52 Weeks One Hero

Hi there, folks! Your friendly neighbourhood web-blogger here, taking over from Denis for a post. It wasn't that hard either. He leaves his account logged in, fool. All I had to do was wait until he was out and nab the keyboard!

Anyway, in his last post he talked about this whole 52 Weeks thing he's doing. Well, that inspired me to do something similar, but I figured having me turn up in the same group might not be the best idea. People might get annoyed. So I thought to myself, there are tonnes of action figures of little old me in the world, as well as tonnes of figures of lesser heroes. Surely there is somewhere that hosts portraits of toys! And sure enough there is.

Plastic 52 is all about respecting the little guy. Or gal, or monster, or car, or robot, or carobot, but you get the picture. So I joined up Denis' Flickr account to that too (he leaves that logged in as well! Will he never learn?). I've posted my first image, which, in the hopes of calming Denis down when he finds out what I've done, has him in it too.

So if any of you loyal readers have cool toys you might like to share with the world, come join us! It's a new group, so everyone's really friendly with everyone right now, which is great.

Anyway. I'm off to read some more Ultimate me. Did you know I'm dating Kitty Pryde in that universe? Man. I wish I could date Kitty Pryde. I wish I could date.

See ya in the funny pages!

52 Weeks One Person

I don't think I've mentioned here already that I'm jealous of anyone that can take self portraits. I mean, just look at these from Bob, Cian, Karen and Sharon, all good friends, all flaunting their talent in my face! Curses! And you know what's sickening about most of these? They're untouched, presented as snapped. That's all natural awesomeness! Gah!!

Now admittedly, my dislike of my own self portraits is in part due to the fact that I'm not a big fan of looking at photos of myself, but it's also true that I don't feel that I have a great eye for photography. That said, self portraits can be amazing, and seeing a bunch together is always nice. The best, in my opinion, are the ones that just look natural. Not posed, not set up. Just grabbing a camera and snapping a great picture. I don't think I can do that.

With this in mind, I want to introduce you all to a Flickr Group called 52 Weeks. It's a group of users on Flickr that are taking one self-portrait a week and adding them to that group, or adding their favourite if they take more. There's another group that is trying to get daily self portraits, 365 in a year, but that's a bit much for me. 52 sounds far more reasonable.

As I said, I know some of my friends and readers do awesome self-portraits, so I thought people might like to contribute. I'm going to be trying it myself, starting today. One photo a week can't be that hard to do, can it?!? I mean, even if I don't like 99% of the images of myself I take, I've got seven whole days to find that 1%.

Anyway. Have a look at some of the contributions already and see what you think. Some are great, some are good, but they're all interesting.

Just A Comment

If I have you as a Flickr Contact, then you've probably noticed that I spent some time this morning commenting on photos I liked, as well as building up my Favourites section.

I just figure I need to start acknowledging things I like and giving credit where credit is due.

On that basis, I've started to make an effort to keep up with peoples blogs and Flickrs and add comments if I think of something.

The Real Me?

So how accurate do you think online personality quizzes are? I just tried out two, and here are the results:

Which Sci-Fi crew would you best fit in?
You are Moya (Farscape) 81%

You are surrounded by muppets. But that is okay because they are your friends and have shown many times that they can be trusted. Now if only you could stop being bothered about wormholes.

Moya (Farscape)		81%
Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)		81%
Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)		75%
Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)		69%
SG-1 (Stargate)		69%
Serenity (Firefly)		69%
Enterprise D (Star Trek)		69%
Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)		63%
Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)		63%
Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)		56%
Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)		56%
FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)		31%

But I tied with Babylon5, which means that:
The universe is erupting into war and your government picks the wrong side. How much worse could things get? It doesn't matter, because no matter what you have your friends and you'll do the right thing. In the end that will be all that matters. Now if only the Psi Cops would leave you alone.

However, although I belong in Moya or onboard Babylon 5, were I to be a crew member of the FireFly-class starship Serenity, I would in fact be:

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)

You are good at fixing things. You are usually cheerful.
You appreciate being treated with delicacy and specialness.

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		75%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		75%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		70%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		65%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)		65%
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		55%
River (Stowaway)		50%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		45%
Inara Serra (Companion)		40%
Alliance		40%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		20%

But once again, there is a tie, so as much as I am Kaylee, I am also Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic):
Medicine and physical healing are your game,
but wooing women isn't a strong suit.
Click here to take the "Which Serenity character am I?" quiz...

Interesting results all round, I think. How do you fair? Any potential space cowboys, bounty hunters or military fly-boys out there?

Not Your YouTube, My YouTube

So you might have noticed in my last post that I put up some of my own videos on YouTube. I have had an account for ages with them, and I'm hopeing to make some more us of it over the coming months! Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's a clip of Stephen almost killing himself. At the very end you can just make out Margaret-Ann start to suggest he do something even more "fun"! She was really trying to get him to hurt himself at that!

My Busy Weekend

This Easter bank holiday weekend I went home to my family for a few days, as I do every Easter. I got away from the internet, friends, work, the world. Home is in the open countryside, a beautiful area in the centre of Ireland, surrounded by green fields, trees, hills and valleys. Below is the nearest town, some five miles away, and from the front of our house you can look down on it, stunningly lit at night. Above, is the Devils Bit, a mountain that has been an unforgettable part of my childhood. By day, it is a wondrous mix of colours, and by night a huge cross glows brightly at it's peak.

So over a glorious weekend I mowed both our lawns, turbo powerwashed most of the drive around the house, helped feed and play with the neighbours two Labradors, watched some movies in the evenings, went to Mass, cooked dinner for mum and my sister, spent lots of time playing with our own two dogs, shot my brother Stephen a few times, caught up with some of the cousins, and generally hung out and had a great time. I also took a few pictures over the weekend, though not nearly as many as I thought.

All in all, a great and activity packed weekend!!