Remember Crasher Squirrel? – the cheeky little rodent who popped up to say ‘hi’ in a Canadian couple’s holiday snap?

Well now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome… Crasher Seal!

What a happy looking little fella! … As The Huffington Post says… imagine the penguins’ surprise when they went to pick up their pictures!

I’d been meaning to blog more recently… had plenty to say… plenty going on. It’s been suggested to me, however, that I don’t go talking online (facebook particularly… here too) specifically about the incident a week ago which led to me having a black eye over the time since then – and it’s been suggested for all the right reasons.

I am going to follow that advice to some degree and not go into any real detail about it. Of course, the minute details of the incident itself aren’t for public consumption as they’re quite personal and it’s not in anyone’s interest really that they be divulged publically. All that needs to be said is that I had a disagreement with someone, he expressed himself physically… and I didn’t get the chance to respond in kind.

Oh… and that I’m fine now!

(Pictures from Malahide Estuary set by catb on flickr)

This is a 20 metre bridge section of the viaduct across Malahide estuary – part of the rail line between Malahide and Donabate which is on the Dublin-Belfast line. It collapsed yesterday evening at around 6.20pm, meaning that we are now left without a train service here in Donabate.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour took off successfully at 6.03pm US Eastern Time this evening. I watched it taking off live on Sky News (and BBC News 24) and within 20 minutes it was passing over Ireland. Had the alarm not been set in the house already and people gone to bed, I’d have been out with my camera, trying to get some pictures or footage of my own. By all accounts (on twitter), I’ve missed out by not seeing it with my own eyes.

Jamie Lawrence (“hopeless” on twitter) posted this picture of the shuttle passing over Cork to twitpic:

and here’s another snap of it, which appears on Gerard Cunningham’s site (found via Robert Dougan):

Since my trip to Zakynthos last month (which was originally supposed to be as a summer of work but just ended up as a pretty awesome 2 week holiday), I’ve been meaning to upload a few of the nice photos I took … but just haven’t gotten around to it,.. until now.

I would have taken a lot more photos (and videos) but I felt that a lot of the whole experience was quite private & personal and was best kept in my head as a memory. I was never going to put all of the photos online anyway

… so… eh… yeah! – here’s a few to check out: