My first site...

I recently made a site for a friend, it's my first site... Check out the dancemakers site.

MySpace part 2

Okay, so I've started to fight the MySpace layout nightmare... This is going to be much harder than I had thought!

I've found a great guide. His MySpace page is here.

MySpace

Everyone, well anyone with taste, hates MySpace and the terrible pages that people post. What the great unwashed have done to the web through MySpace is really unforgivable!

I am taking it upon myself as my challenge to make my MySpace page of decent design and not distasteful to the pallet of my friends of the design persuasion!

It will take me some time to get it right, so have patience... but I will bring taste to MySpace!

http://www.myspace.com/mark_moynihan

Heroes

Ok, this isn't going to be a big post, but I just have to state that Heroes is the best tv show I've ever seen, ever... and I've been a tv junkie in my time...

Heroes rocks!

Oh, so does Milo Ventimiglia... First saw him on Gilmore girls, now he's on Heroes... Very hot!

Zune

I went to a Microsoft event on hosting providers today...

They were giving away a Zune at the end of it... I hide my iPod Nano as I walked in and said my mantra's...

Then at the end, I won it :)

Okay... so it's like one of the first ones in Australia... so should I sell it on eBay? Christ... hard descision... It's not really my style to get rid of things... I'll probably keep it for while, never use it cos' my nano is smaller and then just give it to my brother Tony.... Don't count your chickens to early Tony, I might just like it... :) Well I suppose in that case you'll get the Nano...

Installing it at the moment...

Hmmm... Damn, if I sold it I could use the money to buy a new bike... damn...

Software installed....

Zune connected...

Firmware updating...

Syncing... blah blah blah... I'll let you know how it goes later...

Bicycles and Vista

Well I finally got my hands on Vista at work today. Still waiting for it for my lappy, but at least I get to have a play. It installed fine, took a couple of attempts to join it to the domain, I don't think it liked having the same name as my poota's previous incarnation... Opps... :)

When it installed it came up with the right video driver, but no sound driver... a couple of minutes later I started to hear clicks and beeps... The bloody thing had gone out, found them and installed them! Did the same when I plugged in my web cam too... Huh! So much for the skeptics that said there were no drivers and all that crap :)

The repair work on my bike didn't go down as well as my Vista install, there was no self repair... bugger... The back wheel is better, but there is still some clunking... I'll have to take it out for a test ride... Throw it about and see if it stays in one piece :)

My take on 2007...

I cancelled my gym membership in December, I always find that I never go during December and January as I'm always off doing other things or not in town. I started riding my bike in from Sunshine to work every day... This way I get to do my exercise and travelling at the same time, it was a great optimisation of time and talk about great exercise...

Each way is about 16km, takes about 40minutes and burns off 500 calories, 35% of which are from fat!!! Only problem is my beloved bike which is very old and done me well for many many kilometers is definitely on it's last legs. I went out on it tonight and the rear hub is loose and needs some tlc... or maybe I should just replace it... hmm just the wheel or maybe the whole bike...

Actually, I really want to move back into the city, Sunshine is just a bit too far out of the city for my social life. I need to be a bit closer, getting home late at night is way too expensive and totally inconvenient. And living close to work would be very nice... Walking to work would be a dream, then I wouldn't need to get a new bike so I'm going to just try and fix the wheel and put up with it until I can save up for a new one (most probably after I pay off my laptop).

So the main things I have planned so far are:

• James and Trin's wedding in Sydney
• Move into the city
• Finish paying off the laptop
• Get a new pushy

2006 wrap-up

The end of 2006 was not short of drama's...

Granny had a couple of bad turns and I took off to New Zealand for a surprise weekend trip... That was emotionally and physically draining. She ended up pulling through...

I lost my phone again, it being a 3 phone I couldn't swap it for one of my spares... Talk about being one of the most painful things that's happened to me...

The year ended and I lived through it, what more can I ask for?

I went back to NZ again for xmas for a couple of days, ended up being searched by customs on the way into NZ. I was fine coming back into Australia, one point Oz, one less point NZ!

Europe wrap up...

Well I thought I had better make a post that finished of the Europe trip so I could try and get this blog up to date... Otherwise I'll always be behind ...

So, Tim and Amber arrived in Barcelona and we stayed at this great apartment which over looked la Rambla. The apartment had cooking facilities, nice shower, was clean and the closest thing to a home that I had been in for nearly a month.

The four of us (Tim, Amber, Wayne and I) hung out in Barcelona, checking out the sites, shopping, eating and drinking.

Things to do:

• Check out all the Goudy stuff you can
• Hire push bikes and ride around the maze of the Barri Gotic and La Ribera
• Eat as much tapas as you can
• Drink as much wine as you can
• Deffinitely check out the hunks on the beach :)

If you look around there are some great places to eat. I had the best meals on my holiday in Barcelona.

