All year round, Paris is considered the city of romance. It's no surprise, then, that lovebirds flock here from around the world for Saint Valentine's Day. There are English-speaking couples everywhere at the moment: strolling along the Seine, kissing in cafés, maxing out the credit card at Louis Vuitton.

The lovey-dovey couple still need to tread carefully down those boulevards, though. Restaurants and hotels, predictably, have upped their prices. And the male of the species would be best advised not to book a table at the Crazy Horse, the famous burlesque cabaret - the current star attraction is Pamela Anderson.

If you live in the French capital, it's unfairly easy to treat your chérie on Valentine's Day. Simply take him/her outside the door, and voilà! You've whisked them off to Paris! The brasserie on the corner where you have your lunch: an intimate little restaurant in Paris! Look up: the Eiffel Tower is glittering - just for you, mon coeur! And so forth.

Cynicism aside, the cinematic grandeur of the place is what makes it so conducive to romancing. Even after years of living here, you can still find Paris dramatically beautiful. Just a glimpse of that beautiful Haussmannian architecture or those art deco Metro signs can transform the dullest working Wednesday. On the streets of Paris, skipping and fluttering is a natural condition of the heart.  

And the city has a history of epic romances, from the ill-fated Abelard and Heloise of medieval times to the costume drama of Napoleon and Josephine up to the existentialist passion of Sartre and de Beauvoir. 'Amélie' (left) defined the modern image of the Parisian love affair - tour guides bring couples to the key locations of the movie, such as Sacré Coeur and the Canal Saint-Martin. And even the current Sarko-Carla soap opera, long tiresome to most people here, seems to the rest of the world so romantic, so glamorous, so... Parisian.

Love affairs, of course, are often doomed and tragic. Strolling down the boulevard, you may step in something (a constant hazard in dog-infested Paris). That little restaurant rips you off like the dumb tourist you are. And what's that eyesore on the skyline, that lump of metal like a vinegar bottle?

Such a sad ending seems to have been the experience of one Irish lover in Paris - here's Neil Hannon singing about 'The Frog Princess':

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Key Note Speaker returns after an extended winter break.  Contrary to rumours printed elsewhere, that break did not involve enjoying the après ski with a bevy of beautiful models in Aspen.  No, instead Key Notes has been diligently tapping up bands and musicians from around the world to become Key Note Speakers. 

The first Key Note Speaker of 2008 is Kilian Pettit of Cork band EchoGram.  2007 saw EchoGram's debut single Conspiracy reach No. 1 on the downloadmusic.ie weekly chart and the band being named Today FM Rising Artist of the Week.  An impressive accomplishment for an unsigned band with no management.

Favourite Songs from the Past Year 
All the best tunes last year were either pop or electronic, but I can't single any one song out. I can't remember liking any rock songs last year, even though the Jimmy Eat World album was ok

Favourite Song Ever
Something by U2 or Depeche Mode, though I don't know what. Maybe One (I know it's a cliché), or Enjoy the Silence. Smells like Teen Spirit also blows me away though

Favourite EchoGram Song
Probably Everytime I Fall. It's a really simple song, written on an acoustic guitar but the recording sounds huge.  You can check it out on YouTube:

Favourite New Band/Artist 
Nothing has really grabbed me yet in 2008, but it's still early

Favourite Band/Artist Ever
Again, it's going to be U2 or Depeche Mode. I do think Billy Corgan is a musical powerhouse though. I also love Deftones as well as most non-retro electronic artists

Favourite Gig This Year 
The only one I've been to so far this year is The Smashing Pumpkins in the RDS

Favourite Gig Ever
It's either Popmart in 1997 or Soulwax at the Electric Picnic in 2005. The sheer scale of Popmart blew me away, so impressive. Soulwax were fantastic though, because all the ravers and metallers were going for it together, something I want for my band too. It was such a great atmosphere

Favourite EchoGram Gig Ever
The Cork show of the 2fm 2moro 2our was amazing. Everyone seemed to be singing the songs back to the stage, it was like waves washing over us

Favourite Venue
I think Cyprus Avenue in Cork is the best venue in the country for it's size. They really have the sound and lighting sorted, I've spent so many great nights there.

Favourite Piece of Musical Equipment
My first acoustic guitar. It's a Hohner, it's a piece of sh*t, but I keep using it. It's so familiar as I learned to play the guitar on it. I always feel very comfortable with it, it's like my security blanket

Download or CD/Cassette/Record
CDs, man! Cassettes are vinyl are before my time. Downloads are ok, but the quality is just nowhere near as good

Favourite TV Show at the Moment
Rescue Me with Denis Leary is the best show around! It has everything: action, drama, comedy, sorrow and loads of sex. The main character is pretty loathsome, but every now and then he'll trick you into thinking he's a nice guy

Best Movie Ever Seen
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brought a tear to my eye, something that I'd never experienced until then. I just saw Children of Men, I'd rate it as almost highly

Greatest Book Ever Read
A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle. Check it out

Most Listened to Radio Show
Dan Hegarty on 2fm. He's played a lot of EchoGram on his show which is great, but even if he hadn't I'd still think he plays the best music on radio.

What’s in Store for EchoGram Next
I've just secured US and UK management for the band, so we're working on the right deals in London and LA at the moment. Work on the debut album is going to start pretty soon, and we'll be playing a lot of shows in the next few months.

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I ushered in the New Year stitting quietly on my couch alone watching the Jools Holland Hootennany on BBC. In a show full of highlights such as Eddie Floyd, Daffy and Kylie Minogue (expertly writhing on a grand piano), one musician shone out, Seasick Steve (aka Steve Wold) a veteran American bluesman whose raw uncompromising brand of blues brought the house down. Winner of the 2007 MOJO Breakthrough award, he is my first choice for 2008.

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The fact that a developed country such as Ireland - so often voted one of the best places in the world to live in those ridiculous surveys - still needs an organisation such as Childline, run by the ISPCC, is a telling reminder of the inability of so-called civilised society to use its economic opulence to provide for the weakest and most vulnerable in its midst’s.

However, socialist tendencies aside, Key Notes suggests that paying a visit to Childline Rocks will do more than abate your guilty conscience.  The promoters of the event promise a seven hour musical extravaganza with performances from Choice Music Prize nominees Cathy Davey and Super Extra Bonus Party and Meteor Nominees Future Kings of Spain and Ham Sandwich on The Star Stage.  There is also a Phantom 105.2 Stage with music from Jape and Dry County as well as Phantom's very own DJ's.  Best of all, Key Notes favourite Irish TV presenter, Michelle Doherty, will be the MC for the evening.  Tickets are €23 and available from Ticketmaster now.

Just in case you need any more convincing, check out the video for Keepsake, from the upcoming Ham Sandwich LP, Carry the Meek.

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Your Paris correspondent was at the Stade de France (a.k.a. The Killing Fields) yesterday for what has now become the Irish rugby team's annual defeat in the French capital. Yes, we know it was a close-run thing (why did Eoin Reddan turn away from a gaping hole in the French defence with only minutes left and metres to the line? The French fans near us were incredulous) - but your blogger hates moral victories more than trouncings.
 
Even before the war, we had already lost an important battle. As the teams lined up, both anthems were sung a capella by a military choir. The setting emphasised again the weakness of 'Ireland's Call' (erroneously introduced by the stadium announcer as 'the Irish national anthem') - a song which completely fails to fill the role of an inspirational rallying cry. Of the Irish fans in the stadium, few sang the verses. Only the chorus seemed to inspire us to join in, albeit self-consciously, as if our mammy was kissing us goodbye outside the school gate while our mates were watching. What's more, nobody sang it during the game.  
 
By contrast, 'La Marseillaise' was as stirring as ever. As is their custom, French fans sang it on numerous occasions during the game - both to celebrate the good times and to encourage their team during the difficult passages. It worked; even as France's disastrous substitutions handed the initiative to Ireland, there was always a sense that les bleus would still do just enough to win.

'La Marseillaise' just happens to be a cracking tune, as evocative and quintessentially French as the songs of Edith Piaf. Unlike many anthems, it's instantly recognisable - we all know it from the opening bars of 'All You Need Is Love'. More recently, our fellow Irish rugby-loving Francophile Neil Hannon worked the same intro through 'The Frog Princess'. And the anthem of Springfield has exactly the same air, according to 'The Simpsons Movie'.

None of those international borrowings caused any serious offence in France - unlike versions by French-based artists. Django Reinhardt's sprightly jazz manouche reworking, which he called 'Echoes Of France' was tut-tutted by post-war Paris.

But that was nothing compared to the venomous reaction to Serge Gainsbourg's 1978 reggae version. Its title, 'Aux Armes Et Caetera', was initially interpreted as a provocatively disrespectful dig at the anthem's rousing call-to-arms: "Aux armes, citoyens!" But Gainsbourg, with the air of a card sharp playing a trick ace, brandished a Revolution-era document - apparently a manuscript of the original lyrics - which featured the line as "Aux armes, et caetera". This argument didn't sway a certain group of veteran paratroopers, who made death threats against Gainsbourg and stopped him from performing his version in public at a concert in Strasbourg - home of the song's composer, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

So why is it not called 'La Strasbourgoise'? Well, the song, written in 1792, was the anthem of a troop from Marseille who sang it as they marched up to Paris that summer, thus spreading it throughout France. It was adopted as the French national anthem on Bastille Day in 1795 and has remained so virtually ever since, although it was briefly banned during the Restoration.

