• Went to the Burren yesterday…on not way to clifden then Connemara tomorrow, Sligo on Sunday. #

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• Thinking most twitters are on west coast… -8 GMT. Little activity on this side of pond. Lets get more twitters here! #
• liking the new dropdown box to send direct messages to your friends, bad if you have loads of friends though #

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It is absolutely gorgeous in Galway today. It seems we have managed to leave Winter behind and charge ahead with Spring. The trees are blooming, the sun is warm on the back and face, there’s a light breeze and the air is Irish Spring fresh. I think today is the kind of day Colgate-Palmolive had in mind when coming up with a clever marketing name. I’m feeling nostalgic lately. I had a strawberry for the first time in a long while. It reminded me of picking them fresh with my grandma back in Indiana. I think Spring is one of the best seasons since it is a time to start fresh. The semester is coming to a close and project deadlines are looming, but we can all take a step forward and start something new.

I’m off for a marathon training run to blow off some stress and take advantage of this amazing day. Tomorrow, Erin’s parents arrive in Shannon and we’ll head off for a long weekend tour of the West of Ireland. Great places to see, memories to be made, and pictures to keep. I’ll take along my journal and keep you posted on my Irish travels.

UPDATE: I just found this article about Irish Spring in The Onion. Brilliant!

• Just had a fresh strawberry 4 the first time in a while. Reminded me of picking them in june in indiana with my grandma #
• I’ve had a shit time setting up my brand new Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n after 1 hr support i have 2 send it back! #
• @endacrowley love the 8GB but i have 2 much music… #

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Since many of you have been enjoying my blog for awhile, especially Bryan, Gregg, Macoosh the top 3 commentators, I decided to ask a little favor of you readers out there. I’m running a contest through the end of April and it’s pretty simple. Add me to your Technorati favorites and each week I will choose one lucky person for a quick review of their site. I also plan to have a recap of each week’s entrants. I must admit I borrowed this idea from HMTK and some people say Technorati is a joke, but I’ll give it a shot. The best thing about Technorati is that it’s a great way to find blogs that you are interested in and create a community of like-minded users. Whether or not their ranking system is legit is up for debate. They rank a blog based on number of links from other sites which tends to be an incomplete picture of popularity and does not account for traffic such as unique visitors and hits.

Nevertheless, I’m excited about this contest since it will give all an opportunity to discover new blogs and for some lucky winners (chosen on merit of site judged by yours truly) it will yield a free review and a permanent link(s) from this blog. Bryan, you are still eligible even though you previously added me as a favorite.

Good luck, I look forward seeing the new fans of britton blog!

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• I <3  #
• installed twitthis on jamesrbritton.com but it’s timing out #
• testing “write tweet” in wordpress, not sure I understand the point when there’s a twitter plugin for Firefox #
• @wilharris don’t get hit by a car whilst emailing! #
• @endacrowley has the whole world gone mad with twitter?! :-< #

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They finally managed to do it. The DUP leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams have managed to reach an accord that restores self government to Northern Ireland and divides the power in the Northern Ireland Assembly Executive after an hour long meeting in Stormont’s Parliament Buildings dining room. Rev Paisley will take the First Minister position while Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin will hold the Executive office of Deputy First Minister.

Today marked the deadline of reaching an agreement between the loyalists and the Irish Republicans in the Executive, otherwise the newly elected Assembly would have been dissolved as it has been since October 2002.

Rev Ian Paisley

“Our goal has been to see devolution returned in a context where it can make a real, meaningful improvement in the lives of all the people of this part of the United Kingdom.”

Gerry Adams

“I believe the agreement reached between Sinn Féin and the DUP - including the unequivocal commitment made by their party executive and reiterated today - to the restoration of political institutions on 8 May marks the beginning of a new era of politics on this island.”

Devolution of Government

The two sides voted on a resolution to form the new administration on Saturday as Paisley and McGuinness pledged a six week test of Sinn Féin’s support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The parties certainly have much work ahead to mend wounds and settle differences, but this historic agreement is a big step forward. I write all of this as a bystander, so if you have grown up in Ireland I would love to hear what you think about this new found power sharing agreement.

*UPDATE*
Take part in the poll for this post at the right…

• Shutdown Day is over! http://tinyurl.com/274ngg what did you do? #
• @krypto you call them ’skittles’? we call them ‘pins’ and I’ve seen that too, weird eh? #
• why did I get 5 or 6 tweets on my mobile in a matter of seconds, backlog I guess? #
• border bottom css #
• oops, forgot to switch FF search engine back to Google from twitter #
• @burkie thanks! just screwing up, I mean fixing my blog #
• @burkie, nope I’m done, just had to make that one little change have a great week! #
• @baratunde just got it myself, very nice though it’s still clunky how you must close it #

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Here’s a quick post of some of the things I’ve been doing this past weekend:

I spent Shutdown Day with my family and we took a nice long bike ride out to the beach to celebrate the coming of Spring. It was absolutely gorgeous this weekend! After frolicking at the beach, we rode out to Barna village and had lunch at a little pub that specialized in seafood; the chowder was great! (I’ll have more on this little trip later in the week, so stay tuned for stories and pictures)

I fixed the blog search function code, it was redirecting to a nonexistent page since I rearranged the page structure, oops! Enjoy the new-found search feature powered by Google. I mostly put it there for me so I can look through old posts, but if you’re looking for a topic it works great!

