So far I’ve spent not just minutes, but a few hours on making the app, but a lot of that time has been learning the functionality of the app inventor, as well as its limitations.

And so, to the app itself…

It’s main reason for existence is to provide me with a portable pocket timetable of acts for this weekend’s Electric Picnic, and if anyone else finds it useful, then all the better.

As of right now, 11am Wednesday, the times are due to be announced, so the current version of the app has but a list of acts on each day. I’ll update it this evening however with a breakdown by stage on each day to make it easier than navigating huge lists (and of course I’ll include the announced times).

I’ve also copied code from one of the sample apps in AppInventor, Android, Where’s My Car. This will (once I get it working right) allow you to save the location of your tent by GPS, and theoretically navigate back to it when you’re lost/drunk/blind.

Lastly, I’m putting in links to the Site Maps (these have to be links unfortunately as the app won’t allow embedded images to be zoomed). So far the Arena Map is available, but I’m going to convert the campsite and other maps to jpeg later and include them also.

So here’s the app: http://idirlion.org/ep/EPicnic.apk

And a barcode if you want to scan it directly from your phone.

Feedback appreciated.

Seachas deacrachtaí taistil agus gnóthacht an tréimhse sin, tá mórán eile a bhí sé i gceist agam déanamh fad is a bhíomar saor. Tá ríomhaire nua le ceannach agam (nó cadhnra nua don netbook ar a laghad). Theastaigh uaim mo chuid sean-cluichí ríomhaire a eagrú, ach faraor tá cuid mhaith des na cáblaí ar strae (maraon le mo chuid Lego, ach sin scéal eile).

Ach ar a laghad tá fón nua ceannaithe agam (Samsung Galaxy S), agus tá mé anois ar O2 seachas Meteor, rud a chiallaíonn go mbeidh mé in ann é a úsáid laistigh den teach don chéad uair.

Oh, agus tá an fón nua go h-álainn amach is amach, nach bhfuil?

What you’ll need:

• iPod (or other portable music player) – the bigger the better, anyone with a Classic can consider it money well spent since the invention of Leap-pod.
• Car
• Method of connecting iPod to car (bluetooth, fm dongle, cable etc)

Preparation:

Set your iPod to shuffle, sit someone with good arithmetic skills and eyesight in the passenger seat and hand them the iPod.

Rules:

When you overtake a car, take the last digit from their registration plate and skip forward that many songs (Do this even during a current song).

When a car overtakes you, skip back the number of tracks equal to the last digit of their registration plate (you’ll need to add one to this number because your first press back will leave you on the current song).

That’s pretty much it.

You might not hear all of many songs depending on traffic, or you might hear all of every song if you meet no cars. We played on the M6 to and from Galway and it worked quite well. Sometimes we’d pass two or more cars and have to combine all their reg numbers.

Of course, additional rules can be added as necessary. Foreign regs with letters can be translated to corresponding number (A=1, B=2 etc). And you may want to give each passenger one pass/lock on long journeys if they particularly like/dislike a certain song.

Having to skip away from a good song isn’t always fun, and other times you’ll be stuck with Westlife (which no one but me appreciated) or that stupid Fireflies song (which I hated), but that’s how the game goes, as the proverb says: “Leap-pod is a cruel mistress.”

Similarly to what I’ve done for the Electric Picnic previous years, here she is:

http://idirlion.org/oxegen

I’ll add any additional maps/timetables/stuff as I find them. Enjoy.

EDIT: Also of interest may be swearimnotpaul‘s “cross-reference style” timetable here

EDIT 2: Found a lovely iPhone/Android site by CAD Monkey

EDIT 3: Charles Julienne on twitter has let me add his fantastic time coded pdf to the folder.

All things considered, it has served me well these past two years, and for the price I got it (€350-ish I think), it was money well spent.

Considering my previous laptop, a massive Dell Inspiron 9100 that weighed a ton and had a broken fan that sounded like a jet engine, a portable netbook was a godsend.

It shipped with a crappy linux distro designed for it called Xandros, and it really left a lot to be desired. The menu consisted of a top bar divided into categories of different applications: Office, Internet etc.

Outside of that, the file management was a nightmare, and even opening a shell took far more work than necessary, so I switched to Windows XP.

The hard drive is 20GB consisting of 4GB and 16GB SSDs, so sensibly I installed Windows XP to the smaller drive and used the 16GB for documents etc, and after a bit of playing around with XP’s settings (disabling pagefile, moving Program Files and Documents to the larger drive), Windows XP has stood strong to this day.

Occasionally trying alternative operating systems along the (including a failed attempt at OSX, and a reasonable go at Windows 7 RC), 95% of the time, XP has been perfect.

But when I recently heard of new ‘netbook specific’ operating systems being launched all over the place, I was intrigued. So I decided to try a few as an alternative to XP.

I tried Jolicloud, and it worked ok, but the install to my 8GB SD card meant that the bootloader only worked with a usb plugged in, and it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It was a bit too cloud based for my liking and lacked a desktop feel.

Secondly, I tried meego, and it wouldn’t even install correctly. I did play around with the live usb and it looked lovely, but again seemed very cloud based, and quite similar to the original Xandros distro.

