End of year update.

These last few months I've been researching the Trump extravaganza and should have a little something soon.

I'm on my time away from coffee. This is the first time I don't miss it, but it means I'm making 4 pints of chamomile tea of an evening and putting in in the fridge for the next day.

I've discovered Cetrine for allergies. Meah, nothing to write home about. But it does mean I can have a sense of smell for a bit more time.

I have two frozen lobster in the freezer for new years day. Small ones. 

A Christmas light.

Christmas food.

OK. Once I discovered the brining of a turkey made it reasonably edible I've attempted to do it with chicken as well as turkey. But for they purposes of the season it was a turkey breast rather than a full bird I soaked in salty water with chillies, juniper berries and thyme. My usual shop ran out of the cranberry and port jelly, so I had to buy the raw fruit which I cooked with Kombucha I made myself rather than alcohol. It's basically a light vinegar, which is what the port is anyway given any heat whatsoever would boil off the alcohol leaving only the acid. But in case the turkey fails I have two lobster that I can cook.
I have some dark chocolate, but I'm not that gone on that nowadays. And a plum pudding, Again meah, I'm not over bothered quite frankly.
I'm really lost though about Jessy's reaction to salmon. She'll climb through brambles to get some. And a tiny bit does her, what you'd put on a fingernail.
Anyhoos, I've the bird breast cooked as I'm not that gone with hot turkey. Cold will do me nicely. All I've to cook is the greens. Basically a ten min job.

Happy Christmas Guys.

The midwinter's sunrise over the passage grave at Knockroe

Moon11

This is a composite of 10 photos stacked to give better sharpness.

With intent.

When did they... .

.. . start packing batteries in plastic you need a serious box-cutter knife to get at. And don't try kitchen knives if you value your digits either.

Hodge-podge

I've been trying to reduce weight and have gone to a smoked salmon supper. Who'd a believed my little dog has a taste for it.

I got a strip of 300 LEDs. I'm not sure what I'll do with them. At the moment I have them strung over my bedroom and using them instead of the main lights. Oddly they seem better. Certainly more daylight balanced and ergo better for SAD. Aiding Vit D usage/uptake.

It's warmer here than it was in June.

But it really hasn't stopped heavily raining for three weeks. Mind you we were really lucky for the months before that.

Got a flu jab today for the first time.

Got my first antihistamine in years, Zirtek. Oh, you can buy Claritin here, over the counter. But I think the good stuff is removed.

Had a very bad trawl through the 2nd and shops today.

Bought an external harddrive 'cheaper' than I could on Amazon. Now that's a first. Seems Amazon is on the turn.

I'm working up an idea for the spring show at the royal Hibernian academy.

On the mountain.

Ugly and pretty at the same time.

I bought this thing in a 2nd hand shop when I was trawling for ultra cheap props to photograph. The mechanism was a dud so I did a bit of surgery and replaced the works with another I had from a wrist watch.

I'm really not sure if I like the thing. But it's been sitting atop my PC tower on my desk since I fixed it. 

Up-date !

It's been a while since I wrote anything of any length here. And about 6 weeks since I had much pizazz for anything at all.
I've been quite busy all in all and a few good thing have occurred. I've done a video editing course as it seems we're about to get fibre broadband in the area, which would make up-loading history videos about the different sites a possibility. Since I have a camera that can record HD, it seemed a sin not to use it. Who knows, I might stink, the camera might hate me. But I sure know how to cut and splice, fade and bin a taped recording.
I've been to three openings, something I swore never to attend after living in London and involving myself in that scene, and disliking it intensely. And same-same, but slightly different. You still have the greedy, the arrogant and the selfish populating the Arts. But you also have the generous, the kind and the actually very good artists.
I got my tax number for the Artists Exemption, meaning I can earn €50,000 from my work before tax hits. It's not really as generous as it sounds. But it does confer a recognition hard to get any-place else.
In all this I've been ill, but not anything I could put a finger on. I went to the doctor and the prick said he'd never heard of the list of symptoms and suggested I find another doctor. So basically I've been left to figure out what the hell has been going on these last number of year on my own. But then I see on the BBC that the NHS has a Health Advisory about Type 2 diabetes and 'tick' to every darn bullet point. I've suspected this for a few years, but was being told it was high cholesterol. The upshot of this is I'm furious at the person who has the gall to title themself doctor and was so unwilling to hear a client. Well, lets see if his Medical Council will heed a letter.

