The rented yurt claimed to sleep four and, from the outside, we figured we were going to need that extra tent for our fifth, Aunt Polly. But it turned out to be a cartoon tent, with the inside ten times bigger than the outside. The forecast didn’t look good and the track was already muddy. Confident that the professionally assembled yurt would do better than the Henderson-assembled tent from last year, we dropped the gear, made small talk with our new neighbors, admired the surrounding Tipis and covered wagons and headed out to find some bands, beer and, for the ladies, some wine in a bag.

Two plus days of mud, food, drink, music (good: Dinosaur Jr., Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Orbital, Explosions in the Sky, Fourtet, Madness; not my favorite: Brian Wilson, Halfset), the kids were tired and whining to head home for the comfort of the XBox and refrigerator. Facty was suffering from wellie blisters, and the skies opened. A half-hearted attempt to stick out the final day, and it was back to the yurt to pack up and steel ourselves for the long walk to the rental car.

More pictures here.

We followed our late summer trip to Amsterdam, Belgium and Electric Picnic with a long weekend of history, art, architecture and Christmas markets in Berlin last month. Last November, we stumbled onto a German Christmas market in Edinburgh and decided to see the real thing this year. Schnitzel and Wurst for the kids, outdoor shopping and museums for the wife, Bauhaus and more great beer for me.

As always, more on flickr.

With Facty’s parents visiting from the States, we toured Blarney, Cobh, Killarney, the Ring of Kerry, Bunratty Castle, Cliffs of Moher, and the Burren. This is detail of a stained glass window in Bunratty.

This was our second trip to some of these destinations, including Blarney Castle. I’ve still not been convinced to kiss the stone, which is at the very top of the wall on the left in this picture.

Cobh is a beautiful little port town just south of Cork, where many of the Irish immigrants through history boarded ships leaving Ireland for the last time. We happened to visit on the anniversary of the Titanic’s arrival in Cobh (then known as Queenstown), which was its last stop before sinking. This cathedral, St. Colman’s, dominates the skyline.

More photos from the trip are in the flickr set, including these last two, for Iggy.

Bonus! Poker content! We found a very popular poker player in the Ring of Kerry. He was kind enough to pose for a photo with Birdy.

Just back from four cold, snowy, windy, but ultimately great, days in and out of Copenhagen, Denmark. I’m still sorting through too many photos in search of a flickr set and trying to put together a proper recap of the trip. In the meantime, these two sit just outside Trinitatis Kirke, next to the amazing Rundetårn, or Round Tower.

Pretty happy with this effort, one of my first with the 50mm f/1.8 I picked up in London today. This was taken near Dorset Square. Click through to find a larger version.

I’ve carried a digital camera around with me almost everywhere I’ve gone for the better part of 5 years. First it was a bulky Olympus that I received as a gift from Facty while we lived in the bay area. I loved that camera and I loved having that camera in a city like San Francisco. All the photos on this site from before 2002 were taken with that camera. It was a tank of a camera, which was perfect. For part of our stay up there, my daily commute was from Marin County over the Golden Gate Bridge and to the South of Market area in the city. I’d leave very early to beat traffic and I found myself varying my route (sometimes widely) to see and photograph more and more of the city. Of course, I never stopped to take pictures. I simply stuck my hand out of the window of the car and took the pic. What? Dangerous?

The only scary moment I had occurred when I once stuck my hand out, over and across the the car to take a shot of something on the passenger side. Being San Francisco, it was a very narrow street and I noticed a bus coming in the opposite direction. In my haste to pull my arm back into the car, I banged my hand on the roof of the car and the camera came loose. It hit the street and bounced into the path of the oncoming bus. I slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car and held up my hands to the bus to stop. The driver saw the whole thing and stopped with plenty of room to spare (neither of us was traveling very fast). I grabbed the camera and hopped back in the car. The door to the memory card was busted and the battery door had opened, allowing a couple of batteries to escape, but once I got to work and replaced them, the camera still worked!

Sometime in 2002, I upgraded to the smaller, better Canon Powershot S110. Pocket sized, 2.1 megapixels. It even takes little 30 second video clips. It has been and continues to be a great little camera that does everything I need except one thing…

I’m not a big phone guy. I am even less of a cell phone guy. But, the one thing that cell phones come with these days is cameras. Not great ones, not even good ones, but still, cameras. And email. And the ability to take a picture and then email it somewhere.

Wouldn’t it be cool if one could take a picture, email it somewhere, and have it appear on one’s website automatically? It turns out that the fine folks at flickr provide just such a service. but wait, there’s more. If one’s website is built on one of the many fine blogging platforms (blogger, typepad, mt, etc.) that are available, the service is provided with barely any effort. Now how much would you pay?

So last week it was time to head over to the local cell phone haus to upgrade our phones. For a reasonable price and a fresh 2 year commitment, we walked out with matching Sony Ericsson z500a phones. Not the top of the line, but camera and email…

Now, this site doesn’t run on one of the supported blogging platforms. So, as I tend to do, I went digging into the flickr api. With the pear::flickr_api library and a little additional php, I hacked together my own little moblog. its over there, in the right column. I’m still tightening up the code, and flickr seems to not respond occasionally, but pretty cool so far. I suspect it could become popular come WPBT Vegas time…