“Artists” Me Arse!

You might recognise a couple of names on the Artists page of the Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery website, Cork’s own Ryan Whalley and Donncha O Caoimh. I’m delighted to see their work showcased as I love their style, particularly now it’s matured. I’m looking forward to travelling to Kinsale to see their work framed, and check out the other artists of course.

Ryan will be photographing myself and T’s wedding next July, and although we’ll have to keep him on a leash for a little while for the bog standard wedding photos, we hope there’ll be a few shots in his unique style too. If he’s not swanning off around the world drinking champagne and doinking the rich and famous in art gallery nooks and crannies, that is.

I’m sure I’m breaking all sorts of rules posting their pics here, but screw them, sure they’re useless anyway. :)

Inniscarra Dam by Ryan Whalley
Iniscarra Dam by Ryan Whally

Donncha O Caoimh
Pharmacy Window by Donncha O Caoimh

(Thanks for the heads-up Damien.)

Zimbra Acquired by Yahoo

Good news for Zimbra, and well deserved. Let’s just hope Yahoo doesn’t fuck it up like they’ve done with so many other things.

Yahoo! is acquiring Zimbra to extend its leadership and reach new customers in the business, education, and service provider markets across the globe. This major opportunity for Zimbra will accelerate our growth using Yahoo!’s worldwide reach, create a larger combined community, plus enable us to build even more powerful experiences together.

The Times Opens Up

The New York Times that is. It’ll probably take the Irish Times another few years to catch on. Here’s what Jason Kottke has to say about the NY Times’ timeliness:

No more Times Select. The NY Times finally admits what everyone else knew two years ago and stops charging for their content. Additionally, all content from 1987 to the present and from 1851 to 1922 will be offered free of charge.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com.

How did that change not happen for the Times when it happened to the entire rest of the web 3-4 years ago?

Monday Motoring Madness

MMM stands for Monday Motoring Madness, in case you were wondering.

I don’t see why Bruce and Damien should have all the fun with woefully uncreative themes.

MMM: Suzuki Kizashi

Sadly the Suzuki Kizashi is a concept too out there to make it to the street, but hopefully some of the styling cues will find their way to the road cars. They didn’t go far wrong with the Swift – this generation or the last one – so if they apply some of this coolness to the next model, it could be a real contender. The rest of their line-up is awful though!

Suzuki Kizashi Front

Suzuki Kizashi Back

Branded Sweeties!

M&Ms with your logo or message on them. This is a terrible rendering of my company logo, but cool if it can be tweaked as they say it will.

M&Ms

(“This is not a final representation of your custom candy order. Our graphic specialist will work with the image(s) you uploaded to provide the best reproduction quality possible.”)

TechShop: Geek Heaven

What an absolutely brilliant idea.

Guy Kawasaki: Jim Newton founded TechShop in the summer of 2006 because he needed a world-class workshop so he could work on his projects and inventions. After having access to full machine shops at both the College of San Mateo when he taught a BattleBots class and at the studio set of the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters show when he was the science advisor, he found himself without a place to work on his projects after these positions. He was surprised to find that there were not any places like TechShop already, so he decided that he would open one himself.

TechShop provides its members with a huge variety of tools, machines, and equipment in a 15,000 square-foot workshop environment. The equipment at TechShop is not likely to appear in the hobbyist’s home workshop. The range of tools and equipment covers machining, sheet metal, welding, casting, laser cutters, rapid prototyping, CAD, CNC equipment, electronics, sewing, automotive, plastics, composites, and lots more.

Membership is modeled after a fitness center, and several levels of membership are available. There are currently approximately 350 monthly, yearly, corporate, and lifetime members. The facility can handle around fifty members at a time, so TechShop have set the membership cap at 500 members so the shop and workspace does not get over-crowded. There are only about 150 membership slots available until membership is full. The hours of operation for TechShop are currently 9 AM to midnight, 7 days a week. Jim tells me that they plan to open 24×7 when they reach the membership cap of 500 in the next month or two.

There are shared bins full of bits and bobs from your shed and everyone else’s shed, much akin to the wall of (useful!) crap Jamie Hyneman is famous for. The tool racks grow when people bring in their own, and appear not to shrink as you’d expect. There’s a 3D printer, a powder coater, a laser cutter, punches, lathes, sandblasters, test benches, plasma cutters, everything the uber nerd or plain old home hobbyist could need. And they run open classes, for thirty bucks and hour — a good price from both standpoints imo.

This should be franchised, all over the world. I want one in Cork. All you need to do to make is perfect for me is add a few ramps and a few other bits of automotive equipment, so I can pretend I’m Chip Foose. I’d have to be dragged out of the place kicking and screaming, like a child being extracted from a playground.

Want, WANT, WANT!