I am sat here in my front room watching some chaps who don't live on the estate hang flags on the lamp posts. This is because it is only a couple of weeks until that annual orgy of all things "orange" and "protestant" gets under way.
This year there are a lot less flags, mainly due to the fact that when the wee toerags whose appear to communicate in monosyllabic grunts, groin scratching and positioning of a Burberry/Rangers FC baseball cap at varying angles upon their echoingly empty heads, came to the door and asked "wannagiveussomemoneyfurdeflagseh?" I, like many of my neighbours when we had taken a moment or two to decrypt this strange request replied "Ah no". This could be because folks are a bit strapped for cash this year or it could be that being surrounded by 100's of flags all flapping in the ever present Norn Iron wind roughly level with your bedroom window was just a bit intrusive. "Tradition" or not, sleep deprivation can be a right royal pain in the arse.
Now it has to be said we have a plethora of flags and for some it is a requirement equivalent with breathing that they fly every fecking one from every lamp post in the province.
At the top of the heap the Union Jack, the flag of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" to give it the full rather boring name.. this one Then you have the "Government of Northern Ireland Flag" which is the sort of official flag of the six counties Then you have the "Alternate Northern Ireland Flag" Which has no crown and a wee union jack in the top corner. This is perceived to be a UDA (Ulster Defence association - an illegal paramilitary/terrorist/drug dealing group)
Then you have the flag of the Orange order, a protestant religious organisation famed for it's bowler hats, sashes and it's unofficial war cry of "Fuck the Pope" (i am being crass here, however on the 12th july when certain songs are played at the BIG parade you will hear this with a monotonous regularity and on walls in Belfast you will see FTP scrawled on walls and it is not the work some underground group of TCP/IP graffitioso)
Then there is the King Billy Flag .. another sort of Orange order flag
Not to be left out the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force - Another illegal paramilitary,terrorist organisation) and the YCV (Young Citizen Volunteers - Much the same as the UVF but without the moustaches)
And here are more.. including Dutch flags (King Billy was Dutch) Scottish flags and even Israeli flags (The Meyer & Cohen Hassidic Loyal Rising Sons of William temperance and Ohi Vey Battalion perhaps??) Anyway there are lots and lots and lots of flags on BOTH sides and as they fly in estates all over the north each flutter picks at the scabs of a 1000 insults both real and imagined.
So here I sit watching a plethora of flags flutter in the stiff breeze and there in the background several of young Ulster Protestantism's finest are singing along to the not terribly well played battle flute. "We are... We are... We are the billy boys! We are up to our necks in Fenian blood, surrender or you die" whilst necking a bottle of Buckfast tonic .. well after all it is traditional so it must be right... isn't it?
ILUG countdown widget
Sun, Aug 22nd 2010 1:30p Steve McDonagh If you would like an ILUG 2010 Widget like the one on the left just copy this code into a convienent HTML/JS widget enclosurer on your blogbr /
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pre style="font-family: Andale Mono, Lucida Console, Monaco, fixed, monospace; color: #000000; background-color: #eee;font-size: 12px;border: 1px dashed #999999;line-height: 14px;padding: 5px; overflow: auto; width: 100%"codelt;script language='javascript' src='http://slightlydoolally.com/ilugcd.js'gt;lt;/scriptgt;lt;div id='ilug'gt;lt;/divgt;lt;scr [read] Keywords: ilug
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Help required with Duffy The Opera (An Idea waiting for a very drunken party)
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 8:27a Steve McDonagh It has been suggested by Mike Smith that we make the "Duffy" epic into an opera.. and tentative work has begun.. picture the scene.. duffy in a cubicle with the lights subdued and a general air of saddness fills the stage.. Duffy takes a deep breath and start to sing....the Duffy Aria ....br /
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blockquoteIm being swallowed by a sharepoint migrationbr /
I'm being swallowed by a sharepoint migrationbr /
I'm being swallowed by a sharepoint migrationbr /
And I don't like it very muchbr /
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Oh [read] Keywords: blogger
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Single authenticated point of entry to iNotes for all your users
Tue, Aug 10th 2010 10:27a Steve McDonagh It has been a while since I did a Domino Geek posting, however I came across this today and thought I would share it. Basically you can if you know the URL get into your Lotus Notes eMail via a browser. The problem is that most users can be .. well .. forgetful and having to remember a big long string of characters is a bit of a pain that and we wanted a single URL that would (a) authenticate the user and (b) open the mail file so we came up with this solution.br /
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A single NSF with a short [read] Keywords: agent
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Offical Minutes of the ILUG oganising committee - 9th Aug 2010
Mon, Aug 9th 2010 7:31p Steve McDonagh i**** Names, locations and proclivities have been redacted to protect the guilty ****/ibr /
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ILUG 2010 is now so certain to go ahead that Celine Dion is penning the lyrics to the theme song and even as I write the organisers are throbing with preternatural wibbliness for tonite was one of the famed ILUG 2010 skype calls.br /
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div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"span style="font-size: small;"Date : 09 August 2010/span/divdiv style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" [read] Keywords: administration
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Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 3 "Is this your Ewok?"
