Ok, I don’t actually have my name in lights anywhere, but I’ve made it onto IMDB and feel like trumpeting this minor achievement to the general public.

In fact, I’m sort of there twice, at least in spirit. The first time up is my own page detailing some of the films on which I’ve worked. It’s quite incomplete really as some of the films I’ve worked on aren’t up there and I’m not sure I can really go adding films, but it’s a start anyway.

So what did I mean when I said I’m actually sort of up there twice. Well there is Cpl. Alex Leonard, a character in “Ultimate Force” a TV show made in England with Ross Kemp. Amusingly I was at a fund-raising auction and the incredibly sound Rob Heyland had put up for grabs the honour of being named in the next TV show he was going to write for.

In the end he named pretty much all the characters in that show after people I know, all of whom ‘bear no resemblence to persons living or dead’ yadda yadda. I’ve never seen it so I don’t know but I believe my namesake in that show is a half-caste bisexual killing-machine (or something), which I’m pretty sure doesn’t bear any resemblance to me

Bono R.I.P.

Shocking news is breaking that world-famous lead singer from U2, Paul Hewson a.k.a. Bono, was found dead this morning in a penthouse suite of a hotel in Amsterdam.

At 10:00 this morning  staff of the Intercontinental Amstel hotel in Amsterdam made the decision to enter Bono’s penthouse suite despite the “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on the door. The decision was taken after Bono’s missed an appointment to meet his new Dutch accountant to discuss important taxation affairs.

Upon entering the room staff were shocked to discover Bono submerged in a bath of caviar. Urgent attempts were made to revive Mr. Hewson but the emergency CPR attempts were hindered by the large quantities of Almas Beluga caviar which were blocking his windpipe.

Dangerous Do Not Disturb

Authorities arrived on the scene and do not currently suspect foul play, however enquiries are being made as to the whereabouts of the supplier of such a large quantity of Almas Beluga caviar, which famously retails for £25,000 per kilo, and samples of the caviar have been sent to the Nederlands Forensisch Instituut in the Hague for testing to rule out any possibility of poisoning.

Bono’s body has been removed to the city morgue and it is expected that cause of death will be either asphyxiation or the rarely seen ‘indulgence toxicity’,  however it has been advised that no statement on this will be given until a full toxicity test has been undertaken.

Costly Death Blanket

Hendrickje Brinkerhoff, a hair stylist in an exclusive salon a near to the International Amstel, said this afternoon that she had been delighted to serve Mr. Hewson on a couple of occasions recently. “I think it’s really sad,” Ms. Brinkerhoff said. “He seemed like a very happy man and had said that the people in Holland were so much better dressed than the Irish that he knew. He made me laugh when he said that but I wasn’t sure how he would take me giving him advice on his own fashion sense.” She later added “It’s funny, he wouldn’t take his sunglasses off even when I was washing his hair.”

Outside the Intercontinental Amstel hotel a sizeable crowd had gathered and many people expressed shock at Mr. Hewson’s death. Rykaard Groesbeck, a local artist, said, “That’s terrible. It seems such a cruel way to go, and what a waste of such expensive caviar!”

Geertje Schermerhorn, a student who was passing by, said, “That’s awful, and I was only listening to ‘Shiny Happy People’ this morning. The world must be much less happy now.”

As news of Mr. Hewson’s death spreads across the Internet, the Chief of Police (Hoofdcommissaris) has issued a fairly terse summary of the death: “On Wednesday the 1st of July 2009 at approximately 1000 hours, in the centrum precinct, police responded to the InterContinental Amstel at Professor Tuppelin 1 and found a M/W/48 unconscious. The victim was pronounced DOA upon removal from a bath filled with Almas Beluga caviar. Investigation continues.”

U2’s manager and other band members have so far been unavailable for comment.

Came across some incredible art work via Conor Horgan’s Tumblr – the photography of Shinichi Maruyama.

The photo reproduced below is part of a series of photographs titled “Kusho”. This was the first and possibly most impacting photo I saw and it definitely took my breath away seeing this and am strongly considering picking up the “Kusho” book (if and when I have some spare funds).

