For those who aren’t aware back in March I restarted barrysomers.com as a photoblog website, please visit it in all its glory and feel free to leave comments 
After using my new safety razor for awhile I’ve found that the original badger brush I bought is pretty poor and also I could do with better shaving cream so I’ve bought a few items which include pre-shave gel, shaving cream, blades and a much better quality brush.
After two days of usage I have to say the brush was well worth it, it holds water much better then the previous cheap brush I bought as such it creates and hydrates the lather much quicker and better too.
For anyone currently looking at buying a shaving brush I can’t stress enough that it is well worth investing in a good quality brush don’t opt for a cheap budget brush.
I’d imagine this selection which I bought from shaving-shack.com should last me a long long time
For those who know me you’ll know that I used to cycle to work everyday before I moved house, in fact I used to average about 12-16knm a day which I sadly miss now that I have to drive to work. 
Anyway back at the beginning of December I brought my Trek 7.1 FX in from the yard to give it a clean and service as I thought it was time I got back in the saddle, I started by taking off the wheels and when I attempted to remove the back wheel the frame came away with it. 
At this stage I’m pretty pissed off as the frame is broken but I’m not too worried as the frame as a lifetime warranty so I get on to the bike shop where I bought it back in October 2006 and they agree to send it back to Trek, of course its December so I’m not worried about it be sorted out fast due to the Christmas rush.
Anyway earlier this week I gave the bike shop a call and much to my surprise and delight it turns out Trek decided they’d replace my old bike with a new one and better still the bike shop wouldn’t charge me for building it.
Here it is in all its glory!!
All in all I’m very happy with both Trek and Altitude Bike shop in Waterford who did a brilliant job at customer service.
So I posted awhile back about switching from a Gillette Fusion to a Safety Razor namely a Merkur 570 Chrome “Progress”, so after a week of use and some initial problems I have to say I’m very impressed with it.
At first I started off using the shaving soap I bought with the razor but this dried out my skin like crazy and didn’t lather very well so I ended up cutting myself about 5-6 times which was fun, I’ve since switched back to my normal King Of Shaves shaving gel and all is well. Although I’m going to try some different brands as suggested on some websites.
The shave is far closer then my old Fusion (even when compared with the first shave with a new fusion blade), also it takes about the same amount of time to shave.
Overall I’m happy with the switch over
I think this sums things up nicely!
So for years I’ve been using the standard Gillette razors such as Mach3 and more recently the Gillette Fusion, their fine and all but I still suffer from razor burn and skin irritation due to the way that Mach3′s and Fusions work.
Basically these cassettes loaded razors use whats referred to as hysterisis, basically the razor pulls the hair out and hacks it off. This is fine and all but it also irritates the skin a fair bit. In addition if you lather up your skin properly your razor should not need to pull out your hair.
So yesterday I took the plunge and bought myself my first Safety Razor a Merkur 570 Chrome “Progress” from theshaving-shack.cm, initially its kinda expensive but when you compare that a single blade for a Gillette Fusion costs about 3.50e and a single blade for a Safety Razor costs 50e and does a better job its worth it.
There is however an important thing to remember, using a Safety Razor is more of “art” then using a normal bog standard razer it is worth watching videos by the Shave Tutor on youtube to get an idea of whats involved.
However if the media were to be believed you’d think that I’m stepping back in time to using a device that is inferior just because it doesn’t come with a “shaving system” or some sort and cost a fortune to use. More and more people are getting pissed off with these “systems” and there is a growing numbers of people on the internet switching to safety razors due to the reasons outlined above.
The third update on my plan to reduce our household waste costs and to improve on the amount of material we recycle, so far the layout is as follows:
- Plastic covered box for cans & glass
- Two 80ltr bins for recyclable material (paper, plastic etc)
- One 90ltr bin to stockpile about 4-5 weeks of non-recycle material
- One greencone for food stuffs
So how it works is about once a month I need to do a run to empty the two 80ltr bins and about once every 4-5 weeks I need to empty the 90ltr non-recyle bin which doesn’t tend to smell because all foodstuff that cause the smells goes into my greencone
Overall this costs me €6 to dispose of all my rubbish which is a good saving over the €25 monthly fee I’d have to pay to a waste pickup company.
So far so good and I’m impressed with how the system works so far, the initial outset for implementing my green waste plan were kinda high though:
- €145.00 for greencone
- €20 for 80ltr bin
- €20 for 90ltr bin
- €20 for plastic box
Total: €205
When compared to what I’d have to pay for a monthly pickup for the same material (12 x €25) €300, so after the first 12 months I’ll really feel the savings
I hope I’ve helped to inspire others to try this as well.
I recently went on a walk on one of the Trail Kilkenny walks which goes up and around Kilmacoiliver Hill, Tullahought.
Took me about 70min or so and was pretty enjoyable with very nice views and even included a lovely 5,000 year old stone circle.
I’d have to recommend it to all, I was thinking some light painting shots on the stone circle could be interesting in future…although wouldn’t be fun getting to it in the dark
So during the weekend (18-19th Oct) I stayed in Charleville Castle in Co Offaly, apparently its the most haunted castle in Ireland but have to say I didn’t notice anything strange,
The event was arranged as part of the Photo forum on boards.ie and I have to say it was great craic, haven’t got time to process all the shots yet but I’ll be uploading them to my flickr set as time goes by.
So I’ve been with Meteor for about two years now but recently got hold of a 2G iPhone but up until now Meteor on Pay As You Go had no data bundles and each kB was charged at 2c, so just to load the front page of boards.ie could cost 4 euro!!
So today I noticed Meteor PAYG have introduced a 50MB data bundle for 99c a day which they only charge once you go over the first 2kB, not bad!
Not the best bargain in the world but it makes my iPhone usable on edge now