Blogging not colum-ing

I'VE been so busy this week that I have barely had time to feed herself! Course I am joking and refering to the story in the papers (free subscription required) this week. But as I am writing about that for my column this week I will leave it for another time.

Even though I have been mad busy and have sat down now to write my column so I am not under pressure tomorrow evening, I am not and instead am blogging about how busy I am. (Our office move took longer than expected and we are still waiting on a couple on phonelines and faster internet.)

So yeah I'm blogging and not column-ing.

Apart from being mad busy I also was out and about on Saturday, a glorious spring day, taking pics. Here are my favourites.





And of course there are more on Flickr.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs flickr

She's electric

I am in the middle of moving in work from one premises to another temporary premises and it has been a mad week. Nanny is home and the flat is like a bomb hit it, no studying has been done - the less said about that the better and I spent half a day packing up my office clearing out so much stuff it is unbelievable.

Do you remember that mad concept a while ago about the paperless office, what a joke. And in fairness while I can read something on my computer screen, if I want to work from something that is on my screen I need to print it out and have a hard copy in front of me. So I am as guilty of rubbishing the 'paperless office' theory as much as the worst of us.

The amount of recycling bags, 70+ heavy bags, I think maybe more, the whole office rounded up, was unbelievable considering we have a company that comes once a month and collects our recycled bags. But we took the opportunity to clear out what was probably decades worth for some.

We were supposed to move on Thursday but the new phone system isn't ready so it has been delayed until Monday. While I have seen the new place already a couple of us couldn't resist going to the new place for a sneaky peak.

So off we went and we were in the door two minutes when I got my first static electricity shock. The next couple followed quickly until the final one as we were leaving when I went to turn off the lights. I touched the switch and there was a loud bbttttzzzzz. If the office was dark I would have lit us all up it was so big. The others with me went 'ohhhh'. They didn't get shocked of course, leave that to me.

After that I was somewhat scared to touch anything so ehm I didn't, though I have to say elbows don't work as well as hands. And this isn't the first time I have noticed this, there are particular shops I go into and regularly gets shocks from rails, lift buttons all sorts; even people. I have put this down to wearing trainers on particular carpets but then maybe the rubber soles should stop this. Am I mixing my physics up there? Anyway I get them all the time.

While we were supposed to be moved in on Thursday the problem with the phones meant a phone engineer was in fixing the problem and reported back a problem. Guess what it was? Yup mad static electricity.

Apparently redheads are more prone to this. He actually said it hits redheads more. Now I have never heard this before and could find nothing to back this up when I looked for it online. But hey it makes sense to me.

Cleaning the carpet is supposed to sort this out and I am hoping it will. Otherwise I am literally going to be buzzing around the place and being a danger to my colleagues.

So yeah I'm electric, Oasis once wrote a song about it, apparently :)

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs

Well done Twenty

Well done Twenty. A c*ntish book deal no less, much deserved and can't wait to see the end product.

Great Irish Women part 4 - Mary Field Rosse

FIRSTLY I must apologise for not getting back to this series before now, I’ve been aware of the time that has lapsed since the last one but I just haven’t had the time.

Since my last entry (and before) I’ve been given loads of tips (as well as a great book from Sinead) on who I should include, enough in fact to have this series run for a very long time indeed. And certainly enough to put an end to any notion of there being no great Irish women.

This time the title goes to Mary Field Rosse, a pioneer in photography which was a massive pull for me to choose to write about this time.



Many people may not be aware of the impact women had on the early days of photography. And yes it is a class thing. You probably wouldn’t have found many women photographers in the working class areas of Dublin in the 1850s but I will be writing about more great women who had poverty to overcome as well as the multitude of barriers placed in front of them in the weeks to come and I promise this will be the main criteria for choosing the next one.

It was because of affluence that there were so many women pioneers in the early days of photography but that doesn’t lessen their achievements any.

Mary Rosse, nee Field, was born in Bradford, the eldest child of John Wilmer, in 1813. After marrying William Parsons in 1836 the couple were invited to live in Birr Castle by William’s father.

Held in high regard by the people of Birr, Mary made many improvements to the interior of the castle. During the Great Famine 1845 -1847 Mary financed many relief works and employed 500 men in construction work around the castle.

