Sunday, August 9, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
17th July 2009
Studying.
Note the empty coffee pot and "Seconds From Disaster" on the TV.
"Seconds from Disaster" is, of course, the best programm on TV. The premise is a very simple one. Each episode shows a disaster (in this case a plane crash) and charts what caused the disaster, second by second. They're usually plane crashes, and this episode is showing the Paris Concorde disaster.
It's addictive but terrifying television.
13th July 2009
I inherited this little plant when I moved into the flat, and for the last couple of years, it has sat there looking rather dead, until I decided to throw it out. Once outside, it has started to flourish.
Has anyone any idea what sort of plant it is? (no, it's not a triffid)
12th July 2009
Áine with her bike; Emma with her chips. Look at the joy on their little happy faces!
8th July 2009
Electricians in Ireland are on strike, and Diagio, the brewer which makes Guinness has applied for an injunction from the High Court to prevent their workers from striking, lest it stop the yeast from growing. Which led to this pretty good headline.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
5th July 2009
Not a sight you see every day in Dublin. I've no idea what nationality they are, or why they're walking along Middle Abbey Street.
Hello, sailor.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
3rd July 2009
I've been reading Alain de Botton's The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work recently. In it, de Botton visits people in their place of work - accountants, biscuit manufacturers, rocket scientists, painters and so on - and watches what they do for a living. One of his conclusions is that people of all grades and in all industries take their work more seriously than the job would suggest. Even though we don't really think about how important the output of their work might be (compared to a brain surgeon, doctor or fireman), to someone what we ignore, is their work and the focus of their day.
De Botton takes, for example, biscuit wrappers. A team of people are employed to make the best possible biscuit wrapper - they make decisions on material, colour, font, logo, number of biscuits contained therein, based on lots of research and design. They know that a good wrapper will help sell more biscuits than a bad wrapper and so de Botton says that every thing we buy and use has been made by groups of specialists whose job depended on designing, making and producing even the tiniest part of the finished product. Packets of biscuits don't look like that by accident. They appear by design.
It always reminds me of the smiley face on my electric toothbrush. According to OralB, you're supposed to brush your teeth for 2 minutes. Once you reach the two minute mark, the toothbrush vibrates and a little smiley face appears on the screen.
It's a nice touch and totally un-necessary. It would have been perfectly logical for the clock simply to register two minutes and no more. But thinking about what de Botton learned, it's feasible to think that a team of people in the OralB HQ must have made a pitch to the toothbrush manufacturing committee to add the smiley face to the display. Maybe they even did some research to analyse the cost-benefit analysis of adding the smiley face (as opposed to another picture, or no picture at all). They will have drafted in some outside consultants to make recommendations on the best picture - a smiley face is, after all, logical for a toothbrush. A smiley face is also text shorthand for happiness. Software engineers would have analysed the cost of adding something to the screen and sat down to design how to make it work. The pitch of the smile, the thickness of the eyes - all deliberate business decisions.
I've no idea who did all that work, but I'm pleased they did. More products should have little smiley faces on them. So, this week, I'm going to try to find nice pieces of design as a way of thanking all those anonymous, hardworking people.
:-)
Saturday, July 4, 2009
2nd July 2009
Taken at about 11pm, in Donnybrook.
Sharp-eyed readers might be thinking to themselves: "Hey, I remember looking at a photograph of those lamps outside the Hampton Hotel, Donnybrook, way back on the 13th of February. What's this guy playing at? Is he that unimaginative that he has to take photos of the same lamps? And where is this hotel? I wonder if they're paying him a fee for taking so many photos of their hotel. I think they should. He's obviously an amazing photographer (and possibly devilishly handsome) and the hotel looks like it offers excellent accommodation and an extensive menu at low, low prices."
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Half-Way
Back in January, I set a reminder on my mobile to alert me when I was half-way through the photo-a-day project. And here we are. 1st July 2009. Only six months to go.
I'm really enjoying the project and I hope it's not too boring to watch.
30th June 2009
Hendrick's Gin. Incredibly difficult to find Hendrick's in Ireland but it's a really nice gin, made with cucumber and very refershing. Very nice neat with lots of ice, or with tonic and a slice of cucumber.
25th June 2009
These two fella were carrying this mattress through Ballsbridge, much to the bemusement of passers-by. God alone knows where they were going with it. I wonder if they were stealing the contents of the Burlington Hotel item by item.
21st June 2009
The FT produce this fantastic magazine "How to spend it." Pure escapism. For a few minutes, you can lose yourself in idle fantasies about just how to spend the most recent million.
The FT is always worth reading. It actually smells the same as new bank notes. Go on, give those pink pages a sniff.
19th June 2009
This isn't a very good photo - taken using my mobile phone rather than the camera, but this shelf is mostly travel and politics books. I'm not sure what Kenneth Williams is doing there. Neither his travel adventures nor his politics were particularly wholesome.
A few books along is a joint biography of Scott and Admunsen. I wonder what they would think of sitting alongside Kenneth Williams on a bookshelf.
18th June 2009
I've no memory of taking this one and for ages I've been trying to work out what it is.
It was only when I was getting dressed for work this morning that I realised it's a close-up of a tie. I must have had the camera the wrong way when I tried to take the photo. I'm assuming it was in the pub.
Still, it came out OK. I wonder what I was trying to take the photo of.
Monday, June 22, 2009
14th June 2009
The Dodder River. This is one of my regular running routes. After running along a fairly major roads, I follow a path which twists between two trees and this is where I emerge. It's always absolutely silent, even with the rush-hour traffic.
Obviously when I'm running, I never have my camera with me, so I trecked out especially on Sunday afternoon to take this snap.
Friday, June 19, 2009
13th June 2009
We've had some brilliant sunsets recently, and I snapped this expecting I'd need to do some fiddling with the colours, but it works quite nicely as it is.
I have the large version as the desktop on my work PC. Very soothing, don't you know?
OK, I'm now nearly up to date.
If anyone wants to be a guest contributor at any time, do send me a photo and I'll upload it. This photo-a-day lark is harder than I expected, so feel free to send me a photo, and I'll add it.
12 June 2009
Is this a heron? I'm not sure, anyway, he has been about quite a bit, feeding off the shopping trolleys and dead bodies which float down the Grand Canal.
11th June 2009
Tony playing on the swing in the back garden. Unfortunately, he is all alone. As a skeleton has has no-body to play with.
10th June 2009
A really terrible photo today. Really terrible. The fish still don't have names, but they're alive and well in their murky underwater world. The Statue of Liberty is there to give scale.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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