The beautiful countryside north-east of Dunmanway in West Cork.
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
Author Archives: Donncha
The Web 2.0 Conference Cork
Tom Raftery welcomes everyone to the Web 2.0 Conference in the Radisson SAS Hotel in Little Island yesterday.
I’ll post a few more shots later tonight and update this post.
From left to right: Shel, Walter, Rob, Fergus (behind Rob), and Tom speaking.
Salim was seated to the right of Shel just outside this photo.
Tom has posted his own thoughts on the Conference and Conor has extensive coverage of each speaker, including a few nice words about me. Thanks!
| Aperture | ƒ/5.6 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 125mm |
| ISO | 1600 |
| Shutter speed | 1/60s |
Web 2.0 pre-conference dinner
A group of about 20 bloggers, techs, and generally smart and nice people gathered in Probys Bistro last night before the Web 2.0 Conference today.
Pictured, in no particular order, and only if I figured out, or know your blog:
- Joe Drumgoole who posted some dinner photos and notes from the conference.
- Rob Burke who gave a fantastic demo of Microsoft’s new AJAX development tool.
- Tom Raftery who helped organise the event.
- Salim Ismail who gave a brilliant talk at the conference today.
- Britt Blaser who was in Ireland with his wife at this time.
- Shel Israel is in Ireland too and also gave a rousing and enthusiastic talk at the conference. I was lucky enough to talk to him last night and he impressed me with his passion for blogging and open source software and WordPress!
Not pictured are Fergus Burns or Walter Higgins who were sitting on either side of me at dinner. They gave great talks too, Fergus concentrated on the Irish perspective of starting a company while Walter gave a more technical talk on the technology behind AJAX and Rich Internet Apps.
Bref, Conor and Sabrina – where are your blogs?
Thanks again to Damien Mulley for organising the dinner. It was a great opportunity to meet some of the participants and characters at conference in an informal setting.
Later.. here’s a pic of me at the dinner taken by Joe Drumgoole: 
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/5s |
Using Photoshop actions in GIMP
GIMP#, a project to provide a “C# wrapper around the GIMP API” and that “enables users to quickly write new GIMP plug-ins using .NET or Mono” has had some exciting developments recently.
Maurits is working on a GIMP# plugin that will hopefully allow GIMP to use Photoshop actions. AFAIK, these are basically files with calls to Photoshop functions. They are self-contained programs using a Photoshop programming API to perform operations on images. There are a countless number of Photoshop actions for download, free, shareware and commercial, so having access to these plugins would give GIMP a huge boost in terms of what it can do.
There are problems, some filters and functions in Photoshop simply aren’t available in GIMP but he has managed to parse 25 filters from the action files.
Lots of actions map on a GIMP equivalent. I downloaded about 100 action files and created a top 25 of most often used functions. At the top are functions like Brightness/Contrast, Set Selection, Gaussian Blur, etc. etc. The first function without a direct GIMP equivalent is the Chrome filter.
Bovine bodyguard
Three cattle watch as we passed their field. “Is that a bull on the left?” says the city boy.
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 72mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
06-06-06
Today is the 6th day of the 6th month of the 6th year or 06-06-06.
People worry about the date’s similarity to 666, “the number of the beast”. Did you do or not do anything today because of the date?
Here’s some more trivia about this once in a century day.
| Aperture | ƒ/5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 16mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/2.5s |
Mr. Ed
Well, maybe he doesn’t talk, but this horse sure eats a lot!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
Image Retouching
More examples and proof that what you see in magazines isn’t reality. This image collection allows you to hover over the image to view the original image.
I previously mentioned another retoucher, Glenn Feron who works wonders with what he does!
Digital Journalist: Harper’s Essays
Peter Turnley’s photo essays in the June issue of Digial Journalist are a snapshot of life all over the planet.
The contrast between soldiers and in the next frame, students couldn’t be more striking but the emotion of his “THE BEREAVED, Mourning the Dead, in America and Iraq” is the same no matter where you are or what your job.
Relaxing on Panna
Young and old women relax on St. Patrick Street in the glorious sunshine about a month ago.
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
Smoke Over Cork City
A long trail of smoke was visible over Cork City and surrounding countryside this evening as a fire raged in the scrap metal yard in Dublin Hill.
Jacinta and I had been down in Monkstown at her sister’s house where we enjoyed a great bbq cooked by her husband. We left shortly after 10pm and I noticed a long band of black smoke as we drove through Passage. We turned into the car park for the Line in Rochestown and switched on 96FMto find out what was happening. I never listen to it, honest, but it’s useful for local news!
I sprinted up the path until I got a clear view of the river where I shot the first photo, then on to the metal bridge which crosses the River Lee. The second photo captures the black toxic smoke as it traverses the river. It’s an ugly thing, which was visible from as far away as Carrigaline. Luckily Blarney is in the opposite direction and it’s not visible from there at all, the radio warned that traffic on the north side of the city was bad so we took a detour home through Sunday’s Well.
Damien Mulley photographed the smoke plume from his home in Blackrock. Does anyone else have shots of the fire?
Here’s the RTE coverage of the incident. Thanks Damien for the link!
Was it arson or an accident?
Later.. Thank you Martina on Red FM for giving me a mention! Must have a read of your blog now!
| Aperture | ƒ/5.6 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/30s |
Press the button
A doorbell on a building on the seafront in Cobh. I can’t remember which building exactly but it was down in the direction of the train station.
It’s scorchio in Ireland now and it’s great! We adopted Oscar yesterday and the poor
dog was upset last night until we brought him for a walk. I think I’m finally going to get that exercise I’ve been promising myself for ages!
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/30s |