I’ve also signed up with AdVolcano to generate some money for this little project. Gotta pay the tuition and the dollar to euro exchange rate is terrible. Therefore, I’m running a special on 30 day text link ads. There is a limit of 5 slots and you can have your site featured just under the Feedburner section for just $10 for 30 days. That’s an excellent deal! I have had nearly 4000 pageviews this month from over 1800 visitors and there is still a week left in March. The graph shows a solid week to week increase in traffic for March. My visits have tripled and pageviews doubled since February (567, 1789 respectively) and I’m on track to double March visits and pageviews for April. Who’s going to be in the top ad spot for just 10 bucks?

As I write this there are only 18 minutes left until Shutdown Day, at least here in Ireland where we’re on GMT. Shutdown Day is all about living without your computer for one whole day, so don’t expect any blog posts from me until Sunday at the earliest. This will be very difficult for me since I’m smack dab in the middle of finishing up my gasoline tax research project. Maybe I’ll use this day to just look over my paper and physically make corrections with a red pen. After that, I’ll take my son out to Galway Bay and Salthill Promenade for a bike ride and a mid-day romp at the beach. With any luck, the weather will be like it was today: sunny, light breeze, about 60 degrees…perfect. After that, I think I’ll treat myself to a marathon training run

I’m really on a roll with all these social issues posts lately, huh? I guess spring is a time of renewal, so it’s good to evaluate where you are in life and make positive changes. What are you going to do on Shutdown Day?

Here’s to Shutdown Day, in 4 more minutes…

Yesterday was a big day for social issues. So far I’ve asked you to join World Water Day events to support water awareness, boycott bottled water to fight climate change, and Bum Rush the Chartsto stick it to the recording industry and support indie record labels. Black Lab are great aren’t they?

The Financial Aid Podcast has just released the initial results of Bum Rush the Charts and they look promising. Black Lab’s Mine Again didn’t make the Top 100 on iTunes yesterday, but they certainly had an effect and hopefully caught the attention of the music industry. Finally, proceeds from the affiliate sales commissions plus an additional 50% match from Black Lab will be donated to ScholarshipPoints.com. If you’re a US college student, sign up for a chance to win a scholarship.

I’ve been listening to Black Lab and I really like ‘em. Thanks for letting me brag about making history!

Well, obviously I missed it. World Water Day was yesterday, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to participate.

In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated March 22 as “World Water Day” to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide.

According to the site, 1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water which makes it even easier for me to boycott bottled water. One billion people! This is truly sad. What’s even worse is how many of us spend $1.50 or more on the stuff because it’s convenient and an alternative to soda. I encourage all of you to boycott bottled water and start carrying around a Nalgene bottle or similar. If you must purify it, get a Brita filter pitcher and keep it the fridge.

As I mentioned just because World Water Day was yesterday, doesn’t mean you missed your chance to participate. There are plenty of water walks in the US this Saturday, 24 March (didn’t see any elswhere) or join the Virtual Water Walk. Finally, you can join me and boycott bottled water. I’ve kept my promise since the beginning of February, with just one exception and I’ve been reusing that plastic bottle since. Take the money you will save and give to others so they may have clean drinking water.

It’s bum rush the charts day:

If you believe in the power of new media, on March 22nd, 2007, take 99 cents and 2 minutes of your time to join the revolution and make iTunes “Mine Again”. If you’re a content producer (blogger, podcaster, etc.), we’re asking you to join up with us and help spread the word to your audience. Nothing would prove the power of new media more than showing corporate media that not only can we exceed their reach and match their purchasing power, but that we can also do it AND make a positive difference in the world. If we can succeed with this small example, then there’s no telling what can do next.

The track we’ve chosen is “Mine Again” by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on - and who they ignore at their peril.

Support independent artists with your wallet today (make sure to buy “Mine Again,” the first track on the album) I just bought mine and listening to it now. It’s a great track, so let’s make “Mine Again” number one on iTunes today.

Al Gore brought 500,000 messages with him as he testified before Congress yesterday on the threat of climate change, urging legislators to take action. Unfortunately this has become a political issue and it doesn’t help matters that Gore is identified with the Democrats. It is unbelievable that there are people out there like Republican Senator James Inhofe leading a defensive charge.

“It is my perspective that your global warming alarmist pronouncements are now and have always been filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements,” Mr. Inhofe said.

And this is the guy that is the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee?!

When will this stop being a political issue and start being a real threat that we can all discuss without taking sides. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to change the course of destruction of our world and parties are bickering over taxes and protectionism.

I can’t wait to get an Apple TV to go with my free iPhone. In case you haven’t heard, Apple TV is the latest gadget from the company that is available now. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ has been reviewing one for about 10 days and loves it. Is he on Apple’s payroll or what? According to Mossberg, the Apple TV runs a variant of OSX, Apple’s operating system found on its desktop and notebook computers. If you’re like me and have music, photos, TV shows and movies from the iTunes music store trapped on your computer(s) then Apple TV is just the thing you need for your spanking new widescreen TV.

Erin and I have to jump hoops and squint at our notebooks when either of us wants to watch the latest episode of LOST or The Office. The Apple TV device would allow us to grab this content off our MacBook and iBook and watch it on the living room TV. Apple TV also allows you to browse photos, share music and even download movie trailers from the comfort of your couch. Up to 5 computers can be connected to the Apple TV wirelessly and, like the iPod, is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, or Mac. One accessory I would definitely buy for this is Apple’s new Airport Extreme wireless router. This baby allows an external hard drive to be connected to act as a wireless storage device for your digital life. When you have 5000 songs and 6000 pictures, the local hard drive tends to get a little cramped. Now I just need to get that widescreen TV, damn…