Month: April 2007

Categories
horology

Ways to spend your SSIA part 1

I’ll probably move this post to the soon to be launched Manifesto blog when I get the chance.
At the moment it’s under construction so it’ll have to live here. The crazy few who read this blog know I’m obsessed with watches and clocks of all sorts. Quartz, mechanical, manual-wind or automatic.. I don’t discriminate against. However, when chatting about SSIA’s to my good friend Kristian Walsh, who’s a fellow watch enthusiast, I started thinking. Women get most of the fun in the shopping department. There are very few ways for guys to go mad and blow all their money in one fell swoop without consultation. I’m not advocating this, merely saying that men can’t shop with impunity whereas women are encouraged to do so. Even fewer ways if you consider that our other halves will guide or derail a purchase as they see fit based on their own taste.
Men are really only free to buy gadgets as women generally either odn’t have an opinion or wan’t to placate us. Mostly watches (which are complex gadgest we wear on our person) and electronics including computers, laptops, iPods and a whole bunch of other groovy things. I’m vaguely serious here 🙂


Image courtesy of TheWatchQuote

In part 2 I’ll focus on electronics but right now I’ll talk about watches. More precisely how do you spend between 5 and 15 thousand euro on a superlatively stylish gadget. Well at Manifesto we’re willing to help you out 🙂
Here’s my top 5 with discounted prices in Euro. Obviously authorised dealer prices will be higher and I’m not about to discuss the pros/cons of buying discounted swiss watches here.

  1. Jaeger LeCoultre Master Compressor Extreme World (9,000 euro) Classic sporty looks, patented shock resistance and one of the greatest Chronograph movements in existence. It reigns supreme.
  2. IWC Ingenieur AMG Chronograph (5000 euro) Well finished titanium case, wonderfully precise movement with patented pellaton winding mechanism. Discreet and stylish
  3. Seiko Spring Drive Chronograph (5500 euro) Another titanium chronograph but this time using Seiko’s amazing hyprid electromechanical Spring Drive. The mechanical perfection of one of Seiko’s best mechanical movements together with an electronic regulator give fantastic accuracy. I like the overall design and finish. Only 750 of these hand-assembled beauties will be produced and Seiko makes a loss on each one.
  4. Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 15300 ST (8000 euro) Simply one of the best known, most distincitve and highest-quality stainless steel sports watches available today. Some will complain the design hasn’t changed much in over 25 years but so what? It’s perfect. In the metal everything about this says quality including the trademark 18 kt white gold “screws” in the bezel and the brushed steel finish on all surfaces.
  5. Aquanautics King Cuda (2500 euro) This brand is just 2 years old but really making waves 🙂 Price is slightly misleading as most buyers will customise their CUDA with platinum, gold, diamonds and other precious stones. They could easily spend 20 times that. That’s the unique customisability of the aquanautics watches where bezel, strap and even case can be changed using a simple tool. Each watch is hand-made and is a real collector’s item

I know I haven’t included a single Rolex here and it’s just personal taste. For more information about the availability of each watch then contact me at manifesto.ie. No time-wasters please!

Categories
Uncategorized

Include your county in Monopoly

I’m not sure that everybody is playing fair with Hasbro’s Monopoly All-Ireland edition website which allows you to vote for your country to be included in the all-ireland edition.. Leitrim at #1? You gotta be kidding me.. Could be the extreme security which can only be cracked using expensive and unavailable applications like wireshark

POST /asp/submitVote.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.monopoly.ie
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDCCCTSTDB=CMELBCDCJFIECKHFLNNABJBI
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-length: 124
optin=0&ageId=2&votingReason=blah&countryCode=2&cityName=Waterford&cityId=79&email=me%40mydomain%2Ecom&name=Shane%20DempseyHTTP/1.1 100 Continue
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:46:17 GMT
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:46:23 GMT
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 83
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><response><result>success</result></response>
</body>
</html>

Yep, it’d be pretty tricky to script a HTTP post command. Even tricker to fake an email address. Not sure I’m up to it & I certainly wouldn’t advocate it. I’m not sure IIS 5.0 would handle the load anyway. Either way when you monitor the voting results it looks a tad suspicious.

Categories
philosophy

So Long Now ?

10,000 year clock

A few weeks ago I stumbled on the Long Now Foundation’s website. I find the site and projects absolutely compelling. I guess most people who got interested in technology as kids wanted to proactively shape the future, not just participate. In doing so we needed a target or goal and for many the year 2000 became that goal. It came to represent the future. People don’t talk about temporal technology goals at the moment. 2100 is too far away. It’s (possibly) outside the lifespan of today’s technologists. The Long Now foundation actively encourages people to participate in projects with implications and reach far beyond their own lifetime. One such example is Danny Hillis’s design for the 10,000 year clock. Danny is better known as the creative force behind Thinking Machines Corporation “Connection Machine” and the inventor of massively parallel computer. I love the idea of a clock that will (very) slowly beat through 10,000 years of technological, social and biological change. I’ll write more about this project over the next few days as it’s genuinely fascinating.

Categories
sport

RTE’s football pundits are muppets

Watching the build-up to the Man Utd v Milan game. I’m a keen Man Utd. supporter for many years and make no apologies for it. Having supported the team during the not so glorious days (Neil Webb anyone?) I can’t be classed a glory hunter. I also think Chelski’s millions are good for the game as it’s improved the overall standard of football in the premiership no end with Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelski playing some fabulous stuff over the past 2 years.
However it’s galling to watch RTE’s coverage of this game. It matters not a whit what these guys see as they always arrive at the same ludicrous conclusions. The game against Roma was a fluke. “Carrick is mediocre”. DID THEY WATCH THE SAME GAME I DID? I’ve never been a fan of Fletcher but he’s not as bad as claimed. Now Dunphy states that Ronaldo is just “hype” and “not a great player”. This opinion was so at odds with the clips we were shown that it was laughable. Equally Dunphy’s been praising Rooney even when Ronaldo’s performance’s have eclipsed his as he’s the “more honest player”. I know football punditry consists of stringing one cliche after another without dribbling on your shirt but for a supposedly intelligent journalist it’s a bit lame….
The problem is that Dunphy is wrong and deep down he knows it. However, he’s built a career on outspoken arrogance so he justifies his points my saying them louder and with greater vehemence.
Combine that with a pundit who’s actually employed by Manchester United’s opponents (Liam Brady) and it’s easy to see why no Utd supporter could reasonably watch this most partisan of football punditry. Yet, part of my TV license fee pays for this “entertainment”.
It’s a shame that a decent man like Johnny Giles has to share a bench with these muppets. He frequently looks like he’s in pain as he winces during Eamonn’s rants and Liam’s Gooner rhetoric. He deserves a break and some new co-workers. Perhaps the NOTW could spare one of the hundred or so models (“lovely girls” in Fr. Ted speak) that are so vital in explaining complex national issues like the health service or why drink driving is bad. They’d arguably be more sensible than Dunphy.
I wonder if An Taoiseach writes them another letter of complaint they’ll stop their “alarmist” and “irresponsible” punditry 🙂