Holy Shmoly! » Photos

Well Loved Lego

Donncha O Caoimh — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:44:00 +0000

Well used and loved Lego may break and get squashed but the non-broken bits can be washed and dried and used again by a new generation.

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Makerbot 3D Printer makes a Church

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:54:12 +0000

Last Saturday I went to the Coderdojo party in the NSC with my son Adam to see what it was all about. We arrived late and all the pizza was gone but there were loads of balloons for the younger kids to play with!

The adults and older kids watched a 3D Makerbot printer demo. I love the open wooden case the printer is made from and when it started making a replica of St. Anne’s Church all eyes were glued to it as layers of plastic were laid down layer by layer. I posted some more photos here too.

Thanks Ann for tweeting about this on Saturday morning and reminding me it was on! Hopefully I’ll get to more Coderdojo events in the future!

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Take That Croke Park, 2011

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:10:08 +0000

Here are a few photos from last Sunday’s Take That concert in Croke Park, Dublin. It was an amazing concert that started way too slowly. The Alice in Wonderland theme was great but the show really picked up once Robbie Williams came on stage. The guy is a master show man. If Freddie Mercury were alive he’d give him a run for his money!

Pet Shop Boys played support and I would gladly pay money to go see them again!

I would venture to say the crowd was 95% women. I bet they were happy to see the guy who half-stripped above the stage. Yes, yes, photo of him below! Over 76,000 people went to see them on Sunday night and it was amazing. We had no problem leaving after the concert and thankfully stayed in a nearby hotel which was just a walk away.

The fans enjoyed the show but so did Robbie Williams if this post is to be believed! (oh dear, the cynic in me!)

Quoting the full post below, just because I know that blog will disappear when some PR guy decides to revamp that site..

HOLY SHIT!

I CAN HONESTLY SAY EVERY SHOW WE’VE DONE SO FAR
HAS BEEN REALLY SPECIAL…..

FROM THE LOVE WE RECEIVED FROM THE GENTLE FOLK
IN THE NORTH EAST…. WHERE WE LEARNT TO BE A BAND AGAIN

….TO THE GRIT AND PERSEVERANCE
OF THE MANCHESTER CROWD THAT GOT PEE’D ON MOST NIGHTS…..

I’D KINDA FOUND MY PERFORMING FEET IN MANNY’
MOST NIGHTS WATCHING YOU ALL BOUNCE UP AND DOWN
IN LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU WAS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

AND THEN THERE WAS THE WELSH CROWD THAT OUT SUNG THEM ALL…..
WE WON’T FIND OURSELVES IN A BETTER VENUE ON THIS TOUR…..
SO HUGE BUT SO INTIMATE AND I/WE FELT THE LOVE

BUT OH MY LORD….IRELAND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME ON SUNDAY NIGHT…..?

I GAVE EVERYTHING I HAD ON SATURDAY AND AS EXPECTED
YOUR PERFORMANCE WAS BETTER THAN MINE…..(ONLY JUST ; )

SO MUCH SO THAT IT WAS WITH A BIT OF TREPIDATION
THAT I MADE MY WAY BACK TO CROKE PARK THE NEXT DAY
FEELING A LITTLE JADED AND DRAINED FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE….
(SUCH HIGH HIGHS THERE HAS TO BE A COME DOWN….)

BUT I WASN’T EXPECTING WHAT CAME NEXT…..

I PROPER LOST MY SHIT……

THE OVERWHELMING GOOD WILL…LOVE…SMILES
HAPPINESS,APPROVAL AND ACCEPTANCE
BEAMING STRAIGHT TO THE STAGE
TRANSFORMED ME FROM PREENING PEACOCK
PRIMA DONNA SHOWMAN
TO A BALL OF MUSH WITHIN SECONDS…..

IT WAS SO POWERFUL THAT I DIDN’T
KNOW IF I WAS GOING TO BE ABLE TO COLLECT
MYSELF ….
PROPER FLOORED ..THERE’S A TEAR IN MY EYE THINKING
ABOUT IT NOW….

YES, THE GIGS HAVE RANGED FROM BRILLIANT TO RELIGIOUS
EVERY NIGHT ………BUT SUNDAY NIGHT CROKE PARK
WAS LIFE DEFINING …….IT WILL STAY WITH ME FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE….

IRELAND I BOW TO YOU….

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN XXXXXXXXXXXXX

The best of these photos will eventually land on my photoblog as more polished images but I wanted to give everyone a flavour of the night’s festivities and atmosphere. Yes, I did sneak my Canon DSLR and a 70-300mm telephoto lens in and I’m glad I did because I was at the other end of the stadium. BUT, Take That recognised that they can’t stop people taking photos and even recreated their first album cover on-stage. They gave everyone a count down to get their cameras out. I unfortunately only got a blurry shot as they weren’t standing in a spotlight.

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Gaming History in Pictures

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:12:39 +0000

A few games I found recently while sorting through boxes at home:

Quake 3 tin box, Linux edition. I wrote an article about this for the Irish Times a few years ago.
Double Dragon, C64 version, I posted pictures of this before of course.
Gyroscope, the first 5 1/4 disk based game I owned on the C64. It was given to me by someone, can’t remember who now but I used it later for Stunt Car Racer and even printed the loading screen from that game on a dot matrix printer for the disk cover.
The excellent Stunt Car Racer manual and box cover.
The System 3 Premier Collection and Thalamus The Hits compilations were the pride of my games collection at one time. I still remember the excitement of getting those boxes in the post.
C64 Cabal, tape version. Brilliant game. I remember spending as much time tinkering with the game ASM code as playing it..
Half Life 2 Collector’s Edition and Half Life 1. Steam was launched when HL2 was released and I was recently able to register the HL1 CD key in Steam and download that great game.

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Military Show at Cork City Gaol

Donncha O Caoimh — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:39:17 +0000

Some photos from the military show at Cork City Gaol today. It’s also on tomorrow and well worth a visit!

I got to try out the red dot sight on an M416, see a Scar-L up close, and even checked out an M60 too. All replica air guns, without ammo unfortunately. There was a target range but there was a long queue for it. Maybe next time because my 3 yro son was disappointed the guns didn’t work!

I have a few more photos on my phone which I’ll upload tomorrow.

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Blairs Inn Smile

Donncha O Caoimh — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:19:19 +0000

Duncan of Blairs Inn was giving out free samples of their delicious beef stew along with samples from other local restaurants at the festival in Blarney today.

Delicious stuff, and Blairs Inn is a great place to go for a meal too. Only been there once but we had a great meal there. Recommended.

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Patrick's Day in Blarney

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:35:31 +0000

We were originally going to be walking in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Blarney but our son fell asleep a few minutes ago, and it wouldn’t be fair on him to drag him out unfortunately. We did visit the “farmers market” this morning however and I took a few photos. They’re really only snapshots but I hope you enjoy them, especially if you have visited Blarney.

This is probably the few times in the year that you’ll see this many locals near Blarney Castle!

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First Day at #WCIRL

Donncha O Caoimh — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:35:37 +0000

So, day one of WordCamp Ireland draws to a close, there is a dinner tonight but the talks and sessions are over for the day.

I briefly helped John Handelaar during his talk on WordPress MU, but my main talk was on WP Super Cache. Thank you Hanni, Jane and Sheri for recording the talk. Hopefully it’ll be available online next week. In the meantime here’s the OpenOffice slides of my talk.

I must extend a big thank you to Sabrina Dent and Katherine Nolan for organising a great day and to the sponsors who made the weekend possible.

Looking forward to the dinner tonight, and the rest of the conference tomorrow.

Update! I’ve added a few photos from Day 2. I was shattered tired though as I was up until 1.30am chatting with Donnacha!

Update 2! Sabrina has written a thoughtful post about WordCamp Ireland. I for one had a great time there and so did everyone I spoke to. I totally agree with her about child minding facilities. My son Adam had a whale of a time, and is still talking about it. (and for an almost three year old, that’s a very good sign!)

Oh, more photos on Pix.ie!

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Some people don't feel the cold

Donncha O Caoimh — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:54:03 +0000

The weather reading on my desktop computer says -3C, that’s the temperature at the local airport I presume. It’s very cold out, but the sun is out and at least there’s no wind.

I took Oscar for a walk, I’m all wrapped up against the cold with a thick warm hat and over that a hoodie (yes, they do have a use!) and finally a light jacket to keep all the heat in. I dodged the ice and enjoyed the lovely sunlight melting away the frost on exposed surfaces. The footpath wasn’t too bad, Oscar was enjoying himself.

Half way down the road I bump into a neighbour. He’s dressed for a totally different season! Apart from his usual black jeans, he had on a nice shirt, but the top two buttons were undone exposing flesh to the cruel winter cold, and his one concession to that cold was a light black jacket, not closed of course. He hurried past, commenting that, “the sun is very bright this morning isn’t it?”

Amazing.

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Cork Floods

Donncha O Caoimh — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:42:46 +0000

A round up of a few videos and photos of the flooding in Cork last month.

Photo by David Hegarty

Panciostela drove from Victoria Cross up the Carrigrohane Straight to Windsor Motors and posted 3 videos along the way, shooting the flood in the Kingsley Hotel last. Any vehicles in the underground carpark there must have been completely destroyed.

Lots of photos on Flickr and pix.ie (floods around the country), there’s even a Submerged Cork Flickr Group. Brian Clayton posted some outstanding photos of the floods on his blog.Thanks to Margaret Jordan where I saw one of the videos above and prompted me to post this.Links: Will has blogged about the various fundraising activities for the people displaced and affected by the floods, West Cork Wash out!, Flood in Cork, North Main Street.I forgot to say, I was in town on Saturday and there was hardly any sign of the flood and the city was very busy.

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