So as a last resort, I looked up Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Remix. I had tried eeebuntu previously about a year ago, and it seemed promising but it had felt very beta, and wasn’t what I’d call a complete OS.

So I threw it on a usb, and installed it to the SD card, leaving my hard-drives intact with my trusty XP.

And boom:

Ubuntu screenshot

It works swimmingly, no issues getting it to work with any of the hardware, and with the help of this wonderful post by The Silent Number, I now have all the software I need working perfectly.

I did find that Firefox was a little slow, so I exported my bookmarks over to Chromium, and bar the fact that I can’t re-organise the icons in the launcher, it seems great.

I’m going to leave Windows XP on the hard-drive for now, but if a fresh OS means I manage to get a few more months (or even a year, touch wood) out of an old netbook, then I’m as happy as Larry.

Stay tuned…

Michael Jackson was indeed great, he was a born entertainer, second to none as a song-writer, we all know this, but let’s face it, he was hardly going to pull any more albums out of thin air at this stage. He said it himself when announcing the O2 gigs, “This is it!”.

It’s a real shame that he never lived to do the O2 gigs (especially as I had a ticket – gutted!), but realistically his career was already coming to an end so at least he went out at a time when we all still appreciated his music.

Let’s not forget also the other great losses this year. First off Liam Clancy, a staple of Irish Folk since TV was invented (in Ireland at least), passed away on December 4th. Bob Dylan once described him as “the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life“, so I’m not sure if anything I say to praise him can top that.

We also lost Les Paul this year, that’s right, THE Les Paul, not only did he invent his namesake solid body electric guitar, but he invented multitrack recording as well, which is one of the most important things to happen in music since… well, ever.

Oh, and the fantastic Scottish guitarist John Martyn also died. One of the first great musicians to cross genres and blend them beautifully.

And of course, though he may not have had as much of a long-term impact on music as the others mentioned, we will all miss Stephen Gately. Boyzone just aren’t the same without him.

But hey, let’s not be down about the whole thing, music hasn’t died, it’s still going strong. 2010 has loads to look forward to.

Here’s someone who is due to make a big splash in 2010, Ellie Goulding.

And yet more good news for 2010, Blink 182 are doing a European tour which will hopefully include Dublin, yay!! So it’s not all bad.

• A cup of Pocahontas
• Six leaves of Fern Gully
• One packet of Lord of the Rings
• A diced Last Samurai
• One pint (600ml) of Jurassic Park
• 1/2lb (225g) The Matrix and 1/2lb (225g) Surrogates
• Four tbps powdered Wall-E
• A Dash of Aliens

Instructions:

Add the Lord of the Rings to the Jurassic Park and bring to the boil and simmer over a low heat.

Crush the Fern Gully leaves and add to the Jurassic Park stirring continuously.

Make sure that the Tom Cruise in your Last Samurai is in a wheelchair as per Born on the Fourth of July. Knead him into The Matrix and Surrogates until it reaches a doughy consistency.

Flatten the dough into pancakes and fry them in some of the Pocahontas.

At this stage the Jurassic Park should have reduced somewhat. Add the powdered Wall-E and leave it on the heat until it thickens (add the dash of Aliens and any remaining Pocahontas at this stage).

When it has reached a sauce-like consistency, dribble it over the fried pancakes and roll into three hour long portions.

Sprinkle with some Smurf hundreds and thousands and serve in three dimensions.

Guaranteed to taste epic.

Performing for a non-stop 3 hours and 10 minutes is a feat no ordinary man can accomplish, needless to say one who is nearing on 60 years of age, yet perform he did, and what a performance.

From the moment Nils walked out on stage playing The Fields of Athenry, I knew we were in for a magical evening.
He and the band played some of my favourite tracks, Badlands, Outlaw Pete, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Badlands. I could go on and on (and they did).

He managed to fit in plenty of crowd pleasers too: Hungry Heart, Spirit in the Night, Proud Mary, and Glory Days (as part of the encore). Needless to say the crowd were indeed pleased, and understandably so. Although he spoke little over the course of the gig, his interaction with the crowd was admirable. He ran and danced and pulled signs from the crowd. No other act I’ve ever seen live can match the Boss’ love for his fans. The ticket had Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band printed on it, but it wasn’t their show, it was all about us the fans.

After playing as many requests as he could pull from the crowd, he then launched into the encore (this is over two and a half hours of playing already), and what an encore! Kicking off with an amazing rendition of Jungleland, and even mustering up enough remaining energy for a lively Rosalita. He then finshed off with a wonderful cover of Twist and Shout.

I went home fairly tired after all of that, I can only imagine how he felt.

The Full Setlist
No Surrender
Badlands
Night
My Lucky Day
Outlaw Pete
Hungry Heart
Working On A Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
Darkness On The Edge of Town
Spirit In The Night
Sherry Darling
Proud Mary
Prove It All Night
Trapped
Waiting On A Sunny Day
Promised Land
Radio Nowhere
American Skin (41 Shots)
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born To Run

Jungleland
American Land
Rosalita
Glory Days
Dancing In The Dark
Twist & Shout