Anarchist Bookfair

I remember it well. It was March 2009 outside Leinster House when I saw my first poster for an anarchist bookfair. While I hadn't a clue what it was about, the concept tickled me and I had a vision of a little man with an oldfashioned bomb in a sack sneaking into the fair, leaving the bomb and running off with a sackful of books while the fair exploded behind him.

Well, finally, in 2012, I actually went to my first anarchist bookfair, in Liberty Hall. And very interesting it was. Looking at the wares on display and the programme of talks that accompanied them, I suppose I would describe it more as a Socialist Alternative Bookfair rather than an Anarchist one as such. Certainly the themes were of resistance to the current power elites and rampant capitalism, but they seemed, for the most part, to stop short of total anarchy.

Anyway, the reason I was there this year was to check out the Come Here to Me bloggers in person. I have been reading this fantastic Dublin blog since its inception and it is going from strength to strength.

The lads were talking about under the radar activities, so to speak, and their event was described thus in the official programme.

Sam McGrath will present his research on the life and death of English revolutionary socialist Arthur 'Neal' Wicks who was killed in action in the Easter Rising. Donal Fallon discusses the problems and potential in marking history from below, and how we should commemorate our past. Ciaran is looking at Dan Donnelly, a boxer in the 1700s who fought the English champion in front of 30,000 in the Curragh. He was born around the corner from where our meeting takes place, in the Dark Horse Inn, Georges Quay

The lads did a great job and delivered what it said on the tin.

Below are a few general shots from the day. You can click on any of the pictures in this post to see larger versions.

While I was there I checked out the mural (below) of the tax protest (1979-80?) on the restaurant wall. Click image for larger version or here for larger version still.

Mechanical Accents

I suspect today's younger generation wouldn't quite know what to do with a manual typewriter if they saw one. But there was a time, before even electric typewriters, when the whole operation was purely machanical and manual. Yes, just like the lawnmower.

Well once upon such a time I aspired to be a journalist and I got myself a typewriter. It was actually the one most popular with journalists at the time an Olivetti Lettera 32.

It was great to be able to type stuff. It looked very professional and you could submit it. There was one small problem, however.

Much of the stuff I was doing was in Irish and there was no fada (acute accent) on the typewriter. Now I could have got one with a foreign keyboard, but, the keyboard layout would have been quite different and I would not necessarily have all the accents I needed.

My needs were quite modest, actually. I just needed to be able to type the vowels with a fada (a e i o u). Since the adoption of the Cló Rómhánach in place of the previous "Celtic" script I didn't need any séimhiú (lenition) on the usual set of consonants (b c d f g m p s t). Following the consonant with a "h" now served the same purpose, and this was clearly within the competence of the ordinary typewriter.

I had two choices really. Try and go for a French type solution where I imported already accented letters onto redundant keys, or, come up with some system which independently typed the fada over an already typed letter.

The disadvantage of the first was that I would be working from a slightly different keyboard in Irish, surrendering quite a few "redundant" keys and running the risk of confusing my English language typing. But the second seemed impossible. Sticking a fada on a redundant key would not work, because each time you typed a letter the mechanism advanced to the next space.

So I brought my problem to Hely's in Dame Street, where I think I must have bought the typewriter originally.

No problem. They took one redundant key. Fitted a fada (and a gràve for good measure) and detached that key from the advancing mechanism. Think about it.

Yes, the only problem was to remember to type the fada before the letter rather than after it. Once you got used to that you were in business.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. How true.

Update 18/9/2013
I found myself in the National Library of Ireland this evening, a wee bit on the early side for the booklaunch I was attending. So I decided to have a coffee in the Library's Café Joly. Sitting sipping, I noticed two manual typewriters on two of the window sills and, out of curiosity, went over to have a look.

They seem to be props for Yvonne Cullen's 7-week creative writing course, which she has titled From History to Story. While poking at one of them, I noticed an acute accent key on the keyboard, and further investigation revealed that it had been modified in exactly the same way as my own, above, the same key used and the same technique of disconnecting the carriage mechanism.

