Feliz Año Nuevo!

T-Wii-nk!

Raced out of work today to battle the traffic to Dundrum to grab those last few pressies. Queuing up in Game, I thought I recognised a voice somewhere nearby, I look up and there's Twink at the counter being served! I hadn't seen her since her "racy" appearance on the Late Late Show, and in fairness she was looking great and chatting away to the awe-struck sales assistant (aw bless!) .

I didn't think to sneak a look at what she was buying, which begs the question - what type of console does Twink have? While I'd love to think she's an Xbox nut like me - my guess is she flies the Wii flag (well all that exercise is paying off!).

Obviously I didn't whip out my camera to snap her in the shop so here's a random photo (courtesy of irish-showbands.com)



The Vengaboys on Friday, Twink today, does Christmas get any better?

Paris Hilton's Assets Grabbed!

Poor Paris. According to Police reports, someone wearing a hood and gloves (Santa?) broke into her LA home and snatched her "jewels"worth almost €1.5 million! That's definitely not "Hot".

Simply having a Venga-ful Christmastime!

It's so true - the BEST nights out are the ones you don't plan.

So when I bumped into the Vengaboys last night it really was a dream fulfilled.....ahem.

The last time I played one of their songs was about 10 years ago - where have they been? I'm guessing Ibiza or staying with their Uncle John from Jamaica.

Whatever they've been up to, the "boys" are back in town...



Even more frightening was the fact that I still remembered all the dance moves.

Let's never speak of this again.

Living for the Weekend!

2 Words - It's Friday!

Fancy something deliciously cheesey?

Thought you might...

Christmas Gimp!

Today, with just a week to Turkey Thursday, I found myself in a frenzied state searching my old hard drives for photos for a work "project" ( all will be revealed soon!). I needed to edit a couple of pics and realised I don't actually have Photoshop! Whilst no decent graphic designer would ever be caught short without Adobe's industry-standard image editor, I'm NOT a graphic designer and haven't used Photoshop intensively, since I left the hallowed computer labs of DIT. Google's Picasa is a nice, free tool for simple editing but I needed something with a little more bite.....enter GIMP! Now before you assume that GIMP refers to some old Computer Science college mate - it doesn't! GIMP is an acronym for "GNU Image Manipulation Tool". It's been around a while, but I've only just discovered its power. Oh, and did I mention it's free? Recession-busting software - eat your heart out Brian Cowen! (www.gimp.org)

Dream On?!

I mentioned this on-air during the week and it's still on my mind....so to speak!

When asked what I like to read, I generally try to avoid the "Dana-esque" Sarah Palin response of all kinds of everything. To be honest the last book I read was "Marley & Me" - if you haven't read it, have a box of Kleenex handy. (The film based on the book is out soon - http://marleyandmemovie.com/)

Anyway, I also love (not!) to leaf through that scientific staple "Neuron" magazine, where they've reported that Japanese scientists can literally read our minds! Yes, apparently our Asian cousins have succeeded in transferring images from the brain onto a screen. Soon they hope to be able to display a person's dreams while they sleep. I'm suitably scared by this....notwithstanding the privacy issues - do you really want someone seeing (in real-time!) what you're dreaming about - or more embarrassingly - WHO?! That's not a dream, that's a nightmare.

The Festive Favourite Returns!

Congratulations to Dan Rogers and his Christmas Collaborators who have just put the finishing touches to their annual Yuletide project.

Find out more at http://thechristmasalbum.org/

Dublin's Destiny!

This really is turning into Beyonce week with the announcement she will play the O2 Dublin in May!
I was asked in work today if I'd ever met her - unfortunately not - but I did manage to get pretty close during a trip to the US a few years ago. We had 6 hours in Chicago, waiting for a connecting flight and ended up in this massive shopping centre. Suddenly there were screams followed by an army of security guards - looking down to the floor below, here's what we saw:

The Beyonce Factor

All week the rumours abounded - who would the special guests be for the final of the annual tellybox fest that is the X-Factor?! A smattering of websites hinted at a Destiny's Child star. However, most reports said Eoghan (EggNog) would be paired off with Boyzone, Westlife would do the honours with JLS and Rihanna would be the not-so-surprise guest to sing with Alexandra. As Meatloaf puts it, 2 out of 3......

Were it not for the incredibly STUPID Kym Marsh exclaiming to Dermot that she couldn't wait for Alexandra's performance with Beyonce, we might well have been somewhat surprised by the Superstar's arrival. Alas, Ms. "Where the hell are Hear'Say now?" had to take matters into her own hands and almost spoiled the show. I say "almost" because what followed Beyonce's entrance still gives me residual goosebumps. Simply incredible. Beyonce sealed the deal for Alexandra who, despite her obvious awe, delivered the performance of her life with her idol.

Should Leona Lewis be worried? Well, if she isn't, she's nearly as foolish as Ms. Marsh, who I suspect we may never see "gracing" the show again.