Cademuir

I went down to Sandycove this evening and took this pic. If it looks a little 'wrong' its probably because its shot though a Cokin 89B IR filter; this is the red channel isolated and converted to B&W.


Here's a slightly different bit of processing. This is just the original image with the 'I'm feeling Lucky' processing in Picassa.

By the time we reached Ballybofey it was raining. And it continued raining all through the match and into the night.

Of course I had planned to be there earlier in the day; but thanks to having the GPS on 'shortest distance' rather than 'fastest route' setting I became acquainted with lanes in Monaghan when I could have been on the motorway. Ah well.

The match itself was pretty dire. Many fans opted to depart for the pub by half time - understandble given the football and the uncovered stand.

If it was disappointing end to Rovers season it was heartbreaking for Harps. They had to win to stay up on Friday; which they did. But a goal for Galway Utd. in Dublin meant that Galway stay up and Harps are relegated. But its the league of ireland we are talking about so naturally the season is not over - Drogheda are in examinership and Bohemians are potentially millions of euro in debt. The composition of the league next season is far from certain.

I'm slowly becoming addicted to twitter; but not in a time consuming (read: wasting) way!

All this web 2.0 malarky means that twitter is no longer just a website. In fact most of the ways I see people using it do not involve the website at all!

twitterfox is one example of how. This is a Firefox extension that sits quietly at the bottom of your browser and pops up with tweets from people you follow and will let you add your status. This is by far the handiest way to keep up with peoples tweets. Actually going to the twitter website is effort...

twitterfeed is another handy tool. It takes an RSS feed from your blog and posts the entries as tweets.

Then for users of facebook there is a twitter application to update your status on facebook automatically. Lets face it noone actually types in a status message in multiple places; typing it in once is more than enough! More of my friends notice my facebook status than twitter I notice.

But wait! Theres more! Thanks to Stephen Fry posting several pictures of silk spinning spiders today, which I stupidly looked at - aggh!, I now know about twitpic.This allows you to send an email with a picture attached and the subject line will be added as your twitter status and a link to the pic added. Sounds useless. But my phone can take 2mp images and sending a low res image is relativly cheap. Yes it probably is just another gimmik but I might just feel compelled to send pictures to twitter at some point. I can update by twitter status by sms also of course!

Finally today twitter got it's 1 billionth tweet - I guess that means it's popular!

Last weekend 19 of us from the Sandycove Kayaking Club went to Killarney for some Kayaking. It was a very mixed group ranging from experts to complete novices. It had been raining heavily  for a couple of days so the Lower Caragh was very full and fast. The stretch of river we were on was only about 3km long; but you can get a lot of stories and incidents out of 3km as we found out! From 'discovering' islands; to kayaking into trees; to watching the experts go for a swim! Anyway here's my first attempt at the river with Neal and Peter.

I'm working on a new website with a couple of other folks and I wanted to see how to make it more "Web 2.0". But first I had to work out what Web 2.0 is, and to be honest I still don't know!Though the wikipedia Web 2.0 article is a good start. Anyway for this web site I'd really like to use some sort of CMS, Joomla is my current preference because I've a bit of experience with it. Whether we'll be able to get the design that people want designed in Joomla! I don't know. Though the alternative of handcrafting a site with bits of our own php will be more work in the long run.

I came across this video that I wish someone had shown me when I asked "What the hell is XML?!" years ago! XML describes content it does not describe the form. There thats not hard!

That video was posted by Mike Wesch who is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Kansas State University. He also presented a lecture at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008 entitled An Anthropological introduction to YouTube.Facinating.

According to National Geographic wind turbines are now killing large numbers of bats. Partly by directly hitting them; partly by causing dramatic changes in pressure causing lung problems like the bends in humans.

It's about time that the general public, governments and in particular the green movement realise that wind power is not the way forward.

It produces a very small amount of energy relative to other means. It takes many hundreds of turbines to get sufficient power to make a wind farm profitable. These farms cause havoc to migrating birds; bats and insects. The stroboscopic effects have even caused health problems for humans.

Wind farms are not the way forward. They are an environmental disaster and we should move on and stop investing in them. Nuclear power is the best option for the environment but it will be a long time before the Green movement realises this. And it will probably be too late when they do. 

1866 photos. 3 minutes 8 seconds.

Stop Motion Bohs -v- Rovers from Albert White on Vimeo.
Canon 400D, Sigma 17-55 lens, all shot as jpeg. Resized in Imagemagick, put together as an mpeg in mencoder.

This is my first effort at underwater video at Sandycove.



Underwater in Sandycove from Albert White on Vimeo.

Here's how Wales are promoting their new kit for the 2010 WC:


Not exactly making me rush out to buy it... Linfield on the other hand, despite being a team I hate seem to have to the marketing right:



Yep take a shirt and a pair of scissors and cut half it off then give it to a model to wear lying on the grass. Perfect.
And:

Or is that meant to be a promo for very tight fitting shorts?

Marketing to football fans : the basic works best!

2 great videos I came across from Rich Burridges blog. Rich is sadly no longer at Sun since the layoffs last week. This video is by Prof. James Duane from Regent University in Virgina USA. His topic is about 'taking the 5th'; the amendment of the US constitution which gives you the right to silence. It's very interesting, and you'll come away convinced that you should never talk to the police.


The second part is by George Bruch from the Virginia Beach police department who, well, basically agrees, but gives an interesting perspective from the police point of view.