DjMagra’s stuff ‘n’ stuff

If you haven’t been watching the International Space Station (ISS) passing over Ireland during the past few nights, then why not!! The ISS is visible for the next few nights passing overhead, and you really should get out and see it. Times of sightings (for Dublin, but pretty much the same nationwide) are available here.

Also rather cool, and mindblowing is to track the ISS as it orbits the globe via realtime tracking. Kinda mind boggling to see it pass over the east coast of the US, and be flying over your head 15 minutes later!!

So, the bucket collection at the Bellewstown Races turned out to be a little better than I had expected. Over the two days I managed to raise about EUR 650, which is pretty cool. EUR 450 of that came on the second evening of the meet, when more people turned up than did on the first.

A big thank you to Morgan and Liam who helped out with the second nights collection, and of course everyone else who volunteered services and those who contributed.

Plans are to try and get a permit from the Gardai to do the same sort of collection at the Laytown Races on Sept 5th (yikes, next Tuesday, better get cracking!).

Don’t forget of course, that if you want to make a donation toward the Niall Mellon Township Challenge, you can do so by clicking on the link below. If you want to find out more about my involvement with the challenge, have a read of this.

I’m looking for somewhere reliable and cheap to buy ink for my HP Photosmart 8150 inkjet printer. I want the official HP stuff, no knock-off or refills. Can anyone suggest where I should go looking?

Fired up the laptop this morning, loaded up iTunes ready to play my Saturday morning playlist…and it was empty. Not just the playlist, but, iTunes itself had managed to loose my entire music library. Queue panic and a thumping heart as I quickly went looking into my music folder to see if it was just the library that had messed up, or if my music files had somehow managed to disappear themselves.

Thankfully, the music files were still there, so, obviously it was just a problem with the library. Off to the iTunes folder with me to see where my library was, and no sign, other than an 11k file with no information that had just been created. Also, no sign of a backup folder anywhere. I also haven’t backed up my HD in a few weeks (I know, I know!), so anything I had would have been old and out of date.

BUT, I did spot two tmp files there, which I though was promising. Renamed these as the iTunes music library files, reloaded iTunes, and bang, panic over, and back to music happiness!

Barry and I are both ready to buy our new macs, and were planning on ordering next week. He’s going for a MacBook, and I’m going for a 20″ iMac. News was that Apple were not going to be introducing any new changes to either the MacBook or iMac at the forthcoming Apple Expo in Paris toward the end of September.

Today though, MacWorld are claiming that major retailers are running out of stock of MacMini’s and iMac’s, which is a common occurence just before a new product is released. Rumours are that anything that’s going to happen will happen shortly after Labor Day in the US (Sept 5th) so I think I may just hold off another week or two before placing my order!

So, yesterday, day one of the bucket collection for the Irish Township Challenge saw EUR 160 raised. Big thanks to CMA for turning up to help me with the collection. The word around the village was that it was an exceptionally poor turnout for the races, I can certainly vouch for that, after 18 years of going to the races, I can’t remember ever seeing it so quiet.

The weather is a little nicer today, so, hopefully that will bring out some more crowds. Morgan and Liam will be coming up to help out with the collection, fingers crossed we get as good if not better results today.

Also have to say a big thanks to the Bellewstown Race Committee who kindly produced a cheque for EUR 100 for me yesterday too.

If you’re like me, you will have thought of the option of creating stock photography at some stage in your photographic career as a means of making a few bob. It’s not something I’ve seriously thought about as of yet, but, reading this excellent article by Chris is certainly food for thought and makes for some excellent advice.

Hey Folks,

Wow, it’s been a while (as usual!). I’m arranging a bucket collection at this weeks Bellewstown Races in order to help raise funds for my trip to South Africa with the Niall Mellon Challenge. If you have any tips or ideas, have arranged a bucket collection before, or fancy coming along to help out, please let me know.

Also, I’m trying to source buckets in order to use for this, probably about 10 in total, anyone have any ideas?

Of course, as always, you can donate through PayPal to this cause also.

Madonna…48 today, whoa, now that is scary!!

My uncle Alan is trying to figure out where this castle is somewhere along the Irish West Coast. Take a gander over, and if you know, leave a comment here or on flickr…