So, every now and then I like to give my computer a bit of a spring clean. Having only a relatively tiny hard disk (150GB) it's necessary especially when I find I've less than 1GB of free space left.CCleaner is great for clearing out unwanted/unused files (e.g. temporary internet files, cookies etc.) and can free up a good bit of space depending on the status of your system.Duplicate Cleaner   is another great tool. You specify which folders you wish to search, and it points out any duplicate files. The search can be filtered based on filename, file ...

In January, Dublin City Council unanimously approved the motion “As a gesture to all of those who suffered as a result of clerical abuse, this council agrees to change the name of Archbishop Ryan Park, Merrion Square, and that this be done by inviting Dubliners to submit their ideas on an appropriate name for the park”. I started the campaign to rename the park after Oscar Wilde,  (which has thousands of members now) and it’s received a fair bit of media attention. The idea was not mine, it’s been suggested before, by Rory O’Neill and others, but Ryan’s fall ...

I’ve only one word for Pink -- wow. She strolled on stage in a slinky white robe to perform ‘Glitter in the Air’ from her Funhouse album at the 2010 Grammy Awards. For those of you hovering over the mouse wondering whether or not to watch this video, let me aid in your decision making. Shortly into her performance Pink drops her robe to reveal a flesh coloured bodysuit, is hoisted into the air where she gives one of her trademark aerial acrobatics displays before getting very…..wet. ...

1. I am off to Zurich tomorrow, back on Friday. I expect the conference over there to be really nice. My talk is on Tuesday afternoon, should be fun.2. I am considering making this blog "access restricted". Given that I have no time to figure out how this works, it won't happen instantaneously, but it might happen in a couple of weeks. If you want to have access to it after that, I'll need your email address (that's how blogspot works, as far as I know). Please don't post it in comments here, but rather e-mail me. My e-mail address ...

These posters tell of two of many difficulties one might face in their life, — being a mathematician (the first two posters) and being gay (the last two posters). You probably realize that I could not resist posting them here! For those who does not read French, here is my approximate translation of the last poster: Here is a boy who likes boys. But this boy who likes boys does not like boys that do not like boys who like boys. This sentence is complicated, but less complicated than lives of homosexual students.(via vovaminkin) ...

A chillingly expressionless mother catches her son masturbating in this 1970’s sex ed video. “It felt good didn’t it?” Shudder. ...

If you lived in South Korea and worked for the country’s health ministry then you’d be pretty pleased right now. The Ministry is turning off it’s lights and sending staff home early every third Wednesday. Why? To combat the country’s falling birthrate. The Ministry is running a project whereby it turns off the lights and bundles staff out the door with a nudge nudge wink wink early every three weeks to “help staff get dedicated to childbirth and upbringing”. It should be noted that ‘early’ to the South Koreans is 7pm! No wonder they’ve baby making issues – they must be ...

Today was one of those ‘pull your hair out and stuff it into that annoying persons throat just to shut them up‘ days. So in an attempt to zone out life, I hit the wibbly wobbly web in search of chewing gum for the mind and found a real gem. No doubt aimed at the ‘more money than sense‘ and ‘clinically insane‘ market,  Regretsy is a haven for people who could not give up make and do after they reached adulthood. The site whose tagline is “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet” allows people to ...

The September Issue was advertised everywhere as a documentary version of Devil Wears Prada. Unfortunately, what was funny (and deliciously bitchy) when it was a product of someone's imagination of how the universe of a fashion magazine operates, the reality is annoyingly boring. I guess that most attempts to make a good show from life are hopeless (even though life creates it own shows whenever possible, in the most random way!). I recall that I was in my fourth year of my undergraduate studies when they had the first Russian reality show on TV. Our mechanics tutor at the ...

Make the Yuletide Gay is probably one of the cutest gay themed movies ever, a real gem of a family Christmas movie. Olaf and Nathan are boyfriends studying at the same college. They plan to spend Christmas with their families, of which Nathan's family knows of his sexuality and has problems with it, while Olaf's family has no idea about his personal life whatsoever. The master plan is ruined by a sudden change of plans that Nathan's parents suddenly surprise him: they are leaving for a Christmas cruise, so he has to spend Christmas on his own. He decides ...

