Beach Horse Race

Last Sunday, I was in Kilkee ( trying to dive as usual), absolutely gorgeous day, blue sky.. absolutely perfect, and despite the gale warning in operatiosn on all coast, the sea was nice to us.
But the main attraction was on the beach, as a horse races were organized there. It's an annual event and a very enjoyable one.

Preparing the racing Field:


The Track:


Reconnaissance:


And here we go:


















From the pier:


....

2nd Blog

I've been looking for a while a blog called Grenoble Daily Photo , it shows a picture a Grenoble everyday. I used to live in Grenoble before coming to Ireland, so it's interesting to rediscover part of this city ( and even some parts I did not know).

So it kinda of inspirate me to do the same with the town I am currently living in : Limerick.

So here we go: Limerick Daily Photo

Lisa Hannigan

Eventful week, i started it by missing my plane to France, sinking rock-bottom a planned week-end of diving in Marseille.
Anyway, i use the time to move house, I am now living in the city center of limerick... we'll see how it turns out.

On the bright side, I went last wednesday to the Univeristy of Limerick see Lisa Hannigan in concert, you probably heard her already on Damien Rice album ( 9 crimes for example ), she had a wonderful new solo album: Sea Sew.


This is taken from the RTE show Other Voices.


Songs of the week:

• I don't know - Lisa Hannigan
• Lille - Lisa Hannigan
• The Steady Song - Republic of Loose

Sachons cacher notre joie [FR]

Dailymotion a signé un accord de diffusion sur les sketchs de Desproges.

Sachons cacher notre joie
Uploaded by pierredesproges

Etonnant non ?

Too much time

May be I've spend too much time in Ireland.
Let me explain, last night i find myself watching the "Rose of Tralee", laughing at Ray D'Arcy silly dancing, wondering about Dubliner, at the end Aoife won the tiara.
The Rose is so different from, let's say "miss France", there is for example no swimsuit walk ( which is a bit hypocritical, when one of the requirement is not to have posed partially or completely stripped), somewhat refreshing in term of innocence, at the same time the women competing seems more outspoken than there french counterpart (or is it due to Genevieve overall control ).

In 3 years, I've seen a "brilliant" Taoiseach disappear. Bertie Ahern has been pure candy for any Irish Comic, how can they survive without him ? Just an example: as a finance minister in the 80's he did not have a bank account ....


Talking about watching stuff on TV, a series of excellent documentary can be seen at the moment on the BCC, it's called "Pacific Abyss". It follows the adventure of deep diver (-100m) in the pacific in search of new species of fishes using rebreathers.

Scubadiving Photographer

And yes even underwater, you can see some starlet and other paparazzi...


See the starlet in all her splendor:

Traffic

As the oil crisis worsen, and the price of petrol continue to raise, more and more Americans are reconsidering their use of their cars, more and more decide to commute using bicycles with some unexpected results.
As more and more people take their bike in the streets of New York, more and more agressive behaviour can be seen between the different users of the roads: car driver versus bicycle user, and biker versus pedestrians. Car driver are not used to share their space with bicycle, unlike what is happening in Netherlands (where more than 15% of the population is using bicycles ), American car driver does not seem to know how to behave nor the cyclists as most of them are newbies in the bike commuter comunity.

And this highlight the weakest link of the car based transportation system: the human factor.
As explained in the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, it seems we are behaving like total nonsensical idiots when we sit down behind the wheel of a car.

An interesting fact to think about next time you're driving:
- the safer a driver feels ( because he's driving a SUV, or he's on a straight road... ), the more dangeroulsy (fast, or careless) is going to drive.
As a result roundabouts, are probably safer than red-lights intersection as it forces us to take more attention to our surroundings.
Our perception of danger in a car is false, and falsed.


Trafic movie by J.Tati

Back Diving....

Back diving (seriously) after a couple of week-end were i was not very actively diving (interrupted by work travel, and my previous dive was only in 10 meters with a trainee).

Dive Site: Pinnacle in Kilkee.


