Edinburgh City Panorama

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: June 20th, 2011 | 0 Comments

The last time i was over in Edinburgh i took the opportunity to grab a few pictures when walking about. I ended up on a small mountain that had a great view of the city, the only camera which i took with me on the trip was my iPhone! I knew the iPhone camera was great and would do the job of taking a panorama. I took about 10 individual photographs using the HDR function on the iPhone, it gives the image a slightly better colour by adjusting the brightness levels. Once i got home from Edinburgh i imported all the images off my phone and into Photoshop and then used a feature called Photomerge. Photomerge will analyse all the photos and detect where they should join up. The end result will be a very jagged edged picture, all you have to do is crop the main part of the image and you have your panorama! Below is a small version of the Edinburgh City panorama, you can either click the image or the link below for a larger version.

View larger version.

back to Scotland again

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: June 9th, 2011 | 0 Comments

First off, apologies for the lack of posts lately, i have no excuse as to why i have not been updating this blog over the last few weeks, but i am hoping to get a bit more time to update it more frequently over the next few weeks. To kick things off i am just going to throw up a quick post. Last weekend i went away on a short trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. I have been there before, this time i was going over to help my friend with some luggage who is moving to Edinburgh. Instead of taking the plane as i would usually, this time it was the ferry. The reason is that since we had a few bags to carry over, they would be too heavy and cost too much to take on a plane, also tickets for a ferry are remarkably cheap compared to a flight. The main difference between the ferry and a plane is that the boat journey in total takes about 10 hours, that includes leaving from my house, driving to Belfast, taking the ferry over to Scotland and then taking a 4 hour bus trip to Edinburgh city as opposed to about a 40 minute flight. I was actually looking forward to taking the ferry, i think the last time i was on a ferry was when i was 8! Up until i was 8 i always travelled by boats, but then planes became the norm each year from then on. It was interesting being back on the boat, its great that you have the freedom of walking around and you have a lot more leg room, a lot more! The ferry takes 3 hours to cross the sea, during those 3 hours, me and my friends just had some breakfast, watched a film in the cinema (the film was Tron Legacy),  and then just went out on deck and walked about. We arrived in Edinburgh city just after lunchtime on Sunday after having a pretty epic 1 and a half hour chess game on the bus. Originally we were due to come back the next day, Monday, but managed to get our tickets changed to Tuesday which gave us a bit more time to enjoy Edinburgh.

A few things we got up to included watching a film, going to a Tapas restaurant which had great food, entering a table quiz where the word appalling would probably be an understatement as to how we done :D but fun none the less and we also went up a sort of mountain, not sure what it was called but gave a great overview of the City. I hope to have a panoramic view up soon, i have lots of photos i took which i hope i can turn into a panoramic view.

The trip home was not as bad as going over i think, the reason was that i had only 1 hour of sleep before going over and on the way back i had a proper sleep so i was not tired in any way once i got home. I really enjoyed the trip and look forward to the next time i head over. Here a some pics of the trip and once i get the panoramic done i might have a few more to throw up!

 

holidays coming up soon

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: July 22nd, 2010 | 0 Comments

Today I went back to work after not having to work for the past 7 days! It was great having this last week off, usually I do not get that much time off but since I requested last weekend off I ended up having a full week between when I last worked and today. Anyway, this week I have only to work 3 days and then I am officially on my 2 week summer holidays from work! It is always great having time off and I want to plan a few things to do over these next few weeks. I am not exactly sure yet as to what I want to do, but there is one thing I know I want to do which is go away to Edinburgh for a few days. It would be nice to get away out of the country for a while and this will probably be the only chance I get to go away for the rest of the year. Last year I went to Edinburgh for a friend of mine's 21st birthday and it was brilliant. Edinburgh is a lovely place and last year when I went over there was a big heat wave which made the trip even better. This year if I do get to go over, a few of my friends will be over there already and I should have some sort of accommodation sorted out. During the month of August there is a lot of festivals on, so if I do go I would like to go within the first week of August. So until I go on that trip I will have to come up with a few more things that I can do here in Ireland. Maybe go to the Giants Causeway, I have never been there, and it is supposed to be a good day out, even though the drive is very long!