A Lot Done; More To Do

I had a very long day at work. And the snow was snowy. This was a blog of my day. Thank you.

Get Your Razers Out! Movember Draws To A Close

It's the last day of November, so you know what that means: it's nearly time to shave off those cancer defeating lip warmers. Here's a picture of Freddy Mercury getting some help with his [note: Mr. Mercury passed on many years before the first "Movember" initiative. The picture is stock, and for illustrative purposes only. Your statutory rights have not been affected].

I'm not participating (the permanent stubble look I've developed must not be changed!) but I have donated. And now some more images of interesting mustaches for your perusal.

#ToyShow - It's The Small Victories...

Friday last, was the night of this years Late Late "Toy Show", a long running love/hate moment yearly Irish TV programming. It's well known for giving members of the audience various amounts of free stuff, hence the phrase "There's one for everyone in the audience..." has become associated with it.

So like last year, I sat down to watch it and started tweeting shite. One particular tweet of mine got picked up and became popular. For the records, this has become my most amount of retweets ever. Tremendous isn't it.


It achieved the spot of "Top Tweet" of the night for the hash tag "#ToyShow". I didn't bother checking out the #latelate tag, which I think is a pity now.


I got a tweet telling me I was "trending" in Dublin. Amazing stuff.


And then a tweet to tell me I was trending in Ireland. Wonderful, wonderful....

A snippit of video from this years Late Late Toy Show [via bigmentaldisease]

Alpine Skiing Weekend: Aspen - November 2010

Maria Riesch investigating expensive ear rings as her manager/fiance Marcus, looks on. This was part of some Milka/Eurosport thing, which included some staged dialogue about buying the earrings if she wins over the weekend. She came second in Sunday's slalom


Susanne Riesch falls down.


German second and third place in the Giant Slalom on Saturday.


All images taken from Eurosports online player HD stream. It would seem however that the feed from Aspen was only in Standard Definition though. [http://www.eurosportplayer.co.uk]

Tim Exile - "The Mouth": A New Reaktor Instrument

I only heard about this shit now. Easily one of the best advertisements for anything, ever! The "Automate your chords in your sequencer" section around 52 seconds in, is the most sexual part of the video. If you don't buckle your seatbelt you may very well ruin your underpants. Damn, it's only €34 too. But if I bought it, that would mean I'd surely have to start uploading stuff here with me singing in it... good lord! It's not that my singing voice is bad really, it's just that my freestyling lyrics usually refer to ladies bottoms and penises, and they don't necessarily relate to each other at the time either!

Dáithí Ó Sé: The Secret's Out

I always see a lot of talk about Dáithí's age. It must be a fiercely guarded secret or something. I give some insight to it above though.

[UPDATE] Thanks to the BMD for finding secret content, on my own blog no less, I can confirm that in 2007 Daithi was only 30. Quite how he managed this is still a mystery. Quantum time travel perhaps? It might explain a lot of things. The evidence appears from 20 seconds into [ the video ].

"What the Butler Saw"

The Princess Di and Dodi Al Fayed Story, in pornographic stop-motion animation. Contains outstanding climax.

Vincent Browne

[ context ] [ original image ]

Angry Kid Writes To Brian Cowen

[real story]

Fair Shitty: Vaguely Musical Child Abuse Video + Extra Bonus Content

Some Fair City video cut to make it slightly more musical. Contains statisfying amounts of child smacking.

To balance it out. Here's an animation I made of the "child beater" getting beaten up. Originally made before video footage of the event was made available on the internet.


[click here if animation doesn't show up]

Carrigstown's own up and coming artist extraordinaire, Philip O'Connor, drew this mighty picture of Suzanne. Suzanne is a giver, and likes knives and snooker cues. Philip on the other hand is a hunted soul, tormented for and by his art. He fell in love with a girl but got disgusted when he found out she was taking someone elses micky. He likes the outdoors and can often be found sleeping rough around the Carrigstown communal areas. In a bonus scene omitted from the Fair City Halloween special, he was pictured sitting on the toilet with 4 of Jo's knickers on his head, chanting: "All the flesh are sinful! Sweets for the sweet!" A true genius in the making.

A Blog Post About Someone Else's Sketch

I'm a big fan of women pulling faces. Usually this involves high resolution photography, but sometimes it can work even in the form of a pencil sketch.

[artist: Peter Slattery]

The Dáithí Ó Sé Files: Dáithí's Dark Desires

Joe Duffy Has Pubic Lice* {music}

Earlier this year, I received a snippet of autotuned vocal freestyling by BMD. So taken with it that I immediately started working on putting it to music. I literally raced through it, without rhyme nor reason. The only thought I put into it was creating a sort of Late Late Show theme tune intro. BMD enjoyed the end result and immediately published it on their blog. I held back, unsure as to it's merrit. I can now finally feel happy publishing it here.

