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cú chulainn mural
Last week I was lucky to get a tour of the new Google building in Dublin. I was blown away by the interior design. I don’t believe I’ve encountered another company that has invested so much thought and consideration into designing functional and fun environments for their employees. Each floor is themed in a particular way, and as a mythology nut and a fan of comics I was delighted with the Emain Macha floor. Here’s most of the full-wall mural in the games room/café on that floor: Here’s a close-up: I’ve more images from this on my Flickr account. That’s the Irish hero Cú Cuhlainn, no doubt doing his famous…
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old horror
Today I was selecting photographs to post to my Flickr stream from those I took at the Church of Saint Bartholomew in Sóller, Mallorca. One of them was the above photograph of the eponymous saint himself, Saint Bartholomew. As I was examining the photograph I realised there was another face hanging from the Saint’s waist. It was a WTF? moment. I hadn’t even seen it when I’d taken the original photograph. Thankfully, a small bit of Internet research cleared it up. Bartholomew is reported as being martyred in three different ways, all of them bloody. The most popular variety is being skinned alive. Hence, pictures and sculptures of the saint…
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gallery cats
Mallorcans love cats and dogs. They are well-treated and indulged, and are everywhere on the island, usually not far from their doting owners. I snapped this mother and daughter duo in a Gallery in the incredibly picturesque village of Sóller. I caught the rickety train, with its old-fashioned wooden carriages, into the mountains to explore the town for a couple of hours. The train trundled upwards past almond trees shedding their blossoms, trees dripping with lemons and oranges, and ancient olive groves. Sóller’s buildings are relatively unaltered, with terracotta roofs, wrought iron balconies and sturdy, polished wooden doors. Many of its winding, narrow streets – loomed over by serrated mountains…
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Mise en abyme
This is a set of Matryoshka dolls, or Russian nesting dolls, I bought recently at the craft fair in Galway (they are from Minsk). I’ve always wanted at least one set, because there is something about the self-similarity aspect of the dolls that appeal to me a great deal. I was introduced to the concept of fractals by Martin, quite soon after we met. Martin was an engineering student at the time, and loved the elegance of fractal mathematics and the Mandelbrot set in particular. When I saw the recursive patterns printed as images it immediately reminded me of the artwork by M.C. Escher. When I was a kid a…
