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Fluffy Links – Tuesday September 5th 2007

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

Forgeté n’est pas an t-Open Coffee Galway on Friday.

Via Keith. Origami Yoda.

Nice to see some people give a damn when designing neighbourhoods and are making them social yet again.

Yeah, I was thinking the same.

In my day we watched Bottom in Religion class. Kids today eh!

I forget where I got this from, but it is rather good, unless you hate flying:

Via BoingBoing: The KLF Burning a Million Quid. Loved the band, loved the invasion of the media that they were all about. This docu seemed to show them being disappointed at not getting a lot of attention for burning a million:

Eamon Ryan bullshits on Newstalk while Karlin turns into DCMNR apologist

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

Download the mp3 of it here.

What really surprised me is how Karlin Lillington is now the biggest apologist for Eamon Ryan’s Department while Ryan is now using tried and tested DCMNR lies, not excuses but pure lies. Lies such as:

90% coverage.
Cable networks.
Late start.
Catching up.
Geography.
Triple play.
A “settling down regulator”.
Cow-towing and excuse generating for low speeds.

I really can’t believe Karlin Lillington took up the whole “demand issue” crap as well. Stop fucking saying there’s 90% coverage. WE DO NOT HAVE 90%. It is not a demand issue or some god damn “unknown” issue we can’t see. The stats are fine, stop suggesting changing the rules so Eamon can look good. Saying we’re not that expensive for broadband when the only option is to rent a phoneline to get broadband is is expensive when you pay the most expensive line rental on the planet.

This is altogether shocking behaviour from someone I had respect for.

Update: Karlin has responded though does not directly address this post.

Guest Photographer: Red Mum

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

This will be the final Guest Photographer for a while though there is still a long long list that I want to get through. Red Mum is another fantastic photographer and has become a good friend over the past few years. Check out her blog as also her photos. The photos below are really good. She’s also an Award winning blogger too. Multi-talented!

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When I agreed to do a guest post for Damien I didn’t think it would be so hard to pick my favourite images to write about until I began to try.

No matter how hard I thought I wasn’t able to narrow it down or even narrow down the criteria I was trying to use. Besides a lot of my personal favourites have been done to death by me on my blog so I thought I would leave it until after the weekend and think about it again with a fresh mind.

Good job too because I was up in Belfast for a Flickr meet where I met up with a gang of Belfast Flickrers and got plenty of inspiration. That’s the thing about social networking sites; there is an actual element of socialising and networking, oh yeah and a bit of craic as well.

While I have met other Flickrers before, this was the first big (well it was nine-strong) Flickr Meet I’ve attended and it wasn’t hard to spot us given we were all carrying large cameras.

Once the introductions were dispensed with and we allowed an appropriate amount of leeway waiting time for the late arrivals and off we went with a loose plan in place.

These meets are brilliant and a great way to explore your love of photography, get hints and tips from other photographers, learn from the images they take and have some fun all at the same time. The meets are also perfect for the kind of ‘off the cuff’ images I like to take.

When I got home and looked through the images I was delighted with my batch and am well impressed with everyone else’s contribution. While we were often taking the same scene I found the differences in the images sometimes startling.

There was also safety in numbers too. I don’t know about anyone else but I can find it hard sometimes to approach someone and ask if I can take their photograph, I have done it but I do find it sometimes urrggg to ask. With a group like a Flickr meet potential subjects are bemused and flattered and sometimes more inclined to be happy to have their image captured. Having the group around me made me braver about taking up-close portraits of strangers.

The images I choose from the day both have a lot of movement in them which is why I keep being drawn back to them. The first two show a gang of kids who were great fun practising their freerunning opposite St Anne’s Cathedral. They ran and jumped on queue, posed for the camera and were delighted that we were having such fun with them as our models.

Leaping and a-hoppin

jumpin

My next favourite image/series is of two kids who were having fun with the cool fountain in Belfast’s Custom House Square.

Custom House Square Custom House Square

The next image is of three boys who were standing on the wall watching the marching bands go by. We had strayed off the beaten track following the sound of the bands until we ended up on an estate off the Shankill. The almost military stance they adopted was a little disturbing.

see no, hear no...

After the Flickr meet we went out for a few pints and on our way we ended up in deep discussion with the taxi driver who was telling us about his recent forays into photography. He was thrilled to hear there is such a site as Flickr and was blown away by the notion of a Flickr meet, so I have a feeling we may see him at the next one. Maybe we’ll see you as well 🙂

And no Flickr meet is complete without a group shot, here’s some of the crew who turned up on the day.