Joe Duffy Has Pubic Lice

[download]

Here's what the BMD had to say about it:

Joe Duffy was a great sport about the whole thing, and gave us a few hours of his time for free. We filmed the video last week in Copper Face Jacks on Harcourt Street. Big shout out to the management there. Everything went well on the night, apart from a minor hiccup when one of the make-up artists on the shoot was attacked in the ladies toilets by a farmer. If anyone was in Coppers on the 8th of April between 21:00 and 22:45 could they please drop me an email or get in touch with Harcourt Street Garda Station?

This is going to be huge all across Europe.

Joe Duffy dance created by JibJab

*Title of song only and probably not a factual statement.

At This Stage I don't Care Who's In Power But...

John Gormley and his bunch of cronies have done more damage to the environmental cause than all the oil spills and years of fossel fuel burning put together! Only when this incarnation of the Green party is destroyed will any respect for "Green Politics" return to Ireland. I personally want to see them burn; all of them! Each one bursting into flames with a little puff of CO2 coming out the top of their heads.

The Plough And The Stars: IMF Version

[original photo source]

Brian Lenihan: The Big Bleak Toxic Problem

If only we had a NicoBloc for the banks...

Treasures From The TG4 Flickr Stream

All kinds of magic: crazy shotgun ladies, jizztastic Aifric, wee Daniel making his beatz, David Icke and lizard man Hector, women with red hair smelling each other, the Guards, and Daithi O Se at the Grand Ole Opry. Marvelous altogether, and all with hi-res original images freely downloadable. Find your own treasures here... [ TG4 Flickr Stream ]

Mighty Shtuff: This Is Da Return Of Da Space Cowboy

After some confusion earlier, Dáithí Ó Sé themed posts have returned. Contrary to popular belief, I have nothing against the man. I actually kinda like him. Well I mean, as much as I know of him. But who knows what wicked stuff he gets up to at home. Maybe he strangulates kittens and uses their corpses as Kleenex tissues to wipe the cream-pies from the crotches of the cadavers that he copulates with, after stealing them from the local morgue. A little too dark? Ok.

He comes across far better when he's speaking Irish. He's a total natural on TG4, but perhaps that might be an indication of his maligned "bogmanitus" image. Nevermind though, I'm sure the only reason he seems a bit awkward when speaking English is because his mind thinks in Irish, and there's some kind of mad translation service going on in his head when he's conversing with someone in the "invaders tongue". Oh and he has excellent shoulders. I can't knock him on the shoulders.

Admitting that I don't hate Daithi may ruin the enjoyment of these blog posts for some but I feel I must be honest in the matter. It would make me immensely unhappy if Daithi read my posts and got the wrong idea. Imagine if he was so upset that he became unable to ejaculate into a fresh corpse he had stolen. I realise it now sounds like I'm being sarcastic in all this but I'm not. Oh internet, you can be such a confusing place. Ok, let's have some acid jazz....

Jamiroquai - Space Cowboy (Album Version)

"sleeping in the car, Cork"

Click image for larger version...
Cork residing Polish photographer/architect Jedrzej Niezgoda snapped this photo some time ago in Cork. What I love about it is both the interesting character asleep in the car, admidst all his knick-knacks, but also how Jedrzej managed to get himself in the reflection leaning in to capture the occupant. The bold yet surreptitious nature of the pose reminds me almost of some kind of "Trollface" meme.

[original post]

Irish Road Speed Limits: A Pile Of Piss?

This is something I've been meaning to blog about for a while now (in reality there's a lot I want to blog about but never do). In the last few years, Cork's South Ring Road/N22 had it's speed limit increased from 100kph to 120kph, a limit which I always assumed was specially designated for Motorway classed roads. After all, it's only motorways with their "specially" designed structuring that could handle the extra 20kph over the national limit. And yet, we find here in Cork, a national route with a "motorway" speed limit. I find this paradox unsettling. Either the road is suitable to be classed as a motorway as the speed limit indicates or it isn't, as the classification of a National Route indicates. Surely having it both ways makes a mockery of road safety in Ireland [it wouldn't be hard, I hear you say]. There is a clause that allows local authorities to decrease the speed limit as they see fit on roads, but the increase in this case is obscene.


View Larger Map

Next on my agenda will be to tackle the criminal level of poor roundabout design in Ireland. That one will be posted right around whenever...

Happenstance {music}

Started messing around with a little Arabic percussion loop, I then recorded a few bars of live drumming over the top. When all that was loops together I started playing a bass guitar patch over the top and before I knew it I ended up in Spain* [by pure happenstance, you see]. Piano track added afterwards. There's an extended version in existence also but that's just extra material tacked on.

Happenstance Part 2 by Gammagoblin

Part one is just made up of some extra bass parts I had lying around, so I tacked them together and put some basic piano over the top. I deemed the bass to be of importance in this part so that's up more than the piano in the mix. You can hear both parts together in the Flash player below.

Happenstance - Part 1 & Part 2

[download]

*"Spain" the musical composition by Chick Corea, as opposed to the country.

Valkyrie Maiden Cry Above The Cold Wind To Valhalla

Ireland's Abandoned Sovereignty

A personal collection of the last sovereign coinage minted in Ireland. 2000.

What Is A Dáithí O Sé Fetish?

I was sent this link  via eoinomahony via Twitter.
http://www.mic.ul.ie/guide2009/english.shtml
It's a promotional video Mr. Ó Sé did for Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.

When I asked him if he had sent the link to Big Mental Disease as well, I got this reply:

"No, funny that. I orig was to send it and the remembered youre the one with the Daithi fetish."


Well I must say I am annoyed. First I'm told that I have a Daithi O Se fetish and then I see I wasn't even first in line for the link! I'm writing to Pat Kenny about this. My constitutional rights have been infringed. I'm citing a case of Habeas corpus maximus! I'm not even the one 'shopping Daithi's micky. Heads will roll!

Rather than halt my posting as planned, I shall now instead ramp up my Daithi postings! The best way to fight fire, is with fire! Go Raibh Maith Agat, agus lovely shtuff!

Superbia-Avaritia-Luxuria-Invidia-Gula-Ira-Acedia

The seven deadly sins which could land you in HELL!

Alpine Skiing: Slalom - Levi, Finland

A mixed day for the Germans. Showing their strength by getting 9 skiers into the final 30 for the second run but were unable to take the top spot. Lena Dürr, pictured above finished in a strong second place after the first run, but crashed out in the second run.


Maria Riesch commanded a strong lead after the first run and looked like she was going to take the victory in the second, but somehow ended up finishing just three hundreds of a second behind Austrian Marlies Schild.


Barbara Wirth demonstrates how not to ski, but does well to complete the second run.


Maria's sister, Susanne Riesch [left] does relatively well by gaining a place after the second run.


I was personally disappointed by Christina Geiger's 20th place finish. I was expecting a little more of her.


[ All images taken from EurosportPlayer's HD internet feed ]

The Ryan Tubridy Photoshop Competition

What marvelous visual imaginings can you come up using this image of Ryan Tubridy. Entries on a postcard only please. Roll it there Róisín. Terms and Conditions: Substituting the trophies for cocks will be frowned upon and you won't win tickets to the Late Late Show.

The Pricewatershitcoopersmith Women

There we go, all women rated, and all achieved a fail. They must try harder in future. Everyone is responsible for their own levels of productivity. This company is standing still while going backwards and sexual related discrimination is up by 17% this quarter. These women wouldn't last 5 minutes under Bill Cullen, but that's probably more due to Bill than anyone else...

The last time I mentioned Pricewaterhousecoopers on this blog, it related to how one of their staff members fucked up Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi Team Mates from winning University Challenge 2009. Yeah, waterhouse' under the bridge, me hole. Old wounds die hard. Vengeance will burn, burn I tell you. All staff members will pay for Trimble's undoing! What day is today again? I think I forgot to take my brain medicine.

[ More serious reporting on the story ]

A Little Bit More On Slow-Motion Video Interpolation

I think most people didn't appricate the epic shit that was the "Ugly Betty Super-Slow-Mo video" post. Never mind, I will attempt to wow you with this post on it now.

Above is the original clip: united except for the sound being removed. In it, you can see the green-screen error at the beginning (black mark on his hand). I initially thought this was another artifact from the slow-mo process, as I missed it first time around, but no, it's actually Ugly Betty's post-editing problem, not mine.

Below are two versions of the video slowed down. The first is the CGI version that was posted already, and the one below it is a bog standard frame-rate reduced version, to roughly match the timing. To see how epic the CGI AI frame-interpolation is (yes, it really is Artificial Intelligence frame creation!) click on the first video below and the then click on the next. If you time it right the two should be in-sync, if not, pause one until the other catches up. What you'll see in the second video is some very jerky movement, it's a 25 fps video played back at 3.1fps. The one above it is very very smooth and the reason for this is because, between those frames of the second video, the computer (yes, the computer. I'm stressing this point for the uninspired) has actually created new frames to tween between the frames in the original source.. Does that not amaze you, no? Just check out the difference then, go on!




So how was it done? Well this is old hat to competent videographers and digital editers these days but there are still a few people out there (those hanging onto clunky VHS cassette recorders perhaps) that will find this whole thing very interesting. There has to be, the law of averages proves it.

There are three ways you can get these kinds of results (that I know of): 1) get yourself some expensive video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro. Newer expensive softwares come with the super sexy slow-mo algorithms built in. 2) Get a copy of Dynapel MotionPerfect. It's software designed for this very purpose 3) Have a mess around with AVS scripts. Here's a guide to creating suitable AVS scripts, but it's a little out of date and I had to do a bit of jiggery-pokery to get it to work.

The main thing is run the video through whatever you use, multiple times. Perhaps that will be done automatically for you but results will dramatically improve with multiple runs. That is all.

Harney: The Angle Of Death

You go gurl...


The Fungus Among Us...

Joan O'Sullivan reporting. I like this image.