Hymn - Francis Giacobetti

Great news, next year the Hymn project by F.Giacobetti will tour around the world in a series of expositions.
Giacobetti started that project in 1980, and it's a fascinating idea: basically he is photographying the iris ( and hands ) of famous people. I saw some of the picture, in an article in the French magazine Geo, few years ago, and the images of those iris are absolutely staggering.

See below a sample from the exposition website:

I'd love to be able to take pictures like those...




For your information: Giacobetti is a french photograph, famous for his pirelli calendar in the 1970, and for directing Emmanuelle 2.

5 movies for a desert Island

Imagine you're alone on a deserted Island, with a DVD player and 5 movies.... on a rainy days what movies would you bring with you and why ?

1. Monthy Python Holy Grail
To keep the moral up, a bit of laugh, can be watch over and over again... especially to hear french swearing (Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! )


2. Chung King Express (Wong Kar Wai)
A romantic stylistic movie, because i fall in love with Faye everytime i watch the movie.

(Full Movie can be seen there, and Quentin Tarantino talks about the movie here)

3. Mon oncle (J.Tati)
Another simple feel good movie


4. Once upon a time in the west (Sergio Leone)
A classic


5. MegaVixens by Russ Meyer
Alone, on an island, migt rise some tension, so here's the solution, more cartoonish than real erotic stuff.


Surprisingly, i did not put any pixar movie, nor Kubrick ....
Note: Based on a French Article on Ecran Large.

Rodrigo y Gabriella ... summer 2009

Oh god i miss the free summer concert in Grenoble, fortunately there is some good bands playing in Limerick, most notably in Dolans, last night it was Rodrigo y Gabriella, absolutely brilliant.

How many of these books have you read?

How many of these books have you read?

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

[Updated August 2016]

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brone
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling   X+
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible X
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare X+ ( i might be missing 2 or 3 )
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy X+
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X+
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame *
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell X+
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood *
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert [Update September 2023]
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X+
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov *
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas *
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X+
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville X ( not sure i finished it )
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker X+
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *
75. Ulysses - James Joyce *
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola *
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell  X
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X+
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X+
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks *
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole X+
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare X+
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *

Instructions:

• Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
• Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
• Star (*) those you plan on reading.
• Tally your total at the bottom

My score 13... not bad

2016 Update -> 15

2023 Update ->  20 (Also realised I missed some books)

iTunes - Medium .... tell me tell me

Today 5 July - Playing with your shufle music player
Go to your music player of choice, and put it all on "shuffle." Say the following questions aloud, and after each one press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

What do you think of me, random music player?
"I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you"
Hyperballad - Bjork

Will I have a long and happy life?
"Let's Talk
Let's talk
Let the dirt fall
Let Heads Roll"
Passionless, pointless - PJ.Harvey

What do my friends really think of me?
"Send me home restless
Send me home damaged
Send me home disposes
Send me home damaged"
The Soldier - PJ.Harvey

What does my S/O think of me?
Hot Stuff - cover by Jape

Do people secretly lust after me?
"That either way you turn
I'll be there
Open up your skull
I'll be there"
Climbing Up the Walls - radiohead

How can I make myself happy?
"Show your hand
I'm jumping off the fence
Into your corner"
Show your hand - Super Furry Animal

What should I do with my life?
"And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted,
All the time, all the time, ohhh... ohh..."
Fake plastic Tree - Radiohead

Why must life be so full of pain?
"Purple haze all around
Don't know if I'm comin' up or down
Am I happy or in misery?
Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me"
Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix (Franck Zappa Cover)

How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
"Oh, My-ex says I'm lacking in depth
I will do my best"
Someday - The Strokes

Will I ever have children?
"And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me"
Arme of me - Bjork

Will I die happy?
"mailprintvotesmallerlarger
Send "Novocaine for The Soul" Ringtone to Cell Phone

Life is hard and so am i
You better give me something
So I dont die
Novocaine for the soul
Before I sputter out"
Novocaine for the soul - Eels

Can you give me some advice?
Salsa con coco - Pochy y su cocoband

What do you think happiness is?
"I've been waiting so long
To be where I'm going
In the sunshine of your love."
Sunshine of your love - Cream ( F.Zappa cover )

Do you have any advice to give over the next few hours/days?
"Bought a present for my guy
I bought him a pair of second hand boots
Those boots were white not pink
He liked to think, that he wore them well
He took them to the park, he wore them out
And played with the geese
Those geese were stupified"
Jake Summers - Fight like Apes


Next time i'll change the questions......

Been there

An update in songs....

Been there, done that, messed around....I'm having fun don't put me down,
Bullet Proof (La Roux)

i love the quiet of the night time, when the sun is drown in a deathly sea
Death (White Lies)
yes this fears got a hold on me

It's a cruel cruel world, to face on your own,
Heavy Cross (The Gossip)

But every time it rains,
Youre here in my head,
Like the sun coming out--
Cloudbusting (Kate Bush)
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.

Traffic Jam at Black Head

There was a traffic Jam in Black Head this Saturday:




the reason: the start of LEG8 of the Volvo Ocean Race ( Galway to Marstrand )

As the boat left Galway, they come fast along SaltHill:


Loads of boat came to visit the race, and accompany them along the irish coast


As they pass the lighthouse, they all started tacking to take the inside route, between the Aran Island and the Burren... much to our delight:


And here's the chinese-irish competitor






Some boat came quite close from the shore (here Delta Lloyd ):




Finally everybody wished a goodbye and safe sailing top the Dragon: