The following people were born on the 6th of January:

• 1367, Richard II, King of England.
• 1412, Joan of Arc, French heroine.
• 1920, Sun Myung Moon, Evangalist^[1].
• 1925, John De Lorean, Car Manufacturer.
• 1943, Terry Venables, football manager.
• 1946, Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd.
• 1954, Anthony Minghella, Director.
• 1955, Rowan Atkinson, Comedian.
• 1956, Angus Deayton, TV Presenter.
• 1960, Nigella Lawson, TV chef.
• 1964, Mark O’Toole of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
• 1980, Steed Malbranque of Sunderland and France.
• 1986, Paul McShane of Hull City and Ireland.
• 1986, Alex Turner of The Artic Monkeys.

The following people died on this date:

• 1884, Gregor Mandel, Father of Genetics.
• 1918, Georg Cantor, Mathematician.
• 1919, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the USA.
• 1945, Edith Frank, mother of Anne Frank.
• 1993, Dizzy Gillespie, jazz player.

The following events take place today:

• Sherlock Holmes birthday.
• The BT Young Scientist Exhibition starts in the RDS.
• Black & White 2 is released.
• Download Day for Hillary Duff new single.^[2]
• vBulletin 3.7.5 is released.

And why am I posting all of this? Well today also happens to be my birthday.

1. Read nutjob
2. It hurt to type that.

Sixteen days of going to bed late and getting up late.

Sixteen days of doing what I liked, when I liked.

From tomorrow at 9am I have to get back in the mindset of concentrating on something else for a minimum of 8 hours a day.

In one way, I’m looking forward to getting back. I’m bored and there’s only so much to do to fill in the hours.^[1]

In another way, I’m dreading going back tomorrow. It’s going to be hard work. It’s going to be a long day and, worst of all, it’s going to be a day of making small talk revolving around variations of “How was your Christmas?”.

The only thing that will make it worthwhile is the fact that everyone else is in the same boat.

1. I’m a night owl, so there’s not a whole lot to do in the early hours beside surf and watch crappy television.

Update: So much for live Twittering. For some reason, Twitter stopped publishing my tweets just as the match reached it’s climax. Maybe I hit one of Twitters limits, but even so, the timing couldn’t have been worse. In any case Taylor took the match 7-1 and completely outplayed Barneveld. Taylor was outstanding, but the game was disappointing and was nowhere near as close as I hoped it would be.

Happy birthday Spirit!

If your password is listed here, then it’s time to change it.

Blog Awards

Nominations are now open for the Irish Blog Awards. Time to get nominating.

Every night after hours of drinking and carousing the young man would pass the old man’s house with his friends. Being young, he was loud and garrulous. Every night they would taunt the old man who would sit there, smile, and ignore them.

Every night the middle aged man would pass by the old man, and he would ignore the old man. The old man would sit there and smile. Late into the night and he would sit there and smile. Only when the moon was high in the sky would he leave his chair by the door would he make his way indoors and on to bed.

One night the young man was passing the old man in his garden, taunting him as usual. And as usual the old man sat there smiling and ignoring the old man. As the old man sat there, the young man lifted the latch on the gate and approached the old man.

“Old man. Why do you sit there and smile all the time? Have I not taunted you enough? Should I continue?”

The old man’s smile grew wider as the young man’s approach brought him closer and closer. The young man grew braver, and his voice grew louder as he continued to taunt the old man.

Without warning the old man lifted a shotgun and pulled the trigger.

He hit the young man in the chest with both barrells.

The young man was dead.

At the sound of the blast, the young man’s friends scattered to the four winds.

It just so happened that the middle aged man was walking by.

Hearing the shot, he ran into the garden to the young man’s body.

“Old man. Why did you shoot the young man?”

The old man was still smiling. And his smile grew wider yet again. He reloaded the shotgun, raised it and shot the middle aged man in the chest.

The middle aged man fell to the ground, dead.

The old man continued to smile as he put down the shotgun and went indoors.

I couldn’t be bothered.^[1]

Instead, I decided to do a “snapshot” post - one of those posts that looks at something current, so that in twelve months time I can look back, do it all again and say “Look what’s changed in the last twelve months”.

After my previous post about the most popular social networking sites in Ireland, I decided to have a look at the most popular Irish Blogs. Before I go through the list, here’s a couple of things to remember:

• I checked the rankings for 179 blogs. This is by no means an exhaustive list of Irish blogs, so if your one isn’t on the list, email me and I’ll update it.
• The list of blogs was taken from my own feed reader and from the Blogrolls of a couple of the more popular blogs on this list.
• The traffic data is taken from Alexa, so while it may not be entirely accurate, it should give a general indication of the relative popularity of those on the list.
• The traffic is based on the last three months only.
• The traffic stats do not contain any information regarding email or RSS subscribers.
• Due to the way that Alexa gathers traffic stats, I was unable to gather stats for blogs hosted on the following sites: blogs.ie, cluas.ie, blogs.msdn.com, blogs.linux.ie.

So with all of that out of the way, lets move on to the list:

Number 20 - John Breslin

John Breslin

Number 19 - Bernard Goldbach

Bernard Goldbach

Number 18 - Cybercom

Cybercom

Number 17 - John M. Ryan

John M. Ryan

Number 16 - Twenty Major

Twenty Major

Number 15 - Grannymar

Grannymar

Number 14 - K8 The G8

K8 The G8

Number 13 - Limerick Blogger

Limerick Blogger

Number 12 - Jason Roe

Jason Roe

Number 11 - Whois Ireland

Whois Ireland

Number 10 - Cormac Moylan

Cormac Moylan

Number 9 - Frank Prendergast

Frank Prendergast

Number 8 - Sabrina Dent

Sabrina Dent

Number 7 - Bock The Robber

Bock The Robber

Number 6 - Head Rambles

Head Rambles

Number 5 - Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery's I.T. Views

Number 4 - Michele Neylon

Michele Neylon

Number 3 - Donncha O’Caoimh

Donncha O'Caoimh

Number 2 - Redfly Marketing

Red Fly Marketing

In at number one, drum roll please….

Number 1 - Damian Mulley

Damian Mulley

In the interests of transparency, you can download the full list of blogs that I checked here. The file is a standard .csv.

1. Mainly because my memory is so bad, I can’t remember what was good or bad about last week, never-mind the last twelve months.