A complete list of all directors who voted in the Sight & Sound Top Ten Films poll 2002 and the films they voted for.
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A complete list of all directors who voted in the Sight & Sound Top Ten Films poll 2002 and the films they voted for.
RTE news have a real video of Paul Cunningham's report on the second section of Dublin's new Spire / Spike being lifted into its position at the site in O'Connell Street.
The latest news on the construction of the Dublin Millenium Spire / Spike is that the 2nd ( 17m tall ) piece is now in place (on the 28m base section ) and the third part is waiting on O'Connell St. but they're won't be any further construction until the new year.
The current Spike height is 45m. Below are some pictures taken today.
Old Spike news and pictures can be found here
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I was saddened to hear today of the death of Joe Strummer. He was only 50 years old.
The Clash were one of the first bands to make an impact on me and were an important part of my teen years. Joe Strummer, for me, always epitomised the kind of rock star who reminded us that integrity and principles were not incompatible with rock.
Many tributes from fans here
From RTE television News real video of Paul Cunningham's report on the erection of the first section of the Spike on Dublin's O'Connell St.
Latest Dublin nickname : the stump in the dump
We've imported everything else American, so why not the noble tradition of the Santa Rampage ?
Because "no force on earth can stop one hundred Santas!" Dublin needs a Santa Rampage !
Some low-res pix of the first part of the Spike / Spire being installed today in O'Connell st in Dublin
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The Millenium Spire , the Monument of Light, the Stilletto in the Ghetto or the Spike. Call it what you want but it's on it's way. The first 20m section travelled from Waterford by road overnight and was installed today. Another four sections will follow and it will be finally completed early January.
The Spike, designed by Ian Ritchie, is a conical spire of rolled stainless steel plate which tapers from 3 metres in diameter at the base to a 0.1 metre pointed pinnacle at a height of 120 metres. The top 12 metres of the structure will be illuminated from within and the top 500 mm of the structure will be made of conically cast optical glass. It will be located on O'Connell Street at the junction with Henry Street and North Earl Street in the position formerly occupied by Nelson's Pillar.
Is the Thomas Davis Irish rebel song A nation Once Again the World's favourite song? I wouldn't have thought so but it's a contender in the BBC World Service search for the world's favourite top ten songs.
Other contenders include Imagine (John Lennon), Vande Mataram (Various artists), Believe (Cher), Dil Dil Pakistan (Vital Signs), We Don't Talk Anymore (Sir Cliff Richard), Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu (Ilayaraja), A Nation Once Again (Wolfe Tones), Hero (Mariah Carey)
Some wireless bloggers:
Remedy, an environment activist treesitting in a redwood in California to stop it being felled, who is blogging from 150ft up by means of a wireless link.
Some (mostly ugly) guys wireless blogging because they can.
Stereolab's singer Mary Hansen was tragically killed on Monday in a cycling accident in London. She was only 36.
Many tributes at the Stereolab website.
You can now buy a talking action figure of George W Bush which utters the immortal line
"You're working hard to put food on your family".
But I think I'll wait for the Nixon doll which presumably will say
I am not a crook
Verio have shut down thing.net to stop www.dow-chemical.com bringing down RTmark.com and theyesmen.org with them. More here
Artists Tax exemption was left untouched in the budget. Maybe someday I'll actually use it, we live in hope.
I got a mail today trying to sell me www.irishgalleries.com for $460, yeah right.
Still it reminded me of my recent adventures in domain name hell.
Up to recently I owned www.temple-bar.org which I bought for a work at the Project Arts Centre. I registered the domain with Namesecure www. namesecure.com initially for a year. But when I tried to renew the registration I ran into trouble. Their online system gave me 'unspecified errors' every time I tried a renewal, I mailed them - no reply, I emailed them again - still no reply - I tried everything to contact them to no avail. To cut a long story short eventually the domain name expired and was purchased by a cybersquatter before it came on the market. Then, magically, Namesecure replied telling me that my domain name entrusted to them had been sold to someone else and suggesting that I should buy it back at a premium. Of course I complained but guess what I got no response, surprise, surprise.
In conclusion Temple-bar.org is now a porn site which no-one wants to buy, the temple-bar.org site was a temporary project so in the end it doesn't matter that the domain name is gone the content is archived here.
The entire episode is a salutary lesson in how corrupt the domain registration system is. No matter how bad a registrar is (and namesecure are bad) there is no effective regulatory system, it's the wild west and cowboys rule.
Namesecure are not to be trusted with your domain name, they refuse to give any support and I suspect they are deliberatly blocking renewals in order to buy the domain names themselves and sell them back at a premium, you have been warned.
The budget here is announced tomorrow and there is a strong rumour that tax exempt status for artists will be abolished. The measure costs 30 million in a year though it is debatable about how much of this is real as the bulk is tax not paid by artists who have moved to Ireland to avail of the exemption and who would presumably move elsewhere if it was abolished.
On paper tax free status sounds great but in practise it's less so as most artists live on the poverty line and don't earn enough income from art to be eligible for tax in the first place - non-art earnings are not exempt and VAT on artistic materials is at 21% - even successful artists don't earn what a twenty-something programmer makes or for that matter an arts administrator. But it is a recognition by the state that the role of the artist is important.
However, given this government's record on the arts I'm not hopeful.
Friday 29th was Buy Nothing Day in the USA, it also broke records for the amount spent in a single day in the US. Sales were up 12.5% on last year and the US's biggest retailer Walmart recorded their highest ever single day sales of $1.43b.
The words Canute and tide come to mind.
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