wojazz3's ireland trip report
 

The mindless ramblings of a lunatic are finally done. You'll need a great deal of caffiene to get through it. There were as many as 12 people along for the ride at different times. We went north from Shannon and ended up in Dublin.

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ire...05_1/index.htm

Bill

Dear Bill, I'll read it when I get some house work done. I've been waiting for months, I know I won't be disappointed. Best, Joan

Only got as far as Westport, so far, but...

BRAVO !!!!

I know how time consuming it can all be. Never been party to more than six at one time and no more than a two-car caravan, but believe me -- I can sympathize AND empathize!

Sounds like a good trip, overall.

Bob

Bob:

Thanks Joan, it was much longer than I intended but that's just the way it goes I guess. Try to stay awake :-)

I did the two car caravan once and that was mildly frustrating. I pretty much gave up on this one and said "See you there!"

I can't wait to read it!

I HATE that I have to go off to work...maybe if I accidentally drop my keys down the disposal?

wojaz3...as soon as I can!!!

Dawn

Thank you Bill - looking forward to reading the mindless ramblings of a lunatic as soon as time permits.

Sandy

Nice report & pictures as usual. I've bookmarked it for a future trip. ((b))

Dear Bill,

Funny and great photos. Brought back good memories. Thanks for the tip about taking a plane to the Aran Islands.

SusanEva

Bill, I started again this morning as I drank my tea, came back after lunch. Had to do some silly things like get ready for Thanksgiving and came back to it now and finished. I'll go over it again sometime and go slower. It was great! You are the first person on this forum(I think) that has spoken of Carlingford. I stayed for 5 nights and fell in love with the place. Had a room at Jordan's right on the waterfront and loved watching the goings on on the lough. Now I need to get to Westport and above. Again, many, many thanks, Joan

Hi folks. Thanks for the kind comments. We thought the Carlingford area would be a nice place to explore some more. We only had the one night and it was a long drive from where we were. I realized just yesterday that the Cooley Distillery must be somewhere nearby and I'd love to sneak in and get a wee sip of the Connemara 12 yo.

Bill

Worth waiting for! Great read, stunning (truely sharp and well formed/composed)photographs. Am half way through and am getting warnings from Geocities that the allowable download limit has been reached. They say that when demand for your site has died down it will be back up again. A sure sign of how many people on this forum must enjoy to read about wojazz3's trips to Ireland.

wonderful, thankyou,

Paul

PS I recommended Pembroke townhouse to you, glad it worked out. Its not that well known, but i think that the location is perfect for visitors to Dublin - not in the hustle and bustle of the city but near enough to walk to.

Okay, Bill - now you've done it! I swore I'd never travel again after our last trip a few weeks ago and now I'm looking at airfares to Ireland. I'm only partially through your report and absolutely love it.

Many thanks,

mom

Paul

Yes, you did reccommend Pembroke and thank you. I really appreciate the help. I'll be back there, I'm sure. It was a great place to stay. Very comfortable and quiet.

I tried to beat the band width issue on geocities by breaking it into six different geocities sites but even that wasn't enough. Because it's on the different pages, you should be able to get to other ones. They are arranged like this:

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ireland_2005_1/
then add the suffix after the backslash: doolin, inishmore, or cregg_castle1

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ireland_2005_2/
cregg_castle2, westport_1, westport_2

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ireland_2005_3/
westport_3, enniskillen, cruit_1

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ireland_2005_4/
cruit_2, cruit_3, cruit_4, cruit_5

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ireland_2005_5/
ballintoy_1, ballintoy_2

http://www.geocities.com/obeirne_ireland_2005_6/
carlingford, dublin1, dublin2, map

Confusing, I know, but it's free. I may have to resort to paying sometime. I guess I may have to go back to using a photo page for the pictures, but I sure like the way Photoshop automates the page building for the more pictures links. Basically, two clicks and I have an html page.

Thanks also for the kind words about the photography. I'm getting better, plus I'm learning more tricks on the camera.

Mom: I have that same problem every year. I'm making plans on the trip home. Just do it! You'll have a great time!

Bill

Bill, Fantastic report!!! How do you get your online photos so sharp? When I do mine they seem to have "halos" around lights and turn the clouds funny. Am I compressing them too much? On the other hand, you need to compress for website download times. Arrrrgh. Help!

Thanks Irish!

It kind of depends on how you are saving them. A few things happen when you reduce the photo size. I use photoshop instead of something like photoeditor. It does a much better job of resizing the pixels and uses something called bicubic reduction (too long to explain here). After that, I always use the unsharp mask, usually at about 50%. Regardless of what you do, resizing will cut the sharpness and the unsharp mask will help clean that up. I also save them at a slightly higher res, usually about 100 pixels/inch.

If you look at the pictures on the photo pages, their quality is less than those on the main pages. It appears that photoshop, when it automates the html page build, changes the resolution (probably to 72 pixels). There is probably a way to adjust that, I just didn't realize until after I had done them all and loaded them to the web. It was ok though, because it was soooo much easier to do with the automation.

Photoshop Elements is the less expensive version and does an awful lot. Another inexpensive, but very good quality photo editor is Paint Shop Pro. It may be a bit more user friendly. Just so you know, everything I know about the programs I learned from poking around and reading a few online tutorials so they aren't impossible to learn to use. I still have lots more to learn though.

Bill

Bill, Thanks so much! I will look into those programs. And thanks for the specifics. It is amazing what one can learn on the Internet! What did we ever do without it???