Life

General - Life - Waterford

You’ll Never Walk Alone: Reflections of 365 Days of Walking

December 31, 2022 by

Inspiration

I began taking some extra exercise at the beginning of 2022, in the form of walking near my home town of Tramore, Co. Waterford in Ireland. After completing 7 days in a row, walking 4 km per day, I decided to keep going to see if I could make it to 28 days in a row, which I did.

I then added an extra kilometre to my route and set my sights on 50 days, which soon became 100, which became 200 followed by 300 and finally, today, Saturday, 31 December 2022, I am delighted to have completed 365 consecutive days of walking. With an average of 5 km per day, that’s a grand total of 1,825 kilometres for the year!

While chatting about this with various people during the final weeks of 2022, the questions about why and how kept coming up. As I recounted the same answers each time, I was encouraged to share some insights into what inspired me to undertake this personal accomplishment, how I did it and what I have learned from it. Here are some of those insights.

Why

There were two main reasons why I undertook the journey that has transpired – why I started it (primary) and why I finished it (secondary). On reflection, only the first of these was apparent to me at the beginning of 2022.

The primary goal was to improve the amount of regular exercise I was getting, or not getting as was actually the case. Having an office-based job for all my professional working life, with a busy family life, I had known for some time that I was simply not getting nearly enough exercise. For me, the Covid-19 pandemic made this worse but also, eventually, made it more apparent, so I decided to finally try doing something about it in 2022.

The secondary goal, which only emerged towards the end of January 2022, was driven more by an emergent desire for personal accomplishment – to see if I could actually make it all the way to the end of the year without missing a day and, if so, what might I learn (or benefit) from that.

Weather

Anyone who knows an Irish person will know that we just love to talk about the weather. And so it is only fitting that I begin my insights with some reflections on this aspect of my journey.

Barring a proper bout of snow, which rarely happens in Ireland anyway (even less so in the seaside town where I live), I think I walked in all of the typically Irish weather conditions during 2022, which included wind, rain, fog, hailstones, balmy sunshine and frosty cold.

I think the warmest I walked in was 30C (in August) and the coldest was -4C (in December) and I can say with absolute certainty that, while dry weather was definitely preferable, it was the wind that really, really tested my resolve above anything else. Not only was windy weather significantly more draining on energy levels (burning more calories to walk the same distance) but it ruined any audio tracks I was listening to along the way, while raising body temperatures higher than wanted.

Surprisingly, for a country that sees a lot of rain, I only had to wear full-blown waterproof clothing around 5 times during the entire year and, of those, I only actually got properly wet around twice. This was partly due to the accuracy of the weather forecasting provided by Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, whose predictability allowed me to time many of my walks avoiding any rain.

Ironically, the very last day of the year was one of the wettest of the year too.

Walking Routes

Well over 90% of my walks took the same basic route, which was a loop from my house to the Tramore beach area, along the promenade and then back home again via a slightly different road, which was almost exactly 5 km in total length.

There were some days when, either because of weather or other circumstances, I was only able to manage 3 or 4 km, with 2 km being the absolute minimum I settled for. I made up for any difference by walking a little extra on other days but this was significantly less than 10% of the time overall.

It was only during holidays or day/weekend trips that alternative routes were used and these were usually devised with the goal of keeping my monthly averages ticking over.

Entertainment

Curiously, a key factor in surviving my year-long escapade was avoiding boredom – something that quickly seemed to stymie previous attempts to take regular exercise. In this regard, it was my Smartphone (and Spotify) that made the real difference, in the form of podcasts and music.

I think that, for every 4 weeks I spent listening to podcasts, I spent one week listening to music. The musical themes varied highly, often being influenced by podcast topics, which included:

  • Playlists with songs whose basic rhythm were precisely 120 beats per minute, which seemed to suit my natural stride.
  • Numerous guilty pleasures from the 1970s and 1980s, including Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Metallica, Billy Joel, Queen, Prince, ABBA and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
  • The Soundtracks to several movies (incl. Platoon, O’ Brother Where Art Thou, Forrest Gump, The Commitments, Baby Driver, Pulp Fiction)
  • Relistening to compilations that I used to own on cassette tape (incl. Now That’s What I Call Music Volume 4 and The Hits Tape Volume 2)
  • Rediscovering a wide range of Classical Music (incl. Strauss, Bach and Mozart).
  • Ireland’s own Jack Lukeman, who released a new album on vinyl during 2022 too.

The main podcasts I listened to (which could easily justify an entire separate article) included:

  • The 2 Johnnies
  • The Witness: In His Own Words
  • The Missing Cryptoqueen
  • The Making of a Detective
  • Murder in Mauritius 
  • Why Would You Tell Me That?
  • The Unusual Suspects
  • Red Notice
  • RTE Documentary on One

The Documentary on One series from RTE is an absolute treasure trove of fascinating stories dating back several decades and, with each one being around 45 minutes in length, they are also ideally suited to the duration of most of my walks. I definitely had a lot of favourites here (and skipped a few too) but far too many to list them individually here. This series is absolutely worth exploring in more detail, though, and I highly recommend it.