Birr Castle at that time was also the home to the largest telescope in the world until in 1917 the Mount Wilson telescope was built in Southern California. The telescope and its users uncovered secrets of Jupiter and the nebulae.

Not only was Mary a leading light in the early days of photography which I will be going into but she was also an accomplished blacksmith and was responsible for iron work on the great telescope as well as the magnificent gates to the Birr Castle estate, which are still in use today.

In fact Mary’s experiments with photography probably started the beginning of the end of the great telescope as it was not suitable for celestial photography due to the nature of how the telescope was mounted.

In June 1842 Mary’s husband began to experiment with a photographic process daguerreotypes, she began to work with stereoscopic photography. This type of photography was invented in 1848 and made it possible to buy stereo photographs of places from all over the world. There are still some of Mary’s stereoscopic works in good condition archived by Birr Castle.

At that stage photography was definitely more science than art with lots and lots of chemistry and a darkroom was built in the 1850s in one of the rooms of Birr Castle. At that time photographers made their own sensitised plates from glass slides with silver nitrate.

I find it astounding and wonderful, and how I wish I had been there, that the darkroom was only rediscovered since the mid-nineteenth century in 1983. WOW. Seriously wow, when the room in the castle was uncovered virtually intact, how was it not found? they found equipment, chemicals and prints. Described as a photographic time capsule its discovery was an exciting date in the history of photography.


The darkroom

At the time her husband was in regular contact with William Fox Talbot who invented negative/positive photography and during one correspondence he said: “Lady Rosse has just commenced photography, and I enclose a few specimens of her first attempts, presently she will do better.”

Fox Talbot replied: “Surely there are portions exhibiting the details of the telescopes that are all that can be desired.”

Eventually through his help her photographic documentation of the famous telescope was exhibited at the Photographic Society’s first show in London. She was honoured with the Society’s Silver Medal in 1859, the first person and indeed woman to be bestowed with such an honour. She was also a founder of the Irish Photographic Society (I have hunted high and low to find out when it was founded and came up with nothing on the internet, if anyone can enlighten us please do!).

Mary’s work documented Birr Castle and it’s environs and they proved invaluable in the castle’s restoration in recent years. In fact her photographs of the telescope enabled it to be rebuilt more than 150 years later.

Sadly she lost seven of her eleven children but her intellectual but strict childrearing enabled one of her sons Charles Parson to become an imminent engineer.



Some of Mary's amazing work

The sources for this can be found here, here and here and do check out Birr Castle here.

That’s it for now, maybe I should do a straw poll on which fantastic Irish woman I should do next? Would you like a list of proposed subjects?

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Great Irish Women Mary Field Rosse

The perils of being in a parade

One of the performers at yesterday's parade came a cropper at the very start of the parade, unfortunately it was in front of me and I only realised he had fallen after he had and knew I had snapped it.

He was taken offside, hopefully he didn't hurt himself too much.



I was also wondering how those wee girls on stilts got on during the long parade.

Typical

IT WAS a typical Sunday, relaxing with the papers, a lovely fire on, Eastenders on the telly, and just as I was about to send the Young Wan to the shops the sky went dark then:



Well at least it didn't happen yesterday during the Paddy's Day parade. Bbbrrrrrr.

Happy Mother's Day

I've been told to stay in bed, its 11.30am so no problems there at all. My Mum brought me in a cup of tea, painkillers (I don't know what I have done to my back but it isn't funny) and told me to stay putt as the Young Wan is doing something in the living room.

I can hear a serious amount of activity going on. I think my Mothers' Day present is a tidy living room, terrific :) I normally get up on Sunday, drink copious amounts of tea while pottering about cleaning and tidying while glancing every now and again at the Sunday papers.

Then the Young Wan came in and told me I wasn't allowed to get up, I asked her why and she just said 'because you can't'. I just heard her drag in the vacuum cleaner, so I am sitting blogging in bed which suits me fine.

After the parade yesterday we went in to get some bits and pieces when I realised I hadn't yet got my Mum a card. So having said she liked a handbag in the shop across the road, I sneakily bought a card before sending the Young Wan to purchase the handbag all without Nanny knowing.

She should be delighted as I will with tidying up.

So Happy Mothers' Day everyone and do something lovely for your Mum or the Mums in your life.

