The launch of downloadmusic.ie went under the radar. Here’s Damien Mulley to tell us all about it. The site is for selling the music of unsigned bands. Seems like a great idea. All they need now is a market.

At first glance, all the tunes on the front page are €0.99.

I wonder how this will stack up against Universal’s plans to give music away for free - with advertising as their revenue model.

What’s web 2.0? Who knows?

Here’s a list of the top 10 Web 2.0 games.

An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words “We will not be silent” before boarding a flight at New York.

Full story on the beeb.

There was a bomb in his shirt, a mental thinking ticking time bomb.

Listen to how different he sounds.

Dustin the turkey takes advantage of an abandoned car lot in the heart of Moscow to flog you some beauties from behind the newly opened iron curtain.Circa 1992. (poor quality)

Posted to youtube by tireoghainian.

Super entertaining read about a first day at kindergarten, written from the kid’s perspective.

When you’re going down the hall, you’re supposed to have marshmallow feet.

One of the boys sometimes puts his thumb in his mouth as he waits in line, but he doesn’t get in trouble.

You have to raise your hand to say something, but that’s really hard to remember when I KNOW THE ANSWER!

Welcome to Kindergarten.

An African immigrant bank security guard turns the tables on Dublin’s nastiest criminals when they force him to be the “inside man” on a bank robbery

Trailer:

Did anybody see this? What’s it like? IMDB where it has 8.5 out of 10 after 33 votes. Pretty negative RTE review. Entertainment.ie review. Official site: www.thefrontlinemovie.com.

Brand new CGI sequences replacing the old school effects for HDTV. Wow, what a waste of money. Slashdot story. Trekmovie.com story.

The mayor of Venezuela’s capital Caracas says he plans to expropriate two exclusive golf courses and use the land for homes for the city’s poor.

Mayor Juan Barreto has said playing golf on lavish courses within sight of the city’s slums is “shameful”.

Full BBC story. I’m reminded of the immortal Falling Down.

What the hell are you trying to do? Kill me with a golf ball? It’s not enough you have all these beautiful acres fenced in for your little game, but you gotta kill me with a golf ball? You should have children playing here, you should have families having picnics, you should have a goddamn petting zoo. But instead you’ve got these stupid electric carts for you old men with nothing better to do.

Dodge the falling spikes in this falling spikes simulation. Use the arrow keys to avoid being killed by the falling spikes. The objective is to miss as many of the falling spikes as you can. Ragdoll Avalanche 2.

Some cool ballymun flats demolition videos uploaded by youtube user thebettyfordclinic.

First up is the McDermot tower implosion with sound:

And this time lapse of the deconstruction of the pearse tower is weird:

There are a few more. You can get the timetable for destruction up until 2008 over at the Ballymun Neighbourhood Council website. Timetable for Destruction is the perfect name for a blog written out of Ballymun.

New Irish sports blog from Gatsby Publishing, who bring us the Irish celebrity photo blog Blogorrah: The Barefoot Fan. Love the logo:

Irish bloggers Damien Mulley and Rob Synnott have created Politics In Ireland.

A while back I created feeds for every TD in the country. Well, now myself and the amazing Rob Synnott have created a handy aggregator for all these details. It’s called Politics In Ireland. It updates twice a day. Maybe it’ll update more frequently the closer it gets to the election. I hope this compliments the already great politics sites that are out there.

Full blog post.

Crazy story found via boing boing.

The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.

But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.

Here’s the video:

The text above is from the Washington Post article on it.

Seven in 10 children are driven to school despite living less than a mile away, a new report has found.

The survey also showed fewer than 1% of youngsters cycle to school.

Well, why else did we buy the Land Rover darling. Full story.

It’s the 37th International Wine & Spirit Competition (Awful website - you’ve been warned) - and Irish booze has won loads of awards apparently.

Every whiskey, cream liquer, poteen and vodka submitted was awarded a medal, demonstrating the persistently high quality of Irish Spirits.

Story.

The drinks company behind Guinness is expected to reveal this week that the tally of pints of “the black stuff” drunk in Ireland has fallen by more than a quarter over the past eight years.

Worldwide sales are expected to increase however.

Story.

We recently featured a story here about doing a PHD thesis on Comic book characters. Now Slashdot brings us news of a PHD thesis called “Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek”. It’s about how Star Trek used ancient mythology as an influence, and how it has created new mythology itself, among other things. It’s pretty good apparently.

Yahoo slideshow covering before, during and after.
Link via Yahoo News.

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is being made to watch his appearance in cult cartoon South Park while he is behind bars.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said US Marines guarding the former dictator during his trial for genocide were making him watch the movie “repeatedly”.

If this is true, does it qualify as torture?

Story.

Hello, if you are one of the 208 people who’s signed up recently, but has not gotten an automated email, this message is for you. In the next two weeks we will be resetting our user registration process, so hopefully ALL of you should get an email along with your accounts being activated.

All I can do is apologise for this, we suck at user registration. It’s like our kryptonite. If you are reading this and don’t get an email within the next two weeks, please contact us. Look out for more exciting stuff as we approach TCAL: Year Two. (Well really year nine, but who’s counting?)