Fuera de Carta (Chef's Special) is, like Julie and Julia, a movie about someone who loves to cook. However, apart from a being a movie about someone who loves to cook, it's a movie about gay relationships, coming out, and kids in same-sex families. One would expect that with this weird mixture one can hardly achieve anything interesting, most likely resulting with a bunch of ridiculous stereotypes. However, the creators of this film managed to keep up to the highest standards of Spanish film-making and created a truly amazing film. The main character of this film is a flamboyant ...

Julie and Julia is the most sweet and touching film about two women with a passion for cooking, with their stories carefully intertwined in a small cinematic miracle. The first, Julia Child, played by Meryl Streep, is the author of the celebrated book introducing American women to French cuisine. The second, Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, takes a challenge of re-creating all 524 recipes from Julia's book in a year time. Everyone will find something dear in this film: the way the director Nora Ephron approaches spectacular recipes, period scenes from the post-war Paris, small glimpses of American ...

Whatever works is the most recent movie by Woody Allen, telling a story of an elderly New Yorker Boris Yelnikoff, formerly a talented physicist, and currently a grumpy old man with theories about pointlessness of everything. His life is suddenly changed when he encounters a VERY naive girl from Mississippi. After spending some time with her he starts to have a strong feeling that they are soul mates randomly brought together in this pointless world. (It is not that surprising after she was exposed to all those theories he has, which probably were the first theories she encountered in ...

Irony of life can sometimes present us with more than we would ever expect: The floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Växjö in south central Sweden collapsed on Wednesday night beneath a group of about 20 participants in the diet programme. Diets do all sorts of miracles, you know. ...

Well, since everyone wrote everything they could about it, I won't write a review of Avatar here, and since my lovely cool original idea about it turned out to be slightly less original, I won't post it here but rather post something that explains it in a better way that I possibly could explain it myself.However, it's the most amazing visual experience. If it weren't that long, I would go to the cinema again to experience the magic. ...

It's both highly disturbing and highly amusing to watch quite respectable papers and magazines publishing things that you would only expect from The Onion. This time, it's The Daily Telegraph. They tell us that "a university maths tutor has discovered the science behind singledom, finding that our chances of finding the perfect partner are just 1 in 285,000". It's especially touching that they suggest to look for the full version of his paper on the University of Warwick website, where the guy's webpage states: "This is a paper I wrote as a joke about 2 years ago and sadly ...

So I arrived back in Dublin yesterday, and starting from today I am back to all sorts of routine, both in research and in teaching. One notable nasty thing that happened to me on my way back is that a very nice bottle of calvados that I bought in a duty free shop in Moscow, properly sealed in a plastic bag, was not allowed when I was changing planes in Switzerland. They told me that all liquids that enter the EU (or EEA?) and were bought outside the EU should be in the checked in luggage, so I had to ...

Check out this video from the crew over at The Onion: ...

After a whopping 42 years showcasing the latest chart hits, Top of the Pops was relegated to gathering dust in the BBC archives back in 2006. Alternative music show, No Disco, popped it’s clogs in 2003 after a ten year run. Dave Fanning’s 2TV music programme lasted 6 years up until 2001. Since then music shows on this side of the pond have been few and far between. Well at last there’s a new music show in town – Ceol ar an Imeall (Music on the Edge) –  hits TV screens tonight at 11.45pm on TG4. You can view a ...

Anyone reading this from outside Ireland/the UK will be uttering ‘Jedward who’ round about now. Here’s a bit of background on the phenomenon that is Jedward.

• Jedward are twin teenage boys -- John and Edward Grimes -- from Lucan, Dublin who entered Simon Cowell’s ‘talent’ show last year
• It quickly became obvious that despite their quirky ‘There’s Something About Mary’ haircuts and cheese-tastic matching outfits, the twins could not sing
• They became the centre of attention, being booed at every live performance, with all talk focused on how they were lowering the tone of the competition
• With the resilience of cockroaches and a truly

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