Fantastic Weekend in Talavera (durh! of course...)

Back from Talavera de la Reina - possibly to be renamed Talavera de la Raina, following some proper Brit-style downpours amidst the baking heat. Nonetheless a brilliant time and a superb fanclub party with lots of friends old and new around to welcome us. Alvaro was of course there, and it was a cracking time.
There's full reports on the Alvaro sites, and also a decent set of pics in the "Members Only" section of BatiFans.

For this page though, here's a cool pic of some curiously and yet coolly mismatched tiles on the walls of the Basilica in Talavera.

If you fancy going to somewhere you might not have considered, *DO* go to Talavera; it's a beautiful, tranquil, and wonderfully friendly place. Not hard to get to from Madrid, and with no shortage of nice food and drink, and of course the Roman archaeology and its famous ceramics. Totally worth visiting. Click here for general information and tourist information...

Can't wait to go back...

...And Back To Spain

Still somehow seems that I'm barely back from the break on the Costa Dorada (although I'm very aware I've still not posted any pics of Tarragona yet, which is a pretty piss-poor state of affairs) - and yet it's back off to Spain on Friday; this time to Madrid and then on to Talavera de la Reina for the summer fanclub party for Alvaro Bautista.
Last year it was like a big and beautifully landscaped oven in the centre of Spain, with temperatures in the mid thirties - and according to my iPhone's weather app (always set to Talavera) it's likely to be little different this weekend.
Extra cold Mahou then... ;-)

Pic Of The Day, Week, Month, Year...

In one of those truly remarkable photos that turn up so infrequently, marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan has captued an iconic image that is bound to be used for envoronmental campaigns for years to come (providing we're actually still around and haven't destroyed the place *completely* by then , of course...) - showing, as it appears to, the face of earth mother Gaia herself weeping from the edge of a melting ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway.
It's not, of course. But it's a hugely impressive photo and one that deserves to be exploited for the cause of good nonetheless.

Makes those "Jesus in a burnt waffle" photos look pretty bloody silly really, doesn't it.

New El Canto Del Loco & Pere Tutusaus Websites

It's been a busy couple of days with me overhauling and relaunching a couple of my "pet project" sites. I won't call them "hobbies" as they're too important to me, and I felt that given the other rebuilds I'd done recently it'd be a great opportunity to carry on learning about Wordpress and PHP and CSS geekery by giving both sites a complete makeover and moving them from Blogger to my own domains and building them from the ground up with revised designs.

Here's how the new El Canto Del Loco website looks...



And this is how I've reworked the new Pere Tutusaus website, although I've left the branding more or less intact on this one, compared to the hefty redesign of the whole styling that I've done with the ECDL site...



I've also been working on a very cool idea that I've come up with which will also be a WP project; although it's huge by comparison, and also very secret squirrel, so I've got to try and stay excited about it for months yet while I mess around at refining and developing the idea and figuring out if there's any money in it!
Stay tuned...
And stay patient...

Brindisa, Borough Market

Very crowded this morning but got 100g of amazing Dehesa, freshly sliced off the joint. Scrummy :-)
Got a bunch of other nice stuff to last the long weekend too.

> Blogged from my iPhone <

Is This The Cutest Beach In The World?

In short... Yes. Yes, it is.

I've just come back from a short break on the Costa Dorada - see previous post - chilling in the (often fearsome) sunshine, supping ice cold Mahou and generally taking a nice break from the UK.
One day though, I had to go for a meeting in Barcelona, and took the train up along the coast - to my (pleasant) surprise, a short distance to the east of Sitges I looked out of the window and thought "Bugger me! I know that beach!" - it was the really cute one with all the beach huts and the sweet retro-looking hotel that's the centrepiece of the promo video for El Canto Del Loco's triffick piece of power-pop, "A Contracorriente"...

It genuinely *does* look fab! I want to holiday there sometime. Badly want to!
Anyway, I checked it out on Google Earth and it turns out it's called Garraf - and I've uploaded a Google Earth placemark here should you want to go look it out for yourself...
And the video can be seen here...

Got some really nice photos of Tarragona, which I'll aim to post in the coming days.

Off To Spain

Okay, I have to admit to not having sorted any updating on here over the last few days, but it's been busy - trip to Bridgend etc - and now it's off on hols for a week. Seven days on the (hopefully sunny) Costa Dorada, interrupted only by a short business meeting in Barcelona, should do me the world of good.
I'll aim to not be 100% lazy and if I catch any nice pics on the iPhone I'll upload them.
But it'd be foolish to consider it a promise of any kind.

Hasta luego :-)

Mankind Discovers 350 New Species To Wipe Out

Researchers in the remote eastern Himalayas (divided between Nepal, Bhutan and parts of China, India, Bangladesh and Burma) have discovered a whopping 350-odd new species over the last ten years, including Gumprecht's (horrendously) green pit viper as shown in the picture - It's venomous, grows to at least 130cm, and clearly thinks that camouflage is very last year.
More here...

Facebook Tip Of The Day... Yarrrrr...

Go to the bottom of the Facebook page. Click on the language settings (yours will probably be defaulted to "English (UK)"...) and try setting it to "English (Pirate)" instead.
Enjoy.

Yarrrr.

It Was Forty Years Ago Today...

Yep, forty years ago exactly, that the photos were taken for the iconic and much mimicked album cover of the Beatles' "Abbey Road".

