No matter how many times I see it, the .com just looks wrong. It’s lower case and looks to be a different typeface as well. Actually, why bother with the .com at all? Why not just do like the London Times and call it: IRISHTIMESONLINE

The introduction of the site is very welcome though

Looks like you might be a new visitor to le craic. If you like what you see here and fancy some daily diversions delivered to your favourite feed reader, why not click to join Club le craic. Go raibh maith agat! Thanks a thousand!

Just updated the header image. Press refresh on your browser if you can’t see it.

It was a nice capture by my nephew Darren a few weeks ago. I took both him and my niece Karina on a photo walk around the town. It was a nice Sunday afternoon and they enjoyed it.

I put a quote in it from Randy Pausch’s book, ‘The Last Lecture’ which I’ve read now a couple of times. There are just so many wonderful quotes from the book, but I particularly liked the one in the header image. I don’t have kids myself, but if I did I’m pretty sure I’d allow them stay up late!

Another story Randy tells is that a big part of his identity was “bachelor uncle”. He often took his sister’s two children, Chris and Laura on days out. One particular time when Chris was 7 and Laura was 9, he picked them up in his brand new VW Cabrio convertible.

“Be careful in Uncle Randy’s new car”, my sister told them. “Wipe your feet before you get in it. Don’t mess anything up. Don’t get it dirty”. I listened to her, and thought, as only a bachelor uncle can : “That’s the sort of admonition that sets kids up for failure. Of course they’d eventually get my car dirty. Kid’s can’t help it.” So I made things easy. While my sister was outlining the rules, I slowly and deliberately opened a can of soda, turned it over, and poured it in the back of the convertible. My message : People are more important than things. A car, even a pristine gem like my new convertible, was just a thing.

As I poured out that Coke, I watched Chris and Laura, mouths open, eyes widening…. A week later Chris got the flu and threw up all over the backseat. He didn’t feel guilty. He was relieved; he had already watched me christen the car. He knew it would be OK”.

I identify with the bachelor uncle thing. I’m the only one of my siblings who doesn’t have any children. I don’t want to be the bachelor uncle forever. I often see guys I went to school with around town with their kids. It leaves me feeling like I’ve a lot of catching up to do. I sponsored another of my nephews at his confirmation 2 years ago. I have to admit that I struggled to hold back tears during the ceremony at one point as I thought about whether or not I would ever see a milestone like that with a child of my own.

Ah feck it, I’m just feeling a little sentimental today. What will be will be and if it doesn’t, so be it – I’ll get on and make the most of what I have.

Viewbook is an application I’ve had my eye on for a long time now. It is, I think, the simplest and most elegant way to display photographs on a website or blog.

The control panel is where you upload all of your photographs and then sort them into presentation folders. So lets say you have just done a photowalk and have 10 or 15 photographs you would like to show. You will probably spend a fair bit of time sizing the images, uploading them, placing them in your blog post and so on. At the end of your efforts, you will have a post which (in my view) takes up far too much space.

With viewbook, all you need to do is select all your photos, add titles and comments to them, and finally copy & paste a bit of code to your blog post. The result is much cleaner and easier in the long run. Sample below shows “one I created earlier” using le craic header images for demonstration. Every presentation you create has its own url so you can email it or post it on twitter.

Sign up for a free account and try it for yourself, I think you’ll like it.

Recently stumbled on wordle and was immediately impressed. I used it to create this weeks le craic header. Having read all the Spencer Tunick posts I thought it would be interesting to take the words from the various accounts of the experience and see what the word cloud would look like.

It’s a fascinating tool and my new favourite plaything. There is also a tag text generator for flickr that makes it really easy to create a word cloud of your flickr account.

(note : as I type this, 9.54 pm Mon 23^rd June, wordle is down for maintenance – I think I’ve broken it )

This is an absolutely genius idea for a website. Love films? Well you’ll absoloutely adore this. It showcases the opening and end titles of various films and tv shows.

Prepare to be dazzled. Get clicking to The Art of the Title.