Happy St Patrick's Day

THE St Patrick's Day parade was great craic, cold of course, windy as well, but that didn't dampen the spirits of the hundreds of thousands of people who lined the streets to watch the parade.

I watched it at the beginning at Parnell Square and took some pics. You can see them on Flickr. Well done to everyone involved for making it a great day.























Technorati tags: redmum Irishblogs Dublin Ireland St Patricks Day Paddys Day

Changes on Flickr

OOohhh Flickr has made a big change. If like me you depend on Flickr to organise, sort and archive your pics, then you will probably like this.

Before you could put pics into sets or albums if you like. Now you can also make collections of sets, as I have with all the different Dublin sets I have including sets like Dublin Zoo, Travels on the Bus, oh yeah and ehm Dublin, so I have grouped them together in an imaginatively named Dublin collection. I'll do a bit more thinking and more organising with this.

Not only that but you can also change the layout of your pages, I think, I did but it only worked with the first page. Once I hit the second page I am getting the three images across as before. However maybe this is a little glitch and it's not ironed out yet. If it's not I am not sure what the benefits of being able to change one page are.



Read more here on Flickr Blog. On another note I am thrilled to see I am about to hit my 50,000th viewer to my Flickr photostream.



Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs flickr dublin

Great customer care

I HAVE always been a sucker for notebooks, like Bernie I have fallen for the moleskin which I only write in using a pencil so I can rub out my thoughts if they don't warrant being there in the first place. To date I haven't rubbed out anything more because I know I am being too precious about such a lovely thing than the fact what's in it is more nonsense than good.

I also love handbags. There is nothing nicer than a great handbag, for other women it is shoes but not me. I have also been known to choose a handbag because my notebook will fit in it, well what's the point otherwise.

In whatever I have done work wise I have always needed to juggle lots of different things, a good diary is everything I need to be organised. I don't know about Blackberries and all those other such like gadgets, a good diary beats all.

I had a great one last year bought in Reids and it was great. Made by Quo Vadis it was the business. A week over two pages with spaces for notes, an address book that inserted into the back and a notes booklet insert. I used it to write what I had done, was doing, need to do, places I needed to be, numbers, names, passwords, notes from meetings, ideas, doodles - it contained it all.



Protected with a sturdy but flexible faux-leather cover it took all sorts of batterings in my handbag over the year. And even now it looks respectable.

So I tried this year to get another one and only managed to get a pale imitation. I have tried to use it but it disappointed me every time I used it, it's flimsy pages, the horrible plastic cover, it's stiffness. There just never seems to be the room to do all I need. Even the Young Wan's cute penguin sticker failed to lift it.

I looked on the web and found an outlet in Bangor, County Down. What joy, I found my diary so I ordered one, paid for it online and went on about my business. About ten minutes later I got an email to say my payment was being refunded. A following email told me the lovely diary was out of stock but they were sending me an academic year diary for 2006-7 running out in August.



How's that for customer care, I haven't actually bought anything with them. So check out the site, here's the link.

RM February 15 - Trail of Destruction

Trail of destruction/it began and ended with trousers

I've been done, screwed over and made a complete and utter eejit. This morning I have left the entire flat in complete and utter chaos and had little to do with it.

Hurricane Young Wan has wrecked havoc and left a trail of destruction in her wake.

This has all obviously been building up slowly until one little thing upset the uneasy chaotic balance levered by herself until it all came down on me this morning.

I suppose it began and ended with trousers. I had a do last weekend and she was coming with me so I wanted her dressed up to my liking not hers.

Knowing the stress a request for this normally gives on previous such occasions I told her well in advanced what I wanted her to wear and I told her to find the outfit days before she needed it,

From experience I have to do this. I can't tell you how many times we have discovered just before leaving the house that she can't find a shoe, her coat, therefore my mind.

And it isn't surprising when you consider the hovel that is her room.

So the night before the big event I asked her had she gotten everything sorted.

"Yeah, but I can't find the trousers!"
"Well you may, I told you days ago, I handed them to you, find them."
Ten minutes later:
"I can't find them"
"Young Wan, this is non-negotiable. I warned you, I told you, You had time to sort it out, Get them."

This happened over and over again for two hours until she pulled every item of clothing off every shelf and from her clothes rail onto the floor.

