Amazed that the place is empty!
Tag Archives: Photos
Three Days in Dungarvan
I spent the last few days in Dungarvan, staying in the Park Hotel with my family. It’s a really nice town, small enough that you can walk around it in half an hour but plenty of places to eat and drink.
I took my camera of course and almost always shot in b/w mode with my Canon f1.8 50mm lens. I cheated a little as I used RAW+Jpeg mode but I’m happy with the results. RAW lets me recover the colour information while the Jpeg records a useful b/w image I can check against during post processing.
I love that 50mm lens but rarely use it so a whole holiday was a challenge. With such a short depth of field it’s really important getting the focus point right. I usually used the center point or a side point rather than trust the matrix to pick out the right one!
Well Loved Lego
Well used and loved Lego may break and get squashed but the non-broken bits can be washed and dried and used again by a new generation.
Makerbot 3D Printer makes a Church
Last Saturday I went to the Coderdojo party in the NSC with my son Adam to see what it was all about. We arrived late and all the pizza was gone but there were loads of balloons for the younger kids to play with!
The adults and older kids watched a 3D Makerbot printer demo. I love the open wooden case the printer is made from and when it started making a replica of St. Anne’s Church all eyes were glued to it as layers of plastic were laid down layer by layer. I posted some more photos here too.
Thanks Ann for tweeting about this on Saturday morning and reminding me it was on! Hopefully I’ll get to more Coderdojo events in the future!
Take That Croke Park, 2011
Here are a few photos from last Sunday’s Take That concert in Croke Park, Dublin. It was an amazing concert that started way too slowly. The Alice in Wonderland theme was great but the show really picked up once Robbie Williams came on stage. The guy is a master show man. If Freddie Mercury were alive he’d give him a run for his money!
Pet Shop Boys played support and I would gladly pay money to go see them again!
I would venture to say the crowd was 95% women. I bet they were happy to see the guy who half-stripped above the stage. Yes, yes, photo of him below! Over 76,000 people went to see them on Sunday night and it was amazing. We had no problem leaving after the concert and thankfully stayed in a nearby hotel which was just a walk away.
The fans enjoyed the show but so did Robbie Williams if this post is to be believed! (oh dear, the cynic in me!)
Quoting the full post below, just because I know that blog will disappear when some PR guy decides to revamp that site..
HOLY SHIT!
I CAN HONESTLY SAY EVERY SHOW WE’VE DONE SO FAR
HAS BEEN REALLY SPECIAL…..FROM THE LOVE WE RECEIVED FROM THE GENTLE FOLK
IN THE NORTH EAST…. WHERE WE LEARNT TO BE A BAND AGAIN….TO THE GRIT AND PERSEVERANCE
OF THE MANCHESTER CROWD THAT GOT PEE’D ON MOST NIGHTS…..I’D KINDA FOUND MY PERFORMING FEET IN MANNY’
MOST NIGHTS WATCHING YOU ALL BOUNCE UP AND DOWN
IN LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU WAS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCEAND THEN THERE WAS THE WELSH CROWD THAT OUT SUNG THEM ALL…..
WE WON’T FIND OURSELVES IN A BETTER VENUE ON THIS TOUR…..
SO HUGE BUT SO INTIMATE AND I/WE FELT THE LOVEBUT OH MY LORD….IRELAND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME ON SUNDAY NIGHT…..?I GAVE EVERYTHING I HAD ON SATURDAY AND AS EXPECTED
YOUR PERFORMANCE WAS BETTER THAN MINE…..(ONLY JUST ; )SO MUCH SO THAT IT WAS WITH A BIT OF TREPIDATION
THAT I MADE MY WAY BACK TO CROKE PARK THE NEXT DAY
FEELING A LITTLE JADED AND DRAINED FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE….
(SUCH HIGH HIGHS THERE HAS TO BE A COME DOWN….)BUT I WASN’T EXPECTING WHAT CAME NEXT…..
I PROPER LOST MY SHIT……
THE OVERWHELMING GOOD WILL…LOVE…SMILES
HAPPINESS,APPROVAL AND ACCEPTANCE
BEAMING STRAIGHT TO THE STAGE
TRANSFORMED ME FROM PREENING PEACOCK
PRIMA DONNA SHOWMAN
TO A BALL OF MUSH WITHIN SECONDS…..IT WAS SO POWERFUL THAT I DIDN’T
KNOW IF I WAS GOING TO BE ABLE TO COLLECT
MYSELF ….
