Well…the blog love is thick around here! I’ve gotten a great response since I posted Everyone’s a (blog) critic. I just received a nice shout-out from my fellow American blogger/postgraduate/actress Macoosh today. This is her response to my post about her a while back.

Macoosh is an ultra-prolific blogger living and studying in Dublin. I was scanning through some of her older posts and there’s some pretty deep stuff, some LOST spoilers, and some good laughs with her camera on eyebrows and writing. I can definitely relate to the latter with my gasoline tax research in full swing.

The header image is great with the failte (welcome) sign and the sheep. It really captures some good bits of Ireland. Macoosh’s blog is much like mine in that we both write about our studies abroad in Ireland as postgraduates and everyday things we encounter. Her specialty topic is LOST, as I mentioned. I think she’s addicted to the show. I must say, I’ve recently caught up to be current with the new season and I am really liking it as well. Her writing style is very free-spirited and off-the-cuff. Reflection of a Dream, or as most people refer to it, A chuisle mo chroí… is just that, “the pulse of her heart.” She writes what she feels.

Keep up the great work, Macoosh!

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A man with the self-applied title of “dot com mogul,” that’s John Chow. I’ve been reading John Chow dot com since about last October when I saw one of his posts featured on the social news site, digg. I’m writing this article because of this link back blog review program John is offering. If I review his blog, he will give my blog a link-back. Not a bad deal considering he ranked 3,881st based on traffic according to alexa.com.

John is undoubtedly an Internet marketing genius. He has a a big network of technology sites, most prominently The Tech Zone, a computer hardware review site and essentially one giant affiliate marketing site. John decided to make better use of his domain name about a year ago and start a blog about his miscellaneous ramblings, much like myself. He writes about his passion for fast cars (something I’m very much against), technology, and most recently, making money by blogging. Around last September, John decided to conduct an experiment using his blog as a case study and grow a user base while continuing to write about his personal interests as well as search engine optimization (SEO), Google Adwords advertising, and affiliate marketing programs such as amazon.com. He has gone from $0 in revenue in September to over $7000 in monthly revenue in February. Not bad for maintaining a blog for just an hour or two per day, as he claims. John offers loads of useful tips for blogging entrepreneurs such as driving traffic to your blog, writing good content that maintains the reader’s interest and encourages comments, and the use of full-feed RSS to encourage news hounds like myself to subscribe and stick around.

My two biggest complaints about John Chow dot com are the barrage of comment spammers that hover around the site and the amount of paid review posts that appear, though John has discussed this problem of balance and tries to mix these paid posts equally amongst regular content. However, the paid posts are usually very honest and not purely a gush of love to the site being reviewed. John’s grammar is choppy, as non-native English speaker, but this is one of the things that gives his blog a voice and character. After all, isn’t that why we read blogs? John’s blog has managed to become one of the top in just 6 months. I don’t aim to be the top, I just want to have a voice in a niche market, like beer in Ireland or gasoline taxes. Thanks to John, I can find that niche.

I presented my research to the other Higher Diploma students yesterday and it was well received. To prepare for my presentation. I used Apple’s Keynote, part of the iWork ‘06 office package. I must say I was very impressed how easy it was to put together a professional presentation. It was a joy to use as compared to Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. As with most Apple products, Keynote was very intuitive and has several built in templates to choose from based on your audience. You can make it look fun or professional, or somewhere in between. The slide transition effects Apple borrowed from OS X are very impressive, but my favorite effect is the reflective picture. If you use iTunes, you know what I’m talking about…how the album artwork appears to be resting on a glossy black table with its reflection in front. It is very easy to add a tables, graphs, pictures, music, videos and even websites.

The presentation view is pretty slick as well. It allows you to see a clock, your elapsed time and your notes on your MacBook, while your audience can only see the appropriate slide. The software is well worth it just for Keynote, but it also includes Pages, Apple’s meager attempt at a word processor. I anticipate the next iteration of iWork (perhaps ‘07?) should have more advanced spreadsheet functions and Apple users may be able to dump Microsoft once and for all. Until then, I still use Excel as well as OpenOffice.org for the word processor and spreadsheet functions.

