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Global Games Jam Tipperary Institute Ireland

Last weekend saw one of the annual highlights for game developers around the world, yes I am referring to the 3rd annual ‘Global Games Jam.’

Once again this global event smashed it’s own record for the single largest games jam ever – 48 hours, 44 countries, 170 locations, 6500 participants, almost 1500 games, one weekend with just one theme.

Global Games Jam hosts Tipperary Institute, here in Thurles, rose to the challenge of organising and joining a game coding marathon for students, creating games, which were then viewed live by International gaming enthusiasts and gaming industry leaders.

Participants were here to make games – fast. It was part of the Global Game Jam, a worldwide event wherein developers, artists and musicians got together to make games in less than 48 hours with eating and sleep left optional.

Some 7,000 odd developers on Friday evening, across the world, worked creating computer games based on a common choosen theme ‘Extinction‘.

When presented with the theme, ‘Jammers’ set about brainstorming concepts, students pitched ideas to attract developers, artists and designers to join their team. Twenty two concepts in total were pitched and these were then honed down, strictly on merit, to just four ideas.

Games agreed and decided were titled ‘Petals’, ‘What We Do Now’, ‘Human Kind’ and ‘Petri Paridice’.

Mr Philip Bourke, the Course Coordinator for T I Development and Games Design stated: “This is as real as it gets, the sandbox nature of these projects, allow our students to experiment with development, design and gameplay in collaboration with their peers. The need to quickly and efficiently produce the code, art and audio assets for fun games in a fantastic way to develop innovation skills.”

Conor O’ Neill, one of the team that produced Petals, said: “This being my first jam, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I imagined it would be extremely challenging to get our ideas into a playable game in just 48 hours. We were delighted to find everyone so helpful in both Tipperary Institute.”

All games produced will be now be showcased later during the annual computer console game programming festival ‘Games Fleadh’ at Tipperary Institute in March next on 9th-10th.

Brendan Graham Tipperary Songwriter And Author

“When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.”

Lyrics by Brendan Graham

“You Raise Me Up,” first recorded by Secret Garden, featuring Brian Kennedy, has become one of the biggest selling songs in the history of popular music, with over three hundred recordings by some of the world’s biggest acts – Josh Groban, Westlife, IL Divo, Paul Potts, Celtic Woman, to name but a few, and has racked up sales of over 80 million copies. It has never been out of the charts somewhere in the world in the past eight years. It has also become one of the most successful songs of all time in sheet music sales, being continuously at No. 1 for the past seven years, in the USA’s Sheet Music Bestseller Charts, in four different categories: Pop, Adult Contemporary, Pop Choral and Downloads and it is the most downloaded song in sheet music format of all time.

All this said, few people in our county realise that the lyrics were written by county Tipperary man, Brendan Graham.

Brendan Graham, born in 1945 here in Nenagh, County Tipperary, was an Industrial Engineer by profession, before becoming a full-time songwriter, after being made redundant in 1993. He was also a former Irish Youth International basketball player, a student priest, a pig-boner in London and a recipient of Western Australia’s Lansing Bagnall State Award for business studies. Mr Graham now resides in County Mayo with his wife and five daughters.

Graham has composed two of Ireland’s winning entries in the Euro-vision Song Contest in the past: “Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids” which won in 1994, and “The Voice” the winner of the 1996 contest.

Brendan Graham, is also an Irish novelist and has published three novels, ‘The Whitest Flower‘ (London, Harper Collins, 1998), an Irish no. 2 best seller, ‘The Element of Fire‘ (Harper Collins, 2001) and ‘The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night‘ (Harper Collins, 2004).

Irish songwriter and founding member of The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO), Brendan Graham is officially included in an exclusive club with the world’s top songwriters, awarded “Million-Air ” status by the American Performing Rights Society, BMI. Only 3900 (0.06%) songs of the 6.5 million works, which BMI represent, have ever been awarded Million-Air certificates.

