Author: Padraig Fahy

  • WWE Royal Rumble 2024 Results [SPOILERS]

    WWE Royal Rumble 2024 Results [SPOILERS]

    The Royal Rumble has been and gone and here are the results from last nights show.

    Spoilers ahead!

    [Pictured is Naomi, who returned to WWE, a year and a half after walking out]

    Predictions:

    WWE Royal Rumble 2024 Predictions
    • Women’s Royal Rumble Match
      • WINNER: Bayley
    • Roman Reigns (C) vs LA Knight vs AJ Styles vs Randy Orton in a Fatal 4-way match for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship
      • WINNER: Roman Reigns retains!
    • Logan Paul (C) vs Kevin Owens for the United States Championship
      • WINNER: Logan Paul via disqualification
    • Men’s Royal Rumble Match
      • WINNER: Cody Rhodes

    And that was the show. What did you think of it?

  • WWE Royal Rumble 2024 Predictions

    WWE Royal Rumble 2024 Predictions

    For the 37th time in WWE’s history, it’s time for the Royal Rumble, and the road to WrestleMania 40 begins tonight.

    There are 2 rumbles and 2 title matches tonight.

    WWE have deliberately not confirmed many entries for the Rumble matches, which makes things very difficult to predict.

    At the time of writing, only 17 men and 10 women have been confirmed for the Royal Rumble matches.

    Rumble Matches

    • Men’s Royal Rumble Match – 30 man over-the-top rope battle royal.
      • PREDICTION: It’s very difficult to predict who would be the stand-out here. I will predict 3 people. CM Punk, Cody Rhodes and Lexis King 🤣
    • Women’s Royal Rumble Match – 30 women over-the-top rope battle royal.
      • PREDICTION: Becky Lynch, (Hopefully a returning) Naomi and Gigi Dolin.

    Title Matches

    • Logan Paul (C) vs Kevin Owens in a singles match for the United States Championship
      • PREDICTION: This could well be match of the night, but I think Logan is going to be holding the title until at least Mania and probably will have a rematch with Kevin Owens. Logan to retain!
    • Roman Reigns (C) vs LA Knight vs AJ Styles vs Randy Orton in a Fatal 4-Way for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship
      • PREDICTION: Roman is going to retain. There is no way that he is going to lose the title now before Mania. He is going to be keeping this until Survivor Series at the very least so that way, he can say that he beat Hulk Hogan. Roman to retain

    And those are my predictions for tonight.

  • [The JukeBox] #94 Robert Miles – One and One

    [The JukeBox] #94 Robert Miles – One and One

    Time to head to 1996 for a Robert Miles song that always played second fiddle to Children.

    The song was initially written and recorded by Polish singer Edyta Górniak, but it wouldn’t be released until a year AFTER the Robert Miles’ cover.

    The female vocalist in this song is Maria Nayler. Nayler mostly contributed to songs in the same way that she did for One and One. At the time of writing, she hasn’t released any of her own music.

    One and One was not part of Miles’ debut album Dreamland until a month after the initial European release of the album. It would be included with the US version and subsequent re-releases.

    My father was a massive fan of Robert Miles and was very sad when Miles passed away in 2017. Most weekends in our house had some Robert Miles tune blasting out of the Pioneer IS-21MD.

    YouTube

    Spotify

    Lyrics

    The sky isn’t always blue
    The sun doesn’t always shine
    It’s alright to fall apart sometimes,

    I am not always you
    And you are not always mine
    It’s alright to fall apart sometimes

    After all is said and done
    One and one still is one
    When we cry,
    when we laugh
    I am half, you are half

    The heart isn’t always true
    And I am not always fine
    We all have an angry heart sometimes

    After all is said and done
    One and one still is one
    When we cry, when we laugh
    I am half, you are half

    Look how far we have come
    One and one still is

    One moon (one moon)
    One star (one star)
    I love the one we are
    One thread (one thread)
    One line (one line)
    Let’s stand still in time

    One moon (one moon)
    One star (one star)
    I love the one we are
    One thread (one thread)
    One line (one line)
    That runs through our lives

    After all is said and done
    One and one still is one
    When we cry, when we laugh
    I am half, you are half

    Look how far we have come
    One and one still is one ah
    Ooh

  • No longer shackled to Google

    No longer shackled to Google

    (mostly)

    Last week I asked whether Fastmail was a good alternative to Google Workspace and while the sole response was a ‘Yes’, I did my research on it before signing up.

    I set up a free trial account with Fastmail and got to importing my emails from Google Workspace.

    Maybe it was just fate, but when I went into the Google Admin Console, there was a banner with a message stating that “The price of Google Workspace Business Starter subscription will be increasing on or after 14 Feb 2024.”

    It was going from €5.20 per user per month (excl VAT) to €6.90 per user per month (excl VAT). Including VAT of 23% that would be €6.40 and €8.49 respectively.

    Fastmail works slightly differently, for the equivalent plan, which is their Standard plan, per month it would be $5. Then they add on the tax (23%) and bill you in USD, which equals $6.15. In Euro, that would be €5.61. That is cheaper than Google’s old price, including VAT!

    I ended up buying Fastmail for the year at $50 which is $4.17 per month. Including tax, that is $61.50 and $5.13 and converting that to Euro: €56.18 and €4.68.

    Even if you are paying monthly, that is still a good deal.

    “But what about Google Drive, Google Photos, etc?”

    Most of that stuff is on my non-Workspace Gmail account that I am (slowly) moving over to my own Nextcloud instance. But I’ll probably keep that as backup (for now)

    I stopped using Google Analytics back in March 2022 and replaced with self-hosted Matomo

    “What about YouTube?”

    A while back, I switched to using Piped, an alternative, privacy-focused front-end for YouTube. I don’t have it self-hosted and probably won’t as there seems to be a bit of a set-up with it.

    Surely, you are still using Google Chrome? You liked Vivaldi and Arc, right?

    Nope. Not any more. I switched to Firefox about 6 months ago and haven’t looked back. I loved Vivaldi and Arc, but I have felt that there was something off with all of them a while back and decided to switch.

    Not only that, but I’ll keep Vivaldi installed on my computers whenever I need to test something in a different browser.

    Okay, but you are using Google for searching.

    Nah, I have switched to DuckDuckGo. I know it’s had some bad press with hiding search results over the last while, but it’s not enough to consider me ditching it.

    There are Google products that I will probably continue using with my free Gmail accounts. Mainly Google Maps. It’s probably the strongest maps app that I have used. I really love the idea of using OpenStreetMap, but Street View is a killer feature that I love using. (And I love playing GeoGuessr)

    The last year for my using online tools and services has been a whirlwind, and in a good way has me not shackled to Google. While it’s great for people who live in the ecosystem, it simply isn’t for me.

    Will I be telling people to stop using Google services? No. Absolutely not.
    You may have one reason or another for using that service, and if you don’t care about the privacy concerns or advertisements, then that is cool too. Times have changed online, and I needed to change too.

  • Funky Loops Vol. 1 & 2 by Funklada

    Funky Loops Vol. 1 & 2 by Funklada

    A new album from Funklada was released on the Coraspect label on Friday. It has been on repeat much of this weekend already.

    Track 2 “Funkin’ Around” is a standout.

    https://coraspect.bandcamp.com/album/funky-loops-vol-1-2

  • Toothless Dance Mod for FFXIV

    Toothless Dance Mod for FFXIV

    Mod by The Mighty Punion: https://www.xivmodarchive.com/modid/96515

    Support them on their Ko-Fi post: https://ko-fi.com/post/Toothless-Dance-G2G2T2068

    Inspired by the meme that is making the rounds at the moment.

    Song: Driftveil City from Pokémon Black & White