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I enjoy going to public events primarily for the purposes of taking photographs of lots of different people in one place, as well as the atmosphere that often surrounds these pieces of cultural activity. It’s nice to take time out from the dark and dingy, seedy and dark, sweary, alcohol-fueled and smoke-filled bars and darkened rooms. To enjoy the sun and act like children.
This is what we did on Saturday 28th April.
Firstly, Friday. Nick McCallan from God Talking Soul followed by Mary’s Great Idea in Common Grounds. The weather was great and the music suited it so well.
After a late night, I met with Ciara, Michelle, Paul, Dennis, Ronan and Connor for an awesome Fry in a local eatery. Soon after we went to the EU50 Playday. This was a day run by the council to mark 50 years of the European Union, the first of a series of events leading up to Europe Day on 9 May. Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park is a beautiful large open space with rolling meadows, woodland, riverside fields formal gardens and the City of Belfast International Rose Garden, I hadn’t been in quite a while and loved going with my parents as a kid.
When we got there it was a little more than half over and had missed some stuff. Unfortunately our opinion of the day will be based on that.
The kids, and there were a lot more than we are used to being around, certainly seemed to be having fun, though I think it could have been better organised. The ice cream man made a mint, having a monopoly on all refreshments - high-priced ice related food stuffs and bottles of carbonated drinks that weren’t even chilled.
We managed to make our own fun, however. We found some trees to climb.
The figure at the top (red t-shirt) is my bro, Chris.
Most of us stayed a little closer to the ground.
But then as we found a patch of grass to eat our ice creams we were suddenly, and very literally, dragged into taking part in a spot of Scottish Dancing. I managed to avoid it, which pleased the others even less. The photos are priceless. 
Afterwards we played frisby like we came to do.
A rare moment of me looking energetic:
When we got bored of that we walked around the park a bit more. It is a beautiful park. Lots of greenery. So we sat in a field and whistling with the grass.
Finally, we ended the day with a pint.
Unfortunately we really ended the day with a trip to the cinema to see The Reaping, but as I won’t get back those ninety six minutes, I don’t want to ponder on it too much.
Another truly great weekend. I feel lucky to have friends who are cool enough to do stuff like that.
(For more pictures check my flickr stream.)
Today marks exactly one year since my introduction to the Northern Ireland music scene - and I still consider that first gig to have been the best. The Delawares, Mary’s Great Idea, The Winding Stair and The Dregs. I was hooked. I’m not gonna go into it again. Just another small milestone and I have taken very few photos since my 6 month recap due to being without a camera for the most part the last 6 months. But now its all go again.
I never could have imagined the impact that night in The Empire could have had on my life.
[More photos here]
I love the music and, especially on sunny days like today (and hopefully the rest of the weekend), I love Belfast.
No time to say more. I’m off to Common Grounds for some Iced Coffee and sweet sweet music courtesy of Mary’s Great Idea.
Have a good weekend.
I don’t like TV, but I’ll tell ya one thing - Ben really doesn’t like TV!!
He went nuts. Like a mad man.
Rock ‘n’ Roll
Those who know me may know by now that I have quite a love-hate relationship with computers. I love using them, but things go wrong so often. It makes me so sad.
As I have been planning for a few weeks, I finally got around to reformatting my computer and reinstalling windows. Everything went fine until I came to switching on my 250gb external hard drive. Nothing. I tried a million times and a million approaches. Still the same. What worried me most was the strange ’struggling’ sound from the hard drive.
It was at this point that my heart raced. I was scared. Very scared. Later I met my brother and we pondered the predicament. Though not before spotting some strange behaviour around the City Hall. Vikings!
He suggested disconnecting the drive from all the USB circuitry. A good idea. Took it home and connected it via IDE to Dad’s computer. It worked!
Boy was I relieved. Everything I own is on that disk. Everything! This was possibly the most worried I have been about my data. It’s happened before, but not to such a scale and at a time when data is so important to me, and when I have so much. Thankfully the problem was solved and everything is safe.
Rather than drowning my sorrows I went out feeling good. Ed Zealous were playing in The Pavilion as part of Rinka club nigh. I like Ed Zealous.
There will be daily, weekly, by-weekly and monthly backups made. This sorta thing will not get a chance to happen again!
I’ve been getting a lot of trackback spam lately. I suppose it could be worse, but it’s only started happening quite recently. I really wasn’t sure what it was at first. I know now that it’s spam. Though it just seems like people are making blogs and filling them with other peoples posts. No advertising penile enlargements, Viagra and general hardcore acts. Just snippets of posts with a link to the post to read the rest.
I found a list of tools for helping to combat this evil. Would anyone recommend any?
My house’s electricity bill is controlled by a pay & go system. Using a card which is swiped in the shop and when a minimum of £5 is handed over we get electricity. Nice and simple.
For the last 2 days there has been no electricity. Fortunately I had nothing in the fridge or freezer. I decided would use the opportunity to bust my cycle. Although I actually have major problems with the PC at the minute and desperately need to reformat (I also think I need a need a new motherboard but thats not too urgent, and a story for another day), it can wait another day or two. See, the weather is just great and I look so cool in my sunglasses I just gotta get out.
As I mentioned the other day, if I lived in a hot climate I doubt I would use the net as much at all. My dream is to have a ‘work-flow’ sorted, whereby I can have times set aside for each thing and spend longer on each activity, including general time wasting, youtubing etc. Instead, I insist on following link after link after link, reading so much crap, and not reading so much crap (I have too many del.icio.us bookmarks tagged ‘toread‘). Someday soon I want to be able to take photographs, put em on computer, edit, add watermark, add border, upload - enjoy the outdoors, repeat. I also wish it was easier and not as time consuming to read the news, read all 500+ items in my reader, comment on blogs, write blog etc. Maybe I should concentrate on fewer things.
Unfortunately Northern Ireland spends most of its time under dark clouds with a wind chill factor of really really cold. This is why I love my computer so much, cos for most of the year there is just no reason to go out. I hate Winter. I hate Autumn. In fact, I hate the months between September and March. Autumn and Winter sometimes look nice - but thats often about it. Now the weather is just awesome. Brilliant blue skies and no need for a coat. So when the opportunity arises to get out for a few hours - I take it. Right now if I look to the side or above my beautiful monitor I can see the sunny sun shining on the white and red bricked buildings across the street and the blue blue sky above. I wanna go out.
Having no electricity was just the latest excuse. On both Monday and Tuesday I hung out with friends at number 34 all evening. Ciara and Ciaran, half of Mary’s Great Idea, were playing singer/songwriter open mic night at The John Hewitt. This was their first gig in over 4 months, it was so good to hear Ciara’s amazing voice again.
Duke Special made an appearance that night, unfortunately he didn’t play anything, instead he was just hangin’ out with his pals. Not wanting to appear all ‘fan boy’ I didn’t use the 10 seconds I was alone with him in the gents to tell him how much like the album. Unfortunately it was only 10 seconds too; just as I was leaving, he walked in. He said ‘hi’ to me though.
Another highlight of the night was Wayne Carr. Accompanied by his guitar, he sang some great songs. Here is one called London Town:
I was glad to come back to an electrified house yesterday, its scary not having an alarm clock to get me up in the morning. I just don’t like relying on my phone at all.
It’s nice to have friends who don’t use computers/internet as much as I do, it gives me a different perspective on things. Generally lazing around, watching tv, conversation. I sometimes even walk away wanting to read a book.
Gingerpixel has announced that she is looking for models for her portfolio. This is something that has been on my mind also in the last few days (weeks and months). Over the weekend I practiced on some friends:
Though I am going to try some proper shoots soon. I just have to convince my beautiful friends that they do indeed look great in front of the camera, on the other hand, some don’t need any more convincing!
This old couple asked me what day it was as I was walking along the Lisburn Road today taking. They thought it was Saturday. I almost asked them if I could take their picture, but I couldn’t do it.
Described as Belfast’s Boutique Boulevard I find the Lisburn Road a great place to photograph, as I did this afternoon. Always interesting things going on and plenty of people about, especially on a good day.
Lots of shops have award plaques, like one butchers’ did:
Designer clothes:
Even a detective agency. Plenty of wealthy couples to spy on their spouses.
I did get one model, unfortunately she didn’t say much.
According to the timetable at Balmoral platform there were no trains arriving, though just as I walked away the express to/from Dublin passed by. It didn’t stop, as I ran this is what I managed.
These garlic bulbs or Allium sativum were hanging on display in a bakery. Like clouds.
When I got to my final destination I had my cousins to photograph:
Today I hope to reformat my PC. I can’t wait. Long overdue.
I am certain that if I lived in a hot climate I would use the Internet/computer very little.
Over the past week I have been online very little. It isn’t very often that I take such breaks.
I spent Saturday until Tuesday at my grandparents’ house. I saw this as an opportunity to spent some time away from the internet. Besides the fact that I find it hard to use a different computer from my own, this usually leads to nothing getting done if I’m away from home. So it was a long weekend of photographing, watching tv and kickin’ a ball around the garden.
The ‘Titanic Festival‘ launched on Saturday morning at the City Hall, and finishes today. It was mildly interesting.
It took me quite a while to find the local blogging community, but find it I did; at Starbucks on Saturday afternoon. Someday I will learn how to cope in situations of meeting new people. Generally when we meet people we have some background on them, common interests often we know what they look like, but this isn’t the case when meeting fellow bloggers. Of course I could have done a little more research by actually reading their blogs.
As I said, I have only discovered the NI blogging people quite recently, though not long enough to have read much of what they have to say on the world, let alone figure out what they look like, so walking to the rendez vous point I was feeling a little awkward.
As I walked in through the door I was sure I heard someone say “Phil” but I just couldn’t be sure. Then at the end of the queue was Ed, the one face I knew (from his blog pic). The others had a table outside. Marc, Nelly, Hannah, Stephen, Dave. A good bunch. I found out a after a while that CyberScribe was infact present, though he tried to claim to be his very own stand-in. Naturally I didn’t believe this, but it set me back a bit and I just wasn’t sure what to say.
There is definitely an art to talking to intelligent people about such a wide variety of topics. It’s just not a skill I have.
Although I didn’t participate much other than my presence, it’s great to meet the fellow blogging companions, and to see that they are all very friendly. Now I have more people to add to my RSS reader and read and comment on and keep contact with and hope they read my blog. Its all hard work.
I am having much trouble with lack of storage space at the minute, and as I suspected might happen, I have been taking more photographs than I have space for. It certainly doesn’t help that I bought the wrong type of hard drive (doh!) so I gotta send it back and get another one. Hopefully I will have things running up to speed soon.
I wore shorts today. I rushed home to put on my shorts, while listening to Vivaldi’s Winter movement from The Four Seasons (not just for pure irony, but because I much prefer it to the Summer movement) then walked to the bus stop to my parents’ to pick up another parcel which had arrived for me. This time - my backpack, unfortunately I don’t yet have enough lenses to fill all the spaces, but eventually I will.
I enjoy watching my own influences on my brother (always good of course) showing through. When I got home he was listening to Duke Special’s album I got for him, then later he took my camera from me and walked around the garden, getting these snaps. I know he would take great shots with his wonderfully creative imagination and hyperactive mind.
Later, while I was waiting for the bus back to the house, I took some long exposure light-trail shots of some passing cars. Unfortunately there weren’t many cars, though it was the first time I have actually done it.
The bus came mid exposure:
I’m beginning to notice a trend. I discover an online service, much later than everyone else of course, at first don’t like it much or see what use I could have for it when I use another just as good. Then further down the line realise that its great and I want to pay to enhance the service.
I’m talking about Flickr. When I first heard of the service I thought to myself “what is this?” I think it took me a while to figure out what was so good about it and how it differed from what I was currently using (and still use occasionally) to store photos, Photobucket. I also found that pages were very slow to load, or so I thought at the time. I was generally not interested.
A lot of my blogging stems back to the Irish Blog Awards, it was this event in 2006 that encouraged me to use Flickr for the first time, appropriately tagging my photos irishblogawards.
That was all well and good, but it wasn’t until 6 months after that that I uploaded more photos to my account. At this point I really wanted people to see my photos. Now, again 6 months further down the line, I have uploaded 165 photographs and enjoying using flickr.
Once I found the Flickr Uploadr glad to have found the easy way to upload photos. It took me quite a while to work everything out. I got it eventually. In short, I like it now. I began to join many groups, including Fastfude which displays some random photos from the group pool on the forum homepage. After that came finding people I know (online and off) and making them contacts.
I’m no power user, though I may turn that way. Since they eventually added the ability to be notified by email of recent activity (comments, favourites etc) it has just got better.
I did read the controversy over the Yahoo! takeover and how it upset the poor fan-boy users are who have been around from the start, though it doesn’t affect me so I won’t be running off and using another service anytime soon (unless Google come up with something better).
It only took this long, but just yesterday I thought of a personalised address I shall use for my Flickr account. I always have trouble deciding on usernames and aliases. After much thought I went for Philokane. Brilliant isn’t it.
You may have noticed the Flickr widget in the sidebar. It updates with the last 10 photos. Having not changed since Jan, it has started finally started changing as I have uploaded photos over the last few days, and I think I will continue to do so.
This whole thing of going Pro like many others seem to have done. I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems to be the only way forward really. I don’t think I will have a problem with the 10mb upload limit per month as I will be uploading small files (30k~), I would, however, like the ability to create unlimited photosets and the newly implemented feature of ’sets of sets’ or collections.
Finally, I have just found out the the basic account is limited to the most recent 200 photos available for viewing. With plans to surpass the 200 mark soon I think its time to upgrade!
For those who do have a Pro account, how do you like it?