Anyhows, since I climb a mountain most weekends, rain or shine, it's not really newsy. And there really are only so many shots off or of Slievenamon I can upload without people saying 'wow, but the grass has grown a bit since last week'. But today was good. It took me twice the time to get to the top. Storm Clodagh was tearing through with winds of Force 10. It was absolutely magnificent. 

From last week

Even I'm pretty darn impressed with what this cloud did.

new photo

Replacement.

As you know I convinced myself of the neeeed for a Wacom tablet and pen input set up. And I duly bought the thing.
About a month ago I started to notice that the surface of the tablet. A surface best described as a light sharkskin had become smooth in the middle of the working area. While it was annoying that a 'feature' of the new tablet was vanishing it wasn't until I really thought about it that I decided to ring Wacom and ask them. I was put onto a chap that wasn't that good with English and when I broke into German I was given a huge run around. So I realised I was getting nowhere and blah blahed the rest of the convo. However once I finished the call I contacted Amazon.
Now say what you like about Amazon, when you have a problem so soon after a purchase they are excellent at solving it. The issued a replacement procedure and the new tablet arrived today.
On the new surface, the sharkskin is really tactile. All in all I'm quite glad I was so bolshy and didn't just accept the old one.

St Partick's Well

This was renovated with donations from the Catholics of LA.

An example of what a poleriser does for the class.

Autumn colour.

Well worth a read

I will advise a slow measured read of this blog. It was compiled by The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) is a programme coordinated by the World Council of Churches.
This is the link to blog.

Philip is too well-read to be ideological!

This was the response I received when I asked where on the left-right line in economics sat our new governor of the Irish Central Bank.
I think it's a blooming brilliant comment, that I really must remember to apply to myself :-D. 

Hillary Clinton

Why is it that Hillary Clinton doesn't engage me at all, one way or the other. And more importantly why is it she has such issues with US women who you'd think would connect with her seven ways to Sunday. 

B&W or colour ?

Not great, but not too bad for a first try either. And oddly in the cast of Augustus Caesar

Shag on a big rock

We both needed a trip to the beach.

Best to view in 1080 quality in youtube on full screen. It was good to see her happy and not under something hiding from fireworks. On the bird she barks at standing on the rock hip of the pinnacle is called a Shag. Always good for a laugh here and the UK.

A little bit of Modernism

Just an FYI; Yale released 170,000 photos of the depression era US

Photogrammar is a web-based platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI).

Moving on, a bit.

There's a lag that I don't quite understand since I'm tied to the PC by wire. I'd understand if was over WiFi. Well I'd get it more anyway. 

There's something odd sitting in the memory, the RAM that is, for there's 4gig and that should be ample to run any darn thing on it's own. 

By far the most interesting thing is the blend. If you note the sky on the left, there are about five different blues blended in. I think it will take about a month to get it to the point where things are 'fine'. And a year, for excellent.

The bloody bangers are going off yet again.

The fireworks are going off. Not too much, but it's early yet. Still my little hound decided to find her safe spots in the house again. 

She's been 'not herself' for a week or so and I was hoping it was the bangers and not something far more serious. I got her this steak at the market to see if she would be OK with it. And YEA, she's fine. The meat was beyond what humans should eat, but for dogs it was just 'au point'. Not quite rank, but not something 'you'd' willingly eat yourself.

She went 'WOW, ALL FOR ME. really'. She wasn't at all sure she should eat it. 

When a curve is near straight up.

Animals

Yikes !

You'd think I couldn't draw a thing.

Wild heather, and a woodland.

Red Moon

Via the wacom.

Buying from Amazon

I bought a graphics tablet on Amazon. But I always go for free shipping. It arrives just a quick for we don't have same day shipping like they do in the UK, we're considered 'off shore island' in the literature of Amazon. However, the downside is the notice page which shows the tracking, or in this case lack of tracking. It hasn't moved that I can discern.

Hore Abbey.

Jessy's got a boooooy-friend.

The get all excited to see each other. Smelling ears bums and other bits.

