DjMagra’s stuff ‘n’ stuff

…just being quiet for once in my life!

This was a bit of fun taken from IRC tonight:

pbm> ah, it’s thanksigiving today!
pbm> what do they exactly thank for? and who?
pron> pbm: their ancestors for getting ‘em out of Europe
pron> we should really be the ones celebrating it !!

Ever wonder what song was Number One the day you were born? I’ve always known what was No1 when I was born in the UK - Come on Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners (choon!), but I never knew Eye of the Tiger by Survivor was the number one in the States at the time. All of this can be found on thisdayinmusic.com

Michael Jackson has launched a website, which will be acting as his official communications channel throughout his trial on Child Sex Abuse. Already there’s a very confident statement up there from him refuting the allegations in their entirety.

Finally got around to playing with iTunes properly this weekend, and getting all my music library transferred over to the new disk on my laptop, and thus imported into iTunes, and I have to say that so-far I’m mightily impressed. Ok, I know I didn’t have the greatest start with iTunes (it gracefully wiped all the music off my iPod, but now I’m happy. It makes organising my tunes, playlists and converting CD’s to MP3 so easy, and the fact that it automagically creates a playlist with your top 25 played tunes is really cool. Even better though, is the fact that it arranged all the tunes on my hard disk into well laid-out folders sorted by artist name! Now, time to finally get everything sorted exactly as I want it

Mickey Mouse is 75 today….happy birthday!

Once again, Mr. O’Leary has done it….he’s stumped all the competition and come up with a brilliant offer! Rather than give away free flights, he’s now paying people to fly with him…I kid you not, here’s the latest press release from the Ryanair website:

Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 low fares airline, today (17th Nov. 03) announced a world’s first for air travel, with an offer to PAY PASSENGERS £1.00 TO TRAVEL.

So, it’s off to book yet more flights methinks and continue to live the jet-set lifestyle life I’ve been leading of late!

I spent the weekend in London with Cella…had a great time, walked the legs off ourselves and spent a fortune, but it was all good! We arrived Friday evening, got to the hotel, lovely spot, out at Canary Wharf with a fabalous view overlooking the docklands and the Millennium Dome. As a fascinating aside, I read that the dome costs £100,000 a week just to keep it sitting there doing nothing!!

We went out Friday night to a fabalous bar / club around Picadilly called Zoo, really cool bar upstairs with cheesy tunes the whole night, and then a huge thumping club below it that we discovered far too late into the evening. The thing that struck us was, despite the size of the place, the number of people and the diversity of culture was how friendly everyone was. I know I’ve been on a rant about how horrible a place Dublin (Ireland!?!) is to live of late, but to find this in London was truly amazing. Cella pointed out that even when you bump into someone on the street (and that happens every 2 seconds!) that people apologise to you. Do that in Dublin and you’ll be thrown such an almighty glare as the person wanders down the street uttering obseneties in your general direction.

Saturday we heading in towards the London Eye (didn’t get into it due to the crowds) and wandered around lots of the city, before heading back to the hotel for a break and then out for dinner and more walking. Yesterday we went to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewls….pretty amazing I must say!

So, all in all, it was a great weekend, striking things were a) the amount of people; b) how friendly everyone was; c) how hard it was to get into any clubs (they all have guest-lists); d) how cheap it was, even with the ~30% hit in the exchange rate it’s still cheaper than Dublin!!; and e) the lack of bins throughout the city.

London’s also in the news quite a bit of late due to the heightened terrorist alert (it’s now the top terrorist threat in Europe) and of course the visit of George Bush tomorrow. Security was huge all weekend, especially when they went to their second highest terror alert, with constant helicpoter activity overhead, armed police and army wandering the streets and constant passing of police cars and bikes at high speed…you’d think it would make you feel safer…but it really doesn’t!

A severe weather warning has been issued by Met Éireann for this afternoon and tonight.
The meteorological service is forecasting stormy conditions across much of the country by this afternoon, extending northwards to remaining areas tonight.

Winds of up to 80 miles per hour are predicted in some areas along with heavy rain and coastal flooding.

A spokeswoman for Met Éireann told ireland.com a storm depression was currently situated off the south west of Ireland.

She said strong winds and heavy rain can be expected in the southern counties today.

However later this afternoon and tonight south easterly winds will eventually give way to westerly winds with storms forecast for the north east including Dublin.

She said the storm surge would bring high seas, 7-8 metres in some places, and many areas can expect flooding.

Warnings have been issued to local authorities on the risk of structural damage. Motorists have been warned of the dangers of fallen trees and other debris.

A number of Irish Ferries sailings may be cancelled.

The poor weather conditions and storms are forecast to abate later on Friday.

Cool, I’ve just realised that if you google for my name, it comes up with my CV as the first hit, I suppose this is the ideal scenario, and I’m definately well chuffed with it! And in case your wondering why I was googling for myself, it was as a result of reading the “Whats hot and what’s not” section to the Irish Times Magazine….I sweat!