Bullshit Bingo

I was sat in the beer garden of a bar in Southwark on Friday evening, waiting for some friends - but couldn't help but be drawn into the hilariously "serious' conversation of two businessmen bellowing at each other in loud and nonsensical business cliches, while I waited.
I really wish I could have written it all down as it was pure comedy gold (and I love it when people really feel they have to be heard by everybody else in a bar or restaurant, as it usually means they're idiots) - lots of stuff about "managing upwards", working in a "matrix" (I thought that was fiction I must admit) and "kicking shit in the UK division". But the bit that really got me (and I hope their business isn't involved in any kind of Physics discipline) was when one of them banged out in a gloriously pompous voice a phrase to describe his position in the company; "Yeah, well that's the thing - the gravitational field is much stronger the closer you are to the magnet..."

Tosser.

"LOL"

I may be getting a bit more reactionary in some of my views - like for instance I reckon using a mobile in a car should result in the filth being allowed to crush your motor into a cube *on the spot* - but it tends to be that these views come from decent observations. And one of those is that people CANNOT drive while using a mobile. Nor can they cycle while using one. And let's be honest most people can barely walk while using one (and alarmingly I'm talking about people using it as a frikkin' phone not as a texting device here...)
Hence why I love this cartoon. Thanks to Chris at Gonzovision for sending it on.

Matthew Norman: Sheer Class

Just before I head off for the weekend to Donington Park for the MotoGP (updates across the event on the BatiFan Blog and at BatiFans.com) I just had to post this stunning hatchet job by Matthew Norman in The Independent.
Although the article doesn't actually address the primary questions of the dishonesty of the mission in Afghanistan - and the basic principle that our troops should not be there and be in harm's way in the first place - it *does* do a smashing job at ridiculing the utterly ridiculous George Foulkes. Not hard, I know - small children could probably do a decent job - but Matthew Norman's rage at the (literally) Brown-nosing dreg is pure joy and pure class.
Read the article in full...

Steve Bell on EU President Blair

I must admit to still being close to incandescent with rage at the idea that Blair might be some kind of shoe-in as EU president. I'm certainly outraged at Glenys Kinnock proclaiming him "the UK's choice" (I sure as fuck didn't vote for him... did I miss something?) but on the bright side I'm confident of the IQs of our friends on the continent that they wouldn't possibly stand for it.
Although I would like it if they had a bit of fun by voting for him, got him over there and then ran him straight off to the Hague for trial...

Steve Bell, as usual, gets it spot on.

Darth Vader - Luke's Father AND Whistler's Mother

Get yourself over to Worth1000.com to take a look at their challenge to get people to drop Star Wars characters into famous works of art. Some aren't too great, to put it mildly - but some are truly excellent.

And Tom Lehrer Said Satire Was Dead...

Tom Lehrer famously said that political satire was obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.
No matter, it seems that these things are somehow either circular or simply launch into another realm of absurdity as news confirms that our own very special lying dissembling scumbag of a war-crim / mid-east-peace-envoy Tony Blair looks ever more set to become the first EU president.
You really couldn't make it up.

Another Good Cause

I can't help it; I'm a sucker for good causes - I've promoted ARK (Animal Rescue Kerala) on here before, and now it's time for another.
Whilst the current good cause in my head is raising money to have Andy Coulson's head on a spike at the Tower of London, there is a genuinely useful one that I'd like to point you at; Wiccaweys Rescued Border Collies & Working Dogs Centre - a rescue centre that really needs some funding help right now.
If you can spare a bit or can set up a monthly donation, you'd be doing something extremely useful.

Hopefully we can return to Andy Coulson's head on a spike some other time.... ;-)

"Light Rain" A Film By Neil Horner

This is a short film called "Light Rain" by a lovely and rather talented friend of mine, Neil Horner - entered in the Virgin Media Shorts competition.
Please do go vote if you like it...

Andy Coulson Must Go

My friend Madame Arcati has long waged a campaign against bullying tory cuntwit Andy Coulson.
For yet more reasons for them to get shot off him, see here...

Apple's App Store Is 1 Year Old

Apple's App Store - part of iTunes, and used for buying applications and games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, turns 1 year old, having put over 56,000 apps on its virtual shelves and had over a billion downloads.
They're celebrating with some special download offers on their most popular apps...

The Latest Lie On ID Cards

Are you under the impression that the government's announcement that ID cards will be "voluntary" is the end of it?
If for one moment yesterday's news made you think that you could forget about the discredited scheme, please don't. Not for a second.

Basically it's complete and utter spin and weasel words (no surprises there, then...) and the central plan to enforce the ID database goes on unchanged - and that means forcing everyone to register personal info whenever they need to update "certain documents"... that's things like passports or driving licences, and in the process paying for an ID card whether they want it or not.

Calling it "voluntary" is nothing short of dishonest. If you don't submit the details then you won't be able to drive or leave the country.
You have a few weeks before MPs vote in parliament on this, so if it troubles you (and pretty much anything this government does in this area troubles me a huge amount - they've proved themselves not only utterly incompetent and incapable on data and IT matters, but they've also proved utterly dishonest, deceitful and untrustworthy on pretty much anything to do with our rights and liberties) then you should waste no time in writing to your MP.

Also why not go check out NO2ID and maybe join them or make a donation.

Luke Jackson - "Goodbye London" Video

I'm indebted to British-Canadian singer/songwriter Luke Jackson for dropping me a line about his new video "Goodbye London" which features not only a cracking song about the place where I live, but also a top piece of animation, mixing time lapse and stop-motion of London scenes with drawn characters and graffiti. The result is a belter of a video; charming but unsentimental, and completely evocative of the city.
Do pass it on, and if you want to find out more about Luke and his work, including "Goodbye London" and his new album "...And Then Some" you can do so here...

You can buy "...And Then Some" on iTunes by clicking here...