She sat on the pile and delved, she stood back and pulled at things. More energy was spent not finding than finding.

Then she came in and informed me, they weren't in her room, she didn't know where they were - she just couldn't find them.

Well that was it for me. I went in and immediately regretted having done so.

I started at the top of the pile and moved things one by one until the pile was moved to another corner of the room.

Still no sign of the trousers.

I then lifted up her chairbed thing and there were the offending items, lying on the floor (with a sponge chair on top) discarded from when I had given them to her to put away only days before.
That only took two hours and the entire demolition of the bedroom.

And so it has stayed demolished all week.

I have been on her back between the serious lack of studying and the bedroom, all the while trying to turn a blind eye to the real horrors of the bedroom.

The straw or should I say trouser incident that broke the camel's back took place this morning.
I was looking for a particular pair this morning that I had left on the table two days ago and which had obviously been 'put away' by herself in a futile cosmetic brush-over pretend to tidy the living room exercise.

So before she left for school I told her to get me them. She huffed and puffed because we had slept in and she didn't want to be asked to do anything by me.

But tough she put them away, somewhere, I didn't know having looked in obvious spots like my wardrobe.

Before booting out the door she shouted they were on the chair and bye bye I'm off to school.
When I went to get them. It wasn't them at all, so I had to go a-hunting.

They were finally discovered in her room, in the middle of the pile. Nice.

Anyway there will be some seismic activity in our house tonight as she will whether she likes it or not be sorting all this out. Wish me luck.

EDIT: I wrote this last month and at no stage yet has the room been done, but Nanny arrives tomorrow and it will be done by then if it kills her or me or both. Arrhhgggghhhhhg.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Redmum column young wan

The world as you have never seen it before

I FOUND an amazing site a while ago, Worldmapper. I think it may have been through another blogger but sometimes I find myself going from one link to another and may even forget where I started. So don't expect me to remember now at this stage months later where I first saw it. If it was yourself, thanks a million.

Worldmapper describes itself as 'the world as you have never seen it!'. It certainly throws up some astonishing, disturbing and fascinating views. You can read more about the site here.

"Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest," the site explains.

Take for example a map of carbon emissions worldwide for 2000



And because you probably can't see it here, here's a close-up of Ireland.



Here's one for carbon emission increases between 1980 and 2000. Look at Ireland in this one.



The next shows some stats which would probably have been more apt to post last week for International Women's Day but sure here they are anyway.

This map shows girls not at secondary school worldwide.



The next shows girls not at primary school.




The next map shows illiteracy among women.



The next shows women's income.



I've just highlighted some of the amazing maps on the site, do check it out, there's everything from exports to tourism expenditure to child labour to oil power. The site is constantly updated, I check it out on bloglines.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs International Womens Day

Pssstttt

PPsssttt Capital D on RTE 1 at 7pm this evening could well feature some bloggers!

Happy International Women's Day

Trocaire is doing an amazing Lenten campaign this year, one when I heard I thought 'wow thats great'. Then I heard it had been taken off the air by the Broadcast Commission of Ireland (BCI).

Have a look and try to work out why.



The BCI took this ad off because the ad contains their website which has a page with an online petition that Trócaire is running as part of its Lenten campaign.

The petition urges the Irish government to implement UN resolution 1325 relating to gender inequality and specifically the protection of women in times of conflict.

"The BCI appears to believe that because our website address is in the ad we are directing people to take a political action. However, our website address is in the ad so that people can donate online or order a Trócaire box and this is specified in the wording," Trocaire says on it's website.

Trocaire is appealing this decision.

So for International Women's Day (March 8th) you could sign the petition on gender equality at the core of all this nonsense which you can find here.

You can read more thoughts on the dreadful decision by the BCI on Irisheyes and Ask Direct.

Trocaire is also launching an online community where people can blog about social injustice. You can check it out here.




Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Trocaire International Womens Day Trocaire Lenten Campaign BCI

Photos and photo links

I SHOULD have said in the last post that I was also up for Best Photoblog in the Blog Awards and the award went to the wonderful Headphoneland, do check out his site as there are some stunning shots.

Meanwhile here's some shots from out and about in Dublin over the last couple of weeks.


Francis Street








This is a reworking of an old pic and one that I entered into Caitriona's Holga competition.

