Today we left Dublin and we headed to Trim Castle for a tour. 

Then, we headed to  SARC (Sonic Arts Research Center) Sonic Lab in Belfast and we were given a tour and test drive of the sound equipment there. They have about 35 speakers around, above and below, the floor. It made it difficult to tell where the sound was coming from, but it sounded amazing from the samples they played.

After the Lab tour, we were able to get dinner in Belfast at a Pub. Some of us went to Elm’s and we watched the first half of the Lancaster rugby game. After a short bus trip, we made it to our hostel in the small town of Ballintoy. I leave you with a few photos of from the town tonight.

So, the Fiscal Stability Treaty has been put up for a vote to the citizens of Ireland. I’ve done a bit of research about the vote and a professor at Trinity said it was a “no brainer” (for yes). So what is it? The treaty ensures that, by law, the national deficit would be lower than %0.5 of GDP. Currently, it can not be lower than 3.0% of GDP. The EU Central Bank feels that this law is necessary to keep the banks from defaulting. Mr. Asmussen (Executive Director of the ECB) has recently said that Ireland is on track to doing much better by next year if the referendum passes and the program goes as planned.

For the average citizen, this will mean a raise in taxes. Either way I will post on the outcome of this, as I will still be in Ireland during the vote.

Just a photo blog for today. I will update this with more information when I can.

Pouring our “perfect pint”

Water fall in the Guinness Storehouse

We’ve Landed! It’s exciting to be in Dublin. After we checked in to where we were staying, we went on our scavenger hunt.  We had to find landmarks all around the city. The first place we saw was the Molly Malone statue.

After we met Molly, we headed over to Trinity college and checked out some of the buildings. The college has been around since 1592 but, we are heading there tomorrow so more on the college in my next post.

There were a few odd things on our scavenger hunt; for example we ran into the “Why go Bald” sign.

More posts to follow. Lack of content is due to lack of sleep. Up next for topics is the vote coming up soon. I will be discussing the issues for both sides, from the perspective of an outsider.

We are well on our way to Dublin. We are taking what most people refer to as the “red eye” and getting in to Dublin on Tuesday morning.  We are staying at a Hostel in Dublin. Rest assured if you’d like more information, I will be filling in and reviewing all of my posts for extra information, by the time we leave.

I feel like I have a lot of creative freedom with this blog. I’m sure once we actually get in to Dublin the blog will take shape. It could be more geared toward my first hand accounts, or discuss some of the larger issues of Ireland faces with economic   issues.  I will also attempting to upload photos from the trip as often as I can,

In case I didn’t explain in my last post, I am traveling to Ireland with the UW-Whitewater Business and communication departments. We have about 30 of us, excited to cover a large part of Ireland in the matter of a few weeks.  We will be staying in large and small hostels across the country. I have taken it upon myself for to preserve my experiences and share them with you right here on my blog.

Irish Population, 1890 census

So where did all the Irish settle? If you take a look at this map, it is clear that many chose to stay close near where they landed on the Atlantic coast. However many settled near Chicago, and plenty made there way to the Pacific coast for the 1849 Gold Rush. Many Irish fought in the  American civil war; a war many knew little about, about 150,000 Irish natives fought. This is considered a turning point, for  the Irish in America. Many proved themselves around this time and the numbers show. Over 260 million US dollars was sent back to Ireland, mostly to fund more emigration. Many family member still in ireland, would say write back to family in America, displeased with receiving pictures of family when they really wanted to see pictures of presidents.

For any new group, entering America, there was still a fair share of  discrimination. There were signs such as the one below that made sure that no Irishmen need apply. For  the irish at the time, it became an uplifting song.

Soon the Irish transformed the Catholic Church. It was very small before Irish influence and by the  early 1900’s most leaders were Irish.

By 1920, in America the Irish held, 35% white collar jobs, 50% skilled labor, and 15% unskilled. While those numbers may not seen high but when you compare that to other populations in America at that time, They were very similar. What this meant for the Irish, was that they holding the sames jobs and living in the same places that other immigrant groups. Most of those jobs were held by the first generation born in America.

Diaspora dī-ˈas-p(ə-)rə: “the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland.”

So what caused the great scattering of the Irish people in from the 1840′s to the early 1900′s? It was more than the Great Potato Famine, or  potato blight, it also was because British discrimination  and religious oppression. When you look at the numbers, between 1845 and 1860 two million people left  and one million died, many of those deaths were never marked graves.) The population was reduced by 1/3 in 15 years. It changed the entire landscape of Ireland.

Potato Blight

Between 1845 and 1852 the potato disease “potato blight” destroyed the crop and left many farmers without large harvests. The High dependence on potatoes led to starvation and  one million deaths over fifteen years.

British discrimination

Ireland became apart of United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1801 and it wasn’t until 1922 that  the southern part of Ireland (the republic of Ireland, while Northern Ireland remains) became Independent again. During that time, Land Acts, redistributed the land to landlords  and it caused civil unrest about 500,000 people were evicted under this policy Furthermore religious oppression that discriminated  against Roman Catholics. For example, Catholics could not inheriting Protestant land. By 1829 Catholics got a break with new legislature did not restrict Catholics from practicing.

Using a modern DSLR, you can get very sharp photos. Most cameras these days have sensors capable of producing 10 or more megapixels (thats millions of pixels) in each photo. If you wanted  a more detailed photo, you would either need to buy a camera that has a sensor with more pixels or a much cheaper option would be to take more than one photo and merge the photos together into one photo using photoshop. That is exactly what I did last week on the UW-Whitewater campus. The above photo is comprised of 8 photos at 15mm which allows for more than 180 degrees of view to be shown in one photo. In fact, the photo is  190 megapixels.

I took a another photo like the one above, however I used my 35mm prime lens so there would not be extreme barrel distortion. What I created from those 20 photos was a 245 megapixel photo and the only place for a photo that is larger than flickr can handle is gigapan. I managed to get all of the academic buildings in the photo, so click through to my gigapan and zoom in see if you spot something interesting!

I’ve been wanting to do this photo project for a while now. Subway Restaurants have more locations than McDonald’s. They are cheaper to franchise because fewer expenses. For example McDonald requires having a deep fryer and large grills, which inflates the start up costs to be much higher than Subway. In fact the only ingredients prepared fresh in a subway include, tomatoes, onions and baking (frozen) bread.

The real interest in this project is how different each and every location is, however each still can serve me the same sandwich where ever I could be. It’s not that Subway makes the best sandwich in America it just makes the most.

Here is the first Subway on my my photo project.  It is located in Whitewater, Wisconsin