Alexia Blogs

Following Matt’s meme here… Here’s Dad and lil toddler me. 

I’m thinking of going snapwalking on Saturday morning in Dublin. What’s a snapwalk? Take any old compact camera you have maybe even a Polaroid - no SLRs.. And walk about the place taking shots of (primarily) inanimate objects.

Anyone interested in coming along? Perhaps grab a coffee somewhere.

Political correct loos at M&S as spotted by Sinead.

Irina asks a question that was on my mind re: Google and Twitter teaming up for Super Tuesday.

Freudian fun. Where did David get this image of baby boomers from?

Apparently, men are bastards.. Have you read my mind, Damien?

More post-rock goodness with Under Byen’s ‘Af Samme Stof Som Stof’

I love capturing the ordinary things about us in snapwalks. Not exactly photowalks, but snatches and snaps. Here’s a few I took on the way home from watching Cloverfield at Dundrum tonight. Btw - Cloverfield is disappointing. Bah.

In a gesture of community spirit and an effort to identify the subjects of it’s photograph collection, the US Library of Congress is opening its vaults and pushing pictures up to Flickr. The Library is depositing some 3,000 photographs on Flickr’s site as part of this pilot project. If it succeeds, you can expect a significant chunk of the Library’s 14 million images being uploaded onto Flickr for the world to name and view.

It will be exciting to see how see how people tag these photos and what level of verification is employed to ensure that identification of people and places is correct and complete. Some of these images are copyright free, so fair gain to the community. This is the exciting part of the project for me.

Wouldn’t it be nice for Irish photographic, art and sound archives that exist in public collection be pushed into our collective digital memory? Surely these could be initiated as part of the national arts strategy pushed by Seamus Brennan, as part of his Arts, Culture and Gaeltacht remit and partnered with Mary Hannafin, as the Minister for Education. Think of how the rich strokes of non-copyrighted early 20th Century audio and photographs could add the existing consciousness of the Irish cultural soul.

Here are some of my favourite snapwalk pics from my trip to Slovenia in 2004. I’ve lots more to upload, not to worry about the tagging and titling. Still. Enjoy.

In country, where capitalism shines through, I was still shocked by the level of homelessness in Silicon Valley during my Paddy’s Valley sojour. In a hub of technology, where millionaires zoom by in flash motors, the streets were filled with those that sleep rough. Their worldly belongings in trollies wrapped with black plastic.

I guess in a country where the dollar is number one, the divisions between the rich and poor are even more pointed.

So, after a jaunt about San Francisco and a meal at the ‘Empress of China’ (who apparently was calling us), the group retired back to Palo Alto. Some decided that the night was still young and promptly went out, the sensible remained at the Cardinal. I was settling into a quiet night of packing and sorting through photos when the electricity went out. A snoop outside my room, poured forth the distinctive smell of burning. Typical, I thought, on our last night at the hotel, it decides to burn down. Could it not wait until Sunday night? The weird irony is, that the hotel had just performed a fire drill the Thursday before. Guests got naff ear protectors during the test.

Creeping through the Shining corridors,I met with a couple of PV-ers and the hotel staff. Apparently, some ruffians thought it would be funny to set the transformer, below ground, on fire. Of course, this set off an explosion, the force of which, killed electricity to our block and others around it. There was laughing heard around the time of the explosion. Smoke was billowing up under some PV-ers windows. Nice. I love the smell of chemicals and asbestos on a Saturday night.

With just a skeleton PV crew in the surrounds, we, being complete and utter nerds, decided it would be cool to document it. We hung out with the police officiers until the fumes got too bad. By then the brigade was on the scene and a section of Hamilton Ave to the south-west of the block was closed off. Given that my camera was out of power, I struggled with my mobile cam. Mulley, ever the video nerd, ran for his vid cam. Niall took some pics on his spanking N95. Oh no, the hotel in danger of burning, can you please get out of my frame, kthnxbye.

Power was promised to return on Sunday afternoon. Alas, too late for the majority of PV-ers.

The fire will be televised.

Bollards closed off Hamilton Ave.

Fire Brigade rush to our rescue.

Priorities, priorities. The Christmas Tree needs to run on emergency power, else Christmas is cancelled.

Repair truck the morning after

On the way to the ho-hum ‘Lion’s for Lambs’ last night, M and I passed by Santa’s Island in the water feature outside Dundrum Town Centre. I just had to grab a pic on the way home.