2011 has been an absolutely unforgettable year for me for many, many reasons. Below, I’m going to list the major events that happened during the year. These are my “Best Bits”.
It was my first year as a music photographer for GoldenPlec.com
Photoshoot with Clare Singleton
Covered DkIT’s Rag Week
Mundy @ DkIT’s Rag Week
The Rubberbandits @ DkIT’s Rag Week
Two Door Cinema Club @ Olympia Theatre
Adebisi Shank @ The Spirit Store
My beautiful Sister got married
Jessie J @ The Academy
Through Dundalk IT, I earned an internship over at the Irish Fair in Minnesota, USA and I made a video while I helped out at the Fair.
Royseven @ The Olympia Theatre
Kaiser Chiefs @ The Olympia Theatre
This gig is also where I got my break for AU Magazine. AU’s photographer could not make it to the Kaiser Chiefs and the editor, Chris Jones, liked my photos and asked if he could use them for the article. He liked them that much, I was asked if I’d like to start shooting for AU. Of course I said yes! 
Duke Special @ The Spirit Store
Spies @ Hard Working Class Heroes
Got to shoot the amazing HWCH festival in Dublin where not only did I get to capture some of the amazing talent coming out of Ireland, but listen to and be part of the great vibe around Dublin city at the same time!
I graduated after 4 fantastic years at Dundalk IT with a BA (Honours) in Communications in Creative Multimedia. They were some of the best fews years of my life and it’s with some trepidation that I leave and enter the next chapter of my life. Excited about what awaits though!
Foster the People @ The Olympia Theatre
Foster the People @ The Olympia Theatre
The Coronas @ The Olympia Theatre
Friendly Fires @ The Olympia Theatre
Ocean Colour Scene @ The Olympia Theatre
A special thanks to Aidan Cuffe (editor over at GoldenPlec) who took a bit of a leap of faith with me to being with and my good friend Ros Madigan who set it up in the first place. Not only did this enable me to shoot massive shows, but it’s done wonders for me and given me a great deal of confidence. Thank you!
And thank you to my friends and lecturers from college, friends from work and my family for the support and great memories you’ve give me over the year.
So yeah, it’s fair to say that I’ve been a pretty busy chap over the past 12 months! I simply can’t wait to do bigger and better things next year and if 2011 is anything to go by, I’ve a lot to look forward to!
I took these photos back in October during a fancy dress Halloween Ball.
For this shoot, the client wanted photos that could be attached to a press release to promote the play that the DkIT Performing Arts Group are doing this year. At this stage, they didn’t have costumes and a set and all that good stuff but I think that most of the photos came out really well and could be used with the press release. The client is happy with them and I think the press releases are going out shortly and I can’t wait to see them being used!
Ellen Eve is a singer from Limerick who currently studies Music in Dundalk IT.
She asked me to do a photoshoot with her so she can use the photos to promote herself online and for future gigs.
I’m very happy with the outcome and she has told me that she’s delighted with them aswell.
Fourth event in DkIT’s Rag Week; The Rubberbandits!
First event in DkIT’s Rag Week; Paintballing!
I did a photoshoot with the Dundalk based band “Boy Lights Fire” recently. They were after some simple enough shots that they could stick on their mySpace and whatever else tickled their fancy.
View images on Pix.ie if you’d prefer.
More photos below the fold
A short piece that myself (@sean_smyth) and Patrick (@NeverMonkey) worked on for college.
We had a Group Project in college to combine a children’s toy with a keyboard and to make a game or some multimedia piece from it.It was my job to do the electronics and wiring for it and below is an account of my ordeal 
The progress blog can be found at httP://www.seabasshunterproject.wordpress.com
The Toy
The toy is a fishing rod game and it was my job to combine this with a small printed circuit from a keyboard. The following is the process I underwent and I was proud to achieve a working final product.
So, what was inside?
Fist thing was first, I had to have a look at what was inside and see what I could do with what was there. I opened the toy up to find:
The Modifying
Ideally, I would like to be able to fit everything needed into the space that I already had. I simply didn’t like the idea of having to have an external compartment somewhere on the toy to store the keyboard’s circuit and wiring. So I stripped out the LCD screen, it’s circuit and the wiring. This surprisingly didn’t leave as much room as I thought so I had to make even more.
This is the back plate of the screen part of the toy. I drilled and cut out the battery compartment (as seen in the first image) as it wasn’t going to be needed anymore. The new toy will be USB powered and leaving the battery compartment would have just been a waste of valuable space.
While I had the drill out, I drilled a hole at the bottom of the handle so that the USB wire would be able to run out it.
Seeing as the screen was no longer being used to display anything, I covered it in black tape just to clean it up and so it would look neater from the outside. The LCD screen itself is only about 1cm thick so I decided to leave it as it would look better than anything I could replicate.
The Initial Wiring
Now to the hard part. 
The keyboard’s circuit has two sets of pins. There are 12 pins on either side and a combination of at least one from either side *may* result in a character output from the keyboard. We checked this by touching pins from either sid with the same piece of wire. This completed the circuit.
Here’s a list that we made that shows what pins corrisond with a letter or number.
( Thanks to Lillian for the lovely hand modeling 
)
We chose only to do letters and numbers because we didn’t want to run into any problems later when it came to programming it later.
I glued the keyboard ciruit into the LCD compartment. This would make the circuit more secure and less prone to moving as I worked on it.
I had to double check these combinations again just to make sure. After I did this I began temporarily holding down the wires with some tape. This allowed me to get a better understanding of how many wires were needed and just how small and fidly it all is.
Now to hold down these wires. There was a little aluminium stip that came with the keyboard that I could use to hold down the wires with. I covered it in tape to insulated it as to not interfere with all the other wires.
However, when I went to screw the plate down, the center would tighten, but the edges rose and no longer held down the wires. It bent so I needed something tougher…….My solution? A Spoon of course!
As strage as it sounds, it worked! Of course, I cut the actual spoon part off and used the handle part. Again, I taped it so it wouldn’t interfere with the other wires but it did the job. I then tried to glue the wires in place as best as I could just to secure them.
Finishing The Wiring
So, I needed to connect the jystick that was already there to the keyboard somehow. I used 4 micro switches which would be pushed when the joystick moved up, down, left or right respectively.
I judged where the micro switches should go by placing them where the old switched used to be underneath the joystick. I covered the ciruit with tape to insulate and I could still see where the switches should go.
And the micro switches all wired up.
I also had to connect up the 2 switches that we were going to use from the bottom half of the toy. We were going to use the reel and theline switch. This wasn’t too hard to do theoretically but the wire kept breaking so it took a fair few tries just to get it the way I wanted.
Finishing Up
Just a last few things to do and that’s it!
I then ran the USB wire out the bottom put the other half on the main body of the fishing Rod.
Here’s a shot of some of the wiring I had to endure.
I closed over the LCD compartment careful not to damage the wiring and slid this onto the Main Body of the Fishing Rod.
I then tested it one final time just to make sure it worked and thankfully it did.
It’s safe to say that I spent over 20 hours on this project, although it may come across differently in this post. The wires never worked first time so it was a matter of constantly tweaking it until it worked. I’m just thankful that this ordeal is over me
Thanks,
Silent Love is a short produced by “Lads and Lassies”, a group of Creative Multimedia students studying at DkIT. The film parodies the silent movie era and coincidentally aims to be funny. I’ve been told that this has been achieved so lemme know what you think.
Oh, I directed and edited it by the way!