Ironically, the anthem was originally written in honour of a German - to be precise, a French officer called Nicolas Luckner who was born in Bavaria. What's more, the luckless Luckner travelled to Paris in 1794, at the height of the Reign Of Terror, to resign from his post - and was promptly sent to the guillotine by Robespierre's beloved Revolutionary Tribunal. There's gratitude for you.

We hope that no Irish fans whistled or booed the French anthem yesterday; technically it's an offence to disrespect 'La Marseillaise', with a penalty of €7,500 and six months in the modern-day Bastille. This isn't some archaic law in a dusty tome, but a modern piece of legislation from 2003, introduced by none other than future President Nicolas Sarkozy (we believe that you in Ireland may be familiar with his work of late).

However, a subsequent ruling by France's constitutional council limits the law's application to official events and allows for an exemption in artistic or private circumstances.

So, there you go: no messin' with the 'Marseillaise'. Here's further proof - the famous anthem duel from 'Casablanca'. And to think we sent 'Ireland's Call' out to compete with THIS:

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Yesterday I posted a blog entry ranking Irish music web sites, from the skinniest, to the most bloated. For those of you who missed it (or don't have the time to check it out) I basically started off riffing about how, despite the growth in broadband penetration in Ireland, website owners and bloggers should remain acutely sensitive to the size of their blogs as: a) there is still about 7% out there who are on a dialup modem and b) broadband users are an impatient bunch you don't want to annoy with bloated pages that test the outer limits of their download capabilities. I then ranked the top 30 or so Irish music sites and blogs in terms of their page size.

Today I'm turning my (weight-obsessed) attention to Irish technology blogs, namely the the 21 blogs longlisted for the category of "Best Technology Blog" in this year's "Irish Blog Awards" (this blog is also one of the longlisted technology blogs).

The table below ranks all these blogs in terms of their total size of their main page. As I did for the music sites, I have also in the table broken out the "payloads" for each different 'component category' that typically makes up a web page (i.e. the HTML part, images, Javascript files, Flash files and CSS files). The results are then clustered into 4 colour-coded categories, based on overall page size:

• Less than 250 KB: ("Optimal balance of content and page size")
• 251 KB to 500 KB: ("Total nightmare for dialup users")
• 501 KB to 999 KB: ("High risk of testing the patience of broadband users")
• Greater than 1 MB: ("Clinical cases of inexcusable hyper cyber-obesity")

Topping the list is here is Bill de hÓra super slim blog, barely detectable on the scales with its impressive 39 KB. And hats off to to James Corbett whose blog is the only other one to come in under 100 KB. At the other end of the spectrum are Ina O’Murchu and Matt Vinyl's blogs, both of which strain the scales with their 1 flabby megabyte of content (a payload that would require a poor dialup user to hang in there for about 4 minutes to complete the download).

All in all, these technology blogs are a slimmer bunch than the music blogs: over 3/4s of them coming in under 500 KB, a feat only 3/5s of the music sites were able to do. The average weight of the technology blogs is 390 KB, compared to a 630 KB average for the music blogs.

The 5 tech blogs falling into the orange and red categories below would do well to reduce their payload by pursuing tactics I yesterday recommend to the music bloggers i.e., reduce the size of images (or in the case of Tom Raftery and Ken McGuire remove the Multimedia flash content that massively bulks out their blogs) and then reduce the number of blog entries on their blog home page. All of them (except Ken McGuire's blog) have 'server side' compression already activated, the other piece of advice I offered yesterday.

Ireland's Top Technology Blogs
(ranked in terms of page size)

Notes on the above:

1. Figures above are the sizes of each site's main page on the morning of 7 February 2008 (according to the Web Page Analyser service). It just represents a snapshot in time. The sizes above are dynamic and will fluctuate whenever new content is added to, or older content removed from, these blogs' main page.
2. Of the 21 sites in the above list, 15 are configured so that text files (such as HTML) are compressed by the webserver before being sent to the requesting visitor (whose browser then automatically decompresses them when the file is received). The advantage of this being that the amount of text data to be downloaded is reduced (the reduction in size of a HTML file that can be expected with such compression is usually in the order of 70-80%). In such cases it is the size of the HTML file after it has been compressed that is cited in the table above. The 10 sites who do not have this function activated (indicated above with an asterisk) are strongly advised to do so.
3. The above list does not include the 'Digital Sole' blog (one of the 26 blogs longlisted for the Best Music Blog at the Irish Blog Awards 2007) as it was inaccessible at the time I was checking the sizes of the blogs / websites.

