Monday, April 30, 2012

Reaching 1,000,000 Learners through @youtube

A great start to Monday for my YouTube Partner Channel - Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin which sometime earlier this morning passed the 1,000,000 views mark. Though I have been anticipating this for several weeks now it is still a bit of a (brilliant) shock to have reached this magic number. 

Image source: Wikipedia.
Thank you so much to all my viewers and to the 1,087 subscribers to the channel. Learners have been brilliant at adding comments and likes, as well as watching and sharing the videos. As an educator it feels wonderful to have reached so many learners through the YouTube medium when I could not possibly do the same in the classroom. Mine is still the only Irish YouTube Partner in the Lifelong Learning section of YouTube EDU. It's difficult to make out, but as far as I can see there is only one other Irish Partner channel (Trinity College) in all of YouTube EDU.

What surprises me is that when I set up this channel had no real plan - I just uploaded a few videos that I felt my own students needed. They are mostly based on content I use in my own classes - but there is no syllabus. I hope to build it up some more by adding more videos and possibly adding new playlists.

Throughout this week I will publish some of the statistics available through YouTube Analytics about which videos are most popular and where the channel viewers are coming from. It make for interesting reading.

I feel really humbled this morning. 

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Wicklow 2-16 Fermanagh 1-11


Today was a special day for Wicklow natives, as the county's GAA team took on Fermanagh in the Allianz National League Division 4 final. The game was played in an almost empty (and very cold) Croke Park where about 7,500 watched this game and the Division 3 decider between Wexford and Longford. I decided to watch both games and wore my "Wickla" jersey, but also had a Wexford scarf to show divided loyalties - the townland of Ballingate where I grew up is the last one in Wicklow before entering Wexford on the Carnew to Bunclody road.

It was strange to be doing this...

...though I was reared in Wicklow I have lived in Dublin since 1978. Any time anyone asks me where I am from I say "Carnew, Co Wicklow" - and have the county's GAA jersey to prove it. I took the train to Croke Park and passed thousands of rugby fans attending the Ulster vs Edinburgh match in the Aviva Stadium - the biggest game in Dublin this weekend.

Wicklow were worthy winners, though for the first few minutes at the start they were outplayed. But once we took the lead with a Seánie Furlong goal, Wicklow were never really in any danger of losing as a poor Fermanagh side could not break down Wicklow's defence or cope with Furlong.


75,000 free spaces!

In the second game - it was a "game of two halves". Longford raced into a huge 1-10 to 0-3 lead by half time and looked to have the measure of an extremely poor Wexford effort. The second half was a bit different as Longford could only manage two points while Wexford dominated. Five more minutes and Wexford would surely have won.

A great day's football, and a day for Wicklow people to feel proud. Former Wicklow GAA County Secretary (and my Grandfather) PJ O'Loughlin would have loved this!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Greeks Fight Back - "I am Hellene" by Katerina Moutsatsou

The Irish Independent reports today about a Greek actress (Katerina Moutsatsou) who "has produced a video hitting back at the blame and recriminations her country has suffered in the debt crisis". It's very patriotic stuff, and the Independent reports that this video has "gone viral" (it has over 1,000,000 views as I write) and that Moutsatsou has "set social networks on fire". Watch and see for yourself - brilliant stuff!



I wonder if an Irish actress could do the same for us? Can you imagine Saoirse Ronan doing the same? Ireland of the Saints and Scholars, poets, writers, theatre, we built America (along with a lot of others) - and all that stuff.

It's time we Irish took a lead from ballsy Greeks like Moutsatsou and show the world what we can do.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Happy 7th Birthday YouTube!

Yesterday was the 7th anniversary of the posting of the first video to YouTube. It was called "Me at the zoo" and was uploaded at 8:27pm on Saturday April 23rd, 2005. The video was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo. It is just 19 seconds long and is only notable since it was the first video on YouTube.


