Boat on the Lee

For the last few days I’ve noticed that the boat used by the workmen on Saturday was tied up in the middle of the river. This morning I stopped and took some photos of it, and played around with a few tools in the GIMP.
I’m sure I used them before, but the “Colour Enhance” tool and “Filter Pack” are very useful for adding a little more atmosphere and feeling to a photo.
The steeple reflected in the river is Holy Trinity Church on Father Mathew Quay. That church itself makes an imposing sight, especially when it’s lit up at night!

I uploaded the last photo above to photoSIG too although trying to attract the attention of visitors there is quite difficult as “boat on river” photos are two a penny there!
Forgot to say, I’m still very impressed by the Linux 2.6 kernel. I had 3 2560×1920 images open in the GIMP, and I had modified each several times so that the undo-buffer was filling up nicely. Under Linux 2.4 my machine would have been unusable, but Mozilla Firefox (with about a dozen tabs on 2 windows), Xchat and Thunderbird all remained responsive and none of them were swapped out! (The machine has 512MB of RAM, so Linux 2.6 doesn’t work miracles, it just handles resources much better!)

Hehe.. 3 blades not enough?

The Onion has an “interview” with the CEO of Gillette who says, “We’re Doing Five Blades.”
Remember Frank in the Comedy Club? “Gillette spent years in development, working hard at their new razor.. What did they come up with? The 3 blade razor!” Ah yes, you had to be there. I bet he wishes he never appeared on Bosco but fancy that, he never mentioned that on-stage.. 🙂

What Digital Camera?

My father’s finally in the market for a digital camera. After many years using a Pentax SLR he has seen the light and wants to take the plunge into the digital world!
He saw that the Nikon Coolpix 3100 was available from Argus at a knock down price of €320 or so. I have no idea how good that camera is so I fired up Google to find out. A review of the camera compared it unfavourably to the Canon PowerShot A70. A review of that camera looks very promising, especially for my dad, who’s used to the manual controls of an SLR. Dpreview also compare the Nikon to the Canon which was useful. Looks like the Canon has the edge on picture quality.
Unfortunately, the Canon A70 is priced at €500 in Argus! So much for the two cameras being similarly priced!
This morning I asked the guys on for camera sites that ship to Ireland and the prices on technikdirekt.de, cam-ireland.com and even amazon.de are much better than high-street Irish prices. (Well, duh! Surprised? Nope!)
Here’s some more reviews of the Canon A70 for future reference from DCRP Review and Steve’s Digicams.

Desmond Tutu Interview

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is in Ireland for a major conference on AIDS this week. There’s been a huge increase in the number of cases in Russia and elsewhere in Europe and Asia and delegates from 55 countries are meeting to discuss this.
Desmond Tutu was just interviewed by Marian Finucane this morning and it’s the first time I’ve heard him interviewed at length. Wow. What an eloquent speaker! He’s had a varied life, and the interview was a reminder of the the horror of Apartheid. The contrast between South Africa and Europe couldn’t be greater, he recounted his experiences in London, where Bobbies on the beat called him and his wife, “Sir”, and “Madam”, and Cape Town where a curfu for blacks meant he couldn’t walk on the street at night!

Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.