Irish Blog Awards 2007

OH what a night. Like last year I have been incapable of doing anything today. And I am delighted and over the moon with my award in the Best Personal Blog category and even more chuffed considering the quality of the other blogs I was up against. Thanks again for the nominations and the votes and now the award, it's made my year :)



The Young Wan herself was there though as I said in my non-prepared acceptance words she had nipped out for some food and missed it. In addition I think I am the only person not to mention Damien, Jaysus Bernie even gave him an award. But I went blank when Red Mum was called out. So thank you Damien for a wonderful night, it was even bigger, much more so, and better than last year. Well done :) And the heartiest congrats to everyone else who picked up an award. I should also thank That Girl, last year's winner in the Personal Blog category who was the sponsor this year.

I met loads and loads of people and missed meeting loads and loads of people. I did want to say hello to the Swearing Lady (I really thought she'd pick up something but I expect that will rectified next year) and didn't get a chance BUT I did meet Twenty so does that kinda balance things out? Not really but still. Along with Ask Direct and others we were among the last there, till the bitter end thats what I like to see. I met the girls at Beaut who presented me with a goodie bag of lovely things including a beaut mousemat, a lovely and unexpected touch. If Twenty swept the boards last year, it was Beaut's night last night.

It was also good to see Colm, the lads at Slugger and I was delighted for Cian with his Irish Election sweep of the boards. I met Tom Raferty and embarrassingly called him by the wrong name, nerves I guess but it was nice to meet you Tom. By the way there is a pic of you throwing shapes on the dancefloor already on Flickr, courtesy of MacAWilliams, do check out his site for his amazing shot of last night's lunar eclipse. I was also delighted to catch up with Ellie and meeting her mum.

Sinead kindly lent me her copy of Irish women writers following conversations on my Great Irish Women series, so thanks for the research and it will certainly be used in the series and well done on the award. While Caitriona, whom I didn't get to meet last year, lent me in her Holga camera to have a go for a wee while. Though she did threaten me if I didn't get it back to her, don't let that smile fool you, she's a tough nut :) I got a great pic of herself and her hubbie which you can see later in the post. Thanks again for the loan of your camera and I can't to try it out Caitriona.

I can't continue with this post without apologising for my pal who made off with an outrageous amount of goodie bags which were left at the entrance for people at the end of the night. Jeez you can't bring her anywhere. I won't tell you about the sea of white paper bags littering my living room floor at about 3am this morning.

The first pic was when she made poor Decs hold some of the loot, I love the expression on his face and the second speaks for itself.






I would not be able to list all of who I met or who I wanted to but didn't, I can barely type let alone add links and stuff. We came back to my place and partied till 6am hence the bad typing. The champagne was wonderful and probably should have remained unopened, but while we tore into half in the wee hours, we had the other half with lunch as mimosas.

I brought the camera but fully intended not to take so many pics, but to enjoy the night in full vision, not through a lens, which I did to a degree but I did take some snaps, some where just calling to be taken. You can see them on Flickr, and I also added them to the Irish Blog Awards group which others might want to do too so we have them all in one handy place.

Anyway here's a selection and here's to next year!




Saying cheese for Rymus


mmm


Snapping the eclipse

The Daily Mirror blogs

The Daily Mirror (English) has a number of blogs for it's journalists which I discovered by chancing by here at Open. I am surprised I haven't seen the Mirror blogs before considering the amount of news sites I trail. Under one banner the site has loads of different bloggers in different sections. It even has a 'new to blogging' link explaining what it's all about.

"Welcome to the Mirror.co.uk blogs! This exciting new area of our site will allow you to read and comment on the things we’re all talking about. Many of our award winning journalists will be keeping a blog and this is just the beginning. In 2007, we'll be giving you the opportunity to become a Mirror.co.uk "citizen journalist" where your thoughts on topical events will be posted right alongside ours!"



I can't see any archives but if you go into read, for example, the editor's blog, there's a handy tag cloud of the articles and one of the top tags is Bee Gees!



It'll be interesting to see how this develops and whether or not it would catch on here, after all there are a number of journalists and columnists blogging. I'll be interested to see the comments, and how they are handled.

Anyway I'm off to tidy this house so I can relax and enjoy tonight without tidying with a hangover in the morning... Thats the plan anyway.