Here are some interesting statistics from YouTube (these and more here):
  • 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
  • Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day
  • In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views, or almost 140 views for every person on Earth
  • Created in 2007, we now have 30,000+ partners from 27 countries around the world
  • 500 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook, and over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute
  • 100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc.) every week
So Happy Birthday YouTube! You have made a difference to peoples lives by entertaining and educating so many people.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Great Week for YouTube Channel

A couple of noteworthy milestones last week occurred with my Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin YouTube Channel. For the first time ever the channel had more than 3,000 views for four days in a row, with Wednesday the 18th April recording my highest ever number of views at 3,728 in a single day. It was also the highest ever weekly total at 19,719 views. Also - my most popular video How To...Create a Basic Gantt Chart in Excel 2010, passed the 100,000 views mark. The pattern of viewing shows significant increase in views during April and May each year. It will fall off a bit in June and the summer months before rising again in September.

YouTube Analytics for last week.
I am getting excited at the prospect of passing the 1,000,000 views in total for the channel - it is at 978,821 as I write this post. At the current rate of viewing, the million mark should be passed next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Ideal Home Exhibition

Today we headed into the Ideal Homes Exhibition. We are looking to do some redecorating in our house and were looking for some ideas. The first shock was the €14 charge each - on top of the €6 parking fee we had spent €34 before we set foot inside the RDS. It is only later that I discovered that I could have attended free yesterday, or got a 2 for 1 deal today if I had registered on-line.

Image copied from idealhomes.ie.
Another shock for me was the lack of electronics - no TV or technology exhibitors. This made for a very uninteresting tour around the exhibition. Insulation was big, with several exhibitors with interesting ideas for "saving" money by insulating your home. Recently we had a quote of nearly €20,000 to insulate our house with outside insulation - the salesman estimated that it will have paid for itself in 15 years! There were also lots of make up stands and food exhibitors. While the exhibition was very busy, it took us just over one hour to see everything. We did ask the Styra Attic stairs man to call to our house - I think it's definitely time that we replaced my home-made attic door with something better.

Overall - the exhibition was a dreadful bore, and a complete waste of €34. Stopping for a pint on the way home saved the day.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

How To... Create a Resource Histogram in Excel 2010

This week I made a short video on how to create a resource histogram in Excel. Nothing unusual about this video except that I recorded it about a hour before students in a IT Project Management tutorial were about to take on the task of creating a resource histogram. Weekly tutorials for this class are marked and the work must be done during the one-hour session. It's a bit like an open book test. This works wonders for attendance! At a guess there is 90% plus attendance (85 students) at every tutorial - the 0900 lecture (which is not marked) the next day is a bit different, in this week's class it started out with just 13 students.

Helping students out in a tutorial can be hard work in a full computer lab. I usually go over the subject of each tutorial in the previous lecture, but since the majority of the class do not go to the lecture I often found myself explaining things again in the tutorial to those who were absent (and who also don't read the notes beforehand). So a short video is a good way to explain the work to be done. I see many students starting the tutorial by watching my video. Many pause and rewind as they complete the tutorial task at the same time.

While it is annoying that so many students choose not to come to my class, I can be satisfied that they learn a lot in the tutorial. My sense of it is that students like having weekly tutorials that are marked instead of assignments or projects, I will be conducting a survey to check out their attitudes to both the module and the method of assessment at the end of the semester.


Friday, April 20, 2012

Getting the most out of Linkedin


Today I attended a Lunchtime Seminar given by Declan Fitzgerald on "Getting the most out of Linkedin". I have been on Linkedin for some time now with 275 connections and 24,854 in my network since April 16th last. Click on the blue "in" button to the right to connect with me. Declan is CEO of Recruitovate, a new HR technology consultancy company, previous to this he worked for Linkedin. The well attended seminar got to learn about how Linkedin is used in the recruitment business, with some clever use of searches to find the people that you need. Declan also told us about the power of Groups on Linkedin, though he warns that managing groups takes up a lot of time. There was also some insight into how Linkedin makes money through advertising and charging for access. 