I had a lovely siren/buddy to accompagn me :

USA - First Trip

For the first week of august 2008, I had my first trip to the USA, work related, no tourism, so no pictures.

Results:

• USA - checked.
• Portland (Oregon) - checked

A very long trip ( Shannon - Atlanta - Portland ), for a very busy and interesting working week.
Portland seems an interesting place, one hour from the sea, one hour from the moutain.
Just checked for the moment....

Off course even that far away from the rainy emerald Island, we found comforting ourselves with a pint of guinness.

Childhood Dreams ?

A moving lecture:


So what have you done with your childhood dreams ?

Is this post too long to read....

Contradicting the title, it will be a short post. I've just read two interesting articles about reading online: the first one form the New York Times about the generation gap existing in the way people read, and a more disturbing one called "Is Google Making Us Stupid ?" by N.Carr.

I have not realized it before, but online reading, fundamentally change the way you read, instead of immersing yourself in a lengthy article or a book, you mainly skim the surface of online article, jumping from one information to another. The online way is a fast, accumulation of data, and we don't really spend time to digest, re-think internally what we read, unlike the way you progress through a book.
And it seems that favoring the online reading, limits our concentration capabilities, because it's so easy to get distracted and jump to another subject.

Sea Kayak Level 2

Last week end, I went down to county Waterford to do two full days of sea-kayaking.
We paddle around broadstand pier, near Tranore.


I did the level 2 course with seapaddling.com.

Now I am seriously thinking investing in a kayak... and a surf.

Monday night I also went to see Wall-ee, brilliant, as every Pixar, but i probably need to see it again later when the hype will have disappeared.

Tonight I went snorkelling near Spanish Point:

Irish Petanque

Oh I've actually been busier than initially expressed, setting up at work a regular game of Petanque during lunch time



Great fun... but seems the Irish are beating the French at their own games... Sacrebleu.

Nude

No real news, still a cracked rib since the mountain biking event, did only one dive Sunday, spent a couple of hours for Bastille Day on Doughmore Beach before finishing the night in the Wicked Chicken (as Friday ).
And we finally had our beach barbecue yesterday ( "healthy" irish sausages and chocolate banana ) in spanish point (Co Clare).



Five more days before Wall-ee.....


Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Other Radiohed remixes here.
Animated videos of Radiohead songs on Aniboom.


Songs of the week-end:
MGMT - Kids
Blondie - Atomic
CSS - Cannon Ball
Fourtet - Unspoken

Damo

Seen Damien Depmpsey in Dolans this saturday, absolutely fantastic

Quote of the day:
"Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mistery, Today is a gift, that's why it's called the Present!"
Oogway in Kung Fu Panda ( though the original quote is much older)

Kung Fu Panda, very pleasant movie, the combat scenes are really funny.

20 - 26

Et de neuf... et merde....
Félicitations Toulouse.
Bravo les jaunards pour cette belle saison... a l'année prochaine en H-Cup et championat.

Georges Carlin

Let's worship the sun

Moutain Bike

I went moutain biking in Ballyhoura moutain , a very moutain bike trail. I had not done moutain biking in a long long time ( first time since i moved to Ireland ), very good and off course i've fallen ( and will fall again ).

A video which shows part of the track:


A good website for outdoors activities in Ireland:
http://www.coillteoutdoors.ie

Radiodead Bis Repetita

Friday Night (6th June 2008), near Dublin, in Malahide Castle park.
I went to see Radiohead in concert in Dublin, again. The atmosphere was quite different.
Probably due to the tone of the last album, or the fact that i've been travelling the country up and down over the week end.

