I love this interview with John Deacon, bass player with Queen. He comes across as a very ordinary and likeable person.
Interesting to hear his recollection of Under Pressure, that it was David Bowie pushing them to do it better.
Author Archives: Donncha
Transfusion Art Gallery at the City Hall
I helped the kind folk at TENI set up a small art exhibit in Cork City Hall yesterday. This week is Cork LGBT+ Pride Festival and this is one part of that celebration.
Transfusion features art made by young trans people, including a pencil drawing by the late Jordan Howe. She was a 19 year-old transgender woman from Belfast who took her own life because of transphobic bullying in 2014.
Drop into the City Hall on Anglesea Street. You can’t miss it. The exhibition will be on until August 15th.
Search for a camera
While watching Stephen Leslie’s latest video on Lee Friedlander it occurred to me I could search Google Photos and Immich for “camera” and I might get back fun photos of photographers at work.
Sure enough, it did, including many photos of people from Blarney Photography Club, and of course people in Automattic. There were also a couple of people who have since passed away which was sad to see, but still a nice memory to have. They’re not tagged nearly well enough to identify the people. I sometimes wonder what will happen to this collection when I’m no longer around to pay for backups, and make sure the external drive they’re on is working.
Anyway, here are a few I liked.
Using machine learning on photos is a great way of diving into your collection of images. You’ll unearth all sorts of stuff!
See more of my photos on my other blog.
There’s no such thing as a safe tan
The What’s Up Docs podcast from the BBC is an entertaining but factual podcast about health presented by two doctors, Chris and Xand van Tulleken (brothers and twins!) who find out to their dismay that they were wrong about the dangers of getting a nice healthy colour from the sun.
A tan occurs when UV radiation damages skin cells, causing them to produce more melanin as a protective response. This process involves DNA damage to skin cells, which can accumulate over time and potentially lead to skin cancer.
Sunburn is obviously harmful and painful. Even one blistering sunburn in childhood can double your lifetime risk of melanoma.
It’s a bit late for my Irish readers, as we had cloudless skies and a hot sun last week. Temperatures reached 25C where I was, so I slapped on the factor 50 sunscreen and made sure I was wearing a hat when I was outside. Many years ago, a neighbour died of skin cancer at the age of 52, only a few years older than I am now.
The Met Éireann UV Index page will show you what the UV index in Ireland is. If it’s 3 or over, you should be covering up with clothing or sunscreen. It’s quite alarming that the difference between a clear sky and a cloudy sky is 1-2 or 8-10 on that index.
The Space Shuttle
From Enterprise to Columbia and onwards. This is a great start to a new series about the space shuttle from the same people who made 13 Minutes to the Moon.
Queen at Live Aid
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!
It’s been rather warm in Ireland of late
Most of the people on this green isle of ours aren’t “built for this sort of weather” as I’ve heard people say a few times over the last few days. There’s a heatwave here that I’m sure most people in southern Europe would scoff at. Temperatures are in the mid-twenties, and beaches are filled to overflowing, so the Guards requested people go to other locations.
There’s rain due next week. Back to a normal summer for us, and Ireland will slowly get back up to the North Atlantic.
PS. Don’t look too closely at the place names. The original image comes from a Facebook post where I’m sure they stole it from elsewhere, but they used a postage-size image I blew up in Topaz Photo AI for this post.
Get the scope right in Authentik
I set up Authentik in front of some of my self-hosted services recently. Authentik allows you to use 2-factor auth when logging into other services that support OpenID. The first one I tried was Immich, and the docs are pretty good.
The one thing they forgot to mention was that you had to set the scope in Authentik too. In the provider configuration, make sure that all of openid, email, profile are allowed.
Also, if you use Cloudflare to proxy your services, make sure Authentik isn’t proxied, or it will try to rewrite some of the HTTP headers used. Make sure your reverse proxy generates its own SSL cert too. You might be using a Cloudflare cert if everything is going through there.
Who said self-hosting was fun, eh?
Kneecap and Gaza
The Irish Passport covers Kneecap’s rise and their support for Palestinians in Gaza.
Right at the end of the episode is a very distressing description of a sniper shooting a 12-year-old’s parents, and sister as they tried to cross a vacant lot to get to a nearby hospital. His father had been shot in the chest the previous night as he looked out of his apartment’s window. Both parents died in the attack.
Why the fuck the UK government is trying to silence music bands like Kneecap and Bob Vylan when these atrocities are continuing without condemnation.
I’ve shared photos of rallies in support of Gaza on my blog over the years. Many Israelis are against the war too. You’re on the wrong side of history if you support the Israeli Government.
Titanic: the unsinkable ship
Titanic is a ship that will be familiar to most, and if you would like to listen to a podcast series about her, I can recommend Titanic: Ship of Dreams. It’s a 13 part series covering everything from the construction of the ship, to modern movies retelling the disaster, to the Titan submersible that blew up while diving to visit her.
There’s also Titanic’s Best Lifeboat, an episode of 99% Invisible discussing the issue of lifeboats on Titanic and on boats in general.
Oh, yeah! Jack & Rose could have survived on that door. There was room. But then she’d be 25 within a few years and too old for him anyway, so maybe it’s for the best how Titanic ended.