return to pearse

Nothing here in a while. Will have some photos from my new DIY Macro Photography Lighting Rig up soon.

Just to tie you over till then, an ad. The whole Jaguar “Gorgeous” thing seems a bit pretentious, but I’ll forgive them, if only for the music (Collarbone) provided by Fujiya & Miyagi (I took this photo at their gig in Crawdaddy in February). Not bad for a band who still had their day jobs until a week after that gig:

Although Tom commented favourably on the site’s design on this post, I’ve been getting kinda bored with it. So I’ve thought up something else:

You can get a closer look here, but be warned: if you’re not using Firefox, it mightn’t be worth it. I’m just looking at design & layout, I haven’t attempted to make it work in multiple browsers, or apply it to WordPress yet.

Anyway, see anything you don’t like? Anything you really like? Gimme a comment.

UPDATE: I submitted the mockup to BrowserShots, so you can see what it looks like in various browsers as the results come in

I went into town yesterday and visited the AIB/PPAI Awards Exhibition 2007 in the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar.

Press Photographers who are members of the PPAI were invited to submit portfolios of their best images of 2006, and the best of those made up the exhibition. This year was the exhibition’s 29th and it was excellent, with brilliant work by all the photographers exhibited. Bryan O’Brien of The Irish Times won the overall Award, and it was easy to see why with a strong performance in all the categories.

The exhibition brilliantly showcased the power of great press photography, which was obvious from hearing and seeing the reactions of people as they viewed the photos.

Unfortunately, yesterday was the last day of the exhibition’s run in the Gallery, but it will be travelling to other galleries around the country during the year. Details should be posted here.

In a completely different type of photography (aerial/satellite), Tom Raftery compared the mapping services of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. He concluded that Google’s services was best, and invited comments. I duly obliged.

Looking at my area (Greystones, Co. Wicklow), Yahoo had the best service, trailed by Google, and leaving Microsoft at a standstill at the start line.

Check it out for yourself and leave a comment on Tom’s post with your findings.

This photo won this competition.

Well, sorta. As Caitriona explains here, she had a hard time picking a winner, so she decided to give two prizes (generous her).
Congrats to my fellow winner McAWilliams (I’ve just realised I haven’t added a link to him in the sidebar though I’ve been a viewer/reader(?) of his photoblog for a while now - Soon to be rectified).

Anyway, while trying not to ramble (I haven’t even prepared a speech), I’ll just say:

• Thanks to Caitriona for the competition (and particularly the prize: something I’d been interested in, but hadn’t worked up the nerve to buy.)
• Well done to the other entrants for their beautiful work, and comiserations to redmum, who unfortunately missed the deadline.
• Thanks also to Absolut, who asked Caitriona to run the competition and donated the prizes. (Similar competitions were run on other photoblogs, and they ran a website with entries and stuff)

via the brilliant satirical cartoonist, Green Ink.

I’m still not sure if I believe it.

TCAL, the ever-reliable source for Internet time-wasting is no more.

I’m gonna have to work a lot harder to find quality stuff on the net now.

Much mourning and messages of condolences continue on the announcement post.

My contribution:

I didn’t see that one coming.

To be honest, it’s the only way TCAL could have gone, and a great to way to end it.

Now they’ll have to give you the obligatory “end of career better give him an Oscar” type Blog Award.

There’s a lot of people not happy that God Save the Queen will be played at Croke Park today. In fact, a drunk man on the DART yesterday warned me to stay away from the match. I’m not sure if he was suggesting I boycott the match in protest, or to avoid any possible trouble over this obviously controversial match.

As suggested on the front page of today’s Irish Times, this will be a test of our maturity as a nation. I sincerely hope all the Irish fans at the match will respect the anthem and people of England, and remain quiet during the anthem.

I’m going to do one better. I’ll be singing along.

via TCAL:

Some Photos of it on Flickr too.

Saw this on TV a while ago, but just found it online today.

There’s also a ‘creak’ ad, but I prefer this one.

The agency is Dublin-based Chemistry, and the animation is by Head Gear of Toronto, directed by Julian Grey.

The always amazing zefrank talks about the web (I think)