Reflections

So, looking back at my year of walking, what do I think I achieved from it?

Fitness

I set out expecting that improvements in my general fitness would be the main takeaway from this exercise (pardon the pun) and indeed it was. Back in January, it was taking me 40 minutes to walk 4 km and I was in really poor shape after doing so (aching, sweating).

However, I am now able to comfortably walk 5 km in the same amount of time (40 minutes), which equates to a brisk pace of 7.5km per hour. In addition, there are no particular dramatics in terms of body temperature or major fatigue afterwards (unless it’s very windy or rainy, of course).

For added fun, I also did all of my walking without a fitness tracker and instead gauged my fitness progress based on where, within a specific playlist of a very specific length (e.g. 45 minutes) I managed to complete my walk. When I first set out, I was just happy to get home before the playlist ended but I then set my sights on finishing before the guitar solo in the last song and then getting there with an entire song to spare. Maybe my daughter is right – I’m such a tech nerd after all!

Wellbeing

I’ve heard lots of people talking about wellbeing and using “good for the soul” narratives in the past, but was never quite sure if/how this applied to walking. I’m happy to report that I think I now understand what they were referring to.

Apart from the innate sense that my new exercise regime is good for me (and seeing small wins via improvements in my general fitness), I have found immense personal satisfaction in having completed an entire year of walking. Admittedly, there are a great many people who take just as many steps in an average day during normal life, so it’s less about the distance and more about the commitment I gave it.

The other benefit I felt, which sits within the wellness genre also, was the simple joy to be had in hearing certain songs from a playlist begin just as the ocean came into view, or as the moon appeared from behind some clouds, or as some other aspect of nature took my breath away, all to the sound of a strong musical beat, guitar solo or a poignant lyric.

I found these enormously uplifting, even emotional at times, and drew wonderful energy from them, which is a benefit that I definitely was not expecting when I set out back in January.

Mother Nature

Perhaps less unique to walking and more to do with simply being outdoors, I also found the various sights and sounds of mother nature to be enormously refreshing. From picturesque dawns and dusks, to stunning sunsets, starry nights and full moons, combined with the smell of fresh cut grass, low tide, cotton candy or fish & chips, there was plenty to savour here too.

Education and Musical Rediscovery

At 45-50 minutes per walk, I reckon I spent close to 300 hours listening to music or podcasts. Not only were many of the podcasts hugely educational (far more than I expected) but I also found myself discovering so much music that I’d forgotten I liked too. I had a few guilty pleasures thrown in here for good measure as well, all of which added to the enjoyment of the time I spent walking.

Next Steps

A few people have asked me if I’m going to keep the momentum going by continuing to walk every day in 2023. While I’ll absolutely keep walking regularly, I’ve not yet decided if I can truly justify or sustain the commitment needed for another year.

Upgrading to jogging is an option to consider too, as is walking a slightly longer distance every other day. I’m just mindful of the pressure to walk every single day, which could easily become an obsession that counteracts the other benefits, and there were definitely times this year when it felt a little this way so I’m very keen to avoid this spoiling the underlying purpose of the exercise.

All in all, it was a journey I’m very glad I started and I’m definitely not done, so you’ll definitely see me out and about near my home town regularly in 2023. I’m also immensely grateful to my wife for creating the extra time and space in our busy family life to allow me to venture out at random times during the day, every single day, in all kinds of weather.

You’ll Never Walk Alone!

Life

Still Wiping Away Our Tears

October 16, 2022 by

For parents everywhere that are living with the loss of a child, my wife and I still take comfort in these words which we composed on the passing of our first-born son, Jake, who was born twenty years ago today on Wednesday, 16 October 2002.

The moment that we saw you our hearts were filled with joy
We wept in adoration for our little baby boy
You were our little angel, the product of our love
You were all we ever dreamed of, a gift from God above
Alas, it was not meant to be and you were needed by another
We hope that they will cherish you as much as me and your mother
How it hurts to let you go; the pain may never leave
But time will help us all to cope; in that we must believe
You are our son, of that we’re sure, and it may take us many years
To rebuild our lives without you here to wipe away our tears

We shared some additional thoughts on what his short life taught us in Life Lessons from an Angel which was published in 2020, on what would have been his 18th birthday.

Happy Birthday, son!

Biking - Life

Getting Road Legal on a Motorcycle in Ireland

August 7, 2021 by

I’ve been enjoying the joys of owning a vintage motorcycle over the past few years (something that’s been declared a midlife crisis by some) and, given the number of times I’ve been asked about the process of getting the bike (and me) legally on the road (in modern Ireland), I decided to document what’s involved for the benefit of others considering a similar hobby.

This is also a catalog of the things I could have done with knowing myself when embarking on the journey, which would have saved quite a bit of time (i.e. knowing that some items require others to be done first and there’s a long lead time involved).

It’s also worth noting that, in my case, I’d never had any kind of prior bike license (apart from the standard moped license that permits driving of vehicles with engine sizes up to 50cc) so I was effectively starting from scratch in my journey.

Many of the items can be done in parallel but there are also some dependencies to note. There are some long waiting times and surprising costs involved too, which you should be aware of.

