There's been something of a drought of activity here on EU over the last 6 weeks. I can only apologise but sadly other commitments make it very difficult for me to find both the time and the connectivity to post, so it may not be rectified in the immediate future.

I'll just take this opportunity to thank everyone who's still reading and I'll do my best to get some more content posted soon.

You will notice that both threads highlighted by me here are written by "Adelante". The last 8 and 16 of the last 20 threads on Balrog are written by this individual. Chris Gaskin today notes:

I have noticed the site slip in quality this last while and I intend to rectify that.

It seems that I haven't been the only one to notice Adelante's provo bigotry.

Balrog doesn't get any better
.

Celtic fans are not, never were and never will be sectarian.

Really?

Nuff said really.

Wasting taxes with a smile.

This is a general plea for comments/tips/complaints on the layout of Everything Ulster and how you (yes, you!) use the site.

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Slugger O'Toole is running an award for political bloggers and the nominations (votes?) are flying in. Mick's done a brief recap of some of the early nominees (yes, I am there somehow ) which serves as a useful reminder of just what Northern Irish blogs are out there.

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A couple of posts at Slugger have witnessed criticism for going off topic in the comments zone. This in itself is not an altogether irregular occurrence, but something about it got me thinking.

Slugger is a great source of news and views on Northern Ireland (and a bit further afield) but I wonder if it's sheer volume of posts, something that no doubt keeps readers interested and gives them an incentive to regularly check the site, is partially to blame for the poor quality and/or off-topicness of many of the comments. Don't get me wrong, some of them are truly informative, but the majority are either rehashes of old arguments or petty tribal/party point-scoring.

Going Off-Topic

The two threads in question are by Mark McGregor and Pete Baker. Mark highlights upcoming protests from socialist, republican microgroup Eirigi while Pete warns that there are actually folk out there who seriously want creationism taught as a scientific "theory".

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Following a meeting of the Alliance assembly group, David Ford has acted to quash any speculation that the Alliance will help dig the Sinn Fein/DUP-dominated Executive out of a hole by nominating an MLA to take a devolved Policing and Justice ministry.

Since Sinn Fein and the DUP will refrain from nominating themselves, apparently as some sort of agreement of a safeguard/mutual veto, I wonder what would happen if neither the SDLP nor UUP were prepared to step up and/or carry the can. And is this "deal" the reason for the executive not meeting?

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Maybe the age of internet development ended with google. Google are great. Their products are great (mostly). Their search engine is great. You want information, it gets you information, quickly and efficiently.

Cuil doesn't. It throws a mash of stuff at you and says "there - you sort through it, I'm off for a smoke". I don't like that in a search engine.

I particularly dislike the photos the put next to results. They usually have no bearing on the page it's appended to. Look at the results for a search on the UUP. Ulster Unionist Party leadership election 2004 on Wikipedia has a picture of Leslie Cree. Whose involvement stretched to voting in that election. Next to United Ulster Unionist Party is the banner from the top of Leslie's website. BBC results from the 2005 Westminster election in North Down? A picture of council candidate Kenny Donaldson. He stood in Warrenpoint. Best of all UUP leadership election 2005 is illustrated with a picture of a girl holding up a necklace with a cross on it.

Cuil - just not worth the effort.

What is the point in Knol (http://knol.google.com/k/knol)? This, to me, isn't a rival to Wikipedia, it's a different format for something Google already does. It's a blog. Yes it's a centralised blog with a more focused purpose, but it's a blog.

I don't think it'll work.