New Ben Stiller/Noah Baumbach (he of Squid and the Whale fame) movie ‘Greenberg’ – Trailer

December 9, 2009

Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is at a crossroads in his life. Out of a job and none too interested in finding one, he agrees to housesit for his younger and more successful brother, thereby getting a free place to stay in Los Angeles. Once settled in, Greenberg sets out to reconnect with his old friend and former bandmate Ivan (Rhys Ifans). But times have changed, and old friends arent necessarily still best friends, so Greenberg finds himself spending more and more time instead with his brothers personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring singer and herself something of a lost soul. As their relationship develops through a series of embarrassingly awkward romantic encounters, even someone as irascible as Greenberg might have at last found a reason to be happy.

Genre:Comedy, Drama
Director:Noah Baumbach
Cast:Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Messina, Brie Larson, Juno Temp

iWatch – Orwell’s nightmare future is alive and well in L.A.

October 24, 2009

Snitch on everyone and everything you see, so the terrists won’t 9/11 us again! Here’s a laughably ridiculous public service announcement all the way from America (fuck yeah).

The Golden Age of Video by Richard Autobahn

October 12, 2009

Unadulterated, 80’s-tastic genius. If you don’t like this video, you have no soul. Or you’re a robot. In that case, lucky you!

Host a Windows 7 launch party… sweet mother of Jesus

September 24, 2009

With the upcoming release of Windows 7, Microsoft have been encouraging people to host informal Windows 7 launch “parties” in their kitchens.

Cue a promo video straight out of a Larry David nightmare:

“Can you believe that Microsoft put the launch of Windows 7 in our hands?” asks one of the tupperware freaks in the closing moments of this soulless tableau.

I didn’t think it was possible for Microsoft’s public perception to become more lame, but they’ve really lowered the bar with this muck.

I will not be buying Windows 7.

You don’t understand! YOU WEREN’T THERE!

July 27, 2009

Shamelessly lifted from r/funny on reddit. It’s just way too good not to share:

You don't understand!

If anyone knows who made the original, please let me know.

Google: So you want to…

June 17, 2009

drive?

be a boxer?

taoiseach

Red Light Company – Arts & Crafts

February 16, 2009

Cracking tune. The Killers should be taking notes.

So long, Eircom. Thanks for all the fish.

I’ve been an Eircom broadband customer for the last 5 years or so. My livelihood depends on me being able to access the internet from home on a reliable, fast connection. I send and receive large amounts of data in the course of my work, including lots of high-res images, video, xml files, as well as weekly updates for my Mac and a variety of Linux machines. Add to that video-conferencing, conceptshare, skype and that’s a shit-load of ones and zeros coming and going from casa McClean.

My humble 2 megabit home connection used to be able to handle all these tasks with ease. I had a consistent and predictable upload and download speed. I knew how long things would take to do. I was happy. My computers were happy. Rascal the dog was happy.

A month ago, this all changed. I decided to upgrade to the Home Plus 3 megabit broadband. This is where the shit started.

At first, it was awesome. I was getting a constant 330 KB/ps download speed and plenty of upload. More than I needed. And it was brilliant.

For about 3 days.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, my download speed would drop to 39 KB/ps. My upload speed remained the same. At times it actually exceeded my download rate. I thought to myself that there must be some wireless interference or whatever, so I changed channels on the wireless router, locked down MAC addresses, changed my WPA key, made sure router firmware was up to date.

No dice.

Plugged directly into the router’s Ethernet.

No dice.

Swapped out the router. Replaced DSL filter.

No dice.

This goes on for 3 weeks. Final straw, I ring up Eircom broadband tech support. Having worked in tech support as a young fella, I know the most annoying thing in the world is the customer who thinks he knows more than the guy on the other end of the phone, so I say nothing and let him go through the script. He’s a very helpful and nice chap.

We reboot and reset the router. We test the line. We check the old TCP/IP settings. We make sure the cables are plugged in.

No dice.

After about twenty minutes or so, the tech support guy concedes that it’s a service issue. He directs me towards the Eircom speed test page where we confirm that yes, I am getting a tenth of the download speed I should be getting and that my upload speed is normal.

Great, I think. We’re getting somewhere. The problem is visible and measurable. It’s not on my side. Let’s fix it, Eircom dude! We can do this, man. You and me.

So what can we do to resolve this?, I ask.

Nothing, he says.

Excuse me?

Nothing, sir. I will give you a reference number. We have to do this speed test a few more times to make sure that there is definitely a problem. When you test it again, use this reference number.

Wait a sec… didn’t we just spend the last twenty minutes working everything back to the point that it is a service issue? It’s been like this for three weeks.

Yes, sir. But we need to do the test a number of times.

Uhhh, okay. How many times?

Maybe seven, maybe ten.

Wait, what?

Seven to ten times, sir.

Over what period of time?

Whenever your connection is bad.

But it’s been bad for three weeks. We’ve been through this.

Yes sir, but we need to do the speed test seven to ten times to understand the frequency of the service issue.

So I need to phone you guys back, quote the reference number you give me, go through twenty minutes of restarting and rebooting everything another seven to ten times?

Yes sir.

Despite the fact that you already know that it’s a service issue?

Yes sir.

Okay then. Uh, thanks… I guess.

Goodbye sir.

That’s bullshit, Eircom. Bullshit excuse and bullshit customer service. If you were operating in any other country apart from Ireland you would be fucked. I haven’t even touched on privacy issues (pussies).

Eircom account canceled. BT is ordered, paid for and is being installed tomorrow.

Never again.

How to access a Mac share from Ubuntu (Intrepid)

January 10, 2009

I’ve never done any kind of tutorial blog posts here before, but because I’ve been pulling my hair out for the last half an hour trying to get files off my Mac on to my Ubuntu machine, and because I couldn’t seem to find a straightforward guide using google, here goes.

On your Mac, head to System Preferences -> Sharing. Make sure ‘File Sharing‘ is ticked.

On Ubuntu, go to Places -> Connect to server

On the Service type dropdown, select ‘Windows share‘ and use the following settings:

Server: (enter the IP address of your Mac) eg. 192.168.1.18
Share: (the name of your Mac hard disk) eg. Ginsberg
Folder: leave blank
User Name: (your mac username) eg. jsmith
Domain Name: leave blank

Tick ‘Add Bookmark‘ if you want to save the connection.

Hit Connect. Gnome will pop up a password prompt. Ignore the ‘Workgroup’ and just enter your password.

Press OK and, presto, you should your Mac hard drive and be able to access everything you need.

That’s it. Any questions, drop me a comment.

Terminator Salvation trailer

December 9, 2008

Early look at the continuing adventures of John Conner and the nasty machines that want to kill him, courtesy of our Japanese cousins. Bale gives his Batman voice another crack of the whip. Looks… okay. Not sure what’s going on with the 50 foot decepticon though.