This was taken quite awhile ago. I was using a Zenith (russian pentax clone) in a very dark pub with some Ilford 400 DELTA or 3200, I can’t remember which right now. Still, I was using a fairly fast shutter speed for the very dark conditions in the pub, when I got the developed roll back from the camera shop they apologised as the film was completely blank from looking at it. It had happened a few times before so I knew I was the cause but I also knew it wasn’t completely blank. It was fairly simple to load them in to a scanner and then push the brightness setting to the extreme to start seeing some detail.

The fire in the photo is caused by a friend who likes his fire, usually drunk people are easily convinced that it’s caused by a build up of alcohol fumes when the real culprit is lighter fluid. Hold your hand over the glass, stick a lighter in the side and hold down the gas release for about 20 or 30 seconds then release and add a flame to the top of the glass. He swore it tasted better. If you want to know what’s in the pint then look around it.

In the next few weeks I’ll be starting a project to wire up a castle for wireless. I hope to outline the process in a series of posts which will act as a form of documentation over the next few weeks. Like most castles it is quite a unique place and with that come unique issues along with a good few standard issues. Like for instance the castle is staffed an run by volunteers so this is a completely volunteer power project, the equipment is the same, donated by volunteers or purchased by their funds. Even though funds are low we’ll aim to build a robust network that will handle anything from a single person on a PC to several hundred smart phone users in a festival setting.

The main aims are

• Supply the main floor and kitchen area of the castle with good wifi coverage
• Supply the living area upstairs with good wifi coverage
• Link a workshop/site office/stage area outside via wireless to the network
• Provide coverage for the entrance to be used during festivals/events

At the moment only three access points are setup, they cover the most used area’s of the castle but these area’s are usually social points or smaller area’s used for office work and not suitable for large meetings or able to reach additional work area’s. One of the first unique problems we face is that the building is also a protected structure, any changes we make must have minimal impact on the structure, that means we won’t be able to drill holes anywhere, mounting any ducting is also out except in some special circumstances. Should be fun alright!

A healing tree, a photo by beer_squirrel on Flickr.

Located not far from Leap Castle, Co. Offaly, there’s a tree know as a Healing Tree or a rag tree and this tree has several supersitions attached to it.

One of the odder ones we where told about is that locals always keep the tree on one side while driving by, there’s even a dirt track on onside.

IMGP6087, a photo by beer_squirrel on Flickr.

Cats, cats, cats. This one likes to lie on things and go murp in the night, usually around the 4am mark. Yeap, murp. He just murps quietly to himself…. outside the bedroom door. It’s quiet enough so that it won’t wake you up straight away but slowly brings you out of your sleep. You can’t catch him as he hears you getting out of bed, when that door opens there is no cat, he’s after running off to a favored hiding spot and will be back in 5 minutes when you’ve settled down again.

1_2, a photo by beer_squirrel on Flickr.

As I don’t really know what to do with a blog, rather like a fish with a bicycle or a cat with a large vegetable, I’ll see if I can do some random things. I’ll start off with something I like a lot. Black and White film photography.

This photo is of two large eggcups, or rather some breadmixers that where used in the Magazine Fort that sits in the Pheonix Park, Dublin. They’re not much use now as rust covers them.

Old blog wiped, time to start anew and give things a good poke and prod.