Showdown The ELO Experience at Cyprus Avenue

Two musicians from The ELO Experience performing under intense green stage lighting, bassist on left singing into microphone and guitarist on right, both backlit by dramatic concert lighting beams

The ELO Experience band on stage with spectacular yellow sunburst lighting effect radiating from centre, three guitarists in foreground with Sonor drum kit visible behind, creating dynamic concert atmosphere

Full band shot of The ELO Experience with multi-coloured stage lighting in purple, blue, yellow and red, showing complete lineup of musicians with guitars, bass, keyboards and drums at Cyprus Avenue venue

The ELO Experience played in Cyprus Avenue in Cork last night and they were fabulous, playing many deep cuts as well as The Electric Light Orchestra’s greatest hits. The crowd thoroughly enjoyed the night and they announced their next gig there in May next year!


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London’s Most Pampered Pooch

I love this little dog’s pet carrier, but every little dog wants to walk and smell the world around them. When they get tired it’s time for a rest and this dog is spoiled with that pet carrier. As they should be. 🙂


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Casting Lines in Cobh

On a warm August day in 2005, you’d find plenty of lads fishing in Cobh, including this bunch who were brave enough to fish from a crumbling pier.

Another photo from that evening shows a disturbance in the water at the mouth of Cobh harbour, where I presume sprat are desperately trying to get away from mackerel and other fish. I wonder if that still happens?


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Focal length180mm
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A colourful sunrise

It was one of those mornings where the sun shone on the clouds from below the horizon and filled the sky with fiery colours!

I’ve been working on a WordPress plugin called Cloud Cover Forecast. It will show you the low, mid, and high clouds for a particular location in a block on your site. It’s inspired by Clear Outside. If you have a blog, take it for a whirl and let me know if it works for you! It’s not on WordPress.org yet, so you’ll have to install it manually by uploading the zip file.


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The Passage West to Monkstown Run

The bike might be a little small but it got him to Monkstown in the end, I hope.


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CameraCanon EOS 20D
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Mahon’s Radio Tower

View across water of telecommunications tower on grassy hillside surrounded by mature trees in Mahon, Cork, with stone seawall and rocky shoreline in foreground under clear blue sky

Twenty two years separate the two images here. The first one is a photo of the old radio antenna tower in Mahon and it was taken in 2003. Back then cattle grazed in the field the tower stood in. That tower was dismantled around a year ago. There’s an interesting Reddit thread here about it. The second photo was from earlier this year where a smaller tower with familiar equipment for what is probably mobile phone cell reception.

It’s an old AM / Medium Wave radio tower that used to carry RTE Radio Cork / Radio 1 and at one stage even a relay of 2FM on medium wave, for those who liked their music crackly. It hasn’t been on air rather a long time an I think RTE has a number of transmitters being demolished. They’re doing it as a single contract.

As far as I’m aware that site was decommissioned in the early 2000s, before RTE finally switched off the main Medium Wave (AM) site in Tullamore. The transmitter itself is long gone. All that’s there is the mast.

There’s no prospect of that mast ever being used again.

Old AM sites typically use the whole structure of the antenna as the transmitter. They often sat on an isolated base and the tower height is half the wave length. So you can’t even easily retune them for an alternate AM frequency and they’re relatively useless for mobile phone gear as they are somewhat flexible and move in the wind.

Basically it would cost RTE a fortune to maintain it, even if it’s a local landmark. They’re not going to pay for ongoing maintenance and they’re quite complicated structures with guy-wires and aircraft hazard lighting and all that stuff.


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From the Heart of Spain

La Mariblanca, a statue in a large square in Madrid, marks the geographic centre of Spain.

This is what it looked like in 2017, but the area around it has been developed since then and now there’s more places to stop and sit.

La Mariblanca, May 2025

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CameraCanon EOS 6D
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The Working End of Gardening

Weathered orange metal storage cabinet or locker with chrome handle standing among coiled black hoses and red plastic chairs at Ballincollig Regional Park allotments, showing rust and wear from outdoor use.

The allotments next to Ballincollig Regional Park need storage for various things, but I doubt the cabinet in the photo above is used for much any more.

Videos I watched recently


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Window on the City

From the car park on North Main Street, Cork, you can Bruce College and St Mary’s Dominican Priory. I liked how the stark lifeless concrete frame of the multi-story car park contrasted with the variety of materials and colours in the world outside.


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Another One Bites the Crust

Meet London’s most successful entrepreneur. This seagull has cornered the market on prime real estate with a view. Perched on the Millennium Bridge like it owns the place, this feathered opportunist represents everything brilliant about urban wildlife adaptation. While Freddie Mercury sang about another one biting the dust, this gull’s motto is clearly “another one bites the crust”, and judging by its confident posture, business is booming.

From this vantage point, our avian overlord can survey the entire pedestrian buffet streaming across the bridge below. Dropped sandwiches, abandoned chips, and tourist snacks are all fair game in the urban food chain. Those gleaming towers in the background might house London’s financial elite, but this bird has figured out a more direct route to success: position yourself where the food comes to you.


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Focal length122mm
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Carey’s Lane After Dark

I was out with Blarney Photography Club during the summer and one member of the club kneeled to photograph Carey’s Lane. I went high and lifted my camera over my head to get it from a different perspective!

Carey’s Lane is one of Cork’s oldest medieval streets, originally part of the walled city that dates back to the 12th century. The narrow width and cobblestone surface are remnants of medieval urban planning, designed for foot traffic and horse-drawn carts. The modern drainage channel follows the same path that medieval gutters would have taken, showing how some aspects of urban infrastructure remain remarkably consistent across centuries.


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Roses on Westminster Bridge

Westminster Bridge is one of those places that is always bustling with tourists. It is so busy.

Westminster Bridge is one of the few locations in central London where street vendors can legally operate without special permits for certain goods, thanks to historic trading rights that date back centuries. However, flower sellers must still navigate complex licensing requirements, and the competition for prime spots along the bridge is fierce, with established vendors often working the same locations for years.


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Focal length24mm
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