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The Thrills (right) are currently enjoying some much-needed TV exposure and interest in France; 'Santa Cruz' is the soundtrack to an advertisement by French credit institution Cetelem. It follows the Blackrock Beach Boys' contribution to another French ad of late: 'Big Sur' was the jingle for a tourism campaign for the Midi-Pyrénées region.

The Cetelem ad features the company's mascot, Credito (how do these marketing guys do it?) - a small green chappie who seems to be made from someone's front lawn. Did some Parisian ad agency guy make a subconscious link between the leafy green man (left) and a band from Ireland, land of leafy greenness? Credito has his own website, if you're interested. 

Anyway, the ad: to the hoarse whining of Conor Deasy, small green chappie is seen helping target punter (scruffy indie guy) make his dream come true by financing his new drum kit. And the little fella's so nice that he even carries the drum kit home, and the guy also wants to buy a piano, and it's gas really.

Of course, the Thrills soundtrack would have made more sense if the indie punter wanted to purchase singing lessons.

And the band themselves could do with a bit of support; EMI dropped them after poor sales for their 2007 album 'Teenager'. Let's hope the bank isn't repossessing their drumkit.

Here's the ad, with music from The Thrills. Small green fella, carry their gear for them!

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In Ireland recent years have seen progress in the availability of broadband services (in July 2007 it was up to 15.5% penetration, according to the European Commission). However that does not mean that dial-up as an access route to the web has gone the way of the Dodo. CLUAS.com's experience is that about 7% of our visitors in 2007 visited the site via a dial-up modem (based on Google's web traffic analytics service we use). If you ask me, many website and bloggers targeting Irish readers would do well to keep it in mind that a decent chunk of their readers are still dependant on a dial up connection to access the ould internets, and that flabbing out their site (or blog) with hefty images and bandwidth choking Flash is going to be counter-productive.

But it's not just about ensuring sites & blogs are quick and snappy for unfortunates stuck with dialup modems. Those of us with bandwidth connections are also sensitive to download times. And arguably more so than someone using a dialup modem who, in order to have any chance of maintaining some sanity, is obliged to demonstrate super human levels of patience. Having a broadband connection means our patience goes out the window: expectations of loading times for any web page are hugely raised, God help a site that is slow to load when we have that big juicy broadband pipe at our disposal. Bloggers and webmasters: ignore this at your peril, especially if you are trying to reach music fans (as their broadband connection may already be under heavy pressure at the moment they try and visit your site considering they are more likely than most to be listening to streaming music or downloading recent MP3 or digital video purchases).

So how are the main Irish music blogs and websites doing in terms of keeping the flab off? Who within the well established eco-system of Irish music sites is going to test the patience of their readers, be they in dialup hell or broadband bliss? And who is successfully keeping the weight down? To get some answers I checked out the size of the main page of over 30 established Irish music sites and blogs. As a starting point I took the 26 blogs longlisted for the category of "Best Music Blog" in this year's "Irish Blog Awards" (two of which I am pleased to point out are from the CLUAS blog family - French Letter and Key Notes). To this list I then added in another bunch of music sites picked out at my own discretion, the sites I added were: State.ie, Hotpress.com, Thumped.com, the Thrill Pier blog, Muse.ie, Phantom FM and the CLUAS.com home page.

The table below ranks all these sites in terms of their total download size. For all sites I have also broken out the "payloads" for each different 'component category' that typically makes up a web page, i.e. the HTML part, images, Javascript files, Flash files and CSS files (for the non-geeks among you a CSS file - Cascading Style Sheet - is used to style and position web page content).

There is a massive variation in the list. The lightest site steps in at a lean 97 KB (that'll be CLUAS.com's home page, thank you) and the heaviest being a broadband busting 2.1MB (stand up Egocentric). In terms of time, a 1Mbps broadband connection would take over 30 seconds to download the 2.1 megabytes that constitute Egocentric's main page (only the hardiest digital souls are advised to click the link). It doesn't bear thinking about but the 7% out there still on a 56 kbs dial up connection would have to wait for over 8 minutes. There should be a law against that. Or something.