Part of the Kusho Series

Conor originally put up a photo of Shinichi at work which, as soon as I saw it, made me think of some recent ideas I’ve been playing around with for my next release artwork.

Whilst I’m not expecting to come up with anything quite as breathtaking, I’m hoping it’s going to be the strongest album artwork I’ve done yet, and something that demonstrates the amount of thought behind it.

Shinichi Maruyama at work

Again, if you like these, definitely head over to Shinichi’s website.

Yesterday I came across Desked, a blog showcasing people’s desks/workspaces, (I think I saw John Braine mention it somewhere) and I figured I’d join in the fun and sent in a photo of my own workspace. However it got me and Donn talking about how we’d like our workspaces to turn out, and more importantly, how far we’d come over the past few years running a business.

When we started out Pixelapes we ran the business split between the flat I shared with my good friend Pob and Donn’s bedsit in Moyne Road. Looking back I can’t believe we worked like that for a year. Below is a photo of my own desk crammed into my bedroom.

Workspace 2005

Moving out of Dublin

Getting out of Dublin meant that we could afford a proper house (and, in my case, pay about half the rent I was paying in Ranelagh) and with that came more room. We based ourselves in Leitrim for about 2 years but even now our office space looks so much more cramped than what we have now. Below is a shot of our office in Leitrim.

Workspace 2007

The current facilities

Even with our office being nearly twice the size of Leitrim I wouldn’t say no to an even larger office space. Although I would probably just end up filling it with crap (that always seems to happen). I can’t imagine downgrading space though, which means I’m not moving away from the middle of nowhere for a while yet. Below is a shot of my current Pixelapes/Ebauche workspace.

Workspace 2009

Not sure if you’ve ever heard someone say how when you have worked on a dual screen computer setup you can’t go back to a single screen. Well I can say the same for quad screens. I’ve gotten so used to having the extra screen real estate that I’d definitely find it hard to go back

Originally my intention for Eidetic Opacity was for it to be a photoblog, but for whatever reason that never quite happened, and knowing me that’s not too bad a thing – there’d likely be long gaps of months between new photos.

Still there’s nothing in the world stopping me from posting the occasional photo, and whilst the design of this blog doesn’t exactly lend itself to expansive photo viewing, you can always click on the image to see a larger version of it!

Robert Playing Ball

Robert having a great time!

I always liked this photo, even though it’s way over exposed. I did a bit of post-processing in photoshop trying to follow a sort of “Lomo” effect technique I came across over on digital-photography-school.com. It’s probably not the best photo to try and achieve that effect with, but I think it worked out well enough in its own right.

In the hope that I’ll be the 800th pingback on Donncha’s fantastic WordPress plugin WP-Super Cache I figured I’d make mention of it here

Super Cache adds super fast caching ability to WordPress and helps speed up your page load times and reduce your server load. If you’re not using it you should be!

I was planning on putting up a photo I took of some lentils, but ended up getting carried away with photoshop and making it anything but a load of lentils.

Sprawled Mess

Update: A few people were wondering what the original photo was, so to satisfy your curiosity I reproduce it below (I haven’t bothered to dress it up barring a quick auto-contrast in Picasa).

Yep, it keeps on going! I don’t think I’ve ever written 3 posts in a row about the same topic before.

So there are some good letters to the editor in the Irish Times today regarding Picturegate/Cowengate.

Madam, – If I find there is an intruder sneaking around my home in the middle of the night, should I dial 999 and tell the operator that someone is attempting to nail a painting to my wall without permission? Because that seems to be a very effective way of getting the gardaí to respond quickly. I certainly won’t tell them that there’s a gang of bankers in the kitchen rummaging through my wallet. – Yours, etc,

Shane Ó Mearáin

Madam, – A case of the emperor’s new clothes? What is wrong with Brian Cowen? The country is in economic ruin which he, as former minister for finance, is partly accountable for. People are losing their jobs and families are in real distress. And he gets upset about a painting? This scandalous reaction involving action by the gardaí is simply unbelievable. There are suspected murderers walking the streets, yet they question an artist? – Yours, etc,

Dermot Sweeney

Those are just a couple of examples of what I’m hearing all over the place. Want to read a bit more about all of this? Sure, head on over to Cearta.ie where he’s collected hundreds of links to people talking about this.

