Damien Mulley

Since the feedback from the guest blog posts a few weeks ago was so postive, I thought I’d have some of the photobloggers in Ireland do guest posts showing off some of their favourite photos. As some may be aware and some may not be, one of the main motivations for starting the blog awards was getting more attention to bloggers and especially photo bloggers. Of all sections in the Awards, this is the section that kills me the most because so many people each year deserve the Award for best photoblogger. Anyway, I asked a few photo bloggers to contribute this week to the blog but of course I asked more than 5 because there are so many amazing photographers to choose from, so this guest photo post idea might last longer than a week. 🙂

First up comes Treasa from Winds and Breezes and also of Dancing Shades of Light. If you like her stuff, don’t forget to visit the site and also subscribe too.

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Damien has been kind enough to flatter my ego by asking me to guest photoblog on mulley.net, the blog where everybody knows your name. I see it as the closest thing to a blogbar which we have and I am pleased, nay proud, to have a couple of pictures hanging here for a while.

Of course, that meant I had to select two and do the blog equivalent of a PowerPoint Presentation about each of them. I think they had to be my favourite photographs but that’s a moving feast so let’s just say that they are my two favourites at this present point in time that fulfill a number of criteria:

1) there’s something to say about them and
2) that something isn’t terribly boring. I try.

Obviously (to me, anyway) one of them was always going to be this photograph.

Francois Colussi, PureMagic Kitesurfing, in Sutton, County Dublin, sometime last year.

This is one of my favourite photographs of all time. It’s a bad photograph because it utterly corrupted me to spending a fortune on printing services. The six by four print was not enough. I had to have a ten by eight. When I got the ten by eight, that wasn’t enough either. I had to have a 20 by 30. And since I did that to this photograph, other photographs have gotten the same treatment so it was the start of a slippery slope which costs me a fortune at Photobox.ie. It’s on a mug. Everytime I look at this photograph, it reminds me of summer. And since we didn’t get a summer this year…that’s no bad thing.

For my next trick, we have this:

Sunset at the Pointe du Raz, Finistere, Brittany.

I think every one has a soul food place, somewhere they can go to escape the harsh realities of life and just feel a lot better in their own skin. Being awkward, my soul food place is the Pointe du Raz, Finistere, Brittany. It’s not exactly convenient when you’ve had a bad day at work.

This is one of the busiest – and most dangerous – sea corridors around Europe. The fact that you can see four lighthouses with your eyes sitting where I took this photograph is a testament to that. Every single time I’ve been there, however, it’s been as calm as a millpond.

There are two places I go every single time I go to Brittany. This is one. Somehow, I feel at home there. Wish I knew why.

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Treasa blogs at Winds and Breezes and also at Dancing Shades of Light

Rough Itinerary for Paddy’s Valley is out. Big news is we are going to Mobile Monday and also E.I. is going to give some classes on how to pitch to local investors. Googleplex visit on the cards too.

Are you going to BarCamp Galway? What is it? Well it’s a conference where people talk about technology and stuff around technology. Everyone is welcome. why not give a talk too?

Craiglist listing results in house being stripped as if locusts came visiting.

The one with the waggily tail. Is this nice for the house or not?

Crocks and Uggs have mated. End of civilisation!

Delirium from the Sandman tattoo.

10 books from Patrick O’Brian for only 20 squid.

Induce out of body experiences. Weird.

Via Random Reflective Rantings: Miss Teen USA 2007 – South Carolina answers a question

Michel Bauwens speaking about peer to peer philosophy, but not in regards to file sharing, he rocked at Reboot:

Frank got on to me aaaaages ago about enabling an option so people could subscribe to the comments in individual blog posts on this site. Valid point. Frank suggested I use the Subscribe to Comments plugin and this weekend I finally finally got round to try and get it to work. This blog operates on a very old version of WordPress so there wasn’t many plugins that would still work, though the one Frank suggested said it would work fine. Yesterday evening I installed it and it rewarded me by killing the whole blog. I managed to get it back by logging in and deleting the plugin. So I think I may need to upgrade to a newer version of WordPress, just for that, which seems a waste really. I use the new version of WordPress on IWillNotHold.com and frankly I prefer the older version. Nevertheless subscribing to comment is on the way.

I got some Hugh Macleod business cards a small while ago and the crowd I got them off are having a sale on the Hughcards and loads of other cards too. I think the sale ends tomorrow. I might actually get some more cards myself.

This is the offer:

A. if you place an order for 100 streetcards, we’ll upgrade you to 200 cards

or,

B. If you place an order for 250 streetcards or more, we’ll Matt Laminate them for FREE

or,

C. If you place an order for 250 streetcards, we’ll upgrade you to 500 cards

Simply choose option A, B or C and email us once you’ve placed your order, quoting which offer you’d like… this offer applies to all re-orders too, if you would like to re-order past designs please email: reorders at streetcards.com If you can find your original order number, that would be terrific, but if not, we’ll find you on our system somewhere – we have all streetcards orders since day one.