Theory Test

Before you can get a driving license in Ireland, you need to pass a (computer-based) test that assesses your knowledge of the theory of driving. This used to be a written test but is now fully computerised and there are different tests for different types of vehicles (e.g. motorbike, car, truck).

The test itself consists of 40 multiple-choice questions on various driving-related topics (e.g. road safety, road signage) for your vehicle type and you need to answer 35 (or more) correctly to pass.

You can also purchase a CD with the same software used in the test (available in most bookstores and local libraries) to prepare yourself for the official test. I strongly recommend this because the pool of questions and user interface on the CD is identical to the official test and taking 1-2 practice tests per week in the leadup to your official test is a very effective way to prepare to pass.

The test costs €45 and you can book online at https://theorytest.ie. However, the waiting time for a test appointment could be several weeks (potentially months depending on Covid-19 restrictions).

Learner Permit (incl. Public Services Card)

In Ireland, your first driving license is called a Learner Permit (it used to be called a Provisional License). You must have passed the Driver Theory Test before you can apply for a Learner Permit.

You can apply for a Learner Permit online but to do this you will also need a Public Services Card (PSC) which many young drivers (or full-time workers) may not have. Obtaining a PSC is actually quite a manual process, requiring an in-person visit to your local Government offices, so this is something you should consider starting much earlier. There is no cost for a Public Services Card and, to be fair, once you have one the process of requesting the Learning Permit is very smooth.

There are some restrictions to driving a motorcycle on a Learner Permit, the main ones being:

  • You cannot carry a pillion passenger.
  • You must wear a hi-vis vest with an “L” sign on it while riding.
  • Depending on your age, you may be limited to the size of bike (engine) you can ride.

You will also need to select a suitable License Category when applying for a Learner Permit. There are several motorcycle categories (all beginning with “A”), linked to your age and/or the power of your bike (e.g. engine size). I recommend choosing the highest category you can (e.g. A2), which will allow you more options for the size/type of bikes you can ride.

A Learner Permit (for a car or motorbike) costs €45 and is valid for 2 years. You can book online at https://ndls.ie. If requested online, it only takes a couple of days to arrive.

Initial Basic Training (IBT)

In Ireland, you cannot get motorcycle insurance until you have taken a 2-day basic training course called Initial Basic Training (IBT). While I understand (and agree with) the logic of this and the course itself was pretty good (one day in the classroom and one day out riding a bike), I found the cost to be extremely expensive at a whopping €495.

If you have been driving a car (on a full driving license) for some time, contrary to some beliefs, this does not give you an exemption from needing to complete the IBT.

The IBT certificate is only initially valid for 2 years but will be eligible for an extension if you had applied for (or attempted) the full driving test within that period of time.

Motorcycle Registration

Depending on the motorbike you plan to use, you may (or may not) need to register it. Most new or second-hand bikes will already be registered for you but, in my case, I had to re-register my bike as it had not been road legal for almost 30 years (and had long since been archived by the relevant Government transport authorities).

Re-registering a bike has a nominal cost of €12 but requires some official paperwork to be signed and stamped by a local Police department official, which can take extra time.

Motor Tax

All motorised vehicles in Ireland are required to pay a motor tax before legally being allowed onto public roads. The cost, which recurs annually, depends on your vehicle type and engine size or emissions but is significantly cheaper for vintage vehicles (e.g. €35 per year). Apart from the bike being formally registered, there are no other prerequisites for paying the motor tax, which can be done online at https://www.motortax.ie.

Motor Insurance

The final step to being allowed onto a public road is to get your bike (and yourself) insured. Again, the cost here depends on your age, driving experience, motorcycle type/size/value etc. However, you cannot get motorcycle insurance until you have completed the Initial Basic Training above.

Bike Gear

You should not take to the public roads unless you are wearing suitable protective clothing. As I understand it, in Ireland, the only legal requirement here is a helmet but the importance of proper bike gear was outlined in a very practical way during Day 1 of the Initial Basic Training:

If you are involved in a biking incident at 30km/h, where you come off your bike and slide to a stop on the ground, while the chances of a fatal injury are low, the chances of needing time off work to recover are very high. In that regard, the difference between wearing proper protective clothing or not could be 6 days out of work (with gear) or 6 months out of work (without gear). You decide!

The cost of proper bike gear was also something I’d not fully understood beforehand and it’s not cheap either. Here’s a summary of what I bought, along with indicative costs:

  • Helmet: €80
  • Jacket: €180
  • Boots: €125
  • Waterproof Pants: €100
  • Gloves: €35
  • Hi-vis Vest (with L sign): €25

The brands/styles I purchased were entry-level in most cases but I did choose to pay a little extra for the boots, jacket and (open faced) helmet as I felt they suited the era of my bike.

Cost Summary

While your costs may vary, here is a summary of the total costs I incurred en route to my first trip:

  • Driver Theory Test: €45
  • Learner Permit: €35
  • Initial Basic Training: €495
  • Registration: €12
  • Motor Tax: €35
  • Insurance: €280
  • Bike Gear: €550

Clearly, you need to factor in the cost of the motorcycle itself, but the additional costs on top of that, to get your bike (and yourself) legally onto the roads, could easily exceed €1,500. 

