Most people change with time

Some people don’t change however, and never learn from their mistakes.

“IT’LL be dark at 5pm before you know it” one parent dropping their child off at school cheerily said to themselves as the telltale sign that an Irish summer is over, Enoch Burke hovering at school gates, has arrived once again.

“Fuck sake,” confirmed much of the nation as the emergence of a wild Burke haring back to its unnatural habitat of outside a premises they haven’t worked at since 2022, signaled the summer is well and truly over.

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.

It’s been rather warm in Ireland of late

A map of Europe with Ireland down by the mouth of the Mediterranean, and a speech bubble coming from it saying, "Well lads, what's the craic?"

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.

Malaysia, no 1 for recycling

it’s fitting that I was listening to the segment at around minute 18:00 of this podcast about recycling when I was putting the rubbish bins out.

Most of the recycled material in Europe ends up in Malaysia, apparently. And it sure isn’t completely recycled.

An EPA report stated that, “Plastics present a serious challenge. Only 28 percent of plastic packaging waste was recycled in 2021, a long way off the 2025 EU target of 50 percent. The majority of Ireland’s plastic packaging waste is being incinerated.”

If a portion of that 28% of plastics is being sent abroad, then our recycling rate must be even worse.

Ireland is Red Tonight

Storm Éowyn is battering the country with winds gusting to 130km/h. Hope everyone stays safe tonight. It started raining here around an hour or so ago, and I can hear wind gusting outside from where I sit.

Status Red – Wind warning for Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford

Met Éireann Weather Warning

Storm Éowyn: Gale to storm force southerly winds becoming westerly with extreme, damaging and destructive gusts in excess of 130km/h

Impacts:

• Danger to life
• Extremely dangerous travelling conditions
• Unsafe working conditions
• Disruption and cancellations to transport
• Many fallen trees
• Significant and widespread power outages
• Impacts to communications networks
• Cancellation of event
• Structural damage
• Wave overtopping
• Coastal flooding in low-lying and exposed areas

Valid: 02:00 Friday 24/01/2025 to 10:00 Friday 24/01/2025

Issued: 17:08 Wednesday 22/01/2025

Updated: 08:28 Thursday 23/01/2025

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.

Debug code left on the SEAI website

I filled in the solar PV grant form on the SEAI website this afternoon. I tried doing it this morning, but there was a “permission denied” error on their dashboard, which stopped things working. There had been a warning that they were doing updates overnight, so I figured it was probably teething problems with the update.

Hours later, upon submitting the grant form, I saw a “Paused on debugger statement” popup. Clicking play on it continued the process, and it all appears to work fine now. One wonders what happened to just submitting a form and processing everything on the server and refreshing the page?

webdev popup saying "Paused on debugger statement" with step and play buttons.
A chunk of Javascript code with a line saying "debugger" highlighted.

Anyone know someone on the SEAI dev team who can remove that debugger command? The joys of developing debugging on a live site.

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!