Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

It's my old tricycle from Le Eighties made all nice and shiny and new again for Isobel, she doesn't even know about it yet, I can't wait to see her face. Ah the glorious days I spent tricycling about the place, under tables, under peoples legs, out the back of the house on the path way and drive way, wind in my "airy fairy" hair, plasters all over my legs, marmite on my cheeks, kittens all over the shop. I loved that trike with all of my heart, Raleigh Special with frogs on the seat, peddling away like I was free as a bird.

I think the reason why I loved it so much was because the siblings were too big to have a go of it so it was all mine all the time. I have some vague recollections of falling off it a few times. Poor me when I was three.

My Dad is the best Dad and the best Granddad for Izzers ever for fixing it all up so it's like new again!

Posted by Babs at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Just look, look at the loveliness!

I got these for a present, I think I am in love, patent-check, high heels-check, pretty-check, deadly soles-check.

(*Irregular Choice Flick Flack)

Posted by Babs at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Every Wednesday night during "relaxation" in my Yoga class I almost pass out, almost, my body is still there, but in my mind I am in my favourite place, or one of them anyway, my most recent favourite place I suppose, one which I may never be in again...

...here. Fremantle Docks, the place I sat and dreamed, the place I laughed with my friend every day, the place I took people too, it's just a dock, it's pretty murky looking, there are huge ships with animals on them being shipped off somewhere to be slaughtered, there are knobs in their Daddy's yachts cruising by, but then you would see loads of Dolphins in the wake of the boats, you would see Sea Eagles, Moon Jellyfish and all sorts of deadliness in the water, you might catch some fish like we did sometimes, you might catch a sea snail by accident like we also did! Oops!

I used to go there every morning, sit there reading books, thinking, lying in the sun on the docks, in my shorts and my flip flops and just think about the world, write letters to my Granny, write in my diary (lots of writing in that back then) listen to my iPod, dream about what was to come, whistle "Sitting At The Dock Of The Bay" (no really we did this a lot!) walk around to the tiny beach and watch the sunset over the Indian Ocean every evening, the sand still warm under my bare feet, write love songs on the back of supermarket receipts, it was my place, my escape, and it's where I go in my head when I need to get away from things for a while, like when the Yogi is saying things like "Re-Lax, Re-Lax take a deep breath into your chest, and just Re-Lax", well when Frankie Says Relax where do you go?

Posted by Babs at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was a wild day for me for many reasons.
It's been nine years since I met some of my very best friends completely randomly at a party and I am so so glad that I went there and that we all found each other because my life would not have as many laughs in it if it weren't for them.

Instead of sitting around the house today in my PJ's wishing that I wasn't feeling so shite, I walked to my friends house in the cold wind to retrieve my baba car from the New Years Ever festivities, almost got eaten by two savage beasts (her neighbours labradors are a tad on the barky attacky side) and then I was a farmer in Rebecca and Seans field for the rest of the afternoon which was actually really enjoyable, despite the smell of the cow poo and the hay bales, and the muck and the cold and the crazy cows buck leaping about, as Rebecca put it, my eyes were on stalks with the fear, but it was great and I feel good for doing it, imagine me, who owns practically a million pairs of high heels, messing about in the wellies with a pitch fork and not really giving a shit how mucky I got when Isobel asked "carry me Sah-Yah".

Happy 2009, lets hope its as good if not better than last year!

(*PS: Sorry about the crap phone camera quality photo but we were out in the fields so no choice for that really!)

Posted by Babs at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in the middle of uploading most of the photos I took (while myself and herself were honeymooning it up) in South Africa, Botswana and Mauritius, to Flickr. The first batch of 100-ish are on the way up now, and I'll be throwing another few hundred or so up in the next couple of days. Hope you like 'em (those of you who are arsed having a gander). The only editing I'm doing is removing duplicates, blurred exposures, and unrepairable over or under-exposures. All other photos are untouched by human hands since the moment of capture.

Oh and by the way, most of them are FUCKING AWESOME, if I may say so myself.

Posted by Matt at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who weren't there, or didn't get sent the link to the whole (private) album, and who want to have a quick look, Claire has put up a few of the photos from our wedding last month. They're absolutely stunning, and the wedding was so UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME that she's had to split the photos over two blog posts, the first time (I think) that she's ever done that with wedding photos.

So the first part (preparations and blessing ceremony) is today, and tune into Claire's blog tomorrow for more photos, of the reception with the drinks and the food and the dancing and the band and the Natural Confectionery Company jellies. And like, me and Nikki and ninety-odd guests, of course.

Posted by Matt at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In relation to Babs' post from earlier today, here's a photo of her offending cankles:

This is what happens when you don't

1. Take some aspirin


2. Drink plenty of water


3. wear flight socks


4. stroll around every so often

I'd say lesson learned.

Posted by Matt at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

(with apologies to Adrian)

I took a few "action" photos of George and just had to set them to music. I think I picked the right track. I like 8-second videos.

Posted by Matt at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

As per Babs request on the previous post, here’s the photo of her when she was all cute and ickle.

AWWLOOKITDELIDDLEBABBY!

Posted by Matt at 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Inspired by ZeFrank, here's a photo of me when I was only ickle. I think (and so does me Mam) that I'm about one and a half in this photo, and teething, hence the red (or slightly darker grey) cheeks.

I also think there's a definite resemblance between me and my niece Isobel, who's currently roughly about the same age as me in this photo. Have a look and tell me if you agree.

Oh, and if anyone else wants to continue the thread/meme/thingy, please find an old photo of yourself, blog it, and tell me about it in the comments.

Posted by Matt at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who aren't rabid followers of my Flickr Photostream, I have now uploaded some of the best photos of mine and Nikki's Alaskan holiday, back in July. There's a few hum-dingers in there, even if I may say so myself. I still have a few from my other (compact) camera left to upload, and a couple of videos which I'm in the midst of editing into something half-decent.

It's almost like being there, only like, y'know, not.

Posted by Matt at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a few photos of me doing my presentation for my College course, back at the start of July.

Posted by Matt at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I just uploaded another crapload of photos to Flickr. This one is definitely one of my favourites:

Posted by Matt at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago, Claire Wilson of Gingerpixel fame asked if anyone would be interested in modelling for her so she could build up her portfolio a bit. Naturally, I said I'd be interested, and she said she'd be doing the shooting on Killiney Beach, which is only five minutes from my house, which clinched the deal (even though she wanted me to be there on a Saturday at 9.30am).

So last Saturday, I met her on the beach, had a bit of a chat and she started shooting. We moved around to several different locations on the beach, and she was very pleased to shoot someone who was interested in photography (I had a few ideas) and apparently I was "a natural". It was quite hard to find somewhere with good light that morning, as the Sun was glaring off the sea and sand, so I was a bit squinty some of the time. I think Claire did a fantastic job though, and these are some of the best photos of me, ever.

So, after the jump there's a couple of my favourite ones of me, and here's a link to all the shots of me on Claire's site, and the set of all portraits she shot on the beach on Saturday.

Posted by Matt at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Last May, for my Birthday, Nikki got me Flying Lessons (thanx Nikki! xoxo)

On Sunday, Midway through September, I finally got round to using them.

It was absolutely brilliant.

Posted by Matt at 1:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Seeing as I totally forgot, and she might not have told everyone, Nikki has uploaded all her photos from the Snowdonia trip and my cousin Ian's wedding onto her Flickr. My Snowdonia pics are up in my 'Snowdonia' photoset, but I got almost no photos of the wedding due to me being an usher all day and having a lot of things to do.

Have a look, to see me, Babs, Nikki and Rebecca (aka 'the big sis') in varying states of drunkenness in our bestest of clobber, along with all the rellies and the campest photo of me I think you'll ever see. Enjoy!

Posted by Matt at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I got an email from the bauld Google telling me that 'Picasa Web Albums' would be launching 'soon', so I should 'apply for an invitation', so I did (haven't heard back yet though). It looks to me like Google, with Picasa, is going to try to take on the might of Yahoo! with Flickr in the online photo-sharing world, which seems to me like a gargantuan challenge for the dudes at Google.

Almost everyone I know who wants to share their photos online uses Flickr (with the exception of Adrian, who designed his own photo-sharing experience, colossal geek that he is), and they pretty much have the market sown up as regards online photo-sharing. Flickr has all the tools too, for things like mo'blogging and such, which from what I can see won't be rolled out by Picasa for quite a while yet.

Now, I use Picasa to organise my pics on my computer, because it's brilliant, at least far more brillianter than Windows is. I'm sure iPhoto on the Mac is pretty good, but as regards Windows and organising pics, Picasa is King in my opinion. If it was really easy to post pics online from inside Picasa, and if they rolled out blogging facilities that were as good as or (dare I say) better than Flickr, I might be tempted to change over to this new service, but they'd want to be pretty far along in their program before I do that, and I think I'll wait (even after I get an invite) until they've taken down that 'TEST' banner from the 'Picasa Web Albums' logo before I even think about telling other people to look for my photos there (how is 'TEST' different from 'Beta', that's what I want to know...).

Have any other Gmail or Picasa users (who read this here blog) recieved an invite? Anyone seen what it's really like beyond the 'Learn More' page? Let me know in the comments, if you please.

Posted by Matt at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Apologies for the lateness of this post (seeing as I came back from Wales on Sunday night).

Well, an excellent weekend was what was had in beautiful Snowdonia. I was there last summer, but only really passed through quickly, on the way to the English Midlands. We got the HSS from Dun Laoghaire (which was handy, as in 5 minutes away) on Friday morning and got to the caravan park (via a nice drive on the A4086, a really good drive, and at least two wrong turns that may or may not have been due to map-reading errors by my trusty navigator) at about half past four, just in time for several pints and dinner in the country club, followed by an early night (relatively anyway) in anticipation of a dayincluding 'a fair bit of walking'.

