate the responsibility of having a female attitude.  With our team of 9 I think a good balance would be two or three people each week taking on the role, bringing in the much needed female qualities our team lacks (empathy, fashion sense and a general distaste for fart jokes).  They won't, however, need to wear a skirt... that would be silly.
   
2. "Remove the mythology behind work-life balance arrangements."
   
   This is going to be a tougher one to implement.  To date we've been able to keep people slaving away at their computers with the threat of a Minotaur which roams the halls until 7pm.  Granted, it also means I can no longer go home early every Thursday using the excuse "Sorry, I need to pick my Unicorn up for school, my wife is at her mermaid husbandry class."

Speaking of husbandry... women in Ireland get 26 weeks of maternity leave.  Their husbands? 1-3 days.  Uh, oh... I feel some male attitude coming back.