Next Steps

Once you’ve been riding for a while, you should consider taking the full Driving Test. If successful, this would reduce your insurance costs, allow you to carry passengers and eliminate the need to wear the hi-vis “L” vest.

While you are free to take the test without any formal lessons, I would recommend you take some lessons beforehand to help eliminate any bad habits you may have picked up and to get you generally “test ready”. The lessons may also help ensure you only ever have to take the test once.

Life

Life Lessons from an Angel

October 16, 2020 by 2 Comments

As I reflect on the 18 years that have passed since I first became a father (on this very day in 2002), I do so with incredibly mixed emotions and a deep sense of anguish that we cannot share the occasion with our beautiful son, Jake, who left our world after just 9 days, on Friday, 25 October 2002.

However, while there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think of him and we yearn to hold him in our arms just one more time, we are comforted (and often surprised) by the things that his short life has taught us in the years since his passing, and I thought it might be nice (and potentially helpful to others) to share some of those lessons today in his honour.

Life is not over – it’s just very, very different

The loss of a child is something you will never, ever “get over” but it is something that you can learn to accept and live with, with the passage of time, while experiencing some enormously uplifting moments along the way. Not only will these moments keep you firmly grounded in life, but they can also serve to inspire the best in yourself and in others, in ways that may otherwise not have been possible.

Some of these moments that I recall and that I hold dear to my heart include beautiful remembrance ceremonies and anniversary Masses at Crumlin Hospital, Dublin, receiving a posthumous bravery certificate from the Irish Heart Foundation (our son underwent heart surgery less than 24 hours after his birth) and a Roll of Honour certificate from the Irish Kidney Association (I am proud to say my son was also an organ donor).

Our annual, overnight trip to Dublin to mark his anniversary has also become an extended family tradition which our other children and their cousins now hail as one of the highlights of their year.

The Japanese Maple tree that stands proudly at the bottom of our garden is also a constant, warming, living, breathing reminder of his place in our family unit. Be it the smile it puts on your face while cutting the grass or the happy sounds of your children playing nearby, or even seeing your own Father stand in silent prayer there at random moments throughout the year, these are all uplifting experiences that you learn to love dearly, and that enrich your now very different life.

Find the positives where you can – they do exist

A close friend of mine, with some personal experience in this area, was brave enough to say this to me a few days before Jake died and it took me several years to learn what it truly meant, and to accept how true it is. That is because, no matter how far you travel in life and how sorry you may feel for yourself because of what happened to you on that life journey, you will learn (several times over) that there is always someone less fortunate than you are, with no exceptions.

We were blessed with a perfect pregnancy, photographs and videos of our newborn son, living and breathing. We got to hold him, to smell him, to hug him and kiss him, multiple times over. Some of our extended family members got to meet him too, if only for a brief moment, and so we have memories, real memories.

Sadly, we have met many people that experienced a similar loss to ours, but with none of the memories we have to cherish. Oddly, we count our blessings for this.

Material things simply don’t matter – family is what matters

I like my home comforts, gadgets, cars and other material possessions as much as the next person, but I definitely find them far less important in my life on foot of the experiences of 18 years ago. Others I’ve met have conceded feeling the same way over time.

I don’t dwell on this and it’s not a major discussion point in my life, but I definitely find myself less motivated to spend time with (or on) material items. I guess it’s because these things are ultimately replaceable, if you know where to find them at the right price, which makes them ultimately less valuable in a human context.

However, the things that I now find most happiness, motivation and contentment in actually cost nothing. They are spending time with family, creating life memories for (and with) our children, but with a far deeper appreciation for why they are so important, valuable and irreplaceable.

We are therefore so especially proud of our first-born son, Jake, today for teaching us all so much about the truly important things in life, in his own special way.

Happy Birthday, son, and thank you!

General - Life - Multimedia

Reeling in the Tears

February 2, 2019 by

I recently came into possession of a rather curious looking spool of tape when going through some old things belonging to my Dad. This surprise discovery (which, amazingly, he never thought to mention when he was alive) was initially met with a mixture of curiosity and excitement, but then tinged with sadness as I remembered he is no longer around to ask about its origins or contents.

Of course the curiosity soon got the better of me and I felt I owed it to him to find out what was on it anyway, considering he had clearly safeguarded it for the better part of 50 years. I therefore set about finding a way to have it converted to some form of modern digital media.

I began by contacting a friend who had recently converted some vintage video reels of the same shape and size, and while he was able to confirm that I was in possession of a Reel-to-Reel Audio tape, he did not himself possess a suitable playing device and neither did any of his hobbyist friends. Fortunately, The Force is strong in this one and so we kept trying.

I then decided to try my luck on the I Am Waterford Facebook page (home to some 20,000 Waterford natives) and was greeted with a delightful array of helpful suggestions, a sizeable majority of which were directing me towards one person, Gary Burns (Audio Visual Technical Officer at Waterford Institute of Technology), who later chimed in himself and offered to do the conversion for me.

