Oh, and congrats Leon Camier

And whilst the cars continue to disappoint, the bikes at least do not...
Which reminds me - congrats - BIG congrats - to Leon Camier on taking the BSB title at the weekend.
Awesome job, kong and well-deserved :-)

Singabore

(*Even Streatham Raceway's kiddie kart track pisses on the Singapore F1 circuit.)

The most entertaining thing about the weekend's F1 race in Singapore?
Without a doubt, Bernie Ecclestone avoiding Jake Humphrey's questions on BBC by pretending to be a dribbling imbecile.
Whilst Jake (who I must admit I'm warming to) actually had the dangly bits to ask some serious full-on questions to Bernie (unlike the lamentable Eddie Jordan who simply stood next to him like a grinning idiot version of Peter Griffin's dad off Family Guy) F1's elder-eldest statesman simply disintegrated into chewing his lips off, glancing around like he didn't know where he was, and simply repeating the questions and random words back at him; presumably in a desperate effort to try and confuse the interviewer.

Pathetic.

As was the race. Dull as ditchwater.

The thing is that it's absolutely unforgivable that the race should be boring, and certainly that it should be boring to watch. They spend kazillions of trillions of billions of dollars making it happen - and starting work on next year's track before this year's race has even happened and all those kind of ludicrous statistics. Buzzing city. Blazing lights. Blah blah, bleedin' blah... What does it look like to the millions who've tuned in to watch it around the world (and probably from other worlds according to the PR hyperbole)...?
It looks like a flat dirty sidestreet surrounded by concrete walls and mile-high fencing.
Astonishing.
All that money, all that effort, all that time and preparation, and it looks like somewhere very grubby between Brixton and Loughborough Junction. Shameful.
Marginally less impressive than the Streatham Raceway. Which is where it should be relocated to in F1's budget-cutting moves. Nobody would notice the difference.

Microsoft's Marketing Department Needs Sectioning

“In a lot of ways, you’re just throwing a house party with Windows 7 as an honored guest...”
In a lot of ways, you're clearly mental...

& in a lot of ways, this is very very funny. Kind of creepy too though, as it appears to be some kind of portal into a parallel universe where everybody's a bad actor. And everybody's on crack.

Still, worth sharing for sheer *WTF* value.

The Weather Report, Australia. Orange Alert...

(*Nabbed from The Guardian...)


Australia has been engulfed by dust storms as wild winds sweep millions of tonnes of red dust from continent's drought-ravaged interior and dump it on the coast...

Storms of red dust produced a supernaturally orange and glowing sky over much of Australia's east coast as the country experienced a day of freak weather conditions.
At Sydney airport, where visibility was cut to 400 metres, flights were cancelled while several international flights were diverted to Melbourne, where flights were also delayed. Flights were also delayed at Brisbane airport in Queensland.

As dust ravaged the east coast last night, heavy rains lashed Adelaide in the nation's south where streets were flooded.
Then as morning dawned, two tremors shook Melbourne. Later in the day, hail stones as big as cricket balls pelted parts of New South Wales where heavy rainfalls are now expected and flash-flood warnings have been issued.

The Bureau of Meteorology said it was the worst dust storm since the 1940s, with particle pollution up to 10 times worse than the previous record and was predicting another storm would hit in the next day or two.

Has Eddie Jordan Just Libelled Fernando Alonso?

"The World Motor Sport Council concludes that Mr. Alonso was not in any way involved in Renault F1's breach of the regulations."
FIA statement, 22_09_09

"Alonso clearly cheated"
Eddie Jordan, on 'PM', Radio 4, 22_09_09

Now when I compare those two statements - and bear in mind that Eddie Jordan's was a reaction to the FIA statement and ruling - I'm left with the distinct impression that surely Fernando Alonso could make a tidy few quid by ringing his lawyers right now.
Jordan has been an utter pillock on the BBC coverage this year - one of the few truly awful things about the BBC's basically decent F1 product - but by any standards this is surely a total clanger.

The context in which he made it was that he was saying that Frank Williams should still be angry because his driver came second in the 2008 Singapore GP (which Alonso won, and which was the race that "Crashgate" / Nelsongate" etc revolves around)...
Now saying that Alonso's first place might be sullied by the fact the scandal surrounding the machinations of Briatore, Symonds and Piquet Jnr is one thing - but it is a very very different matter indeed to maintain that "Alonso clearly cheated", especially when the FIA (mad and inconsistent bunch of freaks that they are) have just exonerated him 100% in the matter a mere 2 or 3 hours earlier.

To me it's just another sign that Jordan should shut the hell up and go away for good. (Unless of course he actually meant to say anything remotely like what blurted out of his mouth...? In which case he should be telling us exactly *how* Alonso clearly cheated, surely - or presenting his evidence to the FIA...?)
But it'd be hellish funny to see Alonso's lawyers take him to the cleaners on the way.

If you think I've misheard something that patently would be too ridiculous to say then check out the programme on the BBC's iPlayer here at about 38 mins 20 secs in...

Great Awesome Amazing Incredible

Say Hello to the most important bits of last week's Apple Keynote. The adjectives, apparently. ;-)
Er... great!

Vroom Vroom...

I'm setting up my new business at the moment, as I'm currently in the middle of a redundancy process and need to get my head around "Life After Teletext", where I've been for 11 years, busily getting complacent and institutionalised.
Getting a similar job is pretty much out of the question (as in it's both unlikely and to be honest, probably undesirable) so I'm looking at freelancing more than anything - the skills and experience are there; but it's going to take a lot of hard work and persistence too.
There's some interesting projects that I'm aiming to pursue, primarily because they'd be things I'd love to do and would be brilliant if they worked out - but I'm also keeping my feet firmly on the ground and prepping to do my fair share of "grind" work too; the kind of thing of which the best you can say is that it "pays the bills..."

One of the major upsides to what I'm planning is that pretty much everything I can do on my Macs, but there's two things that have sadly meant I need to get Windows up and running...

One is that, as a web designer amongst other things, I really need to ensure that anything I build looks and works fine cross-platform, so I need to check it in PC browsers on a Windows OS. The other is that I bought a special application called "Business in a Box" which is basically an adaptable business and legal document resource. Had I wanted just the English version then there's a Mac one, but as I wanted the English AND Spanish combined edition it's got a bit more complicated, as it's not available for the Mac and requires a PC version that is a bespoke app that allows exports to standard "Office" formats.

So basically I've just had to shell out on the Business in a Box software, plus Office for PC, plus Windows for PC, plus Parallels to run the whole fat lot on top of the Mac OS.

This had better all be bloody worth it!!! It's yet another disappointment to my team too, who've been devastated by the sight of me buying project-planning and accounting software recently. By the way, the best project planning software for Mac is unarguably OmniPlan by the wonderful folks at Omni Group, who also produce OmniGraffle which is pretty much indispensable for things like sitempas and wireframing.

By the way, the new business is called Vroom Media.
There's a main information site here...
And a more detailed portfolio site here at Vroom Vroom...
Plus there's a page on Facebook here...

If you need some nifty design work doing, and you're a nice person and a prompt payer then get in touch ;-)

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.