Extreme Pornography

Seriously, don't watch this if you're of a sensitive disposition. If you thought Tom Green humping a dead moose was bad, this is much worse. You think the money shot is when the guy cums, oh no no no... the real money shot is given to the dogs directly afterwards [you'll know what I mean when/if you see it].

[via Cafe't Spieke]

"Mary Harney Diagnosed with Breast Cancer"

Hands up who wants this to be headline in the tomorrows newspapers... What? I'm only asking what youre all thinking. I however, have much more important things to think about.

[Mary Harney Cancer Disgrace]

Picture of the Week

This one annoyed me. I was waiting for the perfect moment to post the picture like the one I took above, and last Thursday's announcement by Bulmers seemed like a perfect time. I rushed the post out, to keep it fresh and current... then almost immediately afterwards, the two public feed aggregators I use for this blog (irishblogs.ie and corkblogs.com) both went offline for the night. I was fuming! So I'm plugging the picture again. Well, not really... As I said in the post, there were a few loose ends to tie up, which didnt relate directly to the story. As noted, the picture above isn't the picture used but it came a close second. All it needed was a tiny bit of fill flash. I love the colour and reflections of on the Waterford' box.

I don't use the term "ghetto" all that often, never in fact, and I'm not sure it would suit a description of this shoot but it certainly was a spur of the moment thing. I set it all up on the floor in my hallway in front of a table lamp. I had no flashgun so I was relying on ambient light. In retrospect I should have just used the on-camera flash for a tiny bit of fill. I used a flashlight to highlight the crystal. I had to shoot it lying on my side holding the camera with one and the flashlight with the other. The camera was cranked up to 1600ISO just to make things a bit easier with shutter speeds. All in all though, it was just a bit of fun and I think the dodgy quality suits the dodgy concept. Choosing a single image was hard though:


The Original... "Nothing added but redundancy."


I like the Cauldrin of Light effect in this one, but it is a bit too strong.


This has nice reflections on the box but the cider looks flat (tone wise).


This is far too dark but the cider and crystal glow beautifully.

Rory Gallagher - Resurrected

I spied this while browsing at Tesco recently. Its a live Rory Gallagher dvd, nothing unusual there. Admittedly it has a catchy cover, but is it factually relevant? The back of the DVD said it was a recording of a 1987 performance at the Cork Opera House but I remembered reading that the new glass front on the building, shown on the cover, was added in 1993. Does it all matter? You decide, it was just something for me to blog about.

SUV Haters: More Venom than Sense

I was listening to "Cork Talks Back: Rewind" last Monday morning. One caller, "Grace", was complaining about SUV drivers. She went on about how reckless the drivers are, she continued by adding: "Its not just SUV drivers that are obnoxious, foreign drivers are obnoxious too. I'm not racist like, I don't mean the Polish or anything, I mean like car's with a British reg". Based on this, I'm sure she must be an excellent driver.

A few notes

• By pure coincidence, I was this blogs 50,000th visiter on Thrusday
• Looks like I don't have to decide about the ballet next week, I'll probably be still working outside of cork by then. I might try the saturday performance if I'm off, although I'm sure its sold out by now.
• Ultraviolet is a really bad movie.
• I think I have stomach cancer.
• My favorite Bushism:

Céad míle fáilte

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of redundency...

Enjoy a beautiful boat ride along the river Suir, locally known as the river of death. Enjoy the views of a heap-of-shit cider brewry in Clonmel and a broken down Crystal factory in Waterford. This is Ireland, welcome to the best economy in the world!

Waterford Crystal did the old "hack and slash" with 500 of their employees a while back, and now Bulmers are "smokin' the bitches" today, we can be sure that this year is going to be a "Merry Christmas" for Irish Industry. And what better way to enjoy the festive season than to slurp back the finest of Clonmel cider within a piece of Waterford Crystal.

Go raibh maith agat,
Do chara Bertie (buachaill deas le Eireann).

[I was working on this post for the last week but todays announcement made it a perfect time for it to go public; more to come.]

Portlaw Wind Turbines

Went to see the two wind turbines recently installed in Portlaw Co. Waterford on Thursday last. The weather was excellent as you can see, cold and windy but very sunny. Thankfully I decided to bring my camera(s) with me (and had charged up the batteries a few days before). It's impossible to get a sense of scale when you get relatively close to them, they almost seem to shrink the closer you get. We didnt venture past the locked gates but I imagine standing beside them would let you realise how big they actually are. Its a pity I didnt bring my tripod with me because I would have loved to have seen what they blades looked like with a long exposure. Something to try the next time perhaps.

Milking a Dead Horse

Like it or not, Mike Oldfields "Tubular Bells" was and is a highly influential album. Not a hugely unique album by any measure but certainly well known and respected as an experimental, progressive, concept etc. recording. When released in 1973 it was successful enough to launch Oldfields career, helped on by its inclusion in the score of the film "The Exorcist", which is probably what it is most famous for.



In 1975, an orchestral version of Tubular Bells was released. Performed by the Royal Symphony Orchestra, it was greeted with mixed reviews, although most would agree that its a harmless gimmicky album that does no more harm than to add a twist to the original.



In 1993 Oldfield released one of my personal favorite albums, Tubular Bells II. He had always openly expressed his ill feelings about the quality and performance of certain sections of the original Tubular Bells and this new album allowed him, not to reproduce note for note the original, but breath new life into the overall concept of the original. Its a wonderfully executed album, reusing just enough themes from the original for it to be called "Tubular Bells" and yet deviating enough for it to stand on its own feet. This was again, and quite rightfully so, another successful album for Oldfield.



Just five years later in 1998, in a seemingly cynical move to cash in on his earlier successes, Oldfield released the abysmal Tubular Bells III. Panned by critics, panned by all but the hardest of fans, Tubular Bells III is a cacophony of shite. Conceptually irrelevant and musically dire, it is a dated mishmash of new age techno with Oldfield rehashing old themes from not just the Tubular Bell albums.



An even more bizarre album was released by Oldfield a year later. Called "The Millennium Bell" and sporting similar artwork, it was obviously designed to take advantage of the interest surrounding the three Tubular Bell albums. Musically however this had nothing similar and seemed to be nothing more than a collection of kooky new age tunes. It again was snubbed by most.



Finally in 2003, Oldfield released "Tubular Bells 2003", a rerecording of the original Tubular Bells score. Oldfield described the album as being what the original would have sounded like if he had the time, the money and the technology back in 1973. Certainly its a great sounding album, it bleeched off all the warts from the original. Unfortunately it was some of those warts that gave it the "Bell's" feel and character that everyone fell in love with. It not strictly true to the original either. The distorted "Basses" part of the original is still there (and disapointingly, still 30 seconds too long) but now he's added in subtle "Metallica" power chords underneat, completely ruining the point of the piece. Unlike some of people I totally enjoy John Cleese as Master of Ceremonies on the album. As rerecordings go, itss pretty good, but it's still a rerecording nonetheless.



Also worth mentioning, Mike Oldfield has repeatidly dipped into Tubular Bell's to provide inspiration for his other albums. Most recently, his 2007 album, The Music of Spheres, has a strickingly similar opening to the main Tubular Bell's theme. A theme which, on a final note, has always been just a musical phrase by JS Bach played backwards.

Adventures in Actionscript

So yeah, all that actionscripting kinda died out didnt it :) Well I'm still tapping away at it, bits here and there, basically I'm at a stage where I know how AS works but all the extra goodies available to me are still a mystery. Thats the problem really, I'm not interested in doing little pointless projects anymore just to learn whats there to use. I don't like the idea of attempting a bigger project of my own having to constantly search around the AS libraries just to see whats already been done for me (never liked re-inventing the wheel).

I could never picture myself as one of those people who manage to code up things over night: "Oh I was just bored last night so I decided to write this little program that graphical shows you how to solve all intractable problems... oh and it plays midi files too!". I couldnt even write a program to print out "Hello World" overnight. Writing this post took me half the day!

Daily Mail: All time low

Last Wednesday's Daily Mail managed to produce a half page article from a single line in a filler-piece about Senator David Norris, in the Irish Times a day earlier. If only we could get the same kind of milage from the petrol in our cars we'd have no oil crisis! Do people get paid for writing this stuff or am I missing something?

Fran Holland's amazing Balloon Organ

Amazing timbre.

TV Licence Inspector

TV Licence inspection accross the water. Oh if this happened to me, there'd be nothing left of the guy apart from a clipboard lying in a pool of gore. "Ya scummy little git!" lol

The Male Face-Lift

"A facelift, also known as rhytidectomy, is a surgical procedure to remove excess skin, tighten the remaining skin to return the face to a more youthful presentation"

I havn't a clue where the idea came from, I think I woke up with it, but I made a note to do it up a few weeks back on my phone.

[images from usemycomputer.com and uncoolkids.com]

TV Licence Fee Adds

For the last year we have been subjected to every second add on radio and tv being one of those annoying infomercials with some smarmy cunt bursting in uninvited declaring himself to be "Ah... TV Licence inspector....". The occupents of the household then offer up lame excuses as to why they dont have one. Well if that bollocks came to my door I'd give him both barrels, and I actually have a licence! Anyway, I've said it all before.

[Still taken from "Magnum Force" (of the Dirty Harry series)]

Do you like random photography?

If you do then give the LiveJournal Randomiser a go.

[via WFMU]

String Theory in 2 Minutes

Yeah fair enough, thats string theory in 2 minutes alright, just don't expect to understand it in two minutes if you have no previous knowledge :)

[More 2 minute videos here via Make:Blog]

Yamaha MO6

Thomas Berlin lays down the chops and makes me want to buy another keyboard! Not as mental as Bert but certainly got the skillz (thats twice today that I used that word). What I love about the Yamaha keyboards are the transport controls. They are just so brutally tactile. Unless someone can tell me otherwise the big put off for me with the Yamaha MM6 is the lack of instantanious looping of recorded parts.

Double the vitality

I was bored so I doodled over the back of this weeks RTE Guide.

Pickup Girls at the Ballet

With this wonderful recent find on the WFMU blog, it seems like a perfect time to mention the dilemma rushing upto meet me this month. Monica Loughman and Cork City Ballet are performing Giselle at the Cork Opera House at the end of the month. I'd like to go, I'd like to go twice in fact, but I have no one to go with. Going on my own wouldn't put me off per se(I've had to do it before), but wouldnt it be lovely to take in a show with a lady. This takes me on nicely to the title of this post.

I've never actually tried, chatting up, picking up, or whatever you want to call it at either ballet or the Opera House; I dont have da skillz, skillz being the ability to talk, to anyone! I did however hope to stand out like a flame in the night, with all the lady moths being drawn to me. I was hoping I could adopt this kind of Bella Lugosi Dracula mindset where, by just using the power of my mind (and no actual effort or balls) attract the "lady of the night". Obviously it never worked; obviously it could never work with my outward physical demeanour of fear and anxiety, sheepishly shuffling towards the stalls staring at my feet with an overal hatred of myself bubbling up in my mind (hyperbole, but ultimately true); possibly I even frightened the poor dear! lol But I look back and laugh, it was a lot of fun. I was getting over a traumatic breakup at the time, I was on the rebound, and the tickets were expensive so I was just getting value for money :)

Anyway, it was never going to work because I hadn't heard the following piece of audio from 1975:

The Ballet Is A Ball

Now I have the power, now I have the skillz! All I have to do is substitute Monica Loughman for "Joanna Webber" and bam! I can be just like Jeff. But Jeff is a womaniser.... hmmm I think I'll stick to Bella Lugosi.

Picture of the Week

I love the contrast between the "alien" orange and blue wheely bins and the dank, decaying laneway entrance that effectively acts as a frame. Its a toss up between cropping out the face on the left and leaving the leg float into frame without an owner, or leaving it as is, sacrificing composition for personality. Eitherway, if it were my image I would definately crop out the first row of red blocks, somewhere in the grey row just below the foot. This would strengthen the composition considerably.

Simon is an English photograher living in Ireland since 2004. He lives and Newbridge and works for a large company on the outskirts of Dublin... or so he says anyway :) His photoblog seems reletively new with a small, but varied collection of photographs. Hopefully he will continue to add to it.

[via Donncha]