As we both live in the same town, I was able to hand over the reel the following day, and within a few days of that I found myself downloading an audio file with the contents of the reel in all its crackly glory – all 35 minutes of it!

Naturally, the anticipation at this point was sky high and indeed, I took a quiet moment to prepare for an emotional reveal. After all, no matter what was on this reel, it was put there for a reason and that reason alone represented an insight into a part of my father’s life that I knew nothing about until that very moment. I consider myself very lucky to have that opportunity, as those in my position will no doubt understand.

So what was on the reel, I hear you ask? Well, I had given this some thought during the previous few days and thought it might have been a recording of him (or his family) singing or playing the accordion, or perhaps a recording of someone describing some of the video reel footage I’d converted some years earlier.

In the end, it was actually none of the above and instead was a collection of 14 songs recorded from the radio, ranging from 1969 to 1974. There were occasional hints of the voice of Brendan Balfe along the way (a popular RTE Radio presenter at that time), so I’m assuming it was his radio show that was being recorded.

Here is a full catalog of the extracted from the reel, which was derived after several hours of painstaking listening for recognisable lyrics, against a backdrop of electrical noise and melodic crackling. I’ve linked each one to a YouTube video of the original song for you to enjoy also:

  1. No Matter How I Try (Gilbert O’Sullivan @ 1971)
  2. Goin’ Down (Jeff Beck @ 1972)
  3. Sing a Song of Freedom (Cliff Richard @ 1974)
  4. Soley Soley (Middle of the Road @ 1971)
  5. Softly Whispering I Love You (Congregation @ 1972)
  6. The Sunset Years of Life (Slim Dusty @ 1965)
  7. Cotton Fields Back Home (Credence Clearwater Revival @ 1969)
  8. Big Strong Man (The Wolfe Tones @ 1970)
  9. You Can Get It If You Really Want (Desmond Dekker @ 1970)
  10. I’ll Take Care of Your Cares (Frankie Laine @ 1967)
  11. I Will Follow You (Dana @ 1970)
  12. Sweetheart (Engelbert Humperdinck @ 1971)
  13. Banquet for the World (Freshmen @ 1970
  14. Which Way You Goin’ Billy (Poppy Family @ 1969

Apart from the curious variety in musical styles (and fashion), I was actually rather impressed with the coolness of some of the tracks, especially Jeff Beck and Credence Clearwater Revival. He certainly kept a few of those guilty pleasures quiet for all the years that he instead lauded the dulcet tones of Foster & Allen!

All in all, this was a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit very emotional, few days that, thanks to the help of people I had never even known one week before, is now set to become part of a new chapter in our family memorabilia that I hope will last for another 50 years, and more.

Thanks Dad, and thanks Gary!

Life - Photography

How nature outsmarts your Smartphone

September 20, 2017 by

There is no doubt that modern technology is getting smarter, smaller and cheaper all of the time, and the modern smartphone is to the fore in how most humans (that own one) access these advancements in technology.

However, it’s also refreshing (and a reassuring in a strange kind of way) to know that such humble and innate everyday objects, found in the most non-technical and un-advanced parts of our world, can still outsmart us all!

The Joint Photographic Experts Group – JPEG

A significant majority of modern smartphones (and digital cameras) use the JPEG image file format to store the photographs taken by the device. This file format is named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which published the first version of the specification in 1992.

The file format was famed for introducing 3 main features:

  1. The possibility of more than 16 million different colours for each pixel in the image.
  2. Varying levels of image compression, reducing the size of the files and making them ideal for use on websites.
  3. An ability to store additional meta data (known as Exif data) inside the image file (e.g. date, time, location, shutter speed).

Digital Compression

By recognising repeating patterns of colour within an image, the JPEG compression algorithms are able to reduce the size of the file containing that image, usually without any significant (or noticeable) loss in image quality. However, with the ever-increasing storage capacity of smartphones, digital cameras, memory sticks and computer hard drives, how many of us ever really take any notice of the size of image files that we are dealing with?

Nature’s Patterns

As it happens, I did just this on foot of a recent family occasion in our back garden where I took rather a lot of photographs featuring grass (plus family members, of course). While syncing the photos to my computer later that evening, I noticed that it was taking much longer than usual so took a closer look when the transfer was complete.

What I discovered then lead me to take a number of other photos of nature scenes the following day, underpinning my theory that nature was clearly outsmarting my smartphone in a variety of very interesting (and surprising ways). Here is what I found.

The Evidence

Each of the following photos were taken using the same smartphone, using the same unmodified Camera app, over the course of 2 days. For the most part, they are shown in order of size (smallest to largest) with some exceptions along the way.

Part Ocean, Part Sky, Part Rocks – 1.5MB

Clearly, the proliferation of grey/dark colours here has lead to a very high level of compression, resulting in a much smaller file.

Very Cloudy Sky – 2.4MB

This very consistent pattern of grey yielded a very high compression rate also, but with perhaps with slightly less dark colours causing a marginal increase in file size.

