This is the Parish Church in the village of Sneem. Outside were several pyramids built by James Scanlon in 1987. Nearby is a statue of Isis and a plague underneath saying:
A GIFT FROM THE PEOPLE OF EGYPT
“ISIS”
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
—
PRESENTED BY THE AMBASSADOR OF EGYPT
H.E. HUSSEIN MESHARAFA
10TH JULY, 1993
I brought my car down to the Blarney NCT center this morning and checked in and joined a lot of other worried looking guys in the waiting room. The tension in the room was palpable as soon as I entered, and when vehicles were driven into the test garage half the room stood up and stared intensely through the windows. I read about discovering new earths in National Geographic.. when else am I going to get half an hour to do nothing but read? The disquiet and oppressive atmosphere was lightened considerably by a 3 year old girl and her parents – the parents were worried, but their daughter was oblivious reading her animal book and chatting to her mom!
Finally, just before 9am a man appeared at the waiting room door, said my name and I followed him out. With a smile he handed me my shiny new NCT certificate. Yay! No need to worry about that again until 2007!
Here’s an updated list of recent spam to this list. It’s updated every few minutes so you can see a snippet of the spam that’s being deleted automatically here by Kitten’s Spaminator and diligent updating of keywords. Go wild!
I need to think about this a bit more. WPMU supports multiple blogs, run by multiple different people, all of whom can update their spam word lists. Wouldn’t it be useful to have a “I trust the following blogs” list so that spam words can be shared between blogs?
Slightly related, I started using PEAR Cache to cache frequently used database calls. Stuff like the “last posts” and other plugins now use that. It’s working very well and load on the server has gone down!
Oh, and when you’re updating to the latest CVS version of WordPress, a database table has changed. I ran the following to update my tables:
cd wp-inst/wp-content/blogs; for i in *; do echo "ALTER TABLE wp_"$i"_users CHANGE dateYMDhour user_registered DATETIME DEFAULT '0000-00-00 00:00:00' NOT NULL "| mysql wordpress_db; done
Here’s a basic introduction to digital photography. it’s nicely illustrated, if a little short.
If you’re buying a digital camera, do consider the cost of buying the necessary accessories as well:
Sufficient Storage Media
These come in various formats, eg. Compact Flash (CF), Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick and many others. Usually the one that comes bundled with the camera is insufficient. I suggest a minimum of 2GB for a 6 megapixel camera, or 4GB for 10 megapixels. The more megapixels, the faster your storage media will fill up.Spare Battery
Not absolutely necessary but handy since digicam batteries drain notoriously fast. If your camera uses a proprietary lithium battery, you need to get at least an extra one. If it uses AA batteries, get rechargeable spares which are cheap compared to lithium. AA batteries are also easily available even in remote areas, though you’d probably only find non-rechargeable types when on an island vacation.CD or DVD writer
This is because digital cameras don’t produce negatives like film cameras do. So you’ll need a way to backup your precious photos, in case your hard drive crashes.
Years ago my father inherited an old pair of binoculars from his father. I have them now and did a quick search and then an image search and found this history, and here as well as a product listing.
Between 1907 and 1914 Zeiss listed at least five 6x 30 mm binoculars in production: “Jagdglas”, “Silvarem”, “Silvamar”, “Maringlas”, and a military “D.F. 6×20” with the D.F. indicating Doppelfernrohr (literally “far from double pipe”).
The first Zeiss 6 x 30 model, ‘Marineglas’, appeared shortly after
the Pernox, and featured the Zeiss patent increased distance between the objectives. This was later named the Silvamar (IF) and Silvarem (CF), available after about 1910.
After the expiration of the Zeiss patent, the Goerz ‘Marine-Trieder’ and the ‘Marinefernglas 09’ were brought to the market, see fig. 195. [page 285] There are no essential differences between these and the Zeiss marine models with the same magnification.A paper from February 1908 described some early Zeiss models:
‘Your Honor. We present to you with polite reference to the repeated recommendations concerning the Marine-Model of the Zeiss binocular on the part of the state secretary of the Marine Office (for example, on the 27th of September 1907); enclosed, a prospectus and order form apropos the military models of the Zeiss field glass. We take the liberty to point out that the two military models: D.F. 6 x 21 and D.F. 6 x 30 are officially introduced to the German Navy, and show the D.F. 6 x 21 for the Naval-Infantry (with W. IIb 12649 of March 28, 1907), and the D.F. 6 x 30, for use on board (with W IIb 9602 of July 22 07 and H. IIa 8453 of September 27, 1907). Furthermore, you might be interested in the fact that we have, since beginning production of our field glass, or about 14 years, sold so far more than 130,000 at a steadily increasing rate.
Sincerely, Carl Zeiss, Jena. February 1908’
It was first manufactured shortly after 1910, and was used by the German army in World War 2! Production stopped in 1975.
Does anyone know anything about these binoculors?
Looks like they’re pre-WWII, Brian noticed that “Made in Germany” is printed on the case!
Here’s a picture I found:
Despite the title of this page saying “Calendar 2004” it does look like a 2005 calendar, only someone was a little too quick off the mark with their website editor!
Anyway, the important bit is that Ilford are giving away a Marilyn Monroe Calendar on their site! The only snag? It’s a PDF that you have to print! 🙂
This boards.ie thread on UTV Talk is englightening. I should have read the terms and conditions when I signed up, because according to section 4.10 I can’t use other telecoms providers like Vartec or Telestunt for mobile and international calls.
Funny thing is, I used both services after my UTV Talk account went active and my call was connected each time. I’ll wait for my Vartec bill to come before I can say for certain what happened. Meanwhile, a phone call to ComReg might pay off.
4.10 The Customer accepts and acknowledges that (i) the Access Provider shall bar access to all carrier selection and carrier access codes on telephone lines that have SB-WLR applied and (ii) override codes are not available for use by the Customer in conjunction with the Service (i.e. a Customer cannot access another operator’s network in making calls through use of a prefix). The Customer accepts that UTV shall have no liability for any losses or damages howsoever arising from non provision of the Service in the event that such restrictions are not accepted by the Customer.
Note – I received an Eircom bill a few days ago and UTV sent me an email saying they had some problems with lines. Scroll to the bottom of the thread above for recent comments on same!
Everyone who’s done any processing of photos will know about the Auto button of their Colour Level tool. It’s something that probably appears in every decent photo manipulation application and it’s invaluable for correcting colour casts on photos. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work very well.
The GIMP offers 3 buttons next to the Auto function and with these three buttons it’s possible to pick out elements of the image under examination that are either black, white, or grey! Click the white button, then click an area of the photo that should be white. Do the same for grey and black if needs be.
I only (re?)discovered how useful these were this evening when I was trying to colour correct a photo taken indoors, but with the white-balance set to "cloudy". The picture appeared too rich, Auto levels made it green but by clicking the white button and then on a fridge in the background the photo was suddenly almost perfect! I’m not going to post that image but here are two I made earlier…
Iniscarra Cemetery, just a few miles from where I work, holds the remains of one "Mary William, daughter of John Stewart of Belfast. Wife of the very reverend Theophilius Blakely, Dean of Down". She’s also the mother of Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely, a prolific designer of rifled cannon and the inscription on the side of his mother’s tomb bears witness to that:
Mother of Captain Blakely Royal Artillery. Original inventor of improvements in cannon and the greatest artillerist of the age.
A quick search proved useful and it was sobering to find a connection between my locality and the American Civil War!
