Last weekend, Saturday and Sunday the 15th and 16th of October we staged Open Learning Ireland’s inaugural event, Learn Something; Share Something; Do Something. OLI is a new organisation seeking to create an alternative learning space in Dublin. For two days we took over a room on the second floor of Earlsfort Terrace at The Dublin Contemporary Exhibition, and filled it full of as many learning opportunities as possible.

The room was divided into several zones – each designed to provide a distinct learning affordance. Sebastian Dooris created a hack zone …

It’s ten years since Daithi Mac Sithigh established the student radio society Trinity FM. In doing so, he did more than add another campus to the BCI’s community license scheme. Daithi gave birth to a new community in Trinity, and the most open radio station in the country. A student could arrive in TCD during Freshers week, sign up at the plywood radio in front square and be on air ten minutes later, hosting their own show! Assuming they were capable of sustained puffery, refraining from racism and the more …

News Stories of the Year – Wikileaks, Acts of God

TV of the Year – Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Spartacus Blood and Sand,

Movies of the year – A Profit, The Social Network, Network (1976), Scott Pilgrim

Games of the Year – Minecraft, Sleep is Death, Pixeljunk Eden (2008) * Dylan Cuthbert

Person of the year – Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Justin Hall, Plato, Why the Lucky Stiff

Personal Highlights of the year – Andrews trip to America, Johns trip to Italy, Marshmallow Ladyboy Jesus, Cheaper Than Therapy

I’ve been listening to podcasts for about five years now, as well as producing more than a couple of my own, and over that time my tastes have changed quite a bit. Looking back over the shows I’ve enjoyed in the past, I note much less podfade than I might have imagined. More often I’ve simply grown tired of a given shows format (which tends, as with radio programmes, to remain extremely static once a successful approach has been developed). Here’s a list of what I’m currently listening to. I …

I recently gave an email interview, the answers to which were included in a feature on arts funding in Ireland. The article, ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ was published in the January 26th edition of The College Tribune (not yet online), a University College Dublin publication. Perhaps like everyone who’s ever been interviewed, I feel the quotes chosen for the piece slightly misrepresented my answers. This is first time I’ve written at length about my involvement in Exchange Dublin, Exchange Words and ‘the arts’ in Ireland generally, so I’m pasting the …

So I recently had my first short story published. It was carried by Ireland’s only print science fiction magazine ‘Albedo One‘, and you can and should pick up the magazine at Dublin’s Forbidden Planet (or grab a subscription online). The magazine (despite being designed like the popeye of a dogs arsehole), actually carries some stunningly good SF; emphasising quality over trendy ‘new weird’, or ‘post singularity’ stories. The whole publishing thing is weird… I wrote this story several years back, had it accepted for publication about two years ago and …

I’m posting this because I want you to recommend me some movies. Little gems I haven’t seen, but would enjoy. Check out my list (and watch the movies!) and tell me what I’m missing. The mini reviews are from my facebook flixster app ratings.

Whit Stilman Trilogy
Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Not one film, but three, Whit Stilman’s charmingly barbed portraits of a group of archetypal upper class Manhattan neurotics, rival anything Woody Allen has produced. Stilman manages to effectively satirise his characters, while whilst drawing them …

Prelude – One Hipster’s Story

In my final year at college I helped start a music magazine that briefly went nationwide. For a little while we covered a brutally hip range of ‘indie’ and electronica acts: Interviewing, smooching, listening to a lot of great new music and occasionally finding time to publish some decent writing.
Then, about a year ago, exactly twelve months after we’d started the magazine, and just before the release of our sixth issue and third nationwide release, trouble hit paradise like a leaky tanker with a drunken …