Heck, there’s even an blog just set up which is entirely dedicated to this one topic, with the aim of collecting responses and perhaps arranging a public exhibition to show the powers that be that you can’t just sit on the things you don’t like whilst everything else is in such a mess..

This evening, I suggested that perhaps one response to the affair may be for a public exhibition (or, after some thought, several simultaneous exhibitions, depending on numbers of submissions) of works, by the public, in a similar vein: How about a group exhibition, with works by anyone and everyone, at somewhere like thisisnotashop gallery / seomra spraoi / The Joinery / the Smithfield Gallery / Butcher Queers mag and anyone else (if they’ll have us)?

Check out Salon Des Libertes over on wordpress.com.

John Braine has just posted some amusing news that a Creative Ireland forum thread dedicated to posting strange and lewd photos of Brian Cowen has been partially reproduced in today’s Irish Daily Mail.

Irish Mail showing off the fruits of Irish humourists

This is just keeps giving.

I’m hearing this referred to as “picturegate” or “cowangate”, but whatever I did today it seemed I was either getting emails or reading about this on the web. Apparently last night RTE officially apologised for reporting on the following:

Two unorthodox portraits — one in the National Gallery showing the Taoiseach on the toilet, and another in the Royal Hibernian Gallery showing him holding his Y-fronts — appeared mysteriously in Dublin among paintings of the country’s other famous citizens in more decorous poses.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5971027.ece

All day long this just kept popping up over and over. With breaking news stories on the Irish Times regarding the police getting involved, the original RTE report going up on YouTube (followed by the apology), a whole barrage of noise on Twitter, and people calling out for everyone to make some noise and ensure this kind of bullshit bullying isn’t allowed continue.

Damien Mulley was enraged:

Last night part of the freedom of the press was murdered in front of our eyes, in prime time hours. We should be crying at that apology. Hope is quickly diminishing in Ireland and more of it went tonight. The country is going to hell in a handcart and now they’re attacking satire in a most brutal way. RTE News has been shut down. RTE cannot report news anymore without having to secondguess themselves and the reaction from Government press officers.

Twenty Major even more so:

Cowen and Fianna Fail had a meltdown though and rang RTE to complain. They demanded the story be removed from the RTE website, and it was. They demanded the clip of the news item be removed and it was. They demanded it be removed from the archives, and it was.

They also demanded an apology be made on air and it was. Pathetic stuff from RTE, truly spineless, but then this is the same organisation that allowed that wretched cunt Beverly Flynn to get away without paying back all the money she owed. No balls whatsoever.

FF’s action , however, was bullying, pure and simple.

The BBC are reporting that the man behind the act of art guerilla warfare could go to jail, and the story is getting coverage all over the place.

I’m personally thrilled to see so many people standing up and saying “fuck this”. Want to buy a naked Cowen caricature on a t-shirt? Are people profiteering, no, proceeds are going to the Rape Crisis Network. Some people are planning to run exhibitions of postcards featuring naked Cowen.

Naked Fat Cowen

Now it’s nearly 2am and despite being zonked and under far too big a work load, I couldn’t help but flex my supremely weak Photoshop muscles to have a go at a bit of a naked Cowen picture. It’s not very good, but it’s a bit of fun and the best I could come up with at this late hour – click the photo to enlarge!

Brian Cowen protects his bits to avoid embarrassment

For those interested, the original photo is by drivenbyboredom on Flickr.

What are ye waiting for?

So why not get off your fat arse and find a picture of a nice big wobbly person and attach Cowen’s head to it. He can’t come after everyone. Boogie boogie boogie.

Update – 1pm :: 26/03/09

Apparently the person mainly reponsible for making this complaint to RTÉ is Eoghan Ó Neachtain. If you feel like complaining about this directly you can reach him at the details below.

Telephone +353-1-619-4098 Fax +353-1-676-3302
Email Address press.office@taoiseach.gov.ie