Bright New Sounds - winner announced.

Darren was first to post the details.

Now it's also over on Hotpress.com, Ken McGuire has posted it, the really lovely Naomi McArdle who I met last night covers it and I'm sure there'll be more.

Update: Entertainment.ie have photos of some of the folk there last night. There are a couple of faces I recognise. Thanks to Keelan, the photographer who happily wandered around looking cool.

Congratulations to the winners, and to echo Darren's post, it was a real pleasure to meet and work with all the bands, managers, groupies, backstage guys, security people, photographers, entertainers and the great team at Vodafone and Bodytonic who made the night rock.

Great fun altogether!

Looking for a new job?

This might be for you

http://www.recruitireland.com/job/?jobID=10012942

Go on, give it a go!

Bright New Sounds - would you like tickets?

Free on Thursday, April 3 and in Dublin City Centre?

If so, and you aren't going to Techludd (more on that to come), then I'd like to invite you to the Vodafone Bright New Sounds gig that's on 8pm in Tripod, Dublin.

Get your tickets here for free.

The show is the final of the Bright New Sounds competition, which invited up-and-coming Irish bands to enter for the chance to win a great prize. PJ Gallagher will be presenting.

The top 5 bands which were announced today will be performing on Thursday with the winner announced afterwards. They are:

• Chaplin
• Superfreakz
• 79Cortinaz
• The Minutes
• Star Turtle

You can hear all their tracks over here.

Whatever your opinion on the gig, be it aligned with Jim Carroll, with Darren or on its merits as a great gig for upcoming bands to get their music out there, its sure to be a belter.

I've been listening to the tracks here and given the fact they'll be each playing for 25 minutes, I'm really looking forward to some great sounds (and photo opportunities).

You'll find the location of Tripod here (just the top of Harcourt Street) and more details about the gig on the Bright New Sounds website.

For the tickets, just apply here before tomorrow, Tuesday at 5pm or drop me an email to say you're coming and I'll put you on the guestlist.

Feel free to invite friends as long as they apply through the link above. Be quick, tickets are going fast!

Elly, you rock!

Via the ever wonderful Ellybabes, this has now become my chosen video on Bebo. Utter genius.

Through her have just found K8 the GR8, progeny of a certain couple of bloggers. Added to my RSS feed now too!

Finally on this Elly theme, loving the photo she took at her local Spar.


I owe the woman a hug and a pint, hopefully to be paid on Saturday night. Cheers for making my Friday even brighter!

... They're all running after the old farmer's wife, she cut off their tales, and baby! And what it all comes down to is that I never seen such a sight in my life, cos she's got one hand on 3 rodents and another one on a carving knife...

The date

Last night's date

was going great

until we started talking

about ages

and it turned out that

I was 12

the year

that she was born.


(She didn't mind).

It's all to do with timing

There I am in work, talking about irish dancing (as you do) when the site diddlyi.com comes up in copnversation. I mention I'm a member. He mentions he knows someone who runs it.

Then, literally a couple of minutes later, I check thechancer.ie and see this.



Ever so slightly surreal. And bizarre. And timely.

(Which my Irish dancing never was.)

Bits, bobs, bananananas and a five-stone, 168,540-calorie, Easter egg

I know I should be working, I know.

But I got the innocent newsletter. I reckon sometimes it's easier not to risk a misspelling:


Jazzbiscuit is on form today with two of the more creative You Tube videos I've seen in a while.

There's the diddlyi music video from a young guy who plays

Music from a tin whistle in D, tabla, bongo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, triangluitar, ukulele, another ukulele, chair with ukulele, chair with tin whistle in D, violin, casio keyboard, erhu/chinese violin, piano, and chair with cellular telephone

Fair play to him!

And then there's the parody on the Guinness dominoes ad. Excellent!

On other interweb blog sites then,

Grandad's given me a great idea on funding foreign holidays this year.

Grannymar's looking for a date. Well, I reckon that's what she's getting at, as inspired by Rick O Shea's post.

and finally, feast (literally) your eyes on this, from the Daily Mail website:

A monster five-stone Easter egg has gone on sale… leaving dieters shell shocked.

The solid chocolate treat is the height of a nine-year-old and could be melted down to make more than 635 standard bars.

And with a whopping 168,540 calories – the recommended limit for 84 days - it won't win any fans at Weight Watchers.

£499 for an easter egg though? Get me a bar of Turkish Delight and I'm happy :D

The art of bus timetables and bus lanes

Late for work today, thanks to a combination of heavy traffic, red lights and a bus driver who made odd decisions.

Living in Dublin 15, I take the 39b. Normally it's a schedule of bus at 07:30 - the journey to town is fairly direct and usually takes 40 minutes - hit town 08:07, get next bus at 08:15. Not always an exact science but fairly standard. Not so today.

I've resigned myself to not getting stressed about these things any more - why bother, there's not much I can do about it - but it doesn't stop me questioning it. Or taking photos.

Today, from the Navan Road right down to the quays traffic was heavy. When at 8.05 we were nowhere near even the North Circular Road, I knew there wasn't a chance of me getting the (free) bus to work. Those are the Luas mornings.

It's when we got to the quays that "bemused" (for want of a better word) me.

Traffic is usually heavy but moving well anyways. Gotta keep an eye on the time.


And of course you have that great bus corridor the whole way practically from Heuston to O' Connell Bridge, right?

You know the one? The one that's EMPTY in the photos above and below:


That's just before the Ha'penny Bridge. A 5 minute walk to O' Connell Bridge. Less if you're a bus driver with a big empty bus lane to fly up. With people who time their timetables and busses exactly. People like me.

But our bus driver? He chose to sit in traffic.


And there we sat while Dublin traffic did its thing.


We got to O' Connell Street 5 minutes later


Eventually getting to Trinity College at quarter to.


Is there any point in complaining? I don't know.

But of course, getting off the bus I said "Thanks" and nothing else. No complaints, questions or anything. Of course I did.