Paudies Photoblog

My head and these waves.

Wade Goodall.

Been a fan of this guy since Frothing!

Check out the project he has going

www.creativedestruction.tv

Some pretty cool stuff going down, then you get to vote for what Wade does next, get this guy over here.

Ok guys I’ve done a good bit of the leg work for you.

Here’s the letter I’m sending in to the council. Please please please print this off, sign your name and send it in. It really is worth it, and remember we’re not just saying no for the sake of it, we’re simply asking them to reconsider the location of the pier. If you have a blog please repost and we can get as many letter as possible.

Send your letters to

Planning Section,
Clare County Council,
New Road,
Ennis

To whom it concerns,

I write in objection of p108006, the current proposal to build a new pier at Doolin, Co. Clare.

I believe the current plan is grossly negligent in its current state and wildly underestimates the impact the proposed structure will have. The existing pier is inadequate for its current usage, but simply building a bigger pier will not solve the existing problems. A new pier will attract more visitors which will lead to traffic chaos in Doolin village. The bridge and narrow road through the village will cause horrendous traffic problems and lead to an overall bad feeling from visiting tourists to the area. Also, the plan proposes to remove the current area that is used as a car park by ferry passengers.

Doolin experiences regular storms throughout the year, building the pier at the proposed location will increase its exposure to larger, more consistent and more powerful waves and thus will increase the chances of it being damaged. One possible solution to this is to move the site back towards the existing pier. This extra distance will allow the wave more time to expend its energy on the existing reef and decrease the impact on the pier. Another alternative is to move the pier to the north side of the bay. There already exists an under-utilised car park as well as public toilets at this location.

Surfing generates a lot of income for the local economy. I regularly travel from Cork to surf both Crab Island and Doolin point. The proposed development has not taken into account the impact the pier will have on these two waves. Crab Island is an internationally recognised world class wave and it is possible that the new pier will affect the wave to such an extent as to make it unsurfable. It is one of the few waves surfers travelling from other countries will always mention when they talk about waves to surf in Ireland. Even in the unlikely chance that the wave is unaffected, the proposed location of the new pier will make it impossible or extremely dangerous for surfers to access the wave at Crab Island as they will have to paddle through the route taken by the ferries. Surfers are now recognised as a target market for Irish companies, with surfing being regularly featured in adverts by Discover Ireland, AIB and Denny. It is highly likely that the income generated locally by these surfers will be completely destroyed by this new pier.

In conclusion I again object to planning application p108006 in its current state and ask the council to reconsider the proposal.

Sincerely,

Shane O’Connor on his brand new DH board.
Goes like a dream apparently.
Shaper is Tom Doidge-Harrison in Lahinch.

I thought movie scripts have to go through a few stages of development and approval before they get the go ahead?

Where is the quality control.

You rarely hear bad music on the radio. Fair enough it mightn’t be ground breaking. But the people can usually sing and play their instruments.

I thought Jake Gyllenhaal and Ben Kingsley were good actors? He’s a Sir for crying out loud.
How can the two of them be so bad, even if the dialogue is atrocious surely they know how to actually act? Even a little?

A dagger that turns back time. How appropriate, I would like the last two hours back please.

Do not go see this movie.

Oh please let me get waves this weekend.

So it looks like my great Ubuntu experiment is over. I’ve just ordered my new Canon 7D and was planning on shooting a lot of HD footage with it. Turns out no Linux program handles HD very well at all, there are ways to get it working apparently.

But it seems awful bloody difficult. It’ll be hard enough getting my head around editing video never mind having to worry about re-encoding the video and all that craic.

Sorry open source.

You have failed me.

Oh in case any one was wondering I ended up using RawTherapee for my raw editing, it’s little buggy but it mostly works very similar to the raw converter in photoshop, all sliders, which I was very happy about.

It actually gives you more options for tweaking in some areas and has a sharpening tool built into the converter.

One of the main problems with it is that when you straighten a picture the image just goes black. However the small preview image in the corner is still visible.

I might try and run it in Windows when I switch back, see if I have better luck.

A few from a recent trip to the coast for sun down.

Pre dusk pano in the middle of a rocky place.

Definitely need to go back with better light and park somewhere else.

Crazy colours that evening.

Ghosty water +dust spots

Slightly less ghosty water with added spray.

Clear Skies, Cold Heads, Can’t Loose

There was a mental full moon, man I really want a bigger zoom. This is heavily cropped.

My tripod mount is bust so this was balanced on my hat on a sloping wall.

What is fairness?

Something we think we deserve because we’re good people?

Who cares? Who decides? There is no fairness.

You try to be a good person, because if you treat everyone fairly well then you’ll receive the same in return, right?

Bullshit.

I’m sick of it.

And whatever about people you can forget about fairness from anywhere else.

Last 15 surf trips been skunks?

So what, so is this one.

This time all out hard work will pay off. Oh wait, there’s nobody keeping score about how diligent you are, the last time you got something worthwhile.

Waves? Sure here’s a perfect looking swell.

Photos? Hah you’re joking right? Here’s a fog so thick you can’t even see the waves from beach.

Dream on sunny-jim.

Ok, ok. Here’s some sunshine at a shite beach break and reef  that isn’t breaking properly.

Good luck to you.

I’m sick of it.

There is no fairness.