cork – Something Odd!

Geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic

A gentleman in tan hat and plaid shirt standing at a busy car boot sale in Bantry with market stalls and shoppers browsing various items spread on tables, County Cork.

Geotagging your photos means adding location data to the image so they can be displayed on a map. Be aware that doing so might reveal sensitive information you’d rather keep secret like your home address.

You can of course remove location data when you export images, like I did with the images in this post.

Anyway, here is how I geotag my photos.

For photos I’ve already taken, I use Google Timeline and export it from my Google account using Google Takeout. You’ll get a rather large “Recent.json” file out of that. To convert that file into the GPX format usable by Lightroom Classic, use this Python script which I’ve already covered in this post.

When I go out with my camera now I use the Anrdoid app, OpenTracks. It’s a free app you can grab from f-droid, but there’s also a paid version on the Google Play Store if you want to support the developer. You can also use GPSLogger, a free app that has the advantage of being able to save your .gpx files to Dropbox or Google Drive.

On iOS, the myTracks app appears to do a similar job but I can’t test it. Please comment if you have tried it or know of decent alternatives.

To geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic, the Adobe documentation on the subject is excellent. Once you’ve opened the Map Module and done it once it’s easy to do again. When you geotag your photos, the Map Module will look like this.

A satellite view of Cork City with a blue line showing where I walked and orange squares showing how many photos I took at various locations.

There is also Jeffrey’s “Geoencoding Support” Plugin for Lightroom that I’ve used for years but maybe it’s because of changes to LrC in recent years, it’s gotten really slow for me. I usually use the built in LrC functionality in the Maps module now.

Transfusion Art Gallery at the City Hall

TRANSFUSION TRANS JOY THROUGH ART

@ Cork 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.

A pancake with lemon and sugar

A folded pancake on a plate, with a knife and fork.

It’s a simple thing, but it’s delicious. Some say Pancake Tuesday was invented by Big Sugar and Big Lemon to drive sales of their respective products.

Kennedy Quay development on hold?

Today I learned that the development of Kennedy Quay in Cork is on hold because An Bord Pleanála decided to refuse permission to develop Marino Point. To save you a click, it’s because they never had any plans for improving the roads in the area.

An Bord Pleanála decided this week to refuse planning to agricultural and chemical firm Goulding to develop port facilities at Marino Point in Cork Harbour, a decision that was two years overdue.

Despite being located in Cobh, the impact of this decision will be felt most harshly in the city centre, with hopes that these proposed developments at Marino Point would pave the way for the wider regeneration of Cork’s docklands and the construction of hundreds of new homes.

However, ABP refusal has brought ambitious redevelopment plans to a standstill and the construction of more than 1,300 city apartments indefinitely on hold.

That area is ripe for redevelopment. When everyone saw the massive R&H Hall building go down, we were sure it was only a matter of time before badly needed homes were built there.

Here’s a great video showing some of the development around the harbour in the last year. Things are moving slowly, elsewhere.

Faulty Towers – The Dining Experience

Sybil and Basil Fawlty — BASIL!
Yes, dear!

If you’re a fan of Fawlty Towers, the hit British comedy from the 70s, then you’ll love The Dining Experience. Apart from the entertaining “shows” the three actors put on, you’ll, of course, be eating a three-course meal.

Manuel, the hapless Spanish waiter, doing his best to do his job. — I know nothing!

In Cork, they performed in the Metropole Hotel, so the food was great. Portions were small but it’s the experience you’re paying for and I have no hestitation in recommending it if you’re at all familiar with the show!

Blarney is Frozen

Schools are back this morning, but temperatures are staying around 2ºC (feels like -3ºC) which would be manageable except it rained around 4am this morning. Local roads are lethal, with vehicles already skidding and crashing.

A double-decker bus skidded on black ice at one end of the village and blocked the road completely.

Twenty minutes later, two delivery trucks jackknifed after coming down the hill coming from the opposite side of the village.

I live on a hill, and watched cars come down it very, very slowly. Thankfully, no incidents there yet.

Pictures come from the Blarney Blog on Facebook.

Extra bits:

Damien Boylan was on RTÉ Radio 1 talking about the freeze with Claire Byrne.

Barry Hoare is internet famous for capturing a video of the bus crashing just outside his garage. Part of his wall was demolished by the bus!

PS. I forgot to say, happy birthday Matt!

Final section of Macroom Bypass opens soon

The final section of the new road bypassing Macroom and other towns in Co Cork will be opening next month, hopefully. The existing sections make that drive a pleasure now, as we can bypass the bottleneck of Macroom, and avoid the twisting roads just west of Ballyvourney.

We drove to Killarney on Saturday morning to photograph the deer in Killarney National Park, and that road was lovely to drive. It’s disconcerting there’s no hard shoulder, but there are lay-bys at least. We passed through Ballyvourney around 7am, and saw a local shop was already open, but I wonder what effect the new road will have on local business?

On the way back, we stopped in The Mills, on the edge of that town, for lunch. It was well over a decade since I’d eaten there. The place was packed with diners, and even a Hen Party! The food was delicious and staff were friendly. Will it be so easy to get there next month, or will drivers have to drive through the entire town to visit?

Tomás Mac Curtain mural on Coburg Street

A new mural was pained recently at the top of Coburg Street, Cork. It depicts Tomás Mac Curtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, playing a violin and surrounded by people from his life. He was assassinated by members of the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1920, at the age of 36.

The mural was painted by Shane O’Driscoll and Peter Martin of Ardú Cork.

In the local press:

An umbrella for the sun

Why don’t people use an umbrella to shield themselves from the sun when they’re out for a walk? It’s a perfectly natural item to use if rain is falling from the sky, but if it is the UV radiation of a sunny day, there’s none to be seen.

A screenshot of the weather forecast showing it will be 19C - 20C today under clear skies.

It felt weird, but I took my dog for a walk and I used a black umbrella. OK, it felt more than weird. It felt stupid. I mean, it wasn’t raining. There’s hardly any cloud in the sky. I had an SPF 50 mineral sunscreen on already.

DIego, a chihuahua lying down in his blanket

But, you know what? I realised I was a lot more comfortable than I normally would be. My dog, Diego, sniffs around in the grass, forcing me to wait around on the other end of his leash. There are trees about, but not enough shade. I had a black umbrella over my head, covering my upper torso and arms. I took my baseball cap off because I didn’t need it. It was nice.

Diego was happy, reading the unseen and unsmelt messages we humans can’t perceive.

On the way back, he stopped, and wagged his tail slowly when I asked him if he wanted to be picked up. He is a 2.5 kg chihuahua, after all. He lay on my arm, and cooled down in the shade cast by me and the umbrella!

I’m not a huge fan of the sun. You’ll never find me sitting in a chair soaking up the rays, so when I do go out in it, it’s nice to be prepared.

PS. I realise 19C (66.2F) isn’t that hot, but I’m melting here!

The cheapest petrol in the county

Petrol in Ballinspittle is only €1.819/lt today. That’s the cheapest I’ve seen in a long time.

After listening to this Planet Money podcast about the cost of gasoline I wonder if we will have expensive petrol and diesel forever? Reason being, it’s unlikely that new oil refineries will ever be built again as demand for oil products plummet in the next decade. A guest on the show predicted that a barrel of oil will be $20-$30 in ten years time.

Electric cars are becoming a lot more attractive, but I won’t be looking to buy a new car for quite some time.

For you, my American reader, there are 3.78541 litres in a US gallon. That means the price of gasoline/petrol here is $6.89/gallon.

Aside from all this, the reduction in oil production will have a detrimental effect on sulphur production. It’s a by-product of that system and used by the metal and fertilizer industries. It’s cheap as chips now, but if there’s a shortage, the price of food will skyrocket.

Yikes. Any good news about the future?