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Monday was the last night of the annual Greystones Arts Festival, with the traditional fireworks display.

A few from Kilruddery Estate in Bray

Sorry, I was in Spain for 2 weeks and didn’t quite get around to scheduling posts before I left.

The night before I left, I shot Nine Lives again, this time at the launch of their EP in the Voodoo Lounge:

The lighting was very dim throughout, especially after a stagediver managed to knock one of the lights away from the stage. As a result, lots of the shots are fairly noisy and I opted to use black & white a lot to make the best of a bad situation.

Also popped the flash a few times to get some crazy light streak effects:

And a stagediver for the crack:

More here on flickr

Green Ink tagged me to do the most worthwhile meme I’ve seen. The idea is to promote the charities and help their search engine PageRank. You list all the charities so far, add some more and pass it on.

The existing ones:

• MS Society Ireland
• Irish Red Cross
• Samaritans
• Cancer.ie - Irish Cancer Society
• Irish Hospice Foundation - Hospice and palliative care in Ireland
• Barnardos - Ireland’s leading children’s charity
• The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity - Polish Charity
• CPR For Schools Across Poland - CPRTraining
• Program of Insulin Pumps in Diabetic Children Therapy - Insulin Pumps For Children
• Non-invasive Neonatal Breathing Support - Infant Flow
• Program of Universal Neonatal Hearing Screenings - Neonatal Hearing
• American Red Cross - disaster relief
• Raleigh Rescue Mission - homeless raleigh
• Samaritan’s Purse - emergency relief programs
• St. Jude Children’s Hospital - cancer research
• Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders - Humanitarian Relief
• American Red Cross - Emergency Preparedness
• AMREF - African Medical & Research Foundation - African Health Development
• DOROT - Programs for Elderly
• Feed the Children - Protect Children
• Service International - Disaster Relief
• Pujols Family Foundation - Children with Down Syndrome
• National Alliance to End Homelessness - Homelessness
• The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research - Parkinson’s Research
• Aids Research Alliance - Aids Research
• Wildlife Conservation Society - Wildlife Protection
• Cancer Research Institute - Cancer Research
• Second Harvest - End Hunger
• AARP Foundation - Helping Senior Citizens
• Bubblegum Club - Children In Crisis
• Autism NI - Autism Northern Ireland
• Adoption Ireland - Irish Adoption Charity
• Ireland Funds - Peace and Reconciliation In Ireland
• Dublin Simon Community - Combating Homelessness in Dublin
• Aware
• To Russia with Love
• Debra Ireland
• Oxfam Ireland
• Irish Autism Action
• Asthma Society of Ireland
• Clowns without Borders- making children laugh in areas of crisis
• Chernobyl Childrens’ Project- holidays from radiation for Chernobyl children
• Irish Rape Crisis Network- support and information for sexual abuse survivors
• Jack and Jill Foundation- care for families with terminally ill babies suffering from irreparable brain damage
• Enable Ireland- support for people with disabilities and their families in 14 regional locations.

I’m adding:

Special Olympics Ireland - Providing year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sport for children and adults with a learning disability

Canteen Ireland - nation-wide support group for young people who have or have had cancer, and for their families and friends.

Camara - sending recycled computers to African schools and providing technology training and computer learning materials to teachers there.

RNLI Lifeboats - provides a 24-hour lifesaving service at sea and on the coast around the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Scouting Ireland - The official line: The aim of Scouting Ireland is to encourage the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual development of young people so that they may achieve their full potential and, as responsible citizens, to improve society.
In my words: The organisation that provides amazing experiences, education and personal development in extremely broad fields to almost 35,000 people in Ireland.

The best way to support Scouting financially (aside from getting actively involved) is supporting your local groups’ fundraising, rather than the national Association

And to pass it on, I think I’ll target:

caitriona
Treasa (again)
gingerpixel

Caitriona says I have to do this meme thing.

the rules:
Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Things

• I have never smoked a cigarette (of the conventional tobacco type) in my life
• I have been involved in Scouting for 12 years, and intend to remain involved and have more amazing experiences for as long as possible
• I have (to the best of my recollection) never been to Scotland
• I can say the alphabet backwards quicker than I can say it forwards. (Backwards in just over 4 seconds if you must know)
• I hate it when people turn off someone’s choice of music (at parties and the like) because “it’s crap” instead of waiting to the end and choosing the next song. I also hate it when people say “you probably wouldn’t like it” in relation to music or anything else
• One year I want to give up procrastination for lent, though I’m fairly certain I’ll never get around to it
• I have never driven a car for longer than a few metres, but I have driven a 20-ton fire engine down the runway at Casement Aerodrome, and a pilot boat around Dublin Port (see second point for details)
• I have no allergies (as far as I know)

So, to pass the torch to 8 bloggers selected from my sidebar:

Blogopho.be, FeckOff.net, snapper, red mum, Green Ink, Treasa, DjMagra and Robin

It’s been quiet around here recently. Sorry about that.

This shot was taken on the evening of Wednesday 20th June, the day of my last exam.

More posts to come soon.

Courtesy of On The Record, the best of The Irish Times‘ look we’re cool we have blogs, comes the genius that is FestivalShirts.net.

The only t-shirts you can wear to a festival this year and still expect to come away from it with everyone thinking you’re really cool, they come in bright but not attention-seeking colours with such genius captions as “If this is your t-shirt I slept in your tent”, “Don’t take drugs. That’s stealing” and “What Music?”

So other blogs have their caption competitions or their fluffy links, but this is as close as you’re going to get to a regular feature around here. I did it once before, and I may well do it again, but there is as yet no planned schedule.

Like the last installment, this one will follow a mainly musical theme.

I started by looking up a performance I saw on Later… with Jools Holland again:

I think I quite like Shy Child. Their mySpace page has some other nice songs. I particularly like The Volume and Summer.

After hearing The Avalanches’ Frontier Psychiatrist (above) on the radio a while back I looked them up. It’s quite a display of their sampling skills, and I think their Since I Left You has the potential to be quite the Summer song. Their myspace page is here.

When I originally heard Frontier Psychiatrist, I at first thought it might have been Messiah J & the Expert, and for that (if no better) reason, here’s Something Outta Nothing:

There’s more on their website and myspace (particular attention is drawn to Superfamous Supertune and All the Other Girls)

That was fun. My first gig with a photo pass, and in the pit.

I was asked on Thursday by Nine Lives to shoot their support slot for Billy Talent at the Ambassador.

From what I heard, it’s very rare that an unsigned band like them, used to playing Scout Halls and birthday parties gets picked to play support at a gig like this one.

Previously the biggest crowds Nine Lives had played to were around 300 or so. The Ambassador holds 1250 people, and was sold out last night.

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