The downside to my presentation was partly due to Apple’s decision to make a different display adapter for the MacBook than what was used on the iBook G4. When I got to the presentation room, I had my old iBook VGA adapter and to my shock and horror, when I plugged in the cord to my MacBook, it did not fit. Damn you, Apple. That’s like making a new iPod that doesn’t function with all of the old accessories and cables. Oh wait, they did that with the new Shuffle as well. Fortunately, Keynote has the ability to export to PowerPoint, so I just dumped that file on a USB key and used the instructor’s notebook for the presentation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the snazzy features of Keynote.

I digress. Despite these problems the presentation went on without any problems. I outlined my paper and proposed direction, got some great feedback from my fellow students and instructors. The idea of presenting a paper while you are working on it is very new to me as an American student. I did something similar last semester and I had my doubts about this practice, but once I presented my topic in front of my peers, I was sold on the idea. By presenting the research during the research, I am able to look at my topic in a whole new light and focus on areas that may not have been entirely obvious. For example, my instructor suggested that I not only look at the economic impact of gasoline taxes, but to also look at the political discourse. Furthermore, he suggested separating these into a few sections and examining opposing views. The class feedback was useful and I also learned a valuable lesson to not trust adapters!

What do you get when you cross Miss Marple, Bad Boys II and Shaun of the Dead? A brilliant side-splitting comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Hot Fuzz is the latest project from Pegg and Edgar Wright with a big cast, loads of great one-liners and non-stop craic.

For the first time since last August I got to see a movie before anyone in the US! Usually big blockbuster films are not released until a few months after the US opening date. Hot Fuzz was released last week on February 14 and will not make it to US cineplexes until April 20 and the Aussies will be able to catch it on March 15. You must see this movie opening night so mark you calendars! If you saw Shaun of the Dead then you’ll love Hot Fuzz. Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is a highly regarded police officer in London that is transferred to a small village in the English country for making all the other cops in The City look bad. He is made sergeant of the local police service and his law enforcement expertise is seemingly wasted on this safe, quiet little community. Danny Butterman (Frost) is the lumpy son of the police inspector that followed his father into a life of police work and who’s idea of crime fighting comes from his favorite cop movies, Bad Boys II and Point Break. The most action Danny has seen is sitting on a stool at the local pub. You can only imagine what happens from here when you put these two unlikely characters together. Hot Fuzz has a great cast with some big, and unlikely, stars such as Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent and Timothy Dalton.

I went to the cinema on student night with a big group of friends for only €4 and it was easily worth the admission. We were certainly the loudest with our gut-busting laughter and this one is a must see with the craziest of your mates. You can’t help but love the slapstick gore and violence for which Pegg and Frost are known. I give Hot Fuzz 4.5 out of 5 stars. So if you’re in Ireland or the UK check it out this weekend, otherwise here’s a quick trailer for the rest of you. Enjoy!

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So I was surfing around on MyBlogLog.com communities and I came across A chuisle mo chroí… at
http://reflectionofadream.blogspot.com/

Macoosh, as the blogger is so affectionately named, is in a similar situation as me. She is:

• an American
• a postgraduate student (at University College Dublin)
• living in Ireland (duh, see previous item)
• a blogger

Macoosh’s blog is a peek into the life of a self-adopted Dubliner who studies film, reviews the latest episodes of LOST, writes inspired poetry. She has some real gems posted you just have to go lurking around her archives. It would be nice to see some kind of ‘Popular Posts’ feature, something I plan to do here soon once I have some solid Google Analytics numbers.

Most of all, it’s nice to see someone out there that is crazy like me and packed up their previous life to embark on a 2 year chapter in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, Ireland. At least Macoosh has some Boston-Irish blood, my surname is Britton for cryin’ out loud! I will leave you to read what I think is the most inspired post, one of her first.

While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to her feed. Erin Go Bragh!