Web 2.0 pre-conference dinner


Web 2.0 pre-conference dinner

Tom Raftery

Salim Ismail and Tom Raftery

Salim Ismail and Britt Blaser

Shel Israel and his wife

Britt and his wife Tamara

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:

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.

06-06-06


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

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


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


Smoke Over Cork City

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


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

An Modh Scoil


An Modh Scoil

This is the Small Claims Court in Cork. If you have a grievance about a product or service you can bring a case against the provider here for around 15 Euro.

In a past life it was also a primary school. I went to school here in the early 80’s when it was the Model School or “Modh Scoil” in Irish.
If you look carefully you may be able to see the inscription, “Cork District Model National School” over the door.
When it was a school the brickwork needed repair, the grounds were simple cement paths with green areas and the heating was open fires and boilers in several of the classrooms. Teachers had to pile on more coal to keep the fire going.
After the school closed down they couldn’t demolish the building because of it’s age so it was converted into a court.

I visited there last year with Jacinta and we were shown around by a friendly guard. I left my camera in it’s case. It was strange to see that the 6th class classroom was now a small courtroom, that huge rooms with high ceilings had been boxed off into offices, and that the boy’s toilets at the end of the building was now a holding cell for prisoners.

This is my first shot taken with the Sigma 10-20mm lens posted here. I didn’t need the wide angle because this is slightly cropped from the original.

Aperture ƒ/10
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/200s
Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.