The Rock of Cashel without scaffolding.

This took me hours.

This is a photographic exercise. You get a crystal glass, preferably faceted like this one. And you put it in a pure white box. Then you pound light from a flash into the box so the box gets grey and the glass is separated but holds the definition. It's the simple things that are really hard to do.  

A trip to Ard More this evening for sunset.

It can surely be little shock.

Surely it's no surprise that I shop in a secondhand shops. I think they can be a great source of books, and on topics that I'd never actually buy in a bookshop. Today I visited a place nearby and found they were selling holy pictures. Virgin Mary, Padre Pio, Pope Benedict and so forth. These images have never bothered me all that much one way or the other so I wasn't really looking at them as pictures, but for the frames and that thin glass that surrounded the pictures.
Earlier this year I made a goodly number of frames and I was thinking if I got ready-made ones I'd be ahead of the game for next time. But the truth is while OK they aren't the same. They don't have that something, even as simple as I made my ones. I may well have to rethink and go more expensive. 

No skin in the game. But for some reason baseball stadiums in Boston have.

Each summer, regular as clockwork a spate of news stories hit the web/news/papers about women's breasts. More exactly, when those breasts are exposed and doing what God made them for, feeding a baby.
Now, as the title says, I've no skin in the game in any way what so ever. Beyond the possibility of seeing such an even occurring. And in truth I just don't see how it truly involves anyone else either. But each year when people thin down with their clothing and the usual winter draping vanishes we get this high pitched screech from those lacto-Nazis and the 180, those that think women should be covered from head to toe (just as long as it's not Arab dress). The usual example trotted out is the woman plus partner out with the pea at a restaurant and the woman starts to feed the child in full view of everyone in the place. For some reason this is seen as especially gorge making.
Now instantly I can think of two things far far far FARRRRR more more disturbing, one would be the said pea squalling it's bloo head off and the parents blithely continue to dine, and two, if said pea vented from the rear end and the waft pumped itself in waves all over the dining room.
What brought this up was an article in the Atlantic about a pod that lactating women can use in US airports, and for some reason baseball stadiums in Boston.

Sideways; a review.

Sideways is a newish film from 2004. I'm about 20 mins in and it smacks very much of a Woody Allen in California. Two guys -groom and best-man- go on a pre-wedding trip to the Santa Barbara wine country. The groom seems to be on a big hunt for a last female hurrah while the best-man is on anti depressants having divorced two years earlier.

Writer and actor. One with and an ever unpublished novel and the other peaked early and is now voicing commercials.

There's a pretty incessant soundtrack a la the Rockford files, and lots of semi documentary filler.

It seems the car, a convertible Volvo 940 sedan is as much a character as the actors.
It turns out the ex-wife, now remarried, is going to the wedding. And he's just drunk dialed the ex.
OK. The groom found a sex buddy that he didn't tell he was getting wed the next weekend. And the writer found a woman to ease his heartache. Didn't end well for the writer for he told the truth about the up coming event.
The writers book was turned down so he'd left being a middle school teacher. Odd sort of concept of failure IMO.
I had to stop and follow the film that's now rolling credits. 

Right, was it a waste of time, no. How it was nominated for 5 Academy awards is utterly beyond me. Yes the acting was excellent, but the story was thin and could be summarized using the words queer in the old meaning and odyssey. 

It was made for 16 million and that seems a lot for what I saw. But it made that back and brought another 100 million of it's brother dollars home with them. I must have another look at the producers, for I really wonder how it could've been pitched to the money men unless those guys and gals were of the industry and could see the potential.

Anywoos, I'm now looking at The Descendants, with Clooney and a good little actress named Shailene Woodley. I think she just might have real potential.

A few images of arches and castles

Last shot of the babies

Last shot of the babies in their bed. Next morning they were flying and now roost with mom and pop in the bike hoist cable. Two have fly in their beaks.
I bought a bivouac tent. I think Sage has one like it. It's basically one pole to rise the body and a fly-sheet. All held by a plethora of pins.

I have a 5-man tent that can fit a raised bunk. So I'm of a few minds what to bring on a trip I'm planning in a few weeks. The new one is really light. But the big one is about as comfy as one can get in a tent.

Something with a coloured flash.

The poppies are natural.