I’m not much of a hill walker but John Finn is and filmed a walk there, up Carrauntoohil, the tallest mountain in Ireland and onwards.
It’s a spectacular walk with breathtaking scenery.
John’s video was voted best video of the year by the Mountain Views website (page 58 of the newsletter).
Queen’s Roger Taylor released a new song about a certain orange guy.
A man of no morality, devoid of empathy.
Technology Connections talks about solar and then goes nuclear. 👏
It’s hard to believe the Bohemian Rhapsody movie is 7 years old. It’s a music documentary about a band that plays the music of Queen, charting their rise from unknowns to playing sold-out gigs, just like the real Queen band.
Anyway, that’s enough of a commentary about what a fantasy the movie was. The trailer was pretty good and Brickfilm Day did an outstanding reproduction of it. This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since 2018, so it’s about time I published it. I’m impressed all the videos are still live after 7 years.
Here is the original trailer. I love what they did for their Live Aid appearance.
Then the LEGOversion of the trailer.
And now side by side. Impressive isn’t it?
Sean Tucker gives some great advice to landscape photographers, likening landscape photography to fishing in street photography. Fishing is the act of finding an interesting place on the street and waiting for someone to walk through. I’m more of a hunter. I keep walking, looking for an interesting subject or situation, rarely stopping. You’ll see many examples of that in my Edinburgh photos.
“It’s a great place for landscape photographers to start. They’re used to fishing, to framing a composition first and waiting for the weather or light to come to them.”
I’m always wondering if I should post photography stuff on this blog here, or should I write my words about photography on my photoblog? What say you, gentle reader? Should I care at all? It’s a personal blog after all.
It was 40 years ago today. I remember watching bits of Live Aid and had a VCR recording it, but as an almost ten year old, I got bored and went out to play. So I don’t remember seeing Queen play that day, but I’ve watched their performance multiple times since.
The official Queen YouTube channel is showing a remastered version of their set for 24 hours only, so the video above may not work if you’re visiting this blog post in the future.
Go get yt-dlp and save a remarkable performance for your own viewing pleasure!
Now, go look at a 480p version of their set. You’ll notice some improvements to the audio, which I like, but the 1080p video in the remaster could have been so much better.
Edit a few days later: it’s gone. I hope you grabbed a copy for yourself!
George Wendt played the part of Norm on the TV show Cheers for many years but I just heard he passed away at the age of 75. Here’s an interview he did with his co-stars Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson.
“Afternoon, ev’rybody.”
NORM!
Here’s a cracking demo by DJ_Level_3 and Marv1994 done on an Oscilloscope, with the music creating the visuals. The music is great too, but of course, it’s not really responsible for the visuals, there are high-frequency sounds doing that, which we can’t hear. Utterly amazing stuff.
The demo got 1ST PLACE in Wild, and 1ST PLACE in Crowd Favorite at the recent demo party, Revision 2025.
Thanks Hackaday for featuring it.
11Km of tunnels were built between some of the islands of the Faroe Islands, and right in the middle of one of those tunnels, 70 metres underground, is a roundabout. It enables drivers to go to Runavik or Strendur. It cuts travel time from just over an hour to 16 minutes. Hugely impressive.
I’d heard of the troubles Keith Jarrett had when he played in Cologne but forgot to find out what his music sounded like until I came across the incident again this morning while listening to Cautionary Tales.
Jarrett was due to play in the opera house there and requested a particular type of piano. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the one he wanted and provided him with a beaten up rehearsal model. It was out of tune, the pedals were sticky, and it was in a terrible condition.
He refused to play at first, but after the promoter, an 18yo woman named Vera Brandes pleaded with him to play. He had to avoid broken keys, and concentrated most of his playing in the middle of the keyboard.
To make things worse, he had driven over the mountains from Switzerland the previous night, his back was in a brace, and he was hungry, having had to miss his dinner earlier in the evening.
I haven’t listened to all of it, but it is remarkable what he coaxed out of such a broken piano! Sometimes, less is more.