Exciting and disappointing at the same time. Exciting to find another one like mine, disappointing to find that I wasn't the only one with this ingenious modification.

Click logo to go to Yvonne's blog

Head over Heels

The latest upside down flying of the EU flag is brought to us by Sinn Féin in the course of their video advocating a NO vote in the upcoming referendum.

Previous examples have been the French Embassy, the Hungarian Embassy and the EU Commission Office. So we are not without precedents here.

There is no excuse for the precedents, but it is always possible that Sinn Féin have done this on purpose, as flying the flag upside down is an emergency cry for help, at least in the maritime area.

In which case, you saw it here first.

In defence of Twitter

When you mention Twitter to non-Tweeters you can see the eyes glaze over on the spot.

The word registers as a kids' thing, or a piece of teenage social media frippery. It may yet even become the ultimate scapegoat for all the ills of the present young generation.

So why are a lot of ordinary sane sober balanced people using it. Why are advocacy groups, political groups, media groups, and, even the most advanced techie groups on the planet using it.

The answer is simple. It is a tool. Just as a computer, phone, hammer, saw and screwdriver are tools.

You don't see people calling for the banning or ignoring of hammers just because some lunatic put one through the skull of his/her partner?

Of course you can use a hammer for all sorts of things. You can use it to nail up doorways to either imprison people or to keep them from entering dangerous buildings. You can use it to drive nails into walls to hang works of art to be admired, or manacles to suspend a torture victim.

So with Twitter. It's a tool, for good or evil. And, as far as I can see, it is mostly for good.

Choose your Company
The first thing to remember is that you don't have to put up with idiots, blatherers or the outpourings of pubescent teenagers. When you start out you are nobody. You get a handle (like @me) and that's just you and your account. You can then pick who you follow by specifying others (@other_people) and everything they tweet will come up on your homepage/column. You are then part of the community to which they broadcast. That's you listening to them.

So how do you get them to listen to you? Well they will have to opt to follow you, and then all your tweets will appear in their homepages. This sort of mutual following works best initially with communities which are already in existence eg real life acquaintances who are online, or people you are in touch with by email. Then, depending on how you use Twitter you will probably pick up more followers as you go on.

Avoid the Body Count
There is one thing to beware of, though. Some Tweeters are not interested in content, only in numbers, eg how many Tweets they've done, how many people they follow and, probably most importantly, how many people follow them. These are the bounty hunters. They don't care about the quality of their followers (eg do the followers read any of their tweets?) or of those they follow (some follow thousands of people). They are only interested in how many people follow them. Now, that might seem a bit strange, but to these people, the number of people following them (irrespective of whether these followers have any interest in them or not), these are like notches on a gun or trophies on the wall. Such macho idiots are to be avoided.

You can't stop other people following them, but make sure you don't end up following them yourself. They will often turn up, out of the blue, following you and expect you to follow them back.

If someone follows me, I check them out, and if I come to the conclusion that they have no interest in my Tweets, and that I am just another potential stuffed trophy on their wall, I make sure not to follow them back so I don't inflate their follower numbers. Then I BLOCK them. That means they can't follow me, they don't get my Tweets and they don't dilute the quality of my exclusive followers list. It's a bit like "Repel Boarders" and every bit as exciting.


Rebroadcasting other people's Tweets
If you haven't yet got round to composing your own Tweets, you can always rebroadcast the Tweets of those you follow to those who follow you. That may sound a bit odd, but a recent example shows how it can even be a lifesaver.

Recently, a troubled person's followers picked up from their Tweets that the person in question had lost it and was in the process of taking an overdose. Now, more often than not, you will only know the great majority of your followers online - you won't have a physical address or phone number. That was true in this case. But the person's followers started retweeting (ie rebroadcasting to their followers) an appeal for a physical address and included a link to the last plaintive Tweet of the person in trouble. Those Tweets went viral and one person responded with a name and then another came up with a reasonable guess at an address. The police were notified and arrived in time to save the troubled person's life. That person has already Tweeted their thanks to those who intervened.

