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.