Flickr meet, hiya

Alan, Mymsie, Jett, Anna, StepBar and me. The others who attended and weren’t in this image were Nicky, Dogtired, digitalEnvironmentalist. You can check out the pool of images at this link.

I should finish up by thanking Damien for the guest post opportunity and for once again flagging Irish photobloggers, I’ve been enjoying everyone’s contributions and hopefully mine matches up in some small way to the excellent series.

Intruders.TV Ireland launches – Conn does it again

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

Delighted to hear that Conn O’Media (this is his new name and it will catch on) is the Irish correspondent for Intruders.TV. Conn sent out his embargoed (til midnight last night) press release yesterday and I got a little laugh at seeing blog posts announcing the service at 12.01am. Nice to see bloggers obey embargoes to the letter of the law. 🙂

This is a great move for Conn and for everybody in the tech scene in Ireland. Quite proud that Conn is our rep for Ireland and I think he’ll certainly compliment Conor O’Neill who is the Irish correspondent for Blognation. Congrats Conn!

Fluffy Links – Tuesday September 4th 2007

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

Yes, they’re back! Big thanks too so Seán McNamara for the great work in updating this website/blog and adding some new features like the ability so subscribe to the comments in each blog post and the ability to bookmark each post with DIGG, Delicious etc.

Shane Hegarty has good tips on being a freelance journalist.

I think my secretary does.

Someone doesn’t like another Daft Dempsey idea.

The continuing FiannaFailisation of the Green Party.

A transparent toaster. Yes please.

2000 Geek Dinners organised via Facebook. I love how ambitious and totally within reach this is.

ZunePhone, love it:

Game on

Monday, September 3rd, 2007

I believe that you can run a respected and profitable web awards without having to restrict entries to those who can afford to take a 300 euros gamble on nominating themselves.

So it looks like I’m getting into the Web Awards business. More in the next few days and weeks. If anyone wants to be a sponsor, let me know.

Well that was a fun weekend

Monday, September 3rd, 2007

Got feck all sleep over the past few days due to music going on til 4am and 30,000 noisy fucking campers, my cough and cold got way way worse, a bloody nose for half of yesterday didn’t help either but despite all those MINOR things, the Electric Picnic lived up to the hype and more. Damn you Jim Carroll and your Pieminister nod. Filled up there more than once. Bjork was fantastic, shame the sound was shite. Chemical Brothers were absolutely fantastic too. Visuals at 1am just surreal. My Brightest Diamond blew me away I must say. Final Fantasy as good as ever though I fecked off somewhere else, can’t remember where. That would have been the absinthe. It’s a pity the cold and cough screwed me up as I found it too hard to stay for most shows in the tents because of all the people smoking them them and the heat. Super Extra Bonus Party, wow, they really rock. Sunday mass with the Warlords of Pez. Nice. Bats for Lashes I found to be quite boring and hyped. Skream was the last act I saw and worth the wait. Nice sound system.

The Go! Team weren’t impressive, though again I blame the sound system. Beastie Boys, yeah, whatever. Boring. I find these guys to be completely over-valued. I noticed that Derek enjoyed the Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pimp show, though I dunno were they as good as I had thought they’d be. They have lots of potential though. Loved when Scroobius Pimp when asked about playing their biggest hit, “If we play that now you’ll all fuck off to Sonic Youth right after, we ain’t stupid.” I think thought it was MIA for me that was the best show, her or Bjork. When I showed someone my list of want to sees for the weekend, they said “You love your women so.” and I guess I do.

Possibly more later. I need sleep now. This took me an hour to write.

Guest Photographer: John Williams

Monday, September 3rd, 2007

John Williams is another genius behind a camera and I am happy to say that I have a print of his jelly people photo below and lots comment on it when they see it. Don’t forget to visit and subscribe to his site.

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What an honour to be asked by Damien to talk about photoblogging, although getting down to typing what I may say is very scary, this would be one of the reasons I have chosen PHOTOblogging (no writing really needed) as my main way of blogging to the WWW.

Damien has asked that I pick out 2 pictures which I like and explain a bit about them. What a bitch, since I have over 400 images I like, so I ended up choosing 10 and let some friends vote, I have to say I was very pleased with the results since they pretty much matched the ones I had in mind. My first image comes from Glendalough.

This was one of my first entries to my photoblog, and one I can honestly say “I aint got a clue how I managed it”. It was taken on Saint Patrick’s Day when myself, my wife and my in-laws decided to venture down for a walk. Since the photoblog had only begun I decided to bring my newish camera and take some shots, which I did, and they were all pretty bad, all except for this one which was taken in manual mode where I had full control of all settings, which I still had no idea about and so I screwed up. When I got home and uploaded the photos to the computer it came out much darker then I had expected and had a great moodiness about it. Sometimes, as I have since learnt, the best photos come when you least expect.

