Martial Arts Demonstration in Midleton

A few weeks ago we went down to Midleton for their Food and Drink Fair. The place was packed with people and I got lots of shots. Here are a few of the martial arts demo we passed near the end of the day:
I wish my camera recorded milliseconds. All shots below were taken at 15:49:45.. The Canon 20D rocks!

Converting RAW files to Jpeg, Nautilus Style

Further to my previous attempts to convert RAW files to Jpeg, here’s a Nautilus script based on this script. How do you use it? The g-scripts FAQ has more, although in Ubuntu I had to copy the script into ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
This script uses “Zenity” to display a nice progress bar while the conversion takes place.

#!/bin/bash

(while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
dcraw -c -a -n -h $1 | ppmtojpeg > `basename $1 cr2`jpg
echo $1
shift
done) | zenity --progress --pulsate --text "Converting RAW files to Jpeg"

Cork and San Francisco

I probably knew this in the back of my mind because there are signs on the major entries to Cork but I had forgotten that Cork is twinned with San Francisco and has been since 1984! I read in the Evening Echo today that the Mayor of SF was over for some big dinner with City officials and he wants direct flights from Ireland to San Francisco. What’s even better, he wants Aer Lingus to fly direct from Cork!
It won’t happen, but it would be good for the city.

Cork Ladies Mini Marathon 2005 Pictures

The Cork Ladies Mini Marathon took place last Sunday and we were blessed with a beautiful sunny sky and a warm day!
I arrived just before the start with Matt and we struggled through the crowd to get to the front before the race started. I held my camera high trying to get crowd shots when my attention was caught by a young woman who asked me if I wanted to get some shots from upstairs! I followed her and another man into their office where they let me capture the crowd from high up!
What’s it like to have dozens of people cheering and waving at you? Look at the pictures below to find out! Personally, I was on a high and couldn’t believe my luck!
I forgot to get the names of the couple who helped me but one or both of them work for Oran Group whose office was where I shot from. Hopefully they’ll leave a comment here!
Later… Thanks Christine for letting me into the office!
Pictures from last year are also available. It was a lot more fun this year though!

Spend Your SSIA!

Here in Ireland, the government set up a savings scheme called the SSIA a few years ago. The SSIAs will be windfall for everyone who has them as they are being topped up by 25% by the Government.
For every 4 Euro I save, the Government adds 1 Euro!
The first SSIAs mature in less than a year and Spend Your SSIA is a website that wants you to spend your hard saved money! 🙂