Hi Folks,

Please swing over to therighthook.wordpress.com for future updates. This blog has been retired.

all the best,

Joe Drumgoole

Here is Karlin in her dazzling top coat as mentioned on tonights show. She defintely outshone me and George.

We also talked about the LG Viewty a stunning camera phone with a patchy touch screen and pretty shoddy PC integration software.

The conference on “me mes” as George referred to them is an important waypoint in charting the development of the web as a social medium for everybody. Everything you want to know about memes is detailed below along with some classic examples. (Karlin did the heavy lifting for this bit).

Memes:

Meme Defintion : (From wikipedia) : /miːm or mɛm/) consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a “culture” in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus.

Popular Memes:

• LOLcats : http://icanhascheezburger.com/
• Dancing hamsters : http://webhamster.com
• Cats that look like Hitler: http://catsthatlooklikehitler.com
• Sneezing panda: http://youtube.com/watch?v=FzRH3iTQPrk
• I Kiss You: http://ikissyou.org
• Chuck Norris facts: http://chucknorrisfacts.com
• Laughing babies: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk
• Million Dollar Homepage: http://milliondollarhomepage.com
• Star Wars kid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
• Stuff White People Like: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com

Here are some links to the items we talked about tonight.

• Robots, Our new friends Electric?
  
• Cycling Jacket Wins Design Award (video)

We also talked about the Asus EEE PC, a low cost, highly portable linux PC. Pixmania has these for 310 euro.

Top tips for buying a future proof PC,

• Max out the RAM (Random Access Memory). This is the physical memory that programs run in and increasing the RAM is one of the simplest ways for users to boost there performance. Use Crucial.com to find out if you can upgrade your existing Windows PC.
• Get the biggest disk you can. Running out of disk space will make your digital life really messy and is the biggest reason that people upgrade their PCs.

Final note: The high end Apple image/photo editing package whose name we couldn’t remember is called Aperture.

Karlin here. I’m just back from two weeks in the US which included 8 days in Maui, Hawaii, where I gave the Sony camera I reviewed in February another good workout. This is the DSC-T200 model and I must say, longer use only made me love this little guy more. It does fantastic ultra-closeups and has a range of tools that allow you to not take stupid pictures. Well, your choice of subject may be stupid, but this camera does a lot of the work to make it as good a stupid shot as possible. It is especially good at making sure your shots don’t blur — a feature called appropriately enough, Super SteadyShot. I also took a couple of movies with it of my little nephew and the quality was decent.

The only (minor) drawback to this camera is it only runs on one of those specialised batteries. That means if the battery drains in the middle of a holiday or event, you can’t rush to a shop and get some regular batteries to fill in for you — something I love about my old Sony DSC camera which takes AAs as well as rechargeables. That’s a fairly common approach with digital cameras and keeps models like this super slim — but I did like the fact that my older Sony DSC model took AAs as well. On the other hand, my old one is about twice the bulk of this compact camera, which easily slips into a pocket.

Overall, a great little camera I’d definitely recommend as a buy! 9 out of 10 as I said on the show.

Here are a view shots from Hawaii. Aloha!

Plumeria blossoms:

Maui sunset:

Bouganvillea:

Bouganvillea close-up:

Fern-leaf close-up:

Simon here.

I believe that tonight will be the first of the video experiments which George has been promising for so long.

Joe Drumgoole will be wielding the camera and intends to put the resulting moving pictures onto the blog here.

I will be tending an ill infant, so you won’t get to see my particularly handsome choice of cuffe-links this week.

On Wednesday night I was the MC at the National Concert Hall for the Friends of the NCH Gala Concert – http://www.nch.ie/Support-the-Hall/pdfs/friends_fav_invite.aspx

The evening was a major ordeal as I am no classical music expert and I experienced nerves like never before. Cara O’Sullivan, Ireland’s finest soprano did a reprise of her “Stand Up and Fight” at the Heineken Cup final in Cardiff and conductor David Brophy tricked me into playing the triangle for the encore item, the Radetski March by Strauss. Hope you enjoy the pictures which were taken by Rosita Wolfe head of marketing at the NCH.  

Right Hook listeners joined myself and the lovely Ingrid at the Gala of Hope Ball in Dublin’s Conrad Hotel on Saturday night. Out of towners stayed overnight courtesy of the good people at the Conrad and probably needed a good breakfast after an event that lasted into the “wee small hours”. The “singing waiters” made their Irish debut and were a huge hit as they had acted as hotel staff until they broke in to song mid-way through dinner. The ball raised almost €100,000 for the Comber Romanian Orphanage Appeal. It is a tradition that Right Hook listeners are invited to the ball.

Friday morning will mean an early start for Paris and the Rugby World Cup Final. The team is booked for dinner in my favourite restaurant, Le Deux Canards. The seven weeks of the world cup have been a welter of travel and there has been little time to savour the delights of Bordeaux and the capital city. Last week we ate in L’Alsace Brasserie on the Champs Elysee which I can definitely recommend and we have plans for lunch on Saturday before the game in another budget but apparently great restaurant. Next week, I will have news of all the eating places.I am backing England to win with a handicap of nine points but South Africa will triumph in the tournament. Once the final whistle blows I will have 30 minutes to deliver 800 words for the following day’s Sunday Independent. It gets a bit heart-stopping attempting to make the deadline.

The Hook Blog is hoping to be back up and running shortly but in a much more interactive and technologically innovative way. Every Monday at 6.30 pm listeners to the Technology slot on The Right Hook have been submitting their suggestions by text to 53106 (cost 30 cent).

Each week I am giving a voucher for dinner for two to the listener with the best suggestion. Please keep your ideas coming.

George

Some of the suggestions so far:

George, why don’t you blog at 4pm each day letting people know what is coming up on the show, that way you can invite comments before you even interview the people.

George, why don’t you put a box on the blog that readers can text with a comment. 

Hello George, how about Georges travel plotting, how long it takes for you to get to the Newstalk HQ from home every day, highlighting how long Dubliners spend in traffic.

George include in the blog, your word of the day and use it in context during the show to educate us while we listen.

George have a photo on each day and have a competition for the best caption.  You could use news, sport etc, the more bizarre or random the better.

Hi George, why not have a ‘Today’s reason why Cork is great’ section on your blog.

5 year anniversary with Michelle, originally uploaded by therighthook.

In the studio.