I love nifty ideas, and thankfully I spotted this one on Twitter last night. The 4th year students of Coláiste Chiaráin, Croom, Co.Limerick have set up a mini business as a transition year project.
It’s called ‘The Line King’ and it sets out to solve a problem for accountancy and business students in Ireland (and presumably further afield as well).
Here it is :
It’s a stencil that a student can use to turn any standard lined page into an accountancy record book, thereby saving money that would otherwise be spent on buying pre lined accountancy books. I know from my school days that I would spend ages ruling pages with a standard ruler and making a bit of mess of it in the process. All a student has to do now is take the Line King stencil, place it on the page, and run a pen through the lines to create their accounting book page. I’d say it would take all of 10 seconds to line the perfect page like the one below.
There are 3 different stencils available, one for each of the accounting record books. I would LOVE to have had something like this back in the day. It’s one of those ideas that make you wonder why no one has thought of it before. Great to see students coming up with ideas like this and I hope it sells well for them.
Links
@accountingking (The Line King Twitter)
Downton Abbey & Twitter interventions
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You’d want to have your head stuck in a bucket of treacle not to have heard about the TV Series ‘Downton Abbey’.
It’s been wildly successful since it first hit the screen back in September 2010. According to the well known online encyclopedia website ‘Wikipedia’, in 2011 :
‘it entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most critically acclaimed English-language television show” for the year, becoming the first British show to be so recognised’
It’s not the sort of programme I’d watch normally, but my chance to see what the fuss was about came via DVD recently.
I didn’t want to like it. I tried not to like it. I picked holes in the very first episode. “This isn’t how aristocrats behaved back then. They were complete and utter bastards and wouldn’t be so friendly with the servants. People are watching this & getting a distorted view of history.” I was told to cop on, and that it’s just a drama – no on thinks this was how life was back then. I’m not convinced of that but secretly I couldn’t wait for the next episode.
Roll forward 2 weeks and 15 episodes later and it’s safe to say that I think it’s a well crafted series and very enjoyable to watch. I don’t think Series 2 was quite as good as the first one (for a variety of reasons), but still very watchable all the same.
Series 3 is due in September and it will be interesting to see how the storyline will develop and whether or not the viewing public will suffer from Downton fatigue.
I do know that if I watch it on broadcast TV this time, I won’t be Twitter hashtagging my way through it using the #dowton tag. I saw a huge amount of this hashtag on Sunday evenings (during my non Downton watching days) and thought to myself it’s an odd thing to do.
I can understand hashtagging a light entertainment show like X Factor or the Late Late, but a drama series? Surely the point of a programme like this is for pure escapism & relaxation. It doesn’t require any brain power. It’s an hour of putting your feet up at the end of the week and shutting out the world for a little while and going back in time to the imaginary world of benevolent aristocracy that Downton portrays so well.
If you’re sitting there constantly tweeting during a show like this, I think a Twitter intervention is needed. It’s impossible to really enjoy it with one eye on a computer screen. I’m quite sure the Countess wouldn’t approve. Although I reckon she’d be a great one for the Twitter if it was around back then.
Christmas tree robberies in 1962
By · CommentsOnce upon a time in Ireland (1962 to be exact), it was the theft of Christmas trees that made headlines. In the Ireland of 2011, it’s the theft of a baby Jesus statue that grabs our attention.
Love this old video, especially halfway through when the Sergeant says “element of surprise”…
A Personalised Christmas Card for you
By · CommentsIf you can guess the hair, eyes, nose and mouth on the Fluffybutton Facebook page.
Here are the Personalised Christmas Card designs you can choose from if you should be the winner.
RTE Player App for iPad and iPhone on the way
By · CommentsUpdate : 21st December 2011. The app is now available. Search for RTE Player in the App store. Worth the wait.
I rarely watch TV programmes at their scheduled broadcast time. I guess most people are the same. Sky+ , web catchup services and iPad/iPhone/Android apps have totally changed the broadcasting landscape. As an Apple device owner, I miss the ability of being able to catch up on RTE programmes due to the lack of Adobe Flash support on the device.
To a collective “hurray” from iPad and iPhone owners, RTE today announced they will launch a Player app for Apple devices “before Christmas”. An Android version is also planned.
One really nice feature of the app (as explained in the video above) is an Amazon Kindle like feature of syncing what you are watching between devices. Start watching an episode of Mad Men on your iPhone on the way home from work, you can pick up where you left off on your laptop when you get home. Some other nice features for sharing content are discussed in the video as well and it will be interesting to see how they work.