Semi Clear Sky – 2.6MB

Surprisingly, this quite different skyline (with a lot more blue) was only marginally larger than the very cloudy scene above, but it still compressed very well due to the consistency of regions of blue, grey and white throughout.

Part Sky, Part Ocean on a Grey Day – 3.4MB

With around 60% of this shot featuring some random sea waves, the level of compression achieved is slightly less than others.

Rippled Water – 4.2MB

While featuring a mostly blue/green hue, the degree of randomness to the ripples prevented a higher level of compression here.

Beach Stones – 5.2MB

So now it begins to get interesting, with nature fighting back. This scene features a large selection of pebbles and stones, of differing shapes, sizes, colours and orientation. Overall, quite a random scene which is duly borne out in the largest file size so far.

Plant Leaves – 5.3MB

There’s quite lot of the same shade of green in this shot, which should yield good compression, but the random shape, size and orientation of the leaves is clearly confusing the compression algorithm, resulting in a larger than expected file.

Cliff Rock Closeup – 5.7MB

Large rocks are normally quite uniform in their colour but a couple of thousand years of being battered by the elements is bound to introduce some character in the form of random edges, wear & tear as well as other inclusions, all reducing the amount of compression the camera was able to achieve.

Forest Ferns – 6.6MB

This scene features predominantly green elements of generally the same shade. However, the size, orientation and varying shape of the leaves and branches across the full spectrum of the shot result in a very confused (and highly random) panorama for the camera.

Regular Garden Grass Closeup – 7.2MB

Surprisingly, the most ordinary patch of grass (somewhat close up) causes the most havoc and lowest level of compression for our camera, with the utter chaos that is the size, shape, length, colour, orientation and depth of the blades of grass resulting in the largest file size. The camera even struggled to retain it’s focus in the outer regions of the shot (see top left), further proving that nature always has the upper hand.

Pebble Dashed Wall – 6.2MB

For good measure, I also sampled this man-made creation with a reasonably high degree of randomness. While the colour and dispersal of the pebbles was most definitely random, the camera did still manage some level of compression, most likely based on the consistent colour of the background cement.

Disclaimer

The level of scientific analysis conducted during this impromptu experiment was minimal at best and no pixels were harmed during the gathering of evidence herein. But you’d be amazed what other surprises mother nature is likely to throw up so get out there and discover your own flavour of randomness!

Life

Muhammad Ali and My Grandfather

November 27, 2016 by

Edmund (Neddy) Mernin

One of my most prized possessions is some very old VHS footage of my Grandfather, Edmund (Neddy) Mernin (1893-1983), being interviewed for an Irish history documentary in 1969. It really is such a privilege to be able to share this tiny slice of family history with my own children, where they can see real-life footage of their Great Grandfather.

The documentary, entitled Gift of a Church, tells the unusual story of how (in 1965) the church in his home village of Villierstown, Co. Waterford, had been donated by the Church of Ireland to the Catholic people in the village so that they would not have to walk several miles to the nearest village to celebrate Mass on Sunday. The church was in need of some repair and was seemingly no longer needed as the Protestant population had moved away.

The documentary was first broadcast on 30 October 1969 as part of an RTÉ programme called Newsbeat and was reported by the renowned Irish history documentary maker and TV presenter, Cathal O’Shannon (well known for this distinctive voice). And with huge thanks to the team at RTÉ Archives, an excerpt (showing Neddy speaking) is now available online.

Muhammad Ali

So what’s the connection with Muhammad Ali, I hear you say? Well, it turns out that the very same broadcaster that interviewed my Grandfather in 1969 also went on to conduct an infamous interview with boxing legend, Muhammad Ali, when he visited Ireland (to fight Alvin Lewis in Croke Park) in July 1972.

That visit was also chronicled in another Irish documentary from 2012 by Ross Whitaker, entitled When Ali Came to Ireland.

Two Legends, One Story

So it turns out that Muhammad Ali was not the only legendary world figure that Cathal O’Shannon had the privilege of interviewing. He also interviewed Neddy Mernin!

 

Life - Photography - Technology

Injecting Data into Scanned Vintage Photos

November 16, 2014 by 1 Comment

In a previous post, entitled Vintage Photo Scanning – A Journey of Discovery, I shared my experiences while digitising my parent’s entire vintage photo collection.

As part of that pet project, I also took the liberty of digitally injecting some of the precious data I had learned about them (i.e. when and where the photos were taken, and who was in them) into the photo files themselves, so that it would be preserved forever along with the photo is pertained to. This article explains how I did that.

Quick Recap

My starting point was a collection of around 750 digital images, arranged into a series of folders and subdirectories, and named in accordance with the following convention:

<Date>~<Title>~<People>~<Location>.jpg

So the task at hand was how to programmatically (and thus, automatically) inject data into each of these files, starting over if required, so that sorting them or importing them into photo management software later becomes much easier.

Ready, Steady, Bash!

In order to process many files at a time, you’re going to need to do a little programming. My favourite language for this sort of stuff is Bash, so expect to see plenty of snippets written in Bash from here on. I am also going to assume that you are running this on a Unix/Linux-based system (sorry, Mr. Gates).

