DjMagra's stuff 'n' stuff

I’ve just been evaluating disk space usage for this blog, and The Dublin Blog and was wondering where the hell all my disk space was going to. Turns out that a plugin that I was using on both wp-shortstat was the culprit, gathering loads of data that I hardly ever use into my databases. Apparently, it’s a known bug in the script, and a newer version has been coded to use about half as much disk space.

There is also a method of shrinking current disk usage by about half if you’re interested:

UPDATE ‘wp_ss_stats’ SET ‘language’ = ‘’ WHERE ‘language’ = ‘empty’
UPDATE ‘wp_ss_stats’ SET ‘browser’ = ‘’ WHERE ‘browser’ = ‘Indeterminable’
UPDATE ‘wp_ss_stats’ SET ‘version’ = ‘’ WHERE ‘version’ = ‘Indeterminable’
UPDATE ‘wp_ss_stats’ SET ‘platform’ = ‘’ WHERE ‘platform’ = ‘Indeterminable’
ALTER TABLE ‘wp_ss_stats’ CHANGE ‘country’ ‘country’ CHAR( 2 ) NOT NULL
ALTER TABLE ‘wp_ss_stats’ DROP ‘user_agent’

Personally, I just found it easier to empty the tables as I hardly ever use the stats anyways and I’ve now got a whole load more space to boot!

Here’s a video I took at the weekend of Ireland running out onto the pitch to play England on Saturday. The atmosphere in Croke Park is like nothing I have experienced before, I can’t wait to watch the recording of the game on TV.

Oh, and the best bit about the game…the scoreline at the end, Ireland 43 – England 13!!

More pics here

Something that’s always really bugged me about flickr (one of the few things that really bugs me about flickr!) is the fact that when there’s activity on your photo’s, in the form of comments / notes etc, that you have to go and check up on your recent activity page to find it. Well, that’s no longer going to bug me, because, according to this flickr blog post they’ve turned on email notifications….yay!

Ok, this seems a little too good to be true, but, apparently it is! AllFreeCalls.ie has just recently launched here in Ireland, with a promise to allow you to make international calls to over 40 countries for the price of a local call, with a further 15 or so countries accessable at national call rate. How the service works, I’m not entirely sure, but, from their FAQ:

How Can You Do This?

We receive a commission from your telecom provider for using our local or national access number. This commission is sufficient for us to buy the International leg of your call.

I have yet to try out the service, but, I will be doing it eagerly in a short while and will report back here on the experience as soon as I have.

For readers in the US or UK, there is also a US Version and UK Version of the site. If this service really does work like it says on the tin however, I will be very quickly giving up on my fondness for Skype.

Cheers to Donncha for pointing this out.

If like me, you use the beautiful freshy theme from Julien De Luca and you’ve recently upgraded to WordPress 2.1 you might notice that a few things, namely the links template on your blog is broken.

Happily however there is already an update to the theme published, and simply replacing your existing theme with this update and everything should work for you.

impressive

Originally uploaded by DjMagra.

flickr never ceases to amaze me…but, this time it’s in a slightly different way to normal, it’s managed to add 16 of 15 possible photo’s to one of my groups?!

Last year, I wrote about the Not For Tourists guide to NY.It is quite simply one of the best travel companions that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve suggested them to everyone and anyone travelling to any of the cities that they cover.

I see that they have now released their 2007 guide to NY in PDF format and are offering it free of charge on their website. They do suggest that if you feel the urge to print any more than 20 pages, that you actually go out and buy the book, but it gives you a feel for just how cool these little things are!

So, this morning, we had the hardest frost I’ve seen in a long time, and even a few patches of snow lying about the place too, especially up around the Airport here in Dublin.

But, the forecast for tonight looks a little more interesting:

Very cold and windy tonight with strong easterly winds and with frost developing in many places after dark. A spell of rain and sleet will spread from the south and will fall as snow in many places. Some significant falls of snow are expected, especially over Connacht, much of Leinster and Ulster, with some drifting in places before dawn. Lowest temperatures -3 to plus 2c

All I can say is fingers crossed!

If, like me, you’re in the market (as I have been for quite a while!) for an Ultra Wide Angle lens for your Canon 20D / 30D and were always left scratching your head as to why the Canon EF-S 10 – 20 was worth approx $200 more than the Sigma 10 – 20, well then this article should go a good way toward explaining the differences, or, more to the point, the fact that there pretty much is none, and there’s no reason at all why you should pay the extra money for the Canon lens.

The wonderful Other Voices started back on RTE2 tonight, and whilst checking out the site, I noticed that there was a Damien Rice Special on over Christmas that I seem to have missed. Thankfully, RTE have gotten their act together, and have posted the entire show online for you to watch, I’m watching it here now, and for any DR fan, it’s well worth watching!