Tag Archives: ireland

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U2 360 countdown: post #4 & Happy Birthday Jen!

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My U2 song of choice for today was pre-determined by the fact that it’s my friend Jenni‘s birthday & aside from it being one of her favourite U2 songs, it has a special happy memory attached for both of us.

One Saturday night while walking towards the taxi rank on O’Connell St, we were singing our way through the U2 catalogue (as you do) and when we tried to start ‘Mysterious Ways’ we got in a pickle over what the first line was. So we decided to ask the highly approachable pair of young Gardai outside the GPO to see if they could help. It went something like this…

Jen: “I’m sorry but we were wondering if you could help us? We’re trying to remember the first line of a U2 song.”

Gardai: “Oh right.”

Jen: “Yeah, ‘Mysterious Ways’ – we can’t remember the first line.”

Gardai: “Oh geez that’s a tough one now. Tell you what if you hang on there for a minute Johnny will be able to answer that one, he’s mad into U2. He’s just gone to the shop for sweets & will be back over in a minute.”

And sure enough, Johnny did arrive back from the shop & did supply us with the line “Johnny, take a walk with your sister the moon”. So we thanked him & continued on our way singing & dancing to the taxi rank & thinking “only in Ireland”.

So from the fabulous Achtung Baby, here’s Mysterious Ways. Happy Birthday Jen & fair play Johnny :)

Thoughts

Design copyright in the Irish Times

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Today I got to see my name in ink in the Irish Times Innovation supplement courtesy of an article titled ‘Lost Property’ by former print designer & now journalist Jason Walsh. You can read the article here on the Irish Times website or soak it up in the form of a PDF of the printed article. Jason approached me about the article about 2 weeks ago and in anticipation of giving my thoughts and reflections on the Fine Gael website fiasco, I had a look back at the website to see if things had changed. It appears to be more or less the same as when I last visited some time around the beginning of May.

I still maintain that the site is not fit for purpose but obviously, they have chosen to stick with it and try to make the best of it. There are a few important issues that should be addressed in my opinion, however:

1. Information Architecture: Finding your way around the site is currently a nightmare. There is a reliance on swapping content in and out of the same container on a single page that sits approximately 600px down the from the address bar. It is quite possibly out of the view of many visitors & many will miss the fact that the content they seek has loaded at all. At the very least a comprehensive search facility should be integrated to allow visitors to pinpoint information they need accurately and efficiently. Failing that, a detailed sitemap (if possible to generate based on the frame-like nature of the website) should be generated dynamically and links provided to it.

2. Remove or fix broken links: The ‘Help’ link on the main navigation appears to be an empty link along with the RSS link in the footer. While the ‘Register to Vote’ link in the main menu is faded out, it still appears as a menu item. Leaving it visible on the menu although inactive might be optomism on the part of FG looking to the possibility of a general election sooner rather than later but it is misleading to users and should be removed.

3. Multi-lingual content: What appears to be the Fine Gael ‘mission statement’ appears only in Irish (as far as I can see) – where is the English version? The ‘Polski’ version of the website appears to be one long page of a variety of information translated into Polish instead of the entire site being translated, something easy to achieve with a HTML website. At the very least, all content should be available as Gaeilge and more information available in other languages such as Polish, Chinese etc. Check out the brand new EU Matters website for an example of how it should & can be done.

If you’d rather keep up with all things FG via other online means, they’re on Twitter at @FineGaelIreland and Facebook and YouTube although things in the YouTube department seem to have dried up since the election fun all died down.

Want to know what heck the ‘FG website fiasco’ is/was? Here’s the story. Got any comments, thoughts or queries on the new EU Matters website launched by my colleagues at X Communications during the week? Drop them a tweet at @xcommunications or leave a comment below.

Thoughts

There goes the summer

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well it is...
well it is...

Well I hope you made the most of the awesome weather we were blessed with this past week coz it is most certainly gone and long gone according to the forecast. Time to resort back to indoor forms of entertainment, soggy ends of jeans, damp socks, umbrellas and checking Ryanair for the price of a flight to Barcelona.

In the immortal words of Pat Shortt, “sure twud be a lovely country if we could only roof it”.

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Dunnes Stores get their garlic from China

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Garlic from China
Garlic from China

I like to buy Irish if I can, especially when it comes to food stuffs. My dad is a dairy farmer & from that background alone I have an appreciation of the importance of supporting local food producers. Ireland produces some fantastic food from beef to cheese and all sorts in besides. This and the fact that one of Ireland’s biggest retailers, Dunnes Stores, have been advertising with the slogan “the difference is, we’re Irish” for the past while has irked me on examination of some of my purchases there recently.

Garlic comes from China. Mangetout (which I had to chuck due to some kind of caterpillar having made the journey within) came from Kenya. Herbs came from Thailand. I wouldn’t have questioned the origin of the garlic in particular had it not been for the awful quality of it.

I’m not naive enough to expect or presume that because Dunnes Stores is an Irish retailer using “Irishness” as a means of attracting Irish consumers that they should stock only Irish goods. It’s impossible. But I can’t help but question why more fresh products such as the ones specified above are not of Irish origin. Is it really cheaper & easier to ship the stuff from the other side of the earth? Is it all down to seasonal availability?

Good vs. Evil
Good vs. Evil

Farmers markets have taken off around the country in the last few years including in my hometown of Ballyvaughan and on a whole they appear to be thriving. It’s of fantastic benefit to all involved – the producers, the consumers and the community. There’s a list of all the Farmers Markets here on the Bord Bia website. If you haven’t been before then I’d say give it a try & you’ll probably never want to set foot in Dunnes, Tesco or M&S ever again.