La Rambla was always alive with people, during the day it's full of con-artists and buskers, or busking con-artists... It's supposed to be a place where you have to look after you wallet, but I never lost mine. During the night la Rambla is full of prostitutes... As I was walking along that would come out grab my arm and try and drag me aside to sell me their wares... After a while I started telling them I was gay and that just encited them to start grabbing my butt and have a feel... Can't win...

We were out walking one night, trying to find a bar we had heard about that sold Absinthe. We knew it was in the El Raval area (dodgy and to the west of La Rambla), so we were walking around and turned down this street... there were no lights and as we started down the street very scary looking people started to step out of the shadows and onto the street... we very quickly turned around and took off... The next day when we were out on the push bikes exploring some how I ended up leading us through this building site and onto the dodgy street. If we had gone down the street in the dark there would have been no way out... Stay away from dark places and keep your eyes open!

Anyway we had a great time in Barcelona and were sad to leave.

I then headed back to London with Tim and Amber, I broke my suit case on the way by using the extendable handle to lift it... a big no no for the suitcases with wheels... d'oh.

London

Back in London I got to go out and do a bit of exploring by myself... When you are out there walking around chosing your own direction you really get a better sense of where things are. I ended up jumping on the underground and getting off at random stations and then walking around. I love Soho, but that's no surprise as it's the city's gay precinct :)

Some of the highlights were:

• The london eye - I went on this with Tim and Ange, Ange who hates heights will never forgive us for talking her into going on it :)
• Heaven night club - after going out for dinner we went bar hopping and ended up at Heaven night club, we got searched and put through metal detectors to get in which had happened everywhere so it just gave you more of a sense of saftey. I loved Heaven... I'll definitely go there next time I go back to London and make a night of it.
• Oxo tower - we had dinner at the Oxo tower bistro, very nice. It was a great meal, but you would want to be earning the pound if you eat there.
• Buckingham Castle - I went on a tour of Buckingham castle, I've become fascinated with the english Royal family... the histroy, the power and more recently the loss of power.
• Cathcing up with Mark, a friend from NZ that I hadn't seen in ages...

Hasta la vista Europe

So I left for the airport and thought I had given myself lots of spare time but I arrived with not much time to spare and at what felt like the end of the queue for my flight. I would have to say that Heathrow Airport would have to be the worst airport I had been through, small cramped, crowded and slow... You would think for the worlds busiest Airport they would have facilities to cope... I guess the whole security thing made it all a lot worse...

I got on the plane and was sitting next to this cool chick who seemed to like drinking as much as I did... So I had the Stewardess's make up for the rude behaviour of the Stewardess I had on the way over.

I got to Singaport Airport and hunted for showers that I had heard of, I was feeling crappy as London had been hot and muggy, a shower would have been great, but I ran out of time. So by the time I got back on the plane I was well and truely ready to get home...

Anyway I arrived home and then went out clubbing... christ what was I thinking?

Barcelona and Goudy...

After a relaxing morning, hiding from the rain and watching spanish DVD's we headed out to see a bit of Barcelona and la Sagrada Familia.

The main tourist centre of Barcelona is called les Ramblas, it's a kilometer long plaza which houses buskers through the day and protitutes through the night. On the east side of Les Ramblas is the Barique Gothic which is as the name suggest 'Gothic' the buildings are very 'churchy' in design. Quite tall buildings which make up a maze of alley ways. They would hose down the streets every night, but all the dogs which ran wild thorough the streets made sure there was enough urine to make it smell. On the west side of Les Ramblas is El Raval, the poorest and dodgiest part to central Barcelona, a couple of good bars and restaurants here and also one of the scariest streets...

La Sagrada Familia is the largest construction project currently underway on the planet and it truely is the most amazing. I have never seen a building that is more awe-inspiring than this. You have to go and see it for yourselves as words cannot do it justice. Even though it's a church and I don't do the whole church thing this is deffinitely a must see.

We finished the day with an amazing meal at an organic vegetarian restaurant, one of the best meals I'd had on my whole trip!

Get me to Barcelona

Again, I woke up hungover…

To be make sure our trip to Barcelona was stress free and enjoyable, we decided we would goto the train station a good hour or two early. We had lots of time to spare, so I went out to get some breakfast with Andrew, a Kiwi we had met the night before. Wayne caught up with us and we discussed out train trip to Barcelona, Andrew pointed out that if we were on the express train that it left from the train station down the road, we didn’t have our tickets on us so we decided to check them when we went back to the hostel.

So we go back to the hostel, pack our stuff and head off to the train station we arrived at. Important thing to note here is that we didn’t check our tickets to see where we departed from!

