There seems to have been an awful lot of downtime here at EU lately (including most of today!). I am monitoring this and will move hosts if I have to to combat this should it recur. My hosts assure me, for the 3rd or 4th time, that they've found the source of the problem and corrected it (this time it was too much server load). Hopefully normal service will now have resumed, but I'll keep an eye on it. In the mean time I'm sorry for the hassle.

Update: I've moved the site to a new host. If you're reading this your ISP's DNS records have already updated, i.e. your ISP knows the site has moved (unfortunately as of an hour ago my own hadn't). The rest of the interwebs should catch up over the next 48 hours or so and normal service will then resume.

It's one of those times when life comes between me and my internet so I'll not be blogging for about a week or so; be good while I'm away!

I'm sure it didn't take anyone long to notice the tweaks made to Everything Ulster over the weekend. The blog software was updated to a new version with lots of funky new features, most of which will make life easier for me rather than affect the front-end too much (though the green links should be easier to distinguish from the black text than the navy ones were).

The upgrade would have meant a major re-work of the previous skin, so instead I decided to start from scratch a default skin and build a new one around that. There may be one or two finishing touches to come, but hopefully you're looking at a relatively finished product.

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Sorry I haven't had a chance to post too much; over the weekend I've been dosed with a severe bout of Manflu and as such, have been fending off the reaper with a combination of max-strength lemsip-like concoctions, hot soup, a duvet, and umpteen hankies.

Glad to say I'm feeling better now though and should be back to 100% soon. Sadly, having wished to no avail that I could only find the energy to open my laptop over the weekend to blog some things, now that I'm feeling up to it there's nothing that interesting to talk about.

There is one thing I should remark upon though. I've been looking to add a bit of variety to the contributions to this site for a while now and to that end, as the more observant of you will have noticed, Michael Shilliday (of Slugger and formerly Young Unionists blog fame) is now blogging here at Everything Ulster so I can now formally bid him welcome. I'm sure his more detailed knowledge of the nuances of political life here will be no small help in continuing to highlight some of the more interesting issues that may fly under the radar of the mainstream media.

While I recently mentioned that Everything Ulster had hit the big time, it came as something of a surprise to find that the site has been nominated for Best Political Blog in the 2008 Irish Blog Awards.

Being up against the likes of Slugger O'Toole, the Mac Daddy of Northern Irish (and probably Irish) blogs, the odds of actually winning are about equivalent to those on Limavady Utd. winning the premier league this year, but it's an honour just to make the long-list, so thanks to whoever saw fit to nominate this little site of mine.

The Irish Blog Awards 'ceremony' will take place on 1st March at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin.

You know your successful when you start getting hate mail. It's a shame it's so piss-poor, but baby steps and all that.

While I've had messages sent from this site before, this is the first one filled with quite such obvious (and entertaining) rage.

Hello Beano...I have to admit that you sound claver enough but your an asshole! Northern Ireland is not britain or the united kingdom or great britain or wathever other little silly names you people use, its NORTHERN IRELAND emphasis on IRELAND because it is Irish soil after all. If u dont like how OUR country is run then leave simple as....You and your cronnies need to start waking up to the fact that you live in Ireland or as i like to call it Eire and if you want to be British then do us a favour and go to Britain!!!
nikki****@yahoo.co.uk

"Go to Britain!!!" Why didn't I think of that before!?

Where do you start?

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It would be hard not to notice that posting at EU have tailed off somewhat in the recent couple of months. I went on holiday for three weeks at the end of July/start of August and went straight into a new job on my return so sadly time has been a scarce commodity. Add to this the fact that I've had no motivation whatsoever to write and it quickly becomes clear that something's going to have to change.

It's not like there haven't been things to talk about either.

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When even the shared symbol of the Red Hand upsets at least one bigot, is it any wonder we get divided over terminology?

There seems to be some disagreement over what exactly constitutes Ulster and when it is and isn't appropriate to use the term. Indeed when I first mentioned this site (actually the gift shop) to a friend, she immediately declared that I'd "only get uber-loyalists" (or words to that effect), to which I initial reaction was "Why?"

Unionists tend to use the term Ulster to refer to Northern Ireland, either as a convenient short-form, or to highlight a certain continuity of identity that goes back to pre-partition (at the same time, perhaps, implying that Ulster lost Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal in 1921). The reason from my own point of view, and the reason that impacted the naming of this site, is simply convenience. Ulster is quicker to write and rolls of the tongue more easily than the quadricyllabic "Northern Ireland" - a fact backed up by the popularity of songs like "Stand up for the Ulstermen" and "Ulster 'til I die" with sports fans, which would sound distinctly worse had there been attempts to squash 4 cyllables into a space intended for 2. Let's face it, there aren't too many songs that include the words "Manchester United."

This map shows Northern Ireland and the "occupied three counties" which, depending on context, may or may not be under discussion when someone uses the term Ulster

When nationalists use the term, howeer, they tend to mean the 9 county province, the boundaries of which were set in the 16th century (by an English-based government!) to make it easier to administer Ireland under the crown. It's this definition which is also usually inferred when sports that are organised on an all-Ireland basis refer to the "Ulster branch."

Unlike Ireland, (an island; a geographical feature) whose bounds are obvious, ie the sea, Ulster has for centuries been a cultural/political entity, the boundaries of which have shifted several times. In fact, the area now known as Cavan was traditionally part of a Kingdom called Breifne (Breifne O'Reilly to be precise) which was part of Connacht. When Elizabeth I created Counties Cavan and Leitrim from Breifne in the 16th century, the northern county was gifted to Ulster (as a reward for loyalty IIRC).

Often, nationalists (particularly the more easily-amused republicans - usually the same ones who, without a hint of irony, do their best to associate Ireland and Irishness with the symbolism of the southern State) insist on "correcting" references to Ulster when the term is used to mean Northern Ireland. I could point out a few of the more simple-minded comments from EU's own archives as proof of this. However, it's worth remembering that Ulster has no fixed definition, in either British or Irish law. With no legal status, therefore, and no one agreed meaning, there is no single "correct" usage.

My final point on the matter is this. EverythingUlster is my site and I'll call it whatever the hell I want

I've upgraded the blogging software (a couple of hours on Wednesday night and some more time on Thursday) resulting in a few changes.

1. Captcha's gone
   
   The anti-spam security code isn't required anymore. The upgrade is supposedly much better at fighting spam, so we'll see how it goes.


2. Hot Topics
   
   Recent Posts has been replaced by "Hot Topics" which will show the most recently commented on stories, rather than the most recently posted. Probably not that useful given the Last Comments menu option, but the plugin for Recent Posts seems a little messed up so until I've time to hack it myself this will have to do.


3. Layout Fix
   
   I've also fixed my skin so it should now work in all versions of IE6 and not just the one installed with Windows XP Service Pack 2. The middle column should now also reach it's full width, no matter how wide you make the window.


4. Date Issues
   
   Unfortunately my nice long dates (1st September 2006) don't work anymore, being replaced with simple dd/mm/yy ones. Something else to work on... some day... maybe.


5. Email Users
   
   Wherever you come across you can email the author of that post or comment through a mail form (you can disable this when commenting if you wish).

As ever, any and all feedback on the changes and/or site design is welcome.

It was brought to my attention today that non-members have recently been unable to comment here at EU due to a problem displaying the anti-spam authorisation code. At the moment I'm blaming my webhost, however in the mean time I've removed the need to enter any code so non-members can comment again and I'll just have to be on the lookout for spam until I get round to upgrading to the new version of b2evo. Sorry about the problems folks; please bare with us until normal service is resumed.