Suggestion: http://blip.tv/file/get/Nharrison-MusicILike222.m4v (this work much faster for some reason)

So, over the past week, ive been listening to a vast array of musical talent. So as I lay / sit / stood (insert possible position), I found the following to hold much value to myself – for a vast variety of reasons. None the less, I thought I would share it;

“The past is behind us, what has been, now is gone, but right now is with us and we must carry on, but when regret closes in, I dont think what might of been, I think grace and I know whatever comes, he’ll make a way! This time, this is what counts, this is what our lives are about, this time..”

and..

“It’s the heart afraid of breaking, That never learns to dance, It’s the dream afraid of waking, That never takes the chance, It’s the one who won’t be taken, Who cannot seem to give, And the soul afraid of dying, That never learns to live..”

and…

“What the hell were we thinking, Were we thinking at all, What the hell did we believe we’d achieve, We stood there with our hearts exposed,  As the others said I told you so, What the hell, What the hell…”

and..

“Close your eyes and they’ll all be gone, They can scream and shout that they’ve been sold out, But it paid for the cloud that we’re dancing on. So shine on. Just shine on! With your smile just as bright as the sun. ’Cause they’re all just slaves to the gods they made, But you and I just shone. Just shone.”

So those are just a few for now that I have enjoyed.

Noel Harrison

So today I was sitting and thinking how much I love music, my first idea was to blog the lyrics – but that was not the ideal for me. So the solutions to this is to release an article “Music I Like” once a week with one of my favorite songs accompanied by a video / slide show of images from the week.

The first one can be seen below. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate them.

Noel Harrison

Hello Readers,

Just a quick notice, noelharrison.net will be having a new guest writer, Jonathan Wagener. He will be writing about PHP, MySQL and other programming technologies which are being used on the internet. He is a really close friend of mine and he has alot of knowledge in this field.

Jonathan and I intend on doing a PHP / technology based podcast series in the near future, so keep an eye out for that. I hope that you enjoy his writing and feel free to contact me if you feel you could be a positive contribution to this blog.

Kind Regards,

Noel Harrison

Just a quick notice, Simon Davo has asked to be a guest blogger on noelharrison.net. He will be writing small articles on Ireland in order to gain awareness for the country and its events. This will be published on a weekly basis.

We look forward to reading some new content on noelharrison.net and hopefully also learning something new about the beautiful country – Ireland.

Should anyone else be interested in taking up a guest writers role at noelharrison.net, please feel free to contact us by utilising the contact form on the contact page.

Regards,

Noel Harrison

I worked on two more images that were taken this evening near my house. I tried a few different things and here are the results. Please let me know what you think of them if you have a moment;

If you are looking for an article that will bash Windows, this is not the article you are looking for and also if you dont have much time, I can sum my experience of Windows with a single word – Wow! I am a very strong “follower” of Apple and have removed Windows and PC’s from my life in general. However, I was interested in seeing what all the talk about Windows 7 was about. A good friend of mine (he is sold of Windows) convinced me to install it as my main operating system on my designers computer, which I let him do.

Although it is still in Beta, it has proven to be brilliant in every aspect of the word. In general it has the same clean and dynamic looks as Vista, but it is better. They have added many minor tweaks which makes it easier to make use of. One of the issues for me at first was the ugly start bar, but now that I am using it, it aint ugly anymore. When you delve deeper you also realise how much work they have put into something as simple as the start bar.

An application when running is displayed in a small square along the start bar. When moused over, all the active open windows running with the program show in a small thumbnail above the icon. Also when mousing over, you will notice that it takes the most used color in the logo and makes it the highlighed icon color. See screenshot below;

The start menu is alot like Vista, but the main thing that is so wonderful about this one is that the shut down button is the first button – unlike Vista where you had to click and go into a small menu to shutdown. It is that kind of minor tweaking which makes it so much better in my opinion.

On a more intellectual note, Windows 7 is by far more stable than any other Windows OS that I have ever used (with Windows ME or Vista ranking as the worst). As far as software compatibility goes, Windows 7 runs like a charm. One of the huge put offs for me with Windows Vista was the fact that I could plug a memory stick in and it would not be able to locate the driver and therefore I could not use the memory stick. It was terrible, I could not use devices that I needed to do the work that I do.

The computer that I am running Windows 7 on was built to run Vista. It only had a gigabyte of ram and Vista was heavy on the system resources. Windows 7 on the otherhand starts quickly and runs fast in general and also shuts down very quickly in comparison to my experience with Vista on the machine.

They have built in many useful small things such as libraries. This makes it easy to share files with other Windows 7 users. The networking controls have been improved dramatically – one of those things that many Vista users hated about Vista.

In closing, it is the same beautiful look of Vista, but this time it is backed by the stability and speed of OSX. What do you think, have you tried it – what will you be willing to pay for it?

Noel Harrison

I thought that I would write about the statistics on my blog; how they are useful to me in a personal sense as well as in a business sense and what kind of information we collect from you as the user.