This seminar was a fascinating insight into how Linkedin works and how powerful it can be. Declan used the term "personas" to describe how people can be categorized - eg Eugene the Lecturer, Eugene the blogger, or Eugene the biker. Linkedin are looking at how best they can use this network of millions of professionals to both make more money and add new ways for people to connect.


Thursday, April 19, 2012

Book review - "The Reluctant Taoiseach" by David McCullagh

I have to confess I knew very little about former Taoiseach John A. Costello before I read this new biography by David McCullagh (he of RTÉ fame). The book was a birthday present last October and it has taken me several months to read. Since starting it I interrupted it by reading three other books (including biographies of Steve Jobs and Galileo) - this will tell you a little bit about this book.

Image link to Gill & Macmillan.
"The Reluctant Taoiseach" is well written, but heavy going in places - it is a book that you can put down. It is perhaps aimed at more serious scholars of Irish history than me? It is meticulously researched - 84 pages of references, plus a detailed index (31 pages). However, it does give a detailed account of Costello's life - particularly his time as Taoiseach in two governments, 1948-1951 and 1954-1957. Costello appears to have been an honest man who was not only a "reluctant" Taoiseach, but an accidental one too. 

What strikes me most about the book is it also describes a time in Ireland in the 40s and 50s where real economic hardship dominated Irish life and politics. The country was being bled dry by emigration - indeed my own maternal grandparents and most of their family left Ireland for Canada while Costello served his second term as Taoiseach. The book also assumes that the reader already knows a lot about two of the central events during Costello's term in office - the Declaration of the Republic, and the Mother and Child scheme. Neither is described in detail and I had to look up these events on Wikipedia to understand what was going on. 

Costello was an unapologetic daily mass-going Catholic who bowed to the Church and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. It's hard to imagine now a Taoiseach opposing a moderate social scheme like the Mother and Child one, that led to his own health Minister (Noël Browne) resigning. He also lived and worked in the shadow of Éamon de Valera - the dominant force in Irish politics during the 20th century, but not much is made of this in the book.

I'd recommend this book as a fair account of John A. Costello. Be prepared for a long read, but it is worth it in the end to find out more about an almost forgotten leader of Ireland.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Apology to Offthemark.com

Earlier today in my Lecture Capture Technology post I linked to a cartoon from Offthemark.com. I am careful to reference anything I post and when I want to use a graphic that already exists on the web I generally link to it (rather than make a copy and upload as my own). Hence my usual "Image link to..." reference. Most of the graphics I use are found through Google Image search and I figured it was OK to simply link to them. As you can see, Offthemark.com clearly do not agree with this.

Cartoon by Dave Walker.
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use
on your blog at 
We Blog Cartoons. 
The cartoon can be accessed here  - it is cartoon # 2008-02-01. This evening the message above showed up instead of the graphic which I used without permission. I have now removed the graphic from my previous post.

So - an unreserved apology to Offthemark.com (and to Mark Parisi, the author of the cartoon) for nicking their cartoon. I'll have to stick to WeBlogCartoons where Dave Walker does allow bloggers to use his cartoons for free - as long as you reference where you got them from.

All of this begs the question - is linking to something the same as stealing? If I stand in the street and point to a picture on a wall - have I stolen it? Is pointing to (not copying) a resource on the web through a hyperlink a breach of copyright and Intellectual Property? If I had taken the care to read the very simple message at the bottom of Mark Parisi's cartoon:

Permission required for use.

I would not be guilty of stealing his work. My learning from this is to first of all apologize when I get something wrong, and secondly to take any corrective action I can to minimize the damage. I'll be more careful in future.

Lecture Capture Technology

Steve Wheeler writing in his blog asks the question about the use of lecture capture technology: is it "opening up a Pandora's box of trouble?". He speaks as someone who is "very comfortable with being recorded, live streamed, tweeted and even live blogged if it will improve students' chances and enrich their learning". I don't have a problem with this either, though I have yet to find students tweeting about me or my class. This kind of "back chat" has great value in my opinion and should be encouraged. I still dislike seeing signs in lecture theatres telling students to turn off their mobile phones. Many of my students are using their laptops/smartphones in class - while I suspect YouTube and Facebook is being accessed, they could actually be on Twitter or email sharing and discussing class material or other College work.