Twitter can also be very useful in following the alternative media. Most publications Tweet when they publish an article and a judicious choice of who you follow can turn you into a virtual alternative media newsagency.

A Temporary Community
You can create temporary (or even long term) communities on Twitter, based around a particular event or interest. Here's how it works. Let us say you are interested in the upcoming International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. You may have decided to follow the organisers on Twitter (@iec2012), but that will only bring up on your homepage those Tweets which are posted by the organisers themselves.

That's where the hashtag (#) comes in. If you include in your Tweet a hashtag for the Congress (eg #iec2012) and put in a search for that expression, then you will see the Tweets of everyone who does likewise. So, a temporary online community is created around the event. The hashtag terms are thought up by the tweeters themselves but it is usually easy to find which one is in use for any given purpose. In particular, you can monitor live events in this way and create Twitter communities around the likes of the Heineken Cup (#hcup) or the Vincent Browne Show on TV3 (#vinb). These communities are great fun and people vent to their hearts' content during the live events.

A much more serious and unexpected role for Twitter emerged during the Arab Spring. Participants were Tweeting events as they happened and including photos from mobile phones. In many cases Tweets were used as part of the organisation of the protests. News was emerging in this way to the outside world which, in many cases, took another whole day or more to reach the mainstream media.

Such communities can be very effective in the case of natural disasters, or other occasions where support groups can be helpful.

Limit of 140 characters

Tweets are not blogposts. They are limited to a maximum of 140 characters and that has to include everything,the text of the Tweet, the Twitter name (@) of the person you are Tweeting, any hashtags, and, of course, any links to blogposts, websites etc. Now, as we know, some links can be very long and even take up more than 140 characters for just the link. So, Twitter will shorten links to 10 characters, or thereabouts, so you are left with plenty of space for the rest of the message.

Don't be Prolix
You will find that 140 characters is, in fact, very little, and your early experience with Tweeting may be a bit frustrating. But, persist. You will get the hang of getting the most into a short message, it will hone your editing skills and test your ingenuity to its limits.

Below is a typical tweet (as it happens, of mine). It is just over 120 characters, contains a shortened link, an id (@) and hashtags (#). You will also notice the avatar (picture) which is one I have uploaded to my account and which appears as an identifier on all of my tweets.

You can get a live version by clicking here and then you can click on the link etc. to see how things work.

When you've got the hang of it you might like to check out my post on Tweetdeck and also a third party post on Tweet Chats.


Happy Tweeting

MMXII

This was Dalkey today.

If you're not smiling you might need to brush up on your Roman numerals.

Nice touch.

Er cof am Howell Evans RIP

Howell Evans died on 21 January 2012 aged 104.

He was born in Anglesea but spent most of his life in Dublin.

You can see and hear his recollections of the Welsh Chapel in Talbot Street, of which he was member.[recorded in early 2011]

He was also a member of the Dublin Welsh Male Voice Choir, which is where I first met him in the early 1970s.

Howell was Welsh to the core and a gentleman to boot.

Y llygaid dwys dan ddwys ddôr,
Y llygaid na all agor.

Upside Down Flying

I was passing the EU Office in Dublin today when I saw the big European flag flying on the flagpole. Well, I thought to myself, at least these guys are flying their flag the right way up. Just as well and Europe Day coming on 9th May. Though, the way things are going it is getting more difficult to see what the point of Europe Day is.

I was reading the offer on the outdoor poster of "Afternoon tea with Europe" and the cakes from the embassies, when my eye caught a detail of the picture under the text. There were two pennants in the photo of the food table and the EU one was upside down.

Now people may be aware of my predeliction for spotting upside down flags. It probably started when Ian Paisley gave out to some British crowd for flying the Union Jack upside down (yes, you can). And then I was involved in work with the EU INTERREG and NI Peace Programmes where it was essential to make sure the EU flag was not flown upside down (yes, you can).

My own experiences to date with the upside down EU flag consisted of the French Embassy on the day of Sarkozy's 2008 visit and the Hungarian Embassy in the course of 2009.

And now, to cap it all, here is the EU itself doing the same thing.

I think I feel a blog post coming on.