Anyways I've clustered the results into 4 colour coded categories, based on overall page size:

• Less than 250 KB: ("Optimal balance of content and page size")
• 251 KB to 500 KB: ("Total nightmare for dialup users")
• 501 KB to 999 KB: ("High risk of testing the patience of broadband users")
• Greater than 1 MB: ("Clinical cases of inexcusable hyper cyber-obesity")

Those falling into the orange and red categories would do well to assess their site's content and see what they can shave off to reduce the payload. Three tactics I'd recommend are:

1. Reduce the size of images: A quick glance in the 'Images' column in the table below confirms that it is images which carry the most blame for the bloated sites. Using even images with slightly reduced dimensions can reduce an image file size by 75%. It is vital to understand that reducing the size of the image as it appears on the page does not automatically mean the file size is reduced. To reduce the file size the image must be 'resampled' to reflect the reduced dimensions of the image. Finally, there is little point pursuing the next two suggestions if this first one is not addressed.
2. Reduce the number of blog entries on blog home page: The obese blogs should also reduce the number of blog entries listed on the blog's home page. Take Stuart Ballie's blog for example (weighing in at 1.8 MB). His has a massive number of entries appearing on his blog home page. If his blog were configured so that the older half of those blog entries were systematically moved to an archive page, the blog would probably leap out of the depths of the red zone and into the healthier echelons of the yellow.
3. Activate 'server side' compression: 4 of the 13 sites in the orange and red zones do not have automatic file compression activated on their web servers (for more info on this see note 2 after the table). This can help reduce the size of the HTML file but, to be honest, the effect on the overall payload of any heavy site will be insignificant if the excessive image files are not first addressed.

These sort of steps can also have longer term benefits when you consider that an iPhone-inspired era of sophisticated mobile web access is on its way. You can bet someone trying to access your site via their future all-singing, all dancing mobile phone - be it a snazzy iPhone or a more modest non-Apple device - won't be prepared to wait 30+ seconds for a 1 or 2 megabyte web page to download.

Ireland's Top Music Site's & Blogs
(ranked in terms of page size)

Notes on the above:

1. Figures above are the sizes of each site's main page on the evening of 4 February 2008 (according to the Web Page Analyser service). It just represents a snapshot in time. The sizes above are dynamic and will fluctuate whenever new content is added to, or older content removed from, these sites' home page.
2. Of the 32 sites in the above list, 22 are configured so that text files (such as HTML) are compressed by the webserver before being sent to the requesting visitor (whose browser then automatically decompresses them when the file is received). The advantage of this being that the amount of data to be downloaded is reduced, the reduction in size of a HTML file that can be expected with such compression is usually in the order of 70-80%. In such cases it is the size of the file after it has been compressed that is cited in the table above. The 10 sites who do not have this function activated (indicated above with an asterisk) are strongly advised to do so (Aside: the CLUAS home page is not compressed - yet still manages to top the list - but the two CLUAS blogs in the above list have compression activated).
3. The above list does not include the 'Digital Sole' blog (one of the 26 blogs longlisted for the Best Music Blog at the Irish Blog Awards 2007) as it was inaccessible at the time I was checking the sizes of the blogs / websites.
4. CLUAS.com's three entries in the list above are all well tucked into the green zone. Hooray!

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At last, Irish music buyers will have the chance to pick up the best French album of recent years.

Via Sinead Gleeson, we understand that 'A L'Autre Bout Du Monde' by Emily Loizeau (right) is coming out in Ireland on 11 February.

Regular readers will be familiar with this fantastic collection of dark, dreamy cabaret-pop. Originally released in early 2006, we've been raving about it ever since and it was our top long-player in our annual Best French Music list that year.

If its Irish release seems a bit tardy, it also proved to be something of a slow-burner in France. Word of mouth made it a cult favourite here, and a timely re-issue last autumn (along with a well-publicised Paris show at the Grand Rex) saw Loizeau finally break into the mainstream market. She has now been nominated in the French music industry's annual Victoires de la Musique, equivalent of the Brits or Meteor awards.

Loizeau has close ties to one Irish artist who shares her piano-driven cabaret sound. She joined Duke Special on stage at his Paris show last April, and recorded some tracks with him around the same time. Since then, she supported him in Belfast last August and he returned the favour at her aforementioned Grand Rex gig last November. No news yet of any Irish shows in 2008.

Loizeau is half-English and often sings en anglais - including album track 'London Town' with Andrew Bird (in French, l'oiseau means 'the bird'). Trivia: her maternal grandmother was actress Peggy Ashcroft, who starred the original version of 'The 39 Steps'.

Her second full-length album is due for release later this year, but you can catch up by listening to tracks from 'A L'Autre Bout Du Monde' on Emily Loizeau's MySpace page. Here's the video for 'Je Suis Jalouse':

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