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Skycon, hosted by Skynet - the computer society at the University of Limerick. I saw a notice for this event today - first time I’d seen it, and there isn’t much on the blog circuit about it so far. This is looking like an excellent conference, with a wide range of local and not-so-local speakers, as well as some fascinating organisational methods (inviting back the founders of the society to talk about their subsequent careers, five-minute ‘lightning talks’ at the end of the day on any topic of your choice!) The email even mentions that Richard Stallman of FSF (and other) fame has confirmed his attendance.

If you blog on a relevant topic (that being Irish techyness or otherwise), please help to promote this event. The participation fee is €40 and Limerick isn’t hard to get to, especially with the 16-departures-a-day new train timetable coming into force next week.

(For those with an interest in computers and law, note also that Simon McGarr and Ciarán O’Riordan are both down to speak).

Finally, lots of fun to be had in Dublin this weekend at the Young Scientist exhibition, including a promised 3D display on ‘what happens to an email’ that was pictured on the Irish Times today. Open Thursday to Saturday. I should be there, for the first time in years; I participated five times in a row (a record in my school that has for some strange reason not been broken since I left!) as a teenager.

Taoiseach* Bertie Ahern gave a nice speech yesterday to mark the launch of the Statute Law Revision Bill 2007 - the centrepiece of a major project of the Attorney General’s office. The Bill repeals literally thousands of laws from the pre-independence period, including Irish and English laws spreach across 800 years§ of law/oppression/good government/imperial joy/delete as appropriate. Long overdue, and also a fascinating project. When I checked in on it last year, I noticed a few interesting English legal landmarks, such as the Bill of Rights, on the list of statutes being ‘repealed’ (in reality, most have been updated and replaced with better provisions, so it’s not as bad as it sounds!)

I wanted to throw a few examples up here, but guess what? The page and set of links on attorneygeneral.ie has hardly any working links - multiple Word documents (bad points for accessibility, incidentally) but virtually none of them actually available. The Oireachtas (parliament) website doesn’t even have a copy of the Bill. You would think that after going to the effort of running the project and launching the Bill at a nice press conference, the techies could make sure that the relevant text was available. You would think.

Update 11/1: the project team left a nice note on this post, which you can see under comments - fair dues to them for the quick response, and for fixing the problem with broken links. They all work now. They rightly point out that I should have emailed them with a description of the problem, and I hold my hands up there - mea culpa, I did intend to but got distracted.

Over in the UK, the Cabinet Office announces that hundreds of websites are to be closed or consolidated - repealed, if you will! They note a trend towards ’supersites’ (seven years ago, we would have said portals, but most people saying that lost their shirts in the crash, I suspect!) which I’m not convinced is entirely accurate. The announcement came as part of the launch of the (terribly titled) ‘Transformational Government‘ report. Maybe the authors could tell the AG’s office how important it is to check your links?

* Pronounced ‘tea shock’. It’s what happens when you don’t get your daily cup of chai. (Actually, Irish prime minister, but my version is better)
§ All together now. Eight hundred years. EIGHT HUNDRED YEEEAAARSSS..

Excuse the slight silence. I was on the road - travelling to Brussels and back by surface transport (DART, high-speed ship, Pendolino train, Tube, Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel and finally local Metro, return by Metro, Eurostar, local bus, long-distance coach and slow ship), attending meetings, wandering around London and then starting a new term here in TCD just this week.

Hi.