So, I enter my 33rd year on this planet. Highlight of the day was our lunch in the Castle Hotel in Blarney where Adam was on his best behaviour and I was surprised with an apple pie and a rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung by my wife and 2 of the staff!
The burger I had for lunch was delicious too. Yum.
The Socialist Party held a protest gathering against the recent tough budget. It took place in Emmett Place in Cork this afternoon. I took a few photos and this video. Our friend, Kathy Sinnott was in attendance but I didn’t hang around to listen for long. Must have a read of the leaflet I was handed. Maybe it has all the answers to a crumbling economy.
Gallery of images after the jump..
Continue reading “Socialist Party Budget Protest”
Saor Patrol, a Scottish band “with their vibrant pipe tunes and drum rhythms [that] please and excite many a crowd” certainly lived up to their reputation when they played for the crowds in front of Brown Thomas on Patrick Street this afternoon.
I came upon them when they were nearly finished but the few minutes of music I heard was exciting and lively, and my son Adam totally enjoyed the spectacle. When the crowd clapped in appreciation, Adam joined in, and almost jumped out of his buggy to dance to the beat!
They were playing in Cork City Hall today as part of the Your Mental Health awareness campaign by the HSE. Depression and other mental health problems still have an awful stigma in this country. People can be reluctant to talk about those problems, families and friends hide them away, or pretend they don’t exist, but they’re health problems like any other. With the right treatment at the right time most people can be helped.
Listening to Saor Patrol certainly lifted my spirits. I was tired and worn down but their music reinvigorated me!
Edit – I was wrong. The mental health event they were promoting is a Scientology event. Not a HSE one. Can’t believe those maniacs managed to hire out City Hall. I definitely do not want to have anything to do with that crowd. Ugh.
Last night a number of bloggers met in Proby’s Bistro for a dinner to see of Tom Raftery who’s leaving our fair isle and heading off to live in Spain next Sunday. I won’t bore you with details of who went and who said what to whom, but a good night was had by all! If you really must know who attended, Conor O’Neill listed each blogger’s Twitter account. Check out the gallery for more!
My wife noticed this morning that Tom was featured in yesterday’s Evening Echo. Alongside him are Pat Phelan of MAXroam and Catherine Wall of IT@Cork. That was the Echo with the photo of the Spencer Tunick Blarney shoot, so I’m sure that copy’s circulation numbers were up!
The last photo in the gallery is a shot of that image. Note the prominent WordPress sticker? Thanks Pat!
Continue reading “Tom's going away dinner at Proby's Bistro”
The first ice cream store in Blarney opened it’s doors for the several weeks ago with a special offer of free ice cream all day but I didn’t stop by there until today.
The store is Il Gelato and it’s around the corner from the main square in Blarney. If you’re in the area, you owe yourself the chance to try out their delicious produce. They offer a range of flavours from the usual vanilla, to chocolate, mint, strawberry and a few other unusual ones. I bought a large tub of chocolate and strawberry. Disappointingly, I thought the tub was quite small and too expensive until I tasted it. It must be the richest and creamiest ice cream I’ve ever tasted! We were after dinner in the Blarney Castle Hotel but I had room for dessert yet I could barely finish the tub!
We all enjoyed our ice cream, and even Adam got a taste of it, despite my earlier protestations that he wouldn’t taste ice cream until he was much older! I’m glad his first taste of ice cream was a good one.
A large tub is €4.80 which seems expensive, but it’s worth it. Delicious!
Just once, slow down on the way home from work this evening. You’ll get caught at traffic lights and that slow driver behind will catch up with you and give you the finger anyway. You’ll get home 60 seconds later, and you won’t be high on adrenaline or a raving lunatic with the stress of driving.
I was so very tempted to name this post after Conor’s tweet about the browsing behaviour of kids but I’ll be strong and mature about it. He gave a talk today in a large truck in the car park of Wilton Shopping Centre. That might sound a bit dodgy but it’s actually part of the Lifelong Learning Festival this week in Cork. I was out there doing some shopping so I dropped by and took a few photos.
Thanks Frank for the link. Otherwise I’d never have known anything about it!
Bloody hell that Wilton crowd knew their stuff. Kids browsing pron and phishing questions galore.
It didn’t take long. Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, announced his resignation yesterday and already the joke emails are pouring in. (Thanks Brian and Louise!)
My own contributions:
Sunday Times, December 23rd 2007.
The Bertie score card above is from Bifsniff.com (but created by Brendan O’Connell), anyone want to claim credit for the others? Unfortunately email forwarders don’t usually give credit ..
Gavin, who has blogged the Mahon Tribunal for so long has given his own reaction as well as a chronology of events leading to the resignation yesterday. It’s scary how long the Teflon Taoiseach managed to survive in politics. Nothing stuck to him.
Edit: Green Ink created Bertie 300. Thanks for commenting!
I have had a plugin running on my photoblog In Photos for quite a while now that imports comments on my Flickr stream into my blog posts. It prefixed “Flickr:” to the username and linked back to the Flickr comment.
Due to overwhelming demand (two people asked!), I cleaned up the plugin a bit and put a configuration page on it and called it the Flickr Comment Importer. There are a few things to consider if you want to use this plugin but it’s straight forward to install and configure and it’s all documented on the plugin page.
A lunar eclipse is expected tonight at 10:44pm here in Ireland, all over Europe, Africa and elsewhere. I’ll be outside with my Canon 20D and 75-300 zoom so hopefully I’ll get a shot or two I can post here later. NASA has a great page on the eclipse which is where I got these two images.
I checked Astronomy Ireland too but unfortunately their site is basic and at a glance isn’t very informative. They definitely need a blog to update their events and provide more information. If one were cynical, you might think they want you to ring their premium rate numbers…
Never fear, the blogosphere came to the rescue. Daragh’s post on the subject has the times of the eclipse and how long it’ll last. I’m subbed to his blog, read that post this morning, and only thought seriously about the eclipse this evening, long after forgetting where I had come across it.. Thank you Darragh! Hope you enjoy the Blog Awards tonight!
Edit: I wrote a short post, how to photograph a lunar eclipse which might be useful to you if you’re out on this cold night. It’s getting foggy here in Blarney but I hope if clears up in the next hour!
9:46pm – a shadow can be seen at the bottom of the moon.
Matt has some excellent shots of the eclipse:
(Matt – get off the phone! Jacinta just rang and the line is busy!)
More photos of the eclipse: