Craigslist Demystified

The Tour of Ireland bicycle race passed through Blarney on it’s way to Cork City this afternoon. There was a sprint to the finish line in front of the local Catholic church before the cyclists made their way down the dual carriageway to Cork and up Patrick’s Hill, twice!

I was there ready to shoot the participants, but I was overwhelmed by their speed. It only took the main group about 11 seconds to come around the corner at one end of Blarney and disappear through the other end. I’m kicking myself I shot in Programme mode when I should have been in Aperture Priority mode, but I did get a few nice panning shots that froze the rider while the background blurred into smudges and streaks of colour.

The Canon 40D performed admirably. ISO was set to 100 because it was a bright day, AI Servo focus to track the riders and keep them in focus, and high speed continuous shooting mode which delivered 6.5fps. It was all over so quickly I barely had time to take a breath. I shot around 230 images while waiting and during the short time the racers were in Blarney. I knew I’d go a little mad with the shutter button, so I preselected Jpeg mode rather than my usual RAW mode.

Here’s a transcript of the commentary during the race. This bit, while serious, made me smile:

13.10: The race leader has been to see the race doctor, who reports a very unusual injury. He had a thorn embedded in his tongue – presumably from an overhanging branch, or perhaps even some dried fruit he ate – which was removed by the doctor. The thorn, not his tongue.

Hope you like the gallery, hopefully some of these shots will be posted here in single posts during the week!

[View post for gallery]

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Young Cork supporters take the tour bus around the city a few weeks ago. Cork plays Kerry isn’t it today in a replay? Yes, I’m a big sports fan, honest.

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michel v — intraordinaire.com posted a photo:

One of ten thousands buddhas in the monastery of Fo Guang Shan in Dashu, south of Taiwan. August 2008.

The toilets in the Cork International Airport Hotel are a pretty amazing sight to behold. Here’s the gent’s loo. The lighting changes constantly. I took a few shots within seconds of each other and they were all different. Luckily it wasn’t in use when I wandered in ..

This is the first shot I’ve posted from the Canon 40D. Unfortunately it’s quite noisy as it was shot hand held at ISO 1000, but the noise really only became noticeable after I applied the Lomo plugin to it. Love this camera. This photo and others taken at the hotel are also in this post. I used my 580EX flash for most of the people shots, but one or two were in available light with the ISO pumped up.

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This weekend’s trip to New York is primarily a chance for me to see a game at Yankee Stadium (Saturday) before they tear it down after the season. However, to book the flight using miles we had to fly in on Thursday instead of Friday, so we got a bonus day to spend doing the tourist bit.

We walked around a lot during the day, checking out a bunch of stuff including going up to the observation deck at the Empire State Building. We tried to swing through B&H Photo but forgot they’d be closed early on Friday (probably a good thing - avoided the temptation). Then back to the hotel for a quick siesta and then out again in the evening.

The evening was quite excellent. We had planned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but decided to walk through Broadway first to see if we could get last minute tickets to a show.

The name and reviews for [Title of Show] caught my attention, and we were able to get seats for the performance that was starting in about an hour. It was really fantastic. I think I connected with it a little bit because I’ve done my share of creating things and trying to make them succeed. The writing was clever, the music was very pleasant and the performances were excellent. Highly recommended.

From there, it was time to eat again and we hopped in to Lucille’s¹ - BB King’s (no relation) restaurant and music club. A blues band was just starting a set, and we were able to get a table near the stage. The music and food were excellent, and we stayed for a while enjoying both.

A very enjoyable evening, with both the show and restaurant exceeding expectations - always nice when that happens.

1. Lucille is the name of BB King’s guitar. [back]

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This weekend’s trip to New York is primarily a chance for me to see a game at Yankee Stadium (Saturday) before they tear it down after the season. However, to book the flight using miles we had to fly in on Thursday instead of Friday, so we got a bonus day to spend doing the tourist bit.

We walked around a lot during the day, checking out a bunch of stuff including going up to the observation deck at the Empire State Building. We tried to swing through B&H Photo but forgot they’d be closed early on Friday (probably a good thing - avoided the temptation). Then back to the hotel for a quick siesta and then out again in the evening.

The evening was quite excellent. We had planned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but decided to walk through Broadway first to see if we could get last minute tickets to a show.

The name and reviews for [Title of Show] caught my attention, and we were able to get seats for the performance that was starting in about an hour. It was really fantastic. I think I connected with it a little bit because I’ve done my share of creating things and trying to make them succeed. The writing was clever, the music was very pleasant and the performances were excellent. Highly recommended.

From there, it was time to eat again and we hopped in to Lucille’s¹ - BB King’s (no relation) restaurant and music club. A blues band was just starting a set, and we were able to get a table near the stage. The music and food were excellent, and we stayed for a while enjoying both.

A very enjoyable evening, with both the show and restaurant exceeding expectations - always nice when that happens.

1. Lucille is the name of BB King’s guitar. [back]

ShareThis

It looks like there’s going to be another point-release of WordPress coming soon. WordPress version 2.6.2-beta1 was just branded in svn a short while ago. Looking over the logs, I don’t see anything major — a fix for the Textpattern importer, a bug fix that prevents an attempt to make a revision of a revision, a new ‘login_redirect’ filter, a new ‘wp_rand()’ function, and a handful of other minor bugfixes.

I’m kind of wondering if there’s something bigger that’s going to be added before release…

Colourful red and white flowers in the doorway of Supervalu in Blarney. I half thought about posting Damien’s picture from yesterday’s get together, especially after what lexia said but that’d be too cruel!

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Captcha is broken - now what? The Guardian. I was quoted in today’s Guardian, which consistently has some of the best tech coverage around.

A neighbour’s gate is securely locked. As secure as a 3 foot high driveway gate will ever be I suppose.

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