I am … unhindered by talent

In doing my homework on things to see while I was in Dublin early in December, I was particularly struck by the description in one book of “Famine”, a sculpture group by Rowan Gillespie. The sculptures represent victims of the enormously tragic famine of the mid-1800’s, where a full quarter of the Irish population died or left the country in hopes of better elsewhere.

I walked out to the sculptures on the first of my two nights in Dublin (which was a long haul). It was indeed a incredibly powerful piece of art, perhaps more so in the dark. It was a bit weird, though, to have the holiday lights as the back drop for this harrowing set of figures.

It’s not clear in the shot above, but the man is carrying what I presume to be a small girl across his shoulders, and is bowed beneath her weight. Quite terrifying, really.

Sadly, as the assassination of Benzir Bhutto makes clear, we’re still learning how to live together on this small rock, and often not doing a great job of it.

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As folks collapse on the sofa, full of roast beast and replete with the goodies of the season, it’s worth thinking a bit about recycling as much as we can of the waste this whole business generates. If you were lucky enough to score some electronic goodies (cell phones, iPods, etc., etc.) that will orphan some of your old gear, you might consider giving or selling those bits on. We sold a bunch of gear on eBay before we came to the UK, and donated a great 19″ CRT monitor that no one bid on to the local school system. Services like FreeCycle make it a lot easier to find happy homes for things you no longer want but which could still be useful to others.

Barring selling or donation, definitely explore recycling them instead of just pitching them in the trash. Cast off electronic represent the fastest growing component of the municipal waste stream, and the problem’s just gonna get larger. Cell phones don’t biodegrade or compost well, and there are now something like 1 billion cell phones on the planet, which makes for a pretty hefty garbage truck.

Looking for some tips on how to gracefully move some old electronics on to their next life? There’s lots of info on-line, including this nice piece from The Daily Green.

Thanks to Alexandre Van de Sande for the cool photo.

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Just before we came up to Preston for the holidays I was able to spend some time taking photos in the beautiful frost we’d been having in Colchester. This is one of the results of that little adventure.

Happy Xmas Eve!

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In just over 2.5 years I’ve posted 1,380 photos on Flickr. I’ll be the first to admit that they’re not all brilliant; some are silly, some I put up to support blog posts, and some seemed like a good idea at the time. I must say, though, that I am frequently mystified by the responses (or lack thereof) to photos. Sometimes I post something I really like and it just sinks without a trace. At other times I debate whether to post something, only to have it get a huge reception.

Just before we headed north for Xmas, I posted this shot of an odd little stencil I saw in Dublin. It’s a neat stencil, and a technically reasonable photo of it, but it’s hardly amazing. Yet it caught some traction (perhaps in part due to synchronicity with the season) and ended up on Flickr’s “Explore” pages. This has lead to 60 favorites in four days, over 4 times as many favorites as every other photograph I’ve posted with one exception. I’m thrilled by the response (it’s always nice when people see your work), but according to Flickr’s “interesting-ness” algorithm this is currently the 5th most “interesting” of all the photos I’ve posted, a “claim” which clearly doesn’t bear any significant scrutiny.

I realize that any algorithmic determination of “interestingness” is going to have substantial oddities and be subject to gaming in various ways. And I suspect that the “rich get richer” part of this is a common experience for anyone who posts stuff on-line or, more generally, puts any of their work out in the public. Still, it’s weird when it happens.

OK, I’m done navel gazing - you can go back to your holiday revelry.

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We’re up in Preston with WeatherGirl’s Mum for the holidays. Bandwidth here at her house is limited and at least mildly awkward, so there probably won’t be much posting from here.

The snow shot is from Morris a couple of years ago - the word is that they’re definitely gonna have snow on the ground for Xmas. It’s quite cold for the UK up here in Preston, but nothing on what it’s like in Minnesota. It’s a bit below freezing at night and heavy frost sometimes lasting the whole day.

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Best wishes for a great holidays!

(I caught this stencil on a building being renovated in Dublin.)

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Today Sub-Evil Boy celebrates 14 years of being, well, less than evil. For this his parents are extremely grateful :-) !

To celebrate the event I decided to (I’m guessing) annoy him mightily by fishing up an old shot from out last sabbatical. Here he’s 6.5 years old at the thermal pools in Iceland near the Strokkur Geyser.

He’s just a tad bigger now, but no less cute :-).

Happy Birthday, and thanks for being significantly less than evil!

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I’ve joked for several years that we were going to take advantage of global warming by starting a banana plantation in Minnesota to support us in our retirement. Apparently a fellow in Devon (here in the UK) is doing it for real, but with olives instead of bananas.

And so now we wait and see…

Thanks to [OP] for the cool photo.

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Albert Einstein spent several years in Pasadena, California, working at CalTech. Einstein wasn’t known for being terribly focused on his surroundings, and apparently many of the locals were terrified that they would go down in history as the person that mowed down Einstein as he stepped out into the road without looking. (Apparently he left a check of some size in a library book - he’d been using it as a bookmark instead of depositing it.)

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The video is from 1948, the music is by kugelplex, and the vocals are by Jewlia Eisenberg from the wondrous Charming Hostess.

If we’re gonna have the silliness of the season, we might as well have people singing about Santa in Yiddish :-).

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