Tag Archives: Photos

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! 😉
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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!)

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Some people don't feel the cold

The weather reading on my desktop computer says -3C, that’s the temperature at the local airport I presume. It’s very cold out, but the sun is out and at least there’s no wind.

I took Oscar for a walk, I’m all wrapped up against the cold with a thick warm hat and over that a hoodie (yes, they do have a use!) and finally a light jacket to keep all the heat in. I dodged the ice and enjoyed the lovely sunlight melting away the frost on exposed surfaces. The footpath wasn’t too bad, Oscar was enjoying himself.

Half way down the road I bump into a neighbour. He’s dressed for a totally different season! Apart from his usual black jeans, he had on a nice shirt, but the top two buttons were undone exposing flesh to the cruel winter cold, and his one concession to that cold was a light black jacket, not closed of course. He hurried past, commenting that, “the sun is very bright this morning isn’t it?”

Amazing.

Cork Floods

A round up of a few videos and photos of the flooding in Cork last month.

Cork Flood 60
Photo by David Hegarty

Panciostela drove from Victoria Cross up the Carrigrohane Straight to Windsor Motors and posted 3 videos along the way, shooting the flood in the Kingsley Hotel last. Any vehicles in the underground carpark there must have been completely destroyed.

Lots of photos on Flickr and pix.ie (floods around the country), there’s even a Submerged Cork Flickr Group. Brian Clayton posted some outstanding photos of the floods on his blog.Thanks to Margaret Jordan where I saw one of the videos above and prompted me to post this.Links: Will has blogged about the various fundraising activities for the people displaced and affected by the floods, West Cork Wash out!, Flood in Cork, North Main Street.I forgot to say, I was in town on Saturday and there was hardly any sign of the flood and the city was very busy.

Retro consoles for sale again!

Retro gaming has made a comeback! A temporary looking shop on North Main Street in Cork is selling old retro consoles at possibly “Irish” prices. According to the “Bargain Hunt” section in Retro Gamer, a Sega Dreamcast can be purchased on Ebay for about £25 Sterling. They’re going for 59.99 Euro here. Cheap enough for an impulse buy? What do you think Mark?

What’s on offer? I saw the Dreamcast of course, many Gameboys in the window, NES, SNES, Sega Mega Drive (Mega CD), Sega Master System, Nintendo Gamecube (why bother when you have a Wii?), Original Playstation, Master System II with Sonic the Hedgehog cart still stuck in it, Xbox 360 external HD DVD player (40 Euro? Can you buy those discs?) and lots of games. I think there were original Xboxes too. There were loads of games for the system anyway.

I doubt the shop will be open after Christmas, none of the consoles or games look brand new so it might be best to test out any purchases when you get home before wrapping them up for Christmas. Bring a copy of Retro Gamer with you if you go in to check the price on Ebay. I have a feeling the guys running the shop will be more than happy to haggle!

Thanks Richard for the heads up. Worth going in there just for the look. I think Branedy may be interested in it too. (I never owned any of the consoles above so I didn’t get a burst of nostalgia for them!)

Irish Blog Awards 2009 Photowalk

About time I posted these. The Blog Awards took place in Cork this year, last February, and before the big night, a good number of photographers wandered around Cork City. I posted several IBA09 photos on my photoblog already but here are a few more:

BTW – if you’re in Cork next weekend, there are still places left in the photowalk! I haven’t decided where we should go after the walk but it’ll probably be The Old Oak as they have plenty of room.

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Tiny Little Kitten

Tiny little kitten

A tiny little kitten wandered into the dog’s kennel this morning and started to meow her heart out. She’s so small I can fit her in one hand. She tried to befriend and approach a local tomcat but he didn’t want anything to do with her. Thankfully Adam kept his distance from the new “baby” and I was able to feed her heavily diluted milk in a syringe.

Not sure what’s going to happen next.

The Irish Blog Awards in Pictures

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, we were at The Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night. Here are a few photos. They’re after the jump because there are 70 there and I’d hate to see them load every time someone loaded the front page of my site!

Gallery of shots from the photowalk to come tomorrow. Possibly over 100 shots in that. I do like to take photos don’t I?

grandad

BTW – Please Photoshop Grandad above. What’s he saying? Two example to follow ..
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Recession in Cork

The world is in recession, and it’s even affected Cork. The city was busy but it’s been much busier in previous years. Every second shop had a “Closing Down sale” or “50% off sale” sign. Usually you have to wait until the January sales. It’s great that prices are down, but depressing what it means for the economy. I heard that many stores on North Main Street have already closed their doors.

cork-2008-12-20-01

Construction work still continues in the center of the city though. I bet the developers of those sites are not looking forward to the job of selling floor space to retailers. The Elysian, tallest building in the country, is practically empty since it was opened officially a few months ago.
Besides the maddening crowds, collectors for Share and other charities were out in force. At least that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. The streets were packed with people, but the queues in the shops weren’t that long.

Bully’s on Paul Street was excellent as usual. Their ground floor tables were all taken but they have a first floor restaurant I never knew existed! We got a nice table away from everyone, it was a nice reprieve from the crowds and sounds outside. Their Bully Burger is well worth sampling too. Yum!
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