You can get the Hughcards direct from here.

This is the back of my new cards:

More Facebook obsessiveness.

Don’t forget to join the Electric Picnic blogger meetup group on Facebook.

Discussion in the Paper Round group: Why does the Irish Examiner all but ignore technology stories?

Irish Ex-pat business people networking group.

Group for Irish business people, business people in Ireland (there is a diff) and Irish ex-pat business people from around the world to mix, network and hopefully do business.

Currently 160 members from Ireland, Europe, Thailand, the UK, States, Australia, Bahamas and South Africa.

Is ComReg getting into media and online regulation?

The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan T.D., today announced the appointment of Mr Alex Chisholm as a Commissioner of the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), for a four year period with effect from October 2007.

Mr Chisholm is currently the Commercial Director of SkupeNet Ltd (Ireland). His career to date is a combination of regulatory, corporate and entrepreneurial achievement and includes working as a senior policy maker in the Department of Trade and Industry in the UK.

Mr Chisholm has also held a number of senior executive roles in media, ecommerce and software, for the last seven years at CEO level. His experience includes managing organisations through change, especially in media, communications and technology markets.

Mr Chisholm joins Mike Byrne (Chairperson) and John Doherty as Commissioners for Communications Regulation at a time when ComReg has been given new and enhanced enforcement powers to support competition

It’s a slippery slope you know. Very slippy. A slippery slope that’s been coated in washing-up liquid and water. Via Michele, is news that someone who could not register Porn.ie went off and registered Orn.ie and so created a subdomain allowing a URL of http://p.orn.ie – clever. It also seems as well as using a .ie domain for the hardcore pornography website, the porn itself is also hosted on Irish servers.

I’d like to see the commentary from the Minister for Communications and the Irish Domain Registry on this and I’d also like to see the legality of a hardcore website operating out of Ireland and using the respected .ie doman space to do it. (Third safest domain space in the world according to SiteAdvisor, don’t ya know)

So a question to the bright legal eagles online, is this an obscene publication?

But you can.

Sinead and Annie have decided I’m to organise a blogger get together at Electric Picnic. Ok. So who’s up for it? Perhaps we should decide in the comments what time to meet and where. Sinead being lovvvvvved by PR people will naturally arrange free booze for us and Annie will design the logo for the t-shirts. There’s also a Facebook group for those that want to meet as well.

I was considering going to BarCamp Galway on September 22nd but looking at the talks, of which there only seem to be 8 now and looking at the attendees it seems to have turned into the cliquey event I suggested it might after attending BarCamp Waterford. Most of the people going I seem to know already via blogs and Twitter. I don’t know can I be arsed spending hours in a car each way to see people I see in a virtual form on a daily basis anyway. Were I to go right now I’d honestly only be going to give support to John who has himself traveled all around the county many times to give his support to so many events and is without doubt one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

As I said back then and I still stand by it now:

I fear the event is becoming far too cliquey. Yes, I’m sick of all your fucking faces after only two. I would like to suggest that next time, if you have been to a barcamp before you *have* to bring someone that hasn’t been to one but who you’d think would find benefit from one. I also think that preference should be given to those who haven’t presented before.

So folks, we need to bring along people who have not been before and we need to get an excess of speakers to talk about interesting stuff.

I was thinking of giving one of two talks, one would be on how to get press attention for your idea/company/campaign and give all the tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way. The other talk would be a version of the blog post I wrote on making things social. Call me precious but were I to do a talk, I’d want new people in the audience interspersed with your faces too but not a lot, you already know what I will say if you read this blog on a regular enough basis. Get me 30+ new faces and I’ll give a talk but I also want to attend interesting talks.

There are plenty of companies in Ireland who have 100s of talented people between them that can inspire and wow us with their ideas and thoughts, no matter how off-the-wall they are. Their employers whould be encouraging their creativity and let them loose on the public. These people alone could fill two Barcamps.

As for speakers, who would I like to see?

• Haydn Shaughnessy to talk about his digital art gallery
• John Ward to talk about Geocoding
• Tom Murphy to talk about how PR is changing with the web
• John Collison on “I made a fucking million and I’m still too young to vote”
• John Handelaar about how Ireland is ideal for Internet radio
• The girls from Beaut.ie on how they created a blogging empire

I’d also like to see interesting unconference discussions on things such as “How tech can rig an election”, a legal discussion called “Getting away with murder in the modern surveillance society” and something like “Google passed me in the NCT”.

We’re a month out from BarCamp Galway, it would be nice to see another 20 or so speakers added before then a whole herd of new faces too. I’m not sure can BarCamps be sustained much longer if they do not start reaching out to more and more people, an evening in the pub would be as useful.

And lastly a note to Google who are saving 100s of Millions in Ireland with their tax dodging: SPONSOR A FUCKING TECH EVENT IN IRELAND YOU TIGHT BASTARDS*

*An event which YOU have not designed to be a pure recruitment event for yourselves.