Perfect Parking in Blarney

I should blog this at Shite Drivers but this was too good to give up. Sorry Niall!

Perfect Parking in Blarney

What you don’t see is the old SUV (probably new when such vehicles were called 4x4s) that swerved across the road in front of me to block 3 parked cars. The elderly driver waited in the vehicle all the time I was walking about there. I parked across the road by AIB because of the stellar parking of the car above. Good thing most of the tourists are gone home now!

Edit: this is how they should have parked!

Back from Dingle

Oh wow! We really have a beautiful country here in Ireland! We are just back from a week in the town of Dingle, Co. Kerry (or An Daingean as it’s officially known, why can’t they have both English and Irish names on the signs? It’s silly. Locals stencilled “Dingle” on many of the signs anyway!) and it was both amazing and refreshing. 7 days without Internet access. Could you survive? I admit I was tempted by the local net cafe but I resisted and we wandered the roads and explored the beaches of that rugged coastline instead.

Weather is always a concern in Ireland and it rained and it poured and gales blew for the first 2 days of our stay. Thankfully that completely changed for most of the remainder of the week and the blue skies were filled with white fluffy clouds casting shadows on the distant mountains. Breathtaking.

Bringing a 23 week old baby away on holiday does present it’s own difficulties but Adam enjoyed himself and made a huge impression on everyone he met. He was generally well behaved while out, and I have to thank the kind staff of the Old Smokehouse Restaurant for their patience as we made 2 trips there with him. On the other hand, the grumpy floor manager of the “Happy Garden Palace” up the street didn’t live up to his establishment’s name. Nice Kung Po though.

Photos will appear in time but tomorrow we’re going to head down to Kinsale for a look at Haydn’s Kinsale Gallery where some of my work is on display. Adam’s been down there already and now it remains to be seen whether any of the pieces attracts a buyer or not. Thanks Damien for mentioning the gallery too!

In other news, WordPress 2.3 came out and I need to upgrade my blogs. WordPress MU will need to be synced with the new release but it will also need a separate upgrader. Upgrading one blog and adding 3 tables is simple, but when you need to do tens of thousands (or millions) of them, you don’t want all of them doing it at the same time or your database server will melt.

Oh, and not one person mentioned the All Ireland. ๐Ÿ™‚

Update on Sunday: Jacinta and I visited the gallery today and we’re impressed! Haydn’s son was taking care of the shop and I noticed a number of the larger prints had sold a couple of copies. Two of my images are visible behind the door if you look carefully at the second image: Innovative Streets and Rusted and Abandoned.

Gallery ICA

Gallery ICA

Gallery ICA

Kinsale Art Gallery

Haydnโ€™s Gallery in Kinsale is now showing my work and Ryan’s as of this week. I visited the framer on Monday where I signed a number of prints and I have to say I’m very impressed with the prints made by those Hewlett Packard Z3100 and Z6100 printers. I wish I could print all my stuff on them!

If you’re in the area, call in, say hi to Haydn and browse around. The gallery is open every day but Monday and is situated on the quayside in Kinsale. Here’s a map of Kinsale courtesy of Yahoo. The cross-hairs mark approximately where the gallery is.

Try and spot the slight mispeling on one of the images I signed. Oops!

Waterloo Renewal Fundraiser

2007-08-25_img_4345-hs.jpg

Originally I thought we might head to Youghal tomorrow but someone called to the door a few days ago selling raffle tickets to support renewal of the local area. It’s organised by “Waterloo Renewal Group” who have great plans for the local river area and walk. There will be a BBQ at the Waterloo Inn so it looks like we won’t be going far from home on Sunday!

Must be the rain in Cork

Rain spattered onto the windscreen in drops and a light drizzle sprinkled the car as we drove through town on our way home. It was warm today and I was looking forward to getting home, putting the baby to bed and relaxing for the evening. The windows were half down to let the air circulate in the car and traffic was going nowhere fast.

As we waited I heard the slowly increasing beat and volume of loud music from behind. A car drew alongside us and the cheering and laughing faces of the guys in it were clearly visible and their music blared into the evening. Their exuberance was catching and we were soon smiling and laughing with them! I think God must have heard their music, because suddenly the heavens opened and the car almost shook with a torrential shower of rain. We all looked at each other and laughed again. Why? Click play and you’ll find out!

Continue reading “Must be the rain in Cork”

Around Ireland in 80 links on July 13th 2007

Unlucky 13? Oooer!

  • What would you like to know about me? Apparently a company in Dublin is selling private information.
  • Paul’s friend was dumped over Facebook when his ex-girlfriend changed her status to “single” and “up for it”. Paul, that was mean to laugh! ๐Ÿ™‚
  • I would love to see the referers to this post when it makes it’s way into Google. I’m sure Grandad will oblige in a future post.
  • Online photo sharing on pix.ie via Czajkowski. Anyone else tried them?
  • Kae says php.ie could be coming soon!
  • Firefox 3 talk by Marcio Galli in Cork on August 8th. What’s in store in version 3?
  • I got my first Facebook invitation. Should I sign up?

Fred the Band played in the Opera House in Cork recently, after a tour of the US where the following video was shot (after the jump). Their first album was great, the second album was so-so being a bit more of the same thing. You can hear a portion of their new single on their website above. They are absolutely brilliant live however. I took photos of them last year in the Spiegeltent. I never did post photos of the crowd surfing …

Way back in March I took photos at the shooting of a music video for Stanley Super 800. Finally, you can see the resulting video for yourself. No, I’m not in the video, I was in the background with my camera! They did a great job of it, and if you’ve been to Cork, watch out for Scotts on Caroline Street, Patrick’s Hill and the alley across from the College of Art on Emmet Place. Great stuff!

Continue reading “Around Ireland in 80 links on July 13th 2007”

Around Ireland in 80 links on July 12th 2007

  • Mark saw the new Transformers movie and was less than impressed. Say it aint so Mark!
  • Alkos continues to impress with today’s image. Wow.
  • The Irish invented the potato smoothie?
  • It’s not pretty but it is wet and muddy, and God knows why anyone would tramp about in a muddy field, but don’t let me put you off going to Oxegen, Anthony does a good job of it! ๐Ÿ™‚
  • Justin notes that the common pint could cause trouble for an inebriated person texting a friend .. “r u going 4 a riot”? Then again, a “shot” of beer would be a lot less harmful.
  • Oh, and you’ll be glad to hear I found a spam blog on wordpress.com thanks to this post ๐Ÿ™‚

Around Ireland in 80 links on July 11th 2007

I still don’t know what to call these posts, but thanks to Niall, Michele and Robert for the suggestions.

  • The handyman came to fix a broken door but got a lot more than he was expecting when he called to Flirty’s apartment.
  • The Ireland tag on WordPress.com is a great source of Irish news. Some people question if Bono or Colin Farrell are Irish at all? Have they not seen the episode of Scrubs below? Meanwhile, does the British Army admit defeat against the IRA?
  • Donal has some good photos of Earthrace while it was (is?) docked in Cork. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to pop in for a look.
  • The 7 wonders of the Irish World by the Swearing Lady.
  • Check out Damien’s Fluffy links and Niall’s Crunchy links for more speed linking goodness.
  • If you made it this far and you’re asking, “how do I get into these link posts?” If you’re Irish (come into the parlour… ) or you live in Ireland and you blog, leave a comment or blog something of mine and trackback it and chances are I’ll add you to my feedreader. Then write interesting and/or quirky stuff! ๐Ÿ™‚

Continue reading “Around Ireland in 80 links on July 11th 2007”