We had a bit of rain, but a good sign appeared in the form of a double rainbow, just as Radiohead went on stage:


And we were started by a lovely evening on the east coast of Ireland

Songs Played:
01 All I Need (In Rainbows)
02 There There (Hail to the Thief )
03 Lucky (Ok Computer)
04 Bangers & Mash (In Rainbows - bonus)
05 15 Step (In Rainbows)
06 Nude (In Rainbows)
07 Pyramid Song (Amnesiac)
08 Optimistic (Kid A)
09 Arpeggi (In Rainbows)
10 The National Anthem (Kid A)
11 Idioteque (kid A)
12 Reckoner (In Rainbows)
13 House Of Cards (House of cards)
14 Everything In Its Right Place (Kid A)
15 Faust Arp (In Rainbows)
16 Bodysnatchers (In Rainbows)
17 Videotape (In Rainbows)

Encore 1:
18 The Gloaming (hail to the Thief)
19 You and Whose Army ? (Amnesiac)
20 Myxomatosis (Hail to the thief)
21 My Iron Lung (The Bends)
22 How To Disappear Completely (Kid A)
Encore 2:
23 New Song (Thom on piano, ‘Super Collider’)
24 Just (The Bends)
25 Paranoid Android (OK Computer)

Source www.ateaseweb.com
.

Don't know why, but Thome spoke a bit of french ( "un deux trois quatre", "merci beaucoup" ) maybe in prevision of the next concert in Paris, or more simply due to the important numbers of french people present at the concert.

And soon too soon it was finished...

Brandon Cox

June Bank Holiday Week End in Brandon.... which can be summarized in : boat - pier - pub

The Boat


The Pub:


Brilliant spot, with the pub just on the pier, wonderful sunny weather. Mike ( one of the "boulets" of 2006 posts was there for the week-end, enjoying some diving (Guinness, Spider crabs, lobster all checked ).

No diving for me, due to an hear infection, but hours of driving the boat up and down Brandon point.

Brandon Head

We had the pleasure to see Dolphins visiting us....
I've passed my Cox test Monday, despite poor maneuver in the harbor ( I really need to practice that - a lot - to improve my boat handling ).

Down to Cork on Wednesday ( OysterHaven ) for a rescue diver examination ( passed, but need to practice CPR more)

Regional WE May 2008

I was at the CFT regional week-end (South-West) over the may week-end.
Excellent, we had it all: sun, calm sea, basking sharks...




I've put all my photos of underwater Ireland into one Flickr set.

Atom movies

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

Octopus

Octopus in Mediterranean sea near Marseilles (France)

Wall ee Widget

Turn-off TV Week

By the way it's "Mental Detox Week" ( formerly turn-off TV week), from 21-27 April.
So it's a good opportunity to reduce your tv consumption (3.5 hours everyday in average in UK.... )

Eart Day

The New York Times has published a interesting series of article about the "green issues" listing some bold and simple ideas to lean towards a greener better way of living on Earth. It's divided in seven steps: Act, Eat, invent, learn, live, move and build.
There is a couple of ideas I really like: from the simple walk more, the simple turn-off habits, having a compost bin, to the more advanced way of building houses. The comforting part is to see how many ideas are there, and how simple they are, for most of them, nothing more simple than turning off your light/tv/computer at night, or walking to the shop instead of taking the car. The sad part is to see, that even if most of these steps, are effortless and easy, the large majority of the population don't do it. For example, in my house, out of 4 people, 2 systematically drives there car to the shop (2 minutes walk from the house) even for a bottle of milk... It's going to be a long way to change people mind.

Pixar 2008 to 2011

Some exciting news from Pixar last week, with the announcement of their upcoming movies:
2008 - Wall-ee
2009 - Up
2010? - Toy Story 3
2011 - Newt and The Bear and the Bow
2012 - Cars 2
Plus a new movie from Bard Bird: 1906.

I am quite excited by all these, and I am particulary eager to see Wall-ee:
Wall-ee trailer


See the Pixar Blog for updated information.

Sharkwater movie

Hope the movie will be shown in Ireland.

Irish Champignac Mayor

Bertie Aherne quadruple negative:
“For legal and professional reasons neither myself nor my advisors have been in a position to respond to any of the accuracy and completeness of the reports about those issues so it is not correct, if I said so I wasn’t correct, so I, I can’t recall if I did say, but I did not say, if I did say it I didn’t mean to say it that these issues could not be dealt with until the end of the Mahon Tribunal, that is not what Revenue said.”
30 January 2008, answering to a question about his tax clearance certificate in the Dáil.