The average professor speaks at 120 words per minute, but students write around 20 words”, according to Isaac Segal, of Tegrity - a company which provides lecture capture technology. The message is to use technology to record/capture a lecture and let the students concentrate on what's being said rather than spending the time taking notes. To me this makes a lot of sense. In fact I'd go so far as to say that there is merit in recording a lecture before a class, and then using the class time for practical work, debate, and discussion. It might make sense to have a short quiz at the beginning of such classes to ensure that the students have watched/listened to the recorded lecture. If the quiz is marked - they will watch/listen.

There are people who have difficulty with the use of technology in the classroom - as Steve Wheeler puts it "some lecturers are uneasy about exposing their ideas and content to an outside audience". But we must move with the times. It's not that long ago that VLEs like Moodle were introduced, and now it is standard practice to place notes on-line. I'm sure that there were objections to blackboard's being introduced into the classroom back in the 19th century. Take a look at the following comment which I have taken from an article available from the Freie Universitat Berlin website:

In 1855, the abolitionist Samuel Joseph May wrote about the introduction of the blackboard to classrooms, being at his time the most modern instruction technology:


...in the winter of 1813 & ’14, during my first College vacations, I attended a mathematical school kept in Boston by the Rev. Francis Xavier Brosius. On entering his room, we were struck at the appearance of an ample Black Board suspended on the wall, with lumps of chalk on a ledge below, and cloths hanging at either side. I had never heard of such a thing before. There it was forty-two years ago that I first saw what now I trust is considered indispensable in every school the Black Board and there that I first witnessed the process of analytical and inductive teaching.


Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Creativity and Ingenuity - Simple!

Somewhere in a little town in Belgium where nothing really happens, someone placed a big red button in the town square, with a message to "Push to add drama", and then waited for someone to push it. What follows is a very clever, hilarious, and dramatic sequence of events - which turns out to be... well I won't spoil it!

This video has attracted nearly 23,000,000 views and has gone viral on the web. According to Time News Feed, this version on YouTube "may end up more popular than any of the network’s actual TV shows". This video shows that there are a lot of creative geniuses out there who are coming up with brilliant and simple ideas all the time. Watch it and enjoy!


Saturday, April 14, 2012

BloggerPlus iPad App

I have just purchased the BloggerPlus App for iPad from the Apple App Store for €2.79. This is my first effort at posting using this App. This blog is hosted by Blogger, but the original Blogger App is very poor, so I'm ready to try something different. I have taken a photo of the BloggerPlus iTunes page and hope that it will show up in the post.

I'm keen to be able to blog on-the-go, and not to have to be tied to a desktop. Some features may not be the same on the iPad compared to a PC, but most of the time I just need to be able to post text and photos. 

Setting up BloggerPlus to use both my Blogger and Tumblr blogs was easy, and so far so good with this App. I'll report at a later date how I'm doing with it.


Friday, April 13, 2012

New Videos on my YouTube Channel

This week I have released two new videos to my Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin YouTube Channel:
  • How To... Plot Multiple Data Sets on the Same Chart in Excel 2010
  • How To...Create a Progress Gantt Chart in Excel 2010
The first is a variation on a previous video showing how to plot a bar-line on the same chart. In this one I show how to add five lines representing five different data sets on the same chart that have different scales. Though relatively straight-forward to do, it's easy to get this wrong - so I think the value in the video is going through the process step-by-step.


The second video is a follow on from my most popular videos which are about creating Gantt charts in Excel. In this on I show how to display progress (complete/incomplete) using Excel. If this is even half as successful at the other Gantt videos I'll be more than happy. This brings to 68 the number of videos on the channel.


Thursday, April 12, 2012

My time at Scoil na nÓg, Trabolgan

My previous post about being "anti-Gaelic" reminded me about my time as a student in 6th class in Primary School. Up to 5th Class I had attended Carnew National School, but in an effort to improve my Irish I was sent to Scoil na nÓg in Trabolgan near Cloyne in Co Cork. I was 11 years old, and it was September 1971. I have visited Trabolgan only once since I left and it has long since been converted to the more well-known Trabolgan Holiday Village.