Mon, Aug 9th 2010 3:30p Steve McDonagh iWhere we are introduced to a Pseudo French Inspector, Mistress Marybeth of the "Never used Vista Virgins" and the difference between Dastard and Bastardbr /
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He looked around the room surrounded by the detritus of a party. Half eaten pizzas beer bottles by the dozen, an unturned bottle of diet Coke in a ice bucket, a dart board with a picture of Bill Gates on.. the picture was more hole that picture. He stooped and picked up a crumpled flyer "Sharepointless Summer Party" .. yes they [read] Keywords: connections
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Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 2 "The Journey Home"
Thu, Aug 5th 2010 8:31p Steve McDonagh iIn which we do not meet Nigel the out of work sarbannes oxley auditor and bus shelter attendant, Duffy has a Beatlemania flash back, Bill Buchans Knees make an appearence and we meet Gladys from the Sharepoint Coven/ibr /
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The group had been partying in the tea shops of south central Portaland. Tonight was the re-opening of the hottest geek club in town. The owner had completely remodelled the club in yellow and renamed it "Banana Daiquiri". No one actually knew who it was that now [read] Keywords: admin
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Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 1
Thu, Aug 5th 2010 5:29p Steve McDonagh iWhere Duffy and his sidekick Privet are introduced to the reader and Matt White gets Dissed/ibr /
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"Are you sure this is a good idea Privet?" Duffy asked, peering at the screenbr /
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Privet laughed at the concern in his friend's voice. "It'll be fine, Duffy. It's a very simple xPages App. I won't mess it up."br /
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"I don't know," Duffy said, unconvinced. "I'm just not sure you should be using fancy coding tricks to spice up your life." He thought for a moment, then chuckled. "I'm sti [read] Keywords: ilug
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Irish Notes Geek in Israel - Jerusalem for a week any notes folk fancy a pint?
Sun, Jul 18th 2010 7:30p Steve McDonagh I will be finding myself in Jerusalem, Israel from the 25th-29th July and I seem to remember that there is an active Notes/Domino community in Israel. So if anyone wants to accompany a very pink (people tell me Israel is warm this time of year) Irish Notes Geek for a pint and a bit of a geek chat on one of evenings while I am there, drop me a line at mcdonaghs (at) utvinternet (d0t) com and lets collaborate socially :-)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger. [read] Keywords: domino
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NotesMan Saves the day AGAIN!
Wed, Jul 14th 2010 7:25a Steve McDonagh It is nice to give a product a "call out" once in a while and today is one of those days.br /
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I had an app today where a unintentional download FUBARed exchange rates over a large number of records. Now I could have written an agent and fixed it that way however in my essential notes tool box I have a copy of a href="http://www.martinscott.com/Site.nsf/ID/Noteman"NotesMannbsp; /aand I was able to go into the app, created a collection of docs that needed changed , did the change, a quick "Co [read] Keywords: agent
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Nerd Vs Geek a Taxonomy
Sun, Jun 6th 2010 7:57p Steve McDonagh Twas only last weekend when thwe Arch Bishopess of ITIL a href="http://www.eileenfitzy.com/"Ms Eileen Fitzgerald/a and her chums Clara and Máireád plodded 22 miles around the north coast of Northern Ireland. Many and various were the topics we covered in those miles. One of said topics was the great Geek Vs Nerd debate. Both Clara and Máireád mistakening thought that Eileen and I were nerds ... OH how we laughed at that one. br /
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Eileen deffered to my age, experience and abilty to gesti [read] Keywords: blogger
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