Dé Máirt (Tue), Samhain (Nov) 30th

Spot the sassenach
I was on the Mozilla Development site today (or more specifically 'Gaeilge') and noticed that they have a Scottish theme online. "St. Andrews day today isn't it?" thought Maca.

Anyway under their logo they have the slogan "Spot the sassenach". "Hmm 'sassenach' - interesting word" thought I, "not unlike our own 'sasanach' meaning 'invading imperialist bastard' ". *wink*
So I did a search on "sassenach" as i'd never heard that version of the word before in English or Scots and I came across the very interesting Royal Stuarts site with a nice explanation of the word.

"Sassenach are folk that are no Scots. Though ye could say that they're folk that are no Celts - I dinna think ye can call most Irish, Welsh or Cornishmen real Sassenach.
Noo then, lad, I dinna want ye treatin Sassenach like inferior folk, een though thats often true. There are guid, kind, intelligent and een holy people among their different tribes ... ..."

Anyway all that lead me to this article on BBC. "A new online archive, "Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech", aimed at recording the Scots tongue in all its forms is going live on St Andrew's Day".

[Update] I've been reliably informed that the Irish word Sasanach, or its Scottish Gaelic equivalent (Sasannach) has been borrowed into Scots and English. It could possibly have a pejorative meaning - comparable with the Irish and Scottish Gaelic "Gall". more..
maca @ 12:57.

Make Love not spam
Lycos have come up with a very clever way of getting back with spammers, by hitting them where it hurts, in their pockets. By downloading and installing a special screensaver "that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail" Lycos hopes to drive up the bandwidth costs of spammers. Sounds like a good idea to me, worth a try. more..
maca @ 01:34.

Déardaoin (Thu), Samhain (Nov) 25th

USB Gadgets
Interesting look at a few USB gadgets on the market. Not that I don't already have enough USB devices but I like the look of those disco lights. more..
maca @ 11:35.

Dé Céadaoin (Wed), Samhain (Nov) 24th

EU grants Irish official language status
"THE Irish language is set to become the 21st official language of the EU". Just spotted this in the examiner this morning and haven't yet seen it in other sites. Looks like the EU have accepted Ireland's request to have Irish as an official working language! more..
maca @ 10:36.

Dé Máirt (Tue), Samhain (Nov) 23rd

Mother severs baby's arms
Un-friggin-believable... In Plano, Dallas, USA, a woman cut off her 11 month old baby's arms. The baby not surprisingly died a while later in hospital. What kind of a twisted fuck would do such a thing!?!? more..
maca @ 02:17.

Dé Domhnaigh (Sun), Samhain (Nov) 14th

Happy Family
It's the run up to christmas, toys are in the shops and the ads are all over the TV. I saw the following product this morning on TV and it made me cringe. See, it's ok if your dad's an alcoholic and beats your junkie mom because you too can have a Happy Family. Buy the Happy Family neighbourhood for only $19.96 or the Happy Family volvo for $19.99, heck you can even buy a family for $29.99! I don't know why but these sort of products sicken me. more..
maca @ 12:56.

Dé Máirt (Tue), Samhain (Nov) 9th

Firefox in the news
The BBC have done a decent write-up of Firefox, worth checking out if you're a Fox Fan. more..
maca @ 04:35.

Firefox 1.0, agus anois as Gaeilge, scaip an focal!
It's here and we've done it ... almost.
Firefox 1.0 is officially released. If you don't have it then go and download it for the system or locale of your choice.

Which leads me to my main point. Firefox 1.0 is officially in Irish. While not yet on the official localized download page (linked above) the translated browser is available from the localization website. You can either install with an Irish installer (which also contains an English translation) or else you can install with a Firefox extension (.xpi) if you already have another language version of the browser installed. Take your pick, install it now.

Btw, Firefox now complies with the Official Languages Act (Internet Explorer does not) so if you work for an Irish Government Agency let your boss/IT department know asap.

Déan athghabháltas ar an idirlíon!!! more..
maca @ 12:46.

Dé Luain (Mon), Samhain (Nov) 8th

US'ers heading North?
Thought this was interesting. Since the US election and Bush's victorification the Canadian immigration website has had record numbers of visitors!
"A new record was set within hours of Bush's acceptance speech as six times more Americans than usual surfed the site Wednesday. The overall number of 179,000 visitors was almost twice the previous one-day record set last year and a whopping 64 per cent of visitors - 115,016 - were from the United States." Slate covers this issue in more detail. more..
maca @ 03:49.

Computer woes
Computers and liquids don't mix they tell us, and I believe them. I was acting the bollox with my son last night and knocked a full mug of tea over my laptop! And i'm not talking about some nancy little cup, when I have tea I go for the biggest mug I have, indeed the biggest mug I was able to find here (without going for some sort of novelty mug). Anway the entire mugs contents covered the keyboard. Amazingly it kept running albeit upside down while the tea drained out. Power was turned off and hair dryer was turned on. It's been drying since then but lets see tonight what happens when I boot it up. Good timing as i'm supposed to be starting a web design job, not to mention that I haven't backed up in about a month.
The moral of the story is rememeber to engage your deflector shield when drinking tea beside your laptop! more..
maca @ 01:16.

Déardaoin (Thu), Samhain (Nov) 4th

First SPAM convictions in the US
A brother and sister in Virginia, US of A have the honour in becoming the first people to be convicted of sending SPAM! Jeremy Jaynes sent hundreds of thousands of mails to AOL users and was selling 'useless wares' through the internet, he managed to earn more than $24 MILLION! He got a 9 year jail term while his sister was fined a mere $7,500. more..
maca @ 11:11.