Setup

While each photo will have a different date, title, list of people and location, there are some other pieces of data you like to store within them (while you’re at it), which you (or your grandchildren) may be glad of later on. To this end, let’s set up some assumptions and common fields.

Default Data

If you only know the year of a photo, you’ll need to make some assumptions about the month and day:

DEFAULT_MONTH="06"
DEFAULT_DAY="01"
DEFAULT_LOCATION="-"

Reusable File Locations

Define the location of exiftool utility or any other programs you’re using (if they are located in a non-standard part of your system), along with any other temporary files you’ll be creating:

EXIFTOOL=/usr/local/bin/exiftool
CSVFILE=$(dirname "$0")/photos.csv
GPSFILE=$(dirname "$0")/gps.txt
GPS_COORDS=$(dirname "$0")/gps-coords.txt
PHOTO_FILES=/tmp/photo-files.txt
PHOTO_DESC=/tmp/photo-description.txt

Common Metadata

Most photo files support other types of metadata including the make/model of camera used, the applicable copyright statement and of the owner of the files. If you wish to use these, you could define their values in some variables that can be used (for each file) later on:

EXIF_MAKE="HP"
EXIF_MODEL="HP Deskjet M4500"
EXIF_COPYRIGHT="Copyright (c) 2014, James Mernin"
EXIF_OWNER="James Mernin"

Data Injection

List, Iterate & Extract

Firstly, compile a list of the files you wish to process:

find "$IMAGE_DIR" -name "*.jpg" > $PHOTO_FILES

Now iterate over that list, processing one file at a time:

while read line; do
 # See below for what to do...
done < "$PHOTO_FILES"

Now split the input line to extract the 4 field of data:

BASENAME=`basename "$line" .jpg`
ID_DATE=`echo $BASENAME|cut -d"~" -f1`
ID_TITLE=`echo $BASENAME|cut -d"~" -f2`
ID_PEOPLE=`echo $BASENAME|cut -d"~" -f3`
ID_LOCATION=`echo $BASENAME|cut -d"~" -f4`

Prepare Date & Title

Prepare a suitable value for Year, Month and Day (taking into account the month and day maybe unknown):

DATE_Y=`echo $ID_DATE|cut -d"-" -f1`
DATE_M=`echo $ID_DATE|cut -d"-" -f2`
if [ -z "$DATE_M" ] || [ "$DATE_M" = "$DATE_Y" ]; then DATE_M=$DEFAULT_MONTH; fi
DATE_D=`echo $ID_DATE|cut -d"-" -f3`
if [ -z "$DATE_D" ] || [ "$DATE_D" = "$DATE_Y" ]; then DATE_D=$DEFAULT_DAY; fi

It’s possible the title of some photos may contain a numbered prefix in order to separate multiple photos taken at the same event (e.g. 01-School Concert, 02-School Concert). This can be handled as follows:

TITLE=$ID_TITLE
TITLE_ORDER=`echo $ID_TITLE|cut -d"-" -f1`
if [ -n "$TITLE_ORDER" ]; then
 if [ $TITLE_ORDER -eq $TITLE_ORDER ] 2>/dev/null; then TITLE=`echo $ID_TITLE|cut -d"-" -f2-`; fi
fi

Location Processing

This is a somewhat complex process but essential boils down to trying to determine the GPS coordinates for the location of each photo. This is because most photo file only support the GPS coordinates inside their metadata. I have used the Google Maps APIs for this step with an assumption that you get an exact match first time. You can, of course, complete this step as a separate exercise beforehand and store the results of that in a separate file to be used as input here.

In any case, the following snippet will attempt to fetch the GPS coordinates for the location of the given photo. Pardon also the crude use of Python for post-processing of the JSON data returned by the Google Maps APIs.

ENCODED_LOCATION=`python -c "import urllib; print urllib.quote(\"$ID_LOCATION\");"`
GPSDATA=`curl -s "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=$ENCODED_LOCATION&sensor=false"`
NUM_RESULTS=`echo $GPSDATA|python -c "import json; import sys; data=json.load(sys.stdin); print len(data['results'])"`
if [ $NUM_RESULTS -eq 0 ]; then
 GPS_LAT=0
 GPS_LNG=0
else 
 GPS_LAT=`echo $GPSDATA|python -c "import json; import sys; data=json.load(sys.stdin); print data['results'][0]['geometry']['location']['lat']"`
 GPS_LNG=`echo $GPSDATA|python -c "import json; import sys; data=json.load(sys.stdin); print data['results'][0]['geometry']['location']['lng']"`
fi

Convert any negative Latitude and Longitude values to North/South or West/East so that your coordinates end up in the correct hemisphere and on the correct side Greenwich, London:

if [ "`echo $GPS_LAT|cut -c1`" = "-" ]; then GPS_LAT_REF=South; else GPS_LAT_REF=North; fi
if [ "`echo $GPS_LNG|cut -c1`" = "-" ]; then GPS_LNG_REF=West; else GPS_LNG_REF=East; fi

Inject Data

You now have all the data you need to prepare the exiftool command:

EXIF_DATE="${DATE_Y}:${DATE_M}:${DATE_D} 12:00:00"
echo "Title: $TITLE" > $PHOTO_DESC
echo "People: $ID_PEOPLE" >> $PHOTO_DESC
echo "Location: $ID_LOCATION" >> $PHOTO_DESC

if [ -n "$ID_LOCATION" ]; then
 $EXIFTOOL -overwrite_original \
  -Make="$EXIF_MAKE" -Model="$EXIF_MODEL" -Credit="$EXIF_CREDIT" -Copyright="$EXIF_COPYRIGHT" -Owner="$EXIF_OWNER" \
  -FileSource="Reflection Print Scanner" -Title="$TITLE" -XMP-iptcExt:PersonInImage="$ID_PEOPLE" "-Description<=$PHOTO_DESC" \
  -AllDates="$EXIF_DATE" -DateTimeOriginal="$EXIF_DATE" -FileModifyDate="$EXIF_DATE" \
  -GPSLatitude=$GPS_LAT -GPSLongitude=$GPS_LNG -GPSLatitudeRef=$GPS_LAT_REF -GPSLongitudeRef=$GPS_LNG_REF \
  "$line"
 else
  $EXIFTOOL -overwrite_original \
   -Make="$EXIF_MAKE" -Model="$EXIF_MODEL" -Credit="$EXIF_CREDIT" -Copyright="$EXIF_COPYRIGHT" -Owner="$EXIF_OWNER" \
   -FileSource="Reflection Print Scanner" -Title="$TITLE" -XMP-iptcExt:PersonInImage="$ID_PEOPLE" "-Description<=$PHOTO_DESC" \
   -AllDates="$EXIF_DATE" -DateTimeOriginal="$EXIF_DATE" -FileModifyDate="$EXIF_DATE" \
   "$line"
 fi

Cross your fingers and hope for the best!

Apple iPhoto Integration

Personally, I manage my portfolio of personal photographs using Apple iPhoto so I wanted to import these scanned photos there too. And so the Data Injection measures above I took above simplified this process greatly (especially the Date and Location fields which iPhoto understands natively).

While I did then go on to use iPhoto’s facial recognition features and manually tag each of the people in the photographs (adding several weeks to my project), the metadata injected into the files helped make this a lot easier (as it was visible in the information panel displayed beside each photo) in iPhoto.

Return on Investment

Timescales

In all, this entire project took almost 9 months to complete (with an investment of 2-3 hours per evening, 1-2 nights per week). The oldest photograph I scanned was from 1927 and the most precious one was one from my early childhood holding a teddy bear that my own children now play with.

Benefits

The total number of photos processed was somewhere in the region of 750. And while that may appear to be a very long time for relatively few photographs, the return on investment is likely to last for many, many multiples of that time.

Upon Reflection

I’ve also been asked a few times since then, “Would I do it again?”, to which the answer is an emphatic “Yes!” as the rewards will last far longer than I could ever have spent doing the work.

However, when asked, “Could I do it again for someone else?”, that has to be a “No”. And not because I would not have the time or the energy, but simply because I would not have the same level of emotional attachment to the subject matter (either the people or the occasions in the photos) and I believe that this would ultimately be reflected in the overall outcome. So hopefully these notes will help others to take on the same journey with their own families.

Life

Free Mobile apps for LEGO fans

January 2, 2013 by 0 Comments

In my endless pursuit of different ways to enjoy LEGO products, I found the following free mobile apps in the Android app store (a.k.a. Google Play).

  • LEGO Creationary – Excellent series of build and guess games, created by the LEGO Group themselves. A bit heavyweight in terms of performance though.
  • myBrickset: LEGO Set Guide – Allows you to search for LEGO sets by number and create a catalog of the ones you own (or want to own).
  • LEGO Instructions – Lots of simple LEGO sets for younger children, complete with interactive step-by-step instructions.
  • LEGO Scans – Quickly peruse through over 4,000 LEGO sets by name or theme (but no instructions included though).
  • LEGO Minifig Collector – Search and browse through the full series of Minifigure collections. You can also tell the app which ones you have and it’ll then tell you which ones you’re missing (a potentially expensive feature).
  • Lego Mini Figure Identifier – Very clever app for helping you identify which minifigure in inside the package before you buys it. However, LEGO have made it a lot harder to use this app since Minifigure Series 5 onwards so bring a microscope with you if you intend to use this app.
There are loads more, some of which are just mobile games inspired by the LEGO brand and others are for much younger children or for specific LEGO sets.
Life - Waterford

Food & Wine Tasting Evening

December 7, 2011 by 0 Comments

If you’re around the Waterford area on Wednesday, 14 December 2011, why not come along to the annual Food & Wine Tasting Evening at the Grand Hotel and sample a wide variety of beers, wine and local food – all for just €8.

This is a fundraiser in aid of two local schools (Gaelscoil Philib Barún and Holy Cross National School) and is sponsored by Hickson’s Centra, Tramore.

Remember: Grand Hotel, Tramore – Wednesday, 14 December 2011 – 7:30pm – 10pm – €8 per person

Hope to see you there.