For my second ditty, we have Jelly Babies.

This was an experiment I decided to carry out while sick from work one day, I have a very weird mind when my stomach feels ill and decided that I should try to take some food shots (why!) which I believe can be quite hard to light and get right. I am a useless cook but did find a bag of Lidl Jelly Babies. So I decided to allow them to be my model for my photos. They pose badly! in the end I just lined them up on a white card and created a Jelly Army. It is one of the most talked about images from my blog (not by comments as Treasa will understand) but by word of mouth. Also I have never tried to do food photography again since it sounds so painful.

I know I am taking liberties here, but I did also want to show one more image mainly due to the fact that it something a lot of people reading this can relate too.

This was taken at last years Blog Awards, and while the majority of people were warm indoors, drinking the night away, a lot of photobloggers went outside to capture the lunar eclipse that occurred the same night, and this is what I came up with.

Well that’s my lot, if you are reading this far congratulations getting through my very badly written blurb and many thanks to Damien for giving me the opportunity to partake in this guest post thing with so many established photographers.

Guest Photographer: Lili Forberg

Friday, August 31st, 2007

Today we’re sampling some of the wonderful work of Lili Forberg. Her blog is at http://misslili.blogspot.com and her portfolio website is at www.misslili.net. Subscribe!
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This is my first ever guest blog post. What a weird thing to do, because when writing my own blog I feel like I just write to myself.. I’m aware that others read it, but I never really think about it.

Anyway, It is actually impossible to choose my two favourite photos. I have so many favourites, and I keep getting new ones because I am lucky enough to shoot amazing new people all the time (it’s not only luck, I work very hard.. ha!) Anyway, the first one I chose is a shot taken at approximately this time last year, and because the Hard Working Class Heroes festival is coming up at the end of the month, I thought I’d give it a quick plug (check out www.hwch.net for details)

Last year, I decided to organise a photoshoot dedicated to the bands of HWCH, featuring musicians of bands which were playing that year. It was then going to be displayed in the HWCH photography exhibition in FilmBase and I was also hoping that a magazine would run it as well (Totally Dublin magazine published it at the end)

The shoot was over two days and featured over 10 musicians from different bands. All gathered in my studio in Smithfield where I had a stylist waiting for them with a selection of clothes, plus a hairdresser and two makeup artists. I was quite nervous before the day as I didn’t have a clue how it was going to work out- none of the musicians knew each other, I didn’t know them and I didn’t know if it was going to be awkward or difficult or what to expect. I prepared loads (and loads) of sandwiches, filled the fridge with beer (you never know with these rock stars.. 😉 and hoped for the best.

Had so much fun on the day then, everyone was just amazing. The biggest challange was the fact that these people weren’t just models that would wear anything. The stylist had to style them so that they still represent their music and their band, and also fit into the shoot as a whole.
So anyway, this is one of the shots from day 1.

Hard Working Class Heroes
from left to right:
Gaz (Butterfly Explosion), Aoife (Moth Complex), Neilo (The Things), Karen (Cowboy X), Eric Eckhart, Caroline (The Radio), Colm (Sickboy), Niamh (Ham Sandwich).

There are more shots from the day here and here.

This second photograph, is one of my favourite photos ever, and definitely a shoot I will remember for the rest of my life. Model Emma Quinlan is a model with Assets, but also owns loads of snakes and performs with them in various places. So we decided to do a shoot with her snakes, which will also be used in InDublin magazine for a feature about her.

Emma Quinlan and bubbles

Emma arrived in my studio with 4 snakes (pictured is Bubbles) and a lizard. Two of the snakes were MASSIVE (around 5 stone each) and the other two were smaller ones. I helped her to bring her stuff up from the car and she handed me a handbag to take upstairs. There was a snake it it. Everywhere I looked there were snakes. It was crazy. They were all really cute though and so easy to work with. They would just wrap themselves around her. Whenever my softbox flashed, one of the snakes would rise up to it like a big poser. Emma said this was normal because he was light sensitive so he was trying get to the light whenever it flashed. It made for some very interesting pictures! I got my photo taken with Bubbles and Squirt as well which was fun and a bit scary at first. If you want to have a look at more of the photos, they are in InDublin this week I think, or you can see some of them over at my blog!

Thanks for reading, byesies.

MissLili x
http://misslili.blogspot.com
www.misslili.net

Off to Electric Picnic

Friday, August 31st, 2007

This blog has mostly been on auto-pilot all week and that will continue until Monday evening now. See y’all when I see you