Will Knott

Guess which is the Dublin calendar and which is the Cork calendar?

Cork has its own legends, but it turns out that even the creation of the Lee Valley has its own creation myth.

A dragon carved the channel out of limestone as he rushed to the sea.

Limestone when mixed with stomach acid forms a highly flammable, lighter than air gas… Perfect for a flying dragon.

Sam Hamilton, the gentleman in the top hat, works with Cork Community Art Link and created this steam punk dragon on behalf of +Cork Pride. Cork Pride is the owner of the shiny metal beast and expect it to wander around the country for a while yet.

Red 5 Studios are creating one heck of a First Person Shooter MMO. Oddly, a large portion of Red 5 Studio is made from former Blizzard employees. Guess who has their European headquarters in Cork.

Welcome to Cork Red 5 Studio.

Based on what the Extra Credits crew are saying, you are going to be a shining addition for Cork (for Browncoat shiny at least).

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“Dance, Its all I want to do” — Kylie Minogue “All The Lovers”

All me to introduce you to a very special Cork woman; Joanne O’Riordan.

She is a young woman, born without limbs, who uses technology everyday, much like us all, to have an average life. I didn’t say “normal”, mainly because I’m not sure what normal is. She has effectively changed government directions already, and she isn’t even past starting yet.

She has put up a challenge to the technologies communities around the world to build her a robot.
I’m not sure she is actually after a robot, a robot being an autonomous artificial form. I suspect that a limb she can control is a but closer to what she is after.

But its a challenge.

However I’m offering a sincere possible counter challenge. Learn how to build one yourself.
I’m a mentor at CoderDojo in Cork. I’d also like to learn and teach how to make a robot. A controlled limb. A walking bi, quad or hexapedal creature.

But be adventurous, why build a limb to pick things up, when you could create a being to dance. Change expectations, challenge what others think is the norm.

Create something, something designed to cause wonder.

Build something, learn how to build something, teach others how to build something.

So, care to take up the invitation? (And I’m looking for an excuse to use a few books)

This is a Loose Bloggers Consortium post, and I’m playing catch up,  on the themes of  “Dance”, “Dominion and stewardship” (robot is based on the Czech word for slave), “Sincerity”, “Change” and “Invitations”…
To find out that the others in the consortium think, check out, …
Delirious, Maria/Gaelikaa, Maria SilverFox OCD writer, Padmum, Paul, Ramana, The Old Fossil, Grannymar.

“Bad dragon. I only told you to blow the bloody dwarfs off” — overheard

This came up in a conversation on a TOG mailing list. Its source was the comment by a electronic image manipulation project and the possibility of getting extra marks from the use of stenography to hide messages within the exhibition.

What came to my mind was, well , why not create a QR Code of the message and then generate a photo-mosaic of the QR code using the exhibition pictures as the mosaic source.

He asked for an example…

Here you go…

To generate this you need three things.

1) A large collection of photographs (or pictures) in electronic form.

2) A QR code and

3) Photomosaic software.

Photomosaics have gone out of style, so that might be why it hasn’t been done before.

In my case, I took a lot of photographs of the recent Cork Pride Festival. So my source were about 400 of the festival’s photos that were uploaded to FaceBook.

Then I needed a CQ Code. I used the Kaywa generator.  Not for any particular reason, I just wanted a quick QR code. The code above, when scanned will link to the Cork Pride Festival site.

So then I needed the generation software. I used the portable version of the Andrea Mosaic Software. It could be more intuitive, but its free with the only request being “give a shout out to Andrea Mosaic” if you use it. Perfect for an example.

So, there is the example, let me know if you have any problems scanning it. The larger version is hosted on Pix.ie, but at 5mb image meant for A3 printing, I’m not going to be e-mailing it to anyone other than the Cork Pride media team to add to their archive.

So how long before you see it being used in an advert folks?

I have no idea what the flower is, but it brightens a dark day.

Today is Mothers Day, or Mothering Sunday, in the UK and Ireland. Somehow the idea of the little man with the lady showing through seems right for today.

Well it was either that or the “Behind every great man is a great woman, rolling her eyes at what he’s up to”.

The shot is from Pope’s Quay opposite St. Mary’s Church. I have no idea why the walking-tour man is cut out of the signs, but now I know about them I’m going to have to keep an eye out for them to see what else lies through them.

My Mother’s Day was last weekend, because I’m getting up at silly O’clock to go on a charity cycle for Africa Direct. Its a 25 mile cycle, and for me the scary part is that its my first proper cycle of the year (i.e. one not involving a trip down to the shops). Its a good (mostly flat) take-it easy training cycle. And I know I will be knackered at the end of it.

Hopefully in a good way.

Then I’ll have to phone Mum. If the oxygen mask doesn’t get in the way that is.

Cork’s Saint Patrick’s Parade was today. I still have to go through all the photographs but on a spot at the parade’s end I’ve managed to catch a few shots.

The theme was supposed to be about maritime history, but most of the floats went for the pirates theme. Sometime it works and sometimes,

its a little stilted