thomas fitzgerald.net

There’s been a rumor doing the rounds lately that Apple plans to add cameras to its entire iPod line. The rumor, which stems from the leaking of several third party manufacturer case designs for the next generation iPods and a supposed order from cupertino for millions of camera modules, already has the pundit-mill all aflutter with proclamations that this is the end of the point and shoot. But the humble point and shoot camera has been declared dead before. When camera phones started becoming commonplace technology gurus quickly predicted the demise of the stand alone compact digital camera, and yet, billions of camera phones later the point and shoot is still going strong. So will having a camera in every iPod be any different ? If this rumor comes true will this be the game changer people are predicting it will?

O2 Ireland have finally announced the pricing on the new iPhone 3Gs, to be available on June 26th here.

I guess this means Summer is officially here…

Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP has promised to keep the record Industry happy and begin censoring the internet. As part of a new deal done between Ireland’s largest ISP and the record labels, they have agreed to block whatever sites the record industry requests, such as the Pirate Bay. Despite the fact that the Pirate Bay is not Illegal in Ireland, Eircom has decided to roll over and do the bidding of corporate multinationals in the guise of “preventing piracy”. I call b.s. on that one.

All this talk of recession lately got me thinking. When I was young I had a very inventive mind. I used to be always coming up with strange and interesting, and usually physics defying impossible things. One of my earliest inventions was a gun that makes pictures come real. The idea was that you would point it at a product in a catalogue, pull the trigger and the thing would come alive off the page and into reality. In essence it was a stick and two wires, which, had someone not stopped me I fully intended to plug in. I was utterly convinced it would work. I got the idea while browsing the pages of the Lego catalogue and dreaming about the cool sets I knew my parents couldn’t afford. It wasn’t that I expected them to be bought for me, or even that I was ever angry that I couldn’t have the big toys. In the 80’s when I was growing up people just didn’t have money, and none of us really knew what it was like to have any kind of disposable income. I just decided to come up with my own solution.

We had a heavy snowfall here today, for the first time in a long time. Ok, so it’s not really that heavy, but it is for here, as we normally avoid most of the snow. Anyway, here’s a few pictures I grabbed during the day. I also put together a video using my D90 and edited using iMovie. I would normally use Final Cut, but I wanted to try out the new iMovie. It worked well, and the sharing is handy, but I think I’ll stick to FCP even for simple stuff. Some things are still really fiddly when you’re used to doing something a different way.

I came across this amazing photo of O’Connel Street in 1981 on flickr. Not that long ago when you think about it, and yet it looks like ancient history. Mind you, we’ll be heading back that way soon at the rate the economy is tanking.

The ultimate in depressing weather forecast – from Met Éireann, The official Irish weather service:

“The outlook is for very wet weather with no hope at all of it settling in the foreseeable future”

Now that’s what you call bleak.