Venturing beyond Dublin, we visited Kilkenny Castle. Though an imposing manor from the outside…
…The rooms and passages inside were bright and decorated for the season.
Stepping to a window, the scale of the grounds become apparent.
Center Church with Fireworks
The incongruity of a brick church and centuries-old burial ground amidst modern urban architecture perhaps aligns with posting summer pictures in early January. Hopefully both aspects brighten the New Year!
Reflecting Roads Riding Off Into the Sunset
Welcoming in 2024 with a ride off into the sunset for 2023. A massive rainstorm in the Coachella Valley turned the roads into pools that reflected the last hints of sunset to form a golden path.
Palms to Pines Panorama
Definitely click through to Flickr for the full-resolution detail on this panorama covering the approach of the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway into Palm Springs.
Fireworks Where the Park Meets the City
Urban parks take my favorite gradient between nature and cityscape and turn it into a Heaviside function, stepping instantly from one to the other.
Christmas After Rain in the Desert
Days of rain covered Coachella Valley in mud, but the clouds broke in time for a Christmas morning hike at the La Quinta Cove trailhead. Out in the misty distance is the Salton Sea.
Small Homes
Down every Dublin alley is another fascinating vignette. These tiny structures, differentiated from their neighbors by their paint, are yet another example.
Back in the Air
After an unfortunate run-in with a tree on a windy day, my drone is repaired and back in the air. A big, dramatic sunset scene of Trinity College is the perfect capstone for may last day at work this semester. The repaired chapel seemed a fitting parallel to the repaired quadcopter.
Infosys Hub
I’m sure it’s perfectly innocent, but having an octagonal tower with a vague-yet-tech-themed name glowing atop it shouts “sinister cyberpunk corporation.”
Old Amidst New
At once (post)modern and ancient, Dublin is a city with many sides; I feel this image captures both. Amidst a see of mid-rise modern construction, this older building looks particularly decrepit with the enormous foliage astride it.
Salton Skies
Bombay Beach‘s beach keeps expanding as the Salton Sea dries back to where it was at the start of the twentieth century, making for an enormous span to match the enormous arc of sky above.
Thankful for Sundae
Sundae was the horse that brought Piper back to riding. He’s now semi-retired at the Kent School, but Piper still gets to visit and ride around the eventing fields every so often. They make quite the pair!
Gates Quad
On an otherwise rectilinear campus, the gentile bubble-arcs of Trinity College’s Gates Quad provide a relaxing geometry that mirrors the true uses of a quad in student life.
The New Bombay Beach
Like a full-time Burning Man, Bombay Beach shifted from its origins as a sort of “California Riviera” in the 1950s to something with more the feel of an artists’ colony. The town’s little grid of streets amid the emptiness of the desert valley brings to mind open-world video game maps, but the eclectic nature of the beach itself makes reality (as usual) far more interesting.
Dublin Barber
The barbershop open at the mouth of a long street of shuttered, graffitied shops almost looks like a dressed set for a film; the visual interplay between the figure in the foreground and the distant figure at the end of the alley raises a question about their past or future interaction that I can’t answer.
Decaseconds 