Relaxed and with plenty of time up our sleeves we caught the underground out to the, or should I say one of the, train station(s)… When we got there, we couldn’t find our train on any of the departure boards, suddenly it dawned on us that we hadn’t checked what station we were departing from… A horrible feeling welled up inside us as we realised that we should be at the other station, on the other side of town.

With an hour till our train left and about that amount of travel to get to it, we started running… So much for being early and having a relaxing trip…

We just made it, I was sweating like a pig, having had to run with my suitcase, thank god it had wheels and a handle…

We got to Barcelona, there was a bit of rain but nothing to write home about.

Wayne’s brother Mark, had kindly offered us his couch. My plan was to stay there for a few nights until Tim and Amber arrived in a couple of days.

At the train station we had the option of catching the underground or getting a Taxi. Mark had advised us to get a taxi. However being the underground veterans that we thought we were and add to that the huge queue for taxi’s we decided that the underground was for us!

Not knowing exactly where Mark lived and not having a map ended up being more of an issue than we thought it would be.

We got the underground to a station which was in the suburb Mark lived in, as we were leaving the station hordes of people were entering the station, it was pandemonium. Barcelona had just played and one a soccer match and this was all the fans catching the train home. We had to get one of the station attendants to walk in front of us clearing the way… there were that many people! As we were passing through the crowd, I made the disturbing observation that people were wet and some of them were wearing ponchos.

Barcelona was experiencing a torrential downpour. This only happens for like 3 or 4 days a year and as luck would have it we were in the middle of it. We were stuck in the street, with no cover in the pouring rain! We were drenched and hiding in a doorway for an hour until we were rescued by Mark, who took us back to his apartment.

Safe, dry sigh…

9-11

James dropped us off at the train station in the morning and then headed back to Lisbon where he started his journey back to Australia. I wouldn't have picked that day to fly, I don't think James thought about it when he booked his flights.

We had a relaxing, uneventful train ride to Madrid.

When we got to Madrid we decided that we would just go straight to Barcelona... Little did we know, but September the 11th is the aniversary of the conquering of Catalonia by the Spanish in 1714. Aparantly the Catalonian's fought valiantly but lost, they celebrate the day anyway. This being the case, all transport to Barcelona from Madrid was fully booked out. Opps... We booked tickets on the express train to Barcelona, leaving the next day.

We were in Madrid for the night! Excellent, it was a good excuse to check out a new city. We booked into a hostel called Cats, if you are in Madrid and looking for a Hostel, it's deffinitely the place to go. Great facilities and a bar underneath with well priced drinks.

After we checked into Cats, we explored Madrid for a couple of hours. It was very hot and dry.... Very developed too, lots of stone and concrete, everywhere. Early evening we went to the bar at Cats, it was great, we met up with people from all over the world and before too long everyone in the room was hanging out and swapping stories. We all got progressively drunker and then went out dancing at some of the local clubs...

A whole day in Salamanca...

We crawled out of bed at about midday... Suffering from the night before...

Over heating, we got in the air conditioned car and drove... James was departing the next day so Wayne and I got train tickets to Madrid, we decided to get the tickets to Barcelona when we got to Madrid, just in case we wanted to check out the sites.

We then found the pool, but as we got there, the sun decided to go and hide behind the clouds. Regardless we went to the pool and finally got some time in the water. To get in the pool, you had to shower, which isn't too weird, but you couldn't take towels, shirts, glasses in to the pool area. Nothing.... nada... and the life guards enforced these rules...

Party Time in Salamanca

So we ate and got ready to check out a Spanish festival...

The family in the appartment across from our room all decided to strip off and get changed. Was an interesting show, but started to get disturbing when granny decided to join in... ug...

The town was packed, there were shit loads of students partying like students do ie. drinking cheap beer and eating crap food... There were familys out watching fireworks... There were even crowds of old people spontaneously breaking out into dance... And this was all around midnight...

These people party late!

So we started our rounds of the local clubs... Total Uni town... Jesus another one... They were all what you would expect from a Uni town.

We were pleasantly rewarded on the way back to our accomodation... We walked passed and subsequently went into a club called Karamello. There weren't many people in there, which did worry us as this usually is a sign that a place isn't that great. We danced to a couple of cheesey 80's songs which is always fun, then we decided to splash out on a shot of liquer... The drinks that night had been ultra expensive, not too bad if the currency was the Ozzy Peso, but it wasn't. Anyway, we ordered shot's of tequila and were only charged 2 Euros each...

We couldn't help but polish off serveral drinks, especially when they were at such reasonable prices.

We met the barman Jacobo, or James in the anglasised version, who practiced his english with us.