20th July 2009

19th July 2009

The precious things

18th July 2009

Spider. Every spider in Ireland is living in my kitchen

17th July 2009

Studying.

Note the empty coffee pot and "Seconds From Disaster" on the TV.

"Seconds from Disaster" is, of course, the best programm on TV. The premise is a very simple one. Each episode shows a disaster (in this case a plane crash) and charts what caused the disaster, second by second. They're usually plane crashes, and this episode is showing the Paris Concorde disaster.

It's addictive but terrifying television.

16th July 2009

The garden

16th July 2009

Jack's. At an angle

15th July 2009

Yeah, the studying is going well, thanks for asking

14th July 2009

Shadows of Chimneys

13th July 2009

I inherited this little plant when I moved into the flat, and for the last couple of years, it has sat there looking rather dead, until I decided to throw it out. Once outside, it has started to flourish.

Has anyone any idea what sort of plant it is? (no, it's not a triffid)

12th July 2009

Áine with her bike; Emma with her chips. Look at the joy on their little happy faces!

11th July 2009

Loch Dan (I think), somewhere remote, co. Wicklow

10th July 2009

Three Colours: Bin

9th July 2009

Jaws

8th July 2009

Electricians in Ireland are on strike, and Diagio, the brewer which makes Guinness has applied for an injunction from the High Court to prevent their workers from striking, lest it stop the yeast from growing. Which led to this pretty good headline.

7th July 2009

6th July 2009

5th July 2009

Not a sight you see every day in Dublin. I've no idea what nationality they are, or why they're walking along Middle Abbey Street.

Hello, sailor.

4th July 2009

Waiting to go into the Newstalk studios

3rd July 2009

I've been reading Alain de Botton's The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work recently. In it, de Botton visits people in their place of work - accountants, biscuit manufacturers, rocket scientists, painters and so on - and watches what they do for a living. One of his conclusions is that people of all grades and in all industries take their work more seriously than the job would suggest. Even though we don't really think about how important the output of their work might be (compared to a brain surgeon, doctor or fireman), to someone what we ignore, is their work and the focus of their day.

De Botton takes, for example, biscuit wrappers. A team of people are employed to make the best possible biscuit wrapper - they make decisions on material, colour, font, logo, number of biscuits contained therein, based on lots of research and design. They know that a good wrapper will help sell more biscuits than a bad wrapper and so de Botton says that every thing we buy and use has been made by groups of specialists whose job depended on designing, making and producing even the tiniest part of the finished product. Packets of biscuits don't look like that by accident. They appear by design.

It always reminds me of the smiley face on my electric toothbrush. According to OralB, you're supposed to brush your teeth for 2 minutes. Once you reach the two minute mark, the toothbrush vibrates and a little smiley face appears on the screen.

It's a nice touch and totally un-necessary. It would have been perfectly logical for the clock simply to register two minutes and no more. But thinking about what de Botton learned, it's feasible to think that a team of people in the OralB HQ must have made a pitch to the toothbrush manufacturing committee to add the smiley face to the display. Maybe they even did some research to analyse the cost-benefit analysis of adding the smiley face (as opposed to another picture, or no picture at all). They will have drafted in some outside consultants to make recommendations on the best picture - a smiley face is, after all, logical for a toothbrush. A smiley face is also text shorthand for happiness. Software engineers would have analysed the cost of adding something to the screen and sat down to design how to make it work. The pitch of the smile, the thickness of the eyes - all deliberate business decisions.

I've no idea who did all that work, but I'm pleased they did. More products should have little smiley faces on them. So, this week, I'm going to try to find nice pieces of design as a way of thanking all those anonymous, hardworking people.

:-)

2nd July 2009

Taken at about 11pm, in Donnybrook.

Sharp-eyed readers might be thinking to themselves: "Hey, I remember looking at a photograph of those lamps outside the Hampton Hotel, Donnybrook, way back on the 13th of February. What's this guy playing at? Is he that unimaginative that he has to take photos of the same lamps? And where is this hotel? I wonder if they're paying him a fee for taking so many photos of their hotel. I think they should. He's obviously an amazing photographer (and possibly devilishly handsome) and the hotel looks like it offers excellent accommodation and an extensive menu at low, low prices."