Image link to Houstorian.
Recently I came across the Housetorian blog, which has an article on Trabolgan Country Estate, written by Annemarie Foley. In the article she quotes one of my own posts Irish School in Trabolgan and Sleeping with a Tenor about my time there sharing a room with the singer Ronan Tynan. The article is an excellent history of the house and estate, and it features several photographs that brought back some memories. 

The house in the photo above was used for the school. The classroom that I sat in was in the room with the three windows on the extreme right of the photo. On the extreme left was the dining room for the about 60 boys that attended the school - I think that it was there that I tasted chips for the first time! In the middle, behind the pillars at the door (which thought were a lot bigger) was the entrance hall - we used to play bowling in this hall. If I remember correctly, there was a plaque on the front wall to the right of the main doorway commemorating Patrick Pearse. In the photo below you can see the woods behind the house which was a paradise for young boys - I have fond memories of my time there.


Image links to the Irish Historical Picture Company.

Did it improve my Irish? Yes it did! When I left in June 1972 I was presented with a Fáinne Nua as a fluent Irish speaker. However, once I went to secondary school it all went downhill - within five years I was barely able to converse in it (Grade C in Ordinary Level). My Fáinne Nua also disappeared as I rather stupidly lent it to a boy named Ruane from Mayo in secondary school who "lost it".


Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Apparently I am "anti-Gaelic"!

On 17th October 2010 last I wrote a piece Ed Walsh wants school budget for Irish to be halved - I agree. This post did attract some comment. Today, Colm Mac Fhionnghaile takes me to task about my comments on the Irish language. In the interest of fairness, here is his comment in full (which I have published on above link):

I find it confusing that you have called Irish both a 'dead language' and 'our first language' in as many sentences, cementing my first impressions of you as writing controversially for the sake of controversy here. This is a standard attack on 'our' language, an unrehearsed and ill-researched piece. As a man who's grown up in a bi-lingual family I believe the language is the standing-stone on which our heritage leans. I would hesitate to base opinions on that of Dr. Ed Walsh. 'But let those who are not enthusiastic about Irish drop out after primary school'. Would he also be comfortable letting those with no enthusiasm for math, or English, or History, Geography etc. abandon those subjects? 

Having said this much, this is a well written piece, and will have been read by plenty people, therefore I believe you should be more careful with anti-Gaelic posts in future in the interest of fairness, or 'cothrom na féinne' as Irish speakers would say. 

First - Colm is more than entitled to his opinion and I welcome his response to my post. Free speech and all that!

But I have responded as follows:

A Chara,

"for the sake of controversy" - gimme a break!

"anti-Gaelic posts" - gimme another break!

According to Google Translate, "cothrom na féinne" means "fair play" - I had to look it up. I am 52 years old and I do not recall ever hearing this. I cannot hold a conversation in Irish - and do you know what? I do not feel less Irish, or "anti-Gaelic" for that matter.

"unrehearsed"? - FFS I have had 52 years of this.

"ill-researched" - FFS I do not claim to have researched this. This is a Blog, not a peer reviewed journal. This is an opinion piece in a personal blog - I'll say what I want. Last time I looked - we live in a democracy.

Is mise,

Eoin Ó Lochlainn


That last bit is my name in Irish - I have not used it since 1972 when I was in Scoil na nÓg in Trabolgan, Co Cork. I have just to walk from my office for 10 minutes to hear Polish and Chinese being spoken, I bet I would have to walk for hours before I would hear Irish being spoken on the street. 

Thank goodness we have Irish to help us get around!

Is a person "anti-Gaelic" just because he cannot speak Irish? Or doesn't want it rammed down his throat?

Monday, April 09, 2012

Happy Birthday Dad!

On Easter Sunday some of the O'Loughlin clan gathered at my sister Kathleen's house in Kilkenny to mark my Dad Joe's 81st birthday. As always, he was in great form and enjoyed the day with family around him. My Mum Phil is visiting my brother Brian in England, so we missed them. Kayo had enough food to feed to feed a large army - delicious roast lamb and a selection of super vegetable dishes followed by a fantastic Toblerone cheesecake that was both sinful and holy!

L-to-R: Joe, Kayo, me.
For his birthday I gave Dad a copy of Anthony Kearns' new book "Ireland's Arctic Siege: The Big Freeze of 1947" - I'd like to read this after he is done with it! I asked him did he remember the 1947 winter - he did, though he was a boarder in Cistercian College Roscrea at the time when he recalls that a foot of snow fell and that he remembers throwing snowballs at the other lads. He also remembers the country almost coming to a halt, with very little happening for a long time. His Dad had to deliver milk to Carnew on a horse, with milk churns strapped to either side of the beast, as vehicles could not drive up the Soldier's Bench on the Coollattin Road. Amazon's "Product Description" of the book describes this vicious winter as follows: 

From shortly after Christmas to almost Easter, the country was gripped by snow and ice; transport ground to a halt. The normal supply of goods and services was suspended.... There was no central heating, and the distribution systems for coal and turf broke down. Even in relatively affluent middle class suburbs, people were reduced to breaking up furniture for kindling in an attempt to keep warm.




Sunday, April 08, 2012

Sir Tom Finney at 90

Preston North End's most famous player ever is Sir Tom Finney - he turned 90 years of age on 5th April last. The was a big event in Preston as they celebrated one of the City's most well-known sons. A good on-line biography of him is available at Football-England.com.

Image link to The Daily Mail.
I of course never saw him play - he retired in 1960 when I was one, and he played before the television-age days. He was regarded as one of England's greatest ever players and has a special place in PNE as he played his entire career there. One of his most famous moments was when he was captured in the 1956 Photograph of the Year - known as "The Splash", in a game against Chelsea (which PNE lost 1-0) at Stamford Bridge. Above is a photo of me taken on 10th February 2007 when I went to see PNE play Wolves (lost 1-0 again) at the Tom Finney statue outside of PNE's ground which (when they turn the water on) replicates the famous photo.

Any time that I mention to anyone that I am a PNE fan, they always bring up the name of Sir Tom and sometimes ask if he is still alive. A pity that in the 52 years since he retired that no one else has reached the same heights for PNE - indeed, they were relegated from the old Division 1 the year after he retired, never since to get back to the top tier of English football. Bill Shankly one famously said of Finney that “he would have been great in any team, in any match and in any age… even if he had been wearing an overcoat”.

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Dr Paul Mooney responds

Two weeks ago I responded to Paul Mooney's blast at third-level education and lecturers, in a post entitled "a philistine mind at work". I wasn't the only person by any means to take exception to his article in The Irish Times. He has responded to me via email as he had read my blog post - he also responded to others. His response is posted in full on Professor Brian Lucey's blog, so I'll not post it here. Dr Mooney and I have exchanged a couple of emails and we have "agreed to disagree". He wants to start a debate on reforming third-level education in Ireland - but he started at the wrong place by having a go at Lecturers.

So - in the interest of fairness, I would recommend people to read Dr Mooney's response on Prof Lucy's blog, and judge it for yourself.

Friday, April 06, 2012

Taste Lecture - MSc Business Analytics

Yesterday I attended a "Taste Lecture" in UCD from the Smurfit Business School from their MSc in Business Analytics. I was looking forward hearing about analytics and perhaps gain some insights as to how this subject is taught in a university like UCD. Alas - it was nothing more than just an information session about their MSc programme. There should be a law against this!

Image link to CRM Fanatic.
First - the "lecture" started 15 minutes late as the presenter forgot his laptop. It wasn't worth the wait as an old presentation with only minor modifications (available here and dated February 2010) was used. I didn't learn anything new. The small audience consisted mostly of engineering students - for them this is an ideal subject to pursue as they have the right mix of maths, quantitative methods, and programming. The UCD programme is definitely very technical. Analytics software tools like SAS are not used (except in dissertation) - programming is mostly through Java, R, and Rapid Miner. Perhaps there is an opportunity a more business type MSc?

