Ba-NAMA Boat Song

(sung to the melody of the Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte)
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...This version of the song can be heard as the Irish Builders and Developers are escaping (walking away) scot-free from their liabilities, as Cowen & D'Greens saving their banking friends, all at the Irish tax-payers future expense for many years to come....
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Day-o, day-o
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day
Me say day, me say day-o
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Work all night on a drink of stout
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Stash some euros till de mornin' come
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Come, Mister Tee-Dee man, screw us with ba-NAMA
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Come, Mister Tee-Dee man, screw us with ba-NAMA
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Get six bill', seven bill', eight bill' loan
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Day, me say day-o
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day...
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

A beautiful bunch o' ripe ba-NAMA
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Hide the lively black econ'my
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Get six bill', seven bill', eight bill' loan
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Day, me say day-o
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day...
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Come, Mister Tee-Dee man, screw us with ba-NAMA
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Come, Mister Tee-Dee man, screw us with ba-NAMA
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Day-o, day-o
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day
Me say day, me say day-o
NAMA cometh and me wanna feck off

Muppet Republic

Greedy businessmen (and women), many known as real-estate developers, in collaboration with the Irish banks drained the Irish economy of at least 90 billion euro over the last few years. That is the remaining balance when the economy now has ground to a halt and the developers say they cannot pay. The Irish government now wants the Irish people to pay them to pay the banks at least 90 billion to bail out the greedy developers.

Let's think this through. There are outstanding "toxic" (i.e. cannot be repaid) loans of 90 billion. This amount was lent to the developers by the banks and profits have probably been moved off-shore, elsewhere, or just plainly spent on excessive consumption, by the aforementioned developers and bankers. As developers and bankers are now so unhappy, having to pay for themselves or go bankrupt or cease to be or disappear, they want us, you and me, to pay them 90 billion euro to allow them to continue their life styles and spend some quality time to try to figure out their next scheme to rob us of our savings (if any remaining), work (if any), life, pensions (if any), etc.

If we allow the defunct Irish government to proceed, we will all (every baby, teenager, adult, pensioner) be made to pay or owe 22,000 euro each, or, if the Central Statistics Office figures hold, about 62,000 euro per household.

Can you afford that?

Links: National Assets Management Agency (NAMA)

Softday Bacterial Ensemble

The 18th of April 2009, the Softday Bacterial Ensemble performed the live music and multimedia Nobody Leaves 'till the Daphnia Sing. The performance with both humans and Daphnia Magna was a once off, but the INFECTIOUS exhibition and our installation with the Daphnia runs until the 17th of July 2009.

Nobody Leaves Until the Daphnia Sings

A new Softday project


Finally Sean and I got the NLUTDS installation finished at the INFECTIOUS exhibition in the Science Gallery in Dublin.




The installation has four stations, each with a Petri-dish with a few Daphnia swimming around, veiwed by a web-cam connected to an Apple iMac (Thanks to Apple for support!), with a PD/GEM-patch making vocalizations depending on the movement of the Daphnia. The voices of the stations are Bass, Tenor, Alto and Soprano.





We are also growing Daphnia on site....


The exhibition runs from the 17th of April 2009 to the 17th of July 2009

The New Bootleggin Band

The Bootlegin Band is being reincarnated, now with the addition of a sax and a trumpet. We rehearsed today (which is extraordinary by Bootlegin standards) and it sounded really good. I felt this was REALLY fun and it sounded the way I would lke the band to sound.
The band will be playing this Friday, the 6th of March, in Hurlers Pub in Castletroy in Limerick. I hope you can join us.

DULL computers

From my perspective, as a lecturer and researcher at UL, Dell represents yesterday's computing needs. For the last few years, all the new laboratories I have specified, together with colleagues in the Computer Science and Information Systems department at UL, have been filled with Apple computers, and lots and lots of software tools and peripherals. That is the technological platform we needed to create the graduates for today, and perhaps more important, tomorrow. 

In our research, we've been working on Ubiquitous Computing since the late 90s and we have published extensively in internationally recognized scientific journals. Many of our research projects have been financed by the EU. We are currently looking at what will happen after the Internet, as we now know it. What I would like to indicate is that while it is very sad to see Dell and many, many subcontractors and suppliers winding down, we have a fantastic opportunity to pick and choose among new technologies that have been created here, to help to get tomorrow's technology off the ground, facilitate real people's needs, make organizations more efficient, enable more people to participate in an ever-increasing web of ideas and possibilities.

Zeitgeist addendum