To be included in this exclusive roster, a song must have been broadcast over one million times on American radio. This definition equals at least 50,000 broadcast hours, or more than 5.7 years of continuous airplay. The songwriter joins previous ‘Million-Air’ recipients like song-writing legends John Lennon, Van Morrison, Enya, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Ben E King, Sting, Otis Redding and Roy Orbison.

Vedanta Friend Or Environmental Enemy Of Lisheen Mine

There have been calls for further investigation in to the Company which is set to take over Lisheen Mines, near Moyne, Thurles, Co Tipperary.
Ministerial approval is currently being sought by Anglo American and Hindustan Zinc Ltd, a division of the Indian mining conglomerate Vedanta Resources plc.for the transfer of the mining leases.

However, locals as well as some of the workers at the Lisheen mines have expressed grave concern about the companies previous operational behaviour, which, last Feburary 2010, was criticised by Amnesty International, for its safety and environmental record in India, as well as its treatment of indigenous people.

Indian owners of the Vedanta Resources Division, earlier last year, purchased the Tipperary zinc mine along with other bigger mines in South Africa and Namibia from previous owners Anglo American Zinc as part of a €1.34bn deal, latter which estimated Lisheen’s value at €242m. Vedanta won out in a bidding war with the Anglo-Swiss mining group Xstrata and China Metallurgical. However, London analysts are speculating that the FTSE listed Vedanta could seek to sell on Lisheen quickly, with one possible buyer being discussed, rival Xstrata which Verdanta outbid, which has a joint lead and zinc venture with Minco at Pallasgreen, on the border between counties Limerick and Tipperary.

A number of Lisheen’s 370 workers have aired genuine concerns regarding the eco-sensitive nature of the Lisheen Mines site.
Concerned workers state: “We would like it confirmed that our new owners have plans to protect the local environment, the life of this mine is finite and the plan is to continue mining here at Lisheen only until 2013, before we begin closure. Lisheen is presently one of Ireland’s most eco-sensitive mining sites”

The environmental fears of Lisheen workers have been aggravated by the Vedanta chairman, Anil Agarwal, who told reporters at a press conference in London recently that the company is looking at “debottlenecking” or removing obstacles that are presently preventing the mining process from being more efficient or workable, at the Anglo American Lisheen Zinc mine.

Amnesty International have claimed people living near the Lanjigarh refinery in Orissa breathed polluted air and were afraid to drink from or bathe in local rivers. Last year it called on Vedanta Resources not to expand the refinery or mine for bauxite nearby, before resolving the problems.

Kate Allen the UK Director of Amnesty International stated “People have a right to water and to a healthy environment but Vedanta has failed to respect these rights in Orissa”

The Church of England last February sold its shares in the blue-chip Indian mining company Vedanta, in protest over a controversial Indian bauxite mining project that activists say was destroying the livelihoods and spirituality of a mountain tribe. The officially established Christian Church in England said that it had sold £3.8m ($5.9m) of shares in Vedanta after a six-month dialogue with its management and a visit in the previous November by the church’s ethical investment advisers, to project sites in the east Indian state of Orissa.

There have been claims of homes being illegally seized in the Niyamgiri hills, without consent, while hired goons, police and other administration beat up those locals who protested.
A firm managing pensions for more than two million people in the Netherlands has sold its €13million (US$ 16million) stake in the mining conglomerate. The investment firm of PGGM made ‘intensive efforts‘ to engage with the British company Vedanta, over its plan to mine the sacred mountain of India’s Dongria Kondh tribe for aluminium ore. But according to PGGM, Vedanta refused to participate in a roundtable discussion on the issue.

Note: Vedanta has consistently rejected all allegations against it and the Vedanta offices in London and Bombay have yet to comment regarding the Lisheen workers concerns.

Tipperary Institute Students Register To Vote

Sometimes I wonder if all of the money spent on education is wasted, but actions taken by students yesterday and hopefully today, have allayed those fears.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) will take a visit to Leinster House today to officially launch their ‘Your Future, Your Vote‘ campaign.