After a breakfast of pastries and coffee which had been cunningly purchased in Bangor on the way to our wheeled weekend abode, we debated joining the others for a hike up Snowdon. After looking at the torrential hail, rain, sleet and snow that looked pretty imminent, and our poor choice of non-waterproof clothing and footwear, and thinking of a 5-hour hike up a mountain and back, we decided (wisely) against it. So we went on a drive to Betws-y-Coed and a bit of a shop for appropriate clothing for future hillwalking adventures, some lunch, and to find a smaller walk to go on. We found a nice lake up in the mountains (I can't remember the name) and had a wee (2 hour or so) walk in the sunshine that broke as soon as we got out of the car, took some lovely photies, and then headed back to the caravan to chill for a bit. Dinner on Saturday was to be a gigantic pot of Bolognaise, made by Kabbage, (fiancé of Ciara, who's 30th birthday was the real reason for being in Wales, as I mentioned previously) up in a shack in the middle of nowhere, followed by several games of pool and copious drinking back at the park.

On Sunday we had to be checked out of our caravans at 10am, so we all (about 28 of us) headed out to get breakfast in a roadside café that Ciara had found would probably have space for all of us. After a few goodbyes and a look around the outdoor clothing shop that was attached to the café (every other business in Snowdonia is an outdoor clothing shop, you'll find), Nikki, Deirdre, Claire and myself (the Irish contingent) parted company with the rest of the gang and headed back to Betws (and yet another outdoor shop or three), and on to Electric Mountain. This was an excellent detour, a pumped storage power station deep underneath a mountain, that looked more like something out of the last half hour of a James Bond movie than anything I've ever seen. To say I was a bit pissed off when our guide said we had to leave our cameras and phones in lockers at the start of the tour would be a colossal understatement. The main cavern of the station is hundreds of metres underground (about a ten-minute bus journey down a huge tunnel in a bus), and is over 125 metres long, and I really expected a bald supervillain to pop out of somewhere and snicker maniacally at his creation. Visit Electric Mountain, it's cool.

From there we headed to Bangor (where it seems absolutely nothing happens on a Sunday) for some lunch, and on to Holyhead for the 6.30pm ferry back to the Pale. An excellent weekend I'm sure you'll agree!

Posted by Matt at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

It's amazing the results you can get while experimenting late at night a camera. Most recently I've been messing with the 'negative' effect on my K750i.

There's a few more of these, follow the links on the pictures to see them. It's been a while since I experimented with photos, I'll be doing more soon, and I'll also be uploading a load more older ones that I really should've already done, so stay tuned. See also pics tagged 'experimental' on my Flickr Photos for an idea of what's to come.

Posted by Matt at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Sign outside the car park at work. Can anyone guess what it means? The prize for the correct guess is... Err... I'll think of one later.

Posted by Matt at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

...I have absolutely no idea! And yet there appears to be an oversized light-sword of some description embedded in the ground in the Docklands in Dublin...
Can someone indicate to be the exact significance of this 'monument'? Or is it a 'sculpture'? Whatever it is, it's definitely a lightsaber. Seriously. No really, it is!
I wonder was there a battle between two enormous Jedi on the roof of the Millennium Tower (the building in the background) or something. That seems the most likely explanation...

[UPDATE: I have done a bit of research as to what exactly the significance of this particular 'thing' is, and have come up with... nothing. Nada. Anyone else know what the story is?]

Posted by Matt at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

As mentioned earlier, my Attchoo! Festival photos are now up on Flickr. For those of you (that's most of you) who aren't aware of the Attchoo! phenomenon, it's an multicultural arts/multimedia movement, which manages to mash pretty much any kind of art you can think of into one weekend, once every two years. I have been involved as a technical adviser for about 3 years now, and last year we went down to the tiny village of Glenmalure in County Wicklow and conjoured up a bit of Hippy Magic...

Posted by Matt at 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

...That somebody did the dishes.

(hint: it's not me)

Posted by Matt at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I only noticed this place the other day, it's between my work and M&S foodhall here in Dun Laoghaire. It's an Imaginarium outlet, but look at the doors!! There's a normal one for grown-ups, and a teeny-tiny one just for kids.

I wanted to go through the little door but they wouldn't let me (even after I threw a tantrum and pounded on the ground and everything).

Posted by Matt at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, maybe not quite, but hey, it's been frickin' COLD for the past month or so, like four degrees, every goddamn day! I got a coat in London in November and it's totally done the business all winter, but recently it's been freezing (well not actually freezing but the wind has been really bitter) and the draught has been getting right up me jacksey. Even with the strings pulled real tight (on the coat).

Posted by Matt at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

My mate Ste got a new dog, and him and his girl Gráinne dropped over to myself and Andy's gaff to introduce the new member of the family to the lads.

Her name is Uba, she's a Weimaraner and she's very cute. Remember 'Family Ties'? Remember 'Sit Ubu sit, good dog' at the end? Well Ubu was a boy, Uba is a girl.

Cuteness of this degree should be illegal. I mean look at it!

I won't tell you how much she cost though (hint: more than a hundred, less than a thousand).

Posted by Matt at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)