Afterwards there was free pizza (which was good), and some chat with the programme leaders. I asked about the NDP funding which makes this a very attractively priced programme for students - they certainly have it for next year.

Overall - a bit of a waste of time.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

How To... Display Two Measures in a Bar-Line Chart in Excel 2010

To mark the occasion of reaching 1,000 subscribers I have created a new video on "How To... Display Two Measures in a Bar-Line Chart in Excel 2010". This one is inspired by the blog post Bar-Line Graph from Sanjay Matange on the Graphically Speaking Blog from SAS Software. Sanjay's post describes how to write the code using SAS Software to display "two measures by one classifier using a Bar-Line graph, where the scale of the two measures is vastly different". It seemed like a very complicated way to draw a Bar-Line chart, so I thought I'd give it a go in Excel 2010. It turns out to be very easy to do - here's my 4 minute 54 seconds video showing you how:



Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Some comments from my Subscribers and Viewers

Yesterday I posted about reaching the 1,000 subscriber milestone with my YouTube channel - Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin. I've been taking a look back at some of the comments that I have received over the past couple of years. As I write there are 922 comments. Here's a selection of some of my favourites (my accent seems to attract a lot of comment!):
  • If you were an attractive women, I would kiss you. Thanks
  • This is awesome, thank you very much for uploading the video 
  • VERY helpful!
  • Your my fu*king hero boy,im off to shoot a goat in your honour
  • This video is amazing....and so are you. marry me?
  • Super helpful presentation with the accent as a bonus!
  • Thanks...very easy to follow..helped me with my project proposal
  • Thank you. Was easily to follow, and was exactly what I was looking for :)
  • The accent makes it just so much more interesting xD
  • Oh thank lord! Now I can put the (Ra-ra-)Rasputin song into my speech about him. Russian Class is saved! Thank you!
  • is it just purely fortunate that the last number was 13 which sounds particularly attractive when said in an irish accent?
  • Detailed, logistically presented, easy to comprehend, well done sir! And I love your accent :3
  • NICE.lovely accent.and i like quick talking(dosent make me bored like many other slow talking videos here)thank you
  • i watched this video just for the accent
  • I really hate this guy's accent.
  • This was an awesome video! I did it right along with the video and worked perfectly! Plus I love his accent! :)
  • I am studying in Malaysia, so the local lecturers' accent is terrible and annoying. But your accent is clear, significantly its understandable. Thx for the video.
  • Your voice is sexy can I have your number? and BTW Brazil LOVE the Irish baby ;)
  • Thank you very much, 15minutes ago I had no idea, now I have a Gantt Chart for my project.
  • fantastic explanation...brief and comprehensive...you really helped add something great to my research
  • Thank you. You made a lot more sense than my professor.
  • thank you very much for your work, our useless professor never taught us that shit he expected us to learn it by ourselves
My How To...Embed a YouTube Video into PowerPoint 2003 video has attracted the most comments (207) so far. YouTube Analytics provides detailed information on comments - here's the Word Cloud for the most used words in the lifetime of this video:



Monday, April 02, 2012

1,000 YouTube subscribers!

Over the past few weeks and months I have been watching out for two landmarks on my YouTube channel - Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin. The landmarks are reaching 1,000 subscribers, and 1,000,000 views. I am so excited to report that @samehdi4000 became my 1,000th subscriber yesterday!

Image link to BigCartel.
This is excellent news for me and helps me to keep going with the channel. Everyday I get emails from YouTube letting me know that I have new subscribers. Sometimes I have fun looking up to see where the subscriber is from and what types of other videos they are viewing.

I can see from YouTube that my 1,000th subscriber, @samehdi4000, is aged 41 and from Pakistan.  He (she?) created a YouTube channel which you can view here.

The next landmark is 1,000,00 views. The count as I write this post is 920,576 views - I expect to reach the million in about a months time.