Remembering Fintan

Fintan Darragh was one of my online friends and he died recently. This post is a memorial to him and a way for me to say goodbye.I hope it gives his friends and family more insight into who he was.

I thought it more appropriate to post this here than at my blog because Fintan was part of 2 Lazy 2 Blog.

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I "met" Fintan in 2005 when I came across a blog of his called The Record Card. I found the blog interesting and loved Fin's sense of humour. Fintan was quite the blogger and always had several blogs on the go. The Record Card was a good blog but Fintan really made his mark with Dech. Fin promoted the blog and it "sold itself" as people found the posts useful and interesting.

Fintan was an active member of 2 Lazy 2 Blog. Like the other members he found it a fun blog to read and to post to. He took part in the contests and won first place in the Logo Contest. He also made a habit of visiting the blogs of other members and commenting on posts. Fin understood how important "community" was to a blog like this and we all appreciated his efforts.

Fintan was a great photographer and he was quite active at Flickr. He took many photographs and won awards for some of them.

His photo "Chill Out Buster" was published in JPG Magazine. At Flickr the photo has had 15,020 views, has been commented on 147 times. At the moment 532 people call the photo a favourite. The photo says a lot about Fintan. He was doing something he loved with a friend (Buster) and doing it in a place he liked. To top it off he was recognized for the effort.

Besides Photography and Blogging Fintan enjoyed Computers. He was an avid web designer and also did programming. He had a design company called Market West and an educational site called Buster Tests. I followed both sites and provided feedback when Fintan asked for it. I used "My Buster Tests" to create various surveys and was waiting for Surveyar.

I began to lose touch with Fintan as he got busier at university and we both blogged less. I managed to check his Flickr site and Dech every so often and sometimes he would comment on one of my blogs. Sometimes we could chat for a bit on MSN and it would end with me saying something like "pet Buster for me". Fin would laugh (or at least smiley) at that.

Fintan could make me laugh. One time he was testing a voicemail system and he sent me a silly nonsense message. It made my day and is one of the reasons I liked the guy.

When I found out about Fintan I was quite sad. He had so much potential and had a positive effect on many people. Fintan died in his sleep on May 6th. He was 21.

Goodbye Fintan.