Alan (stayed) in Belfast ... and didn’t win any awards!

Unable to get down to Dublin for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards, I did a quick Google blog search and discovered Conn’s post pointing to a live video feed from the Alexander Hotel in Dublin.

Edgecast.ie’s Ustream live feed was somewhat at the mercy of the hotel ballroom’s Ethernet connection. Not the most stable piece or performant piece of wet string in the island! (Though Ethernet did triumph over the 3G experiment mid-way through!) Big thanks to Conn Ó Muíneacháin for persevering with the live feed all night.

The audio pretty much dropped out for the middle section of the awards … so I had to rely on other means of making sure I hadn’t won the Best News & Current Affairs Blog category! So fall back was Lex Ferenda’s live blogging (across a total of three posts which were sporadically updated throughout the night) and a couple of twitter feeds – @jdrumgoole and @patphelan. Thanks guys for keeping us all up to date.

Frankly, although nice to be short-listed, it would have been embarrassing (and impossible) to win given that AiB is really quite random in what it covers, and would be locally put to shame by blogs like Slugger O’Toole ... which might have cleaned up this category had it not ranked higher in the short-listing for the Political Blog category and left to fight it out with its eventual winner Irish Election. In the end, Best News & Current Affairs was a tie between The Limerick Blogger and Maman Poulet. Well done to both.

Maybe next year, blogs should be limited to two or three categories, rather than this year’s best placed category + best blog + best post constraints.

Good to see a few new names picking up category awards tonight. Loved the moment when Robin Blandford’s mother picked up his award when ByteSurgery won the Best Irish Technology Blog category – Robin was working in Singapore (watching the edgecast.ie feed).

I don’t think any Northern Ireland bloggers weren't that successful tonight – Grannymar and Sharon from The Voyage were was the exceptions – and they've rarely picked up awards in the past. Which is disappointing given the quality of some of the entrants - The Asylum and Slugger O’Toole would have been worthy winners.

Ex-Belfast flâneur Jett Loe did get a special mention in the specially-invented “shafted category” ... though his absence – he left Belfast for Nashville a few months ago – seemed to surprise the hosts! (“Shafted”: since although present at the last two year’s award ceremonies with MP3 recorder in hand to record the event for Letter to America, he never managed to win any of the many categories LTA was nominated for. And by not being present tonight when he actually won a special award, he’s missed out again.)

Certainly a valuable annual boost to the confidence of the Irish blogging community – and no mean feat for Damien Mulley to pull off on such a scale.

The other technical excitement this evening was watching the status of my wife’s connecting flight from New York/Newark to Washington DC/Dulles. Continental’s flight tracking is second to none, with quite detailed and minute-by-minute explanations of ground movements and progress. But tonight’s CO1279 is ...

Status: Delayed - Awaiting arrival of crew

Update - And now ...

Status: Departed Gate Late, taxiing to runway (Delayed - Awaiting arrival of crew)

(Trophy photo above via goodonpaper / Andy McMillan's Flickr.)

Update - Mon 3 Mar - Apparently northern bloggers have been gurning ...