There are many great applications in order to collect this information, I personally use a system called AwStats – that is until I finnish developing my own personal system which I will be using on my clients websites (see my business at www.spinningyourweb.net).

In a personal way, it is useful to see what people are interested in reading – you are able to track what people searched for in order to find your blog, you are able to see where in the world the visits are coming from (for instance, this blog gets hits from – South Africa, United States, Argentina, Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia, France and Germany to name a few). It also collects information about when my users are on the blog and for how long they are reading my blog. It also tells me where the hits came from – eg. other blogs and search engines. It is a good way to see how well your networking with other sites is working (Networking? Things such as your URL, link or reference to your blog on other online locations).

From a business perspective, these features are very helpful. You are able to aim your websites content towards the audience that is visiting your website. As far as countries go, it helps you to be able to target the appropriate languages to the appropriate groups of people. In business, it is important to know how many different (unique) people view a website a month and for how long they stay on the website. This gives you an understanding of approximately how many people are reading how much.

Anyway, heres what my blog has had in the last year or so; Unique hits: 2641, Page Views: 15421 and Visits: 2614. This is very low in comparison to most large websites, but I have detected a increase in hits over the last few months, so im excited to see what the next year or so holds as far as blogging goes.

Noel Harrison

The following is the official response to the comment made by Rasool Snyman on the post “Hot Topic: Gaza/Israel – Published the 10th of January 2009″.

The original article can be viewed at the following URL’s:

1. http://sweetbru.com/2009/01/hot-topic-gaza-israel-noel-harrison/
2. http://www.noelharrison.net/archives/93

Hello Rasool,

Let me handle your questions that you asked in the previous post, then I will come to what I have to say about the long article that you attached;

I want you to know, that to me, what I am discussing here has nothing to do with the religion (however this could be a massive debate backing to ages ago, and of course you will have a conflicting view to me on this too) , I am not a Jew, Muslim or a Zionist. However I see that you are a member or some sort of affiliate and a sympathizer to the people of Palestine – seen in your Palestine Support Group and your pro-Palestine poetry, so of course you are going to do absolutely anything to defend anything that is done against Israel, where as myself, I am not a member of any pro this or that groups and I do not share a religion or faith with any of the groups. I have taken the time to look into the history and have identified that;

a.)Hamas has committed acts of terrorism
b.)Hamas has been classified and is internationally recognized as terrorist organization, and not only by America, but by many of the other countries in this world. So I think that you need to stop trying to say that Hamas is not a Terrorist organization
c.)Rasool (now I dont want you ducking from this question, its really important that the readers get an answer to this) What does your religious book say about the Infidel? Correct me if I am wrong – All followers of Allah have been commanded to to kill everyone who is not of your faith so they can have a place in heaven? Is that correct?
d.)Did you know, that according to International – INTERNATIONAL law, Israel is still within their boundaries legally.
e.)My answer to the apartheid question would be – different. One is done out of hate of a group of people, however, what Israel is doing is out of pure defense and out of pure protection for their people. I dont think that you would be vocal at all if this war was the other way around.

Answer these questions for me before you make any more statements;

1. Where were the protest marches all those years Hamas was firing rockets into Israel?
2. If you see a group of kids playing in the park… not harming anyone, would you be upset if someone constantly fired rockets at them, killing a few here and there?
3.If your neighbor was firing rockets into my back yard putting your children in danger, what would you do, would you just leave it because maybe only one or two of your children get hit and die?

As expressed by many readers, I feel sorry for those who die in the pursuit of peace, bu that it what happens very often in order to secure peace, you critiqued me on this point a while ago, but let me back it up;

When Hitler was disrupting peace and taking over masses of land and killing thousands and thousands of people, do you think the rest of the world should of said, well in order to make peace there we should do nothing and lets say, just let things work themselves out? I think not!

Now to the article, Rasool, I am sure that you will agree with me, that in every group of people, Jewish, Muslim and so on, you will have extremists and then you will have people who are not. This is probably written by one of those kinds of people.

This is how I see the situation in a step by step guide;

1. Israel has agreed to a peace treaty
2. Hamas breaks the peace treaty
3. Israel does nothing, but maybe warns Hamas
4. Hamas is not interested in the warnings, no they know what their objectives are – to see Israel destroyed! TO SEE ISRAEL DESTROYED!!!
5. So they continue firing their rockets, and Israel does nothing.
6. One day Israel thinks enough is enough, we need to deal with the treat and the constant fear that our people live in
7. They vow to attack until certain objectives are met
8. The rest of the world (well actually not, America does not) backs Palestine? Why did they not back Israel when Israel was being attacked

Rasool, stop trying to debate the fact that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, they have been declare one, and in fact that is a generally agreed upon things – Hamas is a terrorist organisation

It is so clear that you are a Palestine Supporter and therefore, of course you will not be willing to see any fault on the behalf of Hamas. Your opinion and your understanding of the situation seems to overshadow anything that has happened to Israel, and you continue to ignore certain select statements and questions I have made. I want to answers to those questions, I answered your, now you answer mine.

Noel Harrison

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