PROPER FLOORED ..THERE’S A TEAR IN MY EYE THINKING
ABOUT IT NOW….YES, THE GIGS HAVE RANGED FROM BRILLIANT TO RELIGIOUS
EVERY NIGHT ………BUT SUNDAY NIGHT CROKE PARK
WAS LIFE DEFINING …….IT WILL STAY WITH ME FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE….IRELAND I BOW TO YOU….
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN XXXXXXXXXXXXX
The best of these photos will eventually land on my photoblog as more polished images but I wanted to give everyone a flavour of the night’s festivities and atmosphere. Yes, I did sneak my Canon DSLR and a 70-300mm telephoto lens in and I’m glad I did because I was at the other end of the stadium. BUT, Take That recognised that they can’t stop people taking photos and even recreated their first album cover on-stage. They gave everyone a count down to get their cameras out. I unfortunately only got a blurry shot as they weren’t standing in a spotlight.
Gaming History in Pictures
A few games I found recently while sorting through boxes at home:
- Quake 3 tin box, Linux edition. I wrote an article about this for the Irish Times a few years ago.
- Double Dragon, C64 version, I posted pictures of this before of course.
- Gyroscope, the first 5 1/4 disk based game I owned on the C64. It was given to me by someone, can’t remember who now but I used it later for Stunt Car Racer and even printed the loading screen from that game on a dot matrix printer for the disk cover.
- The excellent Stunt Car Racer manual and box cover.
- The System 3 Premier Collection and Thalamus The Hits compilations were the pride of my games collection at one time. I still remember the excitement of getting those boxes in the post.
- C64 Cabal, tape version. Brilliant game. I remember spending as much time tinkering with the game ASM code as playing it..
- Half Life 2 Collector’s Edition and Half Life 1. Steam was launched when HL2 was released and I was recently able to register the HL1 CD key in Steam and download that great game.
Military Show at Cork City Gaol
Some photos from the military show at Cork City Gaol today. It’s also on tomorrow and well worth a visit!
I got to try out the red dot sight on an M416, see a Scar-L up close, and even checked out an M60 too. All replica air guns, without ammo unfortunately. There was a target range but there was a long queue for it. Maybe next time because my 3 yro son was disappointed the guns didn’t work!
I have a few more photos on my phone which I’ll upload tomorrow.
Blairs Inn Smile
Duncan of Blairs Inn was giving out free samples of their delicious beef stew along with samples from other local restaurants at the festival in Blarney today.
Delicious stuff, and Blairs Inn is a great place to go for a meal too. Only been there once but we had a great meal there. Recommended.
Patrick's Day in Blarney
We were originally going to be walking in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Blarney but our son fell asleep a few minutes ago, and it wouldn’t be fair on him to drag him out unfortunately. We did visit the “farmers market” this morning however and I took a few photos. They’re really only snapshots but I hope you enjoy them, especially if you have visited Blarney.
This is probably the few times in the year that you’ll see this many locals near Blarney Castle! 😉
Continue reading “Patrick's Day in Blarney”
First Day at #WCIRL
So, day one of WordCamp Ireland draws to a close, there is a dinner tonight but the talks and sessions are over for the day.
I briefly helped John Handelaar during his talk on WordPress MU, but my main talk was on WP Super Cache. Thank you Hanni, Jane and Sheri for recording the talk. Hopefully it’ll be available online next week. In the meantime here’s the OpenOffice slides of my talk.
I must extend a big thank you to Sabrina Dent and Katherine Nolan for organising a great day and to the sponsors who made the weekend possible.
Looking forward to the dinner tonight, and the rest of the conference tomorrow.
Update! I’ve added a few photos from Day 2. I was shattered tired though as I was up until 1.30am chatting with Donnacha!
Update 2! Sabrina has written a thoughtful post about WordCamp Ireland. I for one had a great time there and so did everyone I spoke to. I totally agree with her about child minding facilities. My son Adam had a whale of a time, and is still talking about it. (and for an almost three year old, that’s a very good sign!)