The USI “Your Future, Your Vote” aims to allow the younger generation of Ireland to decide their own future and to make the politicians aware that students are registering to vote en masse.

USI President Gary Redmond stated the analogy and logic used by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union Address: “Ireland is spending billions of euro on educating young people before sending them abroad to compete against us. There are parents every single day of the week in the airports all over the country saying goodbye to their children.”

I would have been delighted to show you a piece of video from Dail Eireann, but no material was available.

USI are on the move

USI are encouraging all local students to register to vote, prior to the looming general election. They claim that for too long the younger generations of Irish society have been ignored, but now, it is time that politicians sat up and listened.

Young people in Ireland will shoulder years of crippling debt thanks to the mistakes of the current generation and they will not tolerate a single second more of lacklustre governance from Irish politicians.

They claim that on polling day, politicians in every corner of the country will realise that students are no longer a dormant force as thousands of young people descend on polling stations to decide the future direction of this country.

Yesterday the special tour bus took to the road and hundreds of students abandoned canteens, bars, lecture halls and libraries, in the Tipperary Institute in Thurles, in Carlow College, and in IT Carlow to registered to vote.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) is on the move, aiming to sign up 50,000 students to vote in the next fortnight and they are adamant students will have the power to influence change.

President of IT Carlow Students’ Union Kate Acheson stated yesterday: “We will not tolerate a single second more of lacklustre governance from Irish politicians. On polling day, politicians in every corner of this country will realise that students are no longer a dormant force in society.”

USI claim that they intend to meet all of the political parties in the coming days to ask them directly their future policies on college fees/ and grants.

What Benefits Birds Can Benefit Humans

What benefits birds, also benefits humans, as those of our readers here in Thurles and Co Tipperary, who supplemented their garden’s birds’ diet, during the recent unprecedented harsh weather, can attest. By feeding the birds in your area, there is an automatically important knock-on effect for the flower lover and organic gardener, as birds will quickly get used to searching for food in your garden and will simultaneously search for pests such as greenfly, caterpillars and snails, all the year round.

By the way this video was captured on the new Flip Video Camera. Latter fits into the palm of your hand, easily fits in your jeans pocket while letting you record high quality HD footage with the greatest of ease. The rectangular shaped camera is the size of a standard mobile phone and can captures 2 hours of HD video at a time, so is ideal for the local football match, the confirmation or the children’s birthday party. On the Flip Video camera front is a zoom lens and microphone, while the back contains a 1.5 inch viewing screen, plus four directional arrows, a delete and a play button. A USB plug flips out from its side allowing you to connect it directly to a computer or laptop USB port, without the hassle of attaching messy cables, thus allowing you to play your captured content immediately without rendering. As you can see from this video, this tiny camera delivers a remarkably high quality picture on a device that any unskilled individual can use. I find it especially good in situations like observing nature, as with the aid of a tripod, it allows me to get up close and personal without being intrusive. (This extraordinary HD Video Camera is also very affordable, at around €170 .)

Feed The Birds from George Willoughby on Vimeo.

After the glut of each years Summer and Autumn fruits have passed and when insects are diminishing, winter is most certainly the correct time to feed our local bird population, but when should we stop?

With regard to this question, there are possibly two schools of thought. Some says you should stop gradually, once winter is over and more natural foods become available. Other state that stopping suddenly increases stress to birds, when they are already under pressure both defending territories and building their nests. There is possibly some truth in both schools of thinking, but it is true that allowing blue tits to feed their very their young babies on peanuts is likely to cause their deaths, as very young Blue Tits can’t digest the nuts fed by their parents. You could however, switch to other foods during the period, perhaps hanging up a meat bone, left over from your main meal, which offers to the birds a high protein food. There will be plenty of natural food available in your garden in Summer, with greenfly, caterpillars and snails, of all sizes, in much abundance.

The different species of our birds life have different feeding habits. Hanging food is ideal for sparrows and members of the Tit family, using a peanut or seed dispenser as shown in this video attached.

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