He reminds me the famous mayor of Champignac in the comic book series: Spirou, here an example of his speech ( in French ):
« Je suis venu vous dire que chaque Champignacien n'a pas assez de ses deux yeux pour pleurer lorsqu'il lance un regard bourrelé de remords, en arrière vers les évènements violemment inexplicables d'avant-hier et vous ne pouvez imaginer, en particulier, combien ce souvenir est amer au maire... Mais cela ne se produira plus, car j'ai pris des mesures... Je viens d'interdire sur le territoire de la commune, tout rassemblement de plus d'une personne, jusqu'à nouvel ordre in-clu-si-ve-ment ! »

For french speaker, you can take a look at the Grand Prix du Maire de Champignac for more real ones.

Where I live in Ireland

Andrew Maxwell is an Irish comedian.

Scuba-Diving in Valentia

Few pics from my week scuba-diving in Kerry...

Relax... and enjoy

Thanks Sigur ros

Lahinch at high Tide

Lahinch beach at low tide.

On the news side, seems it's going to be a busy summer as i will prepare to pass the Leading Diver with CFT

Cinema 08

I've restarted to go more regularly to the Cinema, as there's some good movies at the moment ( i am not going to talk about Rambo ).

Be Kind Rewind
The last movie by the every imaginative Michel Gondry, it's cheerful and very pleasant. All about the pleasure of making movie, watching movies, sharing through movies.

The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert ford
Slow drama, hypnotic at some point, about the murderer of Jesse James, forgotten by history.
Other interest, alongside B.Pitt and Casey Affleck, Marie Louise Parker plays from Weeds in that film.

Sweeney Todd
Tim Burton merging this story into his own Gothic universe. For a musical, the song are not great, but it's a strong story, visually impressive.

No Country for old men
The Cohen brothers at their best, based on a great novel by Cormac McCarthy.
May be one of their best movie since Fargo ( though I loved "Intolerable Cruelty", "The man who was not there", "O'Brother where art thou ?" and the cultissim "No Country for old men" )

Juno
Very refreshing and funny. Juno the girlfriend i would have love to have in high school.

Off course I could not resist buying the latest Pixar DVD Ratatouille.
And in the following months some very interesting movies are coming:

There will be blood by Paul Thomas Anderson.

Burn after Reading by the Cohen Bros

Indy 4 by S.Spielberg/G.Lucas

Fear(s) of the dark an animation movie made by some very talented comics authors (Blutch, Mattotti, Charles Burns)

And off course the next pixar Wall-e




Links

An interesting irish blog about movies: Confessions of a Film Critic John Maguire

In French: critic radio show Le Masque et la plume (France Inter)

Seeing Dublin

Back to normal

Lomofied version


Pub, work, diving, Pub, salsa, pub-rugby, beach, ...in other words, back to normal

Panic Economic

From the Daily Show

[FR] Arte-radio, les expatries

Arte Radio un delice a entendre, voici un reportage consacre en particulier aux expatries:

[FR] Voleur de poule

Underwater ...rugby

No it's not Irish rugby played under continuous fall of rain...



And talking about rugby, last Sunday, saw Clermont beat Munster at home in France, but ASM were unlucky in preventing a defensive crucial bonus point to be awarded to the red army. Damn...

Can Ireland be the next Saudi Arabia ?

Ireland... and its green grass, you can find all over the place. May be this grass can be the new source of richness for Irish, it turns out a Canadian company has developed a new process to create ethanol from the left-over of corn/cereal production, which means basically been able to make ethanol from cellulosic material. Some scientists have tried to calculate the yield by using switchgrass. And now we can dream of producing bio-fuel just by lawn mowing your garden. May be a whole industry could emerge in Ireland, based on shamrock-fuel ?

Snow in Ireland

What to say, yipeeee, snow in Ireland.