The shot above I took when driving back to Dublin after a weekend back west. I’ve had to do a few of those trips lately, and I’ve noticed that in certain light, parts of the motorway can be very visually striking.

About two weeks, I opted not to take a shot that I sorely regret now. It was the night the moon was bright red and large on the horizon, and on part of the motorway I was on, the moon was perfectly framed inside a bridge, with subtle lines leading up to the framed moon. As I saw this, I also realised that I had driven too far to safely stop and take the shot. There were more moments like that that evening, still kicking myself for not taking those shots.

Lesson learned though, if possible within acceptable bounds of safety, I will be taking more shots on my drive’s to/from home.

R

Lonely Heart, originally uploaded by eibrandr (in Paris).

A heart made from horse chestnuts, gently laid on a grave in Père Lachaise, a touching gesture

Here is a collection of shots I took on Saturday, I am really glad with how these came out.

R

update: Some of the pics are not showing in the gallery, you can see them all here, on flickr

This weekend I thought I’d go for a drive, and I figured, sure why not go North, Donegal direction, via Enniskillen. The traffic was crazy in town, so I parked up and asked a local for directions to Millets camping shop, where the idea was to buy some camping gear. I got there, but dissapointingly, they stocked very few of the items I was looking for. I got what I thought was a Trangia equivalent, and headed off. On the way back to the car park, I walked by the river, took the shots of the swan and the part of the barge.

The plan was to do find a nice quiet place to park the van, and then sleep there for the night. After a some searching, and very dodgy mountain roads I found a nice little pier, where I parked up and set about getting dinner cooked. Thing was that the cooking set I had bought was missing the actual burner! Annoyed, I had to settle with a sardines in tomato sauce and potato salad sandwhich. More annoyingly, it meant no warm coffee for the morning…

I succumbed to sleep very quickly, there was a lot of driving that day, and woke at 6am the next day.  Fresh and clear – and I thought, great, lets take some pictures!! (click on the thumbnails to enlarge)

There was a lot more driving that day, but sadly after the early morning clear skies, the weather somewhat, and the light just did not work for pictures. Donegal though, is well worth visiting, make sure to get off the main roads though, as everything looks the same. Do what I did, pick a random side road – and go for it!

R

p.s. The post is numbered, as I plan on doing more trips like this over the coming year

(via Ubuntu blog)

Gimparoo!
Adapting Photoshop Tutorials for The GIMP.

This does look good. Recently my Dad bought a new iMac, and as such have been trying to get to use more OS apps, like the Gimp, Firefox and Thunderbird. The biggest problem was the Gimp, even though I installed Gimpshop (makes the gimp  look a little more like photoshop) for him, there were still growing pains, as a lot of the UI is still quite different – but perhaps with these tutorials the transition might be easier.

R

through lastfm (again) I found some rather excellent music.

it is Malian Contemporary Music, and the track I heard “Kele Mandi” blew me away, so I’m going to have to get that album!

wow! (via Wired)

Bionics (also known as biomimetics, biognosis, biomimicry, or bionical creativity engineering) is the application of methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. Also a short form of biomechanics, the word ‘bionic’ is actually a portmanteau formed from biology (from the Greek word “βιος”, pronounced “vios”, meaning “life”) and electronic.

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talk about mouth watering, the peoples involved at deliciousdays